My good mate Steve McAlpine has been doing it tough over the last few months as it was fairly certain he had pancreatic cancer and the odds of any kind of recovery were not good.

I was just reading on his facebook this morning that it turns out to be serious gall bladder issues – which is absolutely sensational (relatively speaking…)

We’re going to catch up soon to have dinner so it will be good to hear some of the journey this family have been on as they have had to face a potential death sentence and then be given a reprieve. I imagine it would make you see life quite a bit differently!

I guess the question comes up – ‘did God heal him or did the docs get it wrong?’

And while I still believe in miracles I couldn’t give a fig which of the above is true and I am pretty sure they’ll take either option as well!

Very happy to hear such great news.

Sadly another good mate Kim Hammond has just found out that his little fella Carter has been diagnosed with leukemia – bloody terrible news – so if you’re the praying kind then I am sure the Hammond family would value anything you’ve got.

There hasn’t been much of it these last few weeks!

I am trying to keep my Retic business to just 3 days a week and while I have been able to do that, it has meant I have had to put in a few 10-12 hour days. When you’re in the sun on hot days digging trenches it means you come home weary and with little brain activity.

I don’t think I have had a coherent thought worth publishing on here for ages, but that’s just life for me at the moment.

Its been a challenge to keep working my business at a healthy pace as the demand increases and there have been a few frantic days when I have felt like just giving it away. I have actually forgotten a couple of customers in the last few weeks and that is quite out of character for me and a sign I am trying to do too much. There have also been a few warranty issues that need to be squeezed in around the already packed schedule. Some have been genuine issues and others have been simple wear and tear and not really my issue – but often you don’t know till you get there…

Its been good to have someone working with me on big jobs because there are times on the really hot days when all has been going pear shaped I have just felt like packing up and going home. Much easier to keep going when two of you are there.

Anyway just thought I’d pop my head up for a minute and let you know that the pace of life has sped up considerably and the depth of thought on here might well decrease proportionately!

Middo’s back in Oz and he’s re-starting his gardening blog. You can find him here.

On the blog you will find:
– free hints, tips and traps on gardening;
– promotion of the planting and growth of Australian Native Plants;
– a link to Middo’s gardening business for people in the Perth Metro area

Check him out!

If you live in the Perth area and need a plumber then I can recommend Geoff of GL Plumbing who has been doing some work for me over the last few months.

He’s a young bloke just starting a business and does an excellent job at a decent price. Lately he’s been doing it tough in terms of finding work so if you need a plumber give him a thought.

I know what its like trying to find a reliable, honest tradie so even if you don’t need one now you can tuck this one away for the future.

Lately I’ve been doing some reflecting on the gospel of John – just looking afresh at Jesus and trying to remove some of the cultural conditioning we place around him to be a certain kind of person.

If you look at Jesus in John then he really is quite a disturbing person. He just doesn’t fit in like he is supposed to, hangs out with all the wrong people, doesn’t pander to the ones who hold the power and is a very bad example of a Christian…

I really don’t think Jesus would get a gig as a local church pastor – or if he did he wouldn’t last long.

He picks fights with powerful people, hangs out with losers (I’m told ‘you can’t build a church out of losers’) and doesn’t seem to be able to be diplomatic with his words. He confounds his own disciples and regularly behaves in a way most unbefitting for a Rabbi.

Gotta say… I like him.

He’d make a bloody good Aussie!

In surfing today I discovered that Graham has a great home roasting set up.

Check it out here Of course if you aren’t a coffee geek this will look extremely weird…

I have a feeling that in church world the noughties will get remembered as the decade when mission got brought back on the agenda wholeheartedly.

What began with alt worship and asking how do we reach ‘Gen X’ (remember that?…) morphed into a much bigger and important missiological question – who are we as the church and what are we doing anyway? It doesn’t get any bigger!

While different ecclesiologies came at their understanding of mission from their different perspectives, we increasingly agreed that the church needed to move from a fairly passive and programmatic approach to outreach into a much broader and holistic understanding of how we engage in the world as the people of God. Mission moved well beyond pure evangelism and proselytism and became concerned with the whole of the gospel, with the environment, the poor and with everyday life to name a few areas.

Still not all would share the idea of the ‘gospel of the kingdom’, seeing it as in conflict with the ‘gospel of the cross’, (I see them integrated) but my own framework and thinking expanded significantly to be able to see some of God’s bigger picture and what that meant for our mission.

FWIW, I still find the term ‘missional church’ an absurdity – like a ‘goal kicking football team’ – or a ’stand up surfer’ (boogers are not real surfers ), but obviously it was the correction we had to have because we had become so inward looking and self focused.

But now I am wondering if we are ‘moving on’?…

I don’t mean that in the sense that we no longer care about mission, but rather that we have sufficiently ‘got it’ and are in the process of implementing, so the conversation is now less pertinent or stimulating. This could just be my own experience as I find less desire to think/blog/discuss in the area of mission but I sense it may be wider.

I remember being part of local missional networks, blogger chats and all sorts of forums online and offline in the early noughties, but no one seems to want these forums these days. I remember when missional thinking that challenged established paradigms met with vociferous opposition, but these days our own Baptist publications from Crossover encourage and endorse a much broader missiology than ever before.

Of course, let’s not think we all mean the same thing when we use the word ‘mission’, but I don’t think you could talk with a church leader anywhere these days who is ignorant of the missional conversation. A fair swag of churchgoers are keyed into it too, but not to the same extent.

While the idea of ‘engaging with the world’, ’sending people’ to their local communities and ‘mission’ rather than ‘missions’ (overseas) did meet with some opposition, we now seem to be over that hump. The innovators and early adopters have done their work and in typical change mode the ‘crowd’ and the ‘laggards’ are coming along.

So I find myself wondering if God is up to something else. While we get on with the job of being the missional communities we have spoken about for so long what is he brewing up in the background and what will he challenge us with next?

Is it just me?…

“You see when you are middle class you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history will never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price to be paid for day to day comfort and silence. And because of this all happinesses are sterile: all sadnesses go unpitied”

D Coupland in Generation X

By and large I enjoy movies that tell a real story and that confront us with life as it really is and there’s no question Samson and Delilah does that.

Its the story of two aboriginal teenagers living on a community in central Australia who leave and attempt to find their place in Alice Springs. From beginning to end it depicts the tragic, meaningless existence of these young people and the lack of hope they experience.

I don’t make any claims to be knowledgeable on what its like to be an aboriginal teenager in the outback, but if this film has any currency then its not a pretty life.

The absence of dialogue combined with the non-stop petrol sniffing of the characters combined to leave you feeling hopeless and wondering where it was all headed… perhaps the point.

While the final scene offered a bit of hope it was still a tragic picture by any standard, but one that is worth watching if only to confront.

I had been using my previous blog template for about 5 years and today thought it might be time for a change…

Chances are I will play around with this a bit before settling on a format that I like so there may still be some more changes afoot.

But in case you thought you had arrived at the wrong blog by mistake, nope… its just a long overdue upgrade!