I reckon this blog will be very important for would-be preachers of the gospel. Posts seem relatively short, too, which is a plus!

Gav Perkins has posted a very timely post about the importance of ministry faithfulness in the little things. Amen!

Des asked me about this on; wondered if there was anything he was missing for why people liked using the word.

Nope. There is nothing he is missing. Praxis is part of that mutant sludge family that includes 'missional' and 'utilize'.

I have to begin drafting some material for Vision 100 to help us screen church planters. Those sorts of things are really hard, I don't want to narrow down the qualifications down too much, as if only one particular personality type can plant a church. Will give it a go and let you know what I come up with.

Fi passed on to me a witticism by David Cook (principal of SMBC) that is right on the mark:

Australians believe in justification by death; as soon as we die, everything will be alright between us and God.

Laura tells us that the new POTUS is neither the Messiah, nor the Antichrist, so we should just chill out a little.

Dying churches have more people on their rolls than in attendance. Growing churches have more people in attendance than on their rolls. Dying churches tend to comfortably meet their budget out of their savings and investments. Growing churches tend to struggle to meet their budget.

We decided to start paying our MTS apprentices according Tasmania's minimum wage rather than according to the recommended MTS 'scholarship'. That's an increase of nearly $10 000 pa.

The Sydney Anglicans site has two videos of Phillip responding to Mark Driscoll's 18 theses.

I'm sure it's really good stuff, but every time I try to watch it, the video begins buffering and then stops altogether.

Al Bain has just started a blog. I imagine there will be plenty here to get you thinking, get you angry, get you commenting.

Al went to SMBC and did his final year project on immanence and transcendence in Barth, Moltman and Scripture. He's now living in Launceston and has a great veggie patch.

John Stott's books are a must-read. In particular, his commentaries in the very variable Bible Speaks Today series are the bees knees.

Galatians 3:21 is used to prove that God never intended the law to be a means of justification. I think this is squeezing more theologial jus out of the text. Of course life cannot come by that law, given that humans are all sinful. But does that mean that the law did not offer justification and therefore life to any who could, theoretically, keep it perfectly?

Taken on its own, in isolation from broader salvation history, the law does indeed offer a means for justification. It never succeeds, because no individual can keep it, but the offer is real.

The argument in Galatians 3:15ff is:

1. This offer does not set aside the previous offer of righteousness by faith.
   
2. The failure for the law to deliver righteousness doesn't mean it was useless - it served to expose sinfulness.

In an 'if... then...' sentence:

The 'if' bit is called the protasis and the 'then' bit is called the apodosis.

Impress your friends.

Exouds 22:25-27, Leviticus 25:35-37 an Deuteronomy 23:19-20 forbid Israel from charging interest against fellow Israelites.

What does that mean for Christians today? Ever wondered that?

The law was "added because of (or for) transgression" and "was put in charge to lead us" could mean one of the following:

1. It managed and restrained our sin. 
2. It exposed sin and declared it to be violation of God's law.
3. It provoked and deepened by making God's demands explicit.
4. It awakened guilt and so gave individuals a sense of their need for forgiveness.

I think number 2 suits the flow of God's argument best, although I think all four are true and taught elsewhere in Scripture.

And the saints below
join with the saints above
Rejoicing in the Risen Lamb

Are the saints above currently conscious and actively involved in rejoicing in the risen lamb? Is the theological so minor and disputed that it'd be ok to sing in church? What do you think?

Often church growth advice focuses on organisational adaptation. I came across another reason for churches under 100 people stagnating: the churches have low 'self-esteem':

This is an important process to go through because many small churches genuinely want to grow but are unable due to their corporate poor self-esteem. This is not dissimilar to a person to wants to grow spiritually, mentally, professionally, etc., but their self image is so skewed that they can't move forward. Until that person sees things more accurately, including their potential, they are unable to grow.

I reckon there's something pretty true in that. 

After two packets of chocolate covered honeycomb, many cups of coffee and a lot of heavy metal, Christian and I have just flicked the switch on the new Vision 100 website. 

It's got sermons, some training materials and all our newsletters. We will aim to upload content, update events and improve the visual design regularly. So please come back again soon.

Let us know what you think by emailing info@vision100.org.

Since 2005 Crossroads has used subversion to manage our church documents. Because the software I first used was called TortoiseSVN, it got called 'NInja Turtle' and the document repository itself got called 'the Sewer'.

Our current resources page just publishes pdfs saved in one folder of our repository.

It has been a very helpful tool to have. It's nice being able to travel back in time and retrieve old documents that have been changed or deleted a long time ago. It's nice to ensure that we all have the same version of various guidelines, goals, calendars and other documents. It's nice to have access to church documents even if I'm away from my personal computer. It's nice to be able to direct people to a central place to get documents, rather than have to send attachments all the time.

There are problems of course:

• We currently don't have an web-based way to edit documents on the repository. This means that for someone to add or change things they have to download software, export the repository... all of this are big psychological barriers for people.
• Filing and naming conventions are always difficult. There is no one way to save everything that seems obvious to everyone.
• It has been a major culture change to get people to update the central respository, rather than just documents on their personal computer.

But overall it has been a huge blessing and I'm sure our problems will eventually be ironed out. Thanks to Alex for suggesting we use it, for jml who developed our setup and for Christian who is no doubt going to improve it further and make it available to others in the Vision 100 network. 

What methods does your church use for document management?

1. In the biblical history sense, most of us are the nations who stand under the judgment of the messiah. How can Gentiles hope to be saved?
   
2. In a moral/theological sense, as unfolded across the Bible, even Jews are under sin. We all stand under the judgment because of our sin.
3. In a typological sense we are part of the new Israel in Christ. There is an analogy between our situation and that of the nation under  the OT kings.
4. We, like the kings and prophets who wrote the Psalms are human beings. Human nature and divine nature remain constant, and so we can take on the words of the Psalms as our own to a great extent. Care needs to be taken that we realise the difference between our position in history and theirs.
5. Finally, we are so incorporated into Christ, that we are counted sons of God. The NT grants us a higher position than an Israelite of old. We will judge the twelve tribes, in fact we will judge the nations. We are seated together with the Christ.