Ahhhhhhh

Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Ex. 31:15

How often does Sunday seem anything but the "day of rest" spoken of in the scritures?

In our household it is most often a day of flat-out action.

a) Church in the morning - getting the kids ready; making sure they are dressed; breakfasted; hair is brushed; teeth are brushed; they have some reading materials; Alyssa getting her children's Sunday School materials and activities together; me loading the car with video projector; laptop; making sure I have my bible; preaching notes.

b) Get to our place of meeting; set everything up; photocopy notes/hand outs/whatever; Alyssa sets up for Sunday School; we find a seat; participate in the service; pack up; try and talk to as many people as possible; keep packing up; have a cuppa; pack up some more; rush home.

c) Make lunch; clean up from breakfast; try and spend some time together as a family.

d) Afternoon meeting time; get the kids ready; get the projector and laptop and whatever else is needed together; final touches to preparation; make sure the kids have activities to keep themselves occupied; load the car; drive half an hour.

e) Get home on dark; get the kids into the shower; eat if we haven't already done so; get the kids to do their afternoon chores; get the kids into bed; exercise for an hour; try and catch up with Alyssa; go to bed; sleep.

That's a typical Sunday in the Rigg household. Unfortunately most other days of the week are the same. Throw in school, work, bible studies, youth group, leadership meetings etc. etc.

For the next 4 weeks things are going to be a little different. We are taking a church fast (my friend Glenn talks about fasting in this post). Actually, what we're really doing is making Sunday our day of rest.

Here's how today looked -

a) Stayed in bed until about 9am. Kids got up when they were ready and played and got breakfast for themselves when they felt like it.

b) Had a shower, checked my emails and then at around 9.45am we all sat down together in the lounge room. The kids lit a candle each and told us all about the symbolism. I told a story illustrating Ephesians 1:3-6 (adoption). The kids talked about the story and asked questions. We prayed and the kids asked if I could play the guitar and we could sing.

c) 10.20am I jumped in the car with the Luke and Ash and we went and checked out the surf. There was a little bit off the boat ramp. Went home and grabbed the rest of the family and my board and hit the beach.

d) Surfed (well actually just kinda bobbed around - there was nothing much by the time we got back as the wind had changed direction and turned everything to chop) and prayed for half an hour, then paddled in and sat on the beach and talked with Alyssa for another half an hour, the kids played and swam, we had a really relaxing time.

e) Jumped back in the car and went home to lunch feeling more relaxed and intune with God than I have on any Sunday (or any other day of the week) for a very long time - Alyssa said she felt the same.

This afternoon we have our Sunday arvo meeting (now only once a fortnight) but, both Alyssa and I agreed, it doesn't feel like a chore, simply because the start of the day hasn't been madness.

Alyssa and I both wondered as we drove home from the beach, whether God really intended us to do Sunday mornings as we have done for so long, or if he intended it to be more like it was for us today? Perhaps we should reintroduce the death penalty for working on the Sabbath! :)

Car smash crap 2 - A little sigh of relief

It seems someone at the insurance company stuffed up when they told me what my excess was going to be. We are actually looking at an excess of $250.00! This is a huge relief.

I am still maintaining my innocence and the claim is now progressing along the path of the insurers "dispute resolutions" procedure.

Stay tuned for more in this ongoing saga!

Car smash crap

Just before Christmas I was involved in a fairly minor car accident. A foreign tourist, driving a friends car, started to make a right hand turn from the middle of the road and, as I was overtaking her on the left hand side, changed her mind and turned straight into me collecting the whole right hand side of my car.

While no one was hurt the damage done to both cars was fairly substantial, at least from a financial perspective. Fortunately mine was still driveable - we live a 70km round trip from town where I work and the kids go to school so the vehicle is essential.

There were two wittnesses to the bingle, both of whom offered me support and reassured me that I was not in the wrong. The driver of the other car also apologised and admitted she had not "signalled" and that she wasn't sure where she was going. All admissions were made in the earshot of at least one of the two wittnesses.

Last week I got a call from my insurance company to say that I had been found innocent of fault and that the full cost of repairs would be covered without excess (I don't know if "excess" is something peculiar to Australia - it's a gap payment between the cost of the repairs and the amount the insurance company will pay out).

This was good news. Our excess is several thousand dollars, and, with a trip to Africa coming up in May, was something we couldn't afford. For once things seemed to be happening in a straightforward way.

