Month: July 2011

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The Prodigal God – Sermon

Here is my sermon from this past weekend at St Faith’s Narrabeen. I’ve preached on Luke 15 a bunch of times in the last few years. I gave it bit of a rework over the weekend including a new title, The Prodigal God with a longer discussion on the reckless love of God. I think people found the emphasis helpful. If you had a listen and are interested in thinking through some of the ideas a bit further, check out The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller.

The Prodigal God – Luke 15:11-32 – Dave Miers [right-click to download etc…]

Also, they’ve said that a few bits were missed in the recording. I recorded a copy as well. I haven’t listened, but if you do, and it feels like something is missing, let me know and I can email a full mp3. But I’m sure you won’t miss much.

If you have a listen and realise that you are distant from God either because of your rebellion or religiosity – let me know and we (or I can find someone near where you live) can chat about how to come back to God. No pressure.

Pic from Saltmotion – used by permission.

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Soulies Underground – Romans 8

Super-encouraging time at SOULIES UNDERGROUND on Friday night. Good turn out. Good vibe. Solid time in Romans 8. Great to pray for Turkey, South Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan. Sang some quality songs. Simple night. We were aiming to 1) HUNGER for the Word and 2) PRAY for the World. I think both those things happened. Praise God!

The video above is an uncut version of the live web stream. We had no more than 15 viewers at any one time, and perhaps 30-40 different people who watched online. I think it was worth having a go at the live stream. We’ll give it another crack next time!

(If you watch the above video, skip along for 15 minutes or so for it to actually start. We’ll also try to get the mp3s of the talks online this week)

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Hunger for the WORD + Pray for the WORLD

SOULIES UNDERGROUND is on this Friday night. As I’ve learnt more about the persecuted church, I’ve been struck by the hunger for the Word of God of underground/secret church members. So SOULIES UNDERGROUND will be an opportunity to be BOUND WITH our brothers and sisters in the persecuted church by learn from their hunger for the Word and also spend time praying for them and for our world. We’ll be looking at Romans 8.

If you’re not part of our youth community, you’re more than welcome to join us online!

We’ve just launched www.souliesunderground.com which will include a live video stream and the opportunity to interact via twitter and facebook. Check it out for details.

Why broadcast it online? There probably aren’t many ‘real’ underground churches broadcasting their gatherings via webcam!!

Here are 3 reasons:

  1. I first read about running an event like this in David Platt’s book Radical. And then Secret Church was simulcast to over 50,000 people around the world in April this year. Our aims are smaller scale, but I like the idea and that leads to point 2…
  2. The technology is fairly straightforward. Livestream is free. LIVE THEME is relatively cheap and easy to customise. And it’s brilliant! (Affiliate link)
  3. If a few more people can be encouraged from God’s Word (in Romans 8 ) and spend some time praying for the persecuted church, then why not?! I’m keen to keep leveraging new technology for good things. I think this is a good thing.
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OK Go – End Love – Official Video

OK Go make creative film clips. Here’s one. Here’s another. And another still:

Tech specs:

“The fastest we go is 172,800x, compressing 24 hours of real time into a blazing 1/2 second. The slowest is 1/32x speed, stretching a mere 1/2 second of real time into a whopping 16 seconds. This gives us a fastest to slowest ratio of 5.5 million. If you like averages, the average speed up factor of the band dancing is 270x. In total we shot 18 hours of the band dancing and 192 hours of LA skyline timelapse – over a million frames of video – and compressed it all down to 4 minutes and 30 seconds! Oh and don’t forget, it’s one continuous camera shot.”

(from here)