Quinns Community Baptist Church

One of the things I love about Jesus is his offbeat and counter-intuitive approach to life. He rarely does what you expect him to and as you read about his life it seems that he views the world from a totally different perspective to most folks.

He never seems to be worried about his bank balance. He doesn’t like stuck up religious people and at times was vehement in his critique of them. He seems to enjoy being with life’s ‘losers’ and those the rest of society had rejected. Interestingly they seem to like being with him too. He sets a pretty high bar when it comes to morality and he calls people to treat one another with often unthinkable amounts of grace and compassion. He really doesn’t have much of a grip on reality, does he?…

Perhaps one of his more offbeat ideas is that of loving your enemies rather than getting even with them. Suggest that idea to anyone you know and they will likely look at you strangely. Why would anyone want to love their enemies rather than give as good as they get?  Maybe Jesus knows that giving tit for tat might bring some short term satisfaction, but the longer term implications of seeking revenge is to sever relationships and destroy community.

The one thing Jesus spoke about more than anything else was what he called the ‘Kingdom of God’ – or the world as God wants it to be. He was speaking of a world where relationships work well and where people act out of love rather than selfishness. It’s a world where greed is culled and generosity is normal where the rich aren’t living at the expense of the poor, but rather are sharing their wealth. It’s a world where damaged relationships get healed rather than left in tatters.

It’s a world most of us would say sounds ‘perfect’, but it’s a world that we experience all too rarely. I have come to see that Jesus’ wacky ideas of how life should work are actually chock full of wisdom and if we follow his lead chances are we will find life, but not where we expect it.

If you want to check out some of Jesus’ inverted logic then read chapters 5-8 of the book of Matthew in the New Testament and then ask ‘how would life be if we did this stuff?’

The church was a part of the Quinns Baptist College Open day,  sponsoring the small animal farm and holding stalls that sold some amazing cupcakes as well as general ‘garage sale’ type gear.

At the end of the day around $2800.00 was raised for the Bali Orphanage projects.

“Be Not Content Merely to Look Upon Atrocities”

“The first time you go to Afghanistan, people think you are crazy.

The second time, they consider you heroic.

The third time, you are disciplined and committed

The fourth time, it confirms that you are, in fact, crazy.”

(source: http://itinerantindigent.wordpress.com/)

This week an old mate of mine went to Afghanistan as an aid worker with TEAR – him, his wife and his three primary school aged kids. This is the fourth time they have gone there to work with the Afghani people and help them as they rebuild their country. His move follows on the heels of some tragic and senseless murders and at face value has an appearance of foolhardiness about it.

By any stretch it’s not a normal thing to do. Some see Phil as an oddity or a radical. Maybe he is even a little crazy…

Or maybe he sees the world differently to most people and maybe he senses the urging of a loving God sending him back to a country and a people that he also loves, a country that has suffered greatly and needs all the help it can get. Maybe for a person of faith this is not at all an act of craziness or brazen foolhardiness, but one of love and deep conviction.

What’s it like to live like that?

Do you know?

Do you have any compelling sense of drive in your own life to do more than get a promotion and a better house in a nicer suburb? Sometimes I think its easier to bracket the ‘Phils’ of this world with the lunatic fringe because by doing so we don’t need to reflect on our own comfort and excess.

I am really tired of listening to people complain about their tedious, and sometimes vacuous lives because I believe there is a choice to live for something greater, but it comes at the cost of not living for the temporal and insignificant. The challenge is to listen to the voice of God that calls us to live purposefully rather than to submit to the voice of culture that tells us to take a number, fall in line and get on the treadmill.

I know that’s pretty direct, but hey, if the cap fits…

I remember as a teenager being inspired by the movie Chariots of Fire and the conviction shown by Eric Liddell, the brilliant Scottish athlete who refused to run in the heats of the Olympic 100m sprint because they were held on a Sunday. Liddell copped a fair bit of heat for being a runner when everyone around him had hoped that he would simply give his running away and go to be a missionary in China.

Yet Liddell had a bigger view of the world and of God than those around him. When those close to him simply wanted him to go and ‘do God’s work’, Liddell realised that ‘God’s work’ was right in front of him doing what he had been uniquely equipped to do. There is a beautiful line in the film where Liddell responds to a challenge from his sister Jenny to give up his running. He says:

“Jenny, God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast, and when I run I feel his pleasure.”

