Red Dirt Adventures

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Hamo

A couple of months back we were sitting having lunch with good friends B & M when B announced ‘We’re going on holidays over Easter’.

‘Are WE?’ I said… ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘You can come’ says B… and the rest was history. A whirlwind trip was planned to the Pilbara to visit the gorges in Karajini and a return visit to Wittenoom. It was the first serious jaunt for the big 60 and while I was confident, it is always a little nerve racking taking a 27 year old car into that kind of territory.

We headed off on Easter Thursday evening following our church service. After a route stuff up which saw us backtrack 40ks we finally got somewhere south of Dalwallinu around 11.00pm and called it a night on the side of the road.

Noisy.

An early start got us on the road headed for Newman. We stopped in Dalwallinu for fuel and iced coffees and I made that horrible mistake of forgetting to check if there is toilet paper in the holder… There was no easy solution this time…

Back on the road, we managed to get to Newman by 5.30 and set up for the night. The most tedious part of the drive was over and apart from some sore butts we had done it in pretty good time. On 100k/hr the Cruiser averaged around 14l/100kms which I was pretty happy with as we were going hard and were fully loaded.

From Newman it was that sensational drive into Karajini. I don’t think there are many more stunning drives around than leaving Newman and seeing those rugged rock mountains, covered in spinifex rise out of the ground. Its a very masculine landscape and yet awesomely beautiful at the same time. It was one of the most worshipful moments I have had for a while.

We made it to our camp spot just out of the national park and where we could camp for free. We did the set up and made for Weano Gorge. It was mid 30’s and pretty warm so we were ready to get wet.

On the walk out to Handrail pool I managed to slip my leg between two rocks and scored a massive bruise all up the shin. Very painful and not fun on the first day.

The next few days were spent visiting a couple of gorges each day – Circular pool, Fortescue Falls, Joffre, Knox and a couple of others. We’d get home late in the afternoon, send Danelle and the kids out to collect firewood and then relax for the evening around the campfire.

We left Karajini after 3 days and drove into Tom Price for a night to top up our water supplies, get some food and fuel up again. It was a shame to leave the bush, but the Tom Price park at the bottom of Mt Nameless is pretty spectacular too and it was nice to have a shower…

I had managed to get a puncture while in the gorges so we got that fixed and enjoyed some coffees from the coffee machine. The next day we left Tom Price for Hamersley Gorge before heading on to Wittenoom and managing to score the prime camp spot by the gorge with the most water in it. Its a stunning spot and as remote as you will find anywhere. We hit the tracks and followed the road into the old mine, but with a heap of asbestos tailings lying around we thought it better to head back out.

We spent the next two days exploring that area and just relaxing. I still find Wittenoon a fascinating place.

No one was inspired for the drive home, but then that’s how it goes when you’ve had a fantastic holiday and are looking down the barrel of 16 hrs of driving..

We tried to leave Wittenoom around 9, but discovered that the newly fitted radiator in the Cruiser was getting hot and had actually lost 5l of water over the time we were there. It was good we discovered it before actually hitting the road as it was well past coping. We decided to try and top it up and get by. Fortunately it worked and got us home with no dramas and its going in for its fix up tomorrow.

Our halfway stop on the journey was the aboriginal mission at Karalundi about 60ks north of Meekatharra, a great campsite with grass, showers, toilets and all you need for an overnight stop but back from the main road. We only saw it briefly but given the options are limited in that part of the world we thought it was great.

The drive home was nasty… Rain started in Cue and by Wubin it was pelting down. The final 300ks was just a case of smashing along bumpy roads in the rain and then when we finally reached home we had to unpack in driving rain.

The sunny days of the northwest were gone and it was back to the hard and (very) cold reality of home.

Until next time…

How to reduce Your Titheable Income

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Hamo

The last two weeks at QBC have focused on the issue of giving and I thought it would be helpful for people to be able to work out how much to actually give.

So here’s how to work out your titheable income…

How much do you earn? Let’s say $150k to get an average household income.

But… You only take home $100k of that…
Then you pay gst on everything you buy so technically not income either… Reduce by another 10%
And if you can salary sacrifice then you can reduce it even further!
Then there’s housing which you have to have so not really titheable..
Clothes… A result of the fall so really not something we should be responsible for…
Education in a Christian school to keep your kids pure… God would want that right?
And so the list goes on of things that aren’t technically titheable and that’s before I even get to my expenses!

Yes – expenses – because it costs me to go to church, take kids to youth group, and all those meetings. Surely I am not supposed to bear that cost myself?
Then we have people from church around for dinner and they eat my food and drink my wine… That costs me.. So I pass it on to God because he needs to know the real cost of this Christian life.
There’s trips to Bali to visit the orphanages, church camps… It’s not cheap following Jesus.

By the time I had finished I worked out that God owed me.

He owed me $5630.95 so I figured that if ‘God is no man’s debtor’ I should send the church an invoice…

Such is the problem with tithing as a practice. It is a rubbery concept at best and for those with short arms and deep pockets it can be easily evaded.

If the law was our teacher to prepare us for faith in Christ as Galatians 3 says then perhaps we can see tithing as trainer wheels that prepare us for actual bike riding?

I know many churches preach tithing because pragmatically it works to make ends meet, but what if in doing that we are actually keeping people in spiritual infancy, with the illusion of having matured? It would look silly for me to ride a bike with training wheels once I know how to ride, but this is what happens often in church.

John Ortberg says a tithe is a good floor but a very poor ceiling. The NT expectation is that we will reflect the generosity of God rather than be restricted to a set amount. It also allows space for those in dire poverty to be supported by others while they find their feet again.

