What a great night....a few highlights...

hearing 2000 men sing...wow....resonance, bass, power....awesome.

Angus has not changed, challenging, direct, funny, nothing left unsaid...

Multi media went well...no mistakes, had to work quick as worship team made last second changed....they sounded great!

Camera was okay...slight delay annoying, but without a $2000 scaler, what do you do?

A great night...cant wait for tommorow.....

This is amazing...wow....I am not much into the whole financial news happening at the moment, but I know enough to know that we should have been listening to this guy a couple of years ago!

I think these pictures tell a great story....
chocolate pancakes with berries and maple syrup....oh YUM!

Want to read this one......
Bible Study Magazine and Mars Hill are giving away 20 copies of Mark Driscoll’s new book, Vintage Church. Not only that, but they are also giving away five subscriptions to Bible Study Magazine and a copy of their Bible Study Library software! Enter to win on the Bible Study Magazine Mark Driscoll page, then take a look at all the cool tools they have to take your Bible study to the next level!


http://www.logos.com/

Very busy at the moment getting ready for Mighty Mens conference.....the registrations hit 1560 make that 1600 ...and still climbing.

I have been responsible for marketing..so we are pretty happy with the result. The website Q developed is very good...and has handled the load well...with most registrations being done online.

Now I have switched my attention to the multi media....and I have worked out how to feed live video feed through my laptop onto the screens....should be an awesome conference!


Lets pray that Angus is inspired...and able to deliver the message from God to the men that come....that they and our state need.

Wayne and myself have re-launched Australian Pastors Blog...check it out.

http://australianpastors.blogspot.com/

It seems the eagles photos I posted on facebook are creating a fair bit of interest....
this comment from Dave Fallon was the best....

"hating the weagles is quite a healthy and satisfying pasttime"

Yes....I concur...it is.....

A reflection on the year, and a look forward to this year....Something I put together for our AGM....

Someone left this doll on my desk tonight...so it needed to suffer.... :)

This is where their season is headed....

And I am sure they are going to get this......

It was a good day in church today...good crowd in, some visitors....
We took some time out of our communion time to remember the bushfire victims, a minute silence.

We have also been raising money for the appeal, will total it up and let you know how we did it this week.

I shared the story about how Jesus responded to a natural, and a unnatural disaster in His day. He did not explain why it happened, but he did clarify to people that it was not because people were being judged, bad stuff does happen in our world....

Our worship leader reminded us to pray for those who were left behind, they are the ones suffering now, the initial shock is gone,and they are ones who have to go on with living, without the ones they loved and knew with them.

Someone who went through the Cyclone Tracy distaster said something profound to me today as well, "no one compares houses when they are all piled up together at the rubbish tip".

One of my best mates has this on his church website...presumably to attract people to the service.

"We have air-con!"

That is so funny...so does the local pub mate..and other places!

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

You know who you are!!!

Remember Ra'ah? Well Wayne and I are going to ressurect it, in a new format, name etc....and possibly some new posters...stay tuned.

Very busy at the moment...
getting ready for our church agm....will post a highlights video shortly....
preparing church vision document....meeting with leaders...our church is a very exciting place to be at the moment.

also getting ready for the Angus Buchan conference, should be an awesome time...with close to 1300 men already registered, we are stoked...the worship time with that many guys will just be fantastic....praying that God chooses to reveal things to men, challenge and inspire them...
But with so many blokes coming, the pressure is on to make it good...pray for me, pray for Eliot as he leads the worship time, and pray for Angus and his team, that the Holy Spirit will empower, direct and give him discernment.

Had one of the best beers I have ever had today, snuck away from the office (should not have, no time to waste, but a good mate needed to chat...so down to Freo we went)....at the Little Creatures brewery.... a 'bright ale'....straight from the tap...cold....absolutely superb.

This from Rowland Croucher....