That is until this morning.

About 10 minutes after arriving at work I received a call from my insurance company to say they had "changed their assessment" and that now they were saying I was at fault and would have to pay the excess on the claim.

I asked why, and they said they had reviewed "the" wittnesses statement and that it seems I had been involved in a "rear end" type of accident. In Australia these kind of accidents are usually deemed to be the fault of the rear car regardless of circumstances. I asked the guy on the other end of the line if they had spoken to the other wittnesses - there were two - to which I didn't get much of an answer. I also reiterated the fact that this was not a "rear ender". The damage to my car was along the entire right hand side and to the other vehicle's front left hand corner.

By this time all kinds of conspiracy theories were rushing around my head. I thought about asking the guy on the other end of the phone if he "knew" I was a church minister (like that would matter!) or that the money he was taking off me for excess was going to be used for an overseas aid and development mission and that he was really taking money away from starving children in Africa.

Thankfully I thought better of it, explained my case again, and put the phone down with the "promise" that the second wittness would be contacted but that I would still have to pay the excess, with it being refunded if the decision was reversed.

I have no intention of paying any excess (we are still waiting for repairs nearly 2 months after the accident) until this whole things is sorted as I know how tightly insurance companies hold onto money, but the whole thing really did leave me rattled.

On top of all this, our power steering pump also decided to give up the ghost today. I have no choice but to continue driving the car with dodgy steering while we wait to see how much the repairs (in time as well as in money) are going to cost us - I aint holding my breath!

CEO style in the church

Hamo again - I great post on the very real problems with the CEO leadership approach in church.

Here's a piece of Hamo's action:

I don’t believe the CEO has any place in the ‘family’ of God. When was the last time your family appointed a CEO to keep it on track? Where does a ‘chief executive officer’ fit into a family? Find me one metaphor or description of the church as business/corporation anywhere in the Bible and I will walk naked up the aisle of your church this Sunday with an annual report in my bumcrack.

While I can't think of any apropriate proof texts - I hope if someone does find one or two, Hamo remembers to post the photos on Backyard Missionary! Read the whole thing here.

Hamo's post is a response to this post by MikeB on Raah.

Christian's have got heaven all wrong

Cape Freycinet, W.A. - January 2008. (c)

Hamo posted a heads-up to this interview on the Time website, with Bishop N.T. Wright on the traditional Christian view of heaven. I think Wright's got it right and I'll be passing this one around our leadership - it's been a bit of a hot potato topic out here in Binningup in recent months.

Here's a bit of what Bishop Wright had to say about the Christian misconception:

... Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.

It seems to me, now could be one of those "times"!

Filling everything with His presence

Last night our "Sunday arvo thing" (aka Alternate-Or) moved to Monday afternoon. Things are still very much in a state of flux which is both a little frustrating but also exciting.

We met for a couple of weeks at the community centre but ended up giving this idea away, at least for the time being, as not enough of our original core group were turning up meaning we were having a hard time scraping together the dollars to pay for the room rental. I suggested we meet in a cafe and someone else suggested we try a pub. The end result was our first meeting in the beer garden at Trafalgars hotel in the pub/cafe precinct of the Bunbury CBD.

It was kinda weird, particularly at first. Sitting down, opening Bibles, talking openly about Jesus. I think most of us felt a little uncomfortable - I kept thinking about Jesus' words to the Pharisees about their acts of public prayer and wondered if we came across the same way - but in the end I felt it went well. A couple of drinkers, obviously listening into our discussion, chipped in with comments from time to time, which was pretty cool and added to the feel of the exercise.

I decided that we would read through that great epistle to the Church - Ephesians, and so tackled chapter 1. Without planning for it in my preparation, the last couple of sentences of the chapter really jumped out at us as being so incredibly appropriate to what we were trying to achieve.

The Message renders Paul's words like this:

The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. (1:23)

Yesterday, sitting in the pub, purposefully gathered to worship and learn about the Master, I got a very real sense of Christ's presence in a place in our city that perhaps, he hasn't been for a very long time.

Saying Sorry

Image knicked from www.abc.net.au website - Sorry!

This morning was an historic occaision for all Australians. New Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, apologised to a group of Australian people for the way previous governments had treated them. This group has become known as the "Stolen Generation".

From the late 1800s until the 1970s, under an act of parliment, more than 50,000 Aboriginal children were forceably removed from the families and placed in the care of state and church run facilities, most never seeing their families again.

