At our Upstream meetings on Monday nights we have just started looking at the book of Jonah – a great book about a grumpy prophet.

We did some overview stuff the first week and then last week we picked up on chapter 1.

Jenny led us in a time of worship that was simple, creative and engaging and then it was my turn to lead us thru chapter 1.

For those seeking ideas for how to help people learn here’s what we did on the night. Again its very simple but it gets people learning in different ways:

1. Read chapter

2. Whiteboard our observations and questions with no discussion. This took about 15 minutes and produced some really good insights.

3. Split into 3 groups for different learning experiences. The learning experiences focused on different learning styles. I was tempted to offer people a choice of where to go and what to do, but in the end I didn’t. Some forms of learning are a little more intimidating than others, but people also need to be encouraged to stretch their brains!

So the three activities were these:

a) You are preaching this weekend in a normal church and you must use Jonah Chapter 1 as your base point. As preparation you need to answer these questions:

What do I want them to know? (There must be 3 points! )

What do I want them to feel?

What do I want them to do?

Discuss this as a group and then come back ready to share your thoughts.

This one is good for the analytical types – left brain Baptists.

b) Each person is to draw an icon that represents what they believe to be the essence of chapter 1. Do this alone first and then share your icons with the rest of the group. From there either choose one icon that you all feel is most symbolic of the chapter or construct a new one using the insights from the first attempts. Share this with the bigger group when we re-group.

Here the creatives / intuitive right brainers can have some fun.

c) Reflecting on personal experience – where does this story intersect with your own story either currently or in the past?

As you share your stories note down what you learn either from your own story or from someone else’s – only one ‘learning’ per story/person.

Come and share the 3 or 4 learnings

Here the more relational folks can come alive

We each did the activity which took around 20 minutes – but could have taken longer and then returned to share what we had learnt as groups.

It wasn’t the greatest night we have ever had, and in hindsight if I had more time I would probably give all three assignments to each group as it would help them work thru the text more rigourously.

Still – live and learn!

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…that clear sense that something is on the move – that there is energy and direction and enthusiasm…

I get the impression that there is substantial momentum building for us as a team. There is a great vibe, a sense of common purpose amongst us and we are all enjoying the friendships we have made in the local community.

It has been wonderful to meet people we can truly call friends rather than simply neighbours or ‘connections’.

This may be just my issue” but, when I reflect back to my time at LBC I had no real friendships outside the walls of the church. It was partly my choice to invest so much of my life inside the community, but also a function of how much a church demands of your time and your heart. I am not sure I could have disciplined myself to live differently and stayed in the system. I am fairly confident that part of this re-imagining has been learning a new way to live for myself – learning how to live in the world rather than separate from it.

Indulge me by letting me quote again from Hugh Mackay’s Winter Close on the dilemma of suburbia:

“Rich is fond of saying that the thing about Winter Close is that it fosters a real sense of community. That’s a big claim and I wish I could share Rich’s confidence in making it. Now that Sydney has grown to four million, communities are hard to come by: a common complaint among Sydneysiders is that ‘we don’t know our neighbours’ – as if that’s the neighbours fault. I’ve given up saying ‘why don’t you knock on their door and introduce yourself?’ The puzzled looks I receive make it clear I have missed the point: plenty of people like not knowing their neighbours and only pretend to complain about it. Suburbia offers the wonderful cloak of anonymity for those who want the security of proximity without any of the demands of intimacy” P.10

And on a similar theme

“The contract between neighbours is based on resistance to intimacy, so a quite different kind of closeness becomes possible: easy open, comfortable, but devoid of any ultimate responsibility or any glimpses into each other’s souls. These are adjacent lives – sometimes even parallel lives – rather than shared lives. We compensate for our physical proximity by keeping our emotional distance. These are not like relationships between friends, or even between people who work closely together – I know Maddy better than I know Rich, Abel, or Mrs Spenser, or Joe Riley. Perhaps the thing suburban life offers us is the possibility of living the life of a herd without the bonds of a tribe: proximity, familiarity, trust, support… but not intimacy. When we cross that line we cease to be neighbours and become something else” P.156

Quite interesting given that Dante’s definition of hell is proximity without intimacy… Is McKay suggesting that for many people the burbs can be hell? The last thing I want is another bunch of superficial, froth and bubble relationships. I am certainly up for more earthy, honest engagement with each other (realising of course that this takes time and trust to occur)

It is also refreshing and challenging to spend more time around people who do not see the world exactly as I do, and who at times disagree strongly with me. I don’t mind a bit of debate on the big questions of life! Actually its one of my favourite pastimes and the more I get the more alive I feel. I have always been a person who feels more alive in an Alpha group (or the equivalent) than I have in a church service. One of the fun ventures I initiated in my time at LBC was the Hills Philosophy Café, a monthly forum for armchair philosophers who were keen to debate life, religion and meaning in an agenda free environment. It was a blast!

