by | Apr 1, 2006 | Uncategorized

Culture Overload

The observant will notice a few changes to the sidebar. No offence Sam, but you really should update that thing or it’s history! Added to the rota.. Mama Roni has become part of the blogosphere, Tim has moved and Jes & Liam have their own little webspace to keep track of the adorable things they say and do.

Aside from web news, I’ve seen more movies this week than I’ve seen for the past 6 months. Crash, The Constant Gardener, Sione’s Wedding and tonight Lord of War.

Check back for the reviews.

by | Mar 28, 2006 | Uncategorized

Baby It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over
My sister in Port Hedland is on alert for Category 4 cyclone about to hit the coast where she is. She’s been called into work to ride out the storm. Sounds like an adventure. Can’t wait to hear her story! Also .. prayers of course.

Great Volunteers
Here’s what’s great about having been at Windsor for 3 years now…. people. There’s a base of relationship and people.. people who care about what I care about… people who want to help out. I’ve been slowly growing in my deep appreciation of those who give up their own stuff in order to help me with mine. They are phenomenal people.

Everything Is Beautiful – Here’s What I’m Doing

I’m watching the news and listening to Jane. The reports are flooding in about the cyclones building off the coast of Western Australia, where my darling sister is. Only two weeks there really and she’s already having some marvellous adventures.

I’m thinking about friends from long ago and wondering about the coinciding circles that connect us to each other and I’m hoping that one day from a more eternal perspective I will understand it more. And then I’ll be able to decide if I’m a Calvinist or not. I’m experiencing tendencies towards open theism because of recent events but I know that I’m not satisfied with speculations.

Meanwhile.. the rain keeps falling in segments, rattling my windowpanes and whistling wind around my ears as I lie in bed.

I’m working on Eastercamp stuff. Fun and challenging. I’m trying to find sense in the madness of making a programme that is meaningful and does any sense of justice to the Gospel story.

Yup.

by | Mar 28, 2006 | Uncategorized

So Much Things To Say
As per usual so many things to say because I’ve been in such poor blog-form. However I’m not as bad as some! We are fourteen days from camp and I’m feeling calm. And I’m not taking drugs, I am taking vitamins and I’m basically taking care of myself.

Excellent aye.

I was driving through Ponsonby back onto the northern side of the Harbour Bridge the other day. I say a sign painted onto a fence – one of those concrete plastered fences that has a special wooden frame reserving space for posting bills. It’s kinda archaic and yet nice that Ponsonby, and the outskirts of Ponsonby so desperately want to stay down to the People’s People. Anyway – it was a painted advertisement for the Freeman’s Bay School fair. Got me thinking about the kids that go to Freeman’s Bay School. For the most part, they are some of the least free children in our city.

They are trapped by mountainous expectations, parents who have sacrificed so much to gain so little, when it comes to being in the trendy suburbs. Today I read an article archived online, about Onehunga being about to become the next ‘It’ suburb. Well, ten years on from that 1995 piece of brilliance.. Onehunga is still Onehunga – and I still am not that cool, for having gone to Royal Oak Primary. My short stay at Gladstone is now something to crow about – depending on how you feel about the modernisation of Mt Albert, with it’s hip, new designer families .. breaking out from artsy Grey Lynn and Kingsland to the outer cool of semi-suburban droll.

Seems so pointless to me, because according to the creativity and design being applied to that painted boardsign on Jervois Rd, the latest hip, up-and-coming zone is going to be Freeman’s Bay. Where no-one’s really free, especially not the land underneath the houses, or the sand that was reclaimed from the sea to build upon.

Freeman – whoever was he, that lived so close to a city, that longs to be more than it is, and could be, it breathes possibility.

Nathan King
I went to a Nathan King Showcase last week. It was phenomenal .. mainly because of the amazing energy of the gats & kit. It was earthy and new and fresh, and had tired edges where you could see the pools of sweat and emotion that have marinated it as a project. I’m not sure whether the true project is the album that’s been produced at the end of it, or the life and spark it gave those who birthed it .. and in there is something to ponder, for those of us who are ‘midwiving’ in our day-to-day.

