I signed up to get some internets today. Fast internet. Good-bye wireless broadband! Hello ADSL2 and superfast Justin Bieber downloads!

I also went and door knocked my neighbours again and gave them invites to our house warming on Saturday. I feel like a Mormon. I reckon they're going to get sick of me soon. "Oh gosh, here comes that guy from Unit 5 again. Here to give us chocolates or another freakin' invite. We just want to relax! We have a security door at the front to keep people like him out!"

Oh and I'm pretty sure my flatmate is a wizard. I think he might even have a Pensive because he stores his memories in a box:

Today was ANZAC Day so I wore my Gandhi t-shirt.

I had my jacket on all day so no-one saw.

I just found this for the first time. Why haven't I found it earlier? Youth ministry would be so much easier.

Favourite quote:

If a girl walks up
With her arms spread wide
And she's front hug bound with that look in her eye

You better turn to the side
And pat her on her back
Cause Jesus never hugged nobody like that

At 6:30am we had the first prayer meeting for my church plant this morning. I was the only one there. Well, there was me and God. Which if you include God makes it pretty big.

I decided after Soul that I should be doing regular prayer for this church. So Tuesday mornings it is. Probably at least until someone else joins the team then it might be at a more reasonable time.

I just wanted to blog it, because it felt like an auspicious occasion.

While I was at Soul Survivor my division at work moved into new offices downstairs.

This is good. Everything is quiet now and I think I concentrate more.

People keep asking me questions about my work. So I thought, I'd show you where I work. It's like taking you on a tour of my work place. I'm sure you'll all be thrilled because offices really are thrilling.



This is a wide shot of the office. It's still messy from the move. But it's nice and corporate looking. This is to help us all fulfil our childhood dreams of becoming desk-jockeys.



This is my desk. I put paper on it to make it look like I do work. There's plastic on the phone because I work for a Christian organisation and the plastic filters out any swear words I might hear or satanic messages from hold music being played backwards.



This is a close up of my phone. It says my name on it so that when it rings I know I should pick it up. It's like the other end of caller id.

I took the plastic off because School Chaplains swear so much if I kept it on I wouldn't hear 80% of what they said.



These are the faces that look over my shoulder. They are accountability faces. They make sure I don't go on Facebook more than 30% of the working day.



This is what I eat as a snack at work sometimes. It looks like poo. Slimy poo.

I'm at work now. On my lunch break. It's a little sad the youth conference season is over and I'm back to the old work. However we are in a new office and that's making me feel very productive.

I am a little tired now that it's over it was pretty big.

This year was the first time I had ever been to KYCK. I know it's terrible. I've spent 8 years in conservative Sydney Bible Colleges, 7 years working in Anglican Churches as a Youth Minister and not once did I make it to a KCC convention. It's only now that I've become a Baptist that I'm forced up the mountains to listen to Bible teaching.

But it was a good experience. We had a group of 8. There were 5 leaders, 1 assistant cook and 2 youth. We were perhaps the most over staffed youth group in attendance.

I did enjoy having a whole weekend of solid Bible teaching. And the music was a whole lot less Sydney Anglican than I thought. There was not one saxophone to be seen, let alone there being a glut of saxophone solos. Plus the songs sounded more like Hillsong than a theology text book most of the time. Which I like. I still would have liked to the music to be louder. Worship music is best played at rock concert levels in my opinion. I think because then only God can hear me sing, and this is probably better for everyone.

I went up to Soul Survivor on Tuesday night, going straight from work. The music was louder there. Soul was up in Newcastle this year. We were doing Soul in the City which means that in the morning and evenings there was a main meeting with worship and teaching, and during the day everyone went out to do projects to serve the community.

I really love the format of getting hundreds of teenagers together to love a bunch of people they don't know just because Jesus loves them. It's entirely outward focused and you very rarely find youth events, or any big Christian event for that matter, that is so outward focused and practical about it.

What I appreciate about Soul is that as far as growing a large, Christian conference goes, it's doing everything wrong. After 5 years in one location it packed up and moved to Canberra. Then after two years in Canberra, it packed up and went to Newcastle. Next year it'll be back to Sydney. The year after I think the plan is to split itself across a bunch of rural towns and bless them with acts of kindness, like Soul in the City but it's Soul in the Bush. If you want to build a big conference this is not the way to do it. You would think the best thing to do is find one adequate location, run the event in the same place, at the same time, and then do the same thing every year but bigger and better with more and more famous people every year.

