Entries from November 2007 ↓

It is obviously looking like Labor are heading for a crushing win next weekend, and howard’s biggest problem is probably just holding his own seat.

But, the reality is that the general vote doesn’t count quite as much as the seat by seat situation, which might make things closer than the polling suggests.

Our area is an interesting story of neglect as a safe Labor seat. It is massively under-resourced in just about every way, and some of the issues with health services, etc, are a joke. But, being a safe seat has just meant we’ve been taken for granted. So much so, our “representative” didn’t even live in our area. Beasley lived in South Perth, which couldn’t be more different to Rockingham if you tried. (I have very strong views about this whole “out of towner” thing – imagine if I as a pastor lived in South Perth but ministered in Rockingham? That’s not real or right, I don’t think.)

But, the good news is that each election has seen the seat slowly become less and less “safe”, and this election will be fascinating. Labor has chucked another old party hack from out of town into our electorate, whereas the Libs have a local guy running who lives in the area and has given himself to a number of key community projects, and has been seen to extract federal funding and support for some of these efforts. The other guy? Well, we don’t know him and he has a funny name! :-)

So, my personal hope is that our seat either flips or goes right on the line so that we’re no longer just ignored and taken for granted. In my view, this would be perfect for our area. What a difference that would make.

Ok, generally, I think the Pope is an ok guy, and he’s obviously got a reasonably tough job running the Catholic Church. I have a little Irish catholic juice running in me, so ok…

But, I can’t get my head around the fact that taxpayers are going to be funding his visit and the World Youth Day event to the tune of $95 million! Who else gets to put on an event and get that kind government grant?! Freak me out!! I think this a huge rip off.

The Catholic Church is one of the world’s wealthiest institutions (regardless of their denials and lack of control over some of their resources), so I don’t get why taxpayers have to fund their event?!

I wonder whether I can get some similar funding for my ministry visits to Sydney? $1m will be fine – I’m not greedy….

said goodnight last night for the last time to a 7 year old, and woke up this morning to my baby girl being 8 years old. starting to feel old. i now have a 15 year old pushing 6 foot who bumps me around and can actually hurt me now (please don’t tell him this), and my littlest one is 8 – wow!

it was actually pretty funny this morning. i got up to find becca sitting at the kitchen bench having breakfast with a handwritten, multi-coloured todo list for herself, indicating that item #4 was “open presents”… :-)

another great book i’ve been recommending widely is andy stanley’s “communicating for a change” (click on the panel to the right for more info).

i personally think that andy stanley is an excellent communicator, so i was very interested to have a look at what he had to say about it all in this short text. it starts out with a bit of a parable (which seems to be a pretty contemporary format at the moment), but the parable is actually quite good and doesn’t come across too cheesy. after that, he unpacks his approach to the preaching task, and i think it is probably one of the most helpful books i have read in recent times in helping the budding preacher to prepare for connecting with the contemporary congregation. i don’t think this book is only good for guys and gals standing in front of big churches – i’ve used the same principles in small groups and other communication spaces, so i think it is generally applicable.

times have changed, people have changed, and preaching must change if it is to connect with real people and their real lives. i’m using this text as the basis for coaching the preachers i have on my team, and one of the nice things is that it kind of gives you a common language to talk about preaching that is sometimes lacking when everyone is just doing their own thing. and let’s face it, some people need a bit of help, but unfortunately most preachers will never get it because they’re afraid of feedback. so, we’re trying to do a better job of coaching and growing the communicators at warnbro.

some of the older texts on preaching are still centred around 3 point sermons with nice roman numeralled outlines, and i personally just don’t believe that stuff has much future to it as a style of communicating live. so, i recommend this book to you without reservation. if you find yourself in a position of communicating, whether it be to a church, small group, or some other gathering, i’ll be very surprised if you don’t find this text very helpful, even if you don’t agree with all of it.

and, as a bonus, given that andy is a fellow dallas seminary alumnus, he gives some nice helpful hints on preaching without notes, which is also one of the strongest pieces of advice i constantly encourage young preachers to grow in.

Started at 8.30am and finished at 7.15pm, with pretty much the entire day a blur of projects and meetings. All in all, it was a fruitful day.

Nic and I enjoyed some relax time watching Heroes, which is quite addictive. I’m currently preaching a series themed along Heroes, so it was all for research purposes… :-)

Still trying to figure out the best way to moblog from my Blackberry.

Feel free to ignore and delete. :-)

i often say to young leaders that one of the biggest challenges for leaders in churches is to deal with the hard stuff.  it may be the same in most leadership environments, but the church is a particularly tough place to deal with the tough stuff because of the interesting relational space that it is, and because it is far, far easier just to sweep stuff under the carpet and ignore it.  almost every time, that’s a massive mistake because most bad things don’t just go away – they tend to simmer and brood into even bigger bad things.

a few months ago i had to have a tough conversation with some folks.  the kind of conversation that it would just be a lot easier to not have.  but, i knew it was what needed to happen, so i prayed a lot and just did it, knowing full well that the consequences of that conversation could be quite difficult for us all.  some big things happened as a result of that chat, bigger than what i had imagined.  i waited to see how things would pan out long term, confident that i had done the right thing, but not enjoying the obvious pain that had come about because of that confrontation.

this weekend i received a note from one of the people thanking me for having done what i did.  they knew that things needed to be dealt with, but they hadn’t had the courage to do it themselves.  in the weirdest way, they had actually hoped and trusted that i would do the unthinkable (in their mind, anyways) and say the things that needed to be said in the situation.  wow!  i had no idea about that at the time, and i’m so glad that i was faithful to the Lord in the way i handled this.  i shudder to think what might have happened if i’d chickened out and let them and myself and God down.

andy stanley once made the comment that leadership is about courage.  he’s probably not the first to say that, but those of us in ministry, it’s 100% true.  we need to be courageous to stand for what is right and true, deal with the tough stuff and the hard things…  that’s the kind of leadership that makes a difference.

we have had, i’m told, a 6 metre great white shark trawling the local beaches. that, by anyone’s standards, is a reasonable size set of teeth. i once was fishing up north off the coast with my dad and we had a 3 metre tiger shark tagging along our boat, and that’s plenty big enough.

anyways, thought this was a funny line…

“There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.”
- L. M. Boyd

just got another plug in the email for a conference featuring a particular speaker who i know is regarded as a bit of a legend, but who in reality (in my view) has a track record which largely comprises of a number of splendid failures.  but, he’s published a few books and is apparently an expert…  hmmmm….  the blind leading the blind.

would *you* take driving lessons from someone who had crashed a car every time they drove?  :-)

“Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimetre bullet.”
- Dave Barry

i once asked a mate why the metric system didn’t take off in the US, and his answer was that in the kingdom of capitalism, it was purely about the money, not about logic.  just to change the road signs alone would cost billions, so he figured that the economics killed it, regardless of the eccentricities of the imperial system.  funny enough, though, NASA uses metric…