Community
Community is where the person you least want to be with.. is. (Henri Nouwen)
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Self Sufficiency is the great lie of Alberta (and the Western World).
This is an article I wrote for todays St. Albert Gazette. You can see it here: John Lennon wrote “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans” in the song Beautiful Boy. It is a lyric I don’t like because it is a little too close to home. As Human beings we really want to believe we are in control of our own destinies. Here in Alberta we place a high premium on the idea of the “self made” man or woman. We put a lot of pressure on each other in Alberta, and particularly in St. Albert. As the poet John Donne reminded us “No man is…
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A healthy church doesn’t fit into business as usual… it sets an agenda that changes every aspect of life.
I like to read. I’ve read lots of books about church history and moments when it seemed like God was working in a special way. It often seems that these moments all happened long ago. This week I was reminded that is not always the case. This past week I had the opportunity to reconnect with my friend Erion for the first time since we spoke together at Palm Beach Atlantic university. Erion is one of my heroes. Together with his wife Melodie and his two partners in leadership, Lorena and Lucy, Erion has been at the forefront of what can only be described as a remarkable movement of young people in…
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What is Pokemon Go doing to us?
Article First appeared in the St. Albert Gazette here: Last weekend there were clumps of people in our city, particularly around St. Albert Place, who appeared to be in engrossed in something very important happening on their phones. They kept muttering things about levels, stardust and poke-stops and every now and then someone would exclaim “Got Him.” It occurred to me that it has been a long time since there has been a craze like this. I remember Yo-Yo’s, I remember the Rubicks cube, but even these phenomenons didn’t seem to grab people like Pokemon Go has. Sure part of it has to do with the technology that makes it…
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If we truly want peace, we need to stop dividing the world into “us” and “them”
Media outlets in North America have become experts at this. A tragedy happens, amateur social media videos are lined up one after the other, professional “experts” give their paid opinions and reporters stand in locations they have never been, acting like they know what they are talking about. Everyone is looking for answers, hoping that this will be as simple as the good guys versus the bad guys. It never is. Like normal, people are trying to reduce complex issues to simplistic stereotypes. Right now there are loud voices proclaiming that the whole problem is either the police, the #BlackLivesMatter movement or Barack Obama. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be…
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Every time we give someone a label we make them a stranger.
One of the highlights of my time in Canada was being at Edmonton airport as a little family of four finished their journey from a war zone to the comparative tranquility of Alberta. Sako, Nairy, Nver and Anna-Maria left Lebanon earlier that day, where they had fled after seeing their city of Aleppo destroyed. A group of about 30 of us welcomed them at the airport, which they seemed to be pleased with. Pastor Hany (centre of the photo with the white shirt) assured me that Syrian culture enjoys crowds. For Leeanne and it was a strange experience. So many memories came flooding back. Four years ago it was our family coming…
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I love the heart, vision, challenge and pathway that I am seeing.
There was a two week period where I attended two conferences that were quite different but at the same time similar, and influenced by a very challenging author and what I was preaching about at the time. The first conference was the National Assembly of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. That was followed by the Deepening Community conference hosted by the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement. While I was doing all this I had also been continuing to preach through Ephesians chapter four and was processing two books by Danny Silk (Culture of Honor and Keep Your Love on) which have been challenging and inspiring. These diverse experiences and inputs somehow wove…
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In moments of disaster we are reminded what a good person looks like.
When I was in Canada there was a one week period I spent fixated, watching a whole city go up in flames. Fort McMurray was decimated by a fire that seemed to rage out of control. As an Australian watching the images on the screen there is a strange sense of familiarity in it all. For our family, in particular, it all brought back memories of the King Lake bush fires in 2009. Then, as in there were in Fort Mac, there were all kinds of stories of heroism and heartbreak. A story that particularly touched me was the news that, of only two fatalities from the fires so far was a triplet…
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The Great Commandment is only possible if we allow ourselves to see.
