Live long and prosper?

I have no idea who John Piper is, but this is the most powerful video about the prosperity gospel I have ever seen.

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Unbind my feet

The Cat Empire sings a song called “The Crowd”.  As often happens, God speaks to me through this what some people I know would call “secular” song.
Here are the lyrics, or you could go watch it on Youtube.
Lord unchain my hands
Let me sing inside the crowded trams
Let me dance among the traffic jams
We’re going to [...]

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Mountains and Valleys

Have you ever had anybody preach to you about mountains and valleys? Mountaintop experiences?
Ever since I was a teenager, it’s been a favourite pull-it-out-of-the-drawer-and-dust-it-off sermon for many who grace the church platform.
I have come to the very considered opinion that it sucks.
When you’re on a “mountain”, enjoying God, loving life, on top of the [...]

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Directions

After all the discussion about vision statements, my own community has just come out with something of a statement that I believe warrants some attention.
It’s been dubbed “Our Values”, and it’s been put forward to us to ponder and discuss.  It’s just up for discussion at the moment – nothing has been implemented, but we’re [...]

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Reconstructing the Deconstruction

I’m wondering…
With the deconstruction that’s happening in most of our lives, we (me very much included) seem to know exactly what is wrong with the institutional church.  So now it’s time for a little reconstruction.
What three concepts or ideas do you think the institutional church needs to embrace in order to go back to true [...]

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Hymns Part 2 – This Weary World

<< Back to Part 1                                                      Forward to Part 3 >>
This world that God created, far from being a wondrous place, seems to have become a weary and tiring one.  Lots and lots of hymns pick up the refrain that thankfully we don’t have much longer in this dark and dreary place.
That bothers me a little, because although it is absolutely [...]

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How weird is too weird?

I’ve probably been reading far to much FSTDT, but I have been wondering about something lately.
With all the weird people around saying they’re being “persecuted for Christ” and living a completely separated lifestyle, it got me to thinking – how weird is too weird?  As followers of Christ, are we called to be different in a way [...]

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The dark side

Some words from Missy Higgins from the song “Nightminds”:
Just lay it all down. Put your face into my neck and let it fall out.
I know, I know, I know. I knew before you got home.
This world you’re in now,
It doesn’t have to be alone, I’ll get there somehow,
‘cos I know I know I know
When even [...]

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Wordle-ordle-ordle

Some people have been Wordling this week.
I’m probably horribly behind, but I’d never discovered Wordle before.  I like!
Since I felt compelled to play, here is my effort, based around Community.  Enjoy!  Or ridicule.  Whatever. 
Oh, and for the record, I did mine before I saw Jamie’s and Cindy’s, but after I saw Makeesha’s and [...]

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The Lines

On Sunday my husband, our girls and I sat down and watched Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium together.  It’s a beautiful movie, but one thing stood out to me.
Early on, Molly Mahoney is colouring in with a child in the store.  She whispers conspiratorially to him:
“No matter what they tell you, you don’t have to stay inside [...]

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Milk, anybody?

The other day I watched a Michael Frost DVD from the 2008 Forge Grassroots conference.  Mike always seems to say something profound that makes me sit up and listen.  This was no exception.
Hebrews 5:11-14 says
There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually [...]

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A Manifesto For Church

I’ve been tagged by Barry to write about what a good church should look like.  I had to think about it long and hard.  I’m not much of a visionary.
However, what I came up with was this:
1. Church should be fundamentally and foundationally missional.  We are a sent people, every single one of us.  The entire [...]

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Fear of God?

I had dinner with Lee last night.  It was such a great time of venting, encouraging and discussing.  I love it when we get together and talk about everything under the sun.
One of the things that came up was the fear that I used to feel.  Not fear of God as in the awe-inspiring kind, [...]

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An Unequal Blessing

A couple of people around the place have been commenting on God’s blessing lately – specifically Grace and Cynthia talking about the “Lakeland Revival“.
It got me to thinking, as posts from Grace and Cynthia often do.
How does the blessing of God work?  Why does it fall so unequally on those who need it most and so [...]

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Support holy stuff for I am holy

We had a fantastic discussion in our church gathering yesterday that I’d love to share.
A couple of weeks previous we all watched a documentary about Oasis, a Salvation Army centre for youth homelessness located in Sydney.
Yesterday we discussed the film. We especially focused on our personal responses and our response as a group. We talked [...]

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God City

Abmo over at Windblown Hope has obviously been reading my posts rather deeply, because he’s come up with a meme about one! See here for my original post and here for Abmo’s.
He wants us to think about what would actually happen if a city was “taken for Christ” – if everybody in my city were Christians.
I only [...]

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A letter

I’m doing this with a little apprehension, but I know it’s time.  After our discussion in a previous post about institutional church, I believe that sharing this letter now might help others to find a voice within their churches.  Before now, only a few of our closest friends and another few who we felt might [...]

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Church?

A post over at The Boar’s Head Tavern (found via iMonk) got me thinking yet again about institutional church.  Oh, that and a post by Jeff McQuilkin.
It is all starting to seem a little unnecessary to me, this ‘My Church, Your Church’ denominational stuff, even to the point of questioning the need for the Institutional Church [...]

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Learning from the Jesus Movement

 
This is referencing an old post, I know, but I was re-reading it and realised anew the importance of learning from the past. The Blind Beggar warns of the pitfalls of the Jesus Movement in the 60’s, and catalogues some of their mistakes that he hopes the emerging church doesn’t make. Excellent reading.

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Repentance??

I read an amazing post this week.  Sarah put a couple of things together in a way I had never thought about them – and got my mind all awhirl.  She said:
In the previous post I referred to my process of repenting from religion for the last several years. Some people call it ‘deconstruction’, [...]

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