Slain?
I'm currently looking at John 18 for a church on Sunday morning.
I read an interesting view on this verse: "When Jesus said, "I am he," they drew back and fell to the ground." (John 18:6).
It's probably not going to be a major point of the message, but one suggestion is that the "fell to the ground" was involuntary - a kind of "slain in the Spirit" experience. Is this reading too much into it, was it more of a fall in worship or fear?
I guess I'm looking to all you NT scholars to help here!

Relief?
I posted off my first assignment today (for my Postgrad studies in Leadership, Renewal and Mission or LRM). My work is done - all I need now is for the Royal Mail to deliver (this story is a bit worrying in that regard!).
So I can put the books about preaching back on the shelf. What was my conclusion about the importance of preaching in contemporary society? A kind of "maybe" but not in the way it was and lets get creative. It took nearly 7000 words for me to get there though! (I'll post a link to the paper in time if you're keen!).
The next module I'm doing is "Leading, Menoring and Accompanying the Emerging Church". Looking forward to it a lot. I'll be doing the second compulsory LRM module in 2008.

Update
Jason sums up the preaching thing very well in 5 points here