The effects of these actions on the people involved are unimaginable. There is no doubt, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, these acts of state sanctioned trauma should never have occured.

For a long time now there has been a call from many segements of Australian society for the government to publically recognise the damage it has done to the Aboriginal people through its actions and to seek reconcilliation.

In recent years churches have apologised for their involvement in the "stolen generation's" case. Most of the children were sent to church run "missions" where they were cared for, and in some cases suffered sexual and physical and psychological abuse.

Our most recent former Prime Minister, John Howard, refused calls for more than a decade to offer an apology to the Aboriginal people, while newly appointed Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd - elected less than 4 months ago - listed a public apology to the "Stolen Generation" on behalf of the Australian government, as one of his key election promises.

You can listen to PM Rudd's speach here or read it here.

So as an Aussie, I have to say that today is one of those historic occaisions that I will probably remember for a lifetime. Kevin Rudds apology is a momentous act of reconcilliation that, in my opinion, eclipses many of the economic and diplomatic acheivements of the previous Liberal government.

Goodonya Kev!

Positive About the Church - Synchroblog

A facebook friend of mine - Sally Coleman - came up with the idea of making February the 2nd a day for posting positive stories about the local church (sorry Sally, I'm a day late!).

As someone who often grumbles about different aspects of the local church, I was challanged to participate in this synchroblog. One of my new years resolutions this year was to learn to express the positive more often and the negative less often in all circumstances and what better place to start than with my very own local expression of the church.

Our fellowship is one that has been through a lot in recent years. Around 5 years ago we experienced a bit of a split when all the young families left to attend a mega-church in nearby Bunbury. This left Alyssa and I as the youngest in the congregation by about 10 years.

There were problems with the leadership at the same time which saw a few more leave along the way. In the end we were left with a shell of about 15 regulars, the majority already well into their senior years, conservative, old fashioned but completely committed to Jesus and to being the only expression of the local church in our community.

Around 3 years ago I took over the pastoral role in the hope that we could take things in a more missional direction, changing from what until then had been a very "believer centred" church and into something that was focussed and committed to the broader community in which it existed.

What we saw in the ensuing 3 years was an amazing period of personal and spiritual growth as a group of older people (and I was always told "you can't teach old dogs new tricks") began to explore what it meant to be a decentralised, disinstitutionalised, community serving expression of faith. To break with long held traditions and even to begin to question core doctrines that had been held to faithfully for decades without question and to allow God to work in us and in our lives and through us through serving the community outside the comfort and safety of our meeting place.

While to the casual observer, looking in from the outside, we probably still look a lot like a conservative, dying church in a growing suburban community, the reality though is something very different.

I am so very proud of the people I call my brothers and sisters (even though most of them are actually old enough to be my parents and grandparents) and the way they have allowed the message of Jesus to challange them and change them and change the corporate and personal foci of their faith.

We are still growing and the journey is far from over, but already I know this community is in a better place because of the presence of the local church within it - as an active part of it - rather than as an enclave on its edge. And for the way in which a bunch of older people have completely challanged the stereotype of stayed, unchanging, evangelical conservatism, becoming instead more and more the salt and light in the difficult missionfield of affluent suburbia.

Happiness - So Simple it's almost stupid!

Throughout history sages have counselled that happiness is not a goal but rather a consequence of how we live and that it comes from being content with what we have. Today, we are sold a different message - that we will be happy only if we have more money and more of the things money buys. Human experience and scientific research does not support this belief.

Hamilton, C. & Denniss, R. Affluenza (2005) p. 218. Allen & Unwin: Sydney

See also The Wellbeing Manifesto

Jesus the Warrior

I was thinking about some comments Glenn made on my last post (Hard Words for the Australian Church) - about the "taking the city" kind of terminology used often in certain Christian circles. Glenn made the point that it kinda reminded him of the terminology of the Crusades.

Jesus ministry and his rejection as the Messiah by the first century Jews ultimately related to his refusal to fullfil the role of the military-type Messiah. Someone who would finish the job of ridding Israel of the Romans once and for all and restoring the theocracy. Jesus simply didn't fit this bill and so people became disillusioned with him and, in the end - one week after they gave him a triumphal entry to Jerusalem - they oversaw his execution.

