backyardmissionary

While on holidays I read Jim Collins Good to Great and it was sensational!
Basically what he does is a rigorous survey of companies that have way excelled in productivity and profit by comparison with other similar companies and asks what makes them great and the others just ‘good’.
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team […]

This is a bit of mantra for me as I talk about church with people.
When it comes to ‘what works?’ I agree that your meat and three veg (sing and listen) Sunday service does ‘work’ for some people. The stats would show maybe 10% of our population.
That is a sizable chunk.
But 90% is a signficantly […]

The last post has been deleted - second thoughts seemed like better thoughts…
Every now and then I write first think later…
Now that I think…

We have 6 embryos on ice… Sound weird?
We start our next round of IVF soon.
People often ask me “what happens if all 6 turn into little people?”
“Ummm… we have 8 kids?”
When you decide that conception is the start of life then you don’t have an option to dispose of the embryos, so we need […]

If you happen to get into Amway and haven’t spoken to me for 12 months, but then call me to see if we could ‘catch up’ so you could show me a great new ‘business plan’ I will probably not have a lot of time for you.

Its been 13 months now since we left Lesmurdie - 13 months of very little routine and lots of chaos.
As a result my well oiled personal disciplines have shot out the window and I haven’t been able to retrieve them at all. I have stopped running and pushing weights, I have been eating more than […]

Michelle, closely followed by Justin.
When I came back to my bloglines feed and checked the number of posts to read from each person on there Michelle topped out with 39 in the the last 14 days and Justin had 34. Lotsa writing from these guys!!
Of course where there are winners there are loooosers and my […]

Holidays are over…
They were great, and I am even ready to come back - but the next few weeks are looking hellish in the diary department. Makes me want to run away at the thought of it!
Some holiday highlights
* Hanging with Danelle, Ellie and Sam - really nice to spend the time and just have […]

I don’t think I have ever been this ready for a holiday!
Today I taught my classes and then finished the day by playing in the staff student basketball game. Wow! I can still feel it.
We lost by 1 point to the students, but what struck me was how much harder it is when you haven’t […]

At lunch time today the conversation turned to church, which is quite unusual for us, even though we are teachers at a Christian school.
As staff members each person (I discovered) has to get an annual report from their pastor stating that they are a regular attendee at worship services.
We began to discuss the implications […]

“If you find God with great ease then perhaps it is not God you have found”
Merton

Mike Yaconelli at his firey best - good enough for me to take the time to copy it out!
What happened to radical Christianity, the un-nice brand of Christianity that turned the world upside down? What happened to the category smashing, life threatening anti-institutional gospel that spread thru the first century like wildfire and was considered […]

Last night we did a ‘lectio divina’ using the passage below. We followed this format and it seemed that God spoke to different people in different ways.
(Luke 17:11-19 NIV) Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. {12} As he was going into a village, ten men […]

Why are we doing this?…
Every now and then I need to go back to the core reason we are doing what we are doing. Why aren’t we simply following the ‘church planters handbook’ and getting a funky Sunday morning service off the ground with a quality kids ministry, cool music and dynamic preaching?…
Why have we […]

Mark ‘Chopper’ Read, notorious underworld hitman and Mark ‘Jacko’ Jackson, legendary AFL footbrawler are both coming to our local pub tomorrow night to put on a show…
I told you it was a pretty rough place!
If these two blokes count as entertainment - and people are willing to pay $25.00 entry - then its a […]

There is no question that we are in need of a holiday…
Its been nine months of going at it in one way or another with no break. The last 6 months have had me working three different ‘2 day a week’ jobs and discovering that its quite a balancing act.
Some days I get it right […]

It seems one of the toughest questions in the emerging missional church scene (there has to be a quicker way to say that!) is the ‘what do we do with the kids?’ issue.
Obviously they are part of who we are and what we do, but certainly for us at this point they have been neither […]

Earlier i mentioned that we have some real points of connection with the insights from the Celestine Prophecy.
On Friday I finished the book and here are some of my conclusions as we look at the final 4 insights.
#6.) Childhood traumas block our ability to fully experience the mystical. All humans, because of their upbringing, […]

I have had one of those ‘don’t want to be a teacher’ weeks.
The kids were pretty good this week - I just didn’t feel like being there. Despite all my prayers for sickness it didn’t come, so I finished up grinding my way thru another 2 days.
One week to go and then its holidays.
I […]