For reasons which currently are not public, a completely ludicrous decision has been made today.

One of the nation’s leading church-based charity groups, the Salvation Army, has been left off the committee that will oversee bushfire appeal funds. Despite raising more than $12 million for bushfire victims and already distributing $1.4 million in cash, the Salvation Army will not play a role in overseeing the operation of distributing the millions raised.

Opposition community services spokesman Tony Abbott called for the inclusion of the Salvation Army. “The Salvation Army are always there when times are tough, without any favouritism as to race or creed,” Mr Abbott said. “The Salvos are at least as active as any other welfare group. It is disappointing they aren’t being given a look-in at official level. “For some reason — maybe it is because of their Christian orientation, maybe because they were thought to be close to the Howard government — the Rudd Government is giving them the cold shoulder. It is wrong and it should stop immediately.”

Salvation Army spokesman Neil Venables said the organisation was ready to respond to any invitation. “We would hope that it’s not because of our Christian values and the perception that we were close to the previous government,” Major Venables said. “We were committed to working with the Howard government, as we are committed to working with the Rudd Government. “It is not about political persuasion; it is about how we most effectively fulfil our mission. At times like this, the Army has the ability to do its best work.”

Sources within the Salvation Army said many officers had been “gobsmacked and bewildered” by their failure to be included in government planning and co-ordination, including being omitted from the Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund Advisory Panel. The administration costs of the official government-Red Cross appeal are being picked up by the Government, but the same offer has not been extended to the Salvation Army Bushfire Appeal.

Source: Compiled by APN from media reports

I really hope this is rectified.  The Salvation Army are one of the most trusted charity organisations in Australia (quite apart from being a church), and to exclude them from this process is foolishness.  This is especially so considering how much they have already contributed to the relief of the misery caused by the tragedy, and the overt Christianity of our Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd.   To be denied a mission field such as this strikes me as a real miscarriage of justice.

What do you think? Even if you don’t know much about the fires, or Australia, tell me how you think the government, the church and secular charity organisations shoud / can work together in times like these.

So over the past few days, I managed to convince Diane (her blog is coming…) to join me in presenting a little tiny snippet of our story in our inimitable style . (Trust me, it’s inimitable…you’ll find out if you try).

We spoke a lot without really saying much.

Or did we…

This got me thinking about some discussions, blog posts, tweets and just stuff in general that have been floating around lately.  Don’t freak…it’s ok; I do that sometimes…

Authenticity refers to the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.

This is taken from the header of Wikipedia’s summary on authenticity.  It barely touches the surface, but I don’t think it intends to go deep…there’s a lots of pages below to navigate.  But read the Bible first. And maybe this too.  I’ll stop with the reading links now.

It’s easy to hide behind the written word, it’s much harder on film.

Yes, I know there’s always the actor factor to consider, but I’m no actor, so what I see in those videos reflects more of the real me than you could ever get in my writing.  I think it creates a better connection than just having my words here in various fonts.

Of course, it may have the effect of completely alienating people too…but I’d rather have any illusions of who I may be shattered early in my (blogging) life.  I like me, and the me I am becoming, despite the occasional pain of the journey.  God is bigger than the pain, and how I deal with it determines whether I dive deeper into Him, or just stay dog-paddling on the surface of His immensity.

An unexpected side effect of all this is that I’m now examining every area of my life and minimising the possibility that someone might be getting the wrong impression of me.  Starting last night at our church pastoral leaders meeting, continuing today at work (speaking of which, it’s AGES since I did a ‘work’ post…), and ending…when I die I guess…!

I’m tired of the fascades I see so many around me wearing.  I want real.

Jesus is real : imitate Him

And yeah, more videos will follow…but for the moment, here’s us…

now…

real.

What do you mean you didn’t know we were Mogwai martians??

Unless there is some overwhelming demand for a continuation of this series, this is where it ends. Even though we’ve left LOTS unsaid.

Thanks for reading and watching the beginnings of our little love story.  This blog will get back to more current space shaping next time…probably…

You know what to do if you think it should be otherwise.  And stalkers, this includes you…

This post is part of the Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMcKinnon.com

Seeing if I can add a bit of structure to these confessionals…let me know if you like or don’t like

Music:
10.30AM
While lots of people were late for our pre-service practice, it went smoothly, but meant we didn’t have time to practice another aspect of the morning…see “Least Favourite Moment” further down the post.

