Driscoll….Discuss

Some people love Mark Driscoll, others can’t stand his teachings and then there are some who have never heard of him or don’t give a damn.

If you like him and his church or the opposite, please read these 3 articles.

1. Mark Driscoll’s Church Discipline Contract: Looking For True Repentance at Mars Hill Church? Sign on the Dotted Line
2. Mark Driscoll’s ‘Gospel Shame’: The Truth About Discipline, Excommunication, and Cult-like Control at Mars Hill
3. A response from Mars Hill Church

Discuss.

unnecessary rant

In the scheme of things this post isn’t going to change the world and is really just going to waste your time. I need to vent somewhere but the wife, son and turtles are all asleep so the blog is it.

On Wednesday I ordered something online, delivery would normally have been the next day but because Thursday was Straya Day I would have to wait until today.

Excited about my parcel arriving today I logged on to the parcel tracking to see where it was.

Ripper it was on board with the driver at 7:12am and would be delivered by 5pm.

Later in the morning I received an sms saying my parcel would be delivered today.

I didn’t leave the house for pretty much the whole day. (not because of the parcel just because my life is that exciting). I did go out for a bit in the afternoon to buy an onion and some tomatoes but Jenny was home when I wasn’t here.

At 5pm there was still no sign of the parcel.

I logged back into the tracking to see what it said.

Same as before, so maybe the courier is just having a busy day and is running late.

Then resigned to the fact that my parcel was not going to arrive I looked up how to find out about the whereabouts of my parcel that would be delivered by 5pm.

Both the company I purchased from and the courier company where closed for the weekend and I should call on Monday.

A few minutes ago I thought I would check the tracking just one last time.

It had been updated!!!!!

“Card left Not Home (private)…….What?????? There was someone here all day, where I sit I can look out the window at our driveway…

I went out in the rain to look for this ‘card left’. there is no card near our front door, on our verandah or in the letterbox.

so my parcel was returned and now there is the lovely message ‘closed for holidays’.

Jerks!

Oh, just saw one of the turtles is awake so gonna go rant to them now.

That’s better.

lady gaga nude

In the past month my blog has gone from an average of 100 visitors a day to the current daily average of 36.52.

I don’t log in to the visitor stats very often anymore, and after today’s report not sure I want to log in again.

I’m not going to stop blogging, this blog is about the only thing I read fully so if I stopped my own blog what would I read? other people’s blogs???? nah!

I need to put up more photos, I need to take more photos. Jenny is always whinging at me for not using my camera enough so I will. How about at least once a week I’ll blog some photos form that week.

And more poo related stories, I know people love them.

In a win win for everyone it turns out the last photo taken on my camera is of me sitting on the toilet…..nothing suss. Tom took it of me while we were filming a promo…I’ll stop talking.

Howie on the dunny

 *UPDATE – Turns out it wasn’t tom but actually Jenny. Less suss? Or more suss because I couldn’t recall which of my 2 wives was photographing me on the bog???

Why I love youtube, but hate spoken word videos.

I’m getting pretty sick of people sending me or people filling my Facebook feed etc with the ‘Why I hate religion, but love Jesus’ video.

I’m not a fan of spoken word, and while this video is nicely shot and uses emotive colours and music the constant battle to make sentences rhyme drives me batty. I think I pretty much agree with content but it would be much less wanky if it didn’t all rhyme.

There is a nice quote from Ghandi “I like your Christ but I don’t like your Christians”.

I think i’m pretty similar.

Well now a Catholic priest and some video geeks have made a response video.

I can’t help but spend the whole time staring at the massive marble alter and over the top architecture in this video while he tries to justify religion.

Discuss.

cupboard camping part 2.

Wednesday at the camp was by far the hardest day for me.

The general gist of my talks was that if we are to follow Jesus and love him and love our neighbors we need to be living a life that is for others not ourselves.The first 2 days were spent exploring poverty a bit and the contrast between our life in Australia compared with the life of people living in utter poverty and marginalisation. And exploring Jesus statements like ‘you will always have the poor with you” so should we even bother doing anything???

