in my ears
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.
Discuss.
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.
I have been thinking lately about God’s call on individuals and also churches.
Before being unemployed I had two jobs which I would say both them came about due to God’s direction. The first being Fusion, where I was a youth worker running programs, developing programs, mentoring young people and other stuff. Why the hell was I doing it. After school I studied TV Production not youth work, I had no intention of ever doing any of those ‘what a good person you must be” kind of jobs. I wanted to be a kick arse cameraman on a live TV show. In fact when a friend called me up and asked if I could come an sit in the youth cafe for an afternoon as they couldn’t open unless there was another volunteer there I replied with “I’ll do it if I don’t have to talk to any young people or go in the kitchen”.
And I didn’t, one afternoon before my night classes learning how to be a kick ares cameraman I headed up to the said youth cafe and sat on a couch grumbling to myself about the dumb young people I had to ‘babysit’. I also didn’t go in to the kitchen.
Around the same time another friend asked me if I wanted to go to Uganda with him to help him make a video for that hippy organisation he worked for called TEAR. I said yes and prayed about it and stuff. I was a poor student and TEAR being TEAR I had to pay my own way. Anyway I felt that God was telling me not to directly ask people for monies so I prayed and the next morning there was about half the money required in my bank as various people had transferred it. I thought it was all good and God was taking care of me so time to sit back and get on with being a kick arse cameraman. It got to a day or two out from the departure date and I still only had half the monies. So I thought maybe I should pray again. I did and low and behold the next day all the money was there. I’m pretty sure this was God wanting me to go to Uganda and it is defiantly what birthed my passion, interest and ‘calling’ to find ways I could help fight poverty. It’s not that I didn’t care before but it’s rather that I didn’t pay attention.
Anyway up at the youth cafe I started becoming more regular (high fibre diet) and ended up being a kind of back up for when people where sick or away. Then I slowly began doing a regular day and two regular days and so on and so on. Yes I did start to like it i wasn’t the grump on the couch anymore although I did still try to avoid the kitchen. Then after 6 years of doing that TEAR offered me a job and it was surreal. My passion and interest in fighting poverty where now linked with my newly acquired skills and passion for engaging and working with young people.
Then suddenly I found myself out of a job and still haven’t found a new one, what happened to God’s call????
Well I think I have worked out that God doesn’t want to be our high school career adviser and that instead he wants us to be disciples. Having a job is not following the call of God. We often say things like God has called me to be an accountant? What about the rest of your life and time is God’s call just between 9-5 and outside of that you are just plodding along being a good person and content with doing what God wants you to do???
Gods call and career are not the same thing. I have come to think that God’s call is probably the same for all of us. It is simply to Love God with all our heart and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Now of course a way me might do this is by having a certain job and God may have led you into that job but that job is not your whole call. I think we often forget this and just focus on our job / career as being the call of God.
There are things that frustrate me like when people may say that God has called them to be an accountant and He has placed them in that workplace so they can be a witness to their colleagues. It doesn’t frustrate me that people are a witness to their colleagues, it frustrates me that this can lead to assuming that this is their entire call and that God has placed them there to be with their other middle class colleagues. And that serving the poor and marginalised is not part of their role and God has called other people to do that. That doesn’t sit comfortably with me. I think regardless of what job God may or may not have placed you in, the face to face contact with poor and marginalised people (however you define those terms) is necessary.
It’s not just the role of people who are ‘missionaries’ or ‘community service professionals’ to interact, nurture and journey with the poor and marginalised, it is all of our jobs.
Which brings me to churches.
I think churches outsource discomfort to external groups, missionaries and a small group of congregation members.
Say for instance there is a soup kitchen in the city and a few people from the church go and serve regularly to the needy who pass through the service. These people use some of their free time to go out of their comfort zone. And you may now be thinking ‘but they are the kind of people who can handle that sort of thing, I couldn’t do that’. Doing that sort of thing is not comfortable for anyone, it’s confronting and challenging every time. Anyway these people go regularly and it’s the same people, every now and then someone else will join them but it doesn’t last long. But the church as a whole feels like they are taking part as they knit blankets or donate money. I’m pretty sure God doesn’t want us to keep a comfortable distance form things we find confronting and I’m pretty sure that while the money and blankets are needed it’s not an excuse to take part from a comfortable distance.
