OFFENSIVE CHRISTIANITY (and other events)

Youth Event is nearly here!!!


On the 8th and 9th of September the Western Victoria Divisional Youth Event; OFFENSIVE CHRISTIANITY will run.


We have a really cool mission challenge, sorry no more details will be released until you arrive at the Forest Gardens Hall in Norman Street Wendouree at 12 PM Saturday arvo, secrecy is vital to this challenges success.


We are going to also have a great social type night where you can get dressed up in your fancy clothes and come along for a great night. Bring some cash if you can for a charity auction of some mystery items. All proceeds will go to Naranna, an Aboriginal centre that is doing some excellent work in the community.


Sunday is going to be a great day of awesome worship in the morning and a special event in the afternoon thats not to be missed.


There are Offensive Christianity T-Shirts available (check out the picture, they will have the 2Love symbol on the sleeve) to be ordered for pick up on the weekend, orders must be in by the 3rd of September so i can get them printed. The cost is $20.00 with all profits going to fundraising for the MakeChange Conference Trip

MAKECHANGE is coming up too. Stay tuned for some more info in the very near future. We are looking at joining up with some of the Salvos from Tassie and doing some cool adventure stuff in New Zealand before the Conference. Details of this will be released very soon.


THEOS is a Scripture Union Beach Mission being run in Torquay. It starts on Boxing Day and runs into the New Year. If you are interested let me know and we will organise an information night for you to find out what this is all about. If you are interested in mission or developing your leadership skills, then this is something you need to think about.

Keep this site in your favourites list, more info will be here very soon.

Yours Because I Am His,

Joel

Deep Wells

I cleaned up my office on Monday!!!

Now this might not seem like much, but my office was a complete mess!! It took the best part of the mornings work to clean up more than 5 weeks worth of clutter, a clutter that seemed to grow through my infrequent visits to the office interspersed with periods of more than a week away from aforementioned office.

Upon cleaning my office i discovered that i had no less than half a dozen books sitting on my desk that needed my attention. Some of these books should have been read sooner, some will wait longer before needing any serious attention, but none the less there were 6 books on my desk that needed to be at least glanced at.

So yesterday afternoon i picked up on book, and decided to start reading it.

The author used this story to illustrate a point:

A tourist takes a holiday to a working Sheep Station in out-back Australia, while in this holiday he follows the farmer around on his rounds one day as he checks the sheep. As they drive around the station the tourist notices that there are no fences in sight. Perplexed by this realisation the tourist eventually asks the farmer "Where are your fences, aren't you worried that the sheep will wander away and get lost?" The farmer, a laid back sort of bloke, points towards the windmill over the way and says "I find that if you dig a decent well that produces good water, the sheep don't wander too far."

As i read this story i was reminded of a story in the bible. The Message version puts it like this:

A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, "Would you give me a drink of water?" (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.)

The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, "How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" (Jews in those days wouldn't be caught dead talking to Samaritans.)

Jesus answered, "If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water."

The woman said, "Sir, you don't even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this 'living water'? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?"

Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life."

The woman said, "Sir, give me this water so I won't ever get thirsty, won't ever have to come back to this well again!"

As i read these stories i began to think about the well of living water in my life and the wells that i am helping God to plant as i travel around the division.

If i invest in my life, plant a deep well of living water in my life, full of 'God water' then as i follow in Jesus' footsteps i will not wander too far from His path. In the same way, if i can clearly communicate the gospel to others, to share with them what God is doing in my life and what He is capable of doing in their lives, then a deep well with good water will be sunk into their lives and will sustain them as they try to follow in Jesus footsteps.

And if this well is good and deep then when we lose sight of God and wander away, we will not wander too far for the well and will return once again to drink of the life giving waters.

The other thing that occurred to me is that where there is water there is abundant life. When the well is producing a good supply of good water, life is abundant. Think of an oasis in the desert, there are trees and plants, there are animals, and people come by the oasis to refresh their supplies of water and to relax. Life happens at an oasis.

If our well is deep and producing plenty of living water in our own lives, then this will be visible to others and they will want to get some of this water too. Initially we can share some of this living water with them, but the real blessing would be to help people dig their own well, where they can have their own supply of living water.


Here are a few questions for you to ponder:

How deep is your well today?

What is the quality of water that is being produced from it?

Have you drank from the well recently?

Are you being generous with the water that springs from the well of living water, or are you restricting or rationing your living water?

The Full Gospel Of Jesus Christ

Almost every week (those that i'm actually around for) i write a segment for the Divisional Newsletter that goes out to all of the Salvation Army officers and to some other people in the division and around the territory. In this article i talk about what is going on in Youth and Childrens Ministry and also cover any relevant Candidates info that i feel needs to be passed on.

