I love this week. We are taking it easy at Orford, fishing, swimming, reading, watching movies and reflecting.

As I have been writing, I am in transition. For 20 years I have been working in hands on leadership with Fusion in Australia, and now for the first time I don’t have that responsibility. I am still working towards the goals I committed myself to when I began my work with Fusion, and I am still hoping to help the organisation as much as I can, but it’s right at the moment to pull back and take the time to work out what the next 25 years will be about.

There is a freedom that comes from not having an external agenda but also a loss of security. The loss of security came sharply into focus for me yesterday as I realised that I now need to give my iPhone and iPad back.

It looks too that I won’t be able to keep my phone number which I have had for about 15 years.

Contemplating a life without a mobile phone and the iPad which I have come to rely on, has had a bigger affect on me than I expected.
Read the rest of this entry »

It was encouraging today to receive another commendation for the book from a man I admire very much, Tom Hallas.

I will be posting another reflection shortly about what it means to be where I am in life and some of the interesting feelings that are evoked by stepping into new territory and away from the things that help me feel secure.

Along the way it feels like God keeps giving me little encouragements at the moments when I need it most.

The email from Tom today was one such encouragement
Read the rest of this entry »

We are in Orford having a week away as a family and this morning I received what felt like a little present from God. Two more Christian leaders have reviewed the manuscript for my book and wrote commendations that were very encouraging.

Dr. Joel C. Hunter is the Senior Pastor of one of America’s biggest churches and spiritual advisor to Obama. Moss Ntlha is the General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance in South Africa and a friend of Fusion over many years.

Their words feel like a squeeze of the hand by God encouraging me to keep going.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking a bit about legacy.

I’m at a point where I am looking back at 20 years in ministry and looking forward at maybe another 25 years and I am asking myself where do I want to be in 2037? Even writing that date seems ridiculous, as thinking about 2012 must have to my Dad when he started Fusion in 1960.

I loved seeing my son Daniel receive his Foundations certificate on Friday. He had done the course for the first time, along with Maddi and Josh and the week had a real impact on them all. Maddi even taught her first unit.

It was a strange feeling for me, sitting up the back and just enjoying the looks on peoples faces at the end of a very busy week, given that I was not involved at all. As I saw the big group huddle together, I thought to myself “Well done Dad.” Dad wrote the first incarnation of the course in 1963 and in 2012 it was still changing peoples lives. Many of them didn’t even know who he was, and yet their lives will be different because of his work.

I came across a Chinese proverb that says:

One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 to line it and install the massive window.

Two years ago, when we returned to Poatina, my shed was in a bad way. It hadn’t been loved and the floor had rotted.

I am very grateful for my mother-in-law who worked out how to replace the particle board floor with pine floorboards, and for my father-in-law who actually did the work (under the close supervision of my mother-in-law).

I can’t describe the feeling when the furniture went back in, the bookshelves were re-loaded, and I had my space once more. Read the rest of this entry »

I find myself in a most frustrating place.

For the first time in 20 years I don’t have direct leadership responsibility. Part of me loves it and another part is going crazy as I see so many things that I think are not being led and for the first time I can’t do anything about it.

It’s one thing to trust God to help you fix something, it’s another thing completely looking on and trusting God to fix it without you. How will he ever manage without me? (I’m only joking in case you didn’t pick it…)

I think I will probably look back on this patch of time as very important in my life, but at the moment, not having answers and not having a way to “fix things” and just having to trust God sucks!

(Very spiritual aren’t I!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we made our way through the Lord of the Rings  once more and I was fascinated by how much more I got from the movies this time around.

Probably the moment that touched me the most was towards the end of The Two Towers when Sam has one of the longest pieces of dialogue in the whole trilogy.

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.

I am enjoying the wrestle of trying to finally finish my book, Kingdom Cells. In many ways it is my wrestle to name what I believe is worth fighting for. Read the rest of this entry »

My wife keeps me grounded.

We were talking this morning about what our future looks like in the midst of a time of change, and I was telling her that I really do have a sense that I am committed to helping Kingdom Cells form and grow around the world.

Her immediate response was: “But it doesn’t work”. She pointed to how broken those we know who claim to be seeking first the Kingdom are.