I wonder if this use of militaristic language betrays a similar form of thinking within the modern church. A crusade kind of mentality that wants Jesus to be a military-type Messiah, demanding allegiance to his cause at the end of a sword (taking the city - by force) rather than the lay-down-your-life and transform-the-world in love (agape) kind of Messiah of the gospels?

Will the "failure" of Jesus to act in these ways lead to the same kind of disillusionement experienced by the first century Jews and if so what effect could this have on the church?

Hard Words for the Australian Church

As part of the "Christianity in Australia" synchroblog, Hamo from Backyard Missionary makes some pretty blunt comments on the state of the Aussie church.

The unfortunate thing is ... I think, for the most part at least, he's on the money.

Here's a snippet of what he has to say;

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I’m so tired of hearing preachers rant about ‘taking our city for God’, or taking the nation’. For one thing I don’t think people like being ‘taken’, and for another I don’t think anyone really wants to do it. Sure you might get a few wild eyed young people fired up and nutso the day after a Planetshakers conference, but talk to them in 6 months about their plans for ‘taking the city’ and chances are (if they are still in church) that they won’t even remember the whole thing.

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Have a read of the rest HERE - then check out the links to the other participants in the same synchroblog.

Kenya - Another story

As is so often the case, the true extent of the violence and suffering is often not the same as that seen on the television news and is often not more fully known or understood until well after the events have taken place - think Rwanda.

Through my work with Day 4 I am involved with a ministry - City Harvest - which works among the slum dwellers of Nairobi, improving living standards, training and providing access to retroviral medication and AIDS/HIV clinics. When the violence broke out in Nairobi at the start of January I knew that Edward Simiyu and his team would be affected and would also be involved at the heart of the relief effort. With this in mind we launched the Day 4 Kenya Appeal to raise funds to send to City Harvest to use in the relief effort.

The reports we have been receiving from Edward paint a picture of disaster that is much more wide spread than that seen in much of the media reports coming out of Kenya in recent weeks. More than half a million men, women and children displaced from their slum communities and left without food, water, clothing, shelter or security. To the north of Nairobi homes, schools and churches have been destroyed and many people killed.

2 weeks ago Edward and a number of other local Christians embarked on a journey through roadblocks manned by armed youth - bent on violent retribution in what many in Kenya have likened to the early days of the Rwandan genocide - in order to supply humanitarian aid to those in remote areas, unaccessible to most other relief organisations.

Edward's report of the convoy's journey paints a picture of corruption, disaster and dispare. The military, sent to help those affected by the indiscriminate violence, were demanding money in exchange for protection, schools churches and homes were looted, ransacked and burnt and bodies left to rot where they lie, providing a source of food for scavenging dogs.

Here are some photos from the road to Eldoret.

Refugees sleeping in the opening with all their belongings in plastic bags

All that remains of Kondoo Shopping Centre

Wrecks of elite forces vehicles, sent in to stop the violence. The troops were repelled and then their vehicles burnt and thrown into the river.

The remains of Kamuyu Primary School - looted and destroyed

All that's left of an AOG church looted and stripped back to the frame

One of many homes completely destroyed - more can be seen in the background

The remains of Eldoret church where many people died after seeking refuge from the violence. The church was torched.

The situation in Kenya is dire. Please continue to pray for this country and its people. Please also consider linking back to this blog post and promoting the Day 4 Kenya Appeal on your blogs. 100% of funds donated will make it to Kenya to be used specifically for the relief effort. Please also consider donating - response to the appeal has been slow, yet even small donations add up and can make a big difference to the suffering in Kenya.

I'll leave you with some words from Edward and thanks again for promoting and praying and donating!

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Please pray for Kenya. The suffering and damage is more than what the media has highlighted. More churches have been destroyed than those counted and reported. More churches are likely to suffer the same fate with the precedence now set should unrest continue. The dead are still unaccounted [for] and we are all likely to die if unrest continues. Prices have shot up and calm that was returning is threatened by uncertainty especially this week as more rallies are planned for Wednesday to Friday. They are never peaceful. Two of our HIV/AIDS support group members had their houses torched and are still in trauma. A number ran out of the life prolonging ARVs and now have to change their line of drugs.

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Am I "Anti Church"?

I had a rather frustrating conversation with a good friend earlier in the week. It arose because of assumptions this person seems to keep making about my opinions on the issues of "church" and "mission".