Research shows that Christians give away around 3% of their income on average (which is a disturbing statistic ) so the challenge is not to get people tithing but rather to have them know God in such a way as to desire to reflect his heart.

Prayer and the Difference It Makes

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Hamo

Revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish. five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. then, when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. i’m neglecting my other guests. enjoy yourself, you’ll find the young ladies stimulating company.

Fasces of harpoons for spurs

With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond!

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Then they show that show to the people

Now we took an oath, that I’m breaking now. We said we’d say it was the snow that killed the other two, but it wasn’t. Nature is lethal but it doesn’t hold a candle to man.

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Well, the way they make shows is, they make one show. That show’s called a pilot. Then they show that show to the people who make shows, and on the strength of that one show they decide if they’re going to make more shows. Some pilots get picked and become television programs. Some don’t, become nothing. She starred in one of the ones that became nothing.
Jujubes tart chupa chups cotton candy marzipan unerdwear.com biscuit bonbon carrot cake. Sweet jelly carrot cake sweet wafer topping gummi bears donut bear claw. Jelly-o gummi bears candy tootsie roll chocolate bar oat cake sweet roll oat cake marzipan. Toffee donut jelly powder.
Steering from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows.

The Good Life

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Hamo

So I wonder how many of you can remember ‘The Good Life’?…

No I don’t mean life before kids… although that was magical…

I’m referring to that wonderful British sit com about Tom and Barbara who give up the rat race and decide to live make their way by turning their back yard into a small farm complete with pigs, chickens and even a methane powered car (that didn’t work so well) much to the consternation of Jerry and Margo, their snobby and pretentious upwardly mobile neighbours.

It was a fun story back in the 70’s but for some it has become their goal – to choose an alternative path – to opt out of the way things work in the world. Barbara Cockburn is one such woman who decided to build a straw bale house (as you do…) and try to live without money for 6 months as they sought to be self sustaining. She wrote ‘Finding The Good Life‘ and has documented her experiences here – an interesting read and she is one of many.

For some this is the good life – running counter to the mainstream – while for others it is to get ahead of the rest – to ‘win’ at this thing we call life. A few weeks back I stumbled on a show called Grand Designs an ABC show that follows the lives of people seeking to build their dream homes or mansions – in pursuit of ‘the good life’. These are massive structures and grand statements about the affluence of the people who build them, but the looks on their faces and the anxiety that is palpable in these shows tells me that these folks definitely haven’t found the good life. Most state ‘we’d never do it again…’

Then this week I took some time to read Hugh Mackay’s latest offering entitled (wait for it…) ‘The Good Life‘ where he does his social commentary thing on Australia and then goes on to offer his own recipe for shaping and living a ‘good life’. Mackay is another one of our secular prophets and we need to hear what he says. He begins by writing of what he calls the utopia complex and says:

Being twenty-first-century Westerners living with unprecedented material prosperity, mobility, convenience and comfort, who would dare say we’re not entitled to the best of everything And yet, the more you examine our Utopian fantasies and our energetic attempts to turn them into reality, the more you wonder if the very things we’re so desperate to acquire as symbols of this imagined good life may be insulating us from deeper and more enduring satisfactions, fuelling our dreams while limiting our vision, encouraging us to settle for the most trivial and fleeting meanings of ‘good’

When we surrender ourselves to the Utopia complex, we can too easily forget who we really are.

No kidding…

Mackay suggests that ‘If you were to espouse happiness as the appropriate goal of your existence, you’d be perfectly entitled to use ‘feeling good’ as the benchmark for assessing whether you were having a good life.’ So if you don’t feel good – if things are not going well for you – then you are not having a ‘good life’.

It all led me to pondering just how Jesus would frame ‘the good life’. What would it look like to really find life and live it as he would hope for us?

I have been reading Ecclesiastes lately – a bit of a mixed bag really – but there the author’s big theme is how achievement, success, wealth etc are all meaningless outside of a bigger purpose. He takes several different tacks throughout his writing, but circles back to one theme that he states more succinctly and clearly at the end:

Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.

Fear God.

That’s what he comes back to.

And my guess is that no one really needs me to explain that we aren’t to fear God like we would a serial killer on our doorstep with a gun… (But I just did…)

The writer of Ecclesiastes concludes that the Good life is not found in what you achieve, what you acquire or what you know, but is found in ordering your life in such a way that it is aligned with God and what he hopes for us.

The reality is that whatever we give our life to will shape who we become and I get the sense that Solomon had given his life to the pursuit of pleasure and happiness and it had left him unsatisfied.

And the pursuit of the good life can take us in more than one direction. Some (perhaps many) give their lives to climbing the ladder, to affluence, wealth etc while others may give their lives to the dream of alternative lifestyle, downward mobility and living on less. While one may appear more noble than the other neither is the source of life.

In one of his other books way back in the 20^th C Mackay wrote this of the search for prosperity:

“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of material comfort and prosperity as long as you don’t expect it alone to bring you happiness. If you do you might discover what late 20^th century westerners have been discovering in droves – that when materialism is unrestrained when it is enshrined as a core philosophy it rots the soul – but it might take half a lifetime to detect the smell.”

The smell of rotting soul is why suburbia can be such a difficult place to live – or it can be difficult because we become immune to its stench and we just play along.

Its why Tom and Barbara did their thing. Its why Linda Cockburn jumped ship and sought an alternative.

But I think the bigger challenge – the more realistic challenge is to ask how do I live within the every day constraints of the reality we are faced with – because most of us simply cannot do a ‘good life’, alternative, hippy transition. Nor may we want to…

How do we find life in the middle of a very ordinary 9-5, 2.4 kids + mortgage situation?

I believe that the central teaching of the Bible is that the good life we seek is found when we get that its more about an orientation and an attitude than it is about an activity.