While Liddell inspired many with his athletic ability and his integrity of faith, perhaps what was missed was the fact that Eric Liddell was very much in touch with his sense of vocation – with who God had made him to be. He knew that when he was running he was more alive than at any other time. In those moments when he was sprinting he was ‘feeling God’s pleasure’.

So a couple of questions for you this week. Eric Liddell said “God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast, and when I run I feel his pleasure.”

What greater purpose has God made you for?

What unique abilities and talents have you been given that when you use them cause you to feel most alive?

Henry David Thoreaux said “Most men/women lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

What’s ‘the song’ that is playing in your heart that needs to be expressed more fully?

Is this it?!

I am guessing this is one of the questions we all ask from time to time as we go through life. Is this all there is?… Or is there more?… And if there is how do I find it?…

It’s quite bizarre that sometimes in the midst of life’s greatest moments we can actually feel empty and even cheated. I’m sure many of us have known the feeling of anticipating moving into a new house, or a purchasing a new car only for the moment to arrive and then discover that inwardly we feel flat and maybe even a little depressed.

Why is it that the things that are supposed to make us happy don’t always do the job, or if they do they don’t do it permanently?

Perhaps its as simple as looking in the wrong place. It would seem pretty weird to look for milk in the linen cupboard, but I sense that sometimes we seek meaning, fulfillment and peace in our purchases, our family or our achievements. And then when the sense of happiness we are chasing evaporates we are left wondering what went wrong.

Even though we are an increasingly secular society, we are also growing in our awareness of the importance of a healthy spirituality as a foundation to life. If you would like to explore some of those spiritual questions then starting Aug 18^th Quinns Baptist Church will be hosting an ‘Alpha’ course where there will be opportunity to engage with the big issues of life and to find answers.

Alpha is 10 week course that looks at the foundations of a Jesus centred spirituality and provides space for learning, dialogue and disagreement.  It consists of an evening meal, a dvd and then some small group discussion.

There will be a no obligation introductory evening on Wed, Aug 18^th where you will get a chance to experience Alpha and get a taste of what its like. If you’d like to be part of it then just let me know and we will keep in touch.

Andrew

David Phillips offers the following as some gauges of success in ministry. Read more here

1. The number of cigarette buts in the church parking lot.
2. The number of adoptions people in the church have made from local foster care.
3. The number of pictures on the church wall of unwed mothers holding their newborn babies in their arms for the first time.
4. The number of classes for special needs children and adults
5. The number of former convicted felons serving in the church
6. The number of phone calls from community leaders asking the church’s advice
7. The number of meetings that take place somewhere besides the church building
8. The number of organizations using the church building
9. The number of days the pastor doesn’t spend time in the church office but in the community
10. The number of emergency finance meetings that take place to reroute money to community ministry
11. The amount of dollars saved by the local schools because the church has painted the walls
12. The number of people serving in the community during the church’s normal worship hours
13. The number of non-religious-school professors worshiping with you
14. The number of people wearing good, free clothes that used to belong to members of the church
15. The number of times the church band has played family-friendly music in the local coffee shop
16. The number of people who have gotten better because of free health clinic you operate
17. The number of people in new jobs thanks to the free job training center you opened
18. The number of micro-loans given by members in your church
19. The number of churches your church planted in a 10 mile radius of your own church

Got any more?

I remember what a sad day it was when my 8 year old daughter brought home her last school report. Ellie had scanned her core subjects in typical 8 year old fashion and immediately noticed where she hadn’t done well. Her face said it all.

She actually got the equivalent of 2 cs and 2 bs which won’t make her a rocket scientist, but neither is it reason to get depressed. However in the attitude and effort column she scored top marks in all 15 categories where questions were asked about perseverance, cooperation, respect for others and willingness to get involved.

The problem was she couldn’t read or comprehend the descriptors because they were written for parents, so it didn’t mean anything to her. That evening before bed I took some time to explain them to her in ‘kidspeak’ and what a difference it made. She didn’t realise that column mattered either, but as anyone who’s been around knows very well ‘attitude is everything’.

When we got back to academia we began to talk about where she could get an ‘A’ and what she would have to do to achieve that goal. I am a firm believer in the importance of developing strengths as a priority rather than bolstering weaknesses. So my offer to her was ‘tell me what subject you love and where you want to get an A and I’ll work with you to see if we can pull it off’.

I sometimes wonder how many kids with great potential lose heart because all that is in their field of vision are the grades from core subjects, while the personal qualities that actually form character and shape personhood get relegated to the back page. In a little while your child will bring home a report that will tell you something of their achievements over the last 6 months, and as a parent you will have a choice as to what you will focus on.

