Romans Wordle from http://gospeldelta.com/tag/romans/

Guess it’s not about me after all?

Gospel Delta have created this telling wordle of Romans.

I’m looking forward to preaching Romans in 2010.

Here’s a wordle I did for 1 Corinthians 13:

stig nygaard flickr

Carols in the courtyard may need a portable p.a. ….

…which we don’t have.

Can you help? Any loans/tips/leads/suggestions/voice coaches if we can’t get one.

Won’t have time to buy this week but any tips will be gratefully filed & considered later.

Anyone else see a rememblance?

If you’re in Bradfield, why not come to Barneys tomorrow & vote (scroll down for details)

A while back I asked if people were interested in reading Trellis & the Vine.Problem was the boat carrying them went missing somewhere in the South Pacific.

Matthias Media now have them in stock. Visit their funky new website. Buy for yourself. Buy for a friend for Christmas. I’ve bought a copy for everyone on Parish Council.

Then post January, I’ll put up a reading program here & we can read together.

The claim is – ‘the ministry mind shift that changes everything.’

Mark Dever likes it:

this is the best book I’ve ever read on the nature of Christian Ministry

Need to know more? Visit the Vinegrowers website

RaeA flickr

1. Talk longer than people listen
2. Read from full script
3. Don’t speak to the world of those who listen
4. Don’t aim for transformation of self and hearers by the renewing of your mind
5. Steal from the  Piper/Driscoll/Carson/Keller mp3 on the passage
6. Start your prep on Friday
7. Don’t listen (let alone watch) yourself afterwards because ‘you don’t like the sound of your own voice when its recorded’
8. Don’t ask people to open their bibles or refer them to the text
9. Work hard on making your illustrations the most engaging part of the sermon
10. Insert “Application = go & evangelize more OR feel guilty about ‘X’ “

I think I could get to about 30 without breaking a sweat. Help me – what makes someone a dull preacher?

Cowboy moustache from a4gpa flickr

Moustaches have taken over the Parish. Is it just me or has Sydney gone Movember crazy? I can’t move without tripping over a moustache. Some truly horrible facial hair is being grown for a great cause.

The Movember website says:

Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men’s health issues, specifically prostate cancer and depression in men.

Mo Bros, supported by their Mo Sistas, start Movember (November 1st) clean shaven and then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache. During Movember, each Mo Bro effectively becomes a walking billboard for men’s health and, via their Mo, raises essential funds and awareness for Movember’s men’s health partners – The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue – the national depression initiative. At the end of Movember, a series of Gala Partés are held to thank Mo Bros and Sistas for their support and fund raising efforts.

The idea for Movember came about in 2003 when a few mates were having a beer in a small bar in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Inspired by the women’s health movement, it was recognized that men were lacking a way to engage and actively involve themselves in their own health. During a conversation about fashion and past trends, the idea came up to bring the moustache back for one month, and in doing so, have some fun, raise a small amount of money and hopefully encourage men to talk about their health with each other.

Since this time, Movember has continued to grow each year, both in terms of participation numbers and funds raised. In its first year, 30 Mo Bros took part in Movember and last year, in Australia alone, 125,000 Mo Bro & Sistas got on board, raising more than $8million for each of Movember’s men’s health partners.

Why does this cultural phenomena work so well?

1. Movember is a brilliant piece of cultural creation. There are other charity days and months but this was something new that didn’t exist before. Those few mates in the Fitzroy pub found a way to do what seemed impossible – involve men in raising the profile of mens health issues
2. Movember is simple, easily explained, limited in time commitment, and able to grow. It has made good use of technology, media and social media.
3. It deals with something deadly serious in a fun and engaging blokey and competitive way. Earnest lectures on prostate cancer would never have achieved the same result.

I’ve been noticing pieces of cultural creation like Movember since reading Andy Crouch’s very stimulating Culture Making: Recovering Our Christian Calling. He reckons Christians typically aren’t good at making culture:

I wonder what we Christians are known for in the world outside our churches? Are we known as critics, consumers, copiers, condemners of culture? I’m afraid so. Why aren’t we known as cultivators – people who tend and nourish what is best in human culture, who do the hard and painstaking work to preserve the best of what people before us have done? Why aren’t we known as creators – people who dare to think and to do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful? …People who consider themselves as stewards of culture – guardians of what is best in aneighbourhood, an institution or a field of cultural practice – gain the respect of their peers. Even more so, those who go beyond being mere custodians to creating new cultural goods are the ones who have the world’s attention. Indeed, those who have cultivated and created are precisely the ones who have the legitimacy to condemn, whose denunications, rare and carefully chosen, carry outsize weight. (p97-98)

As our churches try to not just grow – but to turn outwards, the issue of cultural engagement is a pressing one. How is it that we will eat, shop, build, travel, do family and school? As we face these and a thousand other issues – how do we relate to the culture? Crouch’s book may well chart a new course in his argument that we can be makers of culture.

Not everyone will create a Movember. But we must all make something of this world God has placed us in.

This post is also published at Sydneyanglicans.net. You might want to leave any comments there.

