Category: <span>Christianity</span>

Published March 30, 2008 by

No rules

Writing a post now is some kind of evil-forced reflection on the past week.

I have been up at Soul Survivor for it’s entirety, bar the last afternoon/evening and one night session hiatus for a 21st. This is the third year in a row – I think. It could be the fourth. It’s always interesting seeing what goes on. God generally uses it as a grand old chance to mess wildly with my head. Last year’s highlight was found in leaving a ‘main session’ going off on a walk and having God speak pretty clearly to me after catching my attention with possibly the most mind blowing moon ever (the same one that frequents your night sky actually). Nothing so gobsmackingly obvious and beautiful naturalistically this year.

Here’s the bare honest truth. I love Soul Survivor for the chance to step out of my ‘daily patterns’, I love the people, I love watching my youth kids pray for eachother, rally around others (and they around them). I love watching people change and grow. But I pretty much spend the whole time, every time frustrated in trying to work out what the hell is going on. Not so much in a bad way – it’s hard to explain. I guess I have this enormous dissatisfaction at the moment with the type of stock standard basic life that I live and although I know, I know there is stuff I do that is good and hey stuff that even is a bit on about bringing about God’s kingdom – I struggle to see it. And even when I do, I don’t think that I’m quite on the right track.

My (kinda) friend Steve Said ran some seminars about the Kingdom of God and if you ever get the chance to hear him do. I’m sure he’d be happy to assist busting some misconceptions. I’ve heard him before, but I needed to hear it again. The VERY short version:

The kingdom of God and following Jesus is not about what you eat – it’s not about prescribed rules at all.

“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,” – Romans 14:17

And before you approach that directly, go and blow the brains out of your standard understanding of righteousness, justice, peace and joy. Erm… take some time and learn Greek and have conversations with lots of wise people or shortcut by going and buying the recordings off the seminars.

Prescribed rules are easier but I don’t think they’re what I want.

(and that my friends is why I’m going to add this stupid little mid-post footnote – calling you my friends – and saying that I think you’re a tool if you think you can go to church on Sunday, lead a “moral” little life, don’t swear and think that you’re following Jesus. Harsh? Hey well I need to hear some of it too and I really wanted to use a different word than tool btw… but I figure I’d better keep this vaguely respectable.)

The other thing I was reminded about was the word Vocare (oh yes, remember that thing I started and pulled out of due to wedding insanity?)

Vocare (latin) basically is on about vocation – where your deepest passion meets a great need in the world. I’d really like to be living my vocation, vocare.

If someone could tell me what my deepest passion is, I’d be greatly obliged.

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kingdom of God Romans is a good book Soul Survivor Steven Said

Published March 24, 2008 by

Rewind the week

be_kind_rewind_post.jpgAfter an exceptionally busy weekend and a crashed blog server, it’s time for another tedious fill-in.

I managed to catch Michel Gondry’s new film Be Kind Rewind I confess I was disappointed in that it lacked such strangeness as the other two. I did enjoy the side comment about Citizen Kane’s weird time sequence and the mention that ‘that’s been done before’. I also enjoyed the fact that when walking out of the cinema, two old ladies were carrying a portable DVD player. Oh the irony! Despite all, it’s a fun and clever movie, I just didn’t like it quite so much as the Science of Sleep – which blew me away. Be Kind is almost too Jack Black.

Easter consisted of a ‘stations’ art/music installation at my church. We were a little rushed through but I really appreciate the launch into acknowledging and using the ‘other’ type talent around the place that is effective for the means and communal minded. It did make for good contemplation. I only wish I had longer. My little sister had two pieces in the exhibition and apparently someone has offered to buy them… I’ve been at her to sell her artwork, so perhaps now she’ll pay attention.

And yesterday was Anne’s (Geoff’s mum) birthday, so we went around there and typically ate too much roast dinner, saw the Grandparents and played Settlers, Blokus etc.

It’s been a tough year to stop enough to remember Jesus over this period. I think I need to do something about that.

In other news, Soul Survivor is coming up this week, and I really, really need to apply for a passport for June’s endeavor of returning to my childhood.

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Art Be Kind Rewind Birthday Easter Jesus

Published March 14, 2008 by

How to have a great conversation

artofconversationdetail02.jpgListening to Sinead O’Connor makes you feel all open, or something.

It’s a crackling 40 degrees outside. I’m upstairs in the ‘spare room’ surrounded by perpetual mess. The controller battery is too flat to display the actual temperature, but I think that the air con is on judging by the apparent coolness.

On Saturday we are running a mini-camp for our youth group kids. I doing a talk thing on ‘Hearing From God’. It’ll be interesting, because I don’t always do too well at it. I sort of rely on God to dump stuff in front of my face, like the other day when I opened my Bible for the first time in ages and got pretty much the verse/s I needed to hear. I’m sure God knows I like my irony, but I doubt that it should come hand in hand with laziness.

So maybe I’ll just write about the art of conversation in my empty Word Document, up in my room, by myself and see what comes of it. Or perhaps I should invite God along.

image from here 

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hearing from God youth talk

Published March 7, 2008 by

The cool and the creeps

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Christians Humor Jesus

Published March 2, 2008 by

Church outside

cleanupToday a percentage of our church participated in Clean Up Australia Day.

It was interesting, because last night I confessed to Geoff that I really didn’t want to be a part of it and then went on to try and justify that I thought it wasn’t a good idea and ‘how was it really helping the community’/’we could do other things better with this time’. He heard me out – knows me far too well, and told me I was wrong. Then about ten minutes later I worked out that it was really only just about me not wanting to do it and felt guilty so I told him and he let me know he knew that’s what I was all along and rightfully laughed about it. As it was, I did feel bad about not wanting to do it, but I still didn’t want to take part – is there really much point forcing yourself to want to when you simply don’t?

Anyway as it turned out, church today (which was just music and communion before the cleanup during normal sermon time) felt very flat and fake.

And here it is. I enjoyed myself cleaning up. The sun was beautiful, the people were fun and talking and interacting with people they didn’t know so well and doing something. And really it felt a whole lot more like how church should be.

I do like it when God sticks it to me.

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Church clean up Australia Day doing church living church people