Here is Part Two of my series on the centrality of the cross. Part One is here

Ok. So the cross is central, someone might say, but if you keep mentioning the Cross all the time, what’s to stop it becoming formulaic and just the magic words to keep a service orthodox? Isn't mentioning the cross just religion?

The truth is that anything you want to keep as a defining principle or event, can be mentioned only out of compulsion, or habit but it is not inevitable. I think the trick is to keep asking throughout the life of the church “How does the cross impact on this?” In major times of teaching we must be clearly showing how the cross makes a difference. Let me show you how this works for three different topics, dealing with evil, relating to people of other faiths and responding to the poor.

The Cross and Responding to Evil

In this world we are constantly faced with the reality of evil. We are confronted with war and terrorism on a global scale, violence, rape and neglect in our communities and anger, hurt and abuse in our own lives. The church, if it is truly going to engage with world needs to know how to respond to evil.

Biblically the church will be calling its people to a ministry of reconciliation, of love for enemies and forgiveness. It will also hold firmly to the principle of justice and the fight against evil.

When the church teaches these things without the cross then it either becomes too hard, too soft or the preacher of two irreconcilable ideals.

If the church preaches forgiveness and love without the cross then evil becomes tolerated and the victim’s suffering gets dismissed. Forgiveness comes free and costs nothing. The suffering victim is told to love their enemy and forgive because that’s what Christ taught we should do. The evil doer escapes punishment and the victim must carry the burden of someone else’s sin.

Any justice achieved now will be unsatisfactory. How do you make a people group adequately pay for the acts of genocide they committed against their neighbours? How do you make the rapist adequately pay for violence they committed against someone created in God’s image? How do you make the mother who neglects and verbally abuses her children adequately pay for all the pain they inflict and the future damage they cause? You don’t because you can’t. We are a church that worships a holy God who hates sin. This means that no punishment and vengeance dolled out by earthly authorities will ever make up for the sins committed.

The end point in the fight against evil must be the destruction of the source of evil. If a church preaches justice and the fight against evil without the cross it must fight a battle that it cannot win with a God who is uninvolved. The reality is that all of us are participants in evil, and if we pursue evil to its end, we will pursue it not to the ends of the earth, but to the centre of our hearts. If we are to destroy evil, we must destroy others and we must destroy ourselves. If we were ever to whole-heartedly fight evil outside of the cross we too would just join in the cycle of violence.

In the history of the Church whenever it has been in charge of the state it has almost without fail ended up punishing sin with an iron fist.* Death for the adulterer, the homosexual, the witch and the disobedient child. And in the churches’ pursuit of justice it becomes the committer of evil.

Yet when we face evil in the light of the cross we see a God who hates sin, who punishes sin, who never trivialises suffering, who puts the wicked to death and gives life to the righteous.

At the cross Jesus takes all the wrath of his father heaped upon him. He, the sinless one, has the sins of humanity placed upon him. There on the cross, beaten and naked, he goes through hell and we see just how much God hates sin, that he would kill even his own Son.

He does this so that through him God would be able to forgive the wicked. Here at the cross we see God’s justice as he punishes evil, rebellion and sin. And we see God’s mercy upon the sinner as he offers his grace and forgiveness.

So when the church preaches forgiveness and reconciliation to the victim in light of the cross it does so knowing that God has already forgiven us. We are all perpetrators of evil and the one who we have done evil to, first and foremost, is God. Yet God forgives us and takes all the wrath we deserve upon himself.

When we call on each other to forgive those who sin against us, we do so in the knowledge that God has already forgiven us. But not only that, one way or another, the sin that has been committed against the victim will be dealt with. Either God has punished it at the cross or he will punish it at the end of time. No evil escapes the hand of God. Justice will be done.

At the cross we see how seriously God takes evil. He doesn’t trivialise suffering but shows that it is so serious that only the life of his beloved Son will pay for it. Jesus takes the wicked, gives them a new heart and a righteousness that is his own. The destruction of wickedness need not mean the destruction of the wicked if it is Christ who makes them righteous. Or to put it another way the wicked person is put to death, as they die to sin, and are born again, a new creation in Christ.

The cross shows us our King who is not dead but will one day come to right the world. What he began on the cross he will finish on that last day. The wicked will be judged and the righteous will be vindicated. Judgement will come and it will be great and terrible just as it was at the cross, yet no more will the innocent suffer for sins they did not commit. We will celebrate because we know that the right response to evil is the wrath of a righteous God.

The church can rest assured. The churches’ fight against evil and for justice can march on knowing that the true judge of the world has come and is coming again. The church fights knowing that we do not, and the systems of this world do not, need to be the final reckoning for sin. When we strive for justice we know that because Jesus is taking care of punishment we must strive for fairness and equality; More than that, we strive for love. As the cross shows us love, love becomes our modus operandi. Because of the example and power of the cross we see that our greatest weapon against injustice is love, and we work so that all people might be changed by love, ultimately to have their evil nature put to death, and to be given new life in Christ. Only that power comes through the cross.

When the church centres it’s response to evil in the cross it finds a response that is more compassionate to the sinner and to those who have been sinned against than could be imagined and harder on evil than is thought possible.


The Cross and Interacting with Other Religions

In Australia we are blessed to live in a multicultural society. This means that one of the great challenges to the church in our country will be how we interact with other faiths.

This is even more important given that we, the people of earth, have a history of fighting over religion more than anything else.

For the church to engage in fruitful dialogue with people of other faiths it must hold the cross at the centre of its thinking and its speaking because the cross gives Christianity it’s greatest distinctive, it clearly sets us apart from every other faith.

Often interfaith dialogue seeks to show the similarities between multiple faiths and find areas of commonality so as to build mutual respect because “we are just like you.” This can end up with people praying to the same God, in the same religious services, under the ridiculous notion that all roads lead to the same God. We flush out all the distinctives in an effort to forge better relations with other faiths.

Unfortunately this insults all involved. Dialogue is vitally important, but dialogue never has to mean acquiescing vital tenets of faith in the name of tolerance.

When the church talks to and about other faiths, it must keep the cross front and centre, otherwise how will we know who we are, and how will they know who we are?

No other religion has a God who is so foolish as to let himself be killed by those who he created. No other faith solves the problem of the human heart purely through divine initiative. No other God has saved its people purely out of his own goodness and through no merit of the people.

This being the case the cross gives the Christian, no right to boast. Knowing that salvation comes only through the death and resurrection of a loving God rather than our own goodness, means that we cannot in any way look down upon people of other faiths. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is not that the Christian is smarter, better, more special or more moral. The difference is only Jesus, and the faith that he gives.

So as we relate to those of other faiths, the cross will lead us to love them because, just like us, they too need Jesus. As Luther (or someone) said “We are all mere beggars trying to show other beggars where to find bread.” The cross will lead us not to acquiesce the uniqueness of our faith in the spirit of unity and tolerance but to humbly share with people of other faiths a vision of a God of ultimate love and ultimate mercy. Then they will see Christianity clearly, and true inter-faith dialogue can happen. But until we embrace the cross we insult our God who died for us because we hide away his greatest act of love, because of it’s offensive nature, and we insult those we speak to about our faith, because we think they cannot handle the most distinctive part of our faith.


The Cross and the Poor

People will often feel the church should be focusing on sharing Jesus’ love through deeds of justice and mercy. The church has a responsibility to be loving the poor and marginalised. If the church is to stay true to its mission we will be loving the poor.

This emphasis can be seen as being in tension with preaching the cross. We can spend our time in church talking about Jesus or we can spend our time in the community loving like Jesus. It’s a choice between words and actions. If you follow this thinking to its most extreme the only time we should be talking about Jesus we should be talking about him in relation to how we care for the poor.

But the truth is that the best and true motivation for our love for the poor has to come out of the cross. A proper understanding of the cross has to lead to a changed response to the poor.

Without the cross our care for the poor and marginalised becomes about obeying the rules set forth by our teacher, it becomes an exercise in changing our hearts through our actions. The more we love the poor, the more we will be conformed to the likeness of Jesus, and our hearts will be changed and the more we will love the poor. The more we achieve this, the more we will be living in the will of Christ and worthy of his love and honour. It’s a religion of work with ourselves at the centre. We are at the centre because we try and please God with our own goodness and adherence to his values. We are at the centre because we are doing the work that changes our hearts, and hoping this will please God.

But the cross turns that on its head. The cross says that for our sake Christ became poor (2 Cor 8:9). He came, the most rich becoming the most poor. And he poured himself out for a wretched and sinful people, saving them from their own self-imposed, spiritual poverty, making them children of God and giving them, in himself, every spiritual blessing.