Your child may not be a genius either, but chances are they will have some wonderful qualities that you can encourage, if you choose to see them

Here’s a great article from Brad Brisco on how churches can move forwards in the missional journey. Some very useful stuff in there for those of us at Quinns

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Over the past few months I have had an increasing number of conversations with pastors and church leaders about moving existing churches in a missional direction. I have been asked what key issues or topics need to be considered when attempting to transition a traditional church. The following list is certainly not conclusive or comprehensive, but here are nine elements that I believe need to be considered when making a missional shift:

1. Start with Spiritual Formation

God calls the church to be a sent community of people who no longer live for themselves but instead live to participate with Him in His redemptive purposes. However, people will have neither the passion nor the strength to live as a counter-cultural society for the sake of others if they are not transformed by the way of Jesus. If the church is to “go and be,” rather than “come and see,” then we must make certain that we are a Spirit-formed community that has the spiritual capacity to impact the lives of others.

This means the church must take seriously its responsibility to cultivate spiritual transformation that does not allow believers to remain as adolescents in their spiritual maturity. Such spiritual formation will involve much greater relational underpinnings and considerable engagement with a multitude of spiritual disciplines.

One such discipline should involve dwelling in the word, whereby the church learns to regard Scripture not as a tool, but as the living voice of God that exists to guide people into His mission. If we believe the mission is truly God’s mission, then we must learn to discern where He is working; and further discern, in light of our gifts and resources, how He desires a church to participant in what He is doing in a local context.

2. Cultivate a Missional Leadership Approach

The second most important transition in fostering a missional posture in a local congregation is rethinking church leadership models that have been accepted as the status quo. This will require the development of a missional leadership approach that has a special emphasis on the apostolic function of church leadership, which was marginalized during the time of Christendom in favor of the pastor/teacher function.

This missional leadership approach will involve creating an apostolic environment throughout the life of the church. The leader must encourage pioneering activity that pushes the church into new territory. However, because not all in the church will embrace such risk, the best approach will involve creating a sort of “R&D” or “skunk works” department in the church for those who are innovators and early adopters.

A culture of experimentation must be cultivated where attempting new initiatives is expected, even if they don’t all succeed. As pioneering activities bear fruit, and the stories of life change begin to bubble up within the church, an increasing number of people will begin to take notice and get involved.

3. Emphasize the Priesthood of All Believers

Martin Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers was that all Christians were called to carry out their vocational ministries in every area of life. Every believer must fully understand how their vocation plays a central part in God’s redemptive Kingdom.

I think it was Rick Warren who made popular the phase “every member is a minister.” While this phrase is a helpful slogan to move people to understand their responsibility in the life of the church, God’s purpose for His church would be better served if we encouraged people to recognize that “every member is a missionary.” This missionary activity will include not just being sent to far away places, but to local work places, schools and neighborhoods.

4. Focus Attention on the Local Community

As individual members begin to see themselves as missionaries sent into their local context the congregation will begin to shift from a community-for-me mentality, to a me-for-the-community mentality. The church must begin to develop a theology of the city that sees the church as an agent of transformation for the good of the city (Jeremiah 29:7). This will involve exegeting each segment of the city to understand the local needs, identify with people, and discover unique opportunities for the church to share the good news of Jesus.

5. Don’t Do It Alone

Missional activity that leads to significant community transformation takes a lot of work and no church can afford to work alone. Missional churches must learn to create partnerships with other churches as well as already existing ministries that care about the community.

6. Create New Means of Measuring Success

The church must move beyond measuring success by the traditional indicators of attendance, buildings and cash. Instead we must create new scorecards to measure ministry effectiveness. These new scorecards will include measurements that point to the church’s impact on community transformation rather than measuring what is happening among church members inside the church walls. For the missional church it is no longer about the number of people active in the church but instead the number of people active in the community. It is no longer about the amount of money received but it is about the amount of money given away.

A missional church may ask how many hours has the church spent praying for community issues? How many hours have church members spent with unbelievers? How many of those unbelievers are making significant movement towards Jesus? How many community groups use the facilities of the church? How many people are healthier because of the clinic the church operates? How many people are in new jobs because of free job training offered by the church? What is the number of school children who are getting better grades because of after-school tutoring the church provides. Or how many times do community leaders call the church asking for advice?

Until the church reconsiders the definition of ministry success and creates new scorecards to appropriately measure that success, it will continue to allocate vital resources in misguided directions.

