Mark Driscoll on RICE

Murals

This is a smoking room

This is someone's bathroom

This is the outside of a public toilet...

And this is the inside...

HMMMMMM!

Monstrosity - Bacon Explosion

Imagine.... 2.2kg of pure sausage meat coated in bacon...


Cooked with 10 litres of oil and spicy BBQ sauce..


BACON EXPLOSION!



Too bad Tom took it too seriously and exploded before the night service. His fart could be smelled 15 metres away (Amy said she could feel it)

To cap off a wonderful week.....

Realised that JOA (my car) got smacked by a stone yesterday sometime......



In other news, was so close to buying E this for his birthday.....


Can't you just imagine him playing this (with a wii board too)

Devil's Snare

I've been feeling like Satan has been attacking me heaps in the past week or two:

- in my family, friendships and relationships (rough edges everywhere)
- in my ministries (in particular Worship and RICE)
- at work (busy busy busy)
- driving (near misses of cars hitting me and pedestrians running in front of my car)
- mentally (feeling very drained and not very aware as I usually am)
- timetable (pretty much every day is busy and booked out)
- financially (a few big surprises which have hurt me quite a bit financially)

... need to focus. move on. keep striving.

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Sunday Lunch Poll

Due to constant indecisiveness in lunch choices, the lunch poll is back!

This week, I will determine some impartial choices (no Yahoo or 7-8 since we've been recently). As for next week, if there are any new food venues which would like to be added, please reply to this post, and to specify and vote for the "Other" option, please reply to the post.

Lastly, if you're not intending to lunch with us, please don't vote. Also please don't use multiple computers to vote for your choice.

Poll finishes when I leave to church on Sunday morning. PS - Can someone please check the poll for this week on Saturday night, because I won't be at church.

The Worship Leader

When you hear the term "worship leader" what comes to mind? You think of a professional singer and musician, on stage with a great crowd, sometimes a concert or rally experience, and figures like Darlene Dszchech, Chris Tomlin, and other high profile names.

In the past few weeks and monthes, I've been challenged to think deeply about the role of the worship leader at church, and what are the qualities that are needed of a worship leader, or a person who leads a Sunday worship service at an Australian evangelical church.

The book I'm currently reading puts it this way: The worship leader faces many challenges, including leading the singing, choosing songs, organising the team of singers and musicians, and constructing the flow of the service. However the biggest challenge is none of these things. The biggest challenge is what the leader brings to the pulpit each and every Sunday, which is not the voice or the look.... it is the heart.

Your heart shows what really matters in your life, what you love and are passionate about. Within each of us is a spiritual battle of who or what we will worship.. is it God, or something else? Someone who is leading a congregation in worship must himself be authentically and genuinely worshipping God, and not focusing on themselves or anything else.

Is God in the centre of our hearts? Do we love Him more than anything or anyone else? God deserves our all. He is worthy of our worship. He wants us to love Him. If God is in the centre of our lives, He is able to work in us and through us, using us to be His light in this world.

This applies for worship leaders too. If God is in the centre of our hearts, and we are genuinely worshipping Him as our top priority, He will work through us in all the other challenges in worship, so that His name will be glorified through us.

Living the Cross Centred Life

I've just finished reading a book by C. J. Mahaney on "Living the Cross Centred Life". Its a great book which reminds and/or tells us that we must live every day of our lives in the light of the Cross that Jesus died on for us. We must begin each day of our lives at the foot of the Cross, remembering how significant the Cross is for us.

So many of us live our lives centred on a range of different things. It might not be evident at face value, but we centre things like academics/intelligence, sport, technology, celebrities, wealth, prosperity, work (secular and even ministry) and many other things. These 'distractions' take over our lives and fill up all of our minds, and we forget about the one thing that has saved us eternally from an eternity of separation, suffering and death.

This book has especially reminded me that everything we do in our lives, from church and ministry work to simply going to the shops, should reflect what Jesus has done for us on the Cross. For example, how does the Cross affect me when I play sport? How does the Cross affect me when I bump into an old primary school friend who I used to dislike? How does the Cross affect my language to my workmates?

I would recommend this book to any Christian who wants to be reminded of how to live a Christian life in this world where so many alternatives are pushed at us. It is also great for new Christians who want to find out more about how the Cross should affect your life.

Thursday Lunch

I was really hungry during lunch today so I decided to go to maccas... unfortunately I got a bit too excited..

Engineers....

Saw an office on my way home in the middle of the technology park surrounded by about 100 engineering firms, so I took a pic of it.


Ironic its situated in the middle of all the engineering firms ;)

Says a lot about them :)