Bushfires on Lake!!

Veronica and I slipped down to Victoria during the week – our passports were up to date – to catch up with my mum in Ballarat for a brief visit. While there I came across one of the more interesting headlines of recent times: ‘BUSHFIRE IN LAKE WENDOUREE!’ Now, Lake Wendouree, along with the adjacent Ballarat Botanic Gardens is one of the major tourist attractions of the city. It was the site of the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games Rowing but after years of drought, it is now completely dry; the first time in 60 years, and the reeds and grass have become a fire hazard. In fact during the week the lake flared up on two more occasions during Victoria’s blistering heat.

With my decision to back away from regular involvement with our Go M.A.D. activities this year I was asked by someone recently as to what I might be doing with the extra hours in my week. A good and perfectly reasonable question and it has caused me to be even more focused in seeking to hear a word from God in recent days.

One of the things that is becoming increasingly clear to me is the need to build a stronger spiritual base across our congregation. It is hard to build something big and strong if the foundations are shaky. Jesus may have had similar thoughts at times as we find in Matthew 7:24-27: ‘The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall.’ We are a very exciting congregation to be a part of and our open, courageous and friendly manner has allowed us to build a great network across our community. We are excellent at doing stuff; but I want to help take us somewhere deeper.

I like the part in the Book of Acts as the early church wrestled with an emerging church that was vastly different to the way that they might have guessed – ‘For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials.’

It excites me that we have several people among us who are eager to go deeper in their faith and to discover what it means to walk with Jesus. So, a major focus for me in 2009 is to assist up close and personal as many who might want to make this journey as possible. I want to offer people greater opportunity for prayer and more space and time for worship.

Those of you who have been around in January and / or have kept up with a couple of my notes will know that I am presently very proactive in the ‘being’ part of my life; yes, even to the cost of my doing. One of the key things that I have learned from wise mentors over the years is that you can’t take people where you haven’t been yourself and I am already enjoying my new role, even as it has barely begun. I have managed to slow myself down and am enjoying the scenery!

I have seen too many over a long period now who have appeared to prosper and grow, only to find that in fact they were like that lake in Ballarat; bone dry and susceptible to bushfire and burnout. I know because I have been one of those fires and appreciated the spiritual hosing that I received from a great mentor only a few years ago. Without that life saving intervention I am not sure that I would be in ministry today.

Psalm 127:1 says, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.’ I want to be a part of building a great faith community in this district and I want to do it because it is God’s idea and not mine. Call me naïve but that is my hope and dream. Part of that hope is to build a legacy for of faith, grace, hope and love for generations to come and there is no better time to start than right now.

Cheers - John

So this is 2009?!

My first contribution for the year and I find myself wondering how to go about kicking off another 12 month journey.

Firstly I guess I need to say that while breaking things into bite size chunks – days, months, and years - allows us to keep life in some kind of perspective, it is a very limiting way of viewing things and perhaps we need to change our perspective? There always seems to be a goal to reach or a line to be crossed and of course this is true. However, for me these artificial lines are all about the ‘doing’ part of our lives and has very little to do with our BEING. For us to nurture a more ontological (go on, look it up) way of viewing life then we have to look beyond human chronology. That’s two ‘ology’s’ in one paragraph! See what a slower lifestyle can do for you?

The church also is ruled by days, months and years; but there is more to it than that. Or at least there should be. John Howard Yoder once said: ‘The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principles for reforming or even revolutionising society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embody forgiveness, sharing and self sacrificing love in its ritual and discipline. In that sense, the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message; but to be the message.’

Humankind is designed for worship. We love on a human level and yet regularly sense that there must be more; something, higher, wider, deeper and stronger that we sense and often yearn for, even occasionally stumbling across a clue. Lots of people boast that they are not religious. We are all religious. We all worship something. It can be power, possessions, money, popularity, people, organisations, or failing any of those, it can be the person we look at every morning in the mirror.

