backyardmissionary

The handbook says that the first tutorial will look at what constitutes ’suburbia’ and whether it is ‘dream or nightmare’.
I imagine the first part of that question might be a bit easier to come to grips with than the second. I haven’t done any serious reading on this but my understanding of suburbia would be [...]

As you may have gathered from my earlier post I am a bit bummed that it just isn’t feasible for me to attend the classes for the course on the history and culture of suburbia. Since living here in Brighton and becoming much more aware of the rhythms and patterns of suburban life I [...]

As I began the class on suburbia today the quote sitting on the front page of the unit reader was this one:
“One of the best instincts in us is that which induces us to have one little piece of earth with a house and garden which is ours, to which we can withdraw, in which [...]

I headed off to check out the UWA course on the History & Culture of Suburbia today.
I hadn’t pre-enrolled as I figured I’d slip in the back, check it out and see if it looked like being worth the effort.
Well after 90 minutes of driving in the rain and seemingly getting every red traffic [...]

From Hirschy
“Michael Frost, a friend of mine was recently privy to a meeting with three Chinese leaders from the underground church who were smuggled out to a group of Western leaders about issues they were facing. When they were asked what wanted prayer for they asked for three things: Whilst acknowledging that the government has [...]

“If one wishes to eliminate uncertainty, tension, confusion and disorder from one’s life, there is no point in getting mixed up either with Yahweh or with Jesus of Nazareth.”
Andrew Greeley, New York Times book review, (in Phillip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God, p.92)
As you were…

Maybe you had to have grown up in the 80’s to appreciate this, but I reckon it’d get up if we had a referendum!

Living in Brighton it always makes me laugh when people say ‘lets catch up for lunch – we can meet halfway between our homes.’
Most people have no idea exactly how far out we live so usually ‘half way’ finishes up with us doing a lot of driving.
So here’s a great tool for settling those disputes. [...]

So while we’re talking about incarnation, contextualization and pushing some boundaries, how do you see this whole deal?…
Second Life is an online ‘game’ where players do literally create a ‘virtual’ second life which they then live out. For some this is serious business and can take up more time than their real life. Scary?… Yes, [...]

Hard to imagine, but he holds his own with this nutjob!
Even manages to say some pretty useful stuff. This is a summary (amidst interruptions) of his book Surprised by Hope, where Wright critiques the common view of the afterlife.

While on the subject David Fitch offers another really interesting piece that may only serve to muddy the waters of understanding further!

Today Sam came home from school and was very upset.
Sam is 6 and one of the kindest, gentlest little kids you will ever meet. That’s not parental bias because I wouldn’t use similar words of Ellie!
He told us that another 6 year old boy at school had been hitting him in the ‘willy’ and [...]

Here’s a post to get you thinking about how you see mission!
As one who writes the odd provocative post I also enjoy reading and engaging with others who do the same.
Read it and offer your thoughts

Aussie roadwork team
From TSK

As people we seem to do a good job of reacting to the absence of something with its excess and vice versa.
You may have heard of the Relevant church in Florida with the ‘30 Day Sex challenge”. (ie you get the leg over every day for 30 days) As a teenager I think that would [...]

One of the beauties of doing what I do with Forge is that we have regularly had wonderful people stay in our home.
Over the last week we have had Steve & Felicity Turner from Queensland and also Andrew Menzies from Melbourne. Andrew was only here a short while, but we had a great time [...]

I went to do a job today and got chatting with the customer, a woman in her 20’s who is getting marrried shortly.
She was telling me about the various problems she has had with her wedding and it sounded like it was wearing her down. Out of curiosity I asked her how much the [...]

It tool me several hours of detecting, but I traced the creak in the back of my car to the way the LPG tank had been installed. Basically after removing everything else this was all that was left!
So with 2 washers per bolt now padding things out the tank no longer rubs on the base [...]

I came across this on the flickr blog today.
Surfing in the river in Munich. I’ve heard about tidal bores, but never seen too many of them in action.
Here are the pics, and some video

I bumped into an old friend on the train on Monday.
He is a teacher in the government system and loves his work. I was also a teacher in the government system for quite a while and had a hoot. I loved the rough and ready nature of things and the earthy conversation in the [...]