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.

For my son and daughters first Christmas my wife bought them ‘Baby’s 1st Christmas’ baubels to hang on the tree.

Well this is my blog’s first Christmas. Merry Christmas blog!

More importantly Happy and Merry Christmas to you all.

I hope God gives you more than you could ever hope or dream of for the coming year.

In “The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations” by Dan Kimball Rick Warren has written the foreword. As seems to be true of most things Rick says, he is looking for opportunities and believing they are there in most situations. Here is how he introduces the book, “In the past twenty years, spiritual seekers have changed a lot. In the first place, there are a whole lot more of them. There are seekers everywhere. I’ve never seen more people so hungry to discover and develop the spiritual dimension of their lives. That is why there is such a big interest in Eastern thought, New Age practices, mysticism and the transcendent. Today seekers are hungry for symbols and metaphors and experiences and stories that reveal the greatness of God. Because seekers are constantly changing, we must be sensitive to them like Jesus was; we must be willing to meet them on their own turf and speak to them in ways they understand.”

Whatever else one might think of the emerging Church, they have got this right, “seekers are hungry for symbols and metaphors and experiences and stories” If indeed they say that. Not that we always know who ‘they’ are or really what ‘they say’. I dont wont to put words in anyones mouth.

I do think this, that people dont care less about apologetics any more, they care about what works, in your emotional and spiritual life. They care about the truth found within a story, and you know what? The Bible is a book of stories. Jesus taught truth through story, through people’s lives and experiences came meaning. Rob Bell has shown me that.

“Why do we do the things we do? Many people react to and are driven by these deep unspoken forces. They are strong and they dictate huge areas of our lives. And it is possible to be a good Christian and go to church services and sing the right songs and jump through the right hops and never let Jesus heal your soul”. (p118)

Woh…. As a Pastor I know this to be true in my own life, as well as those I interact with.

The deep forces, things like abuse, insecurity, rejection. These are the things which bring forth legalism, phariseeism, bitterness, overt submission, persecution complex, addictions.

Christ has set us free, he wants us to live lives of hope, joy and strength. We cant if we wont let Him heal us.

A friend emailed me this devotion.
How am I going with the things that are really important, what am I building, and how am I building?
This is good.

A carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building industry and live a more leisurely life with his wife and his extended family. He would miss the regular income but he had decided to retire, they would manage.The boss was sorry to see such a good worker leave and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favour.The carpenter said yes, but it soon became obvious that his heart wasn’t in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and even used inferior materials. It seemed an unfortunate way to bow out of his career.When the house was finished the builder came to inspect the house, the boss handed the front door key to the old carpenter. “This is your house,” he said, “my gift to you.”What a shock! What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently. Now he had to live in the home he had built none too well.So it is with us. We build our lives in a distracted way, reacting rather than acting, willing to put up less than the best. At important points we do not always give the job our very best effort.Then with a shock we look at the situation we have created and find that we are living in the house that we have built. If we had realised, we could have done it differently.Think of yourself as the carpenter. Think about your house. Each day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Build wisely. It is the only life you will ever build. Even if you live it for only one day more, that day deserves to be lived graciously and with dignity.Your life today is the result of your attitudes and choices in the past.Your life tomorrow will be the result of your attitudes and the choices you make today.