Double~take | questions

I have no shameI

know a great song called Glory Defined. I never knew who it was played by until last weekend, when Building 429 featured in a concert at a youth event I was at. The penny dropped as I was reading their bio – “Glory Defined? Dude, I think that’s on my mp3 player!”

The only issues I have with the song are two lines in the bridge. I can never sing them, because it would be a big fat lie if I did, and my conscience would never let me live it down: “There’s never a question in your message… there’s never a doubt in my mind…”I think asking questions is a dying art form.

In Jesus time it was apparently common practice for question and answer sessions in the synagogues or at the temple. Or basically wherever there happened to be a group of rabbis. Not only was it a chance for younger people to take advantage of their elders’ wisdom, but the elders got the chance to outsmart their peers and be extra smug for a few hours until the next question session. Benefits all round… › Continue reading

Vox populi | following

going where Jesus already is

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ave you ever sat in a church service and wondered where God was?  I’ve been there, and thankfully not too recently.  In fact, this past weekend I had the privilege of serving alongside cadets as we went out for a weekend of ministry.  We all had opportunity to share how God expanded their learning, and highlights from the weekend, and there was a comment that keeps coming back to me.

Matt shared how his team had gone out on a midnight patrol taking food and drinks to women who were prostituting themselves on the streets.  He explained how he thought the purpose of the evening was to minister God’s grace to the prostitutes, but when he met them on the street he was reminded that in a mystical way God was already present.  They had only come to join Him in the places where He was moving.  Campolo preaches the immediacy of the kingdom, and explains that in a missional sense we should not be going to the places where the church is absent, but with a shift in paradigm, ought to be going to the place where Jesus already is.

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The Match Factory | June - Aug, 2008

Ideas for selected
Match Factory dates
over the next three months
by Lucy AitkenRead

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une to August is full of days to cause us to reflect and act on some significant global issues. Here is a small selection of just a few of the dates taken from the longer list that can be found here.

June 1 | International Children’s Day

Spending time with my one year old nephew gives me huge amounts of joy. Through observing Hudson I have noticed two characteristics that seem to be innate - sharing and dancing! Hudson can’t seem to let a tune go by, be it a sombre brass band piece or a nursery rhyme, without clapping and bouncing. He also struggles to eat even his favourite treats without pushing a little into someone else’s mouth. Sharing and dancing… we have so much to learn from kids!

Unicef’s latest flagship report The State of the World’s Children 2008 is a sad read. Despite the publication’s attempts to celebrate the progress that has been made across the globe for the well being of children, the absolute figures are still quite shocking. It is fairly clear that despite unprecedented economic growth across the nations, millions of children are being completely left behind. Everyday 26,000 children under the age of five die from mostly preventable diseases and up to 50% of the causes of this mortality are related to undernourishment. Put starkly, while many of us revel in the fruits of prosperity, poverty is quietly killing the precious ones that Jesus not only delighted in but pointed to as signs of his kingdom.

So, the challenge for International Children’s Day is: how do we celebrate the laughter and lessons kids bring yet also reflect and act on the dire experience of many of them?

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Deeper shade of grey | lost themes

… compassion - the lost theme of mission?

Bosch in a chapter entitled Reflections on Biblical Models of Mission draws attention to missional motifs, attributes of God outworked in his redemptive plan that is woven throughout both Old and New Testaments. One theme being that of compassion, Bosch’s exegesis centres on Ezekiel 16:4-7: “… on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you out of compassion for you; but you were thrown out in the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born. I passed by you, and saw you flailing about in your blood. As you lay in your blood, I said to you, “Live!”

I like the Message paraphrase  “No one cared a fig for you…”

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In defense of preaching

by Grant Sandercock-Brown

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n recent times the cyber pages of theRubicon have seen a number of people express their ambivalence towards preaching, in fact some have questioned whether we should even continue the practice.  It is a little ironic to me that one should have to defend preaching in a movement founded by two famous preachers, William and Catherine, but defend it I must.

You see the problem is if we say that preaching doesn’t matter much and isn’t much use, then what is the centrepiece of our worship? Of course for many churches it is actually communion rather than preaching but that is not so for us. So what is our centrepiece? The singing? Hardly. The offering? I don’t think so. Our prayers? Perhaps, theoretically but rarely in practice. Well what then? If we are not careful, ultimately we can arrive at a place where communal worship doesn’t matter much at all because “what really matters is what I do on the streets, or in the community or my work with the poor. That’s much more important”.

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Ragamuffin: David

Where did David get such courage?

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avid in 1 Samuel 17:32-37 remembers a time when he faced danger. It has implications for David’s life in the encounter with Goliath. That experience of the lion and the bear helped to groom him for the day when he would face a Goliath-sized problem.

Someone said, “The choices we make, make us”. This is so evident in the life of David. Whether these choices are good or bad they tend to affect our character and identity. Most people know – or have casually heard – the story of David and Goliath. The portion of David’s life concerning the lion and the bear may not be so well known yet it is important to the formation of the person we come to admire as David. The formation of David came from his experience as a youth.

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Thinkaloud | true healing

the battles of life come to us all

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ou have been injured in the battle of life and your wounds are severe, not life-threatening but very painful. Perhaps you realized only recently that the shadow which has been over your life for as long as you can remember started when you were sexually molested by an adult whom you had trusted. Maybe your life companion has just died and you are experiencing such cutting loneliness as you never thought existed. You are bereft, aimless and lost.

It might be that you have lost something so precious that it meant the world to you: your sight, your hearing, your mobility, your life savings… the list could go on. Possibly you have just learned that you, or someone dear to you, have cancer or some other dread disease, and you don’t want to die; there’s so much you want to do, that you put off until just the right time – and now there is no more time.

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Double~take | work & identity

    life - work - life

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oday at work I overheard on the radio (briefly) a discussion on identity. Basically, one lady had noticed that most people defined themselves based on their jobs – i.e. I’m a butcher/baker/candlestick maker - and her response to this was that she doesn’t want to know what you do, she wants to know who you are. (i.e. Don’t wait until retirement before you start defining yourself in some other way than by your occupation!)

My first thought on this was that my paid occupations have never been anywhere near a part of my identity. The very thought that I would ever think of myself as a factory worker just because I worked there was laughable. My identity has, at various times in the past, been made up of various things - family, my country, my school, and SAGALA – activities similar to scouts run by The Salvation Army in Australia. I was a member of such groups as a child, and a leader after I became old enough. Tattooed across my heart somewhere in bold capitals lie the words “North Brisbane” (the corps where I attended SAGALA sections) and “SAGALA” - these being some very important parts of my identity.

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Site change

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e’ve overhauled an oft-neglected feature of theRubicon. Take a quick look at our article depository either by visiting the “Archives” tab at the top of the page or by clicking here. It is now easier to see any of the 420 posts and 1,378 comments that have appeared on this site in the past two years.

theRubicon team

Vox populi | trust

Do we trust God?

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ot topics on theRubicon that are sure to get a slew of comments:  smoking, drinking, uniform and officer leadership to name a few.  I’m avoiding all of them this week even though my ego can get fueled by a plethora of comments from the vox populi.  Andrea hit me a couple of weeks back, in a good way, to ask why we always talk about officers and soldiers when we talk about leadership.  Why don’t we talk about the laity?

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