It's something that has kept cropping up over the past year or so and usually ends with me consistently trying to reassure this person that I think believers meeting together to learn, worship, pray and fellowship and that people travelling overseas for "mission" are really important. As someone both employed by a local church, involved in leading and teaching in a Sunday meeting and also heavily involved in overseas mission in Central Africa I've found the assumption that I am against both these things in some way or another to be incredibly frustrating.

It all came to a kind of head at the start of the week. Instead of dancing around the whole thing like we usually do, I came out and simply said "I don't know why you think I am against Sunday meetings and overseas mission. In fact I don't see how you could even think that I would be against these things given my involvement in both."

She responded by saying that I kept saying we needed to forget about these areas and focus more on other things so I obviously was anti both. The conversation ended at that point and I was left feeling bewildered.

I was talking about it with Alyssa later on when Alyssa hit on an important detail we had overlooked - something I regularly say when discussing these things is "we need to put Sunday church to the side and focus on the other days of the week" or "we need to put overseas mission to the side and focus on the missionfield at home for a bit".

What Alyssa pointed out was, what I mean when I say these things is, "we need to elevate the other 6 days of the week and things we do on those days to the same level of importance we give Sunday's" and "we need to give mission at home the same level of importance we give mission overseas".

But instead of hearing this, my friend - and quite possibly others also - was hearing, "I don't think Sunday meetings and overseas mission are important and we should just leave them to one side and concentrate on other things".

Another clear example of the confusion which can be caused by not communicating clearly. All I have to do now is work out how widespread these sentiments are so I can hopefully undo any damage I've done and reassure everyone I am not anti church!

Tough Week

This week has been incredibly stressful.

Back at work on Monday, lots of changes and new people in new jobs, lots of uncertainty about things that for the last couple of years have been pretty certain, a new senior role with no real clarity around responsibilities, authority or expectations.

I find it kinda funny how I react to this kind of pressure. The "fight or flight" response kicks in - my initial reaction is usually "fight", and when I don't give into this (becuase past experience - and my wife - tell me it can get pretty messy and ungodly when I do) I quickly end up at "flight".

The reality of this situation is such that neither reactions are really appropriate - instead I've just had to sit tight and endure the ongoing swing between the two extremes.

What I really hate though, is the way the "flight" side of things seems to dominate and flow on into my whole life - or at least significant parts of it.

How does it make me feel?

It makes me want to run and hide and ditch everything!

It makes me feel weak and helpless and useless - like there's no point in being involved in most of things I'm involved in - chucking the job - "the stress isn't worth it", ditching the new EMC plant in Bunbury - "it wasn't going to work anyway - it was just a dream afterall", chucking the Binningup work - "the changes are never going to last, things won't really ever change".

In all of this though I'm reminded of Paul's conversation with Jesus when Paul was facing an issue that was out of his control.

Jesus response ... "my strength is made perfect in weakness"!

It's so often at these times that I'm not-so-subtely reminded of the fact that I really, really, really, need God - that even the things that seem so clear and certain today aren't neccessarily going to look the same tomorrow, but that - at least - one thing is sure. God and his love for me and purpose for my life remain unchanged.

I wish I didn't so often need reminding of this and I hope and pray that the current "trial" will find resolution soon. And in the meantime, I guess I will just (sigh) have to keep sitting tight and let God sort out the stuff that I have absolutely no control over- and for me, that's not an easy thing to do.

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!

The Gospel According to Judas

When I was in Perth last week I was browsing the book section of a department store when I came across an interesting looking little book, entitled The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot. When I opened it I saw it was laid out a lot like a biblical text. It was broken into chapters and numbered verse and even had "red letter" sections.

My first thought was it must have been a publication of the Gnostic Gospel of Judas which created a bit of a stir in the media last year. I flicked to the back of the book, past the ribbon book mark - another "biblical" addition to the binding - and saw that it was actually a work of fiction by non-other than British lord and onetime jailbird, Jeffrey Archer.

Archer approaches the "gospel" as the work of Benjamin Iscariot, the fictitious son of Judas and heir to the true story of Jesus. The younger Iscariot recording the gospel during a visit to his father at Khirbet Qumran where the now elderly, Judas fled following Jesus death.

The story starts with Benjamin assuring his readers that Judas did not believe Jesus was the Messiah and that Judas himself was the victim of a smear campaign who did not take his own life or do many of the things claimed of him by the traditional gospel writers.

