B-List here I come!

well not content with sitting at the bottom of the blogpile i have now started my quest to become a B-List blogger... Why you ask.... well i dunno why not!

The first part of my plan for blog domination is that i am "Feature Pastor" at Ra'ah (thanks for the link love Wayne)

So look out Tall Skinny Kiwi and Jesus Creed here comes notyetfinished!

Ok i am sooo deluded .....

music to change the world by

i have read through both of Mike Frost's books (The shaping of things to come and Exiles) and love a lot of what he has had to say... one point of contention has always been about his views on music, especially against those "Jesus is my boyfriend" type songs....

now i am not keen on songs with bad theology, nor am i keen on over sentimental songs (i am thinking back to one more for Jesus.... if you have done 40days of purpose then you know what i mean...)

but i do like songs of tender devotion, songs that do draw us to the intimate nature of God...

but i have been uncomfortable with some of the themes absent from Church songs today.... I first sung "God of Justice" at a Soul Survivor conference a few years back and i thought to myself "here is something missing... songs about social justice! Songs about Mission!"

After that a few more songs popped into the scene like "Missions Flame" by Matt Redman... but nothing prepared me for the song i heard while browsing over at Mars Hill Bible Church...

Bridges are more beautiful than bombs are
Bridges are more beautiful than bombs
Listening is louder than a lecture
Listening is louder than a shout

But love
Love can change the world
Oh do we still believe that
Love
Love can change the world
Oh do we still believe in
Love love
God is love our God is love and
Love can change the world


An open hand is stronger than a fist is
An open hand is stronger than a fist
Wonder is more valuable than Wall Street
Wonder is more valuable than gold

2005 AARONieq Music (Admin. by Mars Hill Bible Church)

I think this is the sort of song that Frosty has been talking about.... that song that wakes us up to mission, that song that wakes us up to social injustice, that song that is critiquing our host empire, that song that recaptures the fact that God is LOVE not "we fall in love with God"

I like it and will keep it in our setlist for a while.... oh did i mention it is hooky as heck as well... you cant get this song out of ya head!! oh yeh... it also rocks!!

teens have changed the world

i have been following a really good series of posts over at Out of Ur blog, about how teenagers and "Youth Ministry" have changed the face of the church as we know it.

one of the big elements i see within these articals is that youth ministry has been allowed to innovate, to focus on relationships and is good at getting peoples attention.

as an example of how i have seen this at play in my own life... at one of my previous churches we used to run a youth program before our evening church... it was not to dissimilar to church but we innovated our buts off... we had license to sing different songs, have interactive discussion, do all sorts of cool stuff and we ended every gathering with a shared meal....

there were some of us leaders started to say things after this program like "Ok we have had church now lets goto the after party" (meaning the evening service.... )

now we said this in jest but i truly believed that our pre-church group was being more "church" than the evening service....

now unfortunately due to a number of reasons this didn't end up changing the church completely.... but it did change me... i truly hope that those lessons learned with a bunch of rough teens will shape how i am able to "do" church.... but i hope i will also be able to change and adapt as the next generation is ready to change!

Below are the links to the 3 part artical

How Teenagers changed the church Pt1
How Teenagers changed the church Pt2
How Teenagers changed the church Pt3

love of ear bleeding guitars

After much procrastination i finally got out to see a good ol indie gig in sydney with Mike and new sydney convert dave. The spectrum on oxford st was the venue and Love of Diagrams the act.

Firstly the venue, this was all class! sticky floors, weird eclectic decor and bathrooms that surely had seen more coke than a vending machine on central station. The PA was loud.... DID I MENTION IT WAS LOUD... yeh i still have ringing ears! the next time i goto this place its ear plugs compulsory!

Support was pretty crazy, a real melbourne love in, a chick called pikelet, who was like a cross between Joanna Newsom and a 1st year arts student, she was using a loop pedel to create weird live loop soundscapes... very cool, very cute... Following her was a band whos name escapes me... a twee bunch of teens that looked like they were straight out of Neapolitan Dynamite! The guy on keyboards looked like a grown version of the asian keyboard kid from School of Rock!

Anyway after that fun Love of Diagrams hit the stage with a blistering ear splitting set, quite dancable and even a bit poppy in places... they defiantly know how to make sound! I think i will check out there tunes in a few days... once the ireperetable sound damage has evened out....

whats that ringing i hear??

digital care

the last few months we have been doing a weekly roll for church and have worked out this is a great way to know who is with us and who needs follow up and all the "pastoral" stuff. I can totally see the benefit of this but i must admit it feels a little "clinical" a little systematic... all those things that i perhaps am not.

So why is it today i am reviewing and downloading church CRM software?? to track manage family data, attendance etc....

Now it does seem clinical and "mega-church" like.... but i dunno i reckon it might actually be good... i mean why not use the advantages of technology to better care and connect people in church...

just a thought

new podcast

I have given up on switchpod and moved things for my podcast over to the wonderful sermon cloud. It is now a weekly podcast from the evening church that i am looking after so there will be sermons in the feed from other members of our community, as well as guests.