Now that is just a made up example but I guess like with individuals I don’t think God calls most of us to be comfortable and some of us to be brave enough to step outside the comfort. I think he calls us ALL to reach out to the poor and marginalized in whatever way we can.
I have been thinking about Mark 10: 46-52. It was a passage I used regularly at TEAR to run a little interactive activity. But it shows Jesus walking along George street outside Town Hall station, flanked by his posse. A stinky, rag ridden blind old beggar shouts and mutters at Jesus as he hears him get closer on the footpath. Members of the posse shout out telling him to be quiet. But the old stinky man shouts and mutters again “Hey Jesus have some mercy on me”. Jesus stops and asks for the man to be brought closer. some members of the posse go towards the old man and tell him to get up, he throws his green Woolworth’s bags full of torn blankets and crushed coke cans to the side and stumbles to his feet. Jesus says to the man “What can I do for you?” The old man says “Rabbi I want to see”. Jesus told him to go and that his faith had healed him, he was healed and he grabbed his woolies bag and began to follow jesus down the road towards Hyde Park.
Jesus is the son of God, he would have known that the beggar wanted to have sight, he could have healed him without talking to him, or even just walked by. But he didn’t, he came face to face with someone who was the lowest of low in the society and said “What can I do for you?”. He yet again made himself a servant, the king of all kings asked a beggar how could he help?
If our Lord stops for the poor and doesn’t just throw a coin or give them a blanket but offers unconditional help who are we to outsource that job to others?
Yes we need people to knit, yes we need people to donate money to overseas aid, yes we need people to bake meals for the church freezer but doing that doesn’t over ride our responsibility to become an uncomfortable servant.
I didn’t just write this to attack the church or individuals there are heaps of people I know doing amazing things and churches too but also more needs to be done. I’m defiantly not perfect and this post is kind of an accountability post for me, for you and me to remind myself that no matter what job I end up doing it’s not following God’s call to turn up to work.
Discuss.
The other day Tom blogged about visiting a local church plant that was holding it’s first service. I’m not a big fan of church planting and thought I might share why. This is not a post attacking Tom or wanting to undermine the work of this new church but rather my views on church planting.
I really don’t understand church planting, I don’t understand why or how a church gets to a point where they decide it’s time to grab a bunch of congregational punters and go and start a new church down the road.
I don’t remember a time where I have been to a church for a normal Sunday service and seen every seat in the building full. If our churches aren’t full why do we need more of them. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to work on filling and improving the churches we already have?
Working with a ‘planting’ analogy if I was a lemon farmer and my lemon trees weren’t growing to their potential and had fraying leaves I wouldn’t plant more and hope they grow better, I would end up with lots of trees, milking more time and resource to maintain for little harvest. Instead it would be better to keep the few trees and concentrate on the soil to ensure the tree’s have all the nutrients and strong roots that they require to grow better.
Our suburbs in my view are bursting at the seams with churches and more and more are popping up. All it seems to be doing is spreading congregations thinner.
Sure people become Christians but the rate of conversions can’t be equivalent to the rate of church plantings.
This new church has a cool band so lets go there instead of this one, the new church has 2 projector screens!!!!
I feel if a church thinks it’s time to plant a new church, which takes a lot of resource, wouldn’t that resource be best used to widen the programs of that church or help a church that already exists in the local area or partner with a church in a rural area that has little resource of its own, not starting a whole new church.
I’ve also heard recently that church planting is commonly used as one of the measures of positive church growth.
Discuss.
