Community

I’ve been thinking a bit about economics lately. There is something at the heart of our capitalist system that makes me feel a bit uneasy. I really enjoyed hearing from Dr. Ian Harper at the last arrow residential conference.  He is one of Australia’s most respected economists, and also a Christian. I asked him a [...]

Our week away came to an end yesterday and as we tidied the holiday house the kids sat down to watch the Super Bowl. I was fascinated as I came in and out of the room to see what a remarkable production it all was. One one of the things that stood out to me [...]

Leeanne and I finished painting my shed yesterday and as I sit inside it writing this I realise that it’s hard to communicate the importance of a shed. This shed was a gift from my wife for my 30th birthday. I was away for a long weekend and she worked with my parents in law [...]

It was Leeanne’s birthday yesterday. I tried to find the words to describe to her what she meant to me in a birthday card but I didn’t do a very good job. At my 40th, a month ago, Leeanne spoke briefly but her words had a profound impact on me. She said that as we [...]

I haven’t written a reflection for a few days for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that I have been using every spare minute to try to finish my book on Kingdom Cells.. Its coming along well but still needs some work. The other reason is that I haven’t been sure what to [...]

Its Christmas evening and we are relaxing in front of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. it’s a very deep movie…. (not!) Today has been a special day. Last night we stayed up and watched the carols, and then did the obligatory late shift getting organised for the morning. There was the normal moment of disorientation for [...]

On Sunday night I was reminded of something. We were in Hobart catching up with family after spending the week in Orford at my brother in law’s holiday house. After catching up with the family on Saturday we decided to go with some of them to the Hobart Carols by Candelight, which was put on [...]

As part of Arrow I have been making my way progressively through the New and Old Testaments simultaneously. As I come toward the end of the New Testamant, I keep being struck at how the bible clearly exhorts us to a communal experience of faith, and how it attempts to prepare us for the fallibility [...]

I am loving my holiday.. I think the way I am wired, getting space is very important in being able to make sense of the world I am living in. One of the things that has most bewildered me has been seeing just how unaware people can be. Things that seem so obvious to me [...]

It was interesting to hear my wife’s response to my reflection yesterday. She said “it sounds like you aren’t going to do anything when anyone does something wrong”. I can see how she would have picked that up from what I wrote, but that was not what I was intending to communicate. We were watching [...]

I am in what is becoming my favourite place. My sister and brother in law have a fantastic beach house in the town of Orford on the Tasmanian South East Coast. Because of their generosity we are able to use it a few times a year and it really is just a great place to [...]

Last week I visited again the Balcombe Beach Retreat (pictured) It is clear that we are called to be hospitable: Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. (Romans 12:13) Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. [...]

I can see how easily I can get drawn into a fight. I am learning the difference between healthy conflict and being drawn into a fight. A fight is about me feeling justified, about me asserting my view above someone elses. My dad used to say that you never change someones opinion by exerting a [...]

I’ve been reflecting a bit about gossip, having been on the receiving end of a bit of it and trying to make sense of the experience. I think I’m seeing more clearly that those who talk about others behind their backs are generally powerless people, and it is that sense of powerlessness that is the [...]

I was reminded today of a lesson I first learned in my first six months of ministry with Fusion. Have you ever met someone fresh out of bible college? They are usually full of right ideas and full of themselves. As I look back, thats certainly what I was like in 1992. A fellow graduate [...]

I must confess to some trepidation in posting this next excerpt from Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. When I first read it, I found I had to read over it a number of times to let the words sink in and face truths I didn’t really want to face. I don’t think its quite as simple as [...]

I live in a Christian community. I have found Bonhoeffer’s Life Together very helpful but also very confronting. This next excerpt puts a finger on what I think the biggest challenge of living in community is: being thankful when it feels like the people you are living alongside are causing pain. Living in community is [...]

I’ve been enjoying reading the new Steve Jobs biography and found it fascinating as I’m also chewing over Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. Steve Jobs gave up on Christianity at the age of 13 and said to his biographer: The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living [...]

As I go back over the parts of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together that I highlighted, I continue to be challenged. One of the themes of the book is the difference between being self centered and Christ centred. I find this following passage very confronting. If you replace the word community with relationship, I think these few [...]