7. Search for Third Places

In a post-Christendom culture where more and more people are less and less interested in activities of the church, it is increasingly important to connect with people in places of neutrality, or common “hang outs.” In the book “The Great Good Place” author Ray Oldenburg identifies these places of common ground as “third places.”

According to Oldenburg, third places are those environments in which people meet to interact with others and develop friendships. In Oldenburg’s thinking our first place is the home and the people with whom we live. The second place is where we work and the place we spend the majority of our waking hours. But the third place is an informal setting where people relax and have the opportunity to know and be known by others.

Third places might include the local coffee shop, hair salon, restaurant, mall, or fitness center. These places of common ground must take a position of greater importance in the overall ministry of the church as individuals begin to recognize themselves as missionaries sent into the local context to serve and share.

In addition to connecting with people in the third places present in our local communities, we need to rediscover the topic of hospitality whereby our own homes become a place of common ground. Biblical hospitality is much more than entertaining others in our homes. Genuine hospitality involves inviting people into our lives, learning to listen, and cultivating an environment of mercy and justice, whether our interactions occur in third places or within our own homes. Regardless of our setting, we must learn to welcome the stranger.

8. Tap into the Power of Stories

Instead of trying to define what it means to be missional, it is helpful to describe missional living through stories and images. Stories create new possibilities and energize people to do things they had not previously imagined. We can capture the “missional imagination” by sharing what other faith communities are doing and illustrate what it looks like to connect with people in third places, cultivate rapport with local schools, and build life transforming relationships with neighbors.

Moreover, we can reflect deeply on biblical images of mission, service and hospitality by spending time on passages such as Genesis 12:2, Isaiah 61:1-3, Matthew 5:43; 10:40; 22:39; 25:35; and Luke 10:25-37.

9. Promote Patience

The greatest challenge facing the church in the West is the “re-conversion” of its own members. We need to be converted away from an internally-focused, Constantinean mode of church, and converted towards an externally-focused, missional-incarnational movement that is a true reflection of the missionary God we follow.

However, this conversion will not be easy. The gravitational pull to focus all of our resources on ourselves is very strong. Because Christendom still maintains a stranglehold on the church in North America – even though the culture is fully aware of the death of Christendom – the transition towards a missional posture will take great patience; both with those inside and outside the church. Many inside the church will need considerable time to learn how to reconstruct church life for the sake of others. At the same time, the church will need to patiently love on people, and whole communities, that have increasingly become skeptical of the church.

Last weekend we saw the amazing journey of Jessica Watson come to an end as she entered Sydney Harbour after sailing around the world, all at the ripe old age of 16. I’m sure many of us were inspired by her courageous venture and maybe it even sparked (or re-ignited) some dreams within us in regards to our own lives.

I wonder how many of us had dreams once upon a time, but have either had them crushed or simply replaced with the routine of family life and work. I wonder how many of us carry unfulfilled ambitions that seems to move further into the distance with each passing year?

Mark Twain once said “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

I have a feeling he was onto something.

Not all of us are created to be adventurers in the Jessica Watson sense but we have all been created for a purpose, a purpose God had in mind from before the start of time. A question I often love to ask people is, “If money were no object what would you do with your life?’ (The perfect answer is of course ‘exactly what I am doing right now.’) But the more I talk with people, the more I realise that is not a common response.

As people reflect on their dreams I’m sometimes surprised by the passion and sense of vision that seems to flow at this point, but then I ask that other question… ‘so why don’t you find a way to make it happen’ and suddenly things go flat again.

Mortgage, work, bills, whatever… There is always a reason why we can’t follow a dream, but maybe sometimes we just need to turn our back on convention and take a different path?…

Maybe we need to dust off the dreams and breathe life into them again.

Just a thought…

For those who like the outdoors we will be having a weekend away in the Ledge Point / Lancelin area on May 21-23.

Saturday will be the primary day for getting out and about, but if you want to spend the whole weekend then you can book into Ledge Point caravan park on Friday night and stay Saturday night as well.

On Saturday we will leave Ledge Point around 9.00am and head up to Lancelin, take the main track to Wedge Island, hit the beach at ‘Bombing Range’ and then drive on thru to Wedge along the beach if possible, or back on the tracks if we need to.

We’ll stop for a surf, for lunch and a fish wherever it looks decent.

Let Andrew know if you want to be part of this, but make your own bookings in the caravan park for as long as you want to stay.

