Here is the problem with identity culture. If you can be anything you want, and people are afraid to say the truth then why not be a 6 year old 6 foot 5 inch Chinese woman, when clearly you are not?
Month: April 2016
Empowering People
I have noticed something very exciting happening in my church lately- people don’t need my permission to do things.
Other pastors try to encourage, cajole, pressure their people to talk about their faith with their friends, but I just hear stories of how it is happening naturally. There is no training programme, 40 Days of Purpose, Evangelism Explosion or visiting evangelist.
One of the great benefits of being a cell church, that is a church which honours both large groups and home-based small groups as important expressions of the Body of Christ, is that leadership is dispersed and not just embodied in one person. (See our web site for articles on the cell church). Everyone gets to share in ministry under the guidance of mature christians, and so it is not a big leap for people to think they can do stuff.
People will find their own calling and their own ways of doing things. One lady in our church who is a teacher is inviting some teacher friends to her home to watch the movie “The War Room.” One of our men who travels big distances finds opportunities to talk to customers about Jesus and daily texts encouraging scriptures to his friends. Others find ways to encourage and support one another in informal ways.
This takes a lot of pressure away from the Pastor. I don’t have to try to do everything because the church is being the church- every member learning how to embody Jesus in their normal every day life.
At the heart of this is the core value that christians grow best when they meet together intentionally in cell groups. Our Sunday gathering gives me the place to provide oversight and good teaching as well as providing a focus for the unity of the congregation. The weekly cell groups provide fellowship and encouragement together with a base for outreach.
I praise God for what He is doing with our people.
Reflection on Acts 11:1-18
Reference: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+11:1-18
Scripture
When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
Observation
Following Peter’s experience at Caesarea, where Gentiles had received the gospel and the Holy Spirit, some of the circumcised believers in Jerusalem criticise Peter.
Peter recounts what happened. His conclusion is that God has poured out His spirit on the Gentile believers, so who is he to stand in God’s way?
The critics are silenced and they praise God for bringing Gentiles to repentance.
Application
If God is moving who are we to stand in His way? God’s plans are often bigger than what we can see, just as the plan of salvation went way beyond the Jews.
God is not willing for anyone to be lost and so He will do what is necessary to see the gospel preached to all people. That includes people we may not approve.
When God moves, the church and its leaders must be careful not to resist Him. We want to limit God, constrain Him, tame Him. When a river overflows its banks it is uncontainable. Yet we try!
We pray for revival but want it on our terms. We ask for the Spirit to move, but become fearful when He does.
Prayer
Who am I to hinder you Lord? Help me to be open to your many-faceted works and to welcome all that you do, even when I don’t understand it.
More Climate Change Craziness
The Climate Change panic just keeps on producing weird dysfunctions in energy systems around the world. A couple of years ago it was Britain converting power stations from burning local coal to running on wood imported from the US- all in the name of carbon credits.
Now it seems plausible that Germany’s obsession with “green” power such as solar has raised their power costs to such a level that China will be able to export cheap coal power there at half the price.
Jo Nova writes:
Get a load of this. China has been adding a new idle coal fired plant nearly every week. It is building368 coal fired plants and planning a further 803.The Greens think the Chinese have over capitalized, made a bubble, and have built a bunch of white elephants (maybe they have). But Germany has crippled its electrical generators in order to make the weather cooler, and pays exorbitant prices per kilowatt hour that are driving businesses overseas.Merkel is still trying to get solar powerto work in a land where the only thing that will make the current panels economic is if the Earth changes its orbital tilt.
Well say hello to the savvy Chinese investors who may be able to solve both problems. It seems hard to believe but all that surplus energy might just find its way to Germany. With new ultra hot coal power there is talk they can produce electricity so incredibly cheap they can send it on ultra high voltage lines all the way to Berlin. Barking? They’ll probably earn carbon credits for doing it too.
Coal’s future burns bright— Graham Lloyd
Greenpeace likes to think that China’s future coal plant projections are the result of “dysfunctional planning systems and cheap credit’’.
