I could put 'I love you' up on PhillipJensen.com. But what would that mean? Only that I know how to spell. When you have pastors saying 'I love you' to 10 000 people, that is phoney. This is where Australian cynicism is right. [loose quote]
My latest for Geneva's website.
I'm a big believer in the Values Statement. Have you used one before?
Phillip Jensen preaching in the US:
By using the wrong words, we laid open for another generation to come and pervert the gospel.. That is why I freak out when I hear Baptists in your country talk about their 'sanctuaries'. And what about 'Pastor Jones' and 'Pastor Smith'? What's wrong with Bill Jones and Fred Smith? They're good old fashioned names. If that's your name, use your name. Don't let people put you into a special category of human beings - men, women and clergy. You're a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ. That's what you are. And the quality of your teaching is the way by which you lead people, not by your status as the teacher. [quoted loosely]
All these should take the titles and names only (lest they be exalted and puffed up in themselves) which the scriptures give unto them, as those which import labour, travail, and work; and are names of offices and service, and not of idleness, dignity, worldly honour or preeminence, which by Christ our Master is expressly reproved and forbidden.If only the Presbyterian Church had paid attention!
Justin Taylor links to this article.
It's an interesting read. A few things rung true:
Including Don Carson and Phillip Jensen. Here.
Just listening to PDJ's Biblical Theology of Ministry 2. It's classic Phillip rambling: he talks about the entire Matthias Media back catalogue and the history of Anglicanism in Australia and test cricket for about twenty minutes before he gets to the point. Hysterically funny and totally awesome.
P. S. Well done Matthias Media for making these available for free. The shape of things to come?
Including some sharp reflections on church-based study and the importance of in-church training and apprenticeships.
A few funny Carson moments:
I'm not a super details person. I'm not good at craft or interior design. I know enough about graphic design to ask other people to do it for me. I don't like errands.
So I feel a bit uneasy about events. There are so many fiddly things. And so many aesthetic, deatils, so many things that once people arrive a certain type of person tells you all the things you 'could have' done.
It struck me the other day that I need a checklist. That will help me feel better prepared when working up an event, that I have covered all the bases.
Please help me out by adding suggestions of your own.
General checklist
I don't do many Christian updates on Facebook. And I don't use my profile updates to advertise stuff at church every week. And I don't import my Christian Refelections blog into by profile. Because I have stacks of non-Christian friends/family/acquaintances with whom I have stacks of light-touch interaction on Facebook.
We 'like' each others' updates and sometimes say 'Oh you like that movie do you - so do I!'. This would all be lost if I totally "Christianised" my Facebook usage.
I started a second blog about a year ago - Boxed Sets - because I don't like blending Christian and random everyday stuff on blogs for some reason. But I figured I had plenty of random stuff to say. And gradually, slowly but surely the readership of Boxed Set has increased. Espcially on Facebook.
It's this sucker that I import into my profile. And it has a way way higher readership and comment interaction as a Facebook Note than it does as a blog.
And so now I'm thinking of ways to share, gentle, reflective, occasional, relevant Christian content into Boxed Sets.
Fun, huh?
We have a huge backlog of stuff, from Pete Woodcock, Graeme Goldsworthy, Michael Jensen, myself and over 150 from Sam Green. Enjoy.
A thread of discussion resulting from this post.
For jml, the vast majority of his actions are at the computer. And most of the time he has access to the internet and phone.
The contexts @Errands, @Phone, @ Home really cover the fringe cases, rather than most of his actions.
What are contexts? Really they are 'things required to do an action'. Maybe different contexts are needed:
Yes or no?
Makes me feel a little unclean, when it comes from people and especially when it comes from organisations. What do you think?
Farewell to that dark, small font website and say hello to this precious thing.
Congrats guys.
We decided that projects need not be broken down into actions that go onto separate action lists. Sometimes the Projects List itself is enough of a trigger.
And rarely do we work through distinct items from distinct projects one after the other. For many projects it pays off to devote a significant chunk to several actions related to that one project.
After all you have to adjust your mind to get it into thinking about that Project and how this one action relates to the whole.
I am a huge fan of the Getting Things Done organisational system.
But like any system it needs its tweaks.
Weekly Review
For example, jml and I were talking about how gruelling and exhausting a full weekly review is.
I don't enjoy it. Something must be wrong. I dread it.