Happy Day (Hughes/Cantelon) – our church is loving this, glad we left learning it til very late in the piece
Now Is The Time (Delirous?) – wow I love this song, and with the chorus being our church theme for the year, finally we had an excuse to learn it. The congregation got into it very quickly, particularly identifying with the social justice themes in the bridge
From The Inside Out (Houston) – it’s been a while since we did this, and I mixed it up a bit by getting Rach to lead instead of me. It’s high in her range, and the fragility was beautiful.
The Simple Truth (Goodwin) – one of mine, uses a synth loop at the beginning before going live band…ends with a HUGE triumphal tag, which kept the congregation hanging for more
Lead Me To The Cross (Fraser) – before the preaching, this was an unplanned sweet soft song. We would usually repeat one of the fast songs. Something different was needed for today
Run (Houston) – after an awesome altar call and time of healing prayer where the team did what we do best – free worship – PsG wanted this to close. So we did

5.00PM
As usual our Ablaze Youth Band led the evening service. They had a rotten practice before hand. The service was amazingly awesome. God is GREAT!

What The World Will Never Take (Sampson/Houston)
Mighty To Save (Morgan/Fielding)
Desert Song (Fraser)

Worship+
The ministry time at the end of our PM service extends into free-worship.  I was part of leading this tonight, which I love almost as much as I love being led into worship by these kids   Tonight we had 1 salvation, and 4 people speak in tongues for the first time. We free worshipped over the chorus of Mighty To Save for around 20 minutes, before we did You’ll Come (Fraser) and Redeemer (Murgida – one of our own anointed songs, and will be the first one we record properly when we hit the studio in April) and free-worshipped over the bridge of that song through to the end of the night, around 50 minutes on these 3 songs.  There is something incredible about being in a place where so many spiritual tongues are being sung with such conviction.

Preaching : AM – Connecting People with God & Others   PM – Three Battles Everyone Faces.  Both great messages, as usual, though the volume was up too loud and the mix was overly sibilant. (I love that word, and I get to use it a lot since it describes my voice all the time). However, considering we have no-one in our church who actually really knows how any of the equipment works, the tech guys do well.

Most Favourite Moment : Apart from the Worship+ time tonight,  the other fave moment has nothing to do with the substance of the day.  This may be a bit sad, but in a day of highlights, picking just one means a fun one is the most likely to make it in here.  There’s a few of us in church who are English language freaks, and often discuss the subject that all preachers obviously take in college teaching them how to artfully create new words, or mix things up in other interesting ways. We call it the Pastor’s Linguistic Anointing.  Today, the anointing flowed most beautifully when my non-twittering pastor made reference to being “bitter and twittered”. I doubt he even knows what Twitter is actually…hardly anyone I know IRL has even the vaguest concept of social media outside Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Least Favourite Moment : We’re trying a new way of opening the service (with a video countdown, yada yada yada).  We didn’t have a lot of time to practice it.  It was OK.  Sometimes I don’t like the showbiz aspects of our church model.  It’s not what I’d personally do, but it’s the vision of my church, so it needs to become my vision too.  It is, but sometimes Satan wants me to think otherwise.  It’s not about me, is it

What about you? How was your “corporate worship encounter” this weekend?

And the blabbing just keeps on going…and going…and going…

Diane noted that we should talk less and say more in these things.  Too late now.

Disclaimer Note Thingy: I may or may not have said something about Tasmania which perpetuates a common, funny yet somewhat crude myth about the lovely people of that state.  I should note that both Diane and I love Tasmania – a lot – and have considered moving there (kind of).   One thing that prevents us from doing that is missing our church family, specifically knowing that God isn’t done with us where we are just yet. Another would be that they’re not likely to let me in again now…

OK, so as requested, we’ve finished this as a video series. Yes, I said series.

This is as much for us as it is for you, so suck it up people

Seriously, we hope you enjoy it, but are also blessed by the (unspoken) background workings of God in bringing us together. We’re still working out exactly what He wants us to do that involved such massive life upheaval, but we know we’re on the right path. More patience is needed…more…patience…

History / Herstory – Part III from David Goodwin on Vimeo.

“How’s it going, cobber? Probably not the best way to ingratiate myself to an Australian, but we’ll see what happens”.

These were the very first words sent across the interwebs from Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland to Moree, New South Wales, Australia back in May 2001 by a Miss Diane Bruce to a Mr David Goodwin.

Before I really get into the story too deeply, I need to state how, even after all these years, I’m totally floored by how God was weaving this story together before we had any idea what was going on

I should also say that we are sickeningly sweet, so be prepared to get sugar-induced queasiness as you follow our tale.

We met at Christian Cafe, and PalTalk became our technology of choice back in the days when IM was still a little bit novel.  The silly Australian was immediately taken by the slight hints of self-deprecation evident in the opening text sent half way round the world by the lovely NornIrisher.  Her profile talked of passion for Jesus, a desire to be a history maker for God, and her recent study at the International Bible Training Institute in England. (NB: that link seems to be having issues right now…it is the right one though).