But there is another possibility highlighted by Britain’sFinancial Times: that is, that China’s proposed investment in long-distance, ultra-high voltage power transmission lines will pave the way for power exports from China to as far away as Germany.
Liu Zhenya, chairman of State Grid, told reporters that wind and thermal power produced in Xinjiang could reach Germany at half the present cost of electricity there.
… the World Coal Association maintains new high-efficiency coal technology will deliver power at half the cost of gas and one-fifth the price of wind in Asian countries in the future.
China looks to export surplus energy to Germany— Financial Times
Talk of exporting power is a reversal for China, which as recently as 2004 suffered rolling blackouts across its manufacturing heartland. But huge investments in power in the decade since, and the construction of a number of dams, nuclear reactors and coal-fired plants due to begin operating in the next 10 years, mean the country faces a growing surplus.
The distance from the edge of China to Berlin is apparently only 600km further than across China to Shanghai. And China hasnuclear power, many hydroelectric dams, and also other markets along the way — like Pakistan and India. They have 32 nuclear power plants in operation, 22 under construction, more about to start, and even more in the planning stage.
China is happy to pay lip-service to the Paris Climate Deal — it doesn’t have to do anything different for 15 years when population growth meant it was going to slow emissions then anyway. Meanwhile the Paris deal hobbles competition, and tosses money at China to shift from older, higher emissions power to newer cleaner styles.
Today’s Sermon
The sermon for April 17th 2016 is now available on the New Life web-site. In this sermon, which is based on Matthew 13:10-17, I talk about Apostolic Community.
Click here to listen in your browser or here to download the mp3
The sermon from Night Church on April 10th was also recorded. It was about Apostles and Prophets- The Sure Foundation.
Click here to listen in your browser or here to download the mp3
Oswald Chambers: Can You Come Down From The Mountain?
Can You Come Down From the Mountain?
We all have moments when we feel better than ever before, and we say, “I feel fit for anything; if only I could always be like this!” We are not meant to be. Those moments are moments of insight which we have to live up to even when we do not feel like it. Many of us are no good for the everyday world when we are not on the mountaintop. Yet we must bring our everyday life up to the standard revealed to us on the mountaintop when we were there.
Never allow a feeling that was awakened in you on the mountaintop to evaporate. Don’t place yourself on the shelf by thinking, “How great to be in such a wonderful state of mind!” Act immediately— do something, even if your only reason to act is that you would rather not. If, during a prayer meeting, God shows you something to do, don’t say, “I’ll do it”— just do it! Pick yourself up by the back of the neck and shake off your fleshly laziness. Laziness can always be seen in our cravings for a mountaintop experience; all we talk about is our planning for our time on the mountain. We must learn to live in the ordinary “gray” day according to what we saw on the mountain.
Don’t give up because you have been blocked and confused once— go after it again. Burn your bridges behind you, and stand committed to God by an act of your own will. Never change your decisions, but be sure to make your decisions in the light of what you saw and learned on the mountain.
From “My Utmost For His Highest” utmost.org
A Quick Break
Thanks to the generosity of some friends, Margaret and I spent a few days in Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley.
The area, of course, is famous as one of Australia’s prime wine-growing districts. Although it seems to me that tourism is now a bigger industry around there, wineries are still important.
The Hunter Valley Gardens are an impressive attraction. They were developed by the Roche family who made lots of money from the Nutrimetics brand before moving into property development in a big way.
The gardens consist of 10 separate themed gardens such as Italian, Indian, Chinese, formal and so on. The most intriguing one is the Storybook Garden. 
Topiary is a major feature of the gardens. It would be a full time job giving the various figures their regular hair cuts.
There is plenty of opportunity for rest and reflection during the long walk.
When you have a few million dollars and your daughter is getting married, the obvious thing to do is build your own chapel.
Our accommodation package included breakfast at the on-site restaurant. Lunch was definitely not required.
We had a great time, but I always think “There is no place like home.”
Heresy!
Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Jimmy Page to face Stairway to Heaven copyright trial
Updated
Led Zeppelin’s lead singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page will face a US jury trial next month over whether they stole the opening chords for their 1971 hit Stairway to Heaven.