Someone emailed me personally and thanked me for blogging. That was very human, kind and thoughtful I thought.
Thanks to all you other bloggers for taking the time and risking to share your thoughts with the world.
And thanks to readers and especially commenters for helping make Christian Reflections what it is.
With love.
It's here.
Brian is the senior pastor of probably one of the largest churches in Tasmania. And probably one of the largest Christian Reformed Churches in Australia. Over the last ten years Kingston Christian Reformed Church has planted four sattelite churches.
He's also the chairman of Vision 100, the Tasmanian church planting network.
Brian kind of likes staying under the radar. He is also possibly a cyborg, at least given the enormous capacity he has for hard work.
And he has a blog.
About Pentecostalism called Quest for Power.
Joe has been giving permission to publish it serially on his blog, Talking Pentecostalism.
Here's the section on healing.
Hmm. Not sure how they'll go, but Mark Haddly reckons they'll work. Mark will post new topics for discussion and then close them down once they get stale.
The first forum is inviting suggestions about what kind of online resources you would like.
The Geneva forums are accessible only once you log in to the website.
To the three people Dave McDonald and I interviewed at In the Chute.
It's a great process and something that I wish I'd been able to benefit from. It stops people from doing dumb things that they shouldn't do and helps people do things they should do in the best possible way (I hope).
I love idea of providing church planters with ongoing coaching. For years, MTS has provided coaching for ministry apprentices before they go to Bible College. But after Bible College it's a lot more patchy whether or not people have a mentor. They have to take the initiatiave to seek one out.
How awesome for new churches and church planters to have an organisation providing committed coaches to encourage, inspire, challenge and provide accountability.
Very fun read. Definitely will return to it in the future and use it in uni evangelism.
Now onto Warranted Christian Belief by big Al Plantinga.
A belief that built upon Jewish belief, but mutated it in unique ways? A single person resurrected in history, a physical but transformed body, a division between the resurrection of the messiah and then the final resurrection etc?
The empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus are obviously a good explanation.
Any other explanation - dreams, visions, religious hysteria, cultish deceit - must still account for the emergence of the unique Christian beliefs themselves. Often sceptical accounts of the rise of Christianity don't reckon enough with how remarkable and unique the Christian belief system is:
The real problem is something that any first-century historian should recognize: that whatever it was that the early Christians were expecting, wanting, hoping, and praying for, this was not what they said, after Easter, had happened. (p. 699)
I've linked to Steve Addison's blog posts from the Uni Fellowship of Christians newsfeed.
"Murray reviews some of the failures of the fashion for church planting in the 1990s. He remains convinced that church planting offers 'fresh ways to incarnate the gospel in a changing context' (5). But it needs to be:
Churches, says Murray, are normally planted too quickly rather than too slowly. People rush ahead without adequate consultation and preparation. The planting church needs to be prepared. 'There are three priorities: preparing the church to become a planting church, clarifying expectations, and selecting and equipping the planting team.' (111)"
From Tim Chester's review of an interesting new book on church planting: Stuart Murray, Planting Churches: A Framework for Practitioners
Have you seen these things not being done in church plants? I know that I have.
Christian Reflections: Do you listen to any sermon podcasts? If so, who are you listening to at the moment?
Guy Mason: Yeh – lets just say I have worn through three pairs of headphones for my iphone in the last 12 months! My wife and I also take time together to watch messages online – we often pause throughout to discuss key points. I find that really helpful.
I listen to a quite a range – I love hearing how different people approach the bible, culture and communication. In the last week I've listened to a conference series by John Piper called 'God is the Gospel,' and a lecture by Tim Keller for Google 'The Reason for God.'
CR: Does Docklands have plans for planting a daughter church? When and how might that happen?
GM: When we planted City on a Hill (known then as Docklands Church) we made a commitment to not just plant a church but to plant a church planting church.
We were encouraged to see growth in our first year, so much so that we were able to plant a second service, which is also growing strong and bearing fruit.
We are now praying and preparing for our next step. There are many options to consider (e.g, more services, new site, multi-site, etc). All these options have varying pros/cons and depend largely on venue options (not easy in Docklands), funding, leadership and volunteer capacity. That aside, it seems likely there will be some new and exciting steps made early 2010! More info to come
CR: Did you have actually a falling out with Al Stewart and Andrew Heard? Why are you going separate ways?
