A Typical Model Audit Approach: Spreadsheet Audit Methodologies in the City of London

Spreadsheet audit and review procedures are an essential part of almost all City of London financial transactions. Structured processes are used to discover errors in large financial spreadsheets underpinning major transactions of all types. Serious errors are routinely found and are fed back to model development teams generally under conditions of extreme time urgency. Corrected models form the essence of the completed transaction and firms undertaking model audit and review expose themselves to significant financial liability in the event of any remaining significant error. It is noteworthy that in the United Kingdom, the management of spreadsheet error is almost unheard of outside of the City of London despite the commercial ubiquity of the spreadsheet.Comment: 5 Page

Preaching Old Testament Narratives

This essay recognizes the challenges associated with preaching biblical narratives, particularly Old Testament narratives. Old Testament narratives have often been under-utilized in Christian preaching and teaching. Biblical narrative itself has been considered light and simple, better left to children while sophisticated minds analyze epistles or prophecy. Then again, some Bible stories explicitly portray such violent or sexual themes that some have practically excluded them from the canon of preaching, finding them sub-Christian or just too hard to explain. Yet perhaps they are designed to cut through apathy and provoke passionate moral questioning at an adult level. Some may have considered OT stories part of the old covenant, forgetting that Jesus and the apostles used them as Scripture. Further, some scholarly approaches have theorized about various sources behind the OT narratives, and have attempted to break texts into various voices and authors. Interesting though this speculation may be to some, it does not consider that at least the final form was intended by somebody and works effectively as a unified work of literature. This essay attempts to provide a means to preach Old Testament narratives with attention to their literary quality and theological teaching. It will do so with attention to 1 Samuel 25, and it will provide practical strategies for constructing a sermon informed by Old Testament narrative. A sample sermon outline is also provided