The following was found in a church bulletin, christians really need to find better ways of doing PR
WHY JESUS IS BETTER THAN SANTA
Santa lives in the North Pole – JESUS is everywhere
Santa rides in a sleigh – JESUS rides on the wind and walks on the water
Santa comes once a year – JESUS is an ever-present help
Santa fills your stocking with goodies – JESUS supplies all your needs
Santa come down your chimney uninvited – JESUS stands at your door and knocks, and then he enters your heart when invited
You have to wait in line to see Santa – JESUS is as close as the mention of his name
Santa lets you sit on his lap – JESUS lets you rest in his arms
Santa doesn’t know your name, all he can say is “Hii little boy (or girl) what’s your name?” – JESUS knew our name before we did. Not only does he know our name, He knows our address too. He knows our history and future and he even knows how many hairs are on our heads
Santa has a belly like a bowl of jelly – JESUS has a heart full of love
All Santa can offer is HO HO HO – JESUS offers help, hope and heaven
Santa says “you better not cry” – JESUS says “cast all your cares on me for i care for you”
Santa’s little helpers make toys – JESUS makes new life, mends wounded hearts, repairs broken homes and builds mansions
Santa is a ‘jolly old elf’ – JESUS is the king of kings
Santa may make you chuckle but – JESUS gives you joy that is your strength
While Santa puts gifts under your tree – JESUS became our gift and died on a tree
At dinner a few nights ago with a bunch of people someone put forth the question “Do you need to go to Church to be spiritually connected to God?”
We took it in turns answering this question, each person having a slightly different view and response.
It got me thinking about it, and I shared a bit of this on Tuesday night at the dinner table. Do I think you need to go to church to be spiritually connected to God?
Well I personally don’t think we need to go to church for spiritual connection, in fact if God is everywhere and always with us then we should be able to have that spiritual connection wherever we are and go. But this doesn’t really work does it? In theory it sounds nice but I know for me that I’m not always engaged with God, in fact often I’m far from it.
Some people say they feel most connected with god when they are alone with Him having a quite time or reading his word. Well I’m not really good at that either, infact if you come to my house and look on the book shelf you will see about 8 different journals and note books that I have started over the years in my attempts to have a quiet time each day. So that doesn’t work
How do I get my spiritual connection with god, that’s a good question sometimes its at church I feel really close to God, and I have to say that its not often during the sermon, often I get distracted and turn off or start thinking about other stuff. But then worship I love worship, but not what you think, I’m not into the new music.
Amazing Grace is such a powerful song, I love it so much and when I’m in a room full of people singing that song it sends shivers down my spine, there is something about old hymms, they are sung differently there is more gusto and passion sometimes and I love it.
That is a song that makes me feel spiritually connected to god.
But why don’t I feel connected during the sermon or in quiet times?
I can tell you that its not because the sermons are lame or that the bible isn’t for me, its not because church isn’t for everyone. Its because I get in the way of myself. That sounds a bit confusing but God is everywhere and he is always ready for me to engage with him but its up to me to make the connection, if I sit in church and get bored in a sermon its no reflection on the preacher it’s a reflection on me. I need to make an effoert to get close to god to be challenged by his word. I’m sure many people turn off in sermons, well I’m going to try not to, God has done so much for me, how about I show him some respect and put in the effort to listen and engage with his love.
Going back to the original question “Do you need to go to Church to be spiritually connected to God?”
Well you don’t need it but boy oh boy it’s a good start, in the world we have so many distractions, things that mean we forget about God and are not engaged with his spirit. So church is a time and place where we can drop the world for a few hours and spend time in fellowship with God, I think church is an awesome tool to help us be spiritually connected, when 2 or 3 are gathered in his name there He is in the midst.
Imagine if we could be spiritually connected all the time….what would it take for you to be?
It would seem as if i am heading off to Greece in three weeks. Like last year.
All a bit sudden, my work is like that.
It seems to me that God seems to have a humerous sense of timing, he never seems to d things with plenty of time to spare, i think thats why we get on so well! Anyway a few prayers will be sent up in the next three weeks. as around $3500 neede be rased for me, but there i s three of us so really its $10,500 that needs to be raised in the next three weeks. Ah i love it!
