Holidays

Tomorrow Ellisa and I will be beginning our Holidays which last for 3 weeks.

I'm probably not going to blog much in that time, and intend to unplug a fair bit.  Though I may tweet the occasional awesome picture that captures my holidaying moments.

On Sunday morning we're making the 10hr trip from Melbourne to Sydney.  In Sydney we're spending 4 nights at this AWESOME place which we got for a steal thanks to Wotif and with the help of a voucher we got for a wedding present.

After our 4 days in Melbourne we will meet up with my Dad who is flying up from Sydney and we will drive another 2hrs north to the Newcastle/Hunter Valley Region to visit my grandparents and extended family who I haven't seen for ages and many whom Ellisa hasn't met (Grandparents excluded as they came to our wedding!)

We'll head back to Melbourne on the Monday and have a few days in Melbourne before heading back home (for me) to Tasmania.  We're spending 6 days in Tassie and I can't wait.

After that we're back in Melbourne for the weekend and then back to work on the Monday.

I'm hoping to use the break as a chance to read lots, and think about my future.

So pray for our safe journeys and that we come back refreshed and relaxed ready for ministry here in Doncaster.

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10 Good Youth Ministry Blogs

This site has a list of 10 good Youth Ministry blogs.  Obviously they should have rounded it out to 11 and added this blog, but none the less, these 10 are good and I think I am subscribed to most of them!

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Voting Green?

I posted a link to this article which gave some good reasons not to vote Green if you're a Christian on Facebook earlier today and got the following comments:

Person 1: I feel insulted with the label "naive Christian". Reading this article was like swimming in a sea of bias.

Person 2: Articles like this really dissapoint me... the Greens will be getting my vote.

My response:

Hey Person 1 and Person 2. First of all (to Person 1) if I didn't know you and was feeling like being a political bastard I could say that your comment might back up the article giving you that label, of naive. Now, don't get me wrong, that's not what I'm saying but you can't just dismiss what the article says because it's biased against your opinion.

Every article we read is biased in some way, we only notice the bias if it offends our own biases. So to both of you I would say, sure it's biased against the Greens, but lots of other articles are biased towards them. You can't just pick which ones you are going to deal with. What is wrong with what the article said?

Why does it disappoint you Person 2? Is it that the article talks about their philosophy/ideology and you're uncomfortable having that exposed? Or is it because thats not true? Is their no such book called, "The Greens"? Does it not say the things quoted and alluded to?

Don't think I'm some sort of right wing, 'moral majority' Christian voter. I'm not. I've voted Green in the past. But as I read and reflect and try and work out what it means to be a Christian in a democracy my feeling is it means I need base my votes not on single issues, but on ideologies. Now, no party has a perfect Christian ideology (not even the Christian ones!) But some are at least not opposed to Christians. And that is my problem. It might be all well and good to have more trees and to treat the 'boat people' (actually desperate refugees in need of our help) more humanly, but what good is letting them settle in Australia only to have the church and Christians then hindered to bring the Gospel to them by a party that has said it wants to bring a, " green philosophy as an alternative to the traditional Christian view: "an alternative tradition", a green ethic that is concerned for "the interests of individual non-human animals". This by its very nature would include a rejection of Christian morals etc.

No party is perfect, I agree. I have no idea who to vote for. But I don't think it should be the Greens. It's not a salvation issue, I don't think you love Jesus less if you vote for them. But I do think it is an unwise move, and surely I must be allowed to hold that opinion and express it. That's what democracy is all about!



Feel free to continue the debate here or on Facebook!

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Men get sicker than women?

My brother has an excellent little piece of analysis of the claims made recently in some of the Australian metropolitan newspapers concerning the idea that 'man flu' is really real and that men always overstate their sickness.

I wonder what other scientific findings you've taken as true, which aren't, based on a piece of poor journalism?

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I thought I'd have to go to America to see something like this

UPDATE: Alan has provided some links to this church in the comments.  You can see a biography for this guy here.

But actually I only have to go to church in Queensland...



Amazing... I promise when you come to our church you will be able to at least follow the preacher.

HT to Nathan where i saw this first...

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The Poor, Homeless, My new books and a video

A week or two ago I posted some of my  reflections on going to the Men's Shelter run by the Salvation army called the Anchorage.   There were a number of comments including some recommended reading.

Just the other day two new books arrived in the mail from the Book Depository for me.

Sider - Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, and Vanier - From Brokenness to Community.


I was also watching this video (see below) about homelessness in America.  It reminded me about when I was at Uni studying subjects like Social Policy and in particular some of the stuff I learnt about homelessness there.  You are said to be in housing stress (you can read some Australian specific stuff here) if you're paying more than 30% of your income to cover the basic costs of providing a house for yourselves (i.e. just the rent or morgate repayments).  If you're paying over 50% you're said to be in significant housing stress.  It's easy to see that it's not hard to get into housing stress!  For example to take out a small loan that would buy you a one bedroom home about 2hrs drive from Melbourne of 200000 with an interest rate of about 8% you need to repay 1500 a month.  To buy anything close to the city or in the Doncaster area you would need a lot more!  Which means of course, you have to earn lots to afford a home.  It's easy to imagine things could spiral out of control, like the loss of a job causing you to lose your house and become homeless.  And perhaps it's sometimes easy to understand why some of the people in our church aren't as generous as we think they ought be.




(HT to the Rethinking Youth Ministry guys for this video)

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Internet Porn Stats

Really interesting bunch of stats on porn on the internet over at Youth Ministry Geek

Check it out

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HTD Youth Camp

This year we're looking at a few different stories from the bible of people encountering Jesus and having their lives turned upside down.  We're blessed to have our new Senior Pastor come on camp and tell us these stories and spend the weekend getting to know this next generation of young people.  Life Upside Down is theme for our camp and over the next couple of months the Youth Leadership Team and I are going to be working hard coming up with some creative upside down games!

We're praying and believing for at least 30 youth on camp this year.  Dates are August 27-29th.  I'd love you to join us in praying for a successful camp this August!

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The new vicar's wife

My Google alerts stumbled me across this interview with our new Vicar's (aka Senior Pastor's) wife.

Looks like it would be a great blog for all you ministry wives out there!

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