We have moved!!

Hi guys,
just a quick note to let you know that we have moved into our fantastic new home in springvale... I have a lot to blog about, but no time right now... I will get onto it soon but we are without internet or even home phone for 2 weeks, thanks to the wonderful response time of optus... We will continue to check e-mails and hopefully will have time to blog as well from the office, but don't hold your breath!!!
Peter

On the Move

As we mentioned a while back, we have been looking to move to Springvale to focus on our work with the Burmese community more. Well, (y)our prayers have been answered, not only have we finally acquired a rental property in Springvale, it is THE property that we wanted!! This is a real strategic property that is at the gateway to a very large neighbourhood of Burmese friends and acquaintances, it is also just around the corner from the rest of the Springvale team, and will provide a great meeting space particularly during summer with it's huge back yard.

The house itself is a real dump, which we are kind of excited about in a weird sort of way, but it will need a lot of cleaning and handyman work (if you are interested in checking it out and helping out we are having a bit of a working bee there this Saturday from 10am - give me a call or e-mail and I'll fill you in with the details).

The move itself will happen in a few weeks and then things will really change for us as we begin to focus on our new neighbourhood and work out what we can do and where we will fit best.

Standing with the Burmese

What a fully Burmese week we have just had. As I have mentioned before, Naomi & I are working on focusing on the Burmese community here in Melbourne more and more, and last week was a great taste of what that will hopefully look like.

Our week started with the Burmese homework club on Saturday morning, where we have at least 12 kids (probably more) to entertain with craft and conversational English, or as in my case, teaching year 10 level maths to a girl who has had virtually no formal education in her life! (fortunately she spent 3 years in Bangkok and as a result was able to learn a fair amount of English). It was a challenging yet enjoyable experience even if I did walk away from it with a massive headache. An exciting thing that happened at homework club too was that a friend of one of our volunteers donated 8 or so scientific calculators, which will come in very handy to these young students as often they cannot afford these themselves!!!

The next day we also went on an outing with about 40 of our Burmese friends to the Melbourne museum, where we got to view an aboriginal display and some other bits and pieces, It was a very moving display, focussing quite strongly on the stolen generation and other atrocities that we didn’t learn in Australian history at school. The day itself was absolutely fantastic, There is something about seeing such a large group of people ascending the escalators at parliament station together, for many of them it was the first time on an outing to the city. As always various Burmese families invited us to share their lunch with them and fortunately there was no (obvious) offal involved this time.

We also got the opportunity to spend a bit of time with one of our families that we have been making friends with, just hanging out talking about the differences in Australian and Burmese societies.

On Wednesday six of us (4 UNOH workers, 1 prospective UNOH worker and a Burmese friend) headed up to Canberra to protest the 19th anniversary of the atrocities that happened in Burma on the 8.8.88. The protest was held outside the Embassy of Myanmar (the military in Burma officially changed the countries name to Myanmar some time ago, but none of our Burmese friends recognise the change of name). We got to stand beside Burmese from Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, as we yelled slogans calling for a free Burma, UN intervention and the end of atrocities in that country. It was very moving to get to talk with these people and find out about their struggles, both back home in Burma and living here in Australia. The look of pure joy on our Burmese friends face as he yelled out slogans that would have got him instantly shot in his own country will not be forgotten quickly.

On Thursday, Naomi also got the opportunity to learn some authentic Burmese cooking with another neighbourhood friend, from what I understand it was a great time of connecting as women together (I wasn’t invited :( - though I did get to sample the curry :))…

So anyway, all that to say that things are starting to really pick up for us in this area and we are overjoyed and excited that God would use us in this very important ministry…

Sorry about the delay, here is an update...

It has been a very long time since my last blog entry, things have been flat out for us here… so, let me update you on what has been happening. The last month or so have seen all the UNOH workers heading down to Melbourne for the Surrender 07 conference, which was an absolutely amazing time… probably the best that I have been to. Our main speakers at the conference were Shane Claibourne, Jackie Pullinger and Mike Frost. All three were in fine form, and it was of particular interest to me to hear Shane speak as I have been a big fan of his for some time now!! Mike Frost’s biblical exposition on some of Jesus’ more complex parables was amazing and probably a major highlight for most who attended. Probably the most exciting part of the conference however was to get to hang out with over 1000 like minded people who created an amazingly welcoming and loving atmosphere that was felt throughout the whole weekend.