Contentment is never found in the next acquisition – nor is it found in asceticism and downward mobility – because its neither the acquiring nor the releasing of things that makes a life.

Jesus didn’t say they will know you are my disciples by your rolls royce, nor did he say they will know you are my disciples by your poverty. (Although I will certainly acknowledge that the most likely source of idolatry in our society is always the former.)

But the key is where we find our hope and our meaning. Most Australian Christians pursue ‘the good life + God’ but what if God is the good life?

What if the life he calls us to is better than anything we can be tricked into believing is good – whatever that looks like… The struggle for most of us is that the illusion of a good life via the Australian dream is often attainable – often within grasp so it would seem.

So its good to hear Paul’s words to Timothy again:

¹⁷Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. ¹⁹In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

You don’t have to live poor. You just need to know where your hope is and live in line with him – to find the ‘life that is truly life.’

It was Paul who said ‘to live is Christ’. To live is Christ… to die is gain… But the focal point of his life was Christ.

Not complicated really…

Jesus said ‘I have come that you might have life – life in all of its fullness’ But his call is also one of submission and of putting ourselves under his authority.

The whole trajectory of scripture is neither to affluence or asceticism but it is towards Christ and in him to find life.

To fear God… perhaps…

As Mackay develops his idea of goodness he finishes up writing of wholeness and notes that it is not far from the biblical concept of holiness.

Of being who you were originally created to be – of giving rather than taking – of being generous and kind rather than self obsessed (which incidentally sounds a lot like what Paul wrote to Timothy…)

Helen Keller said ‘happiness is not achieved thru self gratification but thru fidelity to a worthy purpose’. The call to Jesus is a worthy purpose, but hardly an easy one. To follow Jesus is to pick up our cross. To follow Jesus is to say no to temptations to find life in our own achievements and actions. Its to follow him where he leads and to be his disciples right there.

Or as CS Lewis put it

‘Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

Looking Back and Looking Forwards

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Hamo

I usually do a blog post around that theme at this time each year so… here it is…

In many ways 2013 has been a somewhat uneventful year, in that there have been few dramatic life changes, but some of the less obvious ones have been valuable and significant.

I began the year experimenting with the sabbath and seeking to ‘rest better’. It was in the middle of the busiest retic season we had known and I was feeling pretty ragged. I haven’t stuck to the regime/practices I laid out in that post, but I have been able to keep a really healthy life balance all year and rarely felt like I’m getting swamped with work, or unable to disconnect. I don’t answer the phone at all on Sundays, but it still amazes me that people will call me – sometimes at 7am to ask retic questions. I had one person ring this year who I ‘declined’ 3 times in a row, however the next time they called I answered with ‘this better be important!’ and there was no one there… funny that. I used to be someone who would call tradies whenever I felt like it. Not any more. I had no idea just how annoying I was.

I also sought out some spiritual direction this year as a way of helping me hone some of my own reflections on life, faith and personal directions. No question it was time well spent and a really worthwhile change to the schedule. What did it do?… I think I enjoyed having someone help me think thru the questions I mull over alone. It helped chewing around some of the challenges of ministry in a focused way. It helped pondering where life is headed and considering the future a bit more intentionally. I have friends I do this with but its also good to set aside specific time. I feel more focused and ‘in tune’ for it. Thanks Jennifer.

One of the outcomes of the spiritual direction process was a change in the way my life is structured. I had been losing the passion for my retic business over the last few years, but haven’t found anything to replace it with. I would regularly go thru ‘quitting season‘ where I would get to the end of my tether and seek ways out of business. This year I actually advertised the business for sale on Gumtree with the intent of giving it up. I had no clue what else I was going to do, but figured that maybe that would fall into place if I took the first step. I did a sophisticated calculation as to the value of the business and advertised it for the value of our mortgage… My thinking was that I didn’t care what ‘market value’ was – that was what I wanted to get to opt out.

It didn’t sell and by June and July I was relieved and enjoying myself again. Working shorter hours with less pressure in cooler weather was nice. But around July just before we took off up north for a month a mate came by and asked if I was interested in selling 50% of the business… I was interested. We discussed a figure that we both felt was fair and then we began to work towards sorting out the details of a working agreement. But the further we went into working things out the more complicated life became. Right at the start I expressed what I wanted from my business – simplicity, flexibility and autonomy – and B wanted the same, but the more we discussed a ‘semi-partnership’ the more convoluted the process became of getting there. So instead I agreed to help him get his own business off the ground and to send work his way and take a small commission. Now he’s up and running and all work south of Joondalup gets sent his way.

The beauty of the whole thing has been that he has found the life he is seeking – closer to his family and away from the rigours of the corporate world. He is finding a new rhythm of life and mine feels much more sane. I’ve been really enjoying the more compact working area and especially the growth in work around the Yanchep area. Come the cooler months I may have to travel a little, but my hope is to eventually work the areas north of Clarkson and not have to head further south than that.

My invoice app allows me to track where I have been working this year and the density of work further north is pretty obvious in the pic.

Part of being able to slow down was to ensure I had more headspace for the work Danelle and I do at QBC. We increased our combined time to 3 days/week and we share that between us according to what we are good at.

As a church it has felt like a steady and fairly undramatic year. It is our fourth year with QBC and next year is the final one of this first term. I’m not averse to a steady year, but I feel the need for a bit more energy as I think we are in danger of lapsing into being just another happy bunch of people who sing songs and listen to sermons. Not a good place and be and time for some refocussing and prayer as to what the future might hold for this community of people.

