Here is a simple loop I have made up using a image that you can download for free from www.floodgateproductions.com
They encourage you to manipulate and change the image to suit your requirements, which is what I have done.
And a great indicator of the season to come…..
(I’ve always thought so!!)
44 points against a pretty lacklustre wee girls…
If not for a brave Mark Seaby, it would have been a lot worse for the Canaries down the road.
Discussions on leadership at the moment have been grabbing my attention.
One comment in particular forced me to think again on the issue of creative freedom.
Someone commented that out of the Ecclesia should come the decisions. One has to go no further than the book of Acts to find some proof verses to back up this view.
Furthermore, years of Baptist history and emphasis on congregational government has led to one of the most missional and orthodox denominations, and one of the few established churches growing.
However there are issues and clarification about what this actually means. The issues in my mind relate to what the congregation should actually decide. In Acts they decided if Paul should be anointed as the Mission Leader. The one who would go out and plant churches, act as an Apostle.
I think this is a great model for us.
What we also find the early church doing is appointing deacons to lead the ministries, and not being checked on by an over diligant membership.
Picture this.
The church decides together to send Paul out. They then have further meetings to decide on what methods he should employ, where he should go, what churches he should set up, where, what he should be restricted to saying to them, whether he should make tents or not, and whether he should be allowed to serve wine or not.
These issues and more were ones that it is logical Paul needed to make for himself, and he did.
The church anointed him as leader, and then trusted him to lead. If he had started to make stupid decisions, if he had been greedy and self serving, and dare I say it in this ‘nice political climate’ he had not performed…..I believe they would have revisited the responsibility given to him. Futhermore they continually asked him to be accountable, to report to them, and when a serious issue came up, for example what to expect of Gentile believers, they gave direction.
Let me say something else. Did their appointing of Paul absolve them of being the church, of sharing the gospel, of bringing the kingdom into the present? Of course not, these and more was what Paul and others expected of the whole church. But Paul was recognised as a leader and allowed to lead.
Some of what I read makes me wonder whether political correctness is driving us, whether in fact our culture is determining our values, rather than scripture?
Are we afraid of authority, submission, releasing people? No one likes a dictator, no one likes someone who does not have their interests at heart, and not many will follow such a leader for very long. But that does not mean we should not let leaders lead, and recognise them as such. The abuse of any model is not evidence to not use it, and I recognise this even in what I am about to say.
Of course experience drives all of our views on these issues.
Two experiences drive me.
Bad members meetings where instead of the church gathering together to find the mind of Christ, gatekeepers gathered to maintain the status quo, dysfunctional bitter people gathered in some twisted way to have influence, and some dear souls gathered to be abused.
The other experience is in the statistical fact that creative people are the first people to leave where instead of releasing people into leadership and freedom in expressing their gifts, talents and ideas, they were stifled by change haters.
The so called “Ceo” model is so far from how it is being stereotyped it is not funny. It is not about one person assuming control, it is about leadership being given to the people, not taken from them.
Good business people know this.
I believe the mind of Christ is found in the eccelisa. But how we work out what the church decides in a modern church context is not as simple as this sweeping statement.
And people wonder why I have a chip on my shoulder about the media bias against the Fremantle Dockers.
Craig O’Donoghue take a bow. You have just taken out the “Markedly award from shrimp most needing to be BBQ’ed”. His ‘journalism’ in the Age Newspaper is clearly the result of too much cheap chardonny and a free set of windscreen wipers from John Worsfold. Read this line from his article and let it sink in for a moment……
“The Dockers were clearly the worst behaved team in the AFL last year “
Now if you were an illegal alien having just arrived from Botswania I could understand you saying this, if you just read one copy of “The West Australian” last February when Farmer did the wrong thing, and Michael Johnson did nothing wrong, but both, in true AFL Tribunal fashion, had the book thrown at them.
But Craig, bless his heart of integrity, lives and resides in Western Australia, the home of the West Coast Beagles, friends of various underworld types and who Worsfold admitted had “up to eight players taking illegal drugs”. Thrown in Kerr’s assault charges, Selwoods racist and derrogatory comments, Michael Gardiner getting the boot and Braun’s flatlining in LA…and well, I think his comment is at best ill informed, at worst, typical of the media stupidity we Dockers fans put up with on a daily basis.
By the way, did you know that the rehab clinin Ben Cousins attended in the US is now shut down because of the negative publicity attracted to it by Ben??
Story
I have had some serious pain in my abdomen the past 12 months, which at one point involved a stay at RPH……
Now I have to visit a surgeon this afternoon with the possibility of having my appendix removed. I think doctors are great, but I dislike hospitals when I am the one getting treatment…..Have you seen the coffee they serve there???
If you are the praying type, send up one for me……