The cross shows us a God who has saved us in the greatest act of generosity ever to brighten the universe. Our life comes from a God who has saved us out of his heart, a heart inclined towards the undeserving poor.

Christ has risen to new life giving us a new heart and his power through the Holy Spirit.

We now have a responsibility to be loving the poor and marginalised because we know that we are the recipients of Christ’s love when we were poor. We know that we are only who we are because God had mercy on us when we had nothing.

As a result we live out the teachings of Christ not to change our hearts, or to please our Lord, but because he has given us a new heart and through the power of his Spirit he changes us to be like him and live out his love. We love because we have been loved and received his love. We love the poor out of grace. We love the poor who are undeserving because we are undeserving. We reach out to the lowest, seek out the most lost and go into the places that are darkest because he came searching for us when we were lower, more lost and in greater darkness, and now he empowers us to search and love like him.

Any church that spends all its time talking about the cross but does not see justice and mercy as an outworking of the cross hasn’t really understood the cross. And any church that forgets the cross when talking about the need for loving the poor and marginalised has forgotten where the true locus of power lies in Christianity.



So there are three ways where the cross is played out in giving meaning to the everyday issues Christians face. Jesus Christ, known and preached as our Lord who came, lived, died and rose again for us, must be at the centre of all we do. Without him and his saving work done at the cross through his death and resurrection, we are to be pitied more than all people. I’ll let John Stott bring it home: “To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralysing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.”


* I haven’t actually done my research and looked up every time the there has been a Christian theocracy in the past two millennia and examined their penal system. But I can think of plenty of examples of the Church gone feral when given the reigns to power.

I preached on singleness in church the other night. I'll upload the sermon soon. Maybe nowish. But here is the video I showed at the beginning of the sermon. I realised I left off my phone number. Oops.

Enjoy.



Update: The sermon is now available here on my preaching blog.

Today I told a chapel of about 200 year 5-8 students about the Bieber experience. It was difficult.

I originally had an illustration about unrequited love (surprise, surprise) but realised that probably the year 5 kids wouldn't really connect with it (it's difficult to like a girl for 4 years when you would have had to start your crush when you were 6). So I decided to tell them all about watching Bieber and crying. It was a risky move. I thought I might win friends with my self-depreciating humour. I think however, I may have just made myself look dumb. Except for the girls who loved Bieber. Maybe today they really heard the gospel for the first time because cried in his movie. Maybe now there's one less lonely girl, cause she found her saviour.

Or maybe I just looked strange.

I was shooting for authentic.

Oh well.

So over the next few weeks, among other things, I've decided to spend time thinking about women in ministry and what roles are open to women in the church. I've heard a lot of the arguments that are against female eldership in the church. I'm really keen to hear arguments for female eldership.

I know there are a bunch of you readers and friends who think women should be allowed to do everything. I really want to agree with you. I'm finding it difficult to justify biblically.

So convince me. If you use biblical arguments you'll be more convincing.

Right now, if I had to plant a church, I wouldn't have the highest levels of leadership open to women. Should I really rule out half the population?

I watched Machette. It was awesome.

That's all I need to say.

I was leaving for work this morning. And as I was walking out of the door I said to my father "Bye God." I can't remember what I was thinking about before that but I'm pretty sure it must have been God. Dad felt that I may have overestimated his role in my life.

Frued would have been pleased.

"The mechanic says, 'If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?'" - Chuck Palahniuk, "Fight Club"

I'm happy I both my dads are good. However one is better than the other and would certainly win in a fight.

“The modern world detests authority but worships relevance. Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance, and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ.” - John Stott


I heard today that John Stott died. It's sad news. John Stott was one of my heros. Over the last ten years I've loved reading his books and listening to his preaching. He has been probably my favourite writer, preacher and theologian since I was introduced to his work in early 2002.

It was reading Evangelical Truth before starting bible college that I realised there were other people who believed in Jesus the same way I did. What Stott described in the book described how I felt about faith. He spoke about a faith that loved Jesus and held firmly to the Bible. A faith that was real and vibrant and tied to God's personal revelation to us through his Son and his word. I read the book and felt like I had found home.

While I never met him, John Stott always struck me as a man who I would like to be like. By all accounts he was humble, gentle and caring. I heard a story once from someone who met him at a conference that at meal times he would only take small amounts. He did this because he knew there were people in the world who didn't have enough to eat, so he would not take more than he needed in solidarity with them.

He had a great heart for the poor and was so influential in the evangelical world in showing that biblical faith is faith that loves the poor and works for justice. He showed that you did not have to sacrifice orthodoxy for justice and mercy.

Most of all he loved Jesus, and that shone through in everything he he wrote and said. He loved to show us Jesus as he showed us his word.

He also loved birds.

I am very thankful for the life and ministry of John Stott. I'm sad that he's no longer here. I very happy for him that there is no where now he'd rather be.


Quote and photo from this blog.

I started writing this in February last year. It wasn't meant to be huge. Then it evolved into a monster and I didn't touch it for over a year. Still I didn't want all that typing to go to waste, and I still agree with myself. So I've touched it up a bit and here is part one of my two part series on the centrality of the cross.


When I made my Hillsong post a while ago I mentioned that I thought that it was important that the Cross is mentioned in every church service. In the comments, not one person agreed with me. While this sent me into an apoplectic rage in which I blocked the IP addresses of everyone who disagreed with me and then sent letter bombs to their houses, it also got me thinking about whether or not I was just being a superstitious legalist, as if saying a particular formula of words will make a church service orthodox and pleasing to God. I went to church the next Sunday watching to see if we mentioned the cross. Happily we sung about it, and the Pastor talked about it in his sermon.

But what if it hadn't been mentioned? Would I need to start wondering if my church was a church of heresy? Would I need to sit down with my Pastor and ask him to make sure the church was preaching Jesus?

After thinking about it for a while, I'm still of the view that the cross needs to be talked about and that it should be talked about every week.

I think perhaps what I said about needing to mention the cross in every service in the Hillsong post, needs elaboration. I reckon I need to elaborate for myself, if nothing else.

For starters I want to make clear that when I say the Cross, I mean the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's short hand for the historical event where Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who is God incarnate, was put to death through crucifixion on a Roman cross, only to be physically resurrected on the third day after his death.

This event was a universe shifting occurrence. It's through of this momentous act of God that he makes peace between humanity and himself, by taking the punishment for sin upon himself. And it is out of this act that God draws his children to himself, Christ wins a bride for himself, and the Church is born.

The question is, why do I feel like this needs to be mentioned in church every time we meet together? Is this a requirement of a good church, or just an ideal to be aimed for?

To put it as simply as possible, I think it is out of the Cross that the church finds its identity, and so it needs to be regularly talked about.

But, you might say, I find my identity in where I was born, who my family is, what has happened to me, who my friends are, what job I do, what hobbies I have, what pain I have had to endure, and more. It’s not like I have to mention this every day to remain being who I am. Why should the church have to talk about its defining event every time it meets to retain its identity? Whether you mention defining events or not, they are part of you, nothing will change that.

I guess the difference is between mere history and fact and what you actually value. For instance, the fact that I was once robbed in the street when I was younger, for years had an affect on how I felt in public, and it probably still, to some degree, has an affect on how I respond in situations where I feel threatened. It is an event that is part of who I am. But that said, it’s not an event that I feel particularly attached to, and it not one that I hold on to so it can keep forming who I am.

On the other hand, when I was 18 God called me into full time ministry to young people. This too is a defining event, it has changed the course of my life. Unlike being robbed however, I want this to keep defining who I am. As soon as I forget that call, I forget why I do what I do. When I doubt why I am where I am, and if I really should be living the life I am, I go back to that event and am reminded that “Yes” this is what God called me to. It’s an event I need to keep central because it is important to my identity.

Similarly the cross is a defining event for the church. We need to keep going back to it because it informs who we are and where we’ve come from. For individuals it is important to remain vigilant in telling ourselves the stories that we want to form and inform our identity. For the church it must be doing the same thing. But more so, because a person is only one person only they, the individual, has to decide what events to draw life from, the church is made up of many individuals and all of them have the chance to speak into what should define the church. Deliberately talking about the cross regularly will help everyone in the church remember what is central to who we are. It is our story of value and identity.

Some people will ask, however, why always talk about the cross? There is more to Jesus than the cross. Similarly there is more to the church than the cross. The church needs to be focusing on Jesus rather than just the cross.

My response would be, as I think I responded in the comments, while there is certainly more to Jesus than the cross, there is never less to Jesus than the cross.

