For his 7th birthday this year Danelle got Sam some musical instruments which he has quite taken to. He has been crashing away on them enjoying himself then the other day he came out with two bits of paper on which he had written two songs.

I found it quite intriguing to see the inner workings and theologisings of a 7 year old so I have posted them on here, both as he wrote them (on paper) and in text that you might be able to read a little easier.

What I found amusing was the trinitarian focus in both songs. I’m sure if you ever want to understand the idea of one God in 3 persons that Sam would be able to set you straight!…

Oh God the Mity

Oh God oh mighty
You care for all of us
Your plans will never fail
You care with love
There’s only one God in three persons
Your Bible means all different words like ‘the book’
You and me look great
We shout to you to worship
When we get closer and closer to you we get to you
When we do we know that where in the safest place in the world!

This one had no title

My lord my lord all you have did my lord
You died on the cross for me
My lord he anseurs my prairs for me
My lord I said I’m safe in bed
Lord you make no mistake
Cos theres only one Lord
In three different persons

One person loses their ipod and another sees a chance to get one for next to nothing!

How is it that people can be in the church their whole lives, or work as Christian missionaries and yet be such arrogant, obnoxious and opinionated nobs?

Clearly education is not equivalent to transformation.

I had an encounter again this week with a person who left me speechless with their attitude. I think there is plenty in the church that is worthy of critique, but when you stand on the sidelines and lob rocks without getting your hands dirty trying to effect change then you just make me want to vomit.

I had to leave quickly because I was about to offer some of my own insights back to them.

As you were…

I have been to a lot of conferences in my 45 years, (many of them well worth every cent), but if you asked me which one I’d like to go to next I’d have to say ‘there isn’t one’.

I reckon you could bring the greatest line up of gurus from all over the world to Perth to talk about some of my favourite interests and I probably wouldn’t be bothered attending. I don’t think its that I have lost interest in the issues, but after a while it just seems there isn’t a lot of new stuff to consider.

Of course I understand the social value of conferences and that is well and good, but I can have lunch with a few mates any time I like and get the same result. If I am going to shell out some $$ and spend a few days of my life in a meeting room then I want it to be an exceptional time and one where I am challenged intellectually and inspired to action.

I know there are plenty of great communicators out there and I don’t for a moment think I have finished learning. I am just not convinced that I am going to be heading off to many conferences in the future.

I wonder if anyone else feels similarly?…

Is it an age you get to, or have we just been stung with a glut of conferences in the last 20 years. (And yes I realise I write this as one who spent the last 6 years of life organising learning events for people!)

Chuckle chuckle

If you don’t like public toilets then this one will knock you out… The first pic is of a woman about to enter a public toilet in Houston

And this is the view from inside the toilet – made entirely of one way glass…No one can see you from the outside, but when you are inside, it’s like sitting in a clear glass box.

Anyone getting nervous?…

Ok this one’s a beauty too. The floor of this bathroom has been painted on, but I still reckon it could be a little weird on first take! From

And just to show you how sharp (or strange) some people are here’s a true story of the ‘Pudding Guy’

In 1999, UC-Davis civil engineer David Phillips was grocery shopping when he noticed something peculiar. Healthy Choice Foods was offering frequent-flyer miles to customers who bought its products. But a 25-cent pudding would bring 100 miles — the reward was worth more than the product itself.

Recognizing a good thing, Phillips bought 12,150 servings of pudding for $3,140, claiming he was stocking up for Y2K. Then he enlisted the Salvation Army to help him peel off the UPC codes, in exchange for donating the pudding.

He mailed his submission to Healthy Choice, and to their credit they awarded him 1.25 million frequent-flyer miles, enough for 31 round trips to Europe, 42 to Hawaii, 21 to Australia, or 50 anywhere in the United States.

There’s no downside. Phillips also got Aadvantage Gold status for life with American Airlines, which brings a special reservations number, priority boarding, upgrades, and bonus miles. And he got an $815 tax writeoff for donating the pudding.

Out the front of our house we have our lawn, then a pavement and closest to the road a 2 metre strip of lawn that spans our block and is considered council property.

I was reading Simon’s blog today and the neighbourhood initiatives he was writing about and couldn’t help wondering what would happen if we were to start a veggie patch in the front of our yard rather than the back – and what if we got others in the street to do similar and we allowed people to come and take what they wanted from what was created.

In his excellent book on neighbourhood mission and spirituality (God Next Door), Simon wrote about how we have lost the ‘front porch’ vibe in our streets and how most living is now done at the back and of course the end result is that we finish up living much more separate lives. It prompted me to consider how we design our homes and whether we could create homes that help us ‘live out the front’ a bit more.

Perhaps using that verge area for a veggie garden could be a starting point in redressing the balance and who knows, if it caught on it could change the whole vibe of a street.

