What a wonderful time we've enjoyed the past few days. The team arrived without a hitch. Well, almost. One of the kids did get pulled over for not declaring food in their bag because they were taking it through for someone else and didn't know there was food in the bag. So they got to be humiliated by the smart-alec quarantine officers getting asked questions like "can you eat this?". But everyone made it through alright and we got everyone back to their host homes fairly quickly. It was a really long day for the poor jet lagged team. We took them to a beautiful ocean-side park called Wellington point for lunch and went for a long walk along a sand bar to an island that can only be reached at low tide. After wearing out the already tired group we took them back to their host homes to spend some time before the BBQ at night. I felt really bad for them because they were already tired and disoriented and now we were at a party with new faces I hadn't even seen. And the only light was that of the camp fire so they couldn't make out well the faces they were meeting. So we didn't end up staying long because we had done the job of keeping them up long enough.
Sunday morning went extremely well. I always love to worship with Holland Park but it was especially nice to hear Dr. Lavender speak and I was particularly glad he had come on that day because my host mom had decided to come to church that morning. She's one of the most kind hearted people I know and embodies so many of the traits of Christ I just can't wait till she makes the decision to pursue a relationship with the Jesus I think she believes in. To what degree I don't know.
Monday morning, after much delay, we took off for the Lipscomb retreat. We reserved the perfect quaint little cabin in the outback three hours from Brisbane. It could not have been a more perfect place. It had gorgeous rolling hills and some rock-faced mountains off in the distance. The team is melding so well as only a group could after being prayed over so much. I'm so grateful to Mark and Beth for the hours I know they spend praying over the trip, for fruits they don't get to witness immediately like I do. In the short time we've been here we've heard nothing but good things from the host families and congregation members. I pray we are just as effective with those who don't know Christ. We have the opportunity Friday morning to witness to the kids of Redlands college. The interns have been there before but we haven't been able to talk in the more intimate class room setting that we'll be in on Friday. We need prayers that the spirit would speak through us to say what these kids need to here. That there is more to living than living for themselves and that there is a God who genuinely cares about them. Exciting stuff. Also on a side note, God is teaching me this week to act on my compulsions to serve. There is more good I can be doing and I want to act on it when it comes to my head. That's all for now. Love you all!
-Robert
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Soon and very soon
Hello friends,
I've started and walked away from this thing a dozen times in the past week. A lot as been going on over here. Work with the schools has gone well. Our normal Tuesday meeting at Cavendish Road school wasn't as big as it normally is. The majority of the kids that show up are year 11's who are in the middle of exams. But a youth worker from the area named Ben showed up and grabbed some kids out of the play ground to have a meeting with. We went around telling our stories and giving testimonies of sorts so it ended up being a great meeting.
Wednesday night we had a bible study over at the Ware's. Normally we watch Rob Bell videos and they'd be finishing up the series with the last one except there was a problem locating the DVD. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I'm glad we didn't find it. Jamie lead a brilliant discussion on the Forms and Functions of the church. He started by asking us what we thought the function of the church was. We said to Love, to Worship, to create Community, Heal Brokenness, Forgive, Invite. We noted that these are all Functions we know the church is supposed to preform. These are the results we want. The Forms being the rituals and acts we do to try and achieve these Functions. We discussed how the church has become a sanctuary for Forms and lost it's purpose, it's Functions. We are more concerned with How we do things than Why. But Jesus came to get rid of this mentality. He came to free us from this form thinking and tells us to stop worrying about the letter of the law and strive for the spirit. The Pharisees we in love with Forms, carrying out the letter of the law and then some. But these laws were created to carry out Functions, they exist for the sake of their purpose. The minute they stop preforming their Function they are useless. Yet the church would rather hold on to a Form they're comfortable with that is no longer relevant to the context of their world, than try something new that carries out the Function of the original law. We talked about how under this new freedom. We are allowed, invited even, to be creative with the way we preform the Functions we are asked to participate in. Living under this revelation is living under a knowledge that what is in the heart truly is God's biggest concern. If we seek Him first He will be faithful and lead us in the right path. There's no need to cling to tradition because it's comfortable and safe. We make the bible and especially Acts and the Epistles into a book of forms to follow. But Acts is a recording of what happend, not nessesarily what should happen. And the Epistles were written to a specific people at a specific time to achieve a specific end. When we look at the advice in these letters we have to look behind the command to see the Function they are trying to achieve, not the Form prescribed for the particular situation. There is much we can learn from them but it's not a manual by any means. Unfortunately, the most important Function of our church today seems to be carrying out a Sunday service. This is an important and good thing but it's just a small part of a larger live of service to God. It is also unfortunate that we pick and choose the parts of the bible we like to follow and call the things we don't like "cultural" and the things we like "essential". We went a bit deeper than this and covered a lot of ground like, what about believers who are more concerned with Forms than the Functions they were created to preform- when it's time to wait for them and when it's time to cut loose and move on. It's very encouraging to see so many people seeking the true heart of God. The people here are so wonderful and full of earnest seeking.