There have been many meetings and decisions to be made over the last month as well, and amongst them, Naomi & I have chosen to take an invitation to move to Springvale and become more deeply involved in the Burmese community there. Naomi & I have fallen in love with the Burmese refugees that we have met over the last year and have a real heart for them and their plight, and while there are many Burmese in Springvale, there are very few in Noble Park, even though it is only one suburb over. As a result we have found ourselves travelling to Springvale to work amongst these people, and find ourselves quite at home with the team already working there. Because one of the main principles of working for UNOH is to live within the neighbourhood of those you are reaching out too, the time has come for us to make this move.

The move will mean a longer term commitment to the Springvale community, which will mean that we will not be getting to go over-seas to Thailand as soon as we wanted to, however we believe that the Lord has lead us in this direction. Our hope is to put a good 5 to 6 years minimum into the work in Springvale focussing more intently on the Burmese community, getting involved in advocacy and political work around the plight of the country as well as the more interpersonal work we are already doing. Our dream is that this time will prepare us for the possibility of working on the Thai-Burma border or in Burma itself in the future. All this we hold loosely and are open to God yet again changing our plans, it was hard to let go of the more immediate aim of working in the slums of Bangkok, however we believe that the Lord has called us to this course of action, and we are excited by the possibilities.

Hopefully the move will happen in the next month or so, please pray for us as we make this move and look for rental properties, good rentals are hard to come by in Springvale at the moment, and rent has gone up quite a bit in the past year. There is a particular property that we are looking at as the location seems ideal. It is at the mouth of a large neighbourhood of Burmese immigrants and many of them will walk past our door every day if we get the property. We were walking around that neighbourhood the other day and ran into three or four groups of Burmese that we already new form our homework club. The property also backs onto an alley way that leads to where the rest of the Springvale team live so it seems ideal. The property will not be available for another 3 weeks however, and the rental will be quite significantly more that what we are paying now, and as we are living on very limited support this is a step of faith in (hopefully) taking this property.

Women, The Church and Leadership

This is a topic I have been thinking to write about for quite some time, but have never got around to...

For me in all truth the question is a bit of a waste of time, there are numerous accounts in the bible that suggest that women are aloud to teach and are equal to men and all that sort of stuff ... (see for example Gal 3:28)... But it seem to be a bit of a problem for a lot of the church, mainly due to 2 or 3 passages by the apostle Paul. I am one of those people that believe that if we are to look at the context that Paul was writing into that we can understand what he is saying a lot better, I know that many Christians out there see this as a cop out, but have you ever noticed how easy it is to put someone off side when you write them a letter or more often e-mail and they take it the wrong way, because they did not understand the spirit that you wrote it in? - well, context is the same sort of thing... anyway lets not get into a lesson on exegesis, lets just accept that I believe that women should be in leadership in the church.

After saying that, let me now say that a lot of the women who are in leadership in the church should not be in leadership (but then neither should many of the men). Jesus was a big teacher of the first being last, the last first and of servant leadership (washing feet etc.). The sort of leaders that Jesus wanted were leaders who were there for the good of others, not for their own glory or prestige. I believe that we should respect and honor those that the Lord has put in charge of leading the church, but if these leaders expect or demand such respect, I do not think that the Lord has truly put them in leadership...

In a world of women's liberation and a church that tries to suppress female leadership, the sort of women who make it to leadership positions (I talk in generalisations as there are many truly humble and anointed women leaders who I have met), are the sort of women that have had to fight tooth and nail to gain their position. They have had to assert themselves and prove themselves as being professional, great orators etc etc. These sort of women do not understand servant leadership and they certainly would not wash the feet of their congregation (after all that's servants work, and women are not servants!).

It is a shame that the church has put so much pressure on women, that many of those who have the will to stick to their beliefs are those who want to prove a point and therefore forfeit their right to be leaders in the church (according to the servant leadership model), but then if we use the same yard stick to measure male leadership, I'm sure that many of men would fail too...

The question should not be Male or Female, the question should be about motivation... Prestige or Servanthood!!

www.avaaz.org

CHARGE!!!!.... What? Which way???

Today, I went back to my old, old church, one that I left because of many reasons, but amongst the strongest was that I could not find a sense of purpose there. 5 or 6 years down the track, I have found purpose, and whilst praying one morning, I got struck with the need to go back to that church for a time, to get my attitude right with the church and to see that even if I disagree with the form, Christ is still at work in it. I am not going to go into the details of my visit, there is still a lot of work for God to do in my life before my attitude is right and I don’t want to ruin it by bitching here.