The blurb in the front cover says that Archer wanted to make the "gospel" as authentic as possible (which probably helps explain the leather-look cover, complete with ancient Christian symbolism and the scripture-like layout of the text, including biblical cross references) and so consulted Catholic scholar and major superior of the Salesians of Don Bosco, Prof. Francis J. Moloney. The end result, according the publisher is "... a project as bold as it is simple. Archer would write a story for twenty-first-century readers, while Moloney would ensure that the result would be credible to a first-century Christian or Jew".

The idea is certainly an interesting one which poses a number of questions. However, Archer doesn't appear to have approached the task in a terribly original way. The Gospel According to Judas is really just a retelling of the accounts of Jesus life recorded in the synoptic gospels. The main difference being Archer's/Iscariot's focus on the thesis that Judas was unfairly treated by later Christian authors, that he did not knowingly or willing betray Jesus but ended up becoming a scapegoat and that he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

The "gospel" ends with Judas living among the Essenes in Khirbet Qumran and finally, at the age of 70, being crucified by the Romans, for which "... he gave thanks to YHWH when he learned that he would suffer the same fate as Jesus" (p. 90 or if you prefer Judas 25:59!).

In terms of practical uses for this book, I guess it could be used to stir up discussion on why we accept the Gospel authors accounts of Jesus life, on some of the so-called contradictions within the gospel accounts, and even as the basis of a comparative study of the quotes and parapharases of the synoptic authors used by Archer/Iscariot to support the claim that Jesus did not want people to view him as the Messiah.

Two trains and a marriage licence

I had to go to Perth today - the hottest day of the past 2 or 3 weeks mind you - for an interview at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to finalise my registration as a marriage celebrant (anyone wanna get married?).

On the spur of the moment we decided to try out the new Mandurah to Perth rail link, parking our car at the Mandurah station and going all the way through. I gotta say, with the exception of the car park at the Mandurah end of the line, the journey was really easy and comfortable and cheap. The whole trip, there and back, with parking included, cost the five of us just over $10 in total.

The Mandurah car park is a bit of a maze, although, contrary to what we had heard, there was loads of parking. I accidentally pulled into the bus entry when we arrived and ended up copping a few words from a disgruntled bus driver in the process. When I finally managed to find the exit I learnt I couldn't turn back and re-enter the car park without heading all the way back out of the complex again. One set of lights and a U-turn later I was back in the car parking area. By the time I had pulled all this off our train had gone.

For some unknown reason, the park itself is divided into three areas, each totally separate to the other and accessible in each section by only one entry/exit point. Because of a big fence it was also only possible to enter or exit the car park on foot at one point in each section, making it really difficult to get in, park, get your parking ticket and make it to your train before it leaves.

With about 5 seconds to spare (I even gave a young guy at the ticket machine .25c because he ran out of money and began to melt-down and I was sure we were going to miss our second train) we made the train and I arrived only 15 minutes late to my interview. Thankfully the interviewer was 20 minutes late so nothing was lost.

Following an hour spent going over the intricacies of the Marriage Act, we caught another train into the underground station beneath Murray St and spent a few hours wandering around the city - organising a "touch-up" for my tattoo and browsing the shops - before jumping back on the train to Mandurah and the 50 minute drive home.

I'm Back

It's been hard staying away from the blog for so long -nearly 5 months! Over the Christmas break I've found the time to get back into reading blogs on a regular basis and am coming across so many things that I feel I just want to share and comment on that I thought I might give blogging another shot.

Things are also starting to move in the area of "church" in my life. About 3 months ago the leadership here at Binningup made the almighty paradigm shift from attractional thinking to missional/incarnational - it was quite an emotional experience for me, to see the move take place after 3 years (more really) of introducing new ideas and ways of viewing "church" and "ministry". The shift has ended with the leadership, with the exception of Alyssa and I, signing up for a 12 month internship with Forge in the Re-Imagine program.

About 10 weeks ago Lyss and I started a discussion group in Bunbury with the intent of moving towards starting a missional community in the town, based predominantly around the concept of the kingdom gospel and a process of community (lives, environment, culture) transformation. We started off reading McLaren's Secret Message of Jesus. One of the original couples didn't last a week, a few more petered out after a couple of weeks. One week we had more than 20 in attendance. And now we've settled at around 8 or 9 regulars - including a couple of young blokes who have come through the drug program and are searching for meaning in life.

