Emerging Church...
28 September 2007

A disturbing (if slightly long) review of Brian McLaren’s new book here.

"As with McLaren’s previous books, no doctrine is safe. And, in fact, almost every critical doctrine is emasculated, destroyed or redrawn. Nothing is sacred. Yet the problems go even deeper than theology because this book deals also with other subjects such as economics. With McLaren’s willingness to play fast and loose with Scripture, interpreting it as he seems fit with utter disregard for the stream of historic orthodox theology and the context of Scripture..."
While there is much to learn from the Emergoing Church this is very worrying stuff.
Cheers Craig for the link.

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A day (off) in the life of an MTSer
27 September 2007

Well it was a sort of day off as I have a big Saturday coming up.

  • 9:15 am Cuddle Christine for extra long in the morning
  • 10:30am Eat breakfast then head to lunch with one of my good mates.
  • 12:45pm Invite him to hear Peter Jensen Speak on Saturday night.
  • 2:20pm Hang out with Dave (My bro) for a late lunch and coffee @ Island Espresso.
  • 2:30pm Bump into Jerome and show him a good bike shop
  • 2:45pm Bump into Kath and Matt chat some more.
  • 3:00pm Have a look at the remains of Myer
(That was the Liverpool Street entrance to Myer)

(Ground Zero)
  • 3:10pm Buy Wheel Magazine (my monthly indulgence of car porn)
  • 5:00pm Come home and eat tea
  • 5:40pm Ride out to Netball
  • 7:00pm Win Netball
  • 7:30pm Help Chris with his broken down car
  • 9:30pm Head home for a shower and bed
  • 10:15pm Discover more wedding photos
  • 10:55pm Blog and upload pictures that have been on my phone for a while.
(I took this one the other day for my lovely wife)

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Church Planting... with Phillip
25 September 2007


I've been listening to some Phillip Jensen talks on church planting. They are from a trip he took to UK for the Yorkshire Gospel Partnership. Well worth a download especially if you are interested in church planting. Grab em here. Phillip you are definately a Christian I respect.

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Myer... not much left
24 September 2007

I don't know who took these pictures... but the mate who sent em through said maybe a fireman took em. For those readers who don't realise this fire was in the CBD of Hobart.








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How many times do you forgive...

...Shane Warne. Oops he did it again. This is getting just a little bit silly.

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My own little piece...

..of Myers Hobart. Was it a plasma TV? Was it part of a nice leather couch? Was it a counter? Was it part of the lift? Maybe a part of an ipod? Maybe it was part of those huge 80's TV CRT screens in the girly section. Can't say I'll miss those.

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Mark Driscoll
23 September 2007

I'm always up for a bit of ol' Marky Mark Driscoll...

"If he hasn't offended you, you've never read his books or listened to his sermons."
You can read a full interview with Christianity Today here.

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Hobart ablaze
22 September 2007

Now while I didn't take the following pictures, I was down watching as Myers in Hobart went up in flames this afternoon. I imagine the pictures will be pretty good in the Mockery tomorrow.




One of my mates took this one from his house...

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Jesus all about Life 2.0...
21 September 2007

I was reading this morning and found that after some debate the Sydney Anglican Synod have refused to get behind the Jesus all about Life campaign. I've posted about this before.

This is interesting to say the least. From what I understand Jesus all about life involves churches coming together based on nicean unity* which is broad to say the least. This form of unity is based on the nicean creed. It's a good deal broader than the AFES doctrinal statement.

You might want to check out the list of church events for Jesus all about Life here. You'll notice that this includes Knowing God better in the Catholic Tradition and an Animal Service. Having said that the Jesus All about life website reckons that 80% or Tasmanian churches are backing the campaign.2

My question is in light of this should we stand behind the campaign?

*I'd appreciate some clarification here

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focus feedback
20 September 2007

We're taking feedback on FOCUS as we think about the year coming. What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? What are the things you like about FOCUS? What are the things you don't like about FOCUS.

I encourage anyone to pop me an email and let me know what you think. Alternatively I'm happy to have a chat in person. (email or facebook is fine)

 

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Advice on cars... for girls


My mate Jonny has some excellent tips....

What car to buy

How to check stuff yourself

And car servicing for girls

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Saving money the MTS way*
19 September 2007

Take one homebrand/coles brand packet of muesli...

then take about 1/2 a packet of breakfast plus....


Then mix together. One very nice healthy cheap breakfast cereal.

*This post is dedicated to Bron

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Praying with John...
18 September 2007


...that's Mr Newton to you... (from 1780) has some advice on how to pray for young men.

The prayers of some good men are more like preaching than praying. They rather express the Lord's mind to the people, than the desires of the people to the Lord. Indeed this can hardly be called prayer.
And...
The chief fault of some good prayers is, that they are too long; not that I think we should pray by the clock, and limit ourselves precisely to a certain number of minutes; but it is better of the two, that the hearers should wish the prayer had been longer, than spend half the time in wishing it was over.

See the full text here on the Resurgence Blog

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My sermons...
17 September 2007

My two most recent sermons on Titus are available for download on a freshly organised FOCUS website. We've moved a couple of the links around so it's a bit cleaner. To download Right click on the link and select "save as".

The Godly Motive
The Godly Bloke/Woman

Enjoy.

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More drum beating... why pray for 2?

I've been beating the drum for more prayer at FOCUS. But why? I read this extract , this morning...

If we are really convinced that prayer changes the way God acts, and that God does bring about remarkable changes in the world in response to prayer, as scripture repeatedly teaches that he does, then we would pray much more than we do. If we pray little it is probably because we do not really believe that prayer accomplishes much at all.
I'm especially keen about getting us praying for our unsaved friends. I'll say it again I want us all praying for two non Christian friends regularly. Please Pray for 2.