But this isn't really about building a big conference, it's about following Jesus. And Jesus is outward focused, and has no desire to build big movements just for the sake of big movements.

I like Soul because they follow Jesus*.

For me the Soul Survivor experience this year was hectic. I was speaking in seminars on 3 out of 4 mornings. And making videos with Sal every day.

We'd start making the video after the main meeting at about 1pm and then have to have it done for showing before 7:30pm. The 6 hour turn around from concept to shooting to editing then rendering, was pretty hectic. But I did enjoy it. It was like the extreme sport for video geeks.

This is a poor quality version of the first video we made, teaching people how they should behave while on projects:



It was a fun few days. I would do it again. Though I would like a little more sleep when it's all over.

*That's not to say that the KCC crew don't follow Jesus. My reflection on one conference is not in contrast to the other.

I watched The Biggest Loser finale tonight. It inspired me to lose weight. But first I need to put some weight on so I have some to lose. So tomorrow I'm going on a trans-fat diet with sugar for snacks.

(I think there's a Soul Survivor/KYCK blog in me, popping out soon.)

I'm in the middle of a youth conference frenzy. I'm currently in lying on an air mattress in a church hall in Blackheath. Someone is snoring and someone else's stomach is grumbling. I'm up here with my youth group for KYCK which is a conservative Christian youth conference in Katoomba. It's been good so far. The talks have been solid, Dave Miers spoke well tonight and I got to pray with some guys who recommitted their lives to Jesus. Excellent.

On Tuesday, after working Monday and Tuesday, I'm heading up to Newcastle for Soul in the City. I'll be there doing video stuff at night and seminars in the mornings. Every spare moment I get now is for seminar prep. Except perhaps for the youth leaders meeting on Monday night. Goodness. I'm just living youth ministry these days. Once I just did it for a job, now it's my volunteer life too! Still, youth ministry rocks, so I'm not complaining.

Good Friday is good.

I love that we spend a day considering the death of Jesus. I love the sombre mood of church. The darkness. The quiet.

The King is dead. Our Lord crucified. Naked, alone, suffering the wrath of man and God. It's hard to know how to feel on Good Friday.

Sad. Contemplative. Thankful.

So often we jump straight to the resurrection from the crucifixion. But at Easter we have time take it slowly, to let the reality sink in.

Now, at this time on the Friday, darkness had fallen on the land. Jesus was in the grave. Hope crushed. The creator's lifeless body, on a cold rock shelf, in a darkened tomb.

Tomorrow our Lord does not stir. Decay begins. The dawn was coming, but who really knew?


He was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors. - Isaiah 53:5,12

He has done it. - Psalm 22:31c

Photo by: jurek d.

I got real excited the other night because I've been trying to figure out how to connect to my neighbours and I realised I could give them all a packet of Easter eggs. I thought I could door knock, say "G'day" and hand over some eggs and an Easter card.

However, while I have the eggs, now that it's not 1am on Tuesday night, I'm not feeling so excited. My house mates asked me if I'm going to dress up in a bunny suit and hand them out. Bah! I wish I didn't believe in community.

But I'm going to do it. Sunday 11:30am. You can hold me accountable to that.

When I arrived at work today the head of the finance division came into my cubicle and asked if I had time for a chat.

He pulled up a chair, and said "Now this hasn't really gotten out yet but on Friday we got a letter about you..."

When he first starts talking I think "Oh no someone's got cancer" then he keeps talking and I think "Oh crap, I'm totally busted for something". And my heart starts beating and I get nervous till he finishes his sentence:

"...from Centrelink. They want to know your employment details."

He's very serious, and I'm wondering why he's so serious. I wonder if I'm going to jail or something. Then I remember that Centrelink sent me a letter a while ago asking me for my employment details. I had already given them my new employment details but not the ABN number of my new work. I had ignored the letter on the advice of the Centrelink worker who told me that because of the way I'm paid in my full time employment I would be receiving $12 a fortnight from Centrelink forever, unless I stopped handing in their forms. So I stopped handing in my forms. My multiple attempts at breaking up with them face-to-face handn't worked. I decided to screen their calls and not return their mail. It's healthier this way.