This week i revealed the name of this years Youth Event; Offensive Christianity (see my previous blog). To be honest, part of the reason i liked this name was because it was a little controversial, the plan was to get people talking. But in my little speil in the newsletter i refferred to offensive Christianity as, and i quote myself here for contextual reasons:

"...not the sort of offensive you think of when you see those obnoxious street preachers in Melbourne."

Now i have had conversations, discussions and slightly heated debates with various friends and acquiantances in the past over this issue, but i still think my position is justified.

First of all, let me say how much i admire the courage of these people who are willing to go out there and speak the gospel, irrespective of what others think. My issue is not that thye are presenting the gospel, in the street or otherwise, but my issue is in the way that it is done.

The Salvation Army has a long history of presenting the gosple to the lost, least and last in public places, and i think that that is great!! I personally would love to hold an event in the public space where i could share the FULL gospel to those gathered around. The key here is the 'FULL' word.

Jesus taught that we should speak the truth. Jesus said the He is the Truth, the Way and the Life. Jesus also taught that we should act with grace and compassion. In fact, i believe that most of Jesus' harshest criticism was reserved for the Pharrisees, Sadducees and Scribes, those that already considdered themselves 'saved'. As i recall, Jesus spoke forgiveness and compassion to the outcast of society. When the Jewish leaders dragged a woman caught in adultery before Jesus asking Him to pronounce judgement over her, Jesus' response was "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." And when they all left because they were not able to condemn her, Jesus, the only one to have never sinned, didn't pick up a stone, but told her the He didn't condemn her but encouraged her to "Go and sin no more."

Maybe in this post-modern, post-Christian world people aren't aware that they have sinned, perhaps people dont care about sin, but i still believe that each person is aware, at least on some level, that they have made decisions that they wish they hadn't. We don't need to be convinced of our unworthiness in most situations, most of us are all to keenly aware of that, we just don't want anyone else to find it out.

My argument continues that instead of preaching the wrath of God and condemning people as i have seen at least once on the street in melbourne on a Friday night for example: the one million dollar note with the $1,000,000 question; where will you go when you die? with the tag line, and i almost quote verbatim; "Basically you're a lying, cheating, theiving, murderous adulterer at heart." Let us preach the love of God, that Jesus died for us irrespective of whether we love him, that God loves us irrespective of what we have don or what we will do, that eternal life isn't just about going to heaven when we die, but about seeing God's Kingdom here on earth now as we live and breathe. Let's try preaching acceptance, not exclusion; love, not hatred; let's return good for bad. instead of being one of those 'fundamental' Christians that hate homosexuals, abortionists, etc, lets be one of those fundamentally Christ-like people who love the sinner, hate the sin and do what we can for these people.

By all means, go into the world and preach the gospel, just make sure it is the full gospel!!!

OFFENSIVE CHRISTIANITY

I was away all last week, again.

This time I had 2 conferences to attend. The first was a Paul Borden Growing Health Corps conference, and the second was a Candidates Secretaries conference.

Leading up to these conferences has been a busy time, I haven't had a lot of time in the office to do stuff, and the little time I did have was used catching up on what had come in while i was away.

So there I was at the Paul Borden conference thinking about how much I still had to do over the next few months, especially how i still hadn't had the chance to get any Youth Event info out to anyone yet, when I heard Paul Borden talking about the church and the gates of Hell.

Paul referred to the passage in the bible where Jesus turns to Peter and says "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it." (Joel Clifford paraphrase version)

And as I sat there it occurred to me that the way I had been thinking about the church in relation to this passage wasn't the way Jesus intended it to be. I always thought that this passage meant that the church would be able to withstand the attacks from hell, when the reality is that hell can not withstand the attacks of the church.

As I already had much of the planning for Youth Event sorted, I was amazed at how this fitted in with my theme. So with this new (to me anyway) revelation in mind i prayed about it and decided to tweak the theme a bit.

So i can now boldly say that the theme for this years Youth Event is:
Offensive Christianity

Now I'm not talking about the offense as in offending someone by saying something rude, but offense as in the opposite to defense.

Youth Event this year will be about Offending Poverty, Offending Sin, Offending Apathy and, Offending Hell.

This year Youth Event will be held in Ballarat, and will include:
A Missional Event Saturday afternoon
A Social Event Saturday night (a good chance to get dressed up!!!)
A Worship Event Sunday morning and;
A Special Event Sunday afternoon.

Posters are out this week, check them out and stay tuned for more details very soon.