This past Sunday, after a break over Christmas/New Years we decided to move things to the next level and agreed to begin meeting in a central location within the CBD. The space is a community arts centre where numerous and varied community groups meet. Its right next to the town skate park and means mixing it up and sharing space with a number of other groups, including the local Dungeons and Dragons club and a literary group.

The place got bombed by taggers (graffiti artists who spray their nick-name on every flat surface) last week and I offered our services to the manager in cleaning up the place which led to a really interesting conversation and the manager coming back at me with ideas for getting involved with the community engagement stuff they are hoping to do this year. I am really excited by the possibilities this place is going to offer in terms of being missional and a part of the inner city community we want to serve and help transform.

We have embarked on this venture with support from Binningup Beach Christian Fellowship, who are seeing it as a kind of "plant" of their own (which is great and which I have encouraged), from Churches of Christ, and from Forge and Scripture Union.

If you're in Bunbury and want to check us out, we get together at 4pm on Sunday arvos at the Stirling St Art Centre - see you there!

In kicking off my return to the blogosphere I'll leave you with a link to a post I found on the "Gathering in Light" blog on the 4 different arms of the emerging church. I think we probably fit somewhere in number 3 in what we are trying to achieve in Bunbury.

Adieu

The time has come for me to throw in the towel and give blogging up to those who are better able to make a useful contribution to the net-enabled world than I.

The process over the past 10 months has been interesting and, in a sense, worthwhile. For a while the act of blogging was quite cathartic (as an interesting aside - cathartic comes from the Greek word catharsis which can mean to "suck", as in pacify, but I thought it was also applicable to my blogging!!) and I have managed to meet and maintain contact with a couple of really cool people from different places on the globe.

I will definitely still be surfing the blogosphere - I have my favourite blogs locked into Bloglines - and will continue to read and comment.

To those regulars whose visits appear in my webstats - thanks for dropping by and taking an interest!

Cheers and all the best,

Andrew (aka - the Creature)

Discipleship without the Bible - Pt 2

Two and a half years ago something remarkable happened to me. I would even call it miraculous.

It was, without a doubt, the end result of several years of prayer, but to this day I cannot understand why it happened, except to say it was definitely a "God thing". I want to make this really clear. It had nothing to do with me or Lyss, other than, I guess, we were prepared to act when the time came.

The miracle is something I have talked about a few times on this blog. Mostly in trying to find some answers to the many questions I have as someone who has well and truly been thrown in the deep end of something big and amazing and really, really scary.

The miracle was/is a youth group.

3 teenage boys turning up on a Friday night with the specific intent of finding out something about God - whoever (as I am sure they were thinking) "he" was going to turn out to be.

By the end of our first 6 months the group of three had grown into 5. A few left, a few more came and for a good 12 months we settled on 4 regulars turning up each week. None of these kids had a Christian background (although a teenager from a Christian home who had been attending a youth group in another town did start attending after a while) and so our Friday nights were their only experience with God stuff and with Christians.

Now our group has a regular gathering of 7 or 8 on a Wednesday night (we changed the night early last year. I no longer worry about the fact they don't come along on Sunday mornings - sometimes I am actually glad they don't. We often refer to Wednesday nights as our new Sunday morning. We also have our first teenage girl coming along - a new challenge for us.

Bible reading though isn't our strength - hence the title for this post. I have tried setting reading homework, but it rarely gets completed. We have tried doing book studies, but these have flopped and one guys stopped coming because, in his opinion, youth group was too much like school!

I have used the Visual Bibles Gospel of John as an alternative to the Bible, this worked to some degree in engaging them with the Gospel story. Another good resource, particularly in terms of generating discussion, has been the Vancouver Youth for Christ's DVD series Quest. I have just started using this again as we have a number of new attenders who didn't see it the first time round 2 years ago.

But I have found it really difficult to find many resources out there designed for situations like ours. Most assume a group comprised of kids from Christian families and so the suggestions and approaches just don't seem to fit guys like ours. The language and the illustrations are specific to cultural, evangelical Christianity, which makes it really difficult for these post-Christian, non-reading kids to relate to.

As a result - and with the exception of a couple of the resources I mentioned above - we have had to come up with pretty much all our own material and approaches, specifically tailored for post-Christian youth to connect with. And this has been an incredibly difficult process, centred mostly around discussion, story telling and hanging out.