Midwiving
The offer has been made, and the deadline set. I think it was unexpected that I wouldn’t accept the job offer first hat. I have some concerns.. firstly it’s a one year project to redesign and shape creative ministries in the process of the community it’s serving being under examination and review. Seems a little scary to put a timeline of achievement on that. However – I understand the need to see me prove myself .. I just haven’t wrestled through the implications of that yet… although I need to. By Thursday.

Wish me luck, this baby may well be breech.

by | Mar 20, 2006 | Uncategorized

Mouths Of Babes

Jes: Are you going to work today? After you drop me at kindy?
Me: Yup.
Jes: So you’re going to work. You’re going to work at church aye?
Me: Yup.
Jes: Did you go to work at church yesterday?
Me: Yup.
Jes: Oh. What was the man talking about yesterday?

by | Mar 17, 2006 | Uncategorized

Blind

Blake thinks that having a blog is ‘sad’. It’s one of the things I so adore about him – his relentless freedom and ability to speak his mind, regardless of the circumstances. So truth being told – the fact that he has just won a highly regarded
and sought-after scholarship to Cambridge University. There are two such scholarships offered each year – Blake was the only student to be shortlisted for both, and consequently won the most outstanding of them.

He’s delightful because he’s not a geek, he’s just a great, confident young man who has weathered a number of storms but has a genuine and real faith, is intelligent beyond belief and has seamlessly transitioned from being student to friend – in fact one of my best friends. I’m devastated and overjoyed at his success and my loss!

Blinder Things
It’s three weeks essentially until I put everything down to paper for the final time and enter GO-mode for Eastercamp 2006. I’ve been reading “Story” by Stephen James and he writes about the human tendency to worship that which we create.

I am trying not to worship the creation that is Easter. I am trying to pray consistently and earnestly for each of my programming decisions, and my team members, the speakers, the delivery, the execution of elements. I’m trying not to break things apart into human-sized blocks of achievement, because the moment I fail to recognise God is at work – the moment I have lost the purpose of my role.

I was speaking to someone yesterday, referring to another someone doing an internship under Michael Frost. The conversation turned to opinion and perception of MF .. my comment wasn’t to do with MF at all, rather the number of people who admire him because they have read the back of his book (co-authored with Alan Hirsch) and think that they ought to like those ideas.

Conversing with another youthworker in the opposite spectrum of socio-economic ministry factors as I, we discussed how much of the emerging conversation in NZ circles leaves us cold. How, as post-moderns, so many of the biggest talkers are those trying to connect with our instinctive culture from outside it, and so we ourselves feel somehow excluded from the conversation about ministry to us.

We compared ministry experience with those who are another generation below us, and laughed as we recounted stories that dealt with heartache issues. We are so comfortable in the conundrum, whilst so many are trying to methodically model their way out.

Now – all of this was simply conversations and snippets of thinking compiled hastily as I try and process my thoughts in the matter – especially in regards to programming Eastercamp. I’m balancing expectations of myself and others, trying to stay relevant and faithful to God-cause in it, telling the story to the right people – not just how I would like to hear it. So I see some connections between the struggle to try and figure out how to go about teh task of postmodern ministry in a world caught between many diverging pathways of thought, interpretation and application.

It echoes the struggle YFC is having to rethink and understand, examine the task of Summer Harvest in light of the new national value structure and practices, and to balance that with the burgeoning heart of those who want to push ahead to see a camp with historical value move into the future.

One must ask the questions, figure out how to ask the questions, who to ask and who to answer, who to ask the questions to begin with?

Who will ask these questions of Eastercamp?

This year again I have struggled with peers and leaders around me as they have challenged me with their urge to rely on the reliable, the fear of the unknown, the paralysing question of boundaries and clifftops. Everything that is natural within me wants to dance stormily towards the edge – sensing in some respects that what is a clifftop for me is a mere rolling slope for those I am ministering to.

A question perhaps – how much of our seeking find relevant ways to minister to the postmodern is part of a deeper desire to be still connected to that which is developing and hatching, a desire to minister some refreshment to ourselves?