On Wednesday the plan was to look at how the choices we make all day every day impacts on others sometimes even without us realising and that loving our neighbour also includes looking after their security, environment, access to resources and necessities etc. this was to be followed by an opportunity to commit to Jesus and ask for his help in living a life for others.

I knew this would be the hardest day and had a terrible sleep the night before. Woke up feeling super dooper seedy and spent the hour before the session sweating like crazy and pacing around the room. I don’t like doing the call to Christ talks, there is way too much potential for me to get in the way. I think because I’m silly and witty (am i?) I often get close to total attention when I’m speaking to teenagers and while it’s nice to not have sleepers and people disengaged it’s also daunting because in this case what if I miss represent Jesus and a room full of impressionable teenagers get a totally wrong view of Him. Just doing a normal talk I don’t feel this but whenever there is this opportunity to become a christian included it takes it to a whole new level of freaking out for me.

Anyway when it got to that point of my session whilst talking I kind of fell apart and was crying all over the place, I was sharing a personal story and trying to convey the devastation that can be caused when we chose selfishness, comfort etc over living for others and how it had destroyed one of my relationships because of my stupidity and stubbornness 10 years on the relationship is still not repaired.. I was a mess and had no idea if I was being coherent and I was at this point where it was time to offer Jesus as an option for these campers. As stated above these things scare me, there is no way in hell I was going to open my eyes when I was praying to see if any hands were going up. If I opened my eyes and saw no hands going up I would think it was all my fault and that I stuffed it up. On the flip side if there was hands up I’m scared I would think I did a good job and because of me kids were choosing to follow Christ. It has nothing to do with me, it’s between the individual and Jesus..not me. So knowing this I lined up two leaders beforehand to keep their eyes open so I could keep my leaking eyes locked closed.

After the session I was absolutely exhausted and all I was thinking about was my notebook and all the points I missed that I had intended to make. Each day I tried to sit in with a different discussion group afterwards, I really didn’t want to this day, but I did. then as soon as it was over I escaped to my cupboard, popped some nurofen and lay on the bed for a bit.

I heard later in the day that a bunch of peeps made a commitment to Christ for the first time and another bunch re-committed. The great thing is that I’m 100% sure it wasn’t because of me and my shambles of a session but it was because of God hanging out in the room too.

After this session was done and dusted the rest of the camp was a breeze, I just hung out with cheeky teenage boys and had good conversations. My poo returned to normal services and all was well.

There was an amazing sharing time around the fire on the last night and people shared where they were at with God, I shared about how inadequate I felt doing this camp for a bunch of reasons and that I often find myself feeling inadequate when doing any kind of speaking etc. Give me a microphone to MC a wedding reception or something and I’ll have the time of my life but convince me to use that microphone for potentially life changing content and I turn into a portaloo. It was pretty out of character for me to share my inadequacies, especially with a group of people I have only known a few days, thankfully I was able to add in a joke about Michal Jackson so it wasn’t all serious.

All up it was a pretty intense camp. Probably the best way to sum it up is to say it was Friggen Nuts!!!!!!

camping in a cupboard part 1.

This past week I have been away on a youth camp. I was the speaker for the senior high kids and I’ve never done that before.

All the leaders arrive at the camp the day before the young people so I got a lift with Lezalee on Saturday afternoon out to the campsite. Lezalee was pretty much the only person I knew on the camp so I new the first few days would be tough. Give me a microphone or stand me in front of a group of people and ask me to speak and I’ll be able to kick off straight away, make jokes do my thing etc. But put me in a room full of people I don’t know and I’m as quiet as a mouse, I’ll respond to questions but not initiate conversation. For some strange reason new people freak me out and I get super shy and self conscious.

Anyway even being asked to speak on the camp was a bit of a shock for me as I have never been a speaker before, I’ve been an MC, I’ve led small groups, I’ve organised camps, I’ve run activities and I have visited camps to do a workshop or two but never been the main speaker responsible for daily talks. When I was asked to be the speaker there was 2 things that taunted me.