Jesus’ teaching is vital for the Christian to know how to live. His miracles point us to the marvellous kingdom that is breaking into this world. His practical love for all people gives us the example we need to go and practically love just like him.

However, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that sets him apart from all other holy men and wise teachers who have walked the earth. It is the death and resurrection of Christ that sets God apart from the pantheon of gods who are worshiped every day all over the world.

If Jesus did not die and rise again, then his claims of divinity were misguided, and foolish. If he didn’t die and rise again, his assertion that he is the judge of the whole earth is positively foolish. If Jesus didn’t die and rise again, then the life that he calls us to becomes an impossible burden. It is only through the power of the cross that we can live as followers of Christ.

If Jesus didn’t die and rise again, then God has not come to be with us in human form, he has not fully suffered as one of us, and he has not beaten death on our behalf. If Jesus didn’t die and rise again, then God has not graciously taken our sins upon himself, and he is still holding our sins against us, storing up his wrath. He is not a loving and gracious God but an angry or unconcerned God.

There is more to Jesus than the cross, but there is never less to Jesus than the cross. Take out the cross and you have no Christ.

It’s the reason the writers of the New Testament keep coming back to the cross. It’s why Paul says: “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” – 1 Corinthians 2:2

It’s why Peter says: “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.” – 1 Peter 1:18-21

It’s why the writer to the Hebrews says: “Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant… he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” – Hebrews 9:15, 26-28

The cross is central, it defines our faith, it defines us. It puts us in our rightful place and God in his. It shows us the depths our sin and the greatness of his love. The writers of the New Testament kept coming back to the cross because they understood that there is nothing greater and nothing that helps us see who God is more clearly.

With this in mind we see that the cross is the central point in the defining narrative of the church. Out of the cross the church gains it's existence and identity. Just as any intentional community needs to remember it's defining stories, and reasons for existence, whenever it meets the church needs to be pointing itself back to its point of definition – the cross of Christ.

If we want to teach Jesus clearly, if we want to preach him faithfully, if we want churches that are centred on Jesus, then we need to always centre ourselves on the event that the Bible is centred on and on which Jesus centred himself on; his world changing, life bringing, glory radiating, sacrificial death and resurrection.


In part two I’ll look at how you keep the cross central to your teaching, using the examples of teaching on evil, dealing with other faiths, and care for the poor.

Photo by djking

I'm having a debate with another single guy at church at the moment about who has the better strategy for getting into a relationship.

His strategy is to wait until a woman comes to him and let's him know how much she loves him, and then they'll go out, get married and live together happily forever.

My strategy has been a little more proactive. Asking girls on dates, getting set up, going on dates, stuff like that.

The two strategies basically boil down to do nothing vs do something.

I took a poll of some single and married people last night and they all said that my strategy is better than his.

His comeback was "But look you're single and I'm single, so obviously your strategy is as effective as mine."

He has a point there.

So judging by our scientific observation of our lives, those options don't work, the answer has to lie outside of our two approaches. I wonder if there's a third strategy something that is neither doing something nor doing nothing. Therein, lies the secret to true love, I'm sure of it.

We'll y'all seem pretty excited by the idea of me going to a database meeting. But sadly, I didn't go. I was home sick today with a case of the poos.

The silver lining to the brown cloud was that I could lie around at home and watch DVDs and stuff. And that I did. I watched Layer Cake, Hollywoodland, Q&A and two and half episodes of Friday Night Lights. I also couldn't resist spending a few hours doing work too, so I sent a whole bunch of emails. Oh and I slept on the couch and ate mashed potato. So apart from being sick, it was a pretty good day.

I went to the chemist and bought medication for my ailment, in case I was need to perform on stage at short notice this evening (turns out I didn't, funnily enough), and I decided not to become friends with the pharmacy sales assistant because poo pills are a bad foundation for friendship.

And that's the story of my day.

We had a talk today at work about how we should use social media to promote work. So I decided today to have another week of blogging. This actually has nothing to do with work and doesn't promote it at all. But I was reminded that I have some social media to attend to. I'm terribly bad these days. I think it's partly because I've been spending a lot of time working in the office which doesn't give much food for blogging. I do still watch a lot of YouTube and my new friends, Vimeo. But I don't want to just post videos all the time. Anyway, I promise to blog every day this week.

I won't give you anything if I don't. You can give me grief.

Tomorrow I have nothing on my work agenda except a meeting about a database. I pretty sure it'll be awesome and I'll want to blog about it. I may even promote my workplace. "Let us minister to you, we're getting a database that's so awesome we'll know more about you than Facebook, Google and spam mailers put together!"

But just before I go, while I am blogging about blogging and videos and stuff, this video is pretty rockin'. Violent, but rockin'.

I meet a lot of new people. Often in the context of somes sort of Christian ministry. And they often ask me, "Are you married, do you have any kids?"

I almost always say, "No wife and no kids... at least, not that I know of." I always think it's funny, then I realise it's more awkward than funny for the other person and then I get awkward.

But then I forget and I say it again next time I meet someone.

I've been doing more video making. This time with Bevis. We filmed last Wednesday. I finished editing today. It was all for work.

So here you go my lovely blog readers, How to Meet the Queen parts one and two. (Yeah, cop that Harry Potter, I bring out both parts on the same day!)

Part One:



Part Two:



I hope you've found it helpful.

Just one more reason to love the internets:

***Spoilers contained within***

I went and saw the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 tonight.

It was a fittingly awesome. Very dark. Very serious. It looked spectacular. Ron, Hermione and Harry are competent actors now. And the story is great.

I think one of the things I enjoyed most about this film was the pace. Generally the Harry Potter films have been about cramming as much of the story in as possible. This film they really took their time. Yates allowed for there to be plenty of silence between lines. People didn't spend heaps of time explaining things. We could take time just to watch magical visual effects and the battle of Hogwarts. It made the whole thing feel grander.

One of the things that Harry Knowles pointed out about Transformers 3 is that it takes people 3 seconds to process a shot. Which means that Michael Bay had to slow down his editing in the action sequences so that we didn't get lost. That totally changed up how Bay did action, and it made Transformers' action sequences a whole lot more fluid and comprehendible. I think it made them the best action sequences in the francise.

For Potter, I think it may have had a similar effect. The whole film felt like you could just take your time to absorb everything. It was quite special. I good way to say goodbye.

I must say, I think I may have mentioned it before, but Harry Potter is quite the Christ figure. I came out thinking "Goodness me, JK Rowling has to be a Christian."

And it turns out, she is. She said this after the last book came out "To me, the religious parallels have always been obvious, but I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going." I guess I missed that piece of news.

About her faith she said "It's something I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books." (From here).

It is tempting, as a Christian who works with young people to exploit Harry Potter's obvious Christ connection. And perhaps I will. But that always seems a bit lazy to me. I'd rather be inspired to create art that points people to Jesus and appreciate art that is inspired by Jesus than just use other people's art where Jesus makes a cameo appearance.

I guess, thinking back to where Harry started to where he's come to, it's nice. I remember someone telling me back in 2003 that when Harry Potter ends, he's going to encourage everyone worship Satan. Instead Harry Potter ends by defeating evil through sacrificial love, and not by killing his enemy through being more powerful, but by dying himself. Love wins. And as Lesley pointed out, when Harry dies, where does he end up? Kings Cross. That's pretty spectacular for a book encouraging kids to worship Satan.

Someone must have written an interesting academic thesis on it. I'd like to read it.

Anyway, it's a pretty awesome movie. It ended well. Go see it.

I like the carbon tax.

I'm happy to pay more for my pollution, though I might end up ahead because of this scheme.

I'm excited about the innovation into clean energy that this should promote.

I wish we weren't so selfish and the questions weren't "How much will this cost me?" but "How can we do the right thing?"

I think Julia did well on Qanda tonight. Especially the last 10 minutes, though I think perhaps that may have been set up the the producers. Letting the last question come from that kid who is "the future", pure political gold. But she still did well, and I enjoy a big finish anyway.

I think I might eat less meat.

I'm also planning on catching the train to work tomorrow. But that might be because I enjoy the sleep in the train gives me.

I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours. - William Wilberforce

So I bought myself a Canon 7D last Saturday. I have been thinking about buying one for about a year now. Finally I actually got around to getting it.

It's a very nice camera. Too nice for someone as unskilled as me. I got it for it's video capabilities, which are pretty sweet for a camera of it's price range. It's a DSLR camera so it's not primarily designed for video stuff. But it does do very good stuff.

When I was in the shop the woman showed me everything I needed to buy. Thousands of dollars worth of camera, lens, bags and filters. She said "Is there anything else you need?"

"I just need to know whether to buy it today or not." I said.