Our clear hope in coming to Brighton is that people we meet will want to know more of the way of Jesus and will want to join us in some expression of community as we live the life of discipleship together. The challenge for me is that I can no more make this happen than I can make the sun get up in the morning. I can do my part by living what I understand to be the life of Jesus around here, but I can’t make anyone sign up for that life.

I believe this is where prayer becomes a huge priority and I would not rate it as a strong area for us as a team. I am puzzled as to where to go with it. There are various constraints that make regular prayer together very difficult and yet reality is that we will always make time for what we value.

I’d be interested to hear how others make prayer happen, that is more than tokenism and more that rigid obligation. I would love to have a group of people to meet with 2 or 3 times a week to pray for our community, but I’m not sure who they would be or how to implement it

The beauty of what we are doing here in Brighton is that it is a constant work in progress – always open to change and re-directing as we see the need.

When we met last night we were discussing how we reshape ourselves again so others can join in more fully if they wish. Earlier this year we experimented with fortnightly open gatherings, but for various reasons they flopped – I think the primary one was that none of our friends were really that interested in being part of any kind of church setting. Fair enough.

In ending those Sunday gatherings we returned to a Monday night gathering weekly for our team members and began a lunch in the local park – a simple community meal. However we are aware that there may be one or two people out there who may be interested in connecting with what we do in a more significant way – who may want to be part of the discipleship processes we engage with as a team.

So its time to morph again.

As of last night we no longer have ‘team only’ meetings on a Monday night. We aren’t changing anything of what we do, but we are saying that if we come across people who are seeking a more significant connection with God and with our community then they are welcome to join us.

We have never made any bones about the fact that we are not at all interested in chasing down people who already attend church and getting them to switch to our gig. Its not that we don’t ‘want them’ as such, but rather we see it as our mission to connect with those who are seeking a connection with God, but are not interested in a typical church setting. We are also unlikely to appeal to many churched folks who want the familiarity of singing, sermons and various programs (and we aren’t about to change to accomodate any of that).

What’s it mean practically?

Actually, not a heap changes. We keep on doing what we are doing and if people want to join us they can. We won’t be advertising, designing a sign or seeking a building. With no public presence we reckon people will only come as they are invited by someone already in the group. This is intentional – to avoid collecting church hoppers.

Assuming that at some point we get too big for a home we will simply multiply and create two groups in different homes.

What happens on a Monday night?

– we share a meal together at 6.30

– we do stuff with the kids between 7.15 and 7.45 and the put them into bed

– we have some kind of worship/prayer activity

– we engage with the Bible and with each other – usually in some form or interactive learning

It aint rocket science.

What we have is a great bunch of people who love each other, enjoy each other’s company and who are committed to becoming more like Jesus in how they live every day.

If you live in Brighton and aren’t currently involved with a Christian community, but would like to be, then you are welcome to get in touch and join with us.

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This is the name of a blog that deals in the whole area of church advertising / images etc. As much as we are not out to do much in the way of promo / advertising, I do still believe its important to have something to put on a letterhead.

As you would know I have been playing around with some logos that we may use with Upstream Communities and John suggested these guys do a peer review on the stuff we have developed.

So they did…

Check it out here

I am thinking we are down to two options:

or

The first is a little more obvious but I reckon its ok while the second looks classier to me, but is also a bit more ‘corporate’ in appearance.

Right now I’m not sure!

For the last three weeks we have been discussing James chapter 1 & 2 as well as listening to Mark Sayers give his talk on hyper-reality / consumerism. Over the three weeks some themes have emerged and we have taken a bit of time to delve into them.

Next week we are scheduled for James 3.

Problem.

I don’t believe we have really come to grips with what we have been thinking on over the last three weeks. It stirred us, but I am not sure if we have acted on it, or if it has moved from our heads to our hearts and subsequently to some kind of implementation.

To move on now will only serve to make the last 3 weeks an academic exercise where we feel like we have lived as disciples because we have talked about issues of discipleship. I think this is what happened many time when I was preaching. Because I had said it, I assumed people would act on it. Most often I reckon people heard it, considered it, but maybe didn’t tussle with it enough to evoke heartfelt action. I reckon we rarely move from thought to action on difficult issues unless we have had time to really grapple with them and engage with others who will support us along the way.

So until we really come to grips with the questions we have been chewing around I reckon its time to pitch camp and challenge one another to ask what our action will look like. That can happen in a number of ways of course and I might reflect on what we do at some point.

One thing’s for sure. I am tired of allowing academic discipleship to exist in the church. I reckon its one downfall of the weekly Sunday sermon. New info every week eventually means that a whole heap of stuff goes thru to the keeper because we just can’t live out all that we hear. It is an information overload rather than a genuine learning experience.

