Monthly Archives: April 2005

Prosh and people

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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 to it so he gave the dollar. As she walked off I found myself wondering how many people had given a dollar this morning?… I’m such a cynic…

Then a few minutes later the Prosh Crew came around selling their annual satirical newspaper and raising money for cystic fibrosis. I happily tipped a stack of money into the tin of the guy who spoke to me – cystic fibrosis seems like a good cause. Then I read the ‘newspaper’ they were selling.

I like satire and I like edgy humour, but this was utter crap with tsunami jokes, bestiality jokes etc. Perhaps its their intention to publish ‘over the edge’ stuff but as far as I’m concerned I wouldn’t buy a newspaper off them again and their charity will suffer for it.

Maybe others will feel similar.

When God is good

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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 rare people with incredible drive, passion and determination. He and I clicked immediately and actually became great friends in a very short space of time (even though he is American 🙂

His wife is also an amazingly gifted woman and spending time with these guys last week was life giving and refreshing. Just what Danelle and I needed.

They actually live in Bangkok and will be there for the next year on a job placement. Ovr the last couple of months I have been feeling a strong need to visit a developing country, to be faced again with how others live. When Jeff and Tara came I discovered that they live a (literal) stone’s throw away from Ash Barker of UNOH, one of the people I feel I could learn a lot from. They invited us up to spend a week with them… sounds great, but how?

I was praying last week as I was walking thru K Mart, ‘Lord we’d love to go to Bangkok, but we need a spare $1000.00 to make it happen… any ideas?…’

On the night Jeff and Tara left we took them out for a meal to the Trigg Island Cafe – (a beautiful place for dinner) and as the evening ended they shared with us that God had been speaking to them and they wanted to give us a $1000.00, which we could use however we wanted, but it would be great if we wanted to use it to visit Thailand…  Hey!?…

Its times like these when you just have to say ‘wow! God is good.’

So we will be heading up to Bangkok sometime in August to see those guys and hopefully catch the UNOH crew and learn from them.

God looks after us.

God is good.

Blogging AWOL

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download romeo is bleeding online 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 the time I used to take and I have to admit it was a little rough… but when you consider that this took 3-4 hours and a normal sermon takes me 12 hours, these days I’m happy to lose the small amount of quality to gain the extra time elsewhere.

And yes, I realise 4 hrs is not 20% of 12 hrs 🙂

Normal service will be resumed when I feel a bit more like it.

So You’re Finally Doing Something?…

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Scaffolding1 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’…

full metal jacket movie So… that means that what we were doing previously was ?????….

There’s no question churches gather together. But, in Christendom thinking this has become the end game. This has become the objective – to get as many people as possible in one place at one time. That’s not being facetious. That’s where I lived for a long time. If people were there on Sunday then all was well with the church. If we had a few weeks in a row of low attendance we would ask what was wrong.

Maybe I’m the only one who comes from a church that does that, but when we get focussed on the meeting we often take our eyes off the mission. The western church over the last few hundred years is stunning evidence of that.

For the record, on Sunday we did meet. We had coffee for about half an hour, had a simple worship/prayer experience that Jenny led, I did some teaching on Jesus’ top priority – the kingdom of God – and then Danelle did some stuff with the kids and families that looked at the stuff I was doing but from a more tactile and experiential angle.

We finished with more coffee and muffins. It was a really good time.

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The point I was trying to make as we talked together about the kingdom of God was that "the kingdom is the building and the church is the scaffolding". We spend a lot of time trying to pretty up the scaffolding when it simply exists to ensure the building is created.

As we begin these meetings we are saying that if we find ourselves spending large amounts of time to make them happen then we will have lost focus. I will not be spending the 12 hours it takes to prepare a sermon to get ready for Sunday, nor will we have hours of music practice and everything else that goes into church as we have known it. If we ever get to that stage then we will have lost our way as a missional community.

Its not to say the scaffolding doesn’t matter, but it does help us focus on the fact that the end game is not to have the world’s best scaffolding, but to create an effective building.

So how many people were there on Sunday?

You think I’m really going to answer that?…

Expensive Morning

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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 life’!

Enough excuses

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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 state of the world can be therapeutic, but societies are mostly shaped by the behaviour of individuals operating within their own personal spheres of influence. For most of us ‘changing the world’ actually means changing the way we interact with the people in our street.

City dwellers who complain that ‘we don’t know our neighbours’, as if this is a commentary on the state of the world could try knocking on their neighbours door. You find it scandalous that old or disabled people are isolated in their homes? Why not try visiting one of them?

People who complain that “the neighbourhood doesn’t function like a community any more” could try inviting a few neighbours in for a drink – especially the ones they don’t know. Neighbours don’t have to be friends, but they aren’t part of our community until we connect with them.

If ever there was a time for do it yourself leadership, this is it. Rather than waiting for someone else to inspire you, why not start inspiring those around you?

I like how Mackay doesn’t allow us to become ‘blamers’ but rather puts the responsibility back on us to get up, take initiative and do the small things we can do to make a difference.

Jesus is a goat

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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 on water, triumphal entry etc etc Later today I ask Ellie her favourite story – its the one where Jesus walks on the water and his disciples see him coming and think he is a goat… Doh!