Published May 24, 2008 by

Changes

I haven’t mentioned them previously due to either uncertainty or confidentiality but there have been some pretty significant changes going on.

In two weeks Geoff finishes up where he’s worked for the last three years for a new job – closer to what he originally wanted to do with IT. It’s been a slow and interesting haul working out what was happening and if he/we’d actually head down that route.

And last night Geoff and I let the youth kids know that we’d be finishing up at the end of this term. This too has been a long and interesting journey. Because to be utterly honest we don’t want to be finishing up.

I’m really not sure about the whole often held idea that God has a set plan laid out for our lives, but regardless I think this is what we need to be doing, and we’ve kind of been told. We have no idea what’s next. In some way it’s a part of establishing what it means to be a Christian and not to be a part of such an obvious ‘ministry’ (Gosh I’m starting to really hate that word). It’s a sucky thing to be leaving youth behind, it will be interesting to see what’s ahead, but for now, I’d rather be back hanging out with 14 year olds. What lies ahead for the youth at YVV is also in question, please be praying for that, there’s no smackingly clear direction or person.

Christianity Church Life Ministry

Christianity Church God plans youth

Published May 24, 2008 by

Read it before

Oh the profundity.

I have realised, or rather decided that sometimes I read too many theological books and not enough of the Bible. I think I do this a lot, not just in this particular. I get so wrapped up in the extremities that I kind of leave out the true guts.

Today I read some of Acts, Fetus and Agrippa and Paul and I could see it. I hope the reason I liked it so much wasn’t only because I hadn’t heard it in a long time.

With only a few exceptions I steer clear from reading books over if I can remember them. There is an element of the forgetting that allows some of the excitement to creep back in and enough for me to revel in the satisfaction of an ending. The same for movies.

Yes the Bible’s a reasonably big book, the copy of the Pijin Bible that I got to hold today is a really big book. There’s a lot in there.

That big lot of book gets beautifully shoved around and sliced down to Sunday-school edible bites and somehow the rest of it wanders off. Then there’s the bits I ignore and the same that are taken up gleefully by others as the one and only.

I think we treat the Bible as a bit of a pick and mix package. I used to (and sometimes still do) open at random to see what kind of answer/encouragement/ephiphany ensues. What crap.

I’d like to learn the Bible again as a story. It is one after all. Who the hell cheats and reads the middle of the novel without giving the honor of reading the rest.

I don’t think that we always need to start from Genesis and read through to Revelation, but it’s a sad old day when we steal our Psalm of choice and ignore the rest.

It feels like I’m a 14 year old learning this over again. Perhaps a random verse now and then is better than nothing but I’m really not so sure.

But then hey, I haven’t even really been doing the one verse thing, so who am I to talk. I love it, but it’s so terribly difficult.

Oh to blow all my spoon fed understanding out the window and to be able to think free from preconceptions. I am jealous of people who come from no church background and get to read the Bible with an open mind.

Books Christianity Life

Bible

Published May 22, 2008 by

Whelmed

I’ve been using up my blogging energy lately being overwhelmed with all the work I have to finish up before uni ends for the semester. I have one week left of classes and a folio week-extra time to finish things off. So I’m peddling my face (read bum) off trying to fill out my folios enough to get me through this lot classes. The direst of circumstances would see me failing packaging and having to do it again (that would be torture) but I think I’ll be okay. It’ll just be a jammed ugly few weeks

On a slightly *lighter note, post of the day to Naked Pastor for Flee to the Desert, because I thoroughly identify.

*as aptly pointed out this is not lighter, merely different

Church Life Post of the Day Uni

homework Post of the Day procrastination slacker too much Uni

Published May 20, 2008 by

I heart Home Barista

I don’t indulge all that often over lunches, but when the place smells kind, feels warm, offers a heated pumpkin, bococcini, pesto foccacia, along with a mean and attractive coffee, friendly efficient service and then tops it off with the Amelie soundtrack, you’ve got to be just a little bit in love.

Coffee Culture Music

Coffee indulgences lunch

Published May 18, 2008 by

Church our saviour

The busy front must recognise the homework, the housework, the social inevitables, the tedious hunt for a new couch. The heart must recognise the crappy situations going on in Burma and China. The fingers must recognise a lack of touch to keys a small apology and the brain is simply flying around like a ninny making sense of frustrations I should have in someway long gotten over and in others, adhere to for sanity, reality and sensibility’s sake

I met a girl on the train the other day, she was terribly intentional about starting up a conversation. It was soon established that she came from (and I wont name it) a rather large and what I’d describe as hypey church in the city. Hypey from experience. We kept talking. I turns out she works there etc. etc. Her conversation (Once she’d established I was a Christian) was loaded with Christianese and she presented the appearance of quite a settled, ‘Everything is great when you have Jesus’ life, except that it was more, ‘Everything is great when you have church’. It disturbed me

One of the reasons I’ve delayed writing this post is that I have a good old fat tendancy to be rather rude and harsh and I’m not very good at being tactful. Look I’m trying assume the best that she had a particular extroverted personality that simply expressed itself in that way. But it did progress some thoughts.

Then last night I had the chance to hear Erwin McManus speak at CityLife – a huge church (He was great btw). I struggle incredibly in going to large, very polished churches, something feels really out of whack. I’m not dissing CityLife here, they had some ripper decent theology in their songs. But big and flashy always brings the thought home.

Christianity wasn’t ever meant to be a show, and I understand that it gels with some, perhaps even fits a particular culture but to me it presents a face that feels really fraudulent and it actually scares the pants off me.

Living authentically is difficult. Talking about Jesus is difficult. I wish for my life if anything, to be brutally honest.

What happens when that doesn’t happen in our communities? When they themselves become our world. Our work, our friendships, our lives.

I know that God will probably drag me nicely across the floor in terms of being far less judgmental when it comes to alternate expressions, and I know I have much to learn from the courage and the enthusiasm of others but it’s rather complicated at the moment, because the walls fly up and render me pretty well incapable of even participating when dumped in any situation of the like. I have a terribly jaded, critical beast in me that hates what I see (badly) and hurts for the people I know who have been repelled from this institution we call church.

I want for my life to be tied to His and not simply to a beurocracy, an idea or a specific community. So much good can easily go wrong. We do need community, but it cannot become God.

Christianity Church General On The Train

Church