"Tell you what, if you buy it today I'll throw in a free dvd."

So I bought it. Who can resist a free dvd?

I went and played with it on Sunday. Me and one of the kids in the youth group made a video. I pretty much shot the video with the settings on straight out of the box. It's not a very good video but I learned a few things. Firstly I need to work on my focusing skills. Secondly, colour correction, better dynamic range and getting a good ISO is also important. But I'm looking forward to improving, which I'm sure I will.

Anyway, this is what we made.



This morning I was waiting to get picked up by Dan and April and spied some good mist, so I went and photographed it. This was one of the better ones I think. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm pretty happy with the camera.

I know the last few posts have been about church planting. Just so you feel like this blog is still part of the internet, and not Jesus-church-brain land, here's a video of a singing cat:

This is part two of a series I started back in September. Go here to see part one.

The most common objection that I get to church planting goes something like this “We have plenty of empty and struggling churches, why not help them grow, rather than use all these resources to start a new one?” or more succinctly “We have plenty of churches, why do we need new ones?”

This is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make. If it ain’t broke why fix it? Or perhaps, if it’s repairable why replace it? Making new churches seems to be an indictment of current churches and just abandoning them to their fate.

All that in mind, I obviously feel like there are good answers to these objections. So I’ll go through a few reasons why I think it’s a good idea to plant new churches even though there are plenty of churches around already.

Evangelism

The first and most important reason, in my mind, is evangelism. New churches are one of the best ways of doing evangelism around. In fact if you do any reading about church planting you’ll soon come across this quote by missiologist C Peter Wagner: “Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven” (Keller quotes him here). Now I don’t really know who C Peter Wager is but everyone quotes him, so I figure he probably knows what he's talking about.

It is my firm belief that one of the central roles of the church is to be bringing people to a saving knowledge of Jesus so they might become his committed disciples (e.g. Matt 28:18-19) . Anything that helps the church do that, is good. Church planting is effective in this mission.

The NCLS (including everyone’s favourite NCLSer Keith Castle) did a study on church planting in Australia in 2003. They found that church plants had an average of 16% of their congregation who were newcomers as opposed to normal churches which had an average of 10% newcomers.

To quote Castle and his friend Bellamy, “Church plants tend to have above average levels of vitality, including higher percentages of attenders valuing the outreach emphasis of the church, higher percentages of attenders inviting others to church, and higher levels of belonging and commitment to the vision and directions of the church.” (You can read the whole thing here.)

Church plants are better for evangelism. I think this is because a church plant has to do evangelism to survive. I also think it’s because church plants, when formed for the right reasons, exist to evangelise, they are started so that people meet Jesus, and they haven’t had a chance to go off mission yet.

Established churches, from what I can see, often suffer from the need to tend to their current attendees rather than those outside the church. Churches, if they aren’t careful, default to work to serve the needs and desires of those who attend rather than those who are beyond it's walls.

A church plant is able to avoid this, at least in it’s early days, because it has no congregation, no tradition, no established way of doing things, and no institutions to uphold. A church plant, if it wants to, can focus its energies on the great commission of Jesus.

Now that’s not to say that an existing church can’t do the same. And there are plenty of churches that are doing that, though most of them aren’t the empty, struggling churches. And if you want to get a struggling church to reorient its energies towards evangelism, it’s going to take a whole lot more work than starting a new church. It’s harder to turn a stationary ship, than launch a stationary row boat.

Church plants evangelise, so I’m keen to plant a church.

Population Growth

“We have enough churches already.” It seems like a far enough statement, so why start a new church?

However if we have enough churches this year, if we don’t start new churches, then we won’t have enough churches next year.

Australia’s population is currently growing at about 2% per year. In the 2001 NCLS they surveyed 7000 churches. Now I’m assuming there are more churches than that in Australia because they didn’t all participate. But lets just say that there are 7000 churches in Australia right now. If the church keeps up with population growth of Australia, then next year we should have 7140 churches. And the year after 7,282 churches. In ten years we should have 8,532 churches. Now no one is expecting that to happen. There aren’t going to be 1,500 churches planted in Australia in the next 10 years. There’s a chance the rate that we are planting churches won’t even keep up with the rate that we are closing churches. Which means that not only are we not keeping up with population growth, we may not even be maintaining our current size.

If we didn’t plant new churches, ideally churches in Australia would grow by 2% a year, but church attendance isn’t growing in Australia, it’s shrinking. So current churches aren’t keeping up. If church plants are better at evangelism and are more likely to be growing than established churches, then why not plant new churches?

Ideally we wouldn’t be content to just keep up with population growth. If we really do believe that Jesus is the hope of the world, and that he is calling all people to himself, then we’ll not only be planting churches for 2% growth rate we’ll be planting churches and seeking to reach unreached people until all of Australia has put their trust in Jesus. And that eventuality is probably a long way off.

Bad Use of Resources

“There are so many empty seats in current churches, why not try and fill them?”

The thinking behind this statement seems to be saying, there are so many resources in the established church not being used, we should be using them, not just making more seats to fill.

The problem I see with this thinking, is that it seems to assume that it’s more important to put people in empty churches than to be finding the best way to bring people to Jesus. If the best way to bring people to Jesus is to fill empty churches, then we should do it. But chances are, it’s not. The great tragedy of the empty church is not the unused resources, but the unreached people.

Now I would love to see empty churches full. I would love to see them full of people who love Jesus, who love the people around them and love the world they live in. And while I go to a church with empty seats in it (and there are plenty of empty seats in my church) I’ll do my best to fill them with people meeting Jesus, and people loving Jesus. But wherever I am, I’m going work to help people meet Jesus rather than get people to fill seats.

I’d rather waste a million dollars to save one person, than save a million dollars and lose one person.

Perhaps people aren’t concerned about the churches resources, but that’s what I hear when people start talking about empty seats and empty buildings.

New Churches Means New Ways of Doing Church

Starting a new church means they can do whatever they want to reach people with the gospel. There are lots of people who will not interact with established churches, they won’t step into a church building, and they see the church as completely irrelevant to them.

However, there may be a church planter out there who is planning exactly the kind of church that will speak to their needs and present the gospel in a way that is meaningful to them.

During the summit I heard about and met people who were doing church in all sorts of ways. Church in the pub, cafes that are churches, church that happens over a meal, church that happens with 6 people and church that happens with 600, church for artists, church for families, church for professionals, church for shift workers, church for retirees. People were thinking about all sorts of different ways to bring the gospel to people who haven’t yet heard it or responded to it. How many people will these churches reach who would never have been reached by churches that currently exist? It’s worth doing our best to reach whoever we can, whatever way we can.

New Churches Invigorate Old Churches

When new churches start, it’s good for the established churches. When a church gets to send people out to start a new church they get to participate in the mission of bringing people to Jesus. I may have said that it’s hard for established churches to be doing evangelism, but if churches plant churches, they’re doing evangelism. What better way for a church to reach more people than to send out people to reach more people? When a church plants churches, if done right, it can fill the church with energy and purpose. When a church exists to make more churches people can clearly see how they are growing and changing lives. They get to do evangelism in their church and support evangelism in the churches they’ve planted. It’s a double blessing! When people leave a church to start a new one, it allows the planting church to fill their place with more people who can be supporting the church plant and with more people who can one day go out and plant their own church. Church plants shouldn’t threaten established churches, but excite them as a chance to support new gospel work.

I'm thankful that my current churches leadership feels just this way about planting churches. They're keen and I'm keen.

Church planting is good for the gospel and good for the established church.


So there are my reasons for planting churches even though we currently have lots of churches.

Having said all that, I want to stress, I don’t think established churches are a lost cause. They’re not by any means. I love the established church. I’ve spent all my life in established churches. I don’t think established churches are ineffective. I’ve seen people saved, lives changed, and much love given and received in established churches. The vast majority of the ministry I’ve done in my life is in the context of established churches.

In the end for me, the reason for starting a new church isn’t really about any of the above arguments (though they all help), but it’s about obedience. Like I said before, I’ve been called to plant a new church, and so I will. Were I called to go to a big, vibrant, growing church, I would. Were I called to go to a small, struggling church, I would. God can work, will work, and is working in all kinds of churches, young, old, big, small, growing, shrinking, conservative, liberal and everything in between. So I’m trusting God to work in this church I’m planting, and I’m trusting him to work in yours. He’s a good God and he’ll reach all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. And that’s pretty good.

