Was invited by a friend to the Leadership Breakfast hosted by Phil Baker.

Phil spoke on leadership principles learnt from the Ancient Egyptians.
Built to last, communication, working as a team.
It was a very well researched, humorous and insightful talk.
These are very well run events.

I was reflecting today that it was reminiscent of the old Christian Business Men Meetings. In their day these were effective and purposeful meetings, designed to share Christ to Business Men. What Phil is doing is a modern twist on that old idea, with the obvious non-exclusion of women of course.

My friend has also found that from a business perspective, such networking times have also been effective for his business.

If you get a chance, I encourage you to get along, if only to see what sort of things they do, and its fun!

I said last week that Fremantle played the best I have ever seen them play.
This week they played very well, but perhaps the more interesting aspect of the game is how ordinary West Coast looked.

The Dockers are now installed as equal second favourites with the Adelaide Crows. That was unthinkable 7 weeks ago.

I had a great time, sat next to two friendly Eagles supporters, and apart from some argy bargy in the section next to mine, the crowd was good.

But hows the karaoke Eagle’s song on the scoreboard?
And how is the innane SGIO Eagles chant?

The Eagles crowd was very quiet most of the day, but I suppose with that scoreline, its to be expected.

There was a big decision before Baptists of Western Australia, whether to appoint Pastor Mark Wilson of Whitfords Church of Christ as our Director of Ministries.

Last night at our Pastors dinner, which was attended to capacity, Karen shared how God had spoken to her about the decision, and it was truly prophetic. They are both leaving a great growing and significant church. They are both making a significant sacrifice, and I am really grateful.

I went to the special assembly called by the Baptist Family of Churches of WA this morning.
About 150 or so turned up to decide on whether to appoint Mark Wilson to the Director of Ministries positon. I don’t normally go to Assemblies, but felt it was important to go to this one, and show my support.

Mark and his wife Karen are great people and I am so excited about his appointment. The vote was overwhelming, almost 100% and there was a genuine sense that God’s Spirit was moving in the meeting.
Often the argy bargy of these meetings has put a lot of the younger pastors like myself off attending, but there has been changes happening in our Baptist culture for some time, with questions being asked respectfully, and the meeting bathed in prayer, including prayer clusters before the decision was made.

Our hope and prayer as Pastors coming through and leading churches is that Mark is able to lead us into a new era. One Pastor commented to me that for the first time he was truly excited to be a Baptist Pastor.

I have just got back the final proofs for our new church sign.
While spending some time reading and praying the other day God spoke to me about ‘being a light to the world’ and one of the things He pointed out was that our church sign was sending a really bad message to the community. Basically that we dont care about how our church looks, nor does anything look like it has changed for 30 years.

Now we are really tight financially at the moment, so how was I going to pay for it? Well I had some generous people tip in for it, and in a fortnight we will have it.
God speaks, God gives through His people. Its pretty humbling when it happens.

Look, I know its only a church sign, but I do think this is important, not as important as the relationships we have in the community, but relevant to being salt and light none the less.
For a church like ours, which has a real focus on being local and whose buildings are used constantly by the community, its important.

Spent a beautiful Monday morning wandering through Araluen. What a beautiful place. Took Clem out of school and he spent most of the morning discovering where all the water went. Not really interested in flowers and tulips, but quite interested in mud and waterways!

Many of you out there in the blog kingdom may not have heard of Matt Price. Matt used to work in Perth as a journalist, but now resides in Canberra.
He is a journalist for The Australian.

Matt is a passionate Fremantle supporter and author. He pens a semi regular column in “The Australian” all about Freo. The latest one is a gem, here is a piece from it,

“Nobody exactly knows why the Dockers are suddenly playing intoxicating,
glorious, physical, daring, intense, attacking, spirited, attractive,
intelligent, skilful, creative, inspiring, formidable, intimidating,
penetrating, compelling, astonishing, rousing football, but they are and it’s
bloody wonderful.
Many Dockers fans were moved to tears by the spectacular
dismantling of Adelaide and, having strung together six-in-a-row, an absurdly
improbably top-four spot beckons. Only a fool would bet against West Coast,
Adelaide and Sydney raffling the flag, but, let’s be frank, six weeks ago only a
clinically certified moron would have foreseen Fremantle’s electrifying run. “

Whole Article