Month: February 2011

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Youth Ministry Papers: Commitment is Counter-Cultural

I’m planning on producing a youth ministry training paper most Wednesday’s throughout the year. These papers will be discussed at our Soulies weekly leaders meeting. Anyone is welcome to interact in the comments. Click here to access archive.

Young punks today are scared of commitment. Mobile phone companies are aware of this, so they’ve lowered the commitment bar: no longer is it the norm to lock-in to a 24-month contract, but 12-month, 6-month and pay-as-you-go options are all now available. If you’ve tried to run an event via “Events” in Facebook, you’d know how difficult it is to get people to commit to your event. If they actually respond to the invitation they’re more than likely to click “maybe” just so they can leave their options open. If you say “yes”, you limit your options if a better offer is made closer to the event. Why do you think people are afraid of making commitments? How might this make youth ministry harder?

There is a sense in which the Christian life is all about making a commitment. A Christian commits to trust in Jesus (John 3:16) and to “no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” (2 Corinthians 5:15 NIV)

As a member of our church, you are asked to make a commitment to the direction and mission of our church. By being part of the leadership in our church you are indicating that you are on-board with the doctrine of the church and the church  mission statement:  “Our desire is to be: A community transformed by Jesus’ love; fully devoted to loving one another; and radically committed to impacting the world with Christ’s love.”

Our youth ministry is thoroughly behind this mission statement. However, we’ve changed the wording to summarise the statement for our youth community.

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No more fear in death

This is a killer video. I’ve posted it twice before. Here it is again for new readers.

The old skool preacher sampled in this vid is Billy Graham. He has preached Jesus to a trillion people. I recently worked out that I became a Christian through someone who became a Christian under the ministry of someone who became a Christian from Billy’s preaching in 1959. Make sense? Pretty cool. I probably won’t get to meet Billy this side of eternity (though I have met his grandson) but I might hear him preaching Jesus in heaven.

Read more about Jesus: the King who Saves + the King who Rules.

Contact me if you want to find out more.

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Francis Chan – Beyond Expectations

After Francis Chan resigned from his role as the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, he spent 3 months travelling around Asia (check this vid for reasons for leaving). I enjoyed reading Lisa’s (his wife) updates during that time. Below is an update from Francis after they arrived back in the USA. My favourite paragraph is in bold.

Update #5 from Francis Chan

Beyond Expectations

It has been an amazing couple of months as you probably saw from Lisa’s updates.  I don’t even know where to start.  Once again, God far exceeded my expectations.  He has a way of doing that…

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…   Ephesians 3:20

There is far too much to say.  I won’t even attempt to write down all of my thoughts, as that would take too long to read.  I prefer you spend that time in scripture.  So let me just throw out a few thoughts.

GOD is the love of my life.  While I enjoyed experiencing different cultures and meeting new people, I most enjoyed my time communing with God.  It doesn’t matter where I am or what I am doing.  Nothing beats conversing with the living God and watching Him answer prayer.

My family was able to experience exactly what I had hoped and more.  One of my goals as a parent is to show my kids how to live for eternity (Matt. 6:18-20).  I don’t want them to live for the things of this earth.  This was the first time they were able to enjoy not having a home and finding security in Christ.  While I tried to teach that our house was not our home, it is much easier to grasp that concept while homeless.

Continue reading “Francis Chan – Beyond Expectations”

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Healthy Habits – Resolutions that Matter

We’re now half way through February – how are you going with your New Year’s Resolutions? If you’re a Christian – how are you going with your Christian resolutions? Well? Keep charging. Badly? Pretend it’s January 1 and start again! Our January preaching series at St Faith’s was called Healthy Habits – Resolutions that Matter. It was a good way to start the year being challenged to develop godly Christian habits.

Here are the mp3s for the series. (Right click to download etc)

  1. Resolve to Read the Word – Dave Miers (related blog post)
  2. Resolve to Spend Time in Prayer – Trent McGrath
  3. Resolve to Meet with God’s People – Neil Souter
  4. Resolve to Share the Gospel – Dave Miers
  5. Resolve to Shine as Lights – Kerry Nagel

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The Egyptian Revolution

Crazy stuff happening in Egpyt! Last night after Mubarak said he wasn’t going to let go of the Presidency I tweeted this: “the current leader of egpyt seems almost as stubborn as the guy who lead the country 3500 years ago when the Jews were in captivity!”Waking up this morning, the news was different. He’d handed over rule to the military. Pretty significant stuff after a month of protesting and 30 years in power. John Piper tweeted this earlier: “In Egypt’s 5,000 years as a unitary state, these people have never been able to choose their government before.” (BBC) After 5000 years, there’ll be big changes ahead.

Every revolution needs people to stand on a bus in celebration! (Pic taken in Tahrir Square) There are lots of amazing photos on news and social media sites that help to capture the emotion of such momentous news. Facts about Egypt to pray from.

Find out about an even more amazing revolution here.

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The Face of Tomorrow

Face of Tomorrow is a really cool art project by Mike Mike (cool name, thinking of changing mine to Dave Dave! haha). MM is travelling the globe taking photos of 100 people in different cities and then, with the help of some swanky digital technology, combining them to make one ‘average’ face. Check it out. It would be interesting do the project in your church, and then compare it to the average face in your community.

Here is the composite picture of the average face in Sydney:

They look quite beautiful!!

See below for the separate pics from Sydney University and Bondi Beach:

Continue reading “The Face of Tomorrow”

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Persecution Is Not a Social Justice Issue

Here’s the intro of a 5 part series over at the Thirteen Three blog: “Our generation loves social justice, don’t we!? We genuinely believe that we can make an impact by righting some of the wrongs we see in the world today. As Christians, we are called to work for justice, to care for the poor, the oppressed and the needy […] You might assume that persecution falls into the poverty/justice category. But persecution is not a social justice issue. Let me tell you why.”

Check out each post… Why Persecution Is Not a Social Justice Issue:

  1. Following Jesus is about dying
  2. Jesus promises that His followers will be persecuted
  3. God grows His church through persecution
  4. We are not trying to stop persecution
  5. A FINAL WORD: Are we against Social Justice?

It’s a really useful series of posts. It helps the Christian to see that persecution is the normal Christian life. Jesus said to expect it (John 15:20). Many Christians around the world experience it. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12 that “…everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

Comfortable, middle-class and persecution-free is not the normal for the Christian.

The normality of persecution helps you respond rightly when it comes. Check out the apostles response to it in Acts 5:41 – “The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.” They don’t complain that their rights have been denied, rather they rejoice and then in v42 they go on and keep preaching Jesus!