Maybe we need one sermon a month and 3 weeks of deciding how we will live it out?

That works easily with a smaller group like us, but it might be hard on guys who have 150 people coming each week some of whom don’t actually want to live it out.

It could be a good way to sort the sheep from the goats? You can’t come and hide in the back row. You must engage with others and decide how you are going to live this stuff we are talking about.black cauldron the movie watch confetti in divx

Did some of you think those were fish in the logo samples below?!

I thought the imagery of swimming up a fallopian tube was quite creative.

Ok – so its down to 2 and 4 on the ‘blogvote’. Any other votes???

I have been having some design work done on a logo for our team letterhead and any material that goes out in public under our name. Its not a huge deal, but in the world we live in I reckon its worthwhile having something of this nature.

I am after something simple, clean, easily recognisable, not cheesy and that embodies the idea of swimming against the dominant current of society.

I put a list of 10 different options to our team the other night and got ten different opinons! I should have known better. Still I like other people’s feedback and perceptions so here is a chance to ‘cast your vote’.

After a bit of sifting this is the short list of candidates. Lets call the top image 1 and the bottom 4. Tell me the one you would see as best depicting us as you observe us thru this blog (which I realise is only one lens)

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Twenty one years ago I set out on my first teaching assignment in the little wheat belt town of Wagin 2 1/2 hours south east of Perth. I was excited that I had been given a posting and was really looking forward to the year. I immediately attended the Baptist church and was dreadfully underwhelmed. While my city church wasn’t exciting this one was struggling even more. I decided to visit the Uniting church – which had an even less appealing reputation than the Bappos.

The night I went a local bloke was preaching and I was quite amazed. He was good. Very good. Inspiring, direct and no crap. My kinda preacher. I decided that whatever else may have been up with the church that was where I would base myself of the year.

Gavin and his wife Helen became really good friends over that one year. It was also the hardest year of my life – the year my engagement busted up. Ouch… It was good to have some people around who cared for me when I was a bit of a mess.

As much as we didn’t see much of each other over the next 5 or so years, Gav ended up being one of my groomsmen when Danelle and I got married. It was a measure of the respect I had/have for him.

Over the last 15 years we have seen each other probably no more than 10 times, but it is one of those friendships you pick up like an old jumper and fit into comfortably.

I asked Gavin and Helen to be on our prayer team when we made the move to Brighton and they agreed. He mentioned that he liked the sound of what we were doing and would even consider coming to join us. Ok…

As if!

Gav is a 3rd generation farmer (I think) so I took his interest as nice but nothing more. He mentioned it a couple more times, but still I didn’t pay much attention.

The came the email saying he had put the farm on the market.

Crikey!

That’s serious… especially for a farming family. Four days later came a rather shocked phone call telling me the farm had sold and they had just bought a block of land across the road about 800metres. ‘We’re coming to join you’. After 21 years we were going to spend some serious time together again.

In Australia when someone is really serious about something we sometimes use the expression ‘I’d bet the farm on this.’ Well these guys did. This is not a test run where if it doesn’t work out they go back to farming. They have taken a huge risk. Gotta admire that!

For the last 12 months their house has been under construction and on Friday it will be completely finished except for landscaping.

As things turned out my in-laws were looking for a place to stay for a few months while their house was being built. So they offered to look after the empty property. Sounded good for all until they got offered 2 months of relief teaching in One Arm Point – one of north west Oz’s beauty spots, and also home to my bro in law. They took that up, so Gav was left without a house sitter – always a bit dodgy in newly developed areas when you are the first house on the block.

Then yesterday we were chatting with Andrew & Jo Dowsett who have been here a month now from Sheffield and they let us know that as from this Monday they have nowhere to live, despite looking all over.

A plan starts to brew in my mind…

‘Come with me’ I said to Andrew. ‘Lets go meet a friend of mine who might like to meet you too.’

The upshot of all that is the Dowsett family will be living in Brighton for a couple of months as of sometime next week. I reckon that’ s a great thing.

It’ll be great to get to know them better and have them around the place for a while as they figure out exactly where God is leading them.

Then after Christmas Gavin and Helen move in and we pick up the journey with them all over again – 21 years later. How bout that?

I’m not one who sees God in absolutely everything – I reckon sometimes stuff just happens – but I get the sense that there is some kind of gracious hand at work herein the relationshio with Gav and Helen, the Dowsett family arriving in Oz and the provision of a house at just the right time. Sometimes you really do just say ‘wow God – good work!’

Last night at our team meeting we began looking at the book of James and discussed chapter 1.