It was the year of car changes but finally I have landed on the big ole Cruiser and am very happy with her. I’m no mechanic, but I love cars and to have the right one is a nice feeling. I’ve heard it said that ‘women wear clothes and men wear cars’… Well, this one fits nicely. Tough as nails, big and spacious with lots of grunt, but also some pretty decent fuel economy.

We also relented and got a dog this year – Lucy – a 5 year old labrador who has been a wonderful pick up. She loves people, the ocean and eating. A bit like me except for the people… She was a bit toey around other dogs initially – I’m guessing there was a story there – but now she’s great. The daily walk means we get to the beach just about every day of the year so rather than just seeing it from the balcony we walk it and take in its different moods which is always fun.

Around the middle of the year I stopped drinking alcohol. That was a biggie. I haven’t blogged about it because I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, but the short reason was that I sensed God saying ‘that’s it’. At least ‘that’s it for now’.

It was hard because I am a red wine lover and at times I loved it too much. It began to be one of those things that shaped my life negatively, but because I enjoyed it so much I didn’t want to let it go. I woke up early one Sunday morning with what I felt was a prophetic message for our church. I rang Ryan and cancelled him for the morning and spoke myself. The message was simple – that sometimes we have ‘demons’ in our lives that need to be removed, but that often stay because we are attached to them.

Alcohol had become that for me. A love and passion that was morphing into a demon that was controlling me more than I was controlling it. I had ‘cut back’ a few times but always slipped back into unhealthy patterns. I was conscious it was an issue but not aware I was going to be speaking to myself. Well… there you go…

It took me a week to let go, but its been 7 months now and I haven’t had any alcohol. I’m sad about that because my take is that alcohol is good and given to us to enjoy. I’d like to be able to be a moderate drinker, but I always liked ‘one more’ and could see the potential for disaster ahead. It also loomed as a simple discipleship issue. I’ve seen too many people as they get older just decide to live with a level of personal compromise that means faith lacks its punch and I have dreaded becoming one of them.

I don’t know if I will ever get back into it – I doubt it. Has life been richer for not drinking? I honestly don’t feel ‘better’ for it and I do miss it, but I also feel like there was both a response to God that was good as well as a simple issue of self control sorted. Sometimes you just gotta roll with your convictions whether they bear fruit in any specific way or not.

I haven’t read a lot this year, but my ‘Book of the Year’ would be Winton’s Eyrie. My TV Series of the Year is a tie between Ricky Gervais’ very funny and poignant Derek and the ABC series, Time of Our Lives, an insight into middle class Australia. We don’t watch a lot of TV so its good to know when something good pops up.

Blogging has been sporadic, but also meaningful when it happens. I still enjoy writing, but the demands of physical work still limits the creative impulses.

So 2014 happens shortly and it will be the year I turn 50. I don’t feel especially apprehensive about it, but I am aware that I am leaning towards the other side of middle age now. We will celebrate the 50th with a visit back to Ireland around the middle of the year and I’m looking forward to that. I guess we’ll have a party in May, but not a big one if I have any say in it.

Lately I’ve been praying about the possibility of a church starting in our area, and listening for any rumblings of the spirit. If its on God’s radar then I’m in for sure – I’ll even stick my hand up to lead if he’s giving it a green light. But I don’t need or want another thing to do, so in the mean time I will pray and wait and see what emerges. Possibly the greatest shift in the last 10 years has been that one – ‘I can make it happen’ (whether God’s in it or not) to ‘If God’s in it then I want to be part of it.’

So, thanks for reading my ramblings and sharing the journey. I’m always a little surprised by who is ‘still with me’ after 10 years of writing.

May 2014 be a wonderful year for you and your family!

Life Rhythms

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Hamo

I watched this short TED clip this morning as I had breakfast and it reminded me that we are close to another ‘sabbatical’ period. The presenter in this talk works on a year every seven years to allow the creative genius to refresh and renew. His argument is that instead of breaking life in three segments as most people do of 1-21 = study 22-65 = work 65+ = retirement, why not take 5 or 6 of those ‘retirement’ years and intersperse them in your working years to enhance what you are doing?

While the sabbath is a biblical concept his argument is not religious at all – it is purely pragmatic – that ‘it works’ (funny that…) but few are game to try it. It could sabotage all we have created in business… I might get bored… what a waste of time and money… But perhaps the sabbatical isn’t just a self indulgent luxury afforded to the wealthy. Perhaps it is something more of us could build into life if we so chose?

He offers 3 ways of looking at work – as ‘job’ for financial returns and minimal enjoyment or as ‘career’ for financial gain but with advancement and aspiration as part of it, or as ‘calling’, where the motivation is primarily intrinsic and the rewards are there whether there is financial gain or not.

I have often wondered why so few people live in the realm of calling or vocation and I get the sense that part of it is that most have no clue as to the concept. Much of that is due to our western world mentality of job=$$= stuff and better job=more$=more stuff which somehow suffocates any hope of a sense of vocation or calling emerging. If the goal is more and more stuff then the mechanism required to get to that goal is simply to earn more $$.

Simple. But rather sad. If this is life then is it any wonder our society is awash with depression. The creative spark is snuffed out as the need to ‘get ahead’ calls the shots. Interestingly, the devotion to work and advancement is so often counter-productive when it comes to finding genuine contentment and peace.

Over the last 30 years of my own working life I’ve taken several sabbaticals – not a year in length – but time enough to disengage from the predictable patterns of life and to allow the heart and mind to be stretched in some new directions. Usually they have come at the end of a term of ministry in a church environment and have been opportunities to step back and reflect before bowling on with the next project.

At the end of our time at Scarborough Baptist we took 3 months off from ministry. In that time I wrote a report for the Churches of Christ on the impact of their sports ministry programs and that funded the break as well as being an enjoyable project. It was in that time that I discovered the ‘sabbatical’ concept as I emerged from 3 months ‘off’ fresh and energetic, rather than simple closing the door on one job and then opening it on another a week later.

