backyardmissionary

Over the last few days an interesting discussion has been taking place on the yahoo ‘reframe’ list concerning this thing called ‘emerging missional church’. My friend and co-worker Geoff has posted his thoughts on his blog.
Funnily enough my thoughts are quite different - yet we both live and operate in similar ways…
Here’s my post:
Words […]

I have been developing what I consider to be my own personal understanding of mission - how I see it biblically and practically and trying to shape it into a ‘model’ of sorts.
One of the exercises this weekend is for the crew to take a maximum of 5 of these words and shape a model […]

This weekend I head out to the wild west of WA for a couple of days in Kalgoorlie.
I’ll be hooking up with the 24-7 house church network and doing some ‘forgish’ type stuff focusing on mission and evangelism what shape that takes especially for house churches.
I’m loking forward to the opportunity to meet a bunch […]

Steve Said is doing some research over here and would value feedback from people doing ‘emerging church’ stuff.
Go over and give him your two bobs worth!

Perhaps its just my own sense calling to be a missionary, but The Mission is one of my favourite movies - one of the few I actually own and I watched it again today.
Its a beautiful movie, but also incredibly powerful with themes of incarnation, justice and love all thru it.
The penance / grace […]

"During the last year or so, I have come to appreciate the "worldliness" of Christianity as never before.
The Christian is not a homo religiosus but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus became man… It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must abandon every attempt […]

"Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience.
We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not. We must get into action and obey — we must behave like a neighbor to him.
But perhaps this shocks you.
Perhaps you still think […]

Hey all you gospel and culture junkies here in Oz. Digger has just told me that the feisty and provocative ‘John Saffran v God’ series is repeating on SBS starting tomorrow night.
I didn’t get to watch it all last time and have been looking out (to no avail) for the DVDs.
Here’s a chance to watch […]

This bloke has some great things to say on thinking and living like a missionary here in the first world.
Phillip has written some great stuff on New Age / alternative spiritualities and was a great help to us when we put a stall in our own local healing festival.
His latest post is a great image […]

I obviously haven’t had too many thoughts to offer lately, but here’s a quote from Miroslav Volf, via James that I am thinking about.
"There is no church without the reign of God and there is no reign of God without the church."
True?

I was out today doing my coaching thing in the Leederville Cafe strip, sitting at Greens Cafe with Danny when a woman appraoched and said ‘excuse me,have you guys got a dollar?…’
Well obviously we do because we’re sitting there I thought to myself…
What now? We both simultaneously reached for our wallets but Dan beat me […]

This week we have been spending time with Jeff and Tara. Jeff is an American who came to Oz as a short term missionary a few years back. He was so good we actually hired him for a short time as an associate youth pastor at the church I was at.
He is one of those […]

Not a lot to say this week…
Working thru some difficult personal issues and not feeling a lot like going online…
Preached today on apostolic leadership. Its online here. Its the ‘3-4 hour prep’ version of a sermon.
The 80/20 rule says that you do 80% of your work in 20% of the time. I took 20% of […]

This is the response I’ve had a few times as I have told people that we are having a regular fortnightly Sunday gathering for anyone who wants to come.
The loose translation is something like ‘ah… so that church you went to start has now actually started’…
So… that means that what we were doing previously […]

Got up this morning to head out diving, surfing, fishing and hanging out with Jeff, Tara, Drew and James only to discover that someone had stolen the fishing rods - mine and my friend’s!
Then while launching the boat we snapped a couple of rollers and buggered up the trailer…
$$$$$$
$$$$$$
Just gotta smile and say ‘that’s […]

Here are a few pics from our night in Fremantle last night with Jeff & Tara and the kids. It was lot of fun and the kids were great even if we did get home at 10.00pm and they were hammered!

Hugh Mackay says it so well.

In yesterday’s newspaper he wrote a column entitled ‘a revolution starts with one small step’ and suggests that rather than complaining about our lot in life we ought to get off our butts and take the initiative to make a difference.

Here is a great quote:

Bigger grumbles about the […]

I was sitting outside this afternoon reading Mark’s gospel. Ellie comes out and says "dad can you tell me more stories about Jesus." We have told lots of stories over the last few weeks and she realy enjoys it. So we started going thru Mark’s gospel - feeding 5000, calming storm, welcoming little kids, walking […]

This is a great article as we think about developing church communities that make a difference.

This is a great article as we think about developing church communities that make a difference.