In a lot of ways Leeanne is right. It doesn’t take too much looking to find people who talk a lot about the Kingdom of God and of Grace but don’t live it. In all honesty I only have to look at myself. Read the rest of this entry »

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 were getting married that she knew it would be an adventure but that she was ready to commit herself to taking the ride with me. Those words are simple but I have come to see how significant they are.

I am close to finishing my book on Kingdom Cells and in it I spend a chapter talking about commitment. I received some feedback from one Christian leader saying that because the younger generation don’t commit so much that the book may need to be less focused on what commitment means.

I disagree.

I mean I agree that is what is happening, I just don’t think it’s o.k. Read the rest of this entry »

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 write about. I would love to write more reflections that are resolved and uplifting, but so often my life is anything but resolved.

I have enjoyed this first week of the year and starting a new journal, and as part of my thinking about the coming year, I have been reflecting on the Matthew chapter 5.

Today I was a bit confronted.

I know I have been in ministry for 20 years and should be starting to have a clue, but I realised today that I had fallen into a trap.

I was starting to see people who I feel hurt by as “them”, and I was blaming “them” for the place I found myself in. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote todays date in my journal this morning and for the last time I wrote 2011.

I love a new year.

For me a new year is like a practical form of grace. The old things are now in the past, the future lies ahead.

I actually think God designed the rhythm of days, weeks, months and years as kind of a structural grace.

One of the most helpful books I had to read for the Arrow Leadership course was “Getting things done” by David Allen. One of the ideas he puts forward is that for most of us we have too many “open loops” in our heads. Open loops are the unfinished things in our heads.

I started to discover the importance of the Sabbath to my sanity early on in my ministry. The weekly day off is a circuit breaker that lets me finish one week and start another.

The Christmas/New Year period is kind of like an annual Sabbath for me, where I take time out to reflect on the past year and prepare for the next one. Read the rest of this entry »

I love this time of year.

I love it for two reasons, the first is that it’s not a normal time, it’s kind of a twilight zone time where no one is really working (apart from everyone in the hospitality industry) and there is the chance to reflect.

I also love it because there is the chance to catch up with family in a way you don’t really have the space for any other time of the year. We had a great picnic together at a park in Launceston (pictured) and it was just nice to be ‘us’.

I find that this week and next week are usually times when I do a lot of thinking. This week I look back over the past 365 days and read my journal from the year.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 me as I heard excited voices from the lounge room at about 6:30 then I remembered what day it was.

The kids loved their presents, although I’m noticing that each year the gifts decrease in physical size and increase in cost….

A highlight for me was being with four generations of my family.

My grandmother is 94. She grew up without electricity and can remember the events depicted in “the Kings Speech” movie.

Ollie is 2, he loves bubbles and wants to be a musketeer.

The rest of us fit between those two (apart from Bridie who was born this year in the U.K. and couldn’t be with us).

As I looked around the table, and remembered family members who couldn’t be with us, it struck me just how important family is.

Read the rest of this entry »

I love this song, “Western desert sun” by Steve Grace.

I first saw Steve perform in 1986 in Perth, Western Australia as part of outreach for the America’s cup.

My dad did a tour of small country towns with him  and I helped to organise a concert for him in Broken Hill in 1991.

One of the things I love about him is the simplicity of his lyrics. There are artists who write songs that probably not even they understand, but Steve writes songs that are clear, simple and a bit confronting.

He is also unambiguously Australian. I love an old song of his about Ned Kelly.

This video brings together his Australianness with the simplicity of his lyrics and as Leeanne and I watched the video last night, I found myself moved to tears.

Read the rest of this entry »

Christmas Lunch at Mornington

I have an embarrassing confession to make for someone who writes a blog called “Faith Reflections”.

For much of my life, Santa has  seemed a lot more exciting than the Nativity.

I was thinking this morning about what kind of Christmas reflection I could write that would help focus the “reason for the season”.

Truth is, for many years  the “reason for the season”  seemed out of place and ordinary alongside the color, music, food and presents of Christmas.

I know a lot of people have got into the book about love languages.. I never did really, because it seemed a bit to simplistic.

I think the truth though,  is that presents do matter to me as a symbol of how I am seen and valued.

Christmas for me was about being seen, and the anticipation of Christmas day was fantastic, but the day itself was often a bit of a let down. Read the rest of this entry »