What I did want to blog about was a bit of a question that came out of today’s sermon. In the sort of church that I have belonged to for the past 5 or so years I probably could have bounced this idea around a bit with everyone, but I just didn’t feel right standing up and saying “ahhhh… excuse me….?”

The sermon in a round about way was sort of about being a warrior for God, and being part of an Army of God, it revolved around reading the bible and being prepared and fighting like your life depended on it (the female preacher told us that we were not allowed to fight like girls). Anyway, the question that came out of this was what are we an army for? Where or what is our battle ground, our front line? This question was never really touched on… There was talk about personal battles, like when you feel the devil attacking you personally (your self esteem or something) or your family (your teenage kid might be getting into sex, drugs or God forbid Rock and/or Roll)… but those are personal battles, and yes they are serious, and yes we need to fight them, and yes we need God’s help and the Word to deal with them. But I got this kind of picture in my mind of a person in an army walking along to battle, in full armour, kind of like how the Roman legions did, complaining about how rough the road ahead is. Complaining about how there was a log in the road ahead and how he had to climb over it, or the cliff he had to scale to get to the battle ground, and when he finally got to the battle ground saying “well that’s it I’m stuffed, I fought my battle getting here… you chaps can do the rest…”

I think that what the preacher today was suggesting was that we are an army, that we do have to fight together, that there is a battle to which we are all called to fight. But the battle was not named, and I don’t feel like the battle was ever really named in the years that I was there either, only the personal battles, and the threat of some nebulous future threat. I wonder, if the reason for this is because of the user friendly approach of so many western churches, the reality of what it means to be in this army, the reality of what the war is, or what we have to give up or go through to fight in this army is too confronting. Maybe if these people were asked to count the cost of going to war they would rather run and hide, it’s a lot easier to pump people up, to let them know that in Christ they are mighty warriors, to let them know how marvellous their armour is , than to start to train them in the art of warfare, of tactics, of knowing their enemy…

By this point you probably have noticed that I have not named the battle front either… the battle is to further the Kingdom of God (“thy Kingdom come…”) to make disciples of all nations (not converts, disciples)… to love your enemy (even the Muslim extremist terrorists?... surely not?)… to feed the hungry… in a nut shell to stand in direct opposition to the works of the enemy, it is a warfare of LOVE, but the enemy fights back with HATE, he is blood thirsty and vile and that is why we need the armour of God… that is why we need to be a unified army!!

We're Back!!!

Hello everyone,

it has been a long time since my last post, we got robbed, and our modem went with everything else... The police tracked down one of our burglars, and amongst the stuff they had was our modem, so I am back online again....

We are still waiting for our insurance company to come through with a payment; these things seem to be extremely slow...

It is amazing the effects that this has had on my thinking. The robbery itself was of course a shock; it knocked the kids around a bit, though they bounced back pretty well. Fortunately for us, our robbers were quite considerate in the way they went through our property, there was no needless damage or vandalism, and even though they went through draws and stuff, the contents that they did not take were left behind in the draws neatly. I guess that Naomi and I sort of felt that burglary was probably par for the course in moving into this neighbourhood, so once the initial shock wore off, we got over it pretty quickly (the sense of invasion, violation, loss of security etc).

When your property is stolen like that, you are really forced to evaluate how attached you are to material possessions, how much you are a slave to the god of mammon. When we decided to join UNOH and leave the middle class rat race, to join a poor community and take a vow of poverty ourselves, I believe that we took a step in the right direction. There was a real sense that God had released us from the love of money, keeping up with the Joneses just did not seem to hold any importance for us. Looking at things from the other side of the fence, it seems that the love of money is prevalent in the western church… the consumerist mentality of church growth teachings fit hand in hand with the seeking of comfort and safety that characterises middle class society; as a result materialism is embraced or at best ignored within these churches.

Anyway, I have strayed from my point… after leaving my previous lifestyle, I often felt that we still had too many comforts, certainly once we moved our stuff into our small unit that we now call home, it did scream to us “Middle Class”. I felt that we had not gone far enough… actions speak louder than words (or in this case thoughts) however… and I never really did anything about it, so I guess to some extent I was still a slave to materialism. The robbery however proved to me how little attachment I did have to my possessions, as the actual loss of most my stuff has not really affected me (there were a few personal items that really hurt to loose, like my wedding ring).