I will depart from my series of posts reflecting on Bonhoeffer’s book today as I departed Poatina for the day over to be with our team in Victoria for the day. It was great to be back with the team that I led between 2005 and 2009 and hear a little bit of what has [...]

How do you go at being thankful with what you have? How many frustrations do you have with the people around you, the place you live or the amount of money you have? I feel like I am often a bit frustrated, which is why the following quote from Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, is so challenging. [...]

I’ve been sharing parts of Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together because it has spoken so deeply to me since reading it last week. In my last post I included a passage where he talks about disillusionment being a good thing because it deals with the illusions we bring into community. He then goes on to contrast [...]

It was nice to be back at the Poatina Morning Tea today and start to see people again. Today I received a call about another person who might like to come into the village to be supported. One of Poatina’s gifts is the way it makes room for people who need an extra hand. Its [...]

It’s so nice to be home. I’m taking it a bit easy today.. Didn’t get heaps of sleep last night as I’m adjusting back to the Aussie timezone. It’s a beautiful day here in Poatina, brilliant blue sky and the plants all have that look about them they seem to get in early spring just [...]

I’m back on a plane. This time it is the short flight to Melbourne from Sydney and then the hop across the ditch to make it home finally. As I said yesterday, I find myself quite challenged by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together. I’m struggling to come to terms with the depth of what he [...]

It’s a strange feeling being back in Cape Town. I am actually in the same bedroom I was earlier this year when I was over here for a couple of weeks so everything is very familiar. A friend told me recently that overseas travel confronts you with two facts: 1) a lot of the things [...]

I had a great day today. We took the day off and went for a family day. We went for a walk on a boardwalk to a pretty Island and then visited a place called Grindewald where I gave the boys a game of mini golf while Leeanne took Sophie and our visitor to the [...]

Marshmallow doesn’t sharpen Iron I just got off the phone from an interview by my friend Dave Hammond, host of the Conversation. (www.conversation.org.au) and I figured I was thinking so much there was no way I would get to sleep, so I would write a blog. He was talking to me about my new book [...]

Conflicting Realities Lately I’ve been thinking a bit about conflict and how it happens. It might seem obvious, but I have realised that most often conflict happens because people are seeing the same set of circumstances from a different perspective. Most of us think we live in reality, however we live in our particular version [...]

Happy New Year I love this time of year. It’s a time to stop and breathe, to reflect and to plan. It’s a time to try to make sense of all that has been and all that will be. New Year for me is a kind of structural grace. The promise that the past can [...]

Commitment is not a dirty word I have been doing more thinking about freedom and in particular what happens to it when you commit to something. Freedom of choice is a wonderful thing. I came to the fairly obvious  realisation this week that when you commit, you lose freedom. Commitment, is by definition, a voluntary reduction [...]

Solo or together?? I’ve been enjoying the podcasts I have been listening to from Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings. (www.thegodjourney.com) They are two Americans who have been on significant individual personal journeys with God and each week record a dialogue that bounces off emails they have received, current events or things they have encountered. There [...]

Fighting for peace Peace doesn’t accidentally happen, and it’s not what is normal. Turmoil and conflict are what is normal. It’s also normal for us all to do everything we can do avoid that turmoil and conflict. Most of us live in a world of superficial peace, with a deep undercurrent of pain that comes from that turmoil [...]

A do it yourself check up A friend send me a link to this article which I found helpful so I thought I would re-publish it here. You can find the original at: http://drbilldonahue.com/2010/10/signs-of-soul-erosion/ by BILL DONAHUE on OCTOBER 5, 2010 My friend Gordon MacDonald has great leadership insights. Some time ago, teaching our Willow staff, he warned of [...]

For whom the bell tolls Today I come to the end of my series of posts about my journey with Colossians 3. The chapter ends with what looks like a change of pace.. and this morning I found myself tempted to skip over what simply looks like some practical advice. I lived with it a [...]

So how do we do this? This morning I was woken by my son who was eagerly looking forward to taking a little row-boat out in the bay that is just metres from our house. I have a confession to make. I am not a morning person. It takes me a while to orientate to [...]

Understanding takes work A few weeks ago I wrote a series of posts about conflict resolution. At the moment I am really enjoying leading a workshop on Stephen Covey’s “the 8th Habit”, and I came across a part that seemed to both enforce what I was writing earlier and develop it further. One sentence seemed [...]

