backyardmissionary

Shaun was once a brilliant footballer and certainly ‘one of the boys’ at the local footy club. He was destined for great things on the football field - surely a star in the making - and his mates reckoned he was a bit of a legend both on the field and off.
Then one day he […]

I have had this current laptop for just over 2 years now.
The battery was dying about 3 months back so I bought a ‘new’ one off e-bay. It turned out to be a dud.
Yesterday in the newspaper I saw that HP are doing a recall on the batteries in their ze4200 models. All I have […]

In our ‘time poor’ world (see In Praise of Slow) real friendships can be hard to come by.
So many of us live such busy lives that we don’t have time to just ‘hang’ with people. And yet its actually a prerequisite for friendship that we spend time hanging, chatting about nothing in particular… just being […]

This morning I was due to take Herds to the airport so he could head off to Melbourne for the National finals of his bream fishing competition.
It was a 6.00am flight which meant leaving Brighton at 4.45am. I hit the sack pretty early and a couple of glasses of red wine saw me nod off […]

Yes, that’s right.
Upstream Communities is a megachurch.
Ok so when you think mega church you instantly think of 5000 people or more, but that’s not what I mean. Maybe we can expand the definition?
If mega = Surpassing other examples of its kind; extraordinary then surely we could claim to be a ‘mega’ -church. We could also […]

Today at FORGE we dug around in the APEPT (apostle/prophet etc) stuff for quite a while with Hirschy and Andrew doing a great job of sparking our thinking.
Part of the exercise was to locate ourselves in the APEPT matrix, something I never find easy.
I was sharing with Alan on the way home that my sense […]

Since I have been doing coaching work I have noticed that for every 5 or 6 youth pastors I meet there will always be one who will forget to show up. That’s about one ‘no-show’ a week.
Does that sound like a lot to you or does it sound normal?
I’m wondering what it says?
I guess if […]

Did some of you think those were fish in the logo samples below?!
I thought the imagery of swimming up a fallopian tube was quite creative.
Ok - so its down to 2 and 4 on the ‘blogvote’. Any other votes???

Friend and prayer partner Steve Barrington of Foothills Christian Community in Vic is off on a mission trip to Bangkok with some of his community. Steve is a key player in UNOH and they will hook up with Ash and Anji Barker for the 10 days.
They have a blog here for those who are interested.

Back in my youth ministry days at LBC I got to know Grant Cullen quite well - the local AOG pastor. Although he was with the AOG he was still a good bloke (that was a joke - before you penties get mad at me!)
Around the same time I headed out to take a different […]

I have been having some design work done on a logo for our team letterhead and any material that goes out in public under our name. Its not a huge deal, but in the world we live in I reckon its worthwhile having something of this nature.
I am after something simple, clean, easily recognisable, not […]

Twenty one years ago I set out on my first teaching assignment in the little wheat belt town of Wagin 2 1/2 hours south east of Perth. I was excited that I had been given a posting and was really looking forward to the year. I immediately attended the Baptist church and was dreadfully underwhelmed. […]

I got up today and decided that as the coming week and half looks really busy I’d take the day off and head out on the water.
I haven’t taken my boat our for a month, partly due to lousy weather and partly to work comittments. Its hard to get free time, good weather and available […]

Last night at our team meeting we began looking at the book of James and discussed chapter 1.
Its always interesting to see where a conversation gathers energy and where it dithers along. Usually my approach to leading this type of meeting is to do a heap of background study and throw it open and see […]

“He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice”
Albert Einstein

About 4 years ago I stuffed my back up while painting… yes… rolling paint on the wall.
Very sad I know!
I painted from 8.00pm - 1.00am one night and spent the final two hours making a tiny amount of paint cover a kitchen which meant more ‘grinding’ than rolling. The next day I could hardly get […]

As a closet geek, I often read Phil’s Geeky Info blog and the other day came across Airset.com.
If your partner is always asking you what you are doing today/next week etc then this is a great tool!
Basically it synchs up your desktop calendar and contacts with an online version of it so that anyone with […]

My ISP seems to be having problems at the moment (again…)
So if you emailed me last night our time or this morning I probably haven’t got it.
Try backyardmissionary@hotmail.com
Grrr…

Ok here’s a rare opportunity for a couple of West Aussies who would love to come to our Forge intensive next weekend, but don’t have the $$$$, to get in for nothing.
Yeh baby… nothing… not a cracker… a true blue freebie!
We give a couple of places to each of our sponsoring bodies and today a […]

One of the real benefits of my ‘job’ is that I get to hang out with some wonderful people.
I had an email last week from Darryl Gardiner telling me he was coming to perth and expected to be having a coffee with me. No problem there. Even though he’s a kiwi, (:)) Darryl’s a bloke […]