A story in the West caught my eye this morning. It briefly told how a church in Parkes, rural NSW, is holding an Elvis style gospel service at the same time as the local community is holding their annual Elvis Festival. The Sydney Morning Herald has some more details such as,
“The Elvis gospel-style Uniting Church service that will be held on the Sunday began four years ago with 80 people. Tomorrow it is expected to draw more than 700.
The Reverend Tom Stuart, who is leading the service, said Elvis was no saint but he saw nothing wrong with the church borrowing him.
Elvis was deeply spiritual and loved gospel singing, having been brought up in a Memphis Pentecostal church.
He recorded three gospel albums and it was for his religious music, not his rock’n’roll tunes, that he won three Grammys.
“I see Elvis as this performer with incredible talent who is like us because of the phenomenal personal failings that exposed his clay feet,” Mr Stuart said.”
NCLS also mention it briefly on their site.
This is awesome. A local church listening and seeing what the local community is doing, and tapping into it in a relevant way. Something accesible and liked by the community. Apparently the church service is now the biggest event on the Elvis Festival’s calender!
I think this is fantastic, mmmm, now how can I get the Bayswater Council to organise a Elvis Festival in my area…. and where have I left my blue suede shoes?

I bought my son, off Ebay, a Jimmy Neutron Rocket Car for Christmas.
Goodness knows how he got so obsessed with this genius wonder boy, but he has. About half the presents he got for Christmas were JM related, including DVD’s, models, and other things.

Unfortunately Hasbro, the manufacturer of Jimmy toys, stopped
manufacturing them and distributing them in Australia about
2 years ago. I know because I rang them.
Thank goodness for Ebay!
I have just purchased him a Jimmy walker robot, and it should arrive in time for his birthday. Only thing is that the postage from the US costs about double what the radio controlled walker is going to cost us.

Do I get a father of the year nomination or what!

This from the The news
“The senior pastor of a Tulsa Baptist church was arrested outside a northwest Oklahoma City hotel after allegedly propositioning an undercover officer, police said. http://newsok.com/video/1724872/Show Video
Lonnie Wayne Latham, 59, senior pastor at South Tulsa Baptist Church, was arrested Tuesday on a complaint of offering to engage in an act of lewdness, police Capt. Jeffrey Becker said. He was released on $500 bail Wednesday.

I checked out his church website and as one of their statements of faith,
“We are all made in the spiritual image of God, to be like Him in character. We are the supreme object of God’s creation. Although mankind has tremendous potential for good, we are marred by an attitude of disobedience toward God called “sin”. This attitude separates us from God”

Its too easy to read these stories and condemn, forgetting this is a real person, probably who started off in ministry just like me, with pure hopes and dreams. Latham is now in a prominent and important role both in his church, and within the Baptist Denomination.
I feel sorrow for his family, and his church, and for him. Lets hope and pray there is a good recovery program going on.
This is a reminder to me, as a pastor, that with responsibility comes accountability.

Off to see the movie tonight.

Loved the seven books as a child, particularly the “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”.

I am speaking on lessons from the wardrobe on Sunday.
Should be fun!

I have booked my ticket to Sydney this year.
Had enough frequent flyers, just, and will take advantage of what looks like the bext line up of speakers ever.
Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Matthew Barnett and …. Delirious!
I always come back home full to the brim from this conference, and it is one of only two or three I go to in the year. My note book is full of enough ideas, deep challenges and vision, as is my heart and mind.

Cannot wait. Just need to cofirm some friends who may come as well, to share a motel room with, and we will have an awesome time.

Unfortunately the budget and time restraints meant I could not stretch the trip to the Saturday before, as the Dockers will be playing Sydney that day. Hopefully they will win, and I can wear the purple with pride in the home of the Swans.

Big bad Kerry Packer has gone to meet his maker. The richest man in Australia (7 Billion dollars) has returned to the dust with as much cash as when he entered the world.
Apparently his father Frank was a real tryant, and a distant and yet overbearing father. Andre Malan in The West Australian has written a great article on this issue, entitled, “lessons to be learnt in sins of the fathers”. Kerry’s father often beat him, humiliated him and called him “boofhead”. Most of Kerry’s childhood life was spent in bording shools. He also suffered from polio as a youngster, and did not receive much sympathy. The West reported yesterday that Kerry had said in a previous life threatening episode, that there was no devil and no heaven. This may explain why he was quite happy to die, to let go of life. He was sick of suffering.

Chatting around a bbq with a group of friends most of them thought he was a great Australian. I found this hard to believe, because I have always seen him as a ruthless man, concerned mainly with his own wealth. But in death, often people take a wider view, and they see the good he did do, his generous giving of millions to various charities, including the famous resourcing of St John Ambulances after they saved his own life.

Either way, whether he likes it or believes it or not, Kerry has discovered now that there is something beyond the grave.
I hope and pray by God’s grace he admitted something within his own heart before he went.

Two seperate incidents in the week leading up to Christmas caught my spiritual attenae.

In David Jones they were selling spell books, that is books with incarnations in them. These books were in the childrens section, and aimed at children.
Up until the age of 9 or 10, children cannot distinguish accurately between fantsasy and reality.

On Humphrey B Bears show, the presenter was plotting the astrological chart for the next year. Great! Just what you want to show impressionable young minds.

I am not one for campaigning against spong bob or Disney, but this sort of stuff is awful.
It is religious teaching, imagine if they had Rick Warren on Sesame Street, telling the kids all about the five purposes for their lives, their would be an uproar.

It also made me keenly aware that you cannot let your kid sit in front of the box unmonitored, not even when watching something that is meant to be innocent like the big brown non speaking bear.