"Where is the pressure coming from? The survey indicates that it is not the members or the church board. It is the ministers themselves. The pastors show a consistent inability to set reasonable limits on their workload. More than two out of three respondents say that they expect too much of themselves. A little over half say that they love what they do so much that they don't know when to stop.
The typical pastor spends about 14 hours planning and attending meetings or services. Another 13 hours is invested in sermon preparation and teaching. Pastoral care and counseling take some nine hours. Six hours are spent in personal devotions and prayer. All types of administrative and budget tasks, advanced planning and the like absorb 13 hours."

Source

Okay...the 2009 season is upon us...

After watching an experienced and determined Richmond defeat Freo by 3 points....and my third cup of coffee...I am ready for my 2009 predictions.
I got at least one right last year, Palmer did indeed pick up the Rising Star. Unfortunately most of the others were wrong after the Dockers suffered a pretty dissapointing season.
I was right about Hawthorn....they did well...and I was right about Woosha Wiperblades....he did say nothing, but was fawned over by 6peagle....
Unfortunately neither Freo nor the Saints gave the finals a shake....maybe this year...find our below.

1. Stephen Hill is a gun, better than Rich, and will win the Rising Star
2. Chris Mayne will develop into a more consistent player
3. Tarrant will repay the faith showed in him
4. Pavlich will start to dominate games with his mate Hasleby
5. Hawthorn wont maintain their form, and will dissapoint
6. Geelong will continue to fade
7. Port Adelaide will implode, and Mark Williams might face the sack
8. Richmond will dissapoint their fans, and yet Wallace will be re-signed
9. Port Adelaide will collect the spoon
10. North Melbourne will be the big riser
11. Freo will make the top four, but miss out on the big one
12.West Coast will still suck

I have not met a Senior Pastor yet who is worth his salt that does not get the whole 'seating' thing.
How...where...in what format a room is set up...is important!
We only have to look at God's complicated instructions for His house of worship to know this.

At Inglewood we have been having real issues with seating....too many people, not enough room.
Okay....there is enough room if we are all squished in.
Last week, just as the service finished, I got up and gently encouraged/asked the folk if they could possibly get to church early...and sit down the front, I even said I would put lollies on the front two pews!

This week we moved all the musicians onto the stage, with just the leader and singers down on the level part. I debated whether to put them up high on the stage, but the crowd is still not large enough to have to do this, and I don't like being up high looking over people, I like to look them straight in the eye, be on eye level with people. We may have to change this at some point.

Anyhoo.....I put some Fantails on the front two pews, and they did fill up. Because we had moved everyone foward, we had some space at the back.....at least until everyone came in. Then we were full again. Its amazing. We truly are experiencing sustained growth.

It felt full this morning, but not uncomfortably full.....whew! We needed to make space. I am believing that very soon we will need to make more space....there are new friends coming and staying every week.

ummmm...lets think about that for half a millisecond.....no.

Bad things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.
The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Indiscriminate, awful fire, killing innocents...is not how God operates.

Why did it happen? Don't know. Why did Soveriegn God not intervene? Don't know.

It is amazing to see how people are helping, it shows the image of God within us when we reach out in love and mercy to those who are struck down. That is God at work.

Judgement will come, at the right time, in the right way, but the posturing of some, the attempt to claim it as some moral high ground victory seems to me to have much more in common with the pharisees of Jesus day, rather than Jesus Himself. In fact its wicked.

fascinating, chilling, interesting.....provoke one to prayer...

"We were all human beings united by a tragedy, equal in the face of suffering and walking the path of recovery together...."
(more)

.....has put some good thoughts together on a way to think through the whole 'revisiting' church issue.

"In our rush to reject the consultant paradigm, there is a real danger that we embrace the house of sand approach that the bartender represents. The truth of the matter is that Jesus has a lot to say about how people, and the world is living......"

The consultant and the bartender walked into a church....

Here is an excellent little video from an atheist....you may have seen him on Penn and Teller.

He makes the following points....

How much do you have to hate someone...to not share your faith?
If I believed without a shadow of a doubt that you were about to be hit by a truck...and did not say something to you, what would you say about me?