The biggest problem in this line of thought however is that we had insurance, a wise move really, at least some would say that… however I know that some of my carefree attitude to the robbery was probably do to this, so at this stage of my life I don’t know how free I am from materialism. I am also faced with the problem of deciding what to replace that was stolen, due to the nature of insurance I will have to purchase new items that will make me look more prosperous than I did before. Some things are quite important to me to replace, like a new camera, others I don’t think I will replace if I have the choice, like the playstation (our lives are better without that). Still, I am haunted with the thoughts of what are the best things I can get with the payout… I am starting to understand what Jesus was really talking about when he mentioned the camel and the eye of the needle, and I am truly thankful that it is not through our power that this is possible, but that it is purely up to God to sort the issue of mammon out in each of our lives…

Peter

apologies

hi guys - sorry I haven't been on of late, we got robbed a bit over a week back and so are running on a dial-up connection whilst things get sorted out - be back soon I promise

Why I Hate Eagles...

"These are the birds you are to detest… the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture…” Leviticus 11:13

Ah, the eagle, that magnificent, powerful bird, mascot of the “most powerful” nation in the world. Interestingly enough it was also the mascot of arguably the most evil regime in the world. The Eagle has also been adopted by the church as a symbol. The symbol has predominantly been adopted thanks to the following verse:

But those who hope in the LORD

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:31

I am always a bit perplexed at the adoption of the eagle as a symbol of Christianity. There are a number of references to eagles in the bible – 29 to be exact – however most of these verses refer to things like dietary restrictions, symbols of judgement and corrupt or ominous nations and characteristics of the creatures who worship god in Revelations… if we look at the bibles reference to eagles in a positive light, there really are only 3 or 4 verses. Yet it seems to me to be the third most popular Christian symbol (at least in the protestant tradition), right after the cross and the fish…

So, what difference does it make? Not a lot really, it is just an interesting observation… The lamb to me seems to be a much more accurate image of how God and the Bible view those that follow Christ, there are certainly more references to us being like sheep, especially when you take into consideration the references to shepherds. It is interesting that we more often than not neglect this fragile, vulnerable and stupid animal to represent us, and opt for the powerful, majestic, independent predator that is the eagle.

The church seems to seek after power, as do many of it’s members, church numbers seem to be the main focus for many, a good church or a blessed church is the church with thousands of people attending, and good or blessed Christian is the one who is financially prosperous. The biggest fear of the church in the west today is that we will fall out of the mainstream, we fear a society that is not Christian, as a result we try to get into politics or align ourselves with political parties. Unfortunately, more often than not this is aligning ourselves with the devil, or the next best thing.

My journey has caused me to strongly believe that the church is not meant to be in the mainstream, the mainstream leads to comfort and ego and laziness and mediocrity. It is those Christians in the margins that are truly powerful although they are often oppressed. Look at the growth of the church in China and other countries where the gospel is banned, in many of these countries the church is growing rapidly, but quietly, the congregations are kept small, running underground in homes, it is these people who are soaring like eagles, it is these people who are attesting to the power of the Lord, the real power that comes out of weakness.

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 1 Corinthians 1:27

We need to embrace our foolishness, our weakness – isn’t it foolish to follow a man who was killed on a cross? Isn’t it foolish to follow a man who tells us to loose our lives, to pick up our own crosses and follow him (to crucifixion, figuratively as well as literally), isn’t it foolish to love our enemy?

True Christianity can never survive in the wisdom and strength of the mainstream, Jesus’ teachings stand in direct opposition to it. The Kingdom of God, that the bible tells us will one day come, yet is already here, operates in contradiction, amongst other things it repays hate with love, and it calls us to freely give instead of building security through wealth. Look at the beatitudes, these values stand in direct opposition to the “Christian” society that we find ourselves in. And somehow, in some wonderfully paradoxical way, the Kingdom of the margins, that can never be mainstream, will one day be victorious.

