Back From Holidays

... actually we've been back for almost a week, but it has taken me a while to get back to the blogging thing. Holiday highlights from Jimmy's Beach, Hawk's Nest, NSW ...

1. Seeing my whole family 'fall in love' with each other again and enjoy each other so much.
2. Spending time with Ruth and relaxing together.
3. Seeing my two older boys sneak away all through the day to read the first book of the Lord of the Rings together.
4. Reading through most of Julius Caesar with Ruth and my older boys taking parts. I got to be Marcus Brutus! My boys fought over who could be Antony. No-one really wanted to be Caesar.
5. Going to the beach almost every day.
6. Kayaking at Jimmy's beach.
7. Looking through the bookshelves in the holiday house we rented through the real estate agent and seeing about fifty copies of 'The Briefing'!!!!
8. Playing two french games - french cricket and boulles
9. Waking up at ridiculous-o'clock most mornings to get time to read the wonderful book of Proverbs and pray for my family (I got through 12 chapters in the original).
10. Having a friend, Meagan, join us for a day.
11. Writing a couple of Sola Panel articles.
12. Staying in a house with less stuff.
13. Getting and giving lots of hugs!
14. The kids not watching many DVDs.
15. Being disconnected from the internet world.

and so much more.

Exciting News

I had privilege of addressing our four church congregations yesterday about our very exciting news. Neil interviewed Cameron and me about the news and we called them to turn to prayer for God's wisdom and blessing.

So, what's the news?

The story so far
1. Our 10am and 7pm services have been getting pretty full.
2. We are about to launch a serious evangelistic campaign next year. We've got be prepared for God to bring more people into his kingdom and at the moment we're not really equipped to bring them into our church family.
3. We have been talking about church/congregation planting for the last year or so.
4. We have made a big investment by buying another on-site adjacent property earlier this year (Praise God for the generosity of everyone!). We've leant towards a on-site plant to start with.

So what's the plan
1. We (the whole church) are planning, under God, to plant a new Saturday evening congregation next year at 5:30pm - 6:45pm. I'll be leading it and Cameron will be coming as well. This is hot off the press. It will be an all ages and stages of life congregation. This may be one of it's strengths.
2. We will be starting this new church two weeks after Easter.
3. We will be asking people to commit at the end of February and we'll have meetings with that team.
4. We're hoping that the group will not be too big (sixty adults max) so we can reach and include more people from the community as well.
5. We're hoping to find some key roles: a. lay pastor (male) b. lay pastor (female) c. gifted evangelist d. music director e. technical ops f. lay meeting leader g. kids team leader h. someone look after cooking dinner for the kids
6. It was brand new news to most people at church yesterday. We did not ask people to indicate what they wanted to do. We just asked them to pray. I matters how we do this. If you're reading this blog and you're a Christian could you pray for us too. Thanks.

A Passionate Plea

We had a great sermon from Chris tonight. He spoke on putting to death our sinful nature and living as citizens of heaven. He spoke about two issues in particular that we must strangle and bury six feet under the ground: unholy anger and sexual immorality. He is a very gifted young preacher. In the middle of his talk he showed this clip. It was really well integrated into his talk.

This clip is about 'our shattered dreams as Christians', 'sexual shame', 'pornography' and 'our stupid attempts to deal with our shame' and 'middle class Christianity.' Don't watch this if you are a wimp.