Its always interesting to see where a conversation gathers energy and where it dithers along. Usually my approach to leading this type of meeting is to do a heap of background study and throw it open and see what people want to discuss. There was no aspect of James chapter 1 that was ‘gripping’ me personally, nor was I feeling like I needed to really press something home to us as a team in any way. I arrived hoping that others had been inspired or that the Holy Spirit would take us somewhere none of us had expcted.

After 20 minutes of fairly uninspiring discussion we began to look at verses 9-11.

The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. 10But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. 11For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business

The conversation that came out of this stirred the room a little more.

You see, we are all rich. Some would even say filthy rich. It depends on who we compare ourselves to I guess. We are a bunch of middle income Australians – probably averaging $70K / household some with average mortgages, some renting and decent cars all round (except for us!)

By world standards we are wealthy. So are we people of ‘low position’? Is our wealth something of a hindrance to following Jesus in this world? Ought we try to extricate ourselves from our possessions?

Maybe…

Now… before you trot out all the reasons why its ok we own stuff – that the world needs the wealthy as well as the poor – that if we gave it all away then we would be poor – the early church had to own stuff to share it – yada yada yada, just stop for a minute and consider how gripped we are by our wealth and how it shapes our lives. (Or is that just me?…)

As we began to explore the (hypothetical) possibilities of giving it all away and moving into a different suburb and then living at a different socio-economic level it was interesting to see our struggle. When I was a teenager I would have given it all away in an instant. Easy.

Now I am 41 year old with a lot of stuff, a family and a way of life that I am familiar with and that I enjoy. I am deeply wedded to my lifestyle and at times I feel infuriated by it. At other times I am really grateful for what I have.

We were discussing how difficult it is to help middle Australia really engage with the gospel. People who are ‘almost there’ and will (apparently) soon be content once they have a bigger house/better car or whatever else are rarely looking for meaning outside of possessions – at least it sure appears that way.

We asked the question if middle Australia is so difficult to penetrate maybe we ought to pull stumps and go to a really rough suburb where folks are poor and maybe more open to hearing Jesus good news. (Just for the record – we don’t feel God taking us anywhere – anytime soon) As we discussed this and the possibility of selling our stuff and giving it to people who need it more than us we struggled to really have a decent conversation. Its hard to really think clearly when you are so mired in your own wealth, worldview and background.

We agreed that for all of us to go somewhere downtrodden would be quite difficult for us as we would be engaging with folks from a very different walk of life to ourselves. We probably would struggle to be accepted and connect in conversation easily due to our vastly different life experiences and backgrounds. (This has been some of our experience here in Brighton.

Even to help the poor and needy round here seems like a lame option at times when millions of people in other parts of the world die from inadequate resources.

I really don’t think there are any easy answers here – if there were we would have found them a long time ago. My answer to this sort of stuff often seems to be the same these days – do what you feel the Spirit is leading you to do.

That’s not a cop out. Its the only safe way to go without creating a legalism.

So, could we simply walk away from the affluence we have at this stage in life? Probably not ‘simply’. but I’d like to think we could make that choice if genuinely faced with it.

When I come home after team meetings I always need an hour or so to unwind a little – grab some headspace before hitting the sack.

Its that way most nights when I have been with people. The introvert needs space to settle before putting head on pillow.

That is why I often find myself writing stuff late at night. I am in unwind/reflective mode.

Tonight we began to look at the book of James. We did the ‘helicopter view’, reading it right thru initially before digging around in it over the coming weeks. I find its always good to take time to read a book as a whole (and aloud if you can) before delving into it. Its a bit hard with Isaiah etc, but the smaller letters lend themselves to it.

For those who are interested here’s another life sharing/prayer exercise I used tonight.

1. Using a set of picture cards (I downloaded from webshots.com and then printed them out) ask everyone to choose a card that depicts where they see their relationship with God at the moment. Do it quickly / intuitively.

2. Pass around slips of paper with sayings of Jesus on them. I had about 30 or so sayings made up using the Message as the translation. The deal is that you read the sayings one at a time as they are passed to you. Read them rapidly and as soon as one hits you, you take it and keep it. The sayings circulate until everyone has one. (We put them on our heads to let people know we had finished – which puzzled Ellie greatly when she came in wanting a drink… ‘what are you guys doing?!’)

3. We then split into groups of 3 or 4 to talk about what we chose and what connections we see between our ‘saying’ and image. My hope was that in the conversation we would pick up on what the spirit was saying to us and we would ‘learn’ .

4. We come back together and I read a passage from Philippians – 4:6-13

5. We pray together – prayers that flow out of the experience.

This was the image I chose – a bush in the desert that looks to be alive and well.

The saying of Jesus that resonated with me was “Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” –Mark 3:35

Is it just me or is there a connection between a bush alone in the desert – that is alive and well and a devotion to Jesus that surpasses any other relationship?

Discipeship is where life is found but it is lonely at times, because few people choose the ‘narrow road’.