backyardmissionary

Driving to granny’s today Sam wants to play hangman. No one wants to play with him. I feel for the poor little bloke so I offer to guess his ‘word’.
S: Ok - go dad!
H: S?
S: Wow - well done!
H: A
S: What? How did you know that!!!?”
H: M
S: Wow!! Wanna try again?
H: Ok… M?
S: What the?! [...]

Today we dropped Ellie, Sam & Winston at Granny & Grandad’s for the weekend.
Yeeha!
The feeling of lightness driving home is totally amazing!
No kids - no dog…
Just us for 2 whole days!!
Anyway - excuse me as I get a little overexcited…
We have tonight alone and then tomorrow we drive to Busso because I [...]

I think I have exhausted all avenues so here’s a question for the geeks out there!
About a week ago I got the iphone and stopped using my E65, but since then neither the iphone or the E65 have been able to download data on my wireless connection.
The iphone shows it is connected, but won’t [...]

A bit of promo for a bunch of people doing the right thing:
International Medical Corps, has the ability to save the lives of malnourished children around the world and has just received some very exciting news.
They have been nominated to be one of the Top 25 in American Express’ Projects, “Saving the Lives of [...]

We’ve been doing a bit of singing at our Upstream gatherings lately.
We have a couple of home brew tunes and a few old faves. We’re currently working on this one… (Thanks Kev Black)

Lots on at the moment.
Between Forge WA, Forge National, various speaking engagements and a heap of reticulation work I seem to be in the midst of a busy period.
So I am not ignoring the conversation i started recently regarding how we shape out theology, but I am struggling to find headspace to engage properly [...]

After playing around with Phil’s iPhone last week and finding it intriguing, I thought I’d explore getting one. The cost of changing over came to a grand $50.00… so as one who likes to explore new things I lauched out and upgraded on my current plan.
So now I have an iPhone…
I am not an apple [...]

How long do you reckon it will be before homosexuality will be completely acceptable to the church? By homosexuality I mean practice of same sex relationships - even same sex marriage.
Whatever your views on this issue - and mine are pretty conservative - I believe it is only a matter of time before we see [...]

I had an email today from a good friend in America asking if this clip was actually an Aussie politician or a bit of fun…
I don’t know whether it reflects worse on Americans or Aussies!

We were scheduled to head down to Busso this weekend to do some more camping, but the onset of cold wet and windy weather meant everyone baled. Danelle has also been sick all week so it was going to be tricky for us anyway.
So Friday night we watched 2 DVDs - the Painted Veil and [...]

The other day Scott recommended this movie as worth a look.
So last night we got it out and watched it. In case you don’t know the story, its about a socially awkward bloke who struggles to relate to people, especially girls, sending off to buy a ‘real life doll’. This doll then becomes his ‘girlfriend’ [...]

Today was one of those days when I came home physically wiped out and very ready to crash early. A couple of glasses of red added to the woosy feeling and at 9.00 I turned the lights out ready to nod off.
But as much as my body was weary my brain was buzzing. It [...]

This weekend coming up will be another camping adventure for the friendly folks of Writtle St.
Our neighbours on either side as well as the 2 families across the road have signed us up to spend another weekend in Busselton, diving, skiing and probably drinking copious amounts of alcohol. (As much as I love a [...]

We had a very late night yesterday as we were up playing poker with a few families from the street. It was a fun evening - even for a non cards player. You learn a lot about people in a poker game.
In my tiredness today I went for an afternoon nap, then slept longer than [...]

By the look of Colin Barnett you’d think he had just been voted in with an overwhleming majority.
Reality is we don’t know who has won the WA state election, but this bloke is obviously weeing himself with joy that around 50% of the people have found him a less annoying option that the Labour crew.
Sad [...]

Driscoll says some very challenging things about the Sydney Anglican brand of Australian Christianity.
However his comments cut more broadly across the Australian church as a whole and point to some of our glaring weaknesses as a wider body.
Hirschy tells me we have much to learn from the Americans about entrepeunrial spirit and supporting one [...]

I think David Fitch could well be onto something here. I like this bloke and the way he thinks and writes. Read on…

Can the gospel be too big? For some of us in the missional church movement, this question borders on heresy. We regularly caution that the gospel is not only about what Jesus can [...]

“Christianity is now almost impossible to explain, not because the concepts aren’t intelligible, but because the living, moving, speaking examples of our faith don’t line up with the message. Our poor posture overshadows the most beautiful story and reality the world has ever known.”
Hugh Halter & Matt Smay in The Tangible Kingdom p.41 HT [...]

I have been test driving the new google web browser this evening and it runs pretty well.
Lots of great features and a it gives you much more viewable screen area as well.
Check it out

After I had preached on Sunday morning a man swaggered up to me. He looked mid forties, stocky and like his nose had been broken more times than he could remember. I was talking to a member of the church and he joined our conversation.
“So, does anybody do any witnessin aroun here?” he asked.
It felt [...]