Sometimes its important to speak up I am working my way through the book of Galatians at the moment and I came across the moment when Paul has to step up to disagree with Peter. Peter was the most significant personality in the New Testament Church but he had started to distance himself from people [...]

The myth of self-determination We are telling our young people they have to do it on their own..  and its a lie. As I mentioned yesterday, in preparing for the Australian Religious Press Association conference I came across very enlightening research from the Australia 21 foundation, and in particular from a team led by Professor [...]

How do you fight? I was personally a bit sad when Julia Gillard overthrew Kevin Rudd. I felt real hope after the last election, the highlight being the apology to Aboriginal Australians. By contrast this election felt so contrived, safe and devoid of leadership that it has been a relief we ended with a hung [...]

Don’t avoid the hard conversations We are now home and getting ready to re-engage with the world tomorrow. It has been wonderful to have the space to reflect over the past couple of weeks. As I took the time to process the journey of the last year, one of the things that stood out was [...]

Learn from the experience A time of conflict can be also a time of learning and growth, but there is no guarantee of that. In order to learn from a time of conflict we need to take the time to stop and think about it. John Dewey said: “We don’t learn from experience; we learn [...]

Communicate For many people the moment of actual confrontation, is the whole of their experience of conflict. I wonder how many times you have gone into a disagreement with someone after doing the work I have been speaking about in the last couple of days? Isn’t it true that mostly we avoid the moment of [...]

Playing to win Conflict doesn’t naturally resolve itself. Mary Parker Follet said: “There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.” [...]

Can you let them be different? Once you have worked our what matters for you and what your feelings are, and done your best to work out what matters for them and what their feelings are, the next step is for that to be ok! One of the great journeys of my married life was [...]

Get your head clear The difficult thing about conflict is the way that our feelings color our experience of it. I don’t know many people who love conflict, and those that do I am worried about. The challenge with our emotions is that they color the way we see things, but often we just experience [...]

What is this fight actually about? The Devil’s main weapon against us are lies that cause division. As I said yesterday, conflict isn’t a bad thing, in fact the absence of conflict can sometimes be like a cancer. Napoleon Bonaparte said: “The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with [...]

Fighting for everyone to win While I am on holidays I thought I would do a series of posts about a strategy for dealing with conflict. Conflict isn’t a bad thing, in fact I would like to suggest that it’s not possible to have real community without it. However most of us find conflict difficult [...]

Life is too complicated to do on your own As you might have picked up, I am loving teaching the book of Ecclesiastes.. The book is basically one mans quest for life understanding (good name for a web site : ) ), but there is one little patch in Chapter Four where it’s like Solomon [...]

Thank God its them instead of you I was talking to a friend to relayed the impact of a moment when she was asking for help in an awkward situation and received a beauracratic response. She was left feeling unseen and frustrated. I was then watching a movie with a bit of action and violence in it [...]

If only you saw things like I did… I have my quiet times using “the message’ paraphrase mostly. I find that I have read other versions of the bible so much that somehow I have managed to inoculate myself from the sharp scalpel of truth. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is able to cut through this [...]

Openness to others I am continuing to put up excerpts from Jean Vanier’s “Community and Growth” every now and then. I love working with Fusion, and I love the heart of what we are about. In this section though, Vanier explores what it means for communities like Fusion to mature. Vanier looks at the challenge [...]

A man who changed the world It is easy to think that somehow people who didn’t live in the current times are somehow less developed than we are. One person from the very early days of the Christian church (about 300 A.D.) seems to be to be someone who we need to be learning from [...]

Community can be very challenging Living in Poatina, and in Fusion, I realise how easy it is to see the weaknesses in everyone else. Jean Vanier talks a bit about this in Community and Growth, and in the process describes the challenge of community life very well: Sometimes I meet people who are aggressive towards [...]

The founder’s dilemma Leading a community is no small task,  and no one has all that they need to do the job. My Dad was the founder of Fusion and of Poatina. Growing up as his son I saw how he carried the burden of both of these things. I also saw clearly that neither [...]