Of course it has risks and associated problems, but wouldn’t it be a fund experiment?…

Now, if only I had the smallest interest in gardening I’d give it a go!

Lately every time I read the book of John, (and I’ve been doing it a lot), I see Jesus seriously headbutting the Pharisees and the religious system of his time.

I thought maybe it was just me and my own disdain for pharisaism that was shaping what I see, but I’m not sure that’s it any more. Over the first 10 chapters of the book Jesus just seems to be in constant conflict with them and at times he is vitriolic in his critique. In fact Jesus is hardly ever gentle and understanding in these conversations / confrontations.

Its been a while since I have read John in great depth, but I have been deeply impacted by how strong Jesus’ opposition to them is and how hard he goes at them. I’ve found myself wanting to focus on something else in my teaching, but its hard to avoid the dominance of this group if you approach the book systematically.

Over the last week I came to the conclusion that maybe we just need to face the significance of Jesus’ concern and recognise that all of our communities are inherently prone to head in this direction if we lose touch with the gospel of grace and with our own identity. Perhaps Jesus hits this so hard is because it is so deeply a part of a fallen human psyche to make rules and then beat people into submission with them, or to want to control others in the name of God.

You certainly couldn’t say we no longer do that as churches…

In all of that I am aware of my own inner Pharisee who sometimes creeps up and bites me on the butt. Hypocrisy and self righteousness can be hard to shake unless we live in communities where authenticity is permitted and where failure is not seen as the end of the world. If we aren’t allowed to be real then the only option we have is that of pretense followed by grappling with the inner demons of deception that remind us of who we really are.

I have been reminded again that for us to be any use at all as a community we must start by acknowledging that we are broken, messed up people and while we are created in God’s image we so easily veer away from there.

I am starting to wonder if one of the biggest assets a Christian community can have is authenticity and then one of the most serious cancers would be pretense. No great surprise there, but perhaps the question that arises is why (if we know this) we still don’t do it more fluently.

It was back in 2002 that Danelle and I sensed God speaking to us about leaving our home in Lesmurdie and making the move to Brighton as missionaries and pioneers.

We were leading a church at that time and I had only just transitioned into the Team Leader role after 5 years as a youth pastor. It was therefore quite bizarre to feel this calling so strongly, and yet we couldn’t ignore it. We also felt there were 4 other families who we should invite to join us on the journey. Again there were very good reasons why each should have said ‘no thanks’, but despite incredible obstacles all said ‘yes – count us in’, and so the journey began.

That journey has been one of the primary foci of this blog, but last night it came to an end – officially. We gathered the core team over a meal and took some time to give thanks, celebrate and share memories of the wonderful time we shared together.

It was a pretty special night as we caught up, shared stories and reflected on the things we had learnt from our experience. What was really cool was that everyone was there – and they wanted to be there. The fact that Upstream ended wasn’t down to bad vibes and people disliking each other. It was just a whole bunch of circumstances that shifted and left it no longer viable.

I heard a number around the table say that if we could do it again we wouldn’t hesitate. In fact who knows… maybe one day we will…

So while there were tears and sadness at the end of a dream, there was also huge gratitude for the journey and for the friendships and for the learning. I think for most of us its been our ‘best ever’ church experience and has shaped up significantly. I actually don’t think we could have learnt any of the stuff we did and changed the way we did while doing ‘business as usual’.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the whole time was the way we were forgotten and virtually disowned by our home church once we made the decision. While there were a few quality people who prayed for us diligently and often, we never got invited back to share our learning and our requests for support or connection were not even responded to.

That has definitely left an ‘ech’ taste in our mouth and was an ongoing source of pain. Recently the church celebrated its 40th anniversary and in recounting the history of the church there was no mention made of the 5 families who left in 2003 to be missionaries in another suburb. Ouch.

To be written out of history like that wasn’t altogether surprising based on what we had experienced, but it was also disappointing as for all of us the church had been such a significant part of our lives and all of us had been long term committed members.

Despite that disappointment we can only look back with joy on a period of our lives that was significant and beautiful and give thanks for being able to do it.

I think most barely sensible human beings would put Fred Phelps in the complete nutbag category. Sadly for those of us who claim to be Christians, he calls himself one of us and for those of us who are ‘Baptists’ he is one of us too.

Ah… don’t think so!

So I must admit I took great delight in seeing this post.

Westboro Baptist Church showed up to protest in front of Twitter’s San Francisco office on Thursday, but found themselves severely outnumbered by a crowd of absurdist pranksters. Here’s one image from the day, but go read the whole post to get the skinny. Its a hoot.

And in case you thought we Aussies were out of his reach think again… Sadly what this does prove is that you can use the Bible to justify even the most absurd of positions.

Pauline Hanson immigrates to Britain…