GM: Absolutely. We had a WWF style punch on in Steve Chong's carpark! It was awesome. Andrew landed some great body slams, and Al gave some brutal head butts. In the end Naomi (Steve's wife) knocked everyone out with one killer close line.
Jokes aside – I respect Al and Andrew immensely and believe they are great men of faith. In fact, Al Stewart is coming down to Melbourne to preach at City on a Hill (January 17) at both our services. I also believe 'Geneva' is a great initiative that will be an important plank in God's work in Australia.
I think Al summed it up well went he said on this site, 'We just found that in hammering out the details... we had different philosophies of ministry about how we'd go about things: not different theology, but different ways of building a network.'
CR: What are some of the unique challenges and benefits of ministry in Melbourne?
GM: Melbourne is an amazing city. It is the fastest growing and expected to be the biggest by 2050. It is also a diverse city made up of people from all around the globe, making it a dynamic and exciting place to live.
I think this is both a strength and challenge in ministry. City on a Hill reaches a range of people who come from different cultures and hold a plethora of views and opinions about Jesus and the church. As such being 'all things to all people' is complex. We work hard to engage our culture, pray earnestly and proclaim the Scriptures faithfully.
Melbourne is also largely secular. I wont bore you with the statistics, but lets just say its not good. This does however present great opportunity for mission and church planting. We continually remind ourselves that Melbourne is our mission field and are called to be a 'city on a hill' in our workplace, university, home, etc. Personally, I love that kind of challenge and pray God would convert, build up and send many more to this great city.
CR: What are three ministries or church plants in Australia that you think are worth watching?
GM: Well – I'd love you to be watching and more importantly praying for City on a Hill. We are two years in and God has done great things – and we are excited about the future. We have lots to learn and would value all the help and support we can get. Recently, we have also launched a ministry for homeless (Many Rooms) and are about to kick off an internship program for emerging leaders (Engage).
Kirkplace – Steve Chong is great friend who planted Kirkplace around the same time as me. He loves Jesus and is passionate about the kingdom.
Engage – I met Will Henderson in Seattle and was encouraged to hear he was coming back down under to start a church in Brisbane. From what I can gather he is still in the core group building stage.
Tribe – Dave Hughes is heading this up. He is in the preparation stage and is reaching people in Narre Warren, Victoria.
CR: What plans do you have for building a church-planting network in Melbourne?
In 2010, I will be launching a church-planting program called 'Advance.' Advance will give young blokes who are passionate about Jesus and mission the opportunity to:
- Connect with other emerging church planters/leaders
- Receive coaching from local, national and international church planters/leaders
- Pray for Melbourne and the work of mission in our city
- Explore God's calling into leadership and church planting
Applications open soon. For more info email guymason@cityonahill.com.au
Surely there are many occasions when you need to transport a bunch of manila folders? Is the briefcase the only solution?
I'm renowned for being mega oragnised and mega scrappy. The nice way of putting it, is I'm 'hard on things' (as Jolly said the other day). This means I treat things badly. There's always a coffee ring or a crack or a dogear within a day or two with me.
So I finally got round to trying to find a way of protecting my manila folders when I trasported them in my backpack or satchel (old school, punkrcok canvas bag, thank you very much, not some nasty Krumpler man bag).
It was amazingly hard to find hard, protective manila-folder sized folders. I found one. It's now cracking (I'm hard on things you see). So I need another. It's gonna be a hunt again.
Do I need to buy a special briefcase backpack? Is that what normal people who transport manila folders and ride bikes do? Does anyone know the answer to this?
How do grownups do this?
A practical article from big Al.
Highlights:
They can be very prone to bitterness because the husband dumps the problems of conflict when he comes home. He later works through the resolution process, but doesn't necessarily include her in that process.
The only churches that grow today are those that do not, in fact, understand the issues, and can therefore traffic in certainty. They represent both the fundamentalistic Protestant groups and the rigidly controlled conservative Catholic traditions. The churches that do attempt to interact with the emerging world are for the most part the liberal Protestant mainline churches that shrink every day in membership and the silent liberal Catholic minority that attracts very few adherents. Both are, almost by definition, fuzzy, imprecise and relatively unappealing. They might claim to be honest, but for the most part they have no real message. They tinker with words, redefine concepts, and retreat slowly behind the rear guard protection of a few pseudo-radical thinkers. No one seems yet ready to invest the energy necessary to the task of reformulating the Christian story.
