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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

In Brisbane at the moment. I have been involved in the Forge Intensive on Spirituality for Mission. It was a great conversation held at Bracken Ridge Baptist.

On Sunday night, I spent the evening with Joshua Tree, Steve Turner's tribe on the Sunshine Coast. It was a good evening, having conversations around money and mission, and catching up with some old (and new) friends.

Yesterday morning I had breakfast with the crew from City Wesleyan, the community presided over by the luminous Ken and Leanne Baker. Had a great time conversing around the artificial gap placed by the Western Church between Evangelism and Social Justice.

Today I spent the morning at YMIS. We reflected theologically on the nature of conversion and its practical ramifications, as well as
some good reflection on the Kingdom of God narratives understood by the early church.

I am getting to the point of exhaustion. So I am really looking forward to meeting up with Ralph (ex-Tear) and then picking up Lisa and Harry from the Gold Coast Airport tonight. I have not seen either of them since last Thursday and miss them crazily.

So I will be signing off for a week and a half, devouring re-runs of the X-Files on my laptop and reading the 14 books I have brought with me on holidays!

Labels: Blogging, Discipleship, Events, Itinerary, Mission, Theology

Posted by Stephen @ 1:27 PM 2 comments

Sunday, April 15, 2007

::Rants-Computer woes, Easter and Fish and Chips with Jesus

I have been having problems with the laptop (which is my main work computer) and therefore have not been able to do much email or blog wise. Ah well. I must admit, life does seem to be a little simpler when you don't have to worry about blogging or getting back to emails.

Lisa, Harry and I got away for a little bit of the Easter weekend and did a night of camping. If Lisa had her way, we would have been gone a few more days, but we were on the tail end of rebuilding the veranda and those of you who know me, know that I don't do manual labour very well!

While we were away, I started reading "The Quest for the Radical Middle", a history of the Vineyard. It certainly is an interesting read. The first thing that struck me was that John Wimber's quest for engage the Spirit was at least partly born out of his interacting with the work of Paul Hiebert and his "excluded middle" theory on Western Rationalisms reduction of supernatural experiences. It threw me because (a) I had just presumed that it was a simplification of 80's Charismatic thinking and most disturbingly (b) I have moved significantly in the last decade or so to the intellectual and aeway from an openness to a life in the Spirit that I have come from historically.

It rattled me in both good and bad ways. I have been challenged by God to understand what it means to be an "empowered evangelical" in 2007 rather than in 1980. The challenge to take the best of evangelicalism and the best of the Pentecostal movement is one that is still stirring me. I would really value your prayers over all of this.

Today was the first day of family devotions. Lisa and I have been waiting for the right time to sit with Harry and start to be more intentional about the story of who Jesus is.

We have been praying with Harry every night since he was born. This stage is cute with Harry consistently wanting to thank God for cows (and the grass that they eat which gives us milk) and sheepy's.

A few weeks ago, we started reading some of the great stories from the bible to him before he goes to sleep. However, what we want to try and do each Sunday is to keep a family journal, where we write and draw what has been happening over the last week, then Lisa or I read a story from the bible, then we draw some of that too in the journal. Once that is done, we pray together. Todays story was Jesus feeding the five thousand. As we find ourselves doing an immediate improv reading, I turned the loaves and the fishes into fish and chips (which is what we had just eaten for lunch).

It was beautiful to hear a child say the name of Jesus, as he tries to draw him in red.

Labels: Blogging, Children, Church, Rants, Spirituality, Technology

Posted by Stephen @ 2:05 PM 3 comments

Monday, April 02, 2007

::Rants-My other obsession...

My neighbor, Sam (who I have converted to the round ball code) sent me this photo from the award presentation of the A-League Grand Final earlier on this year. It is a picture of Christian Sarkies, Melbourne's gifted midfielder kissing the head of the Prime Minister, when he presented Sarkies with his Premiership medallion after the game. Howard took it in good spirits.

It was great to be there for Melbourne's first and very convincing win.

Sarkies? Well the little squirt just signed for Adelaide United. Nuff said.

Labels: Blogging, Football

Posted by Stephen @ 3:43 PM 1 comments

Monday, March 26, 2007

::Rants-Back on Deck...

grad.stephensaidnme
Originally uploaded by Stephen Said.

Well it is official! I am now a Bachelor, even though I have been married for 12 years. On Saturday I received the award for Bachelor in Mission Studies from Tabor College in Melbourne. I have been studying for the better part of 10 years. This is a photo of me with one of my students who also graduated on Saturday. Her name is Beth Rumble and she was better at getting the photo's out of her camera than I was. Thanks Beth.

Well, I am back on deck too, after taking three weeks off to build it that is! I had three weeks to rebuild our veranda (or deck) that had rotted all the way through, but I was back on deck last night, preaching at Ballarat Family Church of Christ. What a great community! I met so many people keen to want to do something about social change. I will look forward to developing a partnership with their church. Quite a few of them seemed keen to participate in Tear's DEEP trip to Nepal.

I will hopefully be blogging every other day or so now that I am back on deck.

Technorati Tags: Tear

Labels: Blogging, Itinerary, Rants, Tear

Posted by Stephen @ 8:32 AM 0 comments

Friday, March 02, 2007

::The System - Was Down

SORRY! My hosting service played up for the last time on me. I am in the process of changing to a new hosting service thanks to Rohan the IT guy from Tear. He's letting me park neurotribe.net with him.

If you have emailed me, I didn't get anything the last week or so because of the faulty hosting.

And in addition, I am about to go on three weeks leave. I am going to be rebuilding our veranda with the carpenter we have contracted for that purpose. I will be checking email's on and off for the next three weeks, and maybe I will even make the occasional blog entry.

I was In Perth (in Western Australia) for the better part of last week and one of the things I did was the Forge Intensive over there. They recorded most of the sessions. You can find links to the MP3's here... http://forgewa.org.au/

Once again, sorry about the dodgy service. It shouldn't happen again in the near future as I have shifted hosts.

Labels: Blogging, Rants, Technology

Posted by Stephen @ 9:16 AM 2 comments

Thursday, February 01, 2007

::Rants-I'm trying...

Hey y'all! I have refined my organisational system (SHUTUP! No smart allec comments please!) and part of the process is setting time aside each week to get through some blogs. I have a great little piece of free software called Omea Reader. I can download blog entries and then read them offline.

One thing I would love to be able to do is read your blogs as well. So could I ask all readers of my blog who have their own blog, can you post a comment with a link to your site feed (if you do not know what a site feed is, just leave the address of your site and I'll try and figure it out) for me so I can add you to my weekly fix?

If you have multiple blogs, could you leave just one that focuses more on you and what's going on in your life?

Looking forward to a more organised 2007!

Labels: Blogging, Rants, Technology

Posted by Stephen @ 8:40 AM 14 comments

Ideas have a mind of their own, and when they get together, woa, what a party!