To date, I’m between 1/3 and 1/2 of the way to raising the $23,000 I need to begin campus work next year.

I have to admit I am struggling to trust God with regards to getting the funds together, it’s quite testing!! But He is good.

If you haven’t yet thought about supporting me, I’m asking people to consider offering $10 a week and committing to pray for me – I firmly believe in the effectiveness and importance of campus ministry, and believe it’s something worth supporting.

Check out my support link at the top of this page.

Yesterday I shared with the church I grew up in, St Thomas’ Anglican in Howrah, and my home church, Wellspring Anglican. It was fun sharing with the two different congregations, and I hope and pray that people caught the vision of campus work and will consider getting on board and supporting me prayerfully and financially.

When I used to work at Coles, there was this guy that was a regular evening customer. He used to work as a cleaner on the eastern shore in the office buildings in rosny of a nighttime.

He would be there every night with his abrupt enthusiasm and strong opinions, buying something random for dinner. Somehow I managed to get on his good side, I think I agreed with him on something. He soon learned my name from my name badge, and we would chat about whatever seemed interesting at 9:30pm. He used ask me where I was the night before, because I wasn’t at work, and he seemed to think I should work every night.

I never learned his name, so it was awkward when I started bumping into him in the street. And on the bus. And not unusually, in the supermarket. It became this sort-of weird relationship. I think he was kinda lonely cause he seemed to appreciate our conversations, even if they were not very long or deep.

I saw him the other day, asked me how I was doing. I told him I was working in insurance. He had a rant about the company I work for, then asked me what else I was doing. He asked me why I wasn’t going overseas like I told him previously. I told him my plans had changed by some major life decisions. I didn’t have the guts to tell him I was going to be a campus-based apprentice evangelist. He told me what he was doing these days and we parted ways.

I think everyone has a guy in the street that they know. It might be their next-door neighbour, or the cyclist that always rides beside them on the bike track for a km or two before speeding off. Maybe it’s the local shopkeeper or someone they regularly oppose in sport. The guy in the street poses a dilemma for the Christian. How can we share the gospel with them? I don’t know.

..for members of the new covenant.. ..our response to God in worship should begin by carefully and reflectively examining what God requires of us under the terms of this covenant. We should not begin by asking whether or not we enjoy “worship,” but by asking, “What is it that God expects of us?” That will frame our proper response. To ask this question is also to take the first step in reformation. It demands self-examination, for we soon discover where we do not live up to what God expects. This side of the fall, every age has characteristic sins. To find out what they are by listening attentively to what the Bible actually says about what God demands will have the effect of reforming every area of our lives, including our worship.

What ought to make worship delightful to us is not, in the first instance, its novelty or its aesthetic beauty, but it’s object: God himself is delightfully wonderful, and we learn to delight in him..

..It is disturbingly easy to plot surveys of people.. ..drifting from a church of excellent preaching and teaching to one with excellent music because, it is alleged, there is “better worship” there..

..you cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself.

excerpt from Worship by the book, pg 29-31

Working toward a definition of “Worship” Carson engages with some current scholarship on the meaning of church gathering

New covenant worship terminology prescribes constant “worship.” [David] Peterson [in his book Engaging with God] therefore examines afresh just why the New Testament church gathers, and he concludes that the focus is on mutual edification, not on worship. Under the terms of the new covenant, worship goes on all the time, including when the people of God gather together. But mutual edification does not go on all the time; it is what takes place when Christians gather together. Edification is the best summary of what occurs in corporate singing, confession, public prayer, the ministry of the Word, and so forth.

Peterson, of course, allows that when the people of God gather together corporately, they are still worshiping. What he insists is that the distinctive element of their corporate meetings in not worship but edification. Inevitably, there are some who go farther. Observing not only how “cultic” language is used in the New Testament to refer to all of Christian life, and noting the lack of any mention of worship when the New Testament writers provide purpose clauses as to why the people of God meet together, these scholars conclude that we should stop thinking of “worship services” and meeting together “to worship” and the like. They make some good points, but a good part of their argument turns on a definition of worship that is tightly tied to cultus

If indeed, as Carson implies in this second quote, meeting together as a church is greater than simply edification, I’m curious to read further his definition of worship. Has the church become too much the “some”, distinguishing the purposes of both, making edification “for us” and worship “for God”?