- quote by Al Stewart
If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.
Wherever the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that one point.
Andrew and Cathy Heard:
We're called to be humble, not proud. Cultivate humility in your life, ministry, marriages, relationships. Daily keep going back to your saviour. Recognise you are a sinner saved by grace. Call yourself a servant: just a slave of God. Your life is not your alone, you are called by the Lord Jesus.
Don't compare youself with other people, but you're thankful for God's work in their life, and you're not jealous. You look for signs of grace in others and other churches.
Pride is something the devil takes hold of and it can destroy your ministry.
If God chooses to use you to grow his church, all glory to him. If he uses others, all glory to him.
Most conferences give you a list of things to do. This talk's different. Do less. What is that we do in our lives and church lives that we really should stop doing, if we were 'operationally focussed'?
Al is great at the sound bite:
That would've been interesting, oh well. Did he decide not to speak much about that? Or was the time taken up talking about other things?
You are not called to manage your own spiritual portfolio.
Sunday morning worship, prayer on Sunday evening. That's the context in which we grow as a Christian.
I don't think they work very well.
We do have them, for example Christianity Explored. They put in a tonne of effort and maybe get three or four people along. At church, we have a few score non-Christians in the service.
But every week, our members are interacting with thousands. Seems better to train them to articulate the gospel and praying for them and encouraging them.
We get people up in the church and get them to share what they're doing during the week, and then we pray for them.
I want to do whatever I can to encourage a culture of evangelism, rather than a huge amount of time in an event.
Before I became a pastor, I asked their permission to simply attend the church for two or three months, to get a feel for their traditions and understand how much it might cost to change this or that.
I hang around after services as long as I can, to talk to people, to model a concern for serving people.
If you think that contextualisation is getting people to like you, you haven't understood contextualisation. you know you've contextualised well, when the offence of the gospel is clear.
There are a few things that the church as the church has to do: preaching, prayer, ordinanances, church discipline. Other things, like caring for poor unbelievers, are things that Christians have to do, but the church as the church doesn't have to do.
That's why it's tempting to focus on common grace good deeds. People like us feeding the hungry. The problem with trying to do things that make unbelievers like you is that unbelievers hate God.
Not so big on vision statements, because they tend to be reductionistic and limit the full scope of the Bible. They lead us to focus on hobby horses. Better to instead work really hard on preaching through the Bible and letting God's Word set the agenda for the church.
As a church planter, you need to be more comfortable with risk, and other things, than a regular pastor. But the most important things for church planter are the most important things for a pastor:
He's gonna give us some thoughts about the US Christian scene - important for us to understand, now that the internet has effectively dried up the Pacific...
New people love nothing more than to see clearly how to become involved in the life of the church.
Part of them maturing in Christ is getting them to welcome people outside their subculture.
We do a lot of on guidance, the sufficiency of Scripture, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts.
You can take someone out of a Pentecostal church, but it's a long process to take it out of them. They're getting to know a God they've never known before. They're learning to read the Bible again, pray again. They doubt if they're really Christians.
We're failing at really repenting of materialism and consumerism.
18 months ago, we had three Sunday services, we were about to plant again and we thought 'Should we plant outside Kirribilli? No. There's more here. Who aren't we reaching here?' For example, a lot of burned out Pentecostals, we weren't reaching.
We'll keep planting in Kirribilli. We'll plant again in 2010. No more place in our our church building, so we'll have to use another venue. But we'll keep trying to reach Kirribilli...
If God had grown CBTB and I was at my strongest, he would not be glorified.
One of the first guys I met, he knew everyone: All the fireies, the surfies, the fishos. I just followed him around like a puppie.
[I'm a fisho]
They're people. Don't send an email. Don't Facebook. Meet with them. Talk to them. Listen to them.
One of the advantages of starting a daughter church is for the mother church to clarify its own vision. If you fail in this, of course you're gonna lose people. Give people a reason to stay as well as a reason to leave.
- Andrew Heard
When a new church starts, people will take what they can, because they know they church won't be around long.
Buying a building shows that you're planning to stick around.
If you're going to plant from a mother church, make sure the senior minister is completely on board with everything you're doing. He's still going to be your senior minister for quite some time. Needed to work out financial relationships, common activities and planter-senior pastor relationship.