This ignoring worked enough to get a letter in the mail from Centrelink telling me my Newstart is cancelled (win!) but not enough for them to not think I'm up to dodgy business and send letters to my employer (fail).

"Apparently someone over there thinks you're ripping them off" he continued.

He was sufficiently worried by the letter to meet with me as if I'm in trouble with the law. I find it amusing that Centrelink think I'm ripping them off because I'm ignoring them so they'll stop giving me money. Maybe they'll fine me for trying to stop getting money from them. It wouldn't surprise me.

Anyway, I'll call them tomorrow to tell them what I've been trying to tell them all along, I'm in a new relationship, could they please move on, I have.

I didn't know but it seems the anti-Christ is among us. The end times are here!

There's a song on the new Passion worship album by the Dave Crowder Band called Like a Lion. And the chorus says:

My God's not dead
he's surely alive
and he's living on the inside
roaring like a lion

It's meant to be rousing and inspiring. But I don't find it inspiring at all. I get this picture of God being a tiny, little lion living in me, roaring. And a lion who is small enough to live inside me is about as scary as a puppy of similar dimensions.

Of course I understand it's a simile. But still.

I guess assuring everyone that God's not dead he lives inside doesn't seem all that inspiring to me. I want a God who is outside. Of course I believe that God does live inside me, but not just there. Jesus is also reigning in heaven. And God is still bigger than the universe and holding it all together. His decision to take residency inside me is only a part of his living arrangements, which I find inspiring because of his humble desire to live inside me. But to me the song sounds like it's where he's been banished like Voldemort onto the back of Professor Quirrell's head. That doesn't do it for me.

"Raarrrr!"

I'm doing the sex talk at Soul Survivor in April. Except that I'm doing it pitched at teenagers, and it's going to be about three times as long.

Anyway, seeing as I'm a seminar speaker I had to submit a profile for the program. I hate writing those things. It's so hard to be interesting, and funny and say a little about yourself that people might be interested to know. In the end I gave up and just wrote mostly silly stuff. This is what I wrote:

Tom spends his days working in schools around Sydney telling young people about Jesus. He spends his nights wearing a cape and fighting petty crime. He is passionate about Jesus, movies and looking at photos of himself on Facebook. He has no pets, children or wives, nor does he love coffee.

I'm worried a) that I sound like an idiot, and b) that the last line will look like I'm lonely and letting all the ladies know I'm available, rather than a dig at seemingly every youth speaker's profile that I've read.

Still if the "Desperate-and-just-putting-it-out-there" look works, I won't be complaining.

I just watched 17 Again and I can see why teenage girls think Zac Efron is hot. And besides his looks, he can dance and is good at basket ball.

It's a pitty his acting skills are a little lacking.

It's been an interesting few days at work.

Yesterday I visited a lunchtime Christian group in a primary school. I was one of the guest panellists in their hard questions/Bible quiz show, along with three other males on staff at the school.

For one of the challenges, in between answering tricky questions about the Bible, I was made to play Evangelism Twister. Which is pretty much twister on a world map ("Left foot Asia!"). This meant that on this stinking hot day, where I was sweating like a pocari, I had to get down on the floor and get to know these three other male teachers, very intimately, (kinda like this). "Hello!"

Today I was speaking at a boys school and thought, because I was speaking to boys in years 3-6, I would would start my Bible talk with an illustration about being a ninja. I took my ninja sword along and the boys were quite excited. It's understandable because swords are awesome.

Following my talk the Chaplain decided to call me Ninja Tom which stuck. I spent the rest of the day at school having boys call out "Hi Ninja Tom!" which was rather good for my ego.

At their lunch time group for one of the games they stuck a target on me and got the boys to just peg balls at me. I just had to sit in a chair and take it. I had a teacher next to me whose job it was to protect me but he just chucked the balls at me too. Seeing as I was Ninja Tom the boys seemed to relish the opportunity to assault a ninja.

It's a good thing I like my job.

It's the end of a long week.

I've still got sex on the brain.