As we finished 8 years of ministry at Lesmurdie and headed up to Brighton we spent 4 or 5 months in transition, travelling for some of it and settling in for the remainder. Then in 2009 after 8 years of ministry with Upstream we finished up and spent 5 months travelling around Oz before coming back to a new role at Quinns Baptist.

I find a 3-6 month break every 5-7 years is a rhythm that allows us to declutter the mind, reconnect with our own sense of calling and get some good refreshment. We are coming to the end of another term of ministry in October 2014 – 5 years of ministry in the same community – working with the same people and doing the same kind of stuff.

Its been a good time, but I sense a significant break may be on the cards in some way. As the end of a 5 year term comes my eyes naturally look up to see what else is out there, in the way of ‘opportunities’ but my heart is strongly rooted both in these people and this location so I am hoping we will be able to stay another 5, 10 or 20…

But to do another 5, 10 or 20 well we may need to defrag a little, allow the imagination spark and listen again to God more closely and what he may want to say to us. We have already scheduled a month in Ireland for July, but I imagine another 8 weeks may valuable to allow a better disconnect.

I liked what the TED presenter had to say about ‘planning’ a sabbatical rather than just discovering you have 3-4 months of time to fill and little to do in it. Right now I am thinking of some folks I’d like to visit, spend time with, learn from, be inspired by and the possibilities of that happening… the cost is always a factor because they are dotted all over the world, but perhaps… perhaps…

Either way we have established the value of the sabbatical to refresh, inspire and renew.

So… What DO We Do With ‘Divorce’ Then?…

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Hamo

A number of years back – probably around 30 as I think about it now – I went away to Margaret River for a few days on my own. I had a mate down there and we arranged to head out for a surf at mainbreak one morning. ‘I’ll pick you up at 4.00am.’ he said.

‘Won’t it be dark?’ I countered. Mainbreak can be challenging enough, but at least with the sun up and the waves visible I figured I had a small chance of not dying.

‘Yeah – but we’ll beat the crowds – and the sun will come up soon enough…’

I didn’t want to sound like a woose so I just ‘no worriesed’ him and was there at 4.00am in the pitch black to be picked up.

Sure enough we rolled into the carpark and no one else was there. It was the middle of the night after all. I pulled the wetty on slowly… very slowly… He, a local now, was racing and keen to get out there. I could hear it, but I couldn’t see it.

It felt like madness. Kinda fun madness, but still madness all the same.

I had no idea quite what I was paddling into.

The sun would come up. That much was sure. But managing to survive between now and then was the top priority.

A couple of weeks back I decided to take a crack at this subject of divorce and I got that same feeling. Like paddling out to mainbreak in the dark… You’re not quite sure what’s out there, but fairly sure you want to be there and ‘ride it’.

On that day the sun came up, the wind stayed offshore and the surf was a good 4ft and was classic MR. I think the sun might have come up on some of my questions about divorce, but I’m still tentative, knowing that a trip over the falls is only an error of judgement away.

So – where has a couple of weeks of ruminating taken me?…

I’ll start writing and see if this is a ‘one post’, two or even three post blog.

It began with reading Mark’s gospel ch 10, where the Pharisees test Jesus with their question ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’

The conversation rolls on and ends up with Jesus speaking about anyone who divorces being an adulterer. Matthew’s account includes the ‘except for sexual immorality’ clause.

The obvious question it raises is ‘for what reasons can a person get a divorce?’ What does the Bible say and how do we make sense of it?

Apart from adultery the only other explicit stuff on divorce is by Paul in 1 Cor 7:12-16 who gives a person freedom to divorce if the non-believing partner moves out and moves on.

So the long held biblical view is that divorce is permissible either for adultery (‘porneia’ – could be other forms of sexual immorality) or if one unbelieving partner deserts the other. There are no other clear and simple instructions given on this matter.

And John Stott says unequivocally:

“We should have the courage to resist the prevailing tide of permissiveness and to set ourselves against divorce and remarriage on any other ground than the two mentioned in scripture (immorality and desertion of the unbelieving partner)” (Divorce 1973)

I think we can establish a couple of things quickly and easily:

a) Marriage is intended to be for life and with one person.

Jesus speaks of this in Mark 10 when he says:

At the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

I don’t think anyone sees marriage as a temporary arrangement so we can nail that as a given.

b) Divorce is a possibility and has been a possibility since the ‘get go’.

And Jesus cites Moses willingness to allow divorce as a concession to ‘hardness of heart’ , or perhaps self centredness is a more modern rendering of that idea.

So while we know marriage is for life and divorce is a valid option in some circumstances the murkiness and struggle hits when we try to discern what those circumstances are.

Perhaps it is just adultery and desertion?…

But Jesus made that one a bit tricky when he spoke of adultery being something we do when we lust in our hearts (Matthew 5). I’m guessing many of us are therefore guilty of adultery and (while divorce is always a last resort) surely a grieved wife could call a husband on ‘lust’ as adultery if she wanted to?… It’d be divorce on a technicality and the scribes and pharisees would be cheering with glee, but she’d win the point.

Some would also suggest that a divorced and remarried person (for reasons other than adultery/desertion) is always an adulterer and because ‘adulterers cannot enter the kingdom of heaven’ (1 Cor 6:9) then they have lost their salvation, are no longer Christian and cannot be part of the church community. Yeah – I know its a totally dodgy interpretation of that verse and passage because then the greedy, liars and cheats would be out of the kingdom too… So maybe that’s not the case… (Oh but there’s an exception for gay folks though – right?… Because they are still in the ‘really really’ bad camp…)

I grew up in this kind of world. People didn’t get divorced in our church – or if they did they didn’t come back. It was clear that divorce was a special kind of sin that took you out of the orbit of faith and left you in no man’s land. At best on the bench and at worst completely unwelcome. That was the 70’s as best I remember it. Debates raged over whether divorced people could take communion, lead a creche, serve on a leadership team and if you could swallow all of that, whether they could be pastors.