You put the word 'community' in your church name and then you can't put it on your T-shirts. The only person who could wear that T-shirt is Pamela Anderson.
One of our blindnesses is how much our gatherings have a culture.
There are segments of our community that simply cannot come into our cultural type of church. Unless you step back from it and really work hard - reshaping, rethinking, recasting many cultural forms, you won't reach them.
- Andrew Heard
I've finished mine. I want to nick the ones from the table behind me.
Half an hour at the start of the day. Fifteen minutes before dinner.
So good to be kicking this whole thing off with big dirty slabs of big kingdom prayers.
For Aussie guys church is like a museum and everyone's always talking about Moses in the wilderness for forty years. Always. Don't talk about Moses in the wilderness cause that's the only thing they'll remember.
Can so burn you that it's hard to get back into ministry again for ten years. We want to help prevent that.
- Andrew Heard.
At the moment, Geneva is still a bit like a new church building. Still making it up as we go... But:
8:30am - Video link up with Mark Dever
11am - 2Timothy 2 with Al Stewart
11:30am - Buildling structures to grow, Paul Dale
12:15pm - Lunch
2-3:30pm - Workshops/Assessments
3:30-4:30pm - Afternoon team
4:30-6pm - Workshops/Assessments
6:30pm - Dinner
7:15pm - Jim Wallace
The more control, the less growth, and vice-versa.
In general, we dial it in a little too far up the control end.
In church planting, you have to, by necessity, dial it in futher down the growth end.
- Andrew Heard
I don't have the same degree of accountability with people about their finances in the same way as I do about their church attendance or sleeping with their boyfriend or girlfriend. This is because of the many warnings in the Bible about money - don't let your left hand know what your right hand was doing.
We only get pledges as a piece of information, not as a way to hold people accountability spiritually.
We still can talk much more about money than we normally do in the Australian church, I think. There are times where you can talk publically and in general terms, about how much you are going to give to a particular project.
1991 - Andrew and Cathy wanted to plant a church.
1996 - They started.
2009 - 5 services (Saturday night, three Sunday mornings, one Sunday night). Each targets a different group. Each has its own identity. About 1200 attend on a Sunday, which makes about 1800 would see EV as their church. About 900 adults. Next week going to move into their new facilities, after planning for ten years. $6.4mill building. Seen hundreds of people converted. Constantly people getting converted. 18 staff and a huge crowd of volunteers.
"What we've done, we've done by God's hand. We done in answer to prayers over 40 years. It's a testimony to God's goodness. Not by might, not by power, but by God's Spirit"
Because we mustn't simply copy what they are doing, but work out how it applies in our situation.
- Tim Baldwin
A ministry philosophy that I hadn't really seen before.
It's worth picking his brains and understanding the theological principles from them.
But it can be hard, because sometimes they do things out of intuition.
- Tim Baldwin
I've heard lots about EV before I joined: They're growing but'... 'all transfer growth', 'watering down the gospel' etc
When other churches grow and ours aren't so we try to think of other reasons why. So we say it's all 'transfer growth'.
Often the transfer growth is good, because they're moving out of churches that aren't giving them the gospel. But at EV I have also seen not only transfer growth where people get converted and matured and active in ministry, but also lots of conversions from outside.
I wanted to get to know as many people as I can as quick as I can. So I joined two soccer teams. So I was permanently sore all winter. We're starting to see a litle fruit from that.
TB: So it's ok to make dumb decisions and then change them?
CE: I hope so!
Al Stewart:
Perhaps we don't see a lot of fruit sometimes is that we don't cross the pain barrier sometimes in our evangelism?
Crunching through some delicious Bible exposition:
Turns out the conference centre has Wi Fi. So I'll be blogging it over the next few days. Enjoy.
8/10 Moore College applicants say that J. I. Packer's book, Knowing God is their favourite Christian book other than Bible.
I wonder if that's still the case?
When one of them gets converted?
Dirty Don gives a nifty answer.
I'm gonna drink enough coffee to melt our faces with Nick. We'll start by going to Mecca Espresso in the CBD. Then we'll have lunch with Bron and Maisy.
Then I'm going to St Cuthbert's Anglican with Ben Pfahlert from MTS. I'm crashing at his place tonight.
Then tomorrow we are going to Geneva's Down the Drain conference. I'll be MCing three or four of the sessions and doing three church planter assessments. I've gotta work on that stuff on the plane this morning.
