Becoming

When I first starting working for the Binningup church I had a few goals. One of them was to catalyse a movement of the church away from the fringes of the local community in both the minds of the members and the community itself.

Back in 2005 we published a flyer with information on the church. Yep, the thinking behind was probably a little more attractional in focus than we would like to admit now, but it included the slogan "A part of your community". This was the first outward expression of this goal. Even though the majority of the members and most of the leadership at the time had no idea how that would work.

The front of our original brochure

This week I feel like that goal has been achieved, that the church has corporately managed the move from an irrelevant institution to an active (and even proactive) member of the town.

Around 3 weeks ago the church was asked by a community group (one that in the past has been quite openly antagonistic towards the church) to organise the Australia Day Breakfast for the town. What eventuated was a coming together of 4 different community groups in a great effort to serve and raise funds for the community.

The church was joined by members of the Surf Club, the Watersports Club, the Tennis Club (and some of the Alternate[Or] Crew from Bunbury to fill a few gaps) in setting up, serving and making the breakfast happen. More than 200 people turned up and well over $1000 dollars was raised to put towards cricket practice nets and new tennis courts for the town.

The community in action at the 2009 Aussie Day BBQ

While there will always be those who will want the church to stay on the fringe, for the most part things are changing and the church is now really begining to be seen as a part of the local community, caring about many of the same things the rest of the community cares about and wanting to make a real difference in the town in positive ways.

Way back in 2005 when I first started talking about this kind of thing, someone called me an idealist. Well, maybe I am, but I think this is proof that having ideals isn't necessarily a bad thing!

Concussion

What a 24 hours.

Lyss called me just after 3 yesterday with a rather rattled and rushed message; "go to the school right now! Sam's been involved in an incident. I'm on my way, will see you there."

I didn't really know what was going on but headed for the school anyway. The minute I set foot in the administration building I was met by a tearful Sam (our 10 year old). He threw his arms around me and kept saying "I can't remember anything daddy, I can't remember anything".

I sat down with him and tried to find out what had happened. He had no idea, other than that he seemed to be experiencing some form of memory loss. He even pinched himself, at the same time asking me if he was dreaming! He said he had a terrible headache.

It didn't take long to work out something really wasn't right. He's memory seemed unable to stretch any more than about 30 seconds into the past before resetting - it was like he was on a 30 second loop. He kept asking the same questions without any idea he had, only seconds before, received an answer to the same questions. He had no recollection of how he came to be in the admin building, of me arriving or anything much after lunch time that day.

The school wasn't able to tell us much at all, other than they thought he had been hit by another boy just after school finished at 3pm.

Alyssa arrived and we rushed off to the hospital where he was admitted fairly quickly through the emergency deparment. Even though they were incredibly busy they still gave him priority which was a great relief.

His memory loss and 30 second loop continued on for around 5 hours. He would just say the same things over and over. At one point I pre-empted what he was going to say and he asked me "how did you know I was going to say that?" I told him he had only said the same thing around 50 times already! He just gave me a funny look as he had no idea!

The did a CT scan, ECG and blood test, thankfully they all came back normal.

He was admitted and spent the night in the hospital. Lyss stayed the night in the room with him. This morning when I went in before work he was much better, almost back to normal, and more interested in the Nintendo in the games room than anything much else.

We went to the school mid morning and found out he had been hit - twice in the forehead - after stepping in to help a mate who was being harrassed by another boy.

Tonight Sam still has no recollection of anything that happened between 1.30 yesterday and about 8.30 last night.

All in all a pretty scarey afternoon. Thank God he is ok, and looks like staying that way. He's off soccer for 2 weeks and off school until Monday and under orders to "take it easy", which is something I think he is going to find very difficult!

Baptism

Coming up for air

Giving God the glory and honouring Pino!

Last Sunday I had the privellage of being involved in the baptism of my good friend Pino. Pino is a guy I hold in pretty high regard. Even though he has been through a fair bit he has an amazing, inspirational faith in God.

Pino isn't involved in any church on a regular basis so he asked if he could be baptised down here at the beach. I invited our regulars from Binningup along, and our youth and the guys from our Bunbury group. The weather was perfect, the ocean glassy and a bottle nosed dolphin even cruised on in to check out the action.

I gotta say, I love baptisms. Unfortunately we don't see too many of them these days - for a whole number of reasons. I see them as a fantastic oportunity to get together and celebrate life and the grace God has shown us. I was incredibly proud of the Binningup guys and they way they showed Pino love and acceptance as a member of the family - even though most of them only met him that morning. A genuine reflection of God's agape - how it should be!

Backyard Missionaries Required for Down-South Ministry

Just over a year ago I published an advertisement calling for interested individuals and families to consider moving to our community in order to work with us (the local church) in order to help serve the community and grow the kingdom of God.

My original advertisement was edited by the leadership team and things about our location (on the beach, close to schools, golf course, etc.) were added in what was seen as necessary incentives to lure people to us. Our hopes, I guess, were centred on reinvigorating our flagging Sunday morning service and adding some new goods and services to our menu of programs.

I knew that Sunday morning services were not the key to our success as a church. I had been preaching and talking about this for several years with our members and leaders, but I allowed myself, for a moment, to fall back into the old attractional way of thinking - maybe if we just gave it one more shot, maybe if we just found a few musicians for our one-woman-band, we might at least be able to attract back some of the local Christians who had abandoned us for the mega-church down the road, or the Christian families who move to town and don't even give us a look in?

The end result of our advertising? One reply - an older guy looking to retire somewhere on the coast, who mistakenly thought we were looking for a pastor and was prepared to offer his services to us free of charge. And that was it.

On the upside our ad sparked a debate on a prominent Aussie blog which made me look harder at something called the "emerging church". Little did I know that the road God had me travelling was very close to that of many others who were now associating themselves with the emerging-missional movement.

Today - well, things haven't changed much, except that I have a new vocabulary which I have been able to share with the leadership team, and I am now on a not-so-lonely journey, with our leadership now among the fellow travelers on this missional adventure. But we are still resource strapped.

So, 12 months on we are trying again - but this time with a revamped "want ad". Feel free to distribute it, publicaly argue about, debate it or slam it!

Are you being called to a cross-cultural mission-field in your own backyard?

If you know the words “missional” and “emerging”, see the kingdom of heaven as something more than just a future event, and understand that sharing the gospel involves living it as much as speaking it, then we would like to hear from you.

Our community suffers from disease and poverty, but our diseases are those of affluence and our poverty is spiritual. Overall our biggest problem is apathy – but we aren't sure that anyone cares?

We are a small number of Jesus’ followers with faith in the power of Jesus Christ to transform our town, however, while the harvest is plentiful the workers are few.

If you think this could be the thing for you and would like more information you can Skype our ministry team leader (Andrew) on deepsky1971, email him at deepsky@oceanbroadband.net, call him during the day on 0413 995 280 or at home on 9720 1215.

Sports Action

My boys, Luke and Samuel, had their first game of soccer (or football if your a purist), for 2007. Unfortunately I missed Luke's games but managed to sit in on Sam's.

I got my new Canon EOS 400D digital SLR a couple of weeks back (after about three years of saving and waiting) and so thought I would test it out on the sports field with some action snaps.

Here are a couple of the better results - my 9 and 3-quarter year old Sam in action in the goals for the Eaton Wanderers.