Having now become a church that uses temporary locations.....spaces rented off others who own them....I am keenly aware of some of the advantages and disadvantages of both.

Using a community owned and used space has helped us to grow, interact and communicate with the community so much better than what we used to. People know where we are, they see us, the interact with our programs...we are part of the community.

Downside is that we dont own the place! We get told off for this that and the other....even if we have done nothing really wrong. There has been a distinct period of the other people using the place getting used to us....One person in particular......(say no more!)
The person who runs the centre is great! Nothing but helpful, know that we know her and have been there a while.

But not being able to do whatever we want there...is a downside.

Ultimatly moving has been the right move for us. There is certainly pain. We have a lot of stuff to set up each week (3 times a week actually)...and not a lot of space to put it in.....but the upside is....we are starting to feel like a mission organisation, not a club.

This is great.
Looking for a biblical justification for cursing that driver that just cut you off, the Barrista who made you a bitter coffee...or even the sales assistant who seems more intent on talking to their boyfriend on the phone rather that serving you?

The problem is that as Christians we are meant to be nice to each other....this curse generator is full of great comebacks for a multitude of situations....

This is one that took my fancy,
"May you go on a diet of crunchy, unsweetened locusts, thou whose name is but dung!"

Biblical Curse Generator

H/T David Wilson

Well well.....Maybe Barra has been listening to his wife (a keen dockers member)....

It just seems that everything is coming together at the moment....there is this synergy as God's hand of blessing is over us. We had 67 kids at Jam Central this morning...but about 40% of them were new to the group! How does that happen when you do ABSOLUTLEY NO ADVERTISING. Seriously...none. And 95% of them don't come to church.

We did not even do a massive mail out this year like we have before....and it was at a new location....

Looking over these parents, observing their parenting styles....and their great spiritual needs, we are so blessed.

But it comes with great responsibility and great work.
We need to make time to form relationships and friendships.
We need to share Gods love with them, and a purpose for living.

God is good and His mercies and blessings are abundant, but we cant sit down, there is no time for deciding what we should do....He has shown and told us what to do.

A prayer....God continue to give us the passion, power, discernement and wisdom we need to be about Your business. Protect us from the evil one...who must be hating what You are doing at Inglewood....
And thanks God...what a privilege!

Watching a bunch of overpaid wimps running around with oversize pillows on their shoulders to protect their fragile egos made me a little bit excited about the real footy season ahead.

The Fremantle Dockers have a pre season scratch match on tonight, and it will be interesting to see how it goes. Press have been reporting that the Dockers have had a very hard pre-season, with the impetus being the need to redress the last quarter fadeouts that plagued us last year. If we had been able to turn a few of those 10 points or less losses into wins...anything could have happened..... (sigh)


Unusually for the press at this time of year, we are not installed as pre-season favourites along with other much more qualified teams. Maybe thats a good sign.


Tarrant is not injured, Hasleby is back, Pavlich is a superstar, and likely to play a more 'James Hird midfield fix it" type role.


Grover is the leagues most underated defender, and hopefully has put the emotional and personal turmoil of last year behind him. Mr Pharlin is awesome.


With the best ruckman in the AFL (Cox is heavily overated)...and the best first year player of 2008 at his feet, Hasleby picking up the spoils, Hedland fit and firing.....who knows?


I have my new membership card...I am ready....

Biggest crowd we have had at 'regular' church yesterday.....approaching the size of the crowd we had at our launch.
A lot (lot) of new folk...coming back and staying.
We ran out of communion elements....we had to open up the back doors.....

It does make you feel overwhelmed. I have always been a pastor of a church hovering around the 80-100 mark, and I have known everyone.....well.

I still make it my business to introduce myself to new people, and to shake hands at the door.
But we are actually utilising the systems we have put in place now. Pastoral care leaders etc.
A loss of feeling like I know everyone and what is happening in people's lives.
But as we grow, and continue to grow, this is only going to become more so. Interesting times ahead.