We had the biggest crowd ever, the sausage sizzle people ran out of sauce, we served over 400 cups of cordial to thirsty kids,

The sound check was done in record time, the stage was stable,

everyone was excited…..

After two carols and one item, the rain come down, and it was too hard to ignore it!

This is Perth Australia for goodness sake, where has summer gone??
Ministry can sometimes be dissapointing, but that is the risk of leading. Last night all the fantastic and joyful people from my church led well.
They felt the joy, and maybe dissapointment of ministry.
Don’t stress, God knows best!!!
I thought we all showed grace, patience and joy in the midst of some trying circumstances.
And I think it was a wonderful witness to the people watching,

SO WELL DONE!!
And roll on next years carols.

I am a Pizza lover. In a former life I used to manage a Dial a Dino’s (remember them, bought out by Dominoes).

At home, most Thursdays, I make the family Pizza. Not any old pizza with a store bought base. I make the lot from scratch. I make the dough, I proof it, I roll it out to size, depending on how thick I want it. Then I crush fresh tomatoes and herbs. My local deli supplies me with some Italian sausage and bacon, which I cook in the fry pan before putting on the pizza. The cheese I use is some good Mozarella.
My wife bought me a pizza stone, which is a round device you put in the oven to heat up, then cook your pizza on it. This gets properly floured and the pizza comes out looking better, and tasting much better than any cheap Dominos one.

Today I blew it. I went to Coles and in a fit of madness bought a Mc Cains frozen pizza on special. I ate it, and now I feel so dissapointed.
How can a mass produced product like that compete with my home ‘built with love’ special, it cant.
Now the Mc Cain special is sitting in my stomach, like some conjealed mess.

Preparing for my message in two weeks time on leaving a legacy. I am exploring the life of Elijah and how lessons from his life help us to be overcomers.

I am particularly interested in how he left a legacy with Elisha to carry on the good work. It goes to the heart of something I am passionate about, the legacy we leave our kids. And I am not talking about finances, although that may be part of it. I am talking about what we will impart to them, what our lives will say to them. How who we are as people will give them strength, and help them lead fulfilling lives.

Looking through some multi media resources I have just found a great mini presentation on what it means to be a father, excellent! I love it when a plac comes together.

Hi to all my fellow bloggers and readers.
Your all welcome to the carols in the park my church is running.
I’m compering, so come and say hello!

Windy and a bit rainy, perfect day for packing some boxes. Yeh right, perfect day for a spot of tennis or reading the West with a large Latte and a cheese sausage from the local deli.

Unfortunately it is the former I am doing today, not the latter.
Wonder if Abraham had this many boxes to pack?

Recently a popular and well written Christian magazine, Charisma, published an article on article about a pastor called Clarence McClendon. Apparently the good pastor , “announced from the pulpit that he had uncovered a “new revelation” in the Bible. His discovery: That a church leader can have more than one wife’. The writer of the article went on and stated, “Hopefully, you and everyone in the building would run, not walk, out of that church and never come back until the pastor had been replaced. But I am afraid too many of us gullible charismatics might stay in the pews—and eventually give the guy a standing ovation plus a $10,000 love offering”.

Well yes, hopefully we would run out. Have a look at the picture I have included. Isn’t it amazing how holy and worshipful this guy looks? I dont say this to be judgemental. In fact Clarence may well have started out as a humble honest preacher, looking to do the right thing. Somewhere along the line though things got messed up. Maybe the enemy got to him, maybe his own addictions got to him, maybe he got lazy. I remember a story in the bible about a wonderful leader and king who did something pretty stupid and comparable to Clarence.

This story reminds me, there go I, but by the grace of God. Lord, keep me humble, keep me faithful, keep me in love with you.

I have been contemplating my own post, after a couple of anonymous (to the public, not to me) people commented on it.

I do not believe we can always see where God is moving, and go there, as Henry Blackeby may lead us to think. (I am not putting words in Blackeby’s mouth, he may lead you to think that, he may not). Sometimes, as a good friend suggested to me this week, we need to go and do something, and hope God turns up! (Or something like that). In other words the whole ‘is it God, or is it us’ never ending paradox. Naturally I lean towards pragmatism, give it a go ya mug!

Sometimes we just have to try something, and if it does not work, well thats life. In fact I preached on this, and am touching on it again at Inglewood Church of Christ this week. “In taking those first few tentative steps, Abraham was moving to a whole new place in his relationship with God. In stepping out Abraham drew nearer to God. His relationship grew deeper. They moved, even though they didn’t know where it would lead, because of the strength of trust in our relationship”.
“What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see”
and this,
” It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going.” (Hebrews 11 NLT)

What I was trying to say in my first post was that we need to be careful that when God has done something marvellous in our midst, that we don’t become satisfied or even complacent with that. God wants us to continue to grow in our faith, our love for Him, dare I say, the fruit that we bear in His Name and for His Kingdom’s sake.