He had a seizure and they discovered a tumour in his brain, I think.
He has written on his blog, prior to going into surgery.
Another dear friend, founding elder of Crossroads and hero of the faith here in Hobart has been in the ICU after having a heart attack a week ago. He seemed much better yesterday, but it's still a long way to go.
Heavy stuff.
A good friend of mine gave this savvy advice for submitting a funding proposal to a businessman:
One idea however would be to include your nice flyer in a printed nicely presented proposal letter etc and post in A4 envelope. Then send it all by email the afternoon when the mail should have arrived and refer to the hard copies he should have received. This is a chance for him to read it in hard copy, which he'd much prefer than reading it all in electronic email attachments (he's not a fan of big attachments), and then also a chance for you to include the nice looking flyer, and your business card etc. The photo of you in the flyer will help him to visualise who he's supporting, which is important.
Keller makes the rhetorical point that we need to apply the gospel both to wordly sinfulness and religious sinfulness - "to good people and bad people". That's very helpful. He says "There are actually three ways to live".
It's a helpful reminder, but it's not ultimately true. That's obvious, but sometimes we don't realise the obvious when we hear a powerful speaker say something.
So there you go. Religion is really a subset of rebellion against God.
So there are really only two ways to live: continue in our rebellion against God and face his wrath, or submit to Jesus as Lord and trust in him for eternal salvation.
I've been using Logos for the last six months and I've found it kind of crappy.
Besides, I'm not particularly convinced that Bible software is all that helpful most of the time. It's a great way to stop using your original languages and, for that matter, you brain. I agree with Con on this:
The risk of using software is that you can short-cut the learning process, just as you will with an interlinear (see my second post). You need to struggle to remember words and grammar, rather than just get a quick answer (By the way, this need only apply to your 'Greek reading time', not every time you use the software). So, if you're disciplined, go ahead and use the software for your Greek reading. But if you can't be trusted not to cheat, then close your laptop, and get out a paper Greek New Testament. If you can find one.A problem with software is that it doesn't tell you which words you should already know. You think you don't know a word, so you get the quick answer, then think, 'oh yeah, I knew that'. A vocabulary tool like Sakae Kubo's book is better in this regard, but I'll address vocab revision/learning in a future post.
a business model which charges often-ridiculous prices for public domain books, and book sets which contain an inordinate amount of chaff, I have consistently found the intricacies of the software off-putting. Logos has never been easy to use. It's complex, counter-intuitive, challenging software. Consequently, I seldom use Logos for anything but simple Bible searches.
The saga continues. Anakin Skywalker has now become Darth Vader but on the bright side, there's no more JaJa Binx.
Some good reflections here about the difference between (and not necessarily the equivalence of kingdom growth and local church growth):
So was Uni Church a failure? As I think about individual people I'm forced to conclude that CUC was not a failure. As always, I think about myself first, and the way God has used the people and Bible teaching, and example of each other striving to live the gospel out, to greatly encourage and strengthen me in living out the gospel message. I think too of the way God has grown new followers of Jesus. I have sentimentally been looking at old photos and keep being surprised at the number of people who have become Christians and then moved on, that I had forgotten about. That's quite astounding really, that in a church whose weekly attendance over six years has rarely touched thirty, that I could actually lose count of the number of people God brought to faith in Jesus. Our goals that we set were at least in part being met: we were reaching Cumberland campus with the gospel, we were encouraging students to persevere and we were training men and women for long term ministry.You see, I was wrong (and let's face it, a little bitter) when earlier in the series I wrote of the godly spin-doctoring we performed as each person chose to leave our congregation, we would inevitably rebadge this leaving as "being sent". But I've changed my mind. We did send them. God through our feeble efforts as a church had raised up people who were going out with the gospel. Furthermore, we didn't ask them to stay. We could have but we didn't. No, we sent them. And knowing the people they are, who were going to serve mightily in other long-term ministries, if we'd begged them to stay they probably would have. Though no doubt we needed them, Uni Church was a sending a church.
Nick from St John's designed an awesome brochure for new students starting at UTAS in 2010. I wish I wasn't a part of this ministry, so that I could get this brochure and then join it!