District Judge Gary Klausner ruled that Stairway and the 1967 instrumental Taurus by the band Spirit, were similar enough to let a jury decide whether Plant and Page were liable for copyright infringement.
A trial is scheduled for May 10.
The lawsuit was brought by Michael Skidmore, a trustee for the late Randy Wolfe, also known as Randy California, who was Spirit’s guitarist and the composer of Taurus.
Mr Skidmore said Page might have been inspired to write Stairway for Led Zeppelin after hearing Spirit perform Taurus while the bands toured together in 1968 and 1969, but that Wolfe never got credit.
The defendants said Wolfe was a songwriter-for-hire who had no copyright claim, and that the chord progressions were so cliched that they did not deserve copyright protection.
“While it is true that a descending chromatic four-chord progression is a common convention that abounds in the music industry, the similarities here transcend this core structure,” Mr Klausner wrote.
“What remains is a subjective assessment of the ‘concept and feel’ of two works … a task no more suitable for a judge than for a jury.”
Mr Klausner dismissed claims against Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and Warner Music Group Corp.
He also said the trustee could get only 50 per cent of any damages awarded, citing a 1967 contract that Wolfe signed.
“This case, from our perspective, has always been about giving credit where credit was due, and now we get to right that wrong,” said Francis Malofiy, a lawyer for Mr Skidmore.
A lawyer for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to the complaint, Wolfe complained about the similarities of the songs in an interview shortly before he drowned in 1997 in the Pacific Ocean while attempting to rescue his son.
Stairway to Heaven is a track on Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth studio album, often referred to as Led Zeppelin IV.
Today’s Sermon
Panama, Jerusalem and Heaven
The leak of millions of documents from a law firm in the Central American country of Panama has a lot of people worried. The company, Mossack Fonseca, specialises in helping clients set up companies in other countries.There is nothing illegal in that, of course, but it is possible that wealthy individuals have been breaking laws in their own nations by using these companies to avoid tax.
The interesting thing about this is that it shows how difficult it is to keep secrets in our modern technologically driven culture. It is not yet clear whether the leak was an inside job or whether hackers from outside the company illegally obtained the data.
There are people around who sincerely believe that there are people who have hidden, virtually unlimited power and are really the ones who control world events. Maybe we want to believe that in all the chaos and unpredictability of life that somebody somewhere is in control- whether it is the Illuminati, the Rosthschilds, the Queen (seriously).
There are huge problems with such theories, of course. While it may have been credible to believe that some secretive group in Europe or the United States controlled governments and economies when wealth was essentially concentrated in a handful of countries, the rise of China, India and other Asian nations has effectively spread wealth globally and makes such control unlikely.
Of course there is an organisation that spreads across all national borders. Maybe the Pope is the one who pulls the strings. The huge bureaucracy of the Catholic Church, its assets and its high ideals does suggest that it could be disciplined enough to control governments around the world. In fact during the Middle Ages it was the church that controlled princes and kings at least in Europe. Yet, as a world power the church seems particularly ineffective, at least in its signature issues such as abortion and same sex “marriage.”
No, to look at who really controls the world we have to look higher. No human organisation can pull the strings of human events.
God himself manages to walk a fine line between being sovereign and allowing people to have free will. He has a kingdom, but it is not like a worldly kingdom. This king seeks to rule by persuasion and allowing people to reap the consequences of their actions, both good and bad.
History is “His story”- God’s story in the world. From the time of creation, man’s first rejection of God, right through to Christ’s death on the cross clearing the way for reconciliation of people to God, it has all been about God’s love for the world.
Now we see something remarkable happening- an exponential growth all around the world of people who claim to follow Jesus. Some statisticians believe that the number of people becoming christians each day is more than twice the number of people who are born each day. Not only is God’s kingdom growing in numbers it is growing as a percentage of the world’s population.
Conspiracy theories are rooted in fear- fear that there is someone with hidden but unlimited power. But reality is rooted in faith- faith in the living God who loves us and has died for us, and really does have unlimited power.
New Life Narrabri 