It seems that in each of us there are usually two competing desires both vying for our allegiance – the desire to get ahead, be successful and gain more than the next person, as well as the desire to think of others, share, express love and generally make the world a better place.

In an increasingly narcissistic society we are daily conditioned to listen to the first voice that tells us we are number one and that our needs and wants are paramount. This is the core message of most advertising – ‘you should have what you want – NOW!’ We only have to glance at our credit card statements to realise that this is a most convincing message.

But what if it is actually nonsense? What if life isn’t all about you (or me) and what if we were created to live quite differently to the messages we hear around us?

Writing on the seduction and subtlety of the powers working within contemporary social structures Hugh Mackay says:

“The truth is that the spiritual impulse and the sporting impulse coexist in most of us; they both have important messages for us, but they have almost nothing to offer each other. And that, in a way, signifies the tension that has Australian society in its grip at the end of the century. Our sporting impulse encourages us to think about economic growth, or globalisation, or industrial relations reform, in terms of winning; our spiritual impulse drives us to think about equity, fairness and justice, and about the impact of our success on the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalised. In a culture that almost deifies competition, the sporting urge prevails most of the time.”

(Turning Point: Australians Choosing Their Future (234-235).)

Perhaps the question is, ‘which impulse is primarily shaping your life?’

It was Jesus who said ‘whoever wants to find his life must lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will surely find it.’ That is some seriously inverted logic. He told his followers to firstly seek after the things that matter to God – righteousness, justice, peace and the like and that all the rest would be taken care of. Essentially Jesus told us to pay attention to the spiritual impulse.

Call me an idealist if you like, but I sometimes wonder what a world would look like if we took his words seriously and actually lived in response to the spiritual urge rather than the competitive one.

A few posts back I mentioned Hugh Mackay’s analysis of suburban life as ‘proximity without intimacy’ and how that was actually the philosopher Dante’s definition of Hell, the implication being that for some people life in the suburbs is a lonely ‘hell-like’ existence.

With blocks of land decreasing in size all the time no one could say we don’t live closely together. I’m sure many of know more about our neighbour’s lives than we would sometimes want to… But proximity is about so much more than physical distance. We can live in each other’s pockets and somehow still be miles apart. Proximity relates to the choice to be close relationally rather than simply live nearby. It’s a whole different deal.

Let me toss in another quote from Mackay’s novel ‘Winter Close’

The contract between neighbours is based on resistance to intimacy, so a quite different kind of closeness becomes possible: easy open, comfortable, but devoid of any ultimate responsibility or any glimpses into each other’s souls. These are adjacent lives – sometimes even parallel lives – rather than shared lives. We compensate for our physical proximity by keeping our emotional distance. These are not like relationships between friends, or even between people who work closely together… Perhaps the thing suburban life offers us is the possibility of living the life of a herd without the bonds of a tribe: proximity, familiarity, trust, support… but not intimacy. When we cross that line we cease to be neighbours and become something else P.156

So what do we become when we cross that line?

Perhaps friends?… ‘Family’ even?…

Of course all this comes at a price because sooner or later relationships enter conflict and then we run the risk of losing what we had. So maybe its safer and easier to just smile and wave and keep to ourselves.

Eugene Petersen has translated the Bible into everyday idiom and in John Ch 1 v 14 he write of Jesus; ‘The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood’. God became one of us and lived among us. Those few words have formed some potent questions in my own mind as I have considered how Jesus might live if he were among us in person today.

Would he keeping his distance, avoiding close connection in case it all went south? Or would he take the risk of rich, deep friendships and thereby encounter the extremes of both intimacy and harsh betrayal?

It’s a bit of a no brainer…

The QCBC Easter Camp was a hoot and those who were there had a blast hanging out together, enjoying the southern region and reflecting on the significance of the weekend.

Kylie took a few great pics so I’ve posted some below.

Hugh Mackay is a well known Australian social researcher and has produced a number of non-fiction works that insightfully analyse social trends in our culture. More recently he has started writing novels and one of my favourites is ‘Winter Close’, the story of the community and relationships in one Sydney street.

