An Eagle 3-D vision - amazing photo, with such clarity, surely worthy of an Attenborough documentary.


You can see the fierce determination in the eagle's eye as it swoops down upon it's prey.

Moved into our new offices at 6th Avenue.....New might be pushing it a little! The building was actually built over 80 years ago. But the office has had a repaint, and some good desks put in.
Its nice...and very welcoming.
Set up broadband after the horrors we had with AAPT, glad to go with Amnet. Adsl2 connection....yes!

Spent some time yesterday doing some pastoral counselling...that takes it out of you.
Today I am back home looking after two kids, both of whom are vomitting....and trying to get my sermon done.

Sometimes being at work is a lot easier than being at home/work!!

Wirrapanda did not do anything wrong....but Shaun did everything right.

And they dont wear teal!!!

Great win today, without Pavlich! Jonathon Brown said that Pavlich would beat Port.....well Brownie....Freo beat Port...fair and square, with 16 individual goal scorers...a club record.
Crowley played a leaders game, Peake is back to his best. In fact Peake kicked a 65 metre goal! Thats extraordinary.

Farmer was typically unselfish and seems to have found some new life on the wing. Tarrant played as a team player. I was also impressed with Mark Johnson. One particular 'bullocking' goal where he bashed through 4 of the teal warriors and slammed it through typified Freo's insistence that they were going to win today. Loved it......

Btw....I am sounding like a broken record, but Freo has the best group of young players coming through. Palmer, Ibbotson, Mayne and Warnock.

It really does feel like a new church. One of the reasons is that we are getting lots of visitors who are coming back. This is creating issues! But they are good issues. We might have to rethink our stage...we certainly have to work on seating issues. Today...when all the kids went out...the place was still pretty full.....

In a couple of weekends we are doing a 'guess whose coming to dinner'. The last two weekends we have invited two new couples....if the trend continues we are going to need to get a bigger table...and another chicken.

I enjoyed speaking today.....God is good.
Eliot and the band kicked out an awesome rendition of U2's "One". sounded great, and was a great lead into the message.

Here is a link to a site which you can download free countdowns from.
Free is good....so are these countdowns.

Free Countdowns

STOP PRESS
I just had a bit more of a look around this site and they have free chroma key backgrounds!!!!This is orrrsome!!!!!

http://www.freecountdowns.net/chroma.html

This is the countdown I have made up for this week. The last minute is great......

that the Dockers win and Weegirls lose....is a great weekend.
The weagles seriously look disinterested at the moment. Leigh Matthews may be right when he stated that following a big high, the players just dont have the motivation anymore.

As for the Dockers, despite the mistruths the media come up with, they continue to unearth some good young talent. Brock O'Brien was great, Chris Mayne and Ibbotson continue to impress...and even Schammer suprised. Lets hope Warnock does stay, and we have the basis for a time of rebuilding.

Third Sunday in....and it feels great.
Good crowd in....childrens ministry was smoother...and we had some visitors as well.

The sum of both churches merged is actually greater than what could have been expected. What I mean is that we have attracted a number of people who previously came to the church. This is something we did not expect...and means we have had to rethink seating and stage set up. But I think this week we did better.

As we look to the official launch in September, and the pre service marketing, we are going to have to be on the ball even more.

But this week just gone...I really am glad to sense that I felt, at least, that my preaching hit the spot as God revealed some deep truths....at least I hope it did. It certainly felt that way.

This is good for me to reflect on....

"Christians, especially ministers, so often think that they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.
Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because Christians are talking where they should be listening. But [the one] who can no longer listen to his brother [or sister] will soon be no longer listening to God either... This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words."

-Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

From the Uk comes this pretty radical teaching/exhorting method.

This guy reminds me of one of the prophets of the OT...he dressed up and stunk up as a street person and entered his parish at their Sunday Service to see what the reaction was....it sounds like it was not too good.

"When Reverend Rigby wanted to teach his congregation a lesson about being kind to others he came up with a rather colourful way of demonstrating his point.
As the 70 churchgoers turned up for their regular Sunday morning service at the Methodist church in Prestatyn, north Wales they found a scruffy tramp sitting in the church porch.
Stinking of beer and dressed in filthy clothes, the disgusted churchgoers did their best to ignore him as they filed past.
This task was made even harder when the unwanted guest joined them on the pews, surrounded with syringes and drinking from a can of lager."

Story

Hillsong Church is doing something about the worlds poor.
The amount of resources, people and prayer they are putting into poverty is incredible. They are uniquely positioned to do something significant about those who Jesus loves just as much, if not more than, white middle class Christians. One of the major themese of the 2008 conference was justice, and Tim Costello kicked off the conference with an excellent message about extending the Kingdom of God to include those who go without the basics.

The Iheart revolution is something which has been birthed in the youth of the church, and resourced by the whole church. The trailer had me in tears and determined to do what I can to play my part. I cant do it all, I cant even do much, but I can do what I can do. My family supports a Compassion child, and I am determined to mobilise our church even more into this area as we continue to grow and reach out to those not only in need of Christ, but also in need of the basics.

I encourage you to check out the IHeart revolution website.


http://www.theiheartrevolution.com/