I preached on it tonight and it felt really long with out many jokes. I think I might have been the first person in my church to ever say in a sermon "Giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up, babe."

Even though it felt long, I wanted to preach on the topic for a good three hours. I feel like we don't regularly teach a good Biblical theology of sex in the church.

I reckon these days I have a higher view of sex and marriage than I ever have. The more single I am the more I appreciate what it means for people to be together. And it doesn't make me jealous, nor does it make me feel lonely. I guess I feel excited that I have friends who get to get married, and have sex, and have kids, and participate in this great gift of God.

I wonder, as I have before, if this is because I am so unmarried and unsexed, that I can idealise it from a far. Maybe that's my role at the moment. Everyone else can do the hard work of marriage, and I can to the easy work of telling everyone how good it is.

On the other hand, I never have married people telling me how good singleness is. Perhaps they should. Then again, most people don't covet singleness like a lot of people covet being in a relationship. Perhaps the only people who covet singleness are the ones who are too righteous to covet having an affair, getting a new partner or doing friends with benefits, but too unhappy to enjoy their current relationship.

Maybe I could do a survey.

Or maybe I could go to bed.

I'll pick the latter.

Seeing as I'm preaching about sex on Sunday, I've been thinking about it for a few weeks now. Of course, if you go by the "statistics" men think about sex every 5 seconds, so nothing's changed really.

I'm reading Every Young Woman's Battle because I'm trying to understand the issues of a single Christian woman. Actually I'd like to understand the issues for women in general, but I figure that's too broad, so I'm just going with the single Christian ones. If there are any women who wants to tell me what it's like being a woman, feel free. I've never been one as far as I know.

Anyway, there was one line at the beginning of Every Young Woman's Battle which said about some promiscuous boys "Each time they had sex with a girl, they took a piece of her soul." This worried me. While I understand what the writer is saying, I'm uncomfortable with saying that girls who have sex lose their soul. I think what the writer is saying that having sex outside of marriage does real spiritual damage, which I'm quite happy to agree with. But if a girl having sex outside of marriage loses some of her soul at some point she'll have no soul, which is almost like saying she's lost her humanity. It seems to imply that somehow a girl who has had sex is less valuable than the girl who hasn't.

Of course I know this isn't what the writer is saying. The gist of the book is "You're too valuable to be giving yourself away to people who aren't going to be committed for a lifetime." But it's the language that worries me. Probably because I think it reflects how Christians often talk about sex outside of marriage. We seem to say that sex cheapens a girl. While we should be saying that we can cheapen the act of sex, but we can't cheapen the person.

The other issue I have is that the language seems to be used much more often in conjunction with women. So the girl who has sex a lot loses her soul and cheapens herself. The guy who has sex a lot is expressing his masculinity in an unhealthy and selfish way. If I had to choose I'd rather be the person who expresses my nature wrong, than person who loses their nature.

Isn't it just as true of girls as it is for guys? A girl who has sex outside of marriage expresses her feminine sexuality, her desire for love, intimacy and pleasure in a way that is in essence unhealthy and selfish. The issue is not that she becomes less, but that sex should be so much more.

Anyway, I could say a whole lot more on the issue of sex at the moment. But I have to save up the gold for Sunday. That's just something I've been thinking about.

Photo by Cazpoo - I'm not sure why I picked the photo. I thought it was less obvious than a flower I guess.

I turned up at a school today prepared to do three different talks. Jesus feeding the 5000 at Chapel for years 3-4 and Chapel for years 5-12 and Jesus and the Woman at the Well for the lunch time group. Unfortunately the Chaplain has been terribly busy and forgot that I would be preparing something for the 3-4 Chapel and had prepared a chapel on the 2nd Commandment. So he asked if I could do something on that. I had a period to write a talk.

I thought I should be able to do it because God provides. However when I sat down in the Chaplain's office to write the talk I was visited to by to friendly boys who I had met two weeks ago who were keen for a chat. Far be it from me to ignore two teenaged visitors, so my talk writing time was reduced to the few pauses in conversations when I could stare out the window and think and on the walk to the Chapel with the Assistant Chaplain.

Needless to say it wasn't the greatest talk I've done. But for a few minutes work, I was pretty pleased with it. God provided. We learnt that Coca-Cola won't answer your prayers.