Writing these Faith Reflections is an important part of my own faith journey. They are where I wrestle with what whatever issue seems top of mind in my own life. I hope they might be helpful for you, but they are at least equally important for me. In early 2016 I was reflecting about the implications of the great commandment for me and for our church. I was preparing for another busy weekend and I wrote the following reflection: It’s time for Share and Wear again. If you are not sure what I am talking about, this two minute video will give you an idea: Share and Wear is a very…
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The six sick practises we have developed to avoid conflict, which eat away at the church like cancer.
Yesterday I sat in a room with a bunch of pastors as we tried to work out what it meant to genuinely be in fellowship. For a number of years we had met and been warm and polite, but yesterday something shifted, just a little bit, and we were starting to be more real than we had ever been. Later in the afternoon I sat with another pastor as we reflected on the Christian church, and together we agreed that one of the biggest challenges we faces is that we are generally isolated as individuals. We agreed that this was largely because we avoid the potential for the pain that conflict might…
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It is not the refugees who need us, it is we who need the refugees.
On one day, in Feburary 2016, I was confronted by the dramatic need facing refugees from the Syrian crisis. It was meant to be my day off but two phone-calls I received yesterday changed things. The first phonecall was from a friend who is working with me on supporting one family who are currently in Lebanon after fleeing Syria, to come to Canada. We were expecting that the timeline would be 2-3 months, however we found that they would now arrive the following week. The second phonecall was from the landlord of a young refugee from Congo, Thierry, who we have been supporting as a result of a number of bureaucratic…
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You think you make your own decisions, but actually that is very rarely true.
Last week I posted a reflection that came from my wrestle with what I was seeing ISIS doing. Last weeks posting was one of the most read ones since I started Faith Reflections in 2010, so I guess that I’m not the only one who has been disoriented by the constant wave of violence we are seeing played out around the world. This disorientation is similar to what people felt after the second world war as the nature of the atrocities committed by Germany started to come to light. One Psychologist, Stanley Milgram, established an experiment to discover what kinds of people would commit those kind of horrific acts against others. Basically the experiment asked…
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It is as we reflect on ISIS that we can see just how confronting, and in fact disturbing, Jesus was.
Every week there seems to be a new example of a world descending into new levels of craziness. I have avoided videos and pictures of the extreme violence of ISIS because it revolts and bewilders me. How can one person do that to another? At the moment the news media is picking over the events surrounding a mass shooting in San Bernardino, which seems to have been inspired by ISIS. Whether it was the line of men slaughtered on a beach, the Paris shootings and bombings or this most recent attack, thing like this are so hard to understand, there is nothing in my current worldview that can make sense…
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To walk alone is possible, but the good walker knows that the trip is life and it requires companions.
I’ve been a pastor for a couple of weeks, and I’m slowly getting used to the idea. One of the things I am appreciating about our church is the way in which we are committed to wrestling with what God is saying to us. Part of that is a current commitment to explore a range of bible passages to see what they might be saying to us as a church. This week we were looking at Acts 2, and as I engaged with the chapter something hit me.MActs 2 chronicles the establishment of the Christian church, and as it does one thing is obvious: the church is a fellowship. From…
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A confronting Punk Rocker challenges me to trust and ask for help
I have been wrestling with what it means to not have a predictable wage lately. A big part of me would like not to have to rely on the generosity of others to support the ministry that I believe God has called me to. In our capitalist society, living without a wage doesn’t make sense and means that I, and my family, are continually in a place of vulnerability. In my quiet time this morning, I was struck by Jesus’s command to his disciples as he sent them out for their training run in Matthew chapter 10 verses 8-13 “The message was free when you got it; make sure it’s…
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I am grateful for my experiences of people willing to face the challenge and cost of repentance and forgiveness
I have been loving my study with Taylor Seminary so far. I am currently finishing off one subject (Christian Worldview), and neck deep in three others (Church history since reformation, Integral Mission and Ephesians). I am fascinated how four subjects that are ostensibly so diverse seem to correlate so deeply. I had thought that I had a good grasp on the book of Ephesians… turns out I had as much of a clue about the book as I do about ice hockey… not a lot. I love that a central theme of Ephesians is the diverse church united through Christ. I’ve been remembering a conference I was at in Australia where an…