Fundraising for my new work with the University Fellowship of Christians is going really well. I've now got a little over $70K in donations or pledges. The last $30K will enable us to lease and set up office space and hire a 1-2 day/week admin staff. It's a funny thing, setting a big vision, like raising $100K. You know it's possible, but when it starts to come together you still get the shock of 'Whoah, this is actually going to really happen!'.
I'm very thankful to the people who have been generously supportive of all of this and hope that a few more people will sign on in these last few weeks of 2009, either for ongoing financial partnership, or once-off contributions.
Arthur and Tamie are blogging through these issues at the moment.
But to the country.
To not eat, smoke, laugh, take herbal baths. To eat a lot of peaches. To be slippin and a sliding, playing domino.
Props to anyone who can add some further lyrics from songs about living in or moving to the country.
Here.
Personally, I'm much more of an NIV guy and I don't like NIV dissing much - or TNIV dissing for that matter. The vast majority of 'bad translation' in the NIV doesn't even need to be commented on in a sermon, you can just paraphrase as you explain. When you do need to 'correct it', you should be brief and very courteous (let's not forget that a international team of experts created the NIV!).
I have a lot of sympathy for a decent amount of the gender-neutral translation, although the TNIV does go too far and make Hebrews 2, for example, kind of meaningless. Still, I agree with Mounce that assuming gender-neutral stuff always involved feminism is mean-spirited.
I've looked at the Holman a bit and quite like it. But still don't feel too bothered with the NIV, actually.
H/T Alan
The Swiss have banned the building of minarets in their country:
But Martin Baltisser, the SVP's general secretary, told the BBC: "This was a vote against minarets as symbols of Islamic power."
Sojourn's Daniel Montgomery's 'breakout session' from the recent Louisville bootcamp.
76 registered.
18 candidates for church planting assessment.
10-12 candidates we reckon will actually complete the pre-assessment paperwork and actually be assessed.
I'll be doing assessment interviews with David McDonald from Crossroads Canberra, cause we kind of go to the same church :-P
I'm really looking forward to hearing Mark Dever and Al Stewart and Andrew Heard speak. Not so excited about Jim Wallace to be honest.
Reckon the biggest highlight will be to meet and chat and scheme with everyone.
Stu asks the hard questions.
I've posted comments over there, so I won't repeat them here. But I both share his concerns with the new dominance of this image for sin and yet think that there is something more biblical about it than previous, secular definitions that focussed on selfishness rather than false gods.
Joe reports J. I. Packer's twelve point list on his blog, Talking Pentecostalism.
The evangelists have told their stories up to this point not only with a steady crescendo of drama and narrative tension... but also with a persistent build-up of scriptural quotation, allusion, reference and echo. A glance at the biblical references in the margins of Mark 11-15 will make the point. Even the burial narrative has strong biblical resonances. After this, the resurrection narratives convey the naked feeling of a solo flute piping a new melody after the orchestra has fallen silent. Granted that the evangelists felt so free, as our own scholarly traditions have insisted, to develop, expand, explain, theologize and above all biblicize their sources, why did they refuse to do so, here of all places?
N. T. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 600.
Nice looking website, don't you think?
I love the cartoony Melbourne skyline with animated lights and sun and aeroplanes. Very cute. I like that they've started a pastors' blog. I like the 'Sunday Services' page tells you how to get there via train, car and tram with cute icons for each. The structure to the site is pretty clear and easy.
I don't like the fact that I can't choose to open things off the menu bar in different tabs. It's all animated within the site itself. I don't like that you can't scroll down on the first page, or that the frame for the site doesn't change when you navigate to different parts. The information on the site could also be more integrated, with the information about the preaching series being linked to the recordings of the sermons.
Obviously everything will get tweaked in the coming weeks, but it's a nice start. Well done guys.
And wrote up a review, in typical Pfahlert style. Here's some highlights (I quote):
Challies says he agrees with John MacArthur:
John MacArthur offers this explanation as to why he will not sign. "It assumes from the start that all signatories are fellow Christians whose only differences have to do with the fact that they represent distinct 'communities.' Points of disagreement are tacitly acknowledged but are described as 'historic lines of ecclesial differences' rather than fundamental conflicts of doctrine and conviction with regard to the gospel and the question of which teachings are essential to authentic Christianity. … [It would] relegate the very essence of gospel truth to the level of a secondary issue. That is the wrong way—perhaps the very worst way—for evangelicals to address the moral and political crises of our time.