Finally I think it’s worth saying that all churches were once church plants. If you go to church, there was a point in time where someone said about your church “I’m going to plant a church.” And chances are there was someone who said to that person “What do we need a new church for, we already have enough churches.” But they did it anyway. And now your life has been changed because they saw the need for more churches. The churches that are planted today will be the established churches tomorrow and people will leave them to plant new ones. It’s my hope that the church that I have the privilege of planting with a whole bunch wonderful people, will be sending people out to keep planting churches and keep finding new ways to bring the love of Jesus to bear in this world that desperately needs him.

Well I’m back from the Summit (thanks Liz).

It was good to get away for a few days and think about church planting constantly.

It felt like a really productive time. Like we’ve moved forward a few conversations, which is really what the majority of the early stages of planting seem to be about, conversations.

We (another of the people who are keen to plant this church and I) met with the dude who’s planting in the area we have been thinking about going to. He’s doing pretty much what we would have done, and he seems to be reaching pretty much the exact same people we would have sought to reach. And he’s probably doing a better job than we would do.

When we talked about us going to the same area as him, he said “the more churches the better”, which was generous of him. I loved that he just wanted people to be doing kingdom work, rather than wanted to protect his empire. He didn’t seem threatened by us at all. Maybe we’re just not that threatening.

That said, it seems a bit silly to us to go to the suburb he’s in to do what he’s doing. So unless we feel called to do something really different to him, we’ll probably go somewhere else.

It’s kinda disappointing because it was feeling exciting for a while there to have a place we could start thinking and dreaming about. Somewhere to invite people to. Now we have to go back to the drawing board. We haven’t totally ruled the old place out, but it’s looking a whole lot less likely.

So while I’m here, let me ask you dear readers, if there is anywhere in Sydney, and any group of people in Sydney, that needs a church, where do you think it is and why? (That is if you think anywhere needs a church.)

Aside from all that, how am I feeling?

Inadequate. Spending a few days thinking about planting and hanging out with planters has just made me realise what a huge task it is and how ill equipped I am for it. There were so many people at this summit who are much better people to be planting churches, more faithful and faith-filled, better leaders, and better do-ers, better with plans and better with people. It makes me think I should just go work in a church somewhere.

I guess it’s an appropriate way to feel, but it’s not how I want to feel. Confident and excited would be much better in my opinion.

But maybe I’m just tired. Perhaps I’ll feel better in the morning.

All that said, I still think it’s important. I’ll go plant because I’m called. And I’ll go because I love Jesus and I would love other people to meet him too. And if I fail, a least I’ve failed at something important.

I’m currently at a church planting conference.

Actually I’m not sure this is a conference I am at. It could just be a church planters gathering, I’m not sure. Either way I feel a little under qualified to be here. I’m not really a church planter, a church planting aspirational hobbyist, perhaps.

I always feel a little bit under-qualified to be at these things. I’m here with all these people who are in the midst of planting churches and have planted churches. I’m just a bloke with some ideas and a few people who are hanging out with me and having ideas with me. But I guess I’m a whole lot further down the path than I was this time last year.

I met a pastor of a church plant today who has planted in the place we’ve been thinking about planting in. He’s really encouraging, genuine and friendly. I reckon he leads a good, Jesus-loving church too. I was hoping when I met him he’d be kinda evil and obviously a terrible leader. It’d make planting decisions easier. On the other hand, if I care about people meeting Jesus more than I care about where I plant a church, which I think I do, then I’m really happy this guy is in the area.

He’s gonna sit down and have a chat with us tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.

I just remembered that I never made post about why plant a church. Maybe I’ll do that while I’m here. I might get inspired.

We’ll see. I don’t wanna make promises I can’t keep.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how this conference/gathering goes. I’ll see if I can have my hobbies affirmed.

I was doing a talk at youth group tonight and I said something about Somalian pirates. Although I got my words wrong and said "Somalian pilots". Which made me say something like "No, pirates. They're very good at being pirates. No so good at being pilots." To which there was a lot of calls from the audience that I was a racist. Which was probably correct.

I said it because I had images in my head of crashed African airplanes. But I don't know where they came from, probably that Ethiopian Airlines crash a few years ago. But Ethiopians are not Somalians. And one Ethiopian pilot crashing is not the same as all Ethiopians or Somalians being bad pilots. In fact, I think the Ethiopian crash was hijacked so you probably can't blame the pilots at all. Perhaps it was the Somalian hijackers.

Anyway I tried to dig out of my blatantly racist flippant comment by saying "I'm not racist. Some of my best friends are Somalian." Which was a joke. But I knew a few people wouldn't get it. So I said "That's not true. I don't know any Somalians." Which just made me sound like even more of a racist.

So for the record, I have no idea how good or bad Somalians are at flying planes. They could be exceptional, probably are. I do however know that they seem to be quite proficient at pirating, which is considered to be quite an asset in some cultures (pirate culture being the most notable).

On another note for tonight's talk I amended the Bible a little. I think perhaps they should consider using it in the next edition of The Message:

If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter heaven with an eye patch and hook like a pirate than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Matthew 5:29-30(ish)

And on one last note, I'm blogging on my new MacBook Pro. It's shiny and nice. Thank you Jesus.

I ordered myself a giantly, nice computer on Friday. It's a MacBook Pro. 15" HD antiglare screen. 8GB of RAM. And wait, wait for it, Microsoft Office! That's right, I'm gonna do word art like a boss.

Since I moved out of the flat in Artarmon a month ago to move in with Chez and Johnny, we haven't been able to find anywhere to live. We've applied for plenty and keep getting rejected.

I've been reading Numbers (the book of the Bible, I'm not much into maths) this month, all about the Israelites wandering around the desert, complaining, and slowing dying off. It's been feeling relevant. I feel like I'm living what I'm reading. While I'm not wandering anywhere and I haven't been dramatically rescued from slavery (my old housemates were quite nice really), I am hanging out for the promised land (house). I'm trying not to complain about my circumstances in case God says that I have to live with my parents till I die, and only my grown up kids will be allowed to move out. I have complained a little, mainly just about the stupid real estate agent's forms you have to fill out for every house. It's probably ok to complain about them though, because the Israelites didn't have to apply to move into the promised land. They just had to kill it's current inhabitants which, sometimes, seems like it could be a simpiler solution.

We do have a hopeful viewing on Thursday. So we could have somewhere to live after Thursday. Or it could just be one more bit of wandering.

I'm looking forward to food falling from the sky.

Tomorrow morning at 8:30am I'm preaching in a school chapel on 1 Corinthians 5. That's the on about the guy sleeping with his step mother.

Hmmm, tricky? Yes. Evangelistic? Difficult. Should I keep the mofo references to a minimum? Definitely.

Still, I'm wondering how much fun is appropriate.

I was happy to see today that my most personally upsetting and perhaps the overall most critical translation error of the NIV has now been fixed by the NIV 2011:

NIV 1984

Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king’s belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, which came out his back. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it.

NIV 2011

Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king’s belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, and his bowels discharged. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it.

Judges 3:21-22

The translators have put a smile on the face of God.

Do you ever feel ripped off that no one asked you if you wanted to be born? Sometimes I feel like the responsibility of being human has been forced upon me. I exist, and I'm expected to love people, love God, obey the Government, and no-one one said "Hey, Tom, I've got a life for you, it'll be a bit of a responsibility, but it could be rewarding. Do you want it?"

Chances are, having had my options laid out, I would have chosen life. It's just that no one asked. It's my life, it would have been nice to have been consulted.

We should start a movement to get God to start giving pre-bodied humans the right to choose if they want to exist. If God acquiesced it'd totally stuff up the right to life/pro-choice debate.

Actually maybe God did give me a choice and then erased the memory. Maybe I exist of my own free will, I just don't remember it.

Anything is possible.

I have been thinking about getting an iPad for preaching.

I feel like there should be heaps of cool things you could do with an iPad while preaching. But it seems no. I did some research. Seems like the best thing you can do while preaching is read your notes off it. It works like paper, except it's about $800 more than paper.

Oh well.

I guess I won't get an iPad. Just as well probably.

We had a bible study at work today on wealth and how we spend our money. I thought I might try and find out how much money there is in the world, divide it by 6 billion and then try and have that amount of money in my life. I thought perhaps that would be a good way to make sure I had only a fair share of the world's money.

But the internet won't tell me how much money there is in the world.

At least the first website I checked didn't tell me.

My plans have been foiled. Perfect logic failed by imperfect Google.

It's the story of my life.

Here's a fun thing I was fiddling with at work today. And, yes, this was work.

Mute the sound on this video and watch it while playing the video below it. When that's finished, watch the video again, but play the music on the second video from about 2 minutes 55 seconds in. Essentially you're substituting the soundtrack from the first video with the soundtrack from the second two.