So yay for my loyal readers, feel free to go balistic on the ads, send up prayer and give me dosh.
I was sitting her thinking I have nothing to blog, its all going downhill, all my readers are leaving, I haven’t said anything interesting in months. The only thing that keeps people interested is if I talk about poo, and I haven’t had any poo stories in the last few weeks. what am I going to say. I don’t have any pictures to put up nothing. I don’t really have anything to whinge about. Although post could be classified as a whinge.
Anyway the point of this post is to try and prove to myself that I do have stuff the share with the world.
Lets see what been happening with my life over the last few months. Worl=k has bbeen crazy and a bit overwhelming at times with no sign of it slowing down anytime soon. Sickness oh yes I got sick. Its funny because I have been sick with this gut thing for about 12 months which is quite a ling time, but its just sort of become normal that I don’t see myself as sick. I really am fine. you know how after a while you just adapt to stuff and it becomes normal. Like when you get a new pair of jeans, at first they are all new and weird and uncomfortable but then after a while you don’t notice they are just jeans they are comfy and normal. Anyway but I got more sick didn’t I had the infections and stuff. But they are gone. Oh and I started going out with jenny that was a good move I really love jenny. We have been going out for just over 3 months now. I can really see myself marrying that girl. I think we have a come a long way together over the last few months. It’s a bit strange because we spend all day with each other at work sitting at desks right next to each other and so much of our work is together. But then after work what do we do. we hang out more. and on weekends we hang out too. There doesn’t seem to be a possible overload of each other. And frankly I don’t want there to be, I like spending so much time with jenny. I do need to watch It a bit so I don’t neglect other people. I think that’s what I did badly last year. With work and stuff I sort of neglected the other people around me, everyone really, I was never home and never hung out with my friends cause I didn’t have a healthy balance. Its not like that with jenny but I don’t want it to become like that. cause it sicked I never saw anyone and never hung out with them, I was just howie, they guy that appeared sometimes and that we used to hang out with. So this year I’ve tried to change that. I’m still not excelling at it there has been heaps to do at work and been spending any spare time I get sleeping or with jenny. But I have spent more time with other people. Still looking for a healthy balance.
Emotionally how am I going, well pretty good I think. A bit tense and overwhelmed at times with work stuff, but then have to try and remind myself that I work for God and he wont give me more than I can handle. The only way it will become more than I can handle is if I don’t hand my work over to God in the first place and I try and do it alone.
Not that god wont make it challenging cause he will but he wont make it impossible.
So I think that’s another growth area for me just trusting in god and his plans for me, and not trying to do work without him.
How am I going spiritually. well that’s a bit of a grey area. I think to be really truthful I have been really close to god since about 2000. That may shock some people. But I think its true, my relationship with god is really up and down I don’t really get angry at God or upset with him, I think its more that I just haven’t had a good church home and I have bad habits which have helped push me further from gods presence. Like quiet times, I would love to have a quiet time everyday and the amount of times I have started and done it for a few days and then just stopped is ridiculous. I guess I’m telling you all this because in telling you I have sort of become accountable to you all. I would like to change I would like to get close to god again I would like to be a place where I thank god for everything, where I send up prayers as I’m crossing a road where I spend time in the bush in his creation just pondering and thanking him. I want to be in a place where I feel his hand on mine where ever I go. I want to be connected into a church, in fellowship with others, sharing our walks with each other.
I’ve started going to Thornleigh Baps a bit and I really like it. Good teaching good worship a real strong focus on mentoring and stuff. I like it I think as my braveness grows I’ll find it a really awesome church. So yes you heard it here first I think it will be my new church home.
In saying all that it sounds like I have been depressed for the last 5 years. that’s not true I have had some really awesome and profound times with God and have grown in my faith in some ways. Its just easier to pinpoint the stuff that’s not going as well as it could be.
It scares me how much people do look up to me sometimes and follow me not in a big headed I’m so good kind of way. Just like young people looking up to me and I have a job to be as much like Jesus as I can. And I fail, a lot so I really need to re-ignite my walk which God so that I can be in touch with him and look after all the young people I work with and everyone I interact with.