The Lipscomb team gets here in less than 42 hours!! I'm really excited for them to fall in love with all the people and things here that I have. We certainly have enough planned to keep them up so that they can get to bed at an hour conducive to offsetting Jetlag. They'll be arriving at 6am after 30 some odd hours of travel and we'll be keeping them up till 8 or 9 that night. I know I didn't make it that far the first day I was here. I fell asleep on the front row at a worship workshop. Hope everyone's summers are going well. Prayers always help. Love you all.
Robert
I've started and walked away from this thing a dozen times in the past week. A lot as been going on over here. Work with the schools has gone well. Our normal Tuesday meeting at Cavendish Road school wasn't as big as it normally is. The majority of the kids that show up are year 11's who are in the middle of exams. But a youth worker from the area named Ben showed up and grabbed some kids out of the play ground to have a meeting with. We went around telling our stories and giving testimonies of sorts so it ended up being a great meeting.
Wednesday night we had a bible study over at the Ware's. Normally we watch Rob Bell videos and they'd be finishing up the series with the last one except there was a problem locating the DVD. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I'm glad we didn't find it. Jamie lead a brilliant discussion on the Forms and Functions of the church. He started by asking us what we thought the function of the church was. We said to Love, to Worship, to create Community, Heal Brokenness, Forgive, Invite. We noted that these are all Functions we know the church is supposed to preform. These are the results we want. The Forms being the rituals and acts we do to try and achieve these Functions. We discussed how the church has become a sanctuary for Forms and lost it's purpose, it's Functions. We are more concerned with How we do things than Why. But Jesus came to get rid of this mentality. He came to free us from this form thinking and tells us to stop worrying about the letter of the law and strive for the spirit. The Pharisees we in love with Forms, carrying out the letter of the law and then some. But these laws were created to carry out Functions, they exist for the sake of their purpose. The minute they stop preforming their Function they are useless. Yet the church would rather hold on to a Form they're comfortable with that is no longer relevant to the context of their world, than try something new that carries out the Function of the original law. We talked about how under this new freedom. We are allowed, invited even, to be creative with the way we preform the Functions we are asked to participate in. Living under this revelation is living under a knowledge that what is in the heart truly is God's biggest concern. If we seek Him first He will be faithful and lead us in the right path. There's no need to cling to tradition because it's comfortable and safe. We make the bible and especially Acts and the Epistles into a book of forms to follow. But Acts is a recording of what happend, not nessesarily what should happen. And the Epistles were written to a specific people at a specific time to achieve a specific end. When we look at the advice in these letters we have to look behind the command to see the Function they are trying to achieve, not the Form prescribed for the particular situation. There is much we can learn from them but it's not a manual by any means. Unfortunately, the most important Function of our church today seems to be carrying out a Sunday service. This is an important and good thing but it's just a small part of a larger live of service to God. It is also unfortunate that we pick and choose the parts of the bible we like to follow and call the things we don't like "cultural" and the things we like "essential". We went a bit deeper than this and covered a lot of ground like, what about believers who are more concerned with Forms than the Functions they were created to preform- when it's time to wait for them and when it's time to cut loose and move on. It's very encouraging to see so many people seeking the true heart of God. The people here are so wonderful and full of earnest seeking.
