backyardmissionary

In 1987 I first felt God calling me to be a missionary. I thought it was going to be overseas (that was the only place missionaries went in them days!)
But I never did make it overseas and finished up as the youth pastor in my home church. By 1991 I had begun to articulate my […]

Conversation around the lunch table at Christian school I teach at.
“So which church are you at these days Bob?”
“Oh I’m going to Vanilla Baptist. Have been for 3 years”
“Right… so whose church is that?…”
Is it just me or do we identify churches too readily with senior pastors? And if we do then what does that […]

Just wondering - what that might look like?
I don’t think it’d be my cup of tea!

Good post here from Tim as a follow up to my comments on ‘Borden’.
The banana benders (Queenslanders for non Aussies) have been using his stuff for a while now and seeing some results as well as asking some questions.
Read his observations.

As part of my job in establishing Forge over here I have been negotiating with denominations to try and secure funds as a partnership/sponsorship arrangement.
Today I finally heard back from one denomination I have been chasing since June last year. I met with them and they agreed to discuss possibilities. They sounded very positive. I […]

Steve called us low brow! I would have thought very low brow was more accurate… Excellent post here - have a read.

‘Borden’ is the name that gets dropped at WA Baptist pastors gigs everywhere these days. Are you using the ‘Borden’ model? What do you think of ‘Borden’? It seems we are infected with Bordenitis everywhere.
Today I met with ‘Borden’ - Paul Borden - executive minister with the American Baptist Churches of the West, a denomination […]

On Friday Danelle heads off to Mandurah again for the weekend, this time with 4 of the girls from round here. There is Heidi from the team and three others we have got to know.
They will have a ball - staying in a resort, eating out, partying, sleeping in…
I will look after children…
Actually I love […]

Its been a morning for Forge admin. Yicky stuff… emails, details, finance, ouch!
Think I’ll go fishing or surfing this afternoon to ease the pain.
Looks nice out there…

My mobile phone carked it on the weekend so currently Danelle and I are sharing a phone. If you can’t get me on it that’s why!
Should be alive again by mid this week.

The Emergent convention is being held somewhere in the world and it sounds like a whole bunch of people who blog are at it.
I’m not.
But I really appreciated this summary of Brian McClaren’s session on ‘Pluralism Revisited’.
To give you a taste here are a few quotes:
“McLaren says that our story, GOD’s story, is in fact […]

It seems that spiritual disciplines change and morph at different life stages.
Just as I was really getting into a groove with one pattern of connecting with God we went and had another child, finished at LBC, had long service leave and then planted a church. I was finding that if I was reasonably disciplined I […]

Finally I feel like I am enjoying teaching again.
I am really starting to like my students and I think they are feeling much more settled with me too. Its only taken half a year!
My contract is for twelve months and then I need to find work somewhere else. I’m not sure I want to go […]

Sometimes this feels like a good word to describe my life.
After 3 days of total relaxation from Friday evening to Monday morning, Tuesday was a complete change of pace with 6 different meetings starting at 8.30 am and finishing at 10.00pm when I went home and crashed.
I know I can’t handle that many face […]

While away on the weekend I went to a second hand book shop and picked up a book called the Poisonwood Bible, the story of a southern Baptist missionary family who head out from segregated Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959 to take the Gospel to the ‘descendents of Ham’.
Dad is a raving […]

Our weekend away was absolutely sensational!
We headed off on Friday arvo with Graeme and Sharron Mason, two close friends and went to a place called Mandurah, where we stayed at Mandurah Quays resort. Verrrry nice… No kids, great food and lots of time sleeping and vegging.
The highlight was on Saturday night when Danelle gave me […]

On Monday I turn 40.
It feels like ‘official middle age’. Middle aged sounds so… I dunno, kinda like you have become your parents all of sudden!
We are going away to Mandurah tomorrow for the weekend to ‘celebrate’. It’ll be great - no kids and just two of our closest friends until Monday.
I’ll be sucking […]

I discovered this link to my site today and found some really interesting and challenging stuff in this post. In light of the conversations around the place about homosexuality you might find this guy’s perspective well worth a read. Its long, but worth it! You can read the whole conversation here
My background…..totally unchurched …zero […]

After 20 years with the club, having been a founding member, a captain, assistant coach and having been involved in many ways, the Perth Wildcats have sacked Mike Ellis one year into his three year coaching contract and replaced him with Scott Fisher.
It wasn’t like they had that bad a season, especially given the limited […]

One of the core ingredients we hope to build into our church culture is reproducibility. By that I mean not just that we ‘multiply’ / plant other churches, but that we make it very possible to do so.
I have a sense that some of our younger leaders may not be stepping up to the plate […]