In the midst of all the stress of merging, documents to produce, people to meet, organisation to organise….its great to stop and reflect for a moment. Life is good. My family is great….Tonight I made dinner. It was a meal I really don’t like at all, but my family loves. Silverside with white cheesy sauce, creamy cheese mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables. There is not much that the kids and my wife eat more quickly.

I just can’t get into silverside. I slow cooked it in malt vinegar, (8 hours) bay leaves and a few other things and it came out perfectly pink, moist and lovely. It dissapeared rather quickly!

My wife said I should have cooked myself a seperate piece of steak…but how can I do that when I encourage my kids to eat whatever the rest of the family is eating?

So we sat down together, as we often do, and ate together. There is not much better things to do with my time.

So much is done, and stopped…without good communication.

My email is not working at the moment. Our church has an account through Brinkster (cheap and good usually). For whatever reason I cant receive it at the moment. So I go to their home page…nothing. So I log onto live help, and get live help quickly (which is great). The person lets me know there is a problem, they are working on it.

Now if they had just posted that on their front page, with an approximate fix time, they would save so much hassle…for everyone. People understand that things dont always work as they should. But if you let me know that they know there is a problem…far less agro.

When trying to share a vision, be prepared to listen a lot, even if people disagree, and bring up reasons why not to do it…often in just sharing it, they can let their objections go.

Good message from Eliot on the churches role as a prophetic voice.

This aspect of the church has been misused in these ways.
1. As a manipulative tool by people seeking to exercise control.
2. As a tool for those angry, bitter and disinfranchised, as a battering ram against the established church
3. As a awful way to avoid being involved in ministry yourself by attacking others who are involved in ministry.

These above abuses do not mean we should not exercise these gift, but they should guide us and govern us to be sensitive and loving in speaking the truth. They should also inform us as to why Christians are wary of this gift being used.

Speaking the truth…in love…..

This does not mean we wont offend, the truth does offend. This does not mean we wont confront, true love confronts evil.

Practically speaking, true prophets don’t use blogs, mass email and anonymous letters to fire shots across an individual or a specific churches ‘bow’.
Thats crap, garbarge…and should be ignored or thrown in the bin without being read.

True prophets who are truly effective will generally be your friend, someone who is in relationship with you, someone you have chosen to make yourself accountable to.
Also true prophets dont have ulterior motives. They have nothing to gain, in any sense, from telling the truth. You get those who say they are reluctant prophets…but in fact they are gaining a sense of control from being seemingly reluctant.
True prophets dont pretend to have a hotline to Gods voice…they share humbly and carefully.

The church needs to be careful that it is not in a compromising relationship with the government, or in fact with any other body, which may compromise its prophetic voice. We need to speak the truth in love.
If there is anything the religious right in the US has taught us…it is that aligning itself with any political party is fraught with danger.

Listening to one of my favourite speakers the other night, Mark Driscoll. Despite him being one of my favourites, he says some things I disagree with, or don’t like.

One thing he emphasises is the soveriegnity of God…and the election of the Saints.
But then…at the end of the message…he called for a response. Even as he was speaking it seemed to me that he was a little uncomfortable with asking for a response. It seemed a little incogruous that after explaining and preaching in detail on how we are “God’s elect”…he then called for a response….

God requires a response. His love requires a response. Maybe…..maybe when we are part of the body of Christ we look back and see we are part of ‘the elect’….but there is also a great need for us to respond to Christ….to His call on our lives…to the responsibility we have to the One who created us….and then came to share the good news with us.

The political incorrectness of the gospel is that a response is necessary…you must call upon the name of the Lord…you must choose to become part of the body. Otherwise you are outside of the Body of Christ…and will face eternity apart from Him.