Acceptance.

This was me at 7:14am this morning. And that envelope contains my letter of acceptance of the Assistant Minister position that Crossroads recently offered me for 2010.


Hoorah!

Stumbling toward Ethics

My Ethics essay is taking a whole lot of my time at the moment. The idea--pray that I get there!--is to outline and critically evaluate Oliver O'Donovan's theological ethic, and I've decided to take homosexuality as a case study.

Along the way, I've stumbled across a lecture series (as a book) from 2001, entitled Common Objects of Love. I recommend it. It traverses terrain like: what binds people together in community, how our loves affect our thinking on right and wrong, how Christians should live among and with non-Christians, and more.

It's a seriously good read, and not nearly as dense as his big works.

Post-Apocalyptic Haze

This is what my backyard looks like a bit after 7am on any given foggy day.


This is what it looked like today at 6:45am today. (1 sec exp., so the reality was less vivid.)


And here it is at 7:05am. (1/10 sec exp)


The air tastes like dust. Horrendous.

Chatting with Nick this morning, we talked about how the smelliness and dirtiness of Sydney saddened us when we first moved up here. I imagine there are some poor souls out there who moved to Sydney just yesterday; this is their first morning of Sydney-life. Yikes.

Looking forward to the Tassie air. Hoping our lungs hold out until then ;)

Crossroads' Offer!

I'm very excited to say that today Crossroads, via its emissaries, Dan and Gwyd, offered me a position for next year!

The position is Assistant to the Minister. The role includes some specifics, but it is quite general (involving preaching, evangelism, etc.), rather than being narrowly focused on one bit of ministry. It's part time (5 of 7 days a week). We were interviewed for it when we were in Tassie in July.

I'm actually quite relieved to have it 'in hand'!

Please join us in thanking God for providing this opportunity for us, and ask that He continue to prepare us for the ministry ahead.

bills, Welsh, Greek, rubbish.

Last week Kate and I had the chance to go out to dinner. We decided to go to bills, Surry Hills. It was great. We recommend it.

I've also been on holiday for a week or so (our last while living in Sydney!). Holidays, typically, mean food. This one has been no exception. Jamie's Welsh Rarebit was pretty fun.


Thanks to the Foodies Guide to Sydney we checked out the factory shop at TIM Products, Marrickville. The bloke there lavished Greek sweets upon us.


While in Marrickville we also visited Reverse Garbage. It's basically a suburban tip-shop. I love the idea; but I found almost nothing vaguely interesting. However, if you need a filing cabinet, go there. You should get something reasonable for about $35.

Goodbye Tiger. Hello Snow Leopard.

Two recent developments in my technological world:


(Warning: some jargon may confuse or bore some readers)

1. This week I got around to upgrading to Snow Leopard (I bypassed Leopard altogether). The upgrade worked... after a couple of small hitches. First, I discovered my DVD drive wasn't working. Why?? Because Noah had posted the business card of my favourite café in there. Nice. Second, the install DVD was a bit faulty (a fairly common problem, I gather); but eventually I managed to install the bare OS, just some of the extra bits remained inaccessible.
2. Thanks to this guide I managed to get Time Machine (backup software) to access an NTFS network share.
   

(End Jargon)

kategoria!

Occasionally, people dump old books in some public spot at college, usually accompanied by a sign that says, 'Free Books', or something similar.

Today I scored the entire back-catalogue of the discontinued kategoria journal.


Score.

Manly with Auntie Amanda

Last weekend Auntie Amanda was in town. We visited some old favourites, and explored some new ones. Unfortunately Noah was pretty crook on Saturday night (he was ok by the morning).

I reckon I'm going to miss the vast diversity of stuff on offer here in Sydney. Ah well, enjoy it while it lasts, I guess :)

Some of the old favourites included:

• Glebe Markets
• Newtown (College and King St.)
  
• Shenkin
• Church

The biggest new thing was taking the ferry to Manly.

Here's the Shakshuka from Shenkin.


Affogato at Campos.


A beautiful day for the ferry ride to Manly.


We found a good coffee joint at Manly called Barefoot.


And we found the beach, too.


In all, it was great having Amanda with us. We look forward to seeing much more of you really soon :)

Jackman on Demands

David Jackman finished-up his series of lecture with What Preaching Demands. He said there are five demands that lie at the heart of fruitful biblical ministry, non-negotiables that a preacher must always be marked by:

1. Constantly feeding on the word of God
   
2. Dependence upon the Holy Spirit
3. Commitment to Hard Work and Progress
4. Love for your Hearers
5. Realism about the Battle

At one point he made this observation (paraphrased):

If you deprive your preaching program of narrative (i.e. the story parts of the Bible), you’ll deprive your congregation of the great bulk of teaching on the doctrine of God from Scripture.

Gold, I reckon.

Jackman on the Heart

All I have to do to have a hard heart, is nothing.

That was David Jackman's comment on Psalm 95 in his lecture, this morning, on Where Preaching Connects.

Reflecting on Psalm 95, he reminded us that: (a) we're seeking a response from our preaching, not just a hearing; and (b) as preachers we've gotta pray for people's hearts.

Jackman on Preaching

Happily, this week David Jackman is loitering around college, speaking each day in chapel on preaching.

Yesterday he spoke on Why Preaching Matters.

(Paraphrased) If you’re not on about proclamation, then don’t put yourself forward as a pastor. Your congregation needs the word proclaimed.

This morning was all about How Preaching Works. He warned against the pitfall (in preaching) of trotting out any one of the various frameworks of thinking that you bring to a given text. He listed heaps; here are the ones I got...

• Systematic theology framework - a topic from systematics swamps the meaning of this text.
  
• Pastoral framework - an immediate pastoral concern governs the shape the sermon.
  
• Legalistic framework - some legalistic concern, specific to our sub-culture, takes over as the issue.
  
• Programmatic framework - whatever your agenda for the time: preaching, evangelism, mission, etc.
  
• A framework governed by our favourite illustrations.

In other news... here's my current desktop wallpaper. I took it from the Manly ferry on Monday.