The first time you watch the video it's a fun little piece about happy day in Sydney when everyone is having a good time, and a clumsy man even gets rescued from the sea.

The second time you watch the video it's about a man who almost drowns as the callous, self-absorbed world passes him by.

Niffty, huh?

Video



Music 1



Music 2

This post has been writen by my friend and youth ministry blogging guru, Graham Baldock.

We tackle the big issues here.

I moved out of my place in Artarmon. When my housemate came home and found me using his razor to shave my bum I knew it was all over.

That's not true.

I moved because my lovely friends Chez and Johnny invited me to move in with them and work at living intentionally as in a more community like way. We're not going to be a "Community House", not yet, just a friendly, welcoming house and we may work out way up to the title of Community House.

Also they want to live closer to my work.

So I moved out of my place on Friday and Saturday. Now I'm technically homeless again. But I'm living with my parents till we find a place to live. And my parents now have Bluray and wifi so it's a good place to live.

I'm looking forward to the new adventure. Chick peas, tea, community and all that. Johnny's a poet and Chez is a vegetarian. How Newtown. But we're too hipster for Newtown, we're too hipster for the inner-west. How Newtown.

Macquarie Park here we come!

I was listening to an interview with Tim Keller the other day. He talked about how sometimes the issues for mature Christians are not about right and wrong but more wise and less wise. There are decisions we have to make and neither option is sinful, but one is better than the other and we need wisdom to figure out which is best.

I liked that. I feel like I spend a lot of time having to make those types of decisions. Sometimes trying to work out the answer you feel like if you pick wrong, it'll be sinful. But often it won't be sinful, just less wise.

I'd like to be wise.

I was up at Maccas after church tonight with the young adults. There were 12 of us. I was eating a salad because I was still full of sake and Japan food from Mother's Day (Happy Mother's Day Mum!). It was Seared Chicken Caesar in case you're wondering.

About two thirds of the way through my salad, there was some shouting at the back door of Maccas. I thought "Oh a fight, I hate fights, they make me nervous." Then I saw the manager and thought "Oh good the manager is going to break it up." I moved my head so I could see better and saw that there wasn't a fight instead two guys with balaclavas had come in the back door. One was holding a large kitchen knife and the other a small axe, a hatchet if you will, with a shiny red bit on it. It looked new. They were both wearing black and one of them was holding a small bag.

I thought "Oh good, it's not a fight. Must be a practical joke. Halloween isn't for a while. It's not a very funny joke. Whoever they're friends with on the Maccas staff is gonna be pissed."

They kept shouting. It occurred to me when they shoved the manager behind the counter and the people nearest the back door got up and ran out that it wasn't actually a joke but this was a real armed robbery.

We were seated at the other end of maccas, far from the counter and far from the doors. I had a view of all the doors and the counter. I was pretty pleased to be in such a good spot. The guy with the hatchet ran behind the counter to deal with the staff, who kinda stood there looking stunned, while the guy with the knife hung around to deal with the customers. He waved the knife and swore at all of us telling us to stay where we were. It wasn't that helpful. Every time he turned his back another group of customers would run out the nearest door.

The group of Christians behind us, closer to the action looked scared and one started praying loudly to Jesus. It's to be expected if you rob a maccas on a Sunday night that someone is gonna start praying. I didn't pray. I'm guess I'm not even a Sunday Christian.

As one group of people ran out the door the guy with the knife chased them out shouting about how they should stay where they were. At that point the Christians hopped up and ran out too. They had a small girl with them. It was probably the best thing to do.

The poor robber, on the other hand, couldn't keep control of his charges. I knew how he'd be feeling, it's the same feeling I used to get every week teaching scripture. You think you're big and scary and then everyone just ignores your threats and runs away. He was hemorrhaging potential hostages like an amateur. Should have watched Heat. Had he promised us all chocolate to stay and watch his robbery I'm sure we would have been more obliging, they don't do that in Heat, but it's probably a good tactic.

Anyway, my group, we stayed. Probably within 30 seconds of the guys coming in we were the only customers left in Maccas. It felt a little special having the restaurant to ourselves. Kinda romantic perhaps, like the empty ice rink in Rocky. If it wasn't for the guys with weapons, I might have proposed to someone.

As we sat there we looked around at each other and the general consensus seemed to be that we should stay where were. We were too far from any doors to get out quickly. It never really occurred to me to leave. I saw other people leaving and I thought "That's brave. They might get stabbed." I figured sitting still and doing what you're told was probably the safest option. Plus if we left I wasn't going to get to see what happened and how often in your life do you get to witness an armed robbery?

I also felt kinda like leaving was the wrong thing to do. Like if we ran away we were abandoning the Maccas staff to their fate alone. Of course I'm sure they didn't feel like they needed us there for support, but we were all in this together. I think perhaps the same reason that I often stay behind at events and help pack up is the same reason that I felt like I should stay behind in Maccas. Bailing early isn't right.

That said, I've never considered the ethics of being a bystander (or bysitter in our case) in an armed robbery. And probably escaping is just as valid option as staying.

Anyway, once it was clear to knife dude that he'd lost control of everyone except us, he headed over to the counter to help hatchet dude. They shouted a lot about giving them money and nothing else seemed to be happening.

I found the whole thing fascinating. I didn't really freak out or even get nervous. I was hoping no one got stabbed but only because I felt like that would complicate things more than I wanted them too. I also spent time wondering what was going on behind the counter, but a lot of my thoughts were just something like "Oh yes, so this is what an armed robbery feels like." I worried a little for my fellow church friends. Some of them were freaking out a small bit. I hoped no one did anything stupid. I also spent a while trying to figure out if the robbers would get angry if I kept eating my salad. I'm not sure what I decided. I think I might have snuck in a few bits while their backs were turned.

After a bit more kerfuffle behind the counter the two guys ran out the back door they had come through. The whole thing would have taken less than two minutes. There was a momentary lull in action as everyone tried figure out if it was over. Then a bunch of us jumped up and went to the counter to see what happened, people pulled out phones to write a Facebook status update and a bunch of the patrons who escaped came back in the door, presumably to pick up the food they'd left behind, no one wants to lose those last two nuggets. I pulled out my phone and thought about doing a Facebook status update but couldn't think of anything witty to write so I put it back in my pocket and went back to eating my salad.

I think there was a little bit of discussion about calling the cops, I'm not sure if anyone did. We were all too busy on Facebook.

Suddenly there was a whole bunch of debriefing going on. We found out that no one was hurt and the guys had only gotten $200 because the safe was on a time lock.

The next 15 minutes was spent debriefing, talking about what we saw, how we felt, making jokes. The adrenaline meant that everyone laughed louder. It was prime time to tell jokes cause it made you feel like you're really funny. It was just the chemicals in the brain laughing, but who cares, you gotta take what you can get.

Eventually the cops turned up, none of them had their sirens on which was disappointing. They took our details, told us to wait for the detectives, and then when they found out all we saw were two guys in masks, told us we could go.

I stayed a little bit longer, finished my salad, thanked everyone for sharing the bonding experience with me, then went home.

The salad was pretty good, in case you're wondering.

It's been interesting watching everyone's reactions to the death of Osama. It's rather distressing to see scenes of Americans waving flags and rejoicing in the death of another human. I take no joy in the death of anyone. I have no feeling that justice has been done.

How does shooting and killing Osama make payment for the thousands of lives he took? Death seems too easy. He deserved worse.

However I do feel like his death is an inevitable consequence of a life lived at war with the most powerful nation on earth. I have no dreams of the US capturing him and locking him up and reforming him. The US could not change his heart. They could not bring back the thousands who he killed. They could only take his life. They could only execute their role to be "agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer." It was justice done man's way.

Messy problems require messy solutions.

But this isn't really a solution, is it? Terrorism will go on. War and violence will continue. Atrocities will continue on both sides. No one will win.

With this in mind, once again the violence and tragedy of this world points me to the God of this world, who brings justice not through a gun but through a cross. The life of one evil man cannot atone for the lives of the thousands of people he killed. But the life of one innocent God-man can, and does, atone for all the terror and atrocity done and to be done. The killing of an infinite God is justice for the sins of a finite race. And those who put their trust in this cross are put to death with Jesus, that they might also be given new life in the risen Jesus. It's a mercy undeserved through a death undeserved.

But justice does not just come through the cross. And Jesus will come again, and he will wield the sword. He will not let the unrepentant escape with just a simple death. Evil will meet its match.

One way or another the evil will be put to death, either at the cross of Christ, or at the sword of Christ. Justice will be done. Fear will end. Pain will cease. Life will reign. Goodness will prevail. God has won.