The podcast will also feture over at the new Maroubra Baptist website.

So click away and subscribe to the new feed.

its raining PM's

This week the PM "little Johnny" Urged Australians to pray for rain... An interesting artical dropped in my inbox about this from the Centre for Christian Ethics It raised some interesting concerns on what it means for our Government to be calling for drought breaking rain... how does this effect our mission in the world...

I have also been quite concerned at the very "Old Testament" view of a lot of Christians that this drought is somehow a result of "National Sin" im not sure that this is how we should view it...

anyway have a read of this artical (warning long quote)

Prayer for rain and the Prime Minister
by Kristine Morrison

On 20 April The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported the Australian Prime Minister’s call to pray for rain in response to the dire state of the Murray-Darling Basin. This call was endorsed in a media release by Rev Dr Ross Clifford, President of the Baptist Union of Australia. Among other things, Dr Clifford encouraged church leaders around Australia to ensure that time was set aside for prayer each Sunday until the drought was broken, and asked the churches to pray for families severely affected by the drought.

The Herald’s Letters to the Editor section of the 23 April devoted significant space to responses to the Prime Minister’s call to prayer. In contrast to Dr Clifford, respondents were unenthusiastic, derisive and scathing.

Does this diversity of opinions represent a simple divide between secular people, who do not believe that there is a place for prayer in everyday life, and people of faith? Or are there genuine problems with a broadly stated call to prayer from a political leader in a liberal democracy such as Australia?

It is difficult for Christians to voice reservations about a public call to prayer for drought-breaking rain. However, there are some aspects of this call to payer that will trouble praying believers.

Christians are wary of having their prayer life co-opted for the advancement of a particular political agenda. Whilst they may pray and indeed be happy to pray for rain, they may not wish to have their prayer life conscripted for the furtherance of the Prime Minister’s ambition. There are also conditions of prayer and limits to the kinds of things that may be requested in prayer that need to be considered when approaching the Almighty.

Even though Dr Clifford’s statement appears to support the Prime Minister’s call, there are elements in his statement that qualify the endorsement. Dr Clifford reminds us that Christians, particularly those in rural areas, have been praying for rain for many months if not years. Rural communities appreciate – far more acutely than city dwellers – our intimate dependence on the cycles of nature. There is an implicit, if gentle, rebuke for our Prime Minister in the words of our President that is worth noting.

Dr Clifford also suggests that we need to pray for wisdom in the management and restoration of our water resources. It is perhaps this apparent lack of wisdom, revealed by our Prime Minister, that so infuriated the writers to the Herald’s letters page.

They point out that in the past decade of prosperity the government has not seriously addressed water management issues. John Howard is accused of failing to listen to scientific advice about water management and being without an alternative water management plan. His plea for prayer is reckoned by one correspondent to be reasonable only in comparison to being asked to slaughter a chicken.

Though secularists, these writers have proved alert to some of the dilemmas facing those who pray. Is it reasonable to pray to avoid the consequences of something that those who pray may have contributed to? Our squandering of water and our failure to be active in prompting our government to take water management practices seriously does compromise our approach to God.

One writer to the Herald, clearly not a secularist, made a compelling link between the need for repentance and effective prayer. He advocated a day of repentance where the nation could acknowledge both God as the giver of rain and our dependence on the generosity of God to provide for all our needs to accompany our requests for rain. Many of us have prayed to escape the consequences of our actions. However, we can only do this when we express contrition and repentance for such actions. This important and significant aspect of prayer was omitted in our Prime Minister’s call to prayer.

The knowledge of the cyclic nature of rain patterns presents another difficulty for those who pray for rain. We know that higher rainfall in one part of Australia (or the world) usually means less rain in some other part of the continent (or the world). Is it right for us to pray for more natural abundance in our part of the world when other places, already suffering resource depletion, may receive less rain as a result?

Writers to the Herald were also annoyed by our Prime Minister’s apparent lack of cultural sensitivity. Which God was he suggesting that we pray to? Yahweh? The Christian God? Allah? Christians may assume that Mr Howard was referring to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but that may not be clear to all members of our community.

If Mr Howard was only calling Christians to prayer, he was ignoring the religious convictions of many in our community. But if he was making a universalist call to prayer, he ran the risk of insulting Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims alike by flattening the diverse meanings of prayer to a one-note refrain. As a missionary people, aware of cultural sensitivities and the challenges of religious pluralism, Australian Baptists might have hoped that our national leader could provide spiritual direction without alienating significant sections of our community.

Public prayer is not a concept that can be conscripted for political gain. Nor, as Mr Howard has perhaps discovered, is it a motherhood issue that will unite everyone in a surge of good feeling. As Florence Allshorn observed, “the primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our needs should come second.”

It is too much to expect our political leaders to encapsulate such a profound appreciation of prayer in public statements, but we can wish that they might avoid reducing public calls to prayer to a glib sound bite.

Kristine Morrison is a midwife at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and a member of the Social Issues Committee of the Baptist Churches of NSW and ACT.