I remember when one of our elders in the church I was attending got divorced. A man I had always perceived as a godly good man was now doing something unthinkable. What did this mean for his life, his faith?… It threw me into a turmoil.

Now – 40 years on – divorce is commonplace. There is no question over your status before God. Leaders can be divorced. Pastors can have divorced – multiple times even – and still be in the game. Divorced people are welcome in church and the whole tenor of things has shifted enormously.

Have we just gone soft?

Have we discovered some new learning/theological understanding that we didn’t have in the 70’s?

John Stott wasn’t unclear in his stance – even if it was 1973 when he took it. I wonder what he would have said if we had been able to speak with him before his death?

So let me pose a question:

If your husband is an aggressive violent man who beats you and the kids up, is feeding your 10 year son a steady diet of amphetamines and selling your 13 year old daughter for sex, while refusing to provide any money for food in the home and has threatened to kill you repeatedly, BUT he hasn’t been sexually unfaithful do you need to stick it out and suck it up?

Or – because it cuts both ways – your wife is a vindictive, manipulative and controlling tyrant who inflicts both emotional and physical harm on you and your children and refuses to change or even acknowledge a problem BUT has not been unfaithful… do you simply have to suck it up and find a way to manage within it?

Doesn’t everything inside you just say ‘what a stupid outrageous and absurd question?! Doesn’t it just seem ridiculous to even have to ask that? And sure – they are extreme examples – but they make the point.

The problem is that historically/traditionally if there has been no infidelity or desertion then there is apparently no biblical grounds for divorce.

John Ortberg says it well:

“For many Christians, sex and sex alone is the key to the dissolution of a marriage. The rub is that if you are humane about divorce you cannot be biblical, and if you are biblical you cannot be humane.”

That bites, doesn’t it?

I realise most divorces are still because people have ‘gone off each other’, and ‘need a change’, so hardness of heart is still the biggie in terms of causes, but there are plenty of situations where Christian people have stuck out incredible nonsense because of this biblical framing of legit reasons for divorce.

In fact studies have shown that Christians (both men and women) put up with much more abuse than those outside of the church because of these theological convictions. Christian divorcees are often more damaged and broken that those outside the church who will simply say ‘I don’t have to put up with this crap.’

So how do we come at this subject in a way is true to scripture but doesn’t lead us to bizarre places? Because Ortberg’s words are so true. There is a cross to carry in following Jesus, but is that how we would see a devastatingly abusive and destructive household?

I’m teaching on that tomorrow so I’ll finish this blog after I’ve said my piece.

Backyard Missionary 10 Years On

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Hamo

Warning – long rambling, reflective post ahead…

Way back 10 years ago in September of 2003, after a nomadic 6 months of travelling, while waiting for our new home to be built, we finally moved house into the new estate of ‘Brighton’, where the developer’s tagline was ‘Its what a community should be.’ (Its wasn’t…)

We went there with 4 other families from our previous church to ‘start over’ – to re-imagine church and to see ourselves as missionaries in the western world. We set out with our tanks full of missionary zeal and enthusiasm, completely unaware of what the next 7 years would hold, but convinced that God had called us and that we would discover ways of being God’s people that resonated better with Australian people than what was on offer around us.

Its the ideal way to start any venture – full of conviction, enthusiasm and vision, even if we were a little short on realism… That said, there aren’t many ‘realists’ who set out to start new things as the vision and optimism has been kicked out of them by the stuff of life.

It was 6 months earlier that this blog began. It was a way of staying in touch with folks from our previous church, but in the end I don’t think any of them read it… However I rediscovered my love of writing and so things kept rolling on here.

Just two years previous I had changed roles at Lesmurdie Baptist and gone from being youth pastor to team leader. It was a significant transition both for me and for the church and in it I wanted to lead the church towards being involved in church planting. Most people liked the theory of this, but neither them nor me had counted on it being such a disruption to our lives.

You can read about the journey to Brighton and all that went with it elsewhere in this blog, but my reason for writing here is more to reflect on where we are 10 years on.

The ‘Upstream’ years were amazing years. In the scheme of things very little went to plan. At times it was humbling and even humiliating not to be able to do what I had thought I would be able to do. And yes I use the word ‘I’ intentionally because I think that was part of the problem. I think others in the team were much more content to let God do what he wanted and how he wanted, but I had some ideas and I wanted him to pull his finger out and make them work for me. He wasn’t compliant. I didn’t think much of him for that.

In short I was not the success I had thought I would have been and in the end we closed Upstream as some of the team moved away and our core crew had reduced to just a couple of families. As we closed it, we joined with Quinns Baptist, where Danelle and I took up the role of being team leaders.

The missional energy that had formed us in those 7 years was still there, but some of the passion had wilted for me. I was convinced intellectually of some things, but my heart had grown weary of toiling away for what seemed like little result. We didn’t seem to make a difference like I thought we would and I was weary from the effort it had taken. In theory mission to the west sounded great. In reality I was tired and struggling to admit it.

So we moved to leading an established church – a dysfunctional established church with two factions on a collision course. We ended up being the catalyst for that collision to take place sooner rather than later and so our entry back into established church world was everything we had dreaded. Politics and power plays were the order of the day and we quickly found ourselves wondering just what we were doing there. As much as we could discern God’s voice he seemed to be saying ‘stay there’.