Then of course, there was the anticipation of that lovely voice.  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t fall in love with her because of gorgeous voice, but it sure helped

I was housesitting for my sister’s mother-in-law (yes, that’s right, and henceforth known as SMIL) who was visiting said sister and her husband in Palau, where he was the chief local pilot (now there’s a whole other story).  SMIL had a substantial amount of pre-paid dial up to be used before the end of the month, so I took it upon myself to ensure there was none that got wasted and set about searching for a place to buy the impossible-to-find-in-Australia DVD of “Left Behind”.  I never found a place to  buy it (and I believe I’m not missing anything), but what I did find was Christian Cafe.

This was of some interest as I’d been through a time of enormous spiritual growth in the years prior, and while content with being single, I wanted to find my soul/helpmate who I was fairly sure didn’t live in outback Australia. Far more importantly though, the Christian Cafe site was based in Canada, so there were a lot of Canadians on the site.  Why did I care about that?  I was the holder of a 12 month Canadian work visa which I was planning to use the following year, and I knew no-one in Canada.  This might be a great way to help with the trip planning if nothing else.

But I didn’t meet anyone from Canada, just a couple of people on the US west coast, and one in Northern Ireland…

I don’t want each of these posts to get too long, and as this is now almost 600 words, I think it’s time to leave it til tomorrow

Sarah suggested we do a video post for some of this story telling series, and we might do that. Just not right this instant as Diane is working out how to use the shiny new (church-owned) MacBook Pro.  It’s pretty similar to our iMac (and naturally, TokBox was the first thing we did on it the other day), but none of that will get it set up ready to use as our multi-media hub for Sunday.  So Diane’s doing that…amidst deciding on the layout for her blog…which will be way better than mine when it begins OK, let’s just state that upfront

Anyway, further instalments in the History/Herstory saga to come…if anything’s unclear up to this point, you know what to do!

Last night, a very cool group of Twitterers TokBoxed the night away.  It reminded me of some history that probably isn’t all that well known; certainly amongst the blogging community anyway

In fact, whenever people ask how @machroi and I met, we still look at each other and ‘argue’ over whose turn it is to tell the story this time.  We usually end up with a short-ish run through of the basics, but never get into much of the detail.  Even when they’d rather we did.

So, now that pretty much everyone who ever visits this blog has graduated to be a ‘real-life’ friend (making my 25 Things song a LIE), it’s probably time to tell you a little bit more about us, and in particular, how I managed to convince Northern Ireland to give up one of its’ greatest assets and entrust her into my care down here in Australia.

And more amazingly, she agreed !  Who’d leave this…

for this ?

So come around over the next few days, as the story unfolds…

And be sure to let me know if you have any
(1) questions about the story as revealed so far (not likely, but you’re always surprising me)
(2) suggestions on how this should be presented for maximum impact (whatever that means), or
(3) I have no idea what to ask for (3), it just needed a 3rd question…which it didn’t get…maybe next time…

And no spoilers if you read and comment, Cee

I’ve posted about the fires and and heat and floods before but I’m doing it again.  This has been an incredible tragedy no matter how you look at it.

Lots of finger pointing and blame has been going on in all sectors, including the Church, but I’m not going to join in that debate right now.  It is too soon, too raw a nerve.  Let’s first have a time of mourning.  I believe that’s what God is requiring us to do. In my previous posts I said we should ‘weep with those who are weeping’ now.  Ensuring we are good stewards of our planet can come after we have comforted those who need comfort.

The press release for the day is below, along with a further reminder of how some of our precious and cute wildlife have been affected.

For further information, an excellent documentary on the fires was shown down here this past Monday, and can be found here.

So a few days into my new blog and the fact I haven’t yet worked out how to fix the banner stuff and a few other things is annoying me, but I’ll live.

There’s a few other bits I need to install too – like a blogroll – for which I’ll keep checking out the widgets as time permits. And hopefully IntenseDebate find all your comments soon, or I’ll uninstall it again. I can see them here in adminland, they just don’t make it through the ID wall.

One thing I am liking is the Tag Cloud, and one particular word that appears there in big bold letters – Hillsong! I tag them a lot. I’m probably going to do a post on the reasons for that soon. But right now, a question for you…

I’m looking for a video that Hillsong Conference have used in recent years, and which links back to a post I did a month ago. Some of you may recognise that the particular line is actually from Eugene Petersen’s The Message Bible transliteration of a passage in Ephesians 1: “The church is not peripheral to the world, the world is peripheral to the church”.

I can’t stop thinking about this, and I really hope they use it again at conference this year (under 5 months away now…ha!). However, if they don’t, I’ll be more than happy just having a copy online.

So if you’ve been successful in finding it, please post a link.
If you haven’t and have no idea what I’m talking about, then post if you want to find out and therefore are also waiting for the link.
If you fit neither of those categories, then post a comment anyway…IntenseDebate needs some more rigorous testing on here!