But until that day, I will not celebrate the death of the wicked at the hands of the wicked because I know that I too am wicked, and I too deserve a death worse that of being killed by a gun.

I will work for peace in this world. I will seek to do no violence and I will not encourage violence to be done in my name. But when evil is done, and terrible solutions are sought, I will look forward to the new and better world to come.

A new day is coming. God has won.

While Navy Seals were busy killing Osama Bin Laden, I went to the cinema to watch Justin Bieber. I was completing my challenge. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who has taken me up on my challenge, but that's ok, I guess I'm just the only brave person who reads my blog. That's fine, you pansies, that's why I have a hairy chest and you don't.

I went to Event Maquarie. The first step was to go buy a ticket. I decided to go to the earliest session of the day. I figured 10:30am on a Monday was the time I was least likely to be stuck in a cinema full of Beiberised 12 year-old girls.

I lined up and spent the entire time in the line trying to figure out whether to ask for a ticket to just plain Never Say Never or to say something ironic and witty. I couldn't think of anything ironic and witty but I couldn't bring my self to call the movie by it's proper title just like I refuse to ask for a Brekky to GoGo at Boost juice. I ended up asking for "One to the Bieber movie."

I was expecting the woman to mock me or something but, like a true professional, she just gave me my ticket and asked where I'd like to sit. I said the middle, not that I was planning on sitting there. I had designated seating.

I took my ticket but no 3D glasses as I had my 3D glasses already in my pocket. Prepared like a scout, you wimps!

The next obstacle was getting past the ticket collector without being laughed at or jeered for being a grown man going to see Bieber in concert on a screen. The ticket collector, she was also very professional, didn't mock me once. I suspect it was all her experience collecting tickets for people going to see things like The Hottie of the Nottie and Sex and the City 2 which stopped her from grabbing her walkie talking and informing all her fellow staff members that there was creepy bearded man off to watch a tweenie girl's movie in 3D.

As I stood there embarrassed by my situation I realised that there is no ironic way to have your ticket ripped.

My last challenge was to make it into the cinema undetected. Happily I'd arrived late so the lights were already down and I could sneak in. As it turned out there was only one other person in the cinema. They were sitting right up the back. I pretended not to notice them and they pretended not to notice me. We had an unspoken agreement. We were like next-door neighbours passing in a porn shop.


Despite the rigmarole, I actually quite enjoyed the movie. I wasn't sure what I'd think of the movie. I never thought it'd be terrible. My embarrassment at seeing the movie had nothing really to do with the quality of the movie or Justin Bieber as a performer. It was only really that I was doing something that I really shouldn't be doing. I was doing something made for girls who are somewhere in-between ponies and vodka cruisers not for men who are somewhere in-between balding and a mortgage.

Anyway, it was an interesting movie. It gave me a good insight into Justin Bieber and what he's all about. From a youth ministry perspective it helped me understand teenage girl obsession a bit too. Also from a youth ministry perspective I left feeling pretty worried about what this life must be doing to the poor kid. To be literally worshipped by millions of girls must screw with the young man's head. From what I could see in the film, he has a solid bunch of people around him who keep in generally grounded. There seem to be some strong Christians there including his mum, so I'm hoping they work on him to keep him humble.

Bieber's music is pretty bland, but he is clearly pretty talented. The film itself is part concert film, part documentary about his rise to fame. The documentary bit was pretty interesting, the concert got a tad boring. I was ready for the film to end after about an hour.

Perhaps most interesting, and most embarrassing, is that the film did make me a tad emotional. Actually not a tad. I cried. Real tears. I know, it's terrible, and that's why I'm writing this so late in the post and hoping everyone has stopped reading by now.

There's a scene where Justin sings One Less Lonely Girl. During the concert the production team pick one girl out of the audience and invite her on to the stage with Bieber. She sits on a stool on the stage and he sings to her and gives her a bunch of flowers and dances around her. The scene in the film becomes a montage of girls getting given the chance to get sung to by their idol Justin Bieber, there is a lot of screaming and tears. And somehow, somehow in all that emotion, music, and in the joy of seeing all these young ones have their dreams come true, I got a lump in my throat and a few droplets of salt water trickled down from behind my 3D glasses into my lap. It was embarrassing and lovely all that same time. So emotionally confusing for a man like me.

I learnt then that there's no ironic way to cry during a Justin Bieber movie.

When the film was done, I left. I tried to sneak out without running into a cinema worker who might notice my puffy eyes. I think I was successful which is lucky, because despite all their professionalism and training I'm not sure they could have let that breach of manly conduct pass without out some public humiliation.

So did I learn from the experience? Yes I did. I learnt a lot. I learnt about Bieber. I learnt about the people who love Bieber. I learnt about facing your fears. And I learnt that if Beiber ever picks me out of the crowd for One Less Lonely Girl there is no way I'm going to be able to hold it together. I'm gonna be a blubbering mess.

The next post I write will be about Justin Bieber. So to avoid having two Bieber posts in a row, is the intro video I made for Donny Jaffa at Soul this year. Mum, you'll love it.

I have yet to go watch the Justin Bieber movie, I'll probably do it on Monday. However I have decided to be pro-Beiber, I probably won't enjoy the movie, but I don't think that should make me anti-Bieber. If I was discovered and given the opportunity to become a pop sensation when I was 14, I would have taken it. Bieber is just doing what anyone his age would do. And he hasn't done anything offensive, he hasn't been arrogant and talked himself up, he hasn't made racist or sexist music or remarks. He's been pretty innocuous really.

So I see no reason to have strong feelings about Bieber either way. But since so many people hate him so much, I'm going to like him. Go Bieber.

People don't have the slightest idea of just how hard it is to break somebody's jaw or eye socket. They think it's just the power. But it's the accuracy of the power. Every punch is thrown with bad intention and the speed of the devil. - Mike Tyson in Tyson

I'm currently at home, in the lounge terminal. On a stopover between Soul Survivor Conference and Byron Bay Blues and Roots festival. In 30 minutes my train leaves to take me to the airport.

Soul was awesome. Two kids in my youth group became Christians! Woot!

More later (if you're lucky).

Blues and Roots promises to be fun but probably with less Jesus.

Tonight I wrote a song with Matt for Soul Survivor. Then I chatted to him and Beck for a while. That was nice.

I came home. Everyone was asleep. It was 11:30pm. I watched an episode of The Wire.

Then I was hungry and I had one episode of The Wire left, ever. So I went to McDonald's, came home, and watched the episode. I'll write about the show later. The food hit the spot. I spilt some tomato sauce on my jeans.

Now it's 2:50am. And I'm probably going to go to bed.

And I'm happy. I can stay up late, watch TV and eat McDonald's whenever I want, because I'm a grown up and I'm on holidays.

Life is good.

Just in time for Soul Survivor and the sex talk, it's a brand old Wisdom with Tabitha. Enjoy.

I bought this t-shirt from Etiko the other day. It arrived this morning. I quite like it, but wearing it makes me feel like I'm on mission for a University Christian group. If I wasn't so theologically conservative I feel like I could wear it and people would say "Wow, yeah, Jesus was the ultimate socialist." However now I feel like I'm a conservative co-opting Jesus from the communists.

Still, I like the shirt.

I just saw this ad on Facebook:



Defence Force ads annoy me. Because they're like "Come join the Defence Force, have fun, make a difference, save some lives, help in disasters..." But they neglect to mention killing people.

This ad does the same thing:



It seems dumb to me that the main job of the Defence Force, as far as I can tell, is to be better killing people than the people who might want to kill us (whether they're in our country, we're in theirs or we're both in a third country). I know that's a really simplistic view, but they don't carry guns and buy bombs for nothing. The ads just don't say what it's all about.

It'd be like being asked to work at Maccas and they say "Wear a uniform, clean some tables, operate a drive-thru" but no one mentions that the main reason why you're there is to sell burgers.

Still I guess death isn't a really attractive selling point. Or if they did use death as a selling point the kind of people it attracted might not be the kind of people the Defence Force wants.

This ad was a little more honest, back in the day. We used to sing a song in school to tune from the ad it went:

"Join the Army get your head blown off,
Doesn't matter if it's hard or soft."

They should have hired us to do their recruiting.

This'll make you love the film even more. So rich.

Everything Is A Remix: KILL BILL from robgwilson.com on Vimeo.

It was Facebook night tonight at youth group. We spent most of the night running around Hornsby trying to catch people pretending to be drug dealers. They were particularly bad drug dealers because they posted clues about their whereabouts on Facebook every few minutes. Despite that, one of the drug dealers managed to stay uncaught anyway. So good on them.