Thanks God.

So we did and things have changed significantly. I love our church now and I am happy to be there, in fact I find it hard to ever envisage leaving. Who would have thought?…

But what of the ‘backyard missionary’? What of the original sense of calling that took us here? We still live in the same region and mix it up with some of the same crew, albeit in different ways.

I have questioned at times whether this blog needs a new title. I have wondered whether I am still that person who began writing it 10 years ago and the truth is I am not.

You’d hope that though wouldn’t you? If you hadn’t changed significantly in your forties then you’d be wondering ‘why not?’

When I read the title ‘backyard missionary’ now I read it with a whole different energy to what I did 10 years ago. Back then I felt I was someone who had stuff to say that needed to be heard and often my blog was a soapbox. To be fair some of that stuff did need to be both said and heard. But some of it was just pontificating in the absence of any real experience.

At times in the last few years I have had to work hard at not becoming either cynical or indifferent. When you realise that changing the world is not down to you then its tempting to cruise – to just roll along and go with the flow because you can’t really change anything anyway. I’ve felt like that at times. Helpless and hopeless are too strong words, but perplexed and disturbed fit well. The western world feels like a hard place to do Christian mission. And then I wonder if its the western world, or if it’s me?… Us?… The fact that so many of us have our priorities arse-about, and we wonder why we seem impotent.

A big reason for setting out on the journey 10 years ago was my critique of the church I was leading and its lack of missional energy. I now a lead a church that is probably less effective or intentional missionally than the one I left.

I sometimes wonder ‘what’s with that?’

In all of this my understanding of what God is asking of me has shifted. I no longer devote myself to full time Christian work. I have an ordinary job. My own business. While I didn’t set out to get here its been one of the better developments in my life. I can’t imagine ever being a full time minister again in a local church. I wonder what people do who are full time…

In this space 10 years on mission has become much more integrated and relaxed. I don’t feel the need to pursue people the way I once did. I guess that has both an upside and a downside. I want to listen more to God and the way he is leading and be less driven. I find that a hard line to walk because the other side of the line often feels like laziness.

I get the feeling who I am is probably more attractive to a person looking on than I was 10 years ago. I’m not sure what that is, but I sense it has something to do with having less of an agenda – less of a drive to convert – its less about ‘me’ maybe?

In this space I sometimes wonder if I have become one of the people I despised. If I am now the preoccupied, self obsessed middle class westerner who talks a much better game than he plays. I wish I had that same zeal and urgency that burned so strongly 10 years ago, but I don’t. And I can’t summon it up. It just feels odd. False. Wrong.

Or maybe I judged those people harshly and incorrectly. Maybe there is stuff you only learn as you get older?…

And maybe passion and vitality manifests in many different ways?…

Divorce

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Hamo

We’ve been reading the Gospel of Mark as a church and its been an interesting and valuable time as we have just rolled with the chapters and tried to cover it fairly sequentially.

That said we just jumped from chapter 6 (where we spent 4 weeks) to chapter 9 and now I’m up shortly with chapter 10 – a chapter that begins with Jesus thoughts on divorce. There is much more in the chapter that we could focus on, but I’m feeling drawn to look at this issue and speak about it.

In a community of people where this has happened I guess it could be a bit of a risky business as there will inevitably be raw wounds and perhaps entrenched views either way. But the more I read it this morning the more I felt the need to give some thoughts on where we sit with this one.

I feel like its an important issue to pick up and speak to – intentionally. So much of what we say about divorce is said in private and addressed in response to specific (often unsalvageable) situations. So maybe its better to say some things with clarity out of the heat of the moment so that there is some food for thought if the issue ever arises.

But what to say…

The stats are pretty terrible on divorce (and let’s face it, you don’t need statisticians to know that). I remember 30 years ago when I first heard of a church leader getting divorced. The shock and horror was palpable. Was the man still a Christian even? Will he still be allowed in church?… He was someone I looked up to so it made it even more confusing. He became a pariah – on a par with a 21st C paedophile.

Our kids wont have that problem. They will have a whole different set of problems.

They will see divorce as a valid option for failing marriages. And if we don’t take it off the table then I imagine they will see it as a viable way to go if their marriage starts to get tough. And whose marriage doesn’t get tough?! Really… Marriage is hard. And at times it feels completely undoable, but if divorce is never on the table (yes – except in some cases) then there is hope.

So I guess my short gut level response to this issue is to take it ‘off the table’ as a possibility altogether except in some fairly terrible situations. And there is where the challenge lies – to define what is considered as fair biblical cause for divorce.

Infidelity is a clear one, but after that it gets hazy (biblically). Abuse seems an obvious reason, but who defines abuse? And what constitutes abuse?

Is it just physical? Can it be emotional? Can it be neglect?

Let’s face it – there are a wide variety of views on those issues in Christian circles. So to call it hard and fast is difficult.

Then there’s the issue of shame and guilt that many struggle with because their marriage failed – even if they were the innocent party. Its tricky to speak objectively about a topic that is anything but objective.

When Jesus spoke about divorce in Mark 10 he said that Moses consented to divorce ‘because your hearts were hard’. If I were to try and translate that to simple English I’d say it’s a result of selfishness – at least on the part of one person, if not both. Either or both has said ‘I want my way no matter what and if it costs the marriage then sobeit’.

And as the church we have made divorce both far more possible as well as palatable.

Why?…

Because many of us want a way out of tired marriages and many of us want a relational change of scenery. Maybe that sounds cynical, but I don’t think it is. With so many Christians now getting divorced it needs to be given some legitimacy, so we can do it without feeling bad. I wish I could believe that all failed marriages were a result of serious infidelity or abuse, but I don’t think they are.