As boundaries increasingly contract, the church is one that is encouraged to expand. Against the odds and a growing culture of fear, the church is ordered to love foolishly and extravagantly. As the world continually defines our enemies for us the church is called to love them!

We enter a New Year that is one of the most unknown of modern times. The economic downturn will continue to bite and many things previously considered safe as the bank, are now feeling the creak of unstable foundations, including those banks! That which was sure is no longer assured and the unthinkable becomes possible.

I ask myself, ‘from where will hope come this year?’ That which is breaking down is too focused on survival to be of any use. Politicians now seem to have a haunted look in their eyes as their ‘spin’ is now spinning out of control. Church leaders moralising from ivory towers are at best ignored and at worst scoffed at as being out of touch and irrelevant. We of course have people who are convinced that this is the ‘real’ world and can give a perfectly rational explanation of our demise, and why there can be no God, to anyone who cares to listen. I have a hunch that their audience is rapidly shrinking?

So what is left? Maybe it will come down to local groups of people who are foolishly committed to each other, recklessly committed to love and serve others and deeply committed to growing closer and deeper in relationship with God. I think they call that a local church congregation. A faith community that will not be diverted by the colour of the flowers, a crying baby, hymns, choruses, chants or silence, a poor performance by the preacher or the brand of coffee. I’ll sign on again for that!

Cheers - John

The guest of sinners

Happy New Year to those who stumble across my blogging!

January is a good time of year for reflection, prayer and consideration of what the future might look like. Too much forward planing is of course fraught with danger as God as a way of changing our minds.

We all have favourite stories. In my increasing age I am enjoying more than ever before some of the children's classics such as the writings of A. A. Milne and Kennethe Grahame. Who would have thought that Winnie the Pooh could teach me so much!

However, my favourite Biblical story is probably Jesus' meeting with Zacchaeus in Luke 19. The firts thing that has always stimulated my thinking is that we always presume that Zacchaeus was the little guy. Whenever I read it I cannot get out of my head the distinct possibility that perhaps Jesus was the one vertically challenged?

'He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not,
because he was short in stature.'
Luke 19:3

I'm sorry if this rattles our picture of Jesus being this tall handsome man; but I am still not convinced as to who the short guy was.

Putting that little furphy aside for a moment, this week as I have found time to reflect on the coming year and what it might hold, a most important line has haunted me.

"He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Luke 19:7

Jesus did that a lot you know. He seemed to have this desire to hang out with people that the average church might not feel all that comfortable with. Just this morning I was called by the local hospital to spend time with a family who had just lost their husband and father through a sudden death. They struck me as battlers, good honest battlers, who had just had their world torn apart. It was good to share hope in that tiny room with a grieving family. Jesus was comfortable in that sort of company.

In our Luke story the precursor to the above quote was 'All who saw it began to grumble..' Who were the grumblers? My guess is that they were the 'righteous'; the ones whose passports were already stamped for heaven and were a bit choosy about who might join them.

It must have really stirred them up when Jesus announced that this lousy filthy sinner Zaccheaus - not just any Tax Collector but a chief one - was also a son of Abraham!!

Who the heck does this Jesus think he is letting just anybody into the kingdom. Heavens above, the next thing we know he will be inviting people like me in there!

As we move into 2009 I am more convinced than ever that my call is to make sure that the church remembers the Jesus they follow spent a great deal of time with the people we might reject. He enjoyed a party so much that in some circles he was known as a 'glutton and a drunkard'.

Jesus was born under rather dodgey circumstances despite our pretty carols. His ministry only lasted three years and in that time he brought freedom to the captives, healing for sick and hope for the helpless. At the end of his life he was crucified alongside two criminals. Hardly the ending that Disney Studios would approve of. The only people that he really managed to tick off on a regular basis were the religious of the day.

He enjoyed being the guest of sinners and he was killed for it!!??

I hope that in some small way my ministry might reflect this truth in 2009.

Cheers - John