I didn’t get to go hunting though because I needed to monitor base camp and be ready to go out in my ambulance car if there were any emergencies. There weren’t. I also had to stay back and work on my talk. I had virtually no time to work on the talk this week, so it was feeling like a bit of a mess.

Despite my lack of preparedness I had a lot to say. I ended up with a 20-25 minute talk rather than the 10 minutes I had to give it in. I edited a lot.

What struck me this week is how concerned parents are about Facebook. At the beginning of the term we let the parents know what we were speaking on, and each week I’d send an email. No one has said anything about any topic, until this week when suddenly parents were wanting to know what I was saying about Facebook. I guess the concern is that Facebook is a vast world that they can’t control. And the dangers are huge for teenagers. You have issues of bullying, cyber-stalking, inappropriate relationships being formed, inappropriate photos being posted, and then kids just doing things which are generally dumb.

The potential audience for dumbness is massive.

One of the illustrations I did was got the youth to imagine they were in a hall and in that hall was everyone they know, parents, friends, enemies, youth leaders, siblings, teachers, everyone. And then to imagine that also in the room is everyone that everyone they know knows.

Then I got one of the male youth leaders up and got him to put on a bikini (over his clothes). Everyone thought it was very amusing, which it was.

Then I asked the girls to imagine how they would feel if they were standing in that hall, in front of all those people, in their bikini. Awkward. Embarrassed. Uncomfortable.

The boys I then pointed out they they’re likely to do dumb things like get in bikinis too. Of if I had an older audience I would have mentioned getting drunk, and doing dumb stuff at parties. Getting naked. The only naked photos I’ve seen on Facebook are of guys. And we probably don’t want everyone seeing how dumb we are.

The point was when you stick photos of yourself on Facebook, when you make comments on Facebook, when you post stuff, you have a potential audience of thousands. And the maths backs me up.

If you have your privacy settings on Facebook as Facebook recommends the you will have photos you post and photos of you set to be able to be seen by ‘Friends of Friends’.

If you are an average Facebook user, you’ll have 120 friends.

Now say my friend Bill takes a photo of me and posts it on Facebook, and he has his photo settings to ‘Friends of Friends’ too, then with just first degree friends, on average each photo has a potential audience of 240 people.

But because the photo is set to ‘Friends of Friends’ assuming Bill and I have no mutual friends, and none of our mutual friends have mutual friends (extremely unlikely, but it’ll make it easier for the maths) then the potential audience for the photo of me that Bill took jumps from 240 people to 28,800 people (if my maths is right). That is a lot of people.

So if you do something dumb on Facebook, the potential audience for your stuff up is huge.

I think the issue is probably bigger for girls. Guys can do dumb stuff and not too many people will be interested, but we live in a culture that expects girls to be sexy. So sticking photos of yourself in your swimmers or underwear on Facebook is a huge temptation. And if you do that boys (and men) are going to look, and friends of friends are going to look. And there are potentially thousands of people who will look at photos of unsuspecting teenage girls posing on Facebook who didn’t think things through.


The point of my talk tonight was, while Facebook offers us the ability to create a custom built identity and community, it won’t be able to live up to its promise. In Jesus however, we are given an identity that is not created online, is not subject to whether people ‘like’ it or not, it does not get better or worse with our successes and failures online and offline. It is safe and secure in the by the work of Jesus on the cross. And we are brought into a community, a holy nation, a royal priesthood and family of God. And that community is not made up of people you have a loose connection to, it’s made up of people who are your brothers and sisters. In Jesus we have an identity and community that is safe, secure and very healthy.

With that in mind, our difference means that we must live differently. I encouraged the youth to live differently because they are different; to treat Facebook not as a tool to shore up their identity and community but as a tool to love God and love others and to help others love God and love each other.


As Christians, I think if we could grasp that our salvation in Jesus affects our whole life, and our character and identity is shaped by Jesus in every aspect of our lives, we wouldn’t need to have think hard about whether our silly choices in the physical world are going to end up online. Our integrity of life would mean that whatever ended up online from what happened offline would fit in with our character online and offline. It would fit in with the character we portray to our parents, friends, family, teachers, bosses, work mates and perfect strangers.

Social networking puts an end to the double life of the Sunday Christian. Instead of making us stress about what goes online, it should keep us accountable in all our life because anything could go online. It should help us live lives of integrity in every facet of life.

That said my experience of teenagers is that integrity of character isn’t always first priority. Not because they don’t value integrity. In fact I think teenagers value integrity more than many adults. Teenagers seem less willing to accept the duplicity and hypocrisy of daily life that grown ups take as par for the course.

However teenagers are still working out who they are. They aren’t asking “How do I make sure I live consistently in all areas of life?” because they are still asking “Who am I? How should I live?” When they know who they are, then they can work at living consistently. Are they the one who drinks on the weekends, the one who obeys the rules, the one who rebels, who is selfless, who is ambitious, who is seductive, who is reserved, who is fun, who is funny, who is thoughtful, who is kind? They’ll test the various aspects of their character they find coming out to see what fits. They’ll ask, what brings peace, what brings comfort, what brings happiness. When they find the character traits that fit then they’ll start asking questions about integrity.

So back to Facebook, when teenagers are discovering and forming their character, Facebook becomes a vast stage for them to test their boundaries, and discover their character and having a couple of hundred people there they can give you instant feed back about the character you’re building. And while this can be potentially harmless, it can also be very detrimental. Facebook can be a permanent record of unthinking moments. One dumb Saturday night, which in the past could be forgotten or just remembered by the few who had to carry you home, can be kept for posterity, a permanent witness that people, friends and strangers are going to interpret however they want, and most won’t interpret the night in light of lessons learnt and character built.


I guess all this musing really just leads me to conclude that we need to be helping teenagers use Facebook well. We need to encourage them to live with integrity. To be living out the character traits of who they want to be rather than who they are discovering they are.

I think older people need to be feeding back online and offline to younger people about what they value in them and what they appreciate, so that they can form a character that isn’t just shaped by the feedback of their peers, which while important will only be one perspective.

Christian teenagers need to be taught to have their identity and community thoroughly grounded in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus so that they can live differently out of that reality. If that can happen, not matter what happens online, no matter what mistakes they make, no matter what dumbness they do, they will have something deeper to hold onto, a way of living that stems from something other than just peer opinion and a character that is rooted in an identity that goes beyond any social network.

The question is though, how do we do that?

Last Sunday it was my sister Hannah's 16th birthday. It was a big day!

Dad and Hannah were going to be going out on a sailing boat thing. Sailing for the Disabled or something. However the weather meant they couldn't go, the sailing trip had to be postponed.

Still Dad decided that Hannah couldn't turn sixteen without a trip on the water, it is after all an important Australian rite of passage, that sixteenth birthday boating trip. So Dad booked him and her onto one of those jet boats that fly around Sydney Harbour so you can see all the sights at ultra high speeds while vomiting over the side or into the face of the person behind you.

However because Dad doesn't really like vomiting, eating other people's vomit or sight seeing, he thought I might be more interested. I was, I'm not a fan of vomit, but jet boats sound fun. So I was going to be Hannah's chaperone.

In the afternoon Mum, Dad and Hannah had a birthday lunch of fish and chips then picked me up after my Sunday afternoon shop for socks and undies (three pairs of undies, five pairs of socks! Hooray!) and we headed down to Sydney Harbour.

When we arrived at Circular Quay, Hannah didn't seem that excited about going on a boat. She seemed to be more interested in dancing the conga and listening to didgeridoo. I think perhaps she saw the boat and was disappointed it wasn't a real jet boat. She was expecting something with afterburners. It just wasn't hardcore enough for her.

Still we tried to convince her. No luck.

"Hannah we're going to go on a boat! Let's go have fun on the boat!"

"No no boat! Bye bye boat!"

No matter how hard we tried, Hannah wouldn't come. We kept trying right up until it was time to step on to the boat. But it wasn't going to happen.

At the last minute Dad subbed in for Hannah and went on the boat with me. Mum and Hannah stayed on the land and waved us good bye while Dad and I went jet boating for Hannah's birthday. It was good fun. No one vomitted so I think Hannah was right in not going, it certainly wouldn't have been crazy enough for her. But for pansys like Dad and I, it was pretty good fun. Plus I think Dad got to go at disability rates. That's my Dad, always scamming the system.

After the boat we had and ice cream which Hannah liked.

Maybe next birthday we'll find a jet boat with afterburners for Hannah. Or I'm hoping perhaps Dad and I get to go sky diving for Hannah's birthday or something.

It's almost 3am. That's because I've been watching The Wire.

Oh yeah. That's what I'm talkin' about.