I am speaking at The Cave tomorrow night in Ascot Vale so if you are close come by and say hi! If anyone actually does I will buy them food, yes I am that desperate!

Catch Ya!

A good friend who would describe himself as a strong Christian went to vote in last weeks Victorian State Election. He wanted to vote for The Greens, so he took the How to Vote and was just about to cast his ballot when a surge of anxiety swept through him.

“Will God punish me if I vote for the The Others and not Family First?” The question paralysed him for a few minutes.

Now, here is my interpretation:

Publicly FF tended to strongly state what they were against: homosexuality, decriminalisation of abortion and euthanasia etc. They also proclaimed that which they were tough on, namely injecting drug users.

Tying this up with religion, which they overtly did through the churches directly tied this up with God: This pretty much painted God as a Parochial Angry and Exclusive God all too willing to punish (with baseball bats!?)

I would argue that the question that was pounding through my friends head was directly tied up to how he had been programmed to view God, leading to the following conclusion:

“If God is so ready and willing to punish others then I am not so sure God won’t also come after me, I’d better vote FF”

I reckon FF picked up a hell of a lot of votes from this type of theology, though not all.

That type of God is an easy sell. That God is too much like a distant father who only comes to you in the night to smack you for what you did wrong, rather than an expansive, loving God who desires the transformation of the world and ourselves.

Please do not construe this to mean that God was on the side of The Greens more than FF but please rest assured that God is bigger than one party’s politics and will not punish us for this sort of expression.

– Yes, I am preaching to myself!

Mate, I was recently hammered by a meeting of church pastors and I happened to mention that I support proposed changes in the law changes to give more rights to people living in civil unions.

Is it right to deny a couple something simple as the right to the superannuation of their partner when one of them dies? This suggestion was loudly booed (I never suggested that the church do this).

Then an angry pastor fired a question to me:

How can I justify calling myself a Christian and support those changes to civil unions?

Well….I shouldn’t have answered. Jesus was asked 183 questions and he only directly answered 3 (usually ignoring, answering with another question or reframing answers)…

When I got home I saw an invitation to a friends wedding. Now, they are a Christian couple and they are going to be spending about $60,000 on their wedding.

What really gets me is that no-one has or will ask them:

How can you justify calling yourself a Christian and spend that much on your wedding?

I am not trying to create a moral equivalence thing here, it is just interesting that the authenticity of my faith was called into question don’t you think?

Can a political party be truly Christian? Isn’t it a scary prospect? Or is it possible? Any thoughts?

I have my reservations, how could anyone say they speak for the entire Christian Community? I know I couldn’t… 

“I’ll be honest; people don’t trust big church groups around here anymore”

Sooner or later every single group in the Mt. Druitt area has told us this, including some church groups. When we ask why, the response is always amazingly similar and really maddens me:

A few years a go a big church got some funding and tried some things out in a poor community. From the outset the tail was wagging the dog, as availability of funding appeared to be the drive for mission.

In the end, some very earnest young people were thrust into environments and situations that they were completely unprepared for. As a result they quickly left, they had that luxury. The program co-ordinators completely underestimated what it takes to reach a poor community offering inadequate training, skills and support.

Simply being “funny, funky and flirtatious” is not enough to reach a poor community for Christ. Poor communities require committed, caring and consistent people, ready to do whatever it takes to see God revealed afresh. More people who will holistically respond to the needs of the poor are in short supply.

This desperately needs a reversal as the church is rapidly declining in poor suburbs, retreating to the “higher ground” of sedentary middle / upper-middle class suburbs. When the poor ask “who is my neighbour”? The answer is fast becoming “certainly not a Christian! (Quite ironic that we follow Christ, who lived and proclaimed “Good news to the poor” Lk 4.18).

In the above situation both sides have lost out. I am sure the workers have had their biases about the poor “confirmed” and community members feel as if they were treated as a project and not as people.

The naiveté (or arrogance) of the big church frustrates me as a missionary. It can undo the great work that many small church groups have been doing in earnest for years in the area!

As a footnote: In contrast another big Church from the same area as the other one mentioned has taken a different approach. One in which they approach community groups and offer their practical services like a working bee (only if they are not stealing jobs of local community members). This approach benefits both sides tremendously probably because it is service and not a service.

Here we are at the new Magic Mountain…

Had our meeting with the Department of Housing (Western Sydney) today. Thanks for all of your prayers, it went well! The staff were really open to hearing about us and were more than a little confused about our particular model. They were also a little suspicious about another church group wanting to come into the area, which is understandable. From here we have to build trust with them. They were impressed that we asked them questions and were open to hearing answers, as opposed to just stating “our agenda”.

Something interesting arose in the meeting: they suggested that the neighbouring suburb of Shalvey (which is 500 metres away) has more problems and fewer services available. So, we are going to leave no stone unturned to find where God wants us. Shalvey is still part of the Mt. Druitt area (there are 11 suburbs in total) and is all public housing.

So from now on we are going to refer to our ministry as being in Mt. Druitt to avoid all confusion if the particular suburb changes. Who knows where God wants us, we may still end up in Bidwill! We are putting in an application for a public house and we will see where that goes, keep praying!

Wow, what a drive it is. There is literally nothing a few hundred kilometres before and after the town of Hay. The girls went a little nuts on the trip, Lisa was fantastic!! We stopped over in Wogga Wogga for the night. The girls loved staying in a Motel, they somehow got the impression it was called a “Motella” and the roof was made of Nutella!

I survived the drive living off Red Bull and Beef Jerky. Needless to say, my stomach wasn’t in the greatest shape when we arrived in Sydney. The promise of Krispy Kreme donuts held our daughters together for the last 100kms of the trip.

Thanks be to God that we made it safely to Toongabbie.

Unfortunately this post has the most references to companies ever, but on long trips around Australia you are at the mercy of their advertising. We managed to do the entire trip Maccas free (as I watched Super Size Me on the night before we left!).

We are going to be sharing this Sunday at Castle Hill Church of Christ at 9.30am, with a few important appointments in between, thanks for keeping up to date with us.

We visited a hero of ours who now lives in Flagstaff Hills, Ian Corlett. We got to listen to his words of wisdom. He was involved heavily in the Kensington Commission Flats in inner city Melbourne, as a grassroots worker amongst the poor.

He would be happy to share that he suffered quite an incapacitating breakdown, and he found himself back in the Adelaide Hills. His encouragement and praise does not come lightly and it is an honour for us that he counts us amongst his companions.

Our encountered reminded me about the history of the “Silenced Priest” from Ireland:

When a priest was found to have some”major moral” flaw (as if we ourselves do not, theirs was usually the bottle), they were officially silenced, shipped away from the people.

Now, here is the interesting thing: If the catholic people wanted advice, they never went to the parish priest, they sought out the silenced priest, who, they claimed, had “the cure”.

How brilliant is that? They knew that wisdom and healing is borne out of suffering (and not in spite of).

Now, I am not saying that Ian has any major moral flaw, just that he has wisdom beyond measure, which is probably equal to the amount he has suffered.

The girls slept well, which is great seeing there is a loss of ½ hr when crossing the border west. I, on the other hand was up bright and early trying to nail my talk for this Saturday night in Melbourne (Jumpstart Concert ref: www.unoh.typepad.com/wild). As it stands I have a lot of work to do!

We went to Glenelg to a place that used to be called “

Magic

Quarterly Essay: Voting for Jesus (Christianity and Politics in

Australia

) by A. Lohrey, 2006.

That’s where I got totally blown away! Read the next post if you are interested!