A Sunday in Hell is a 1977 Danish documentary that tells the story of the 1976 Paris Roubaix cyclying race. Paris Roubaix is one of the classic one day races – often known as ‘the hell of the north’ because of its long section of pave cobblestone surface. The closest you get to cobblestones in Australia are some of the massive pedestrian areas around Homebush stadium – no real comparison.

I’ve wanted to see it for a while & Deborah managed to borrow it from the newly opened Castle Cove library.

No sonner had we got it home than our soon to be 7 year old asked, ‘Where is hell?’ We had a good talk about hell and one of the things I said was how silly it was to talk about a bike race as hell.

I get how ‘hell’ is used in popular culture and wouldn’t be suggesting the film should be renamed or anything like that. But Christians need to watch their tongues when it comes to using the word.  Everytime we use it flippantly it devalues the currency of the vocabulary we do need to use when we have to talk about it seriously.

We’re having a Bittersweet chocolate night at church. Dr Hugh is a food scientist with a PhD in chocolate, Deborah is a long time lover of chocolate. Don’t think they’ll be doing a Tom Waits cover – don’t think anyone could do a Tom Waits cover.

Here are the lyrics:

Don’t go to church on Sunday
Don’t get on my knees to pray
Don’t memorize the books of the Bible
I got my own special way
I know Jesus loves me
Maybe just a little bit more
I fall down on my knees every Sunday
At Zerelda Lee’s candy store
Well it’s got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied
Well I don’t want no Abba Zabba
Don’t want no Almond Joy
There ain’t nothing better
Suitable for this boy
Well it’s the only thing
That can pick me up
Better than a cup of gold
See only a chocolate Jesus
Can satisfy my soul
(Solo)
When the weather gets rough
And it’s whiskey in the shade
It’s best to wrap your savior
Up in cellophane
He flows like the big muddy
But that’s ok
Pour him over ice cream
For a nice parfait
Well it’s got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me
Well it’s got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied

thoughts?

From today’s SMH letters:

When in church, stick to the script

I am sure millions of Australians would agree with Dorothy McRae-McMahon that Joe Hockey’s god seems much more palatable than Phillip Jensen’s (Letters, November 16).

Mr Hockey is free to express his views on faith and Jesus. But where they differ from the Jesus that is found in the Bible, Mr Jensen is right to point this out.

Disagreeing with Mr Hockey does not imply disrespect, and Mr Jensen commends him for raising issues of faith. However, it is the job of the Christian minister to faithfully teach the message of the Bible and help others to shape their views according to its revelation – not to affirm that all views are right.

Mr Jensen rightly points out that Christianity stands or falls on the person of Jesus and his sin-bearing death. Ms McRae-McMahon says truth “will always be beyond human knowledge”. This is why in my own spiritual explorations I left her denomination and joined Mr Jensen’s.

Deborah Kellahan Castle Cove

There goes that invitation to the World Council of Churches. I’ve written to the SMH but never been published. Deborah gets in first time. Go figure.

Image from NE Michigan Reformation Society

I’m speaking at City Bible Forum next Thursday – a one off talk on Christmas. Gives me a chance to work up something for the December Christmas talks here. But I’ve been doing what I do every November/December – having second thoughts about Christmas. It just seems so all consuming. Family, work, church – suddenly everything revolves around the Christmas season.

At a church level, most churches would have preaching programs and kids ministry that spends December each year doing Christmas. Plenty of evangelism is tied around it as well – from Gingerbread to Carols to Christmas Eve & Day services.

Why? Why make such a big deal of it? Yes, it is big in the culture and you can ‘trade off’ that. Yes, the kids love Christmas and its better that they hear about Jesus than Santa. Yes, we do have people that will only come on Christmas so they should hear about Jesus. Is this kind of thinking strategic and missional or is it just pragmatic.

The puritans tried (but largely failed) to ban Christmas. Andreas Kostenburger has a great article here on it where he asks this question:

how can Christians in one age seek to outlaw Christmas and in another champion the cause of celebrating Christmas?

Why didn’t Puritans like Christmas?

1. they couldn’t find it in the Bible & if you follow the regulative principle then why would you set it up?
2. there were those nasty associations with pagan midwinter festivals and Roman Catholic masses
3. it led to debauchery

I’m no believer in the regulative principle BUT Jesus never said ‘remember my birthday’. Instead he said remember my death – we even get a date for it! Surely something is out of whack when so much is made of his birth compared to his death. We of all people should be talking up Easter and making it a much bigger deal in our churches and families. Right?

Attempts to ban Christmas were seen as rather Scroogeish and led to riots and protests. But you have to admire the way they acted on their convictions.

So I don’t think we should ban Christmas. What will your family do though? and your church? Will you just get swept along by the season or will you do Christmas differently?

What if your local church had a sign up saying ‘Christmas cancelled this year – enjoy the day with your family and friends, join us next Sunday instead and hear about a Jesus worth worshipping every day of the year’

What do you reckon? What crazy reforms would you bring to Christmas?