Not saying that God needs edifying, or we need worshiping, but can it not be encouraging to declare the magnificence of God? Likewise, can God be glorified where his people gather to exhort one another in holiness and knowledge of the word? I don’t think Carson would disagree.

excerpt from Worship by the book, pg 24-25

To Summarise: The construction of a responsible theology of worship is made difficult by strongly held and divergent views on the subject, by a variety of linguistic pressures, and by the sharp tendencies to produce quite different works, depending in part on whether the theologian is working out of the matrix of systematic theology or of biblical theology.

I love this about Don Carson – the way he will summarise 7 pages into one neat, succinct sentence.

Here’s a quote from the chapter:

Intriguingly, many of the new nontraditional services have already become, in some churches, entrenched traditions – and, on a historical scale, arguably inferior ones.

–Ouch! That’s a challenge, certainly one set before the modern evangelical church. What do you think?

From Worship by the Book, edited by D. A. Carson (with Mark Ashton, R. Kent Hughes and Timothy J. Keller as contributors)
The above segments were taken from the chapter entitled Worship under the Word, pages 18 and 13 respectively.

Edit: Challies has a small review of the book here

Comments on the welcome

I’ve read this post before, but came across it again, raiding the blog of Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village church.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Every week I purposefully say the same thing to our first time guests. It goes something like this:
“Good Morning. My name is Matt Chandler I am the Lead Pastor/Teaching Pastor here at The Village. If this is your first time visiting with us I want to welcome you. I am guessing that if this is your first time here you are in one of two lanes.. ..

and later in the post:

Over the last few years, people who have given their testimonies in the baptistery have commented on the welcome. It disarmed their fear and anxiety about being in a church for the first time.

Awesome reflections, and great intentional and purposeful church. Check it out at the link below.

Comments on the welcome

There is something real awesome about spending time with people and the staple Italian masterpiece. Homemade of course. With the best sauce and stringy mozzarella, capsicum, chicken and ham.. *ahem*
In 2010, it is my hope that we will see many a homemade pizza and Fellowship Groups coming together for the Gospel. Who knows, we may even be able to share with our non-Christian friends..

But, a little more seriously..
Next year, University Fellowship of Christians will be placing an emphasis on Fellowship Groups as a core part of it’s ministry (it even has a front page link!). The groups won’t just be coming together to do a bible study – but also to pray together, to dream together, and to chat and encourage one another in the mission on Campus.

It’s from small groups that random and fantastic ideas germinate, and it’s our hope that the Fellowship Groups will really capitalise on this inherent creativity to come up with awesome ways to win the campus for Christ.

A quote from Matt Chandler, from a message preached at a Celebration service at the Village.

“Now, on the ground it’s dirtier. See, right now it’s a very popular thing to like the gospel at 30,000 feet, we love the gospel at 30,000 feet, because sin then is racism and it’s injustice and it’s poverty.. ..on the ground here’s what the gospel looks like.

On the ground, a Creator, Infinite, Ferocious, Holy God creates everything for His own name, for His own renown, for the praise of His glorious grace. And you, not we, you, you as an individual, me as an individual, every one of us has mocked and belittled his name, and done it all gladly. And God, because he is good and holy and just is going to judge and damn every one of us rightly. He is not wicked for this; He is good for this. But, being rich in mercy and wanting to display the infinite perfection of His grace, he comes in the flesh, lives the perfect life that he will impart to those that repent and believe. He is arrested and begins to absorb the wrath of God toward those who would later believe. He is beaten. He has the beard pulled out of his face. He is mocked. He is spit upon. He is slapped. He is struck. He is nailed to a cross where He is belittled and mocked, his lungs fill with blood, He cries out to the heavens ‘it is finished’ and He dies.. ..He is resurrected to show, by the power of God, all of God’s wrath for those that would believe has been absorbed in that crucifixion.”

Simply Awesome.

Some things I’m aware of and to look out for:

• Being _too much_ of a uni student
• Unchecked youthful ambition
• Losing friends that don’t know Jesus because of what I’m doing
• Overworking
• Underworking/Laziness
• Not making time to disciple my non-Christian friends..
• ..because I spend too long discipling Christian friends.
• Losing perspective of God’s plans – working for the reaping and my glory, not the sowing and God’s glory. (being fully aware the inverse is just as possible)