I do not pretend to understand it, and I think that is part of the beauty of it all, we can only trust in our Lord and follow his ways, and he will look after the rest, we are not to be eagles, we are to be lambs, innocent, trusting, defenseless lambs…

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Matthew 10:16

… yet we still have a mission, we are still warriors in the army of the Lord, however we are warriors of peace, this is yet another wonderful paradox of the kingdom… maybe I will explore this later…

Blasphemy Challenge

Hi guys, as you are aware, I have been playing around a lot on myspace of late (in an attempt to get my head around it for UNOH promotional purposes - see shobie's myspace page... I did that! - but I did not come here to blow my own trumpet). While playing around on myspace I came across a group known as the Confession Campaign which is a direct response to another group known as the Blasphemy Challenge. The Blasphemy Challenge is a bunch of sceptics or rationalists convincing people to make videos and post them on myspace or youtube, renouncing the holy spirit in their lives. I am not quite sure of the rational behind it, to me it seems quite juvenile, but in the U.S. it has got a lot of attention and the church is up in arms about it.

The Church of course has responded, and the Confession Campaign is one such response, here is what they see their mission as...

We have one weapon, prayer that is aligned with the WORD OF GOD. This is how we'll fight off this challenge and whatever else Satan schemes with. Our goal needs to be to expose these fads, educate people about these fads, and to help the lost from falling for these frauds. This is our mission statement: 1. Confess Jesus with your mouth. 2. Confess Jesus with your lifestyle. 3. BE BOLD!!! Do you want a challenge? Then follow these 3 things. Make a video, we'll put it on this site, leave a comment, send pictures, confess Jesus at school, work, or the street, do whatever you feel challenges you... but BE BOLD

Now I strongly agree with the sentiment above - this is how I am trying to live out my life... the problem is that the only real outcome seems to be that people are making videos stating that they believe in the Holy Spirit and follow Christ. What it ends out as is a Tit-for-tat battle, and really, what good is that?

Yet again, I think that we have missed the point (I don't think that the confession campaign has missed it - I think those subscribing to it have). Yet again the church has circled its wagons, trying to defend itself against attack. I hate to tell you this guys, but a video stating that you believe in OR renounce the Holy Spirit is going to do nothing in the bigger scheme of things.

A friend of mine, Ash Barker once said something along the lines of "The world does not need more words, the world needs more words become flesh" which to me follows on from St Francis' famous quote of "everywhere you go preach the Gospel, and if necessary use words". The blasphemy Challenge in my opinion only exists because the church has lost it's way, has become a laughing stock & is viewed as hypocritical. If we actually stopped trying to defend ourselves and stepped out & lived the Gospel (and the Gospel is good news TO THE POOR! - the hurting, the lonely, the marginalised etc), then maybe the world would once again see that the church is a force of change for the good.

If they are going to persecute us - and the bible says they will, let them persecute us because we are doing the right thing and not because we are sitting back, getting fat, protecting ourselves and hurling judgement and condemnation onto the world.

The church in the west is once again being forced into the margins, we are no longer main stream! - we are getting back to where we were in the first 300 years of the church's history, a powerful time for Christians, a time of persecution, but also a time of witness (through action) and effectiveness. Lets pray that the church wakes up, sees the position it is in and starts to head out into the world to make a difference and does not become defensive and circle its wagons until it is finally taken over.

heartache and joy

We are going through a particularly tough time at the moment. There has been a very large amount of heartache and pain in members of our extended family of late, I will not go into any details about it, as many of the people who read this blog are known by these family members and I have to give them the respect that they deserve. Needless to say that these situations are playing in the back of both Naomi & My heads as we continue on in our work here in Noble Park. It is difficult as we dedicate ourselves to our work to know that family members are suffering, and while if it is ever really needed we could go and be with the family, there is a sense of separation as we have dedicated to living and working in this community 24 hours 6 days a week. Our prayers and thoughts are with them all.

At the same time, we are facing heartache here in our community too, we have now been in the community long enough to experience the ravaging power of addiction, as two of our regular friends have lapsed into their addictions again and have ostracised themselves form the community. It is horrible to think that just a month or two earlier these two people were active participants in our community and now they have hidden themselves from any assistance and are suffering under the influences of their addictions. I am told however that more often than not these things are cyclical, and that these people will most likely be back, and the hope is that eventually, as we demonstrate the liberating power of Christ, the cycle will be broken.

Needless to say, these things make us feel like we are under attack, (and this is where the old Pentecostal theology comes back into play guys) and the only time that we get attacked seems to be when Satan feels under threat from our actions (I am not saying that these things are only happening because of us - that would be extremely egotistical, the universe is way too complex for that, but things do seem to align and occur at particular times, it is almost like there is some higher power at work). We will continue to do our work regardless, we will continue to stand in opposition of the work of the enemy, we will continue to see God's Kingdom come.

