Having morning tea this morning, one of the students asked me ‘how was yesterday afternoon?’ I sat there trying to think what could he be talking about? What did I do yesterday afternoon? He noticed the blank look on my face and the vacant stare and proceeded to say ‘you know the old people!’ Ah it all came flooding back… Every Thursday I run a computer group for seniors. A nice bunch of people, friendly, fun, considerate group of people. But to tell you the truth at 38 years of age I did not picture my life being the way it is! I did not imagine I would be running a group full of how can I say…...

I wonder what happened to this guy? Get the Flash Player to see this video.

So many of us are under-estimated in life! Have you ever felt that people just can’t see what you know is inside you?… or at least what you hope is there? I had this experience this week, someone I spend time with thinks I’m a drop kick. Now I know at times I act like a drop kick, but not to the degree that person thinks I am. I remember as a young kid standing in line on the edge of the soccer field as two of my primary school mates picked the day’s lunch time soccer teams. Without fail, I was the last to be picked for soccer (not so with rugby, but soccer was a sad sad story for me). I never understood the rules, in fact...

I had to speak to our Cert IV grads who are beginning the Diploma course today. And while today should be a celebration for them… they have finished the CertIV… and although they earned to right to look back… and while it would be good to talk about how good the journey has been so far… I was reluctant to do so. And it wasn’t because I feared some of them would not shutup! I will explain in a moment. If you visit my house you’d see some of the furniture I’ve made. Traditional cabinet making is my trade, but it was more than a trade for me, it was my passion. Before I was married I spent what seemed...

Sometime ago I wrote an article about the 3 “f’s” of my church planting journey fear, finances and failure. Since then nothing much has changed. Those three things are still there but I thought it was time I did a follow-up –  this time about the ABC’s of Church planting from the perspective of someone like me… overworked, overstressed, overweight, underpaid, underachieving, undertheweather! One of the things I remember vividly about church in my younger days was the complete lack of excitement. People just gathered, sang a few songs which were unlike any of the songs I heard on the radio, rehashed the same...

I was revising my evangelism teaching notes and came across an old article about ‘deconversion’. This article has always struck a cord with me and I thought it was about time I shared it with you. It’s long, but worth it. I can no longer get in contact with the orginal author to get personal permission. But I have noticed it is now scattered throughout the wonderful land of public domain on the net, so I hope it is ok (if it’s yours, please email me). The late fall afternoon is peaceful as I cozy up on the sofa for a few hours of cable television movies. Flipping through the channels, I happen upon a prerecorded...

When I think back about why I chose to learn at The Pines, it really wasn’t to learn how to plant churches. (Sorry). I had felt for quite a while that Australian churches weren’t really impacting Australia, like we could or should.. like what happened in the Bible. I couldn’t see the blokes at high school coming along to youth group (though ironically some of the tougher guys did 🙂 And I was frustrated with the lack of progress I was experiencing with the guys at work. There was no way that the blokes there would come along to church or home-group! In fact, I wasn’t even interested in getting them to church. Most of the blokes I dealt with...

David Garrison has alerted the world to the amazing phenomenon of Church multiplication movements.  I get excited when I hear about Churches multiplying themselves through a society via the rapid spread of the Gospel through relational webs. Most of the success is due to Church people (not pastors) taking the initiative to share the “Good News” with friends and family.  According to Garrison, most of this growth is occurring in Latin America, Africa and Asia. There is no evidence to date of this phenomenon occurring in the West. As an Australian I am envious. Why can’t this happen in my land? Garrison and Ed Stetzer write that two...

Thank you to the original author of this article Julia Kate Swodeck for giving us permission to use her post. First off, I love and appreciate Rick Warren.  I have been to his church on several occasions, read The Purpose Driven Life, and even defended his choice of Hawaiian shirts & khakis, but when it comes to Twitter I just can’t bring myself to click the Follow button.  He is just one of the many christian influencers of our time that consistently unsocialize the social media.  “How’s that?” you say.  It’s quite simple actually… according to Twitter, Twitter may be used for any number of purposes,...

Today has been an emotional day and it’s only 9.15 in the morning. I’ve just finished reading an article written by my wife regarding the terrible start in life our son Zeke had. I’ve also been keeping up with the saga of someone who’s been ripped off in an online transaction (read about it here, but be warned, there is some bad language). I recognise millions of people have so much more to contend with than I do and lately just about any story of powerlessness or injustice makes me think of  ‘fairness’ or more importantly the lack of fairness in the world today. I can’t even watch a simple...

Almost every week I get an email from some Christian organisation asking me to sign a petition regarding something ‘bad’ on the internet. Every second day I see another news headline talking about the dangers of facebook. A recent news headline in Australia has been about defacement of a young schoolboy’s tribute page with disgusting porn images. Last week I saw another story about a teenage girl being lured by two men to her death through her facebook page. All this talk about facebook and yet not much about myspace. (By the way, myspace isn’t exactly a field of daisies either. “Lowlights” include video images of...

When I am riding my motorbike and going fast I posture my body differently. For example if I am breaking for a right hand corner I would for a brief moment transfer my weight on the left hand foot peg, move my entire body over to the right so I am no longer sitting on the seat, I will then point my right knee into the direction I want to turn, the weight is then shifted back now to the right foot peg. The way my body is postured determines the direction in which I travel. The more weight I transfer to the inside of the bike, that is the right hand side of the bike going around a right hand corner, the less the bike will have to lean over....

The movement of God in India – one man’s remarkable story One day, he was a professional young chemist living in an upper-middle class family in India; the next he was called by God to a life of servant hood and found himself living on the streets with no income and only some Bible tracts and a backpack to his name. That was 35 years ago. Today, Pastor R. Abraham is a spiritual father to many in India and has an influential relationship with Government leaders. He heads up the church planting movement of the New India Church of God, and is leading them towards the vision of planting 3000 churches in India and Nepal by 2010. So far, 2150...

The noise is getting louder each day! The boisterous opponents of the Church are becoming increasingly vocal: ‘All the Church wants is money!’ ‘Fanatics like them cause wars!’ ‘Bunch of hypocrites!’ ‘They don’t know how to have fun! ‘The Church has no place in politics/schools/the media’ Every day the opportunity for Aussies to hear about belonging to a community of God becomes more remote. Every day Mr/Ms Average Australia sees less need to go to Church. And more often than not, the wider Church body has one response: Silence. Do you hear it? In many Churches it’s deafening....

My two favorite subjects at College were ‘theology’ and ‘Church history’, because I love to see the outworking of the theology of the time. The Reformation saw the Church being ‘born again’ or ‘saved’ from the dark ages through the restored message of justification by faith, according to scholar Jack Hayford. The doctrine of salvation was rediscovered. Hayford believes the 20th century was the ‘century of the Holy Spirit’, and says this century birthed the reformation of ‘ecclesiology’ the doctrine of the Church. 100 years from now, what will Church history say about...