Often they are just self centredness. So that’s a fairly tough line to take, but I think its true.

And then there’s the question of how we respond to those who have either been devastated by a divorce or who have initiated a divorce (for what we might call ‘selfish reasons’) and remain within the fellowship.

I’m for erring on the side of grace every time, and for offering hope and forgiveness and restoration to folks who find themselves here. But… if I’m honest I think I also want to give some folks a really hard kick up the butt and I want to say ‘What on earth on are you doing? Wake up to yourself.’

That’s probably not politically and ‘pastorally’ correct, but I think our tendency towards grace and forgiveness sometimes messes with the need to say some other hard truths.

So – those are some of my immediate thoughts on the subject and no doubt they may start a fire among the small hardy crew still reading this blog… And maybe come Sunday next week they will be a little more refined…

Compensating…

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Hamo

Depending on the church culture you grew up in you may have experienced that great evangelical motivator, ‘guilt’, (often accompanied by its friend ‘duty’.)

In the world I grew up in these two factors seemed to play a large part in why people went to church, why they got involved in church service and would explain some of why weekly church attendance was normal and predictable.

If you weren’t there ‘the pastor’ would call during the week and your absence would be enquired about. The elders would note your absence and the ‘roll’ would show an ‘x’ next to your name (yes – there was a roll…) If the reasons for skipping church were inadequate, then there would be at very least a silent ‘tutt tutt’ of disapproval from the pastor. No one liked those kinds of pastoral visits or those phone calls that said ‘we haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks…’

But guilt is a powerful motivator and it did have its desired effect of keeping attendances (and offerings…) up.

However guilt is also a hollow motivator – as soon as someone calls it out, names it and shames it. No one wants to be driven by guilt. No one wants to own that as their raison d’etre.

Even now I encounter the legacy of those times when I call to check in on someone who hasn’t been around and they immediately feel the need to justify their non-attendance and let me know that they will be back at church again soon.

That wasn’t why I was calling…

Or was it?

It makes me question my own motives sometimes. Am I ok with people skipping church?… Am I latently trying to guilt them back in?…

I have a hunch that what’s happened in the last 20 years is a pendulum swing away from compulsory weekly attendance based on guilt. We have been so keen to make sure people are not motivated by guilt that we have given them permission to choose – to choose to attend – to choose to stay home – sleep in – go away – whatever they ‘need’ to be doing that day is fine. We wouldn’t want you to feel guilty about not attending Sunday worship…

And while I see value in the shift, I also see a developing Christian culture that is not able to sustain a community. The average Aussie Sunday church attendance is now probably about 1 in 3. There are some who will be there every week and others who will be there once a term, but on average it seems ‘regulars’ get there one week in three. It used to be 1 in 2 but I sense it has shifted even in the last few years.

What’s that mean for us as the church?

Do we just accept this as ‘how it is’?

Do we challenge it?

Does it even matter?

I have to put my hand up as one who said ‘church attendance is not the big deal – being part of a church community IS.’ And I still believe that is completely true, but the reality is that most people who don’t attend church weekly are not part of any other expression of church community. Its those who are regular on Sundays who are also regular at bloke’s groups and women’s groups etc.

Which ultimately means that those who aren’t consistently gathering on a Sunday most likely aren’t gathering anywhere and aren’t earthing themselves in Christian community, and that has to be a concern. The gospel is inherently communal. There is nothing solitary about following Jesus, but a busy, consumeristic world and a self centred culture have led us to accept that maybe this is as good as it gets. If this is discipleship then we are screwed.

At QBC we have joked about who is on the ‘attendance roster’ this week. We have talked about rolling with it and accepting that this is the world we live in. But lately there is a part of me that has just got gnarly about it. There is a part of me that wants to say ‘ok guilt sucks – and that was bad – but this lame excuse for being the church is hardly a better solution.’ I think its more than a personal indignation or offense. I feel it is a God stirred thing because it won’t go away and I feel it rising in me as something I can’t ignore.

The mere term ‘church attendance’ still gives me a shiver down the spine because it so badly misses the point of what it means to be a church. However we may need to start again with exactly this.

Maybe the first thing to challenge people with is their commitment to the community that gathers on a Sunday?

My observation is that the erratic (or maybe predictable but disappointing) attendance patterns affect others who are there. When there are 120 in your church and 50 on any given Sunday then it is hard to form a healthy community. The necessary connections that lead to mutual spiritual formation just don’t happen because there isn’t a foundation for them. So instead we press on and hope that an inspirational sermon might find its mark somewhere and might stir someone into action for another week.

It might… but a sermon every three weeks is not what discipleship looks like and that we have come to accept this is disturbing me.

In moments like these I want to quit Christian leadership because it seems like a dead end task. It seems almost impossible to work within this culture to create something that looks like the church.

Or maybe we need to go back and challenge people about this issue? Maybe we need to take the risk of ‘guilt’ raising its head and just call out laziness, selfishness and misplaced priorities? Maybe this is one of the prophetic roles of Christian leaders in this time – to say ‘Christian community is not a convenience – it is a commitment – and it will cost. Deal with it.’

Yeah… I’m chewing on it. I’m wondering how you say these things in a spirit of grace and with a depth of conviction that doesn’t simply take people back to their ‘guilt scars’ and evoke a ‘you can’t tell me what to do’ kind of reaction. I’m wondering how we inspire people to a better vision, because it will be a costly vision.

But I do know that if this is as good as it gets then I probably need to do something else because it isn’t a model I want to invest my life in

(By the way – the image is of Lesmurdie Baptist Church in 1969 as it was beginning)

Backyard Missionary

unrefined theological musings, random personal reflections and occasional naughtiness…

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