The reason for Satan's attack on our lives would have to be that like no time before in the year or so that we have been living in NP, Naomi and I feel really plugged into the community, we feel like we are really contributing and really digging deeper in the lives of those around us. We have become extremely involved in a group of Burmese immigrants, working along side their kids, teaching them English and helping with their homework, visiting these people and really building relationships. We have also started to build friendships with others in our community, including a Sri Lankan family with a son who suffers from the same disability that I myself do - cerebral palsy. Anyway, all this to say that we feel that we are really at home and in the flow here and we praise the Lord as a result!!

Please pray for our family and friends who are suffering.

Pray for our own peace of mind and strength.

Pray that we can continue to dig deeper into this community and these relationships, seeing real transformation occur.

Thank you...

Peter

Sacred/Secular Duality

In playing around with myspace over the last few weeks, I have been confronted by a theme that I often think about and probably have blogged about in one form or another many times, and that is, what does it mean to be a Christian…

I came across one site of a guy professing to be a Christian. In his “about me” blurb, he mentioned that he believes in forgiving but not forgetting, and explained about how he has a 3 strikes and your out policy (as if this is a virtue), unless of course you do something really bad and then you are out on the first strike. I have read other myspace entries by Christian musicians explaining about why they don’t sing Christian songs, and whilst I understand the dilemma they are going through and understand what point they are trying to get at, there seems to be this duality going on in their lives, where they can separate the sacred from the secular within their own lives.

On the subject of Christian art, I agree, a Christian should not feel compelled to sing about Jesus, just like a painter should not feel compelled to paint the cross in their work, but if an artist is a Christian, doesn’t their artwork by default become Christian? The values sung about the feelings expressed, should be a reflection of that belief (and again I am not talking about veiled love songs that actually are dedicated to Jesus and not a girl/boy friend). In the same way, the work of an abstract artist who is a Christian, is imbued with the values of that persons relationship with Christ, even without Christian icons being present on the canvas, and even without anyone else understanding the value of the work…

My point by all of this was not to defend the work of a ‘non-religious’ Christian artist, but to challenge the separation of sacred and secular in our lives. I don’t think it can really be done. Again I am not saying that we need to fluff around acting religious, greeting everyone we see with a “Jesus Loves You” and calling everyone brother or sister, but if the values of the Gospel, the values of the Kingdom, are not present in our lives, then our lives are not given over to Him, and we need to reassess our values.

This kind of concept reminds me of the movie “The people versus Larry Flynt”, a biographical movie about a pornographic magazine editor. In this movie, Larry becomes a Christian at one point, and from the portrayal in the movie, it seemed to be a genuine conversion, but Larry tried to continue his magazine editing work whilst professing Christ (from memory he even tried to put Christian articles in his magazine). Anyway, the point was that something had to give in the scenario, and for Larry, he let go of his Christianity. Similarly, I had a friend who was involved in the drug trade (and other shifty dealings) who became a Christian and tried to balance the two, again he found it impossible and let go of Christ (the positive side of his story is that God has continued to pursue him and through business failures and marriage failures, this man is beginning to turn once again towards Christ). For myself, I used to work in a newsagency, every day I would sell Tatslotto tickets, now that I work in the context that I do, amongst those who are affected by gambling addictions I do not feel that a Christian should work within such a destructive industry.

But those examples are extremes, which make a point, we are faced with these sorts of decisions every day, and not only referring to big things like the industries we work in. We are to be challenged by day to day things, do we display forgiveness in our live (70 x 7 – and this is not literal), we should display morality in our choices of how we live our lives (do we support industries that cause harm to others, do we lie to get advancements in work, do we manipulate situations to our advantage), we should also display compassion (opening our eyes to the hurt that is in others and helping them wherever possible). We will never be perfect in these things, it is a continual learning curve, but if we don’t challenge ourselves in these things we will never change, if we continue to justify our actions, because it is the way of the world then we will never see His Kingdom come.

This morning as I did my reading I was challenged again by this passage; it is relevant and I think that all of us in this comfortable western existence that we are in need to keep it constantly in the back of our minds as we go about our day to day…

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:37-39)

Australian Poverty

Poverty is a confusing word. Probably the first thing that comes to mind when we think of poverty is the starving children from African