Well, I’ve been reading more blogs recently – and in particular blogs to do with Emerging Church stuff (although if you start reading christian blogs it seems you’ll end up there anyway) and saw this post which demonstrates everything that scares me about the term post-modern at “Established and Emerging“. Food for thought.

Well I’ve not delved much into my sporting passions so far in this blog, but today’s news that Brad Hodge has been dumped from the Australian Test side is bordering on insanity. The man has averaged over 50 in his 5 test matches so far and has not put a foot wrong. He is being replaced by Damien Martyn who is bordering on being the most out-of form cricketer in all Australia, and Michael Clarke who hasn’t done anything since being dropped from the Test side for poor form. The selectors now have a tour party who is effectively the same team as we took to England, which was such a raging success.

I’m willing to put my (insignificant) credibility on the line and say that with the side the selectors have opted for, Australia will not be able to win this series. It is a sad day for cricketing administration in this country.

Had my regular sunday morning chat with the youth this morning and was talking about baptism, and we got some! It’s certainly in moments like these that I am really forced to be deliberate about (figuratively) slapping myself around when I hear myself taking credit for stuff like this. Usually it’s just in my head, but it’s hard to focus on the amazing work that God’s doing without trying to make yourself big. But God’s certainly helping me out, my talk this morning was pretty jumbled, and didn’t really feel like it had a lot of flow to it – which is probably why God used it.

Can’t wait til the baptisms actually happen – we’ve got 5 lined up for it, and it’s gunna be great! One girl in particular, who is just an absolute fortress in a family of non-christians, almost made me cry when I saw that she was up for being baptised. As much as it means for people who are in christian homes and have done the whole church thing, it’s gotta mean so much more for someone like this girl, who will get her mum and dad along to see something that is so foreign to them. She’s an inspiration to me.

Had a great afternoon with our senior youth kids. Were going to go to the beach but the commitment of going away for the whole day was a bit much and we only had 3 coming – so we hooked up to go tenpin bowling with a group of about 8 and had a wonderful time. And despite my natural instincts, I was being considerably less competitive than normal, and bowled 151! Couldn’t believe it. I know deep down that I should be learning from the obvious lesson there – but there’s little chance that I will.

I’ve been reading the biography of the woman who started up “God’s Golden Acre”, throughout this week while I was doing training at Oracle, and all that. For those who don’t know about it, God’s Golden Acre is an AIDS orphanage in South Africa, which originally started to house orphans from the civil war and then has since been a refuge from the AIDS epidemic.

It’s not possible to read those sort of stories without having an emotional reaction on some level at least, and this hit me pretty hard – and given that we’ve already established that I’m a cryer, I spent a couple of lunchtimes last week wiping moisture from my cheeks. And something deep within me want to do something. I don’t know what. What skills could an IT worker from Melbourne have to offer to help children who have lost parents to AIDS. Is just sending money enough?

So I’m walking to my train, in at Flinders Street (Melbourne’s central station for the uninitiated) and had someone from “Save The Children” approach me – as you often do in that area. But for some reason I stopped and it didn’t take long for my softened heart to give out my credit card and before you know it I’m signed up to give away 39 bucks a month. Which given that I just recently got a payrise for significantly more than that, won’t actually mean that I notice.

And I guess that’s my point. As far as I can see, considering that I’m ultimately doing fairly well financially, giving a small bit of money doesn’t seem to really be doing anything about it. It’s just enough to dissuade my western guilt, and leaves me feeling like there must be more to this. And there are tonnes of causes that all make me feel like I need to do something, including the teenagers in our community, which I actually am doing something about. So how do you pick your battles. And am I putting the ministry towards teenagers, which is ultimately something that takes a bit of effort but doesn’t really cost me my lifestyle in front of working for AIDS orphans (or something similar) just because it’s easier.
I know that these are questions that aren’t ever going to be answered by my own head – and that it really depends on having some confidence that God has called me to be in the ministry I am in (which I do feel quite strongly) and trusting that he’ll let me know when that needs to change. But the feeling is that sometimes I’m not really that interested in going out of my way to do God’s stuff.

I’ve been on training all this week (I’m working towards the lofty goal of being an “Oracle Certified Professional” database administrator. Nerdy nerd nerd), and as a result been afforded long lunch breaks, which has been a great chance to do some reading. So I’ve been getting stuck into a book that I’ve been meaning to read for ages, and recently got my hands on – “The Quest For The Radical Middle” by Bill Jackson.