The Lipscomb team gets here in less than 42 hours!! I'm really excited for them to fall in love with all the people and things here that I have. We certainly have enough planned to keep them up so that they can get to bed at an hour conducive to offsetting Jetlag. They'll be arriving at 6am after 30 some odd hours of travel and we'll be keeping them up till 8 or 9 that night. I know I didn't make it that far the first day I was here. I fell asleep on the front row at a worship workshop. Hope everyone's summers are going well. Prayers always help. Love you all.
Robert
Monday, June 9, 2008
Brisvegas
What an amazing week I've had. The ball has started rolling at one of the schools we're at. There's an R.E. class tomorrow we'll get to volunteer at. As in the U.K. in Australia you can teach religion in classes as long as there's fair representation of all religions. Some schools have religion classes every week but most get to experience other religious practices through assemblies. Tomorrow morning the 8th Graders of Cavendish Road High school will be piling into a lecture hall to hear about Jesus. I'm so excited for what God is going to do there. At our meeting on Tuesday we went into the room and prayed over Thursday's R.E. that hearts would be exposed and kids would have their eyes opened to see what's missing in their lives. Every prayer helps. We'll have a chance to share some of our testimonies and lead small groups after the lecture part is over. This will also give us a chance to promote the camps we're holding in a couple weeks. I can't believe the team 
will be here a week from Saturday. Time flies.
I can't wait to have more American's around. It will be funny to watch all of their reactions to the culture shift after having been here for a month. God is blessing my relationships with growth as time goes on. I really want to be able to surrender and let him move in them more. Help me love deeper and more genuinely. I often force things because I don't think I'm friendly enough but that never works. We just need to be transparent and loving and be able to laugh together. I just got back from a camping trip that helped me do all those things. We were able to experience some authentic Australian bush. I had forgotten how much I love to go camping. We had such good times just sitting around a fire talking. I think humans need to do that more often. It's so much better than sitting in front of a television.
Yesterday after visiting the schools we were able to go rock climbing. I really need to take pictures and I'll have some up later but it was dark last night. It is such a perfect area to do it. It's a natural rock face that runs along the river that cuts through downtown so right on the other side of the water is a beautiful view of the city. I went abseiling for the first time. I was expecting a new way to repel down gracfully back words but no. We got to the cliff's edge over 100ft to the ground and Josh, the ACU intern we're working with over here jumps down face first. I was not mentally prepared for that. The first time I was too timid and didn't let the rope out fast enough so I fumbled my way down the rocks and whacked them pretty hard once. But once I got the hang of it I went down much faster. The harness has less time to dig into you if you go fast. If you ever get the chance go faster than slower. Ok, that's all for now. Thank you agian to everyone that made it possible for me to be here. God is doing such wonderful things here and I'm privileged to witness and participate in it.
Shalom,
Robert
will be here a week from Saturday. Time flies.I can't wait to have more American's around. It will be funny to watch all of their reactions to the culture shift after having been here for a month. God is blessing my relationships with growth as time goes on. I really want to be able to surrender and let him move in them more. Help me love deeper and more genuinely. I often force things because I don't think I'm friendly enough but that never works. We just need to be transparent and loving and be able to laugh together. I just got back from a camping trip that helped me do all those things. We were able to experience some authentic Australian bush. I had forgotten how much I love to go camping. We had such good times just sitting around a fire talking. I think humans need to do that more often. It's so much better than sitting in front of a television.
Yesterday after visiting the schools we were able to go rock climbing. I really need to take pictures and I'll have some up later but it was dark last night. It is such a perfect area to do it. It's a natural rock face that runs along the river that cuts through downtown so right on the other side of the water is a beautiful view of the city. I went abseiling for the first time. I was expecting a new way to repel down gracfully back words but no. We got to the cliff's edge over 100ft to the ground and Josh, the ACU intern we're working with over here jumps down face first. I was not mentally prepared for that. The first time I was too timid and didn't let the rope out fast enough so I fumbled my way down the rocks and whacked them pretty hard once. But once I got the hang of it I went down much faster. The harness has less time to dig into you if you go fast. If you ever get the chance go faster than slower. Ok, that's all for now. Thank you agian to everyone that made it possible for me to be here. God is doing such wonderful things here and I'm privileged to witness and participate in it.
Shalom,
Robert
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