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Older really is better

I love old people. I went to St Johns to plug FOCUS on Sunday and was pleased to find that
they are some of the sharpest minds around. Not only did one old dude remember my name, but Christine's and which country she was from, and which one she had lived in. WOW! Many of my friends wouldn't even be able to manage that.

Now really that shouldn't surprise as St Johns have been great supporters of FOCUS over the years. In fact I began my FOCUS plug with a big fat thankyou for all prayer and dosh they've chucked in at FOCUS over the years. It was also great to also have a number of the younger duders there keen to help me with my wage... but this one is for the old people of St Johns.

Old people of St Johns you are truely Christians who I respect.

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The Easter linebacker
16 September 2007

If you thought this was funny you'll love this video.

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Pray for 2
14 September 2007


Be devoted to prayer says God's word... Over the next few weeks I'm aiming to get every member of FOCUS regularly praying for two non-Christian mates. I'm calling this (somewhat tackily) "Pray for 2".

The aim of Pray for 2 is two fold.

  • Firstly to get us thinking and praying for the unsaved not just talking about it. We want to build a culture of prayer where the salvation of people is thought about and prayed for.
  • Secondly getting us to spend time hanging out with, meeting with non Christian friends so that we can have (God willing) the opportunities to talk about the gospel.
I firmly believe that this is something ALL of us can do. So let's get praying for our mates.

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Angus on why...

facebook is getting a little silly. Gus is a funny guy and always worth a read.

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Poor mans walk up...
13 September 2007

OR being culturally engaged.

Mikey and I went out this morning to chat to people. Now I want to be clear, we weren't actually seeking to share the gospel with the people we talked to. Rather what we wanted to do was to seek to understand where students and Hobartians are coming from (how they tick). What they like about Hobart, what are it's strengths and weaknesses. What are the values that people have, religious, ideology's etc.

We talked about University Culture and what it actually is. We asked people about thier religious backgrounds and spiritual experinces. I asked about the internet and the effect of online social networking. Each conversation ended with us giving one the person a card advertsing the "cool" Crossroads meeting.

Now it might be easy for the cynical to dismiss this as a waste of time. Far from it I learned a great deal about people and how to bring the gospel to bear on it. If we want to be serious about evangelism we need to serious about listening to where people are at.

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Driscoll on creation
11 September 2007

This actually will cause some controversy I'm sure...

Mark Driscoll has written a very clear and concise account about creation and the fall. I think he articulates a position that gives fair hearing to all views.
You can read it here. I'd especially recommend people who haven't thought about the issue of creation should check it out.

Driscoll has a wonderful gift of communicating clearly and using plain language here's a snippet...

The great theologians of the Protestant Reformation coined the Latin phrase Sola Scriptura, which means that Scripture is the sole locus of our final authority. Simply put, there is nothing we are to believe above the Bible.

This, however, does not mean that as Christians we should practice "solo Scriptura," which means that we only read the Bible and reject any information that is not directly from the Bible. If we held to "solo Scriptura" then we could not study anything but the Bible and I would have to, for example, put down my Chilton's manual when tuning up my old truck and try and take my auto repair cues from Deuteronomy.

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Tonight I
10 September 2007

  • am feeling dismal
  • am preparing a sermon for tomorrow @ FOCUS
  • am tired
  • now have 256 friends on facebook
  • hope my favourite team (Hawthorn) will make the AFL grand final.
  • Lacking in ideas.

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Sermon writing... my blog stats are down.*

This can only mean two things.
One I need to be more controversial.
and Two I can be more controversial.

So I give you just what the world needs another facebook group. Imaginatively entitled... drum roll please?

"Using your wedding photo as a profile picture is so lame."

Join today.

*This post was written deep into the night and my state of mind wasn't quite normal so if you are offended in any way please feel to rant winge and rave below or report me.

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macbook
08 September 2007

That has got to be the one of the most dead headings in the history of blogging. Anyway besides being away on holidays my computer has been getting fixed. Now if you don't know I have a black macbook. I've had a number of issues with it. It was one of the first batch that tended to suffer from the following problems. So far I've had replaced...

  • The topcase
  • DVD Drive/burner
  • Bluetooth module
  • Heatsink (Overheating problems)
  • Logic board
Now before you all jump in and tell me how crap macs are and how good PCs are, I'd point out I've had far fewer problems with my current setup than with my previous PC (Hardware/Software). I rebuilt my PC from scratch more times than there are fingers on your hand, I've never had to do that with my mac. I also believe the current Mac OS is simply better. Now I have everthing back and running wonderfully. Apple have been very good with fixing all the problems. I'd certainly buy a mac again if I had my time over.

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Tassie the road trip...
06 September 2007

Christine and I took some time off and went away for three nights. Our trip began with a trip up past Bothwell to Great Lake then over the pass to Poatina.


We then stopped overnight stop at Tunbridge. The Sonnemanns very kindly let us stay in one of their little cottages. It was very nice.

The next day after a good breakfast... (cooked by me)


We headed off to Cradle Mountain via Launceston. It was a very nice little drive with plenty of bends and de-restricted speed limits.


We stayed at Cradle Mountain Lodge. Next morning it was back to Tunbridge...


Via Queenstown and the West Coast. Again more nice roads and we used plenty of fuel. Probably one of the highlights was seeing a bunch of cars on a road test for Motor magazine...


then overtaken naturally...
A little bush bashing through the buzzing metropolis of...

Then it was night 3 of the holiday back at Tunbridge. In the evening I made a very nice...

And the home today. A big thankyou to the Sonnemanns again for letting us stay at their cottage.

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