1. Am I good enough and smart enough to provide a bunch of senior high peeps with biblical based content for a week that would challenge and equip them.
2. Would I have enough poo jokes to sustain a whole week.

The other thing that was a bit daunting was that the director of the camp pretty much gave me free reign over what the content of my sessions would be.

As is usual in my life I spent the days leading up the the camp feeling pretty crap, loose and unformed stool, headaches, nausea the usual. Once at camp that was no different.

I arrived at camp and took my bags inside where I was led to my room. The good thing about being the speaker is that you get provided with your own space, the thing that amused me was that my ‘space’  was a cupboard. It was a lovely cupboard and it’s contents intrigued me for the whole week. It had a window which was nice although even with the window open there was a strange aroma to the cupboard. On that first afternoon / evening people were coming and going from my abode a fair bit so I unfolded a large puppet theatre that was near my bed to create a bit of a partition, unfortunately there was no puppets. If there were puppets I totally would have started a cupboard production.

The first night and next morning was spent with some team training sessions and cramp induced visits to the toilet.

Once the young people started to arrive I found my groove a bit better. As often seems to be the case with me at youth events etc I found myself amongst the more cheeky / naughtyish type lads.

After around 10 years of working with teenagers at youth events, camps, schools etc, my tolerance of ‘get to know you’ games is quite low. Anyway the first night all the senior high kiddies headed up the room which would become our hang for the week. We did a bunch of get to know you games and eventually the toilet roll was pulled out. Not because someone had let one out on the floor but so we could play the game where you pull off however many squares you would normally use and then you go around and say one fact about yourself for each square of 2ply you have.

I was one of the last people to have a turn and I had to consider 2 things. I wanted to say something that no one else had said and I also wanted to say stuff that would try to get the young people on side with me as quickly as possible. I think the speakers role is different from leading a small group etc as it’s your job to be engaing so that you can get across the serious content you want to convey without people turning off. So I think it’s important to be engaging from the get go. Not that it’s not important for leaders but they have more opportunity to build rapport etc. In my normal style I attempted to be amusing.
I had about 6 sheets, so rattled off normalish things like having pet turtles, my full name etc. but then for one of my facts I said that I was currently in a bit of trouble from the wife because I dropped something in the garden the other day not realising Oscar was close by and I said something like ‘Oh F%&#$ng nuts!”. And that Oscar now walks around and looks down and mutters in a similar tone to me “Oh friggen nuts”. It got quite a big laugh but I just thought it would be a quirky little fact and had no idea it would then turn into a catchphrase for the senior high kids for the entire camp. One night there was a camp wide trivia night and teams had to have a phrase to use as their buzzer. there at the back of the hall a team stood up and all shouted ‘Friggen nuts!” While I was pretty amused on the outside, on the inside all I was thinking was please don’t ‘friggen nuts’ be the only thing the campers take home from me.

When my morning routine falls apart my body doesn’t seem to cope and pretty much every time it ends in sloppy jaloppy and feeling super seedy. For the Tuesday morning of the camp there was to be a 4:30am wake up to catch a bus down to Mona Vale beach to watch the sunrise, have breakfast, worship and have a talk before beach fun.
When my alarm went off at 4:30 I could instantly tell my body was not impressed. I was sweating and feeling super seedy and also had some lovely bowel cramps. On the bus the cramps went away but I was feeling pretty darn off. The bus dropped us off on the cliffs overlooking the ocean and beach, there was not a toilet in sight. I stood at the back of the morning worship trying to sing a long but spending most of my energy thinking about how sick I felt and that any moment I was going to need to explode whilst at the same time knowing as soon as the worship finishes it’s time for my speaking gig. I knew there was no time to go find a toilet so just stood there praying that the cramps would not return.

I think I talked for about 20 minutes and managed to stay on topic but while my lips were moving my body was squirming. Eventually I needed to dash….somewhere?!?!?!