The Quest For The Radical Middle (TQFTRM) is essentially a history of the Vineyard movement. As someone who has been a part of a vineyard for the last 8 years, and had an affinity for Wimber and the Vineyard ideas for longer than that, it’s been great to read a documented history of exactly what happened in Vineyard as it went through its early stages. And Bill Jackson doesn’t shy away from the mistakes and hurty bits in the formation of the movement. I don’t think that I’ve read a more honest and open look at John Wimber’s influence in the Vineyard, and it’s that honesty and realistic self analysis that encourages me about the Vineyard’s ability to continue to grow and move in what God is doing.

TQFTRM was such a fun read too. As I was reading through the history of Vineyard, I’d recognise little bits of the story – you’d have heard John Wimber say that on a video, or in the case of stuff like the Toronto Blessing I can vividly remember being a part of a good traditional Anglican Church in the UK that really embraced what God was doing as an overflow from that place.

I think TQFTRM is a wonderful read for anyone who is in a Vineyard Church and wants to understand some of the background of the place, and especially anyone who is looking to plant a Vineyard – I think that this would have to be on the Required Reading list. I loved it.

Have had an interesting chain of thoughts running through my brain over the last week or so. Met up with a few old school friends last Saturday for a BBQ, and one of the friends who was there was someone who up until about a year ago would have been someone I’d have asked for advice on spiritual matters and the like.

Disturbingly, in the past year this friend has joined what ultimately is a cult in Sydney, albeit one that doesn’t seem to be completely dangerous. but certainly not at all good. And in chatting with her about what had changed about her, and why is living in this community, one thing stood out to me. Above anything, she said that their community was all about forsaking everything to follow Christ. And to be brutally honest, some of the model that this group uses could be a lot closer to the way we should be living than it is in my life at the moment.

They live with about 25 people sharing four houses. And in everything they do, they live simply, opting to forsake the trappings of modern living like computers, or even telephones, and while some of them work part-time, all their money is shared, and no-one’s needs are put above anyone elses. When they are not working, they spend their time witnessing to people (and I’m sure there’s some weird stuff in there, my friend was pretty sketchy on the details), and ministering to the poor.

And while I’m not for a moment saying that I’m about to uproot and join this cult (there’s some very, very dodgy theology and ideas floating around, that are not OK at all) it seems to me that if we were to genuinely attack this God thing with ABSOLUTELY no pre-concieved ideas, this could quite possibly be a lot closer to the model we’d start with than even anything as radical as the emerging church forge type model. But ofcourse I’ll still be doing church on Sunday as usual, it’s pretty hard to make a change anywhere other than your head.

This Friday will be a little bit of a landmark day for me. For the first time in over 4 years, Friday Night Youth Group will run and I won’t be a part of leading it. I’ve been involved in working with the Year 7 – 9 group since I finished school, and this year I won’t be involved in running the friday night program. After 4 years, I’ve graduated to working with the senior group.

For the last while my focus has been on running our Sunday morning program, which is where I’ve taken out our youth every second week from the main service, and we do a talk/discussion/discipleship type deal. And I’ve been just another helping hand on Fridays. But over summer (which if you’re a northern hemisphere person is your winter) I’ve been really challenged about where God is calling me to be at the moment, and have felt fairly gradually that it’s time I worked more with the senior guys, which really is much more where my “bent” is.

And there’s been a bit of a hole in our ministry to the senior high schoolers in the area of doing something social. They have a bible study that’s powering on and really meeting lots of the kids where there at, but there’s still definitely a significant group who aren’t really connecting at that level, and who really need to be feeling a part of the wider group. So that’s what I’ll be attacking. I’m really quite excited by the prospect, and the details have all happened in a hurry.

Basically, every 1st, 3rd and 5th Sunday of each month, we’ll be doing a social thing after the sunday morning service. The plan is to have the whole program run on a three week rotation, although we will obviously have to reassess after a few goes. But the idea is to have the first time with us going somewhere. Whether that be something low-key like a trip to the movies, or tenpin bowling, or something a bit bigger like a footy trip or a trip to the beach, etc. The second time we’ll have something low-key: order in pizza or grab some fish and chips and probably just hang around, catch a DVD, play cricket, whatever takes our fancy.

But the really exciting prospect is that on the third sunday we do something practical. I’ve been really inspired to get our teenagers out there doing something for someone who is not themself. So sometimes that’ll be just doing something at the church, and other times we’ll do servant evangelism type stuff, other times just do something to help out people with needs in the community (church and wider). It’s a really exciting prospect and if we can see these guys take a hold of the vision I can really see their attitudes and lives being changed.

It’s such an exciting time, and I’m sure that this entry is mostly self-serving, it’s mostly just getting the ideas really clear in my head, and getting some sense out of my enthusiasm. But in the off chance that someone reading this has ideas or war stories that might be helpful, I’d be thrilled to get any comments.