The Fences of Joburg Driving into Johannesburg I was struck by the extent and height of the fences. Everywhere you look there are barbed wire, razor wire and electrified entanglements. Signs on almost every fence declare “Armed Response”. At Robben Island I was struck with the heroism and hope. In Joburg I am confronted with [...]

Coming home for the first time I’m sitting on a bus again with 30 other pilgrims making our way from Cape Town to Joburg. We left 5 of our number in Capetown including my friend Gerri who is travelling to Kenya to visit her sponsor child. Another person we left in Capetown is Philip a [...]

Relationships that give life I can confidently say that I wouldn’t still be in the ministry I am in if it wasn’t for my friends and fellow travelers. We have already talked a bit about the need for a committed core at the centre of the Kingdom D.N.A. Sustaining this committed core is not easy. The [...]

Together is the only way At the heart of the Kingdom D.N.A. is a small fellowship of people who have dedicated themselves firstly to Jesus, then to the mission God has called them to and then to each other. Whenever the church has been at its best, there have always been these small groups at [...]

Hanging on to hope When I arrived in Durban I heard a few of the team members say something like “she could be another Stella” two or three times about different people. I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. As the bus rolled in to Cape Town someone said “Oh Cool Stella is here”. [...]

Meeting God in the moment I was on washing up duty the other day at the Poatina motel. One of the unique things about living in this village are the rosters. I regularly find myself doing things that I wouldn’t ordinarily do. As I washed up I had strong feelings of incompetence.. I feel so [...]

Freeing young people to fly In my last post, I included an excerpt from Jean Vanier’s “Community and Growth”. Vanier’s L’Arche communities are focussed on caring for the disabled, in a similar way that Fusion’s communities are focussed on caring for “at risk” young people. I remember a conversation with George Savvides who said to me “In [...]

Sometimes there needs to be a stepping stone between family and the world. A month or so ago I was talking to Colin Piper, of International Youth Works, in Germany, about Poatina, and he was fascinated by our assumption that the only way you can build a healthy community is if that community exists for something [...]

Having someone to blame Every few days I have been including excerpts from Jean Vanier’s “Community and Growth” that I have found helpful. This passage talks about what happens when one person is singled out as the scapegoat. As I reflect on the many groups I have been part of, I find this challenging because [...]

Looking through the eyes of innocence In my last post I was talking about being like a child and it reminded me of something. My mate, Dave Hammond used to be a musician. He released three albums. My favourite song he wrote was “eyes of a child”. I sent Leeanne hunting through the cupboards for [...]

Sometimes I skip and dance I don’t tell a lot of people about the skipping and dancing. When I think no-one is watching, or if I’m feeling fairly comfortable, or beyond caring, my feet start to move. A friend in Victoria who I used to work with, Fiona, used to say “Matt must be tired” [...]

Community can hurt A few days ago I shared a little bit from Jean Vanier’s Community and Growth. I intend to put a few excerpts up over the next little while because it is a book that has really helped me understand more of the reality of community. As I have said before, the dream [...]

Not all dreams are good I’ve been doing a bit of reflection on my own journey with leadership and have realised something: Whenever someone felt really strongly about wanting to do a particular role, and I let them, it didn’t work. I also see in me, the times I am attracted to a role it [...]

Small groups of friends that changed the world Last week I published a list of John Wesley’s small group questions.. they were pretty amazing and it was easy to see why the church grew if people were courageous enough to face questions like that each week. This week I want to introduce you to another smaller list [...]

The journey towards understanding I know saying that people are different is like saying the sky is blue.. obvious (unless of course you are English in which case the sky is rarely blue : ) ). But it is this fundamental observation which I think I am only slowly starting to understand. I began my [...]

I live in a community. It is a village in central Tasmania called Poatina. The dream behind Fusion is that a little community can make a difference in the big community. Community isn’t easy though and I thought I would share some of the insights from a book I have found very helpful called “Community [...]

A friend sent me a quote a couple of days ago about burnout: Burn out comes not primarily from doing too much, but from doing what we don’t really want to do – so that one foot is moving forward and the other foot is trying to run away’. – (from a book: sleeping with [...]

As I write I am sitting in the Poatina Service station doing my twice monthly shift caring for this little business. I am a bit sad today because the Poatina working bee is on and I am missing it because I am sitting here. This is a bit of a shift for me. I actually [...]