I finished talking, chatted for a bit then decided to walk to Warriewood surf club as It was the closest known toilet. On the walk the cramps returned and it felt like the longest walk I have ever taken. I made it JUST in time.

Part 2 will come when I have had more sleep and will contain less poo related material…less not none.

I went to QLD

I went to Queensland last weekend.
Jenny went to Adelaide and Oscar stayed with inlaws.

I have quite a lot of frequent flyer points with Virgin, well I had a lot of them until I used them all to go to QLD last weekend. I went up and back on Virgin’s new domestic Business class which was pretty fun. It does however mean I now only have 185 points.

I have never ever been upgraded on a flight so it was all new and fun for me, the express check in, the lounge access, fast boarding and comfy seats with good food.

I booked the tickets a while ago and when i booked them they were for premium economy not business class but since booking them virgin got rid of their premium economy on most planes and replaced it with business so my tickets became business.

On the way up I sat in 1F and was called “Mr Howie” a lot.

During the flight I got to finally give my awesome noise cancelling headphones a proper  run. (I bought the headphones using frequent flyer points about 6 months ago)

They were awesome.

And when I got off the plane my bag was the first onto the baggage carousel.

I caught a train straight from the Airport down to the Gold Coast to hang out with my buddy Bowen for a few nights.

We pretty much just sat around eating chicken burgers and chatting, it was great to do nothing and kind of fun to do nothing interstate. Just chill.

Bowen

On the second night with Bowen we walked to 7eleven and I finally got to have a Lemon Lime and Bitters Slurpee, it was damn exciting, so exciting that whilst taking the blury photo I made the whole cup overflow with slurpee goodness and spend a good few minutes licking the outside of my cup before I could walk over to the counter.

Then next morning I trained it back up to Brisvegas and had some lunch, listened to a cool blueegrass / folk band in the mall and then headed for my hotel which was booked using a wotif voucher I got at Christmas.

It was pretty swanky, I was on the 25th floor.

I spent a couple of hours working on outlines for my talks for the camp I’m speaking on next week.
Then I put my boardies on and went down to the pool, but on arrival at the pool I noticed that no one was in the water but there was heaps of very brown older people laying on lounges around it. So I went back to my room and had a nap.

I thought maybe because I was sooo hot and was too pansy to show off my super white skin in the pool area that I would have a shower.
It was one of those showers that just has one tap for both hot and cold and you turn it to either side to adjust the temp.

I turned the water on in the position it was already in (which was extremely hot) and then when I went to turn it down the tap came off in my hand.

It took me a long time to get it back on because I had to put my hand through the boiling water and be able to hold it there long enough to reattach the tap.

But thanks to my mad skillz, I did it eventually.

I also got to have dinner with my buddy Jesse, he took me to a pancake place in an old church. It was pretty good food.

J-Dog

After Jesse left and I had a phone conversation with the wife I went for a long walk across to south bank and around the city.

there was drunk people swimming, couples kissing and lots of pretty lights. I had a good time until i had the poo urge and realised how fricken far it was back to the hotel. And as you are a probably aware I can’t drop a load just any old toilet.

It was a brisk walk back to say the least.

The next morning I checked out, trained it back to the Airport then flew home. This time in 1A.

The business class flights and Hotel total was $47, a pretty good holiday for $47.

Well PLUS THE $91.30 FOR THE BLOODY AIRPORT TRAINS!!!!!!!!!!!!

she’s got mail

Yesterday my birth mother was sent a letter which included a little bio of me.

Now I wait more.

brick by brick – part 2

brick by brick

Under the bed in our spare room, office, fair trade storeroom was a lego city public transport set. Never opened and covered in dust. We must have bought it ages ago but no idea when or where. What use is it under a bed??? It says 6-12 years on the box so Oscar is too small and I act like a 12 year old so it was time to play. Jenny played the role of responsible adult saying things like “just do it like it says in the instruction book”.

We made some cool stuff.