Ty and I where talking about our sort of work once and talking about me not having a church and stuff. He had a good analogy. Its like a sponge full of water, you can wring it out for a long time and get water out of it but eventually it will run dry unless there is a tap above it replenishing its water. Like the work I’m doing is good, and people are growing and changing and its all awesome but if I’m not getting replenishment from god then I’ll just run dry and the life will be squeezed out of me.
So there you go, may have shocked some of you, its not often I talk about god stuff on here.
that might do for now.
there will be a comprehension exam on the above later on.
People with mental disabilities don’t have a disability, they are the most able people on this planet. How many people with a mental disability do you see judging people, holding grudges, blackmailing, twisting, hating.
Never, thats when.
People with mental disabilities are who we should be getting our mentoring and guidance from especially illness like down syndrome. People with down syndrome just keep on loving and smiling, sure they can get grumpy but the grumpiness never turns into a grudge or a prolonged hatred. It lasts for a very short amount of time. There is always love. You could do something to upset someone and 20 seconds later they hug you and embrace you. The past is forgotten.
Why is it that the people in this world who are the best examples of loving other people are the people we class as being “sick” and “disabled” and suffering from an “illness”.
Being able to always love is not an illness, its us who are ill. Not them.
Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, thats everyone!! Jesus loved everyone, why cant we?
You don’t need words to love,
1 Corinthians 13: 4-7
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
‘m not sure why i had this sudden outburst but i was thinking about it the other day.
Last night myself, David, Tom, Jo, Helen, Ryan, Carmen and Margaret went and saw “the Passion of the Christ”
I didn’t really know what to expect, I was quite un-enthused at going and seeing a subtitled film as I can never keep up with the subtitles and the thought that the whole film may not be subtitled defiantly made me consider not going, but I went maybe partly because if I didn’t go I would have nothing to contribute to conversations in the next few weeks as the whole world goes out and sees this film, especially fellow Christians. So I went!
During the film I managed to keep up with all the subtitles, and I didn’t loose the impact of the film because I was spending my whole time reading.
There was something about the violence in this film, that really got to me, like watching kill bill or something like that, seeing heads get chopped off and stuff doesn’t really impact or affect me much, a bit de sensitised to it all I guess. Damn modern culture!
Anyway Sitting there watching Jesus get whipped and whipped really disturbed me, Just the fact that I knew this was Jesus. If it was some guy in a war movie or something I would not have been nearly affected as much, I don’t know anyone from war, I have no connection with those people. But Jesus, he knows me, He was there being whipped for me and I was sitting there watching,
There was this strange feeling, Having these very graphic images right in front of me, sure I could have turned away and sure I could have walked out. I mean I know how the movie ends, I know what happens next. But that’s the thing, I know what happens next and I know that one of the things that happens next is that I have eternal life because of what Jesus was going through on that screen, so I could at least show him the courtesy of watching it. This was for me, This man was having his body torn apart by the soldier’s, he was being spat on and shouted at, wounds weeping all over his body, gash’s and lash’s and cuts and bruises, whip after whip after whip, his body so so weak. All for me. All for you.
Big nails driven through his palms, bones breaking and shattering, for me and you,
Death, for me and you.
Isn’t that crazy to think about, and there is something about physically watching it that drives it home more and more, reading the words in the Bible tell the story, Having pictures to go with the words makes the whole thing much more realistic, much more full on.
I think this film is good, it scares you, it disturbs you, it shakes you, we need to be shaken we need to see how much Jesus really has done for us,
I say Mel, make a film about the whole Bible, sure it might be 6 weeks long, but how powerful would it be, how much would it re enforce beliefs and create new ones,
I’m not saying that this film should replace the Bible or anything, like if you wanna know the Story of Jesus dying read the Bible, This film is just a tool to assist in telling the story.
Like that Francis of acyesis said “go out into the world and preach the gospel, and if you need to, use words”
Pictures can paint a thousand words.
