…..for geoff.wordpress.com……

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BECAUSE….

www.geoffreport.com is here! I've enjoyed the hospitality of WordPress.com, but I wanted to shift to somewhere with a bit more control (it's all about the power), and I saw a sweet hosting deal for not very much money at all, and went for it. So check it out – I've imported all of the posts from here, although you won't see any of the comments from this blog (sorry, just couldn't make it happen), and hopefully you'll enjoy reading TheGeoffRe(y)port from its brand new location. And while it might look the same at the moment, rest assured – there will be changes!

I'll keep this blog open for as long as WordPress lets me – but if you're reading this well into the future – I strongly suggest you check out the new updated fan-dangled GeoffRe(y)port!

Brilliant insight into taking up your cross from The Rev. Have a read, it might just blow your mind…..

Had Home Group back on tonight after a two week absence, and there was definitely some meat in what came out of the night. While there were a lot of posers for the evening, the one that has my mind stretched beyond what it can bear has to do with the balance between being an experiential and passionate person who seeks God by putting yourself in a position to experience what God is doing, and being a seeker of the word, and someone who is determined to find the truth through meditating on God's word.

So we spoke a little about what some of the bad fruit can be if you are pushed too far in either direction, where theological type people have a tendency to lean towards becoming legalistic, and experiential people can stray from having a complete understanding. And we discussed finding the balance as (fitting in with the metaphor of the night) being in tune with God's song, and that the balance was somewhere in the middle.

Now maybe it's just that I've got a natural tendency towards being logical and "straight down the line" with things, and know that I need to free myself up a bit, but I tend to think that maybe the "in tune" line isn't quite at the center of the continuum. That while Jesus had plenty of unhappiness for what the Pharisees were on about, I struggle to see quite as much wrath from Jesus for people who were a bit too "let's just do the stuff and she'll be right". (Which for non-australians roughly translates as "everything will be OK")

Now I know that you can't have a complete theology based on what Jesus didn't say, but does the point make sense for people? It just seems to me that the church doesn't really seem to be in danger of being excessively prone to "doin' the stuff" (two Wimberisms this week already, the pastor will be pleased). What do you think? I'd love to hear feedback – don't make the mistake of thinking that this is a really solid position, I'm just trying to work this stuff out by writing. 

Have a look at this post (and the discussion that follows), for some really solid discussion about discipleship and long-term fruit in teenagers. Top quality. And while you're there have a look around the blog, it's got some good stuff

So, having conducted my grand experiment, I am now ready to reveal results. And the results are:

Not exactly overwhelming. I'm not sure if I expected too much but I'm not sure that there has been that much change in my thinking. I guess I probably instinctively tend to censor my music anway, so there's not that much that gets through that would do me too much damage. It was probably a bit of a weird week to do it because work was pretty stressful. Although I think that it actually meant that lots more of the tunes that got stuck in my head were more likely to point me to God, although there are probably some other tunes that I boycotted that can at times do the same thing (The Killers, "These Things I've Done" comes to mind – great lyrics).

I guess I'll probably keep it up. I think probably the biggest thing is that I'm more likely to add things to my music collection that have got some goodness in them. Fix any problems at the source. In the past I've tended to go along a bit with anything that has got a bit of bop-ability and that isn't going to have me laughed out of town by my youth minions (although I've got some Frank Sinatra, Jamie Cullum and Michael Buble – so it's not always successful). I did miss playing Scissor Sisters "Take Your Mama" as I drove along, so I think there'll be a return to that. But we're just going to watch the iPod's input from now on. So overall, despite my pessimism at the start of this post – I think the Experiment was a success. So in the words of Dale Kerrigan "Looks like everybody's kicked a goal".

(for any american/british/american expats in germany readers, do yourself a favour and find a copy of "The Castle" – the best Australian comedy ever. It'll explain everything)

Apologies to Wimber for ripping off his line but I love it so much that I had to pinch it. This morning's church service was something a bit different. While all of the respectable members of the congregation heard an inspiring message, anybody who wanted to get out there and be a bit evangelistic (ie – youth) was out handing out light-bulbs. Now this whole servant-evangelism thing is certainly not new to me but I'd never actually done stuff where we were going up to people's homes. And I was (to be brutally honest) a bit freaked out. I'm not someone who likes going up to people I don't know. I don't even really like going up to receptionists in offices (wow – didn't think this was going to get so deep and revealing).

But as soon as the first person took a light-globe, it was on! (edit – forgive the completely unintentional pun) I loved it. LOVED IT. There's something deeply exciting about being a positive Jesus light in someone's life. We had one person who wants to bring their kids along to our kids programs. We had another who tried to give us a donation. And we had one family who not only needed light-globes, they needed food. So I popped around later with some groceries.

Afterwards, all I could think of was: "this is a big part of what it's all about". So there you are ladies and gentleman, the meat is on the street.

Below is a map of all of the lovely people who have gone onto my site in the last week(ish). So far my list of countries is quite impressive:

• Australia
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Germany (Rick I presume?)
• India
• Belarus

Probably the highlight of being able to see the source of the visitors to the site was when I saw that one of the UK visitors had come from Slough (which will only mean anything if you watch "The Office", and even then only if you watch the proper one )