A section from the novel that particularly struck me was this paragraph:

Rich is fond of saying that the thing about Winter Close is that it fosters a real sense of community. That’s a big claim and I wish I could share Rich’s confidence in making it. Now that Sydney has grown to four million, communities are hard to come by: a common complaint among Sydneysiders is that ‘we don’t know our neighbours’ – as if that’s the neighbours fault. I’ve given up saying ‘why don’t you knock on their door and introduce yourself?’ The puzzled looks I receive make it clear I have missed the point: plenty of people like not knowing their neighbours and only pretend to complain about it. Suburbia offers the wonderful cloak of anonymity for those who want the security of proximity without any of the demands of intimacy P.10

As I dug a little deeper I discovered that the philosopher Dante once defined hell as ‘proximity without intimacy’ – being in close quarters with other people but without really connecting. Yet this is the common experience of many living in Australian suburbs. We smile at one another, wave as we drive past and pull each other’s wheelie bins in while we’re on holidays, but we don’t really know each other, and while we like it that way to some extent we also yearn for more.

The whole idea of ‘intimacy’ gets a bad rap these days as it is too easily tied to sexuality, but I am certain that it is God’s intent for us to connect in more than superficial ways and to experience significant relationships. Whether we call it ‘intimacy’, ‘community’ or something else, I believe we have all been created with a desire to know one another and to be known.

It isn’t easy to live in significant relationships with others, but the alternative is much less appealing…

This Easter we will be having a Good Friday service and an Easter Sunday service and both will commence at 9.30 in the primary school auditorium.

We’d love to have you there to celebrate this most significant occasion in the Christian calendar.

Danelle is currently planning a trip to Bali to visit the ‘widows and orphans’ projects going on over there.

It looks like being a trip for the women, while the blokes stay home! So far there are 5 or 6 mums and daughters signed up to go so if you’re keen to be part of 7 days away and being part of some great ministry then get in touch with Danelle and book your flights asap.

This Sunday is ‘College Sunday’ at QCBC where the church joins with the school to mark the start of the year and to pray for the staff.

It will be at 9.30am in the main auditorium and there will be no regular service this week as a result.

Recently sociologists identified a new and growing social group called the NETTELS, which is an acronym for “not enough time to enjoy life”.

It seems that lately it has become fashionable to take the largest mortgage you can afford, buy the grandest home possible and then furnish it with the most lavish furniture you can find. Of course this comes at a cost and usually it means people working 6 days a week just to stay afloat.

I have walked into homes of those in my neighbourhood and been stunned at the opulence, only to realise that those who live there are up to their eyes in debt and running like rats on a treadmill just to survive. The slightest move in interest rates pushes them into the danger zone because they already stretched to the limit.

Somehow our obsession with affluence has distorted our approach to life and seen us regard a 60 hour week as just a price you need to pay if you want to live the ‘good life’. The problem is that there isn’t much ‘good life’ left at the end of a 60 hour week. In fact chances are we have completely lost perspective.

When Clive Hamilton wrote “Affluenza” he tuned into a very real sickness in Australian society – the constant desire for more and the realisation that no matter how much we have we are never satisfied. He discovered that Australian people work the longest hours in the developed world, but they are no more content than those in poorer parts of the world.

What’s the deal with that?

I would suggest many of us know that a life of accumulating stuff is not truly satisfying at a deeper level, but we aren’t sure of what else to seek in its place.

Jesus spoke to this many years ago when he said “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”

There’s no question that its enjoyable to have a beautiful home and nice stuff, but everything comes at a price. So I guess the question Jesus might ask us is “How is your choice of lifestyle affecting your soul?”

God does a pretty decent job of mission.

And we are there to help him, rather than try and enlist his help in our projects.  Here’s how one author has put it:

“Mission has been regarded as an essentially human activity, for which we need to enlist divine help through intense prayer, whereas a more faithfully biblical understanding would see mission as a divine activity that invites human collaboration. There is a world of difference between the two, not only conceptually but also in practical terms. For if mission is something that we do, then we can stay firmly in control of it and, to some extent, predetermine its outcomes so they never challenge us beyond our own comfort zones. But if God is the initiator of mission, who knows where that might lead us, and what the outcome might be.”

John Drane, After McDonaldization

So the question then becomes, ‘what is God up to around here and how can I get involved with what he is doing?’

Thanks to my friend Carolyn for the quote.

Cate sent this thru today. For those who are sick of spending money on easter egss and chocolate, here’s something useful you can do. Via TEAR

Chocolate bunnies have nothing on real, live chickens as an Easter gift.

For only $5, a pair of chickens can provide a family from a poor community in Burma, Cambodia, India or Uganda with a source of eggs to eat and sell. So, they’ll be healthier and on the way to earning a small income.

When you order, you can choose a traditional printed card or an e-card to give to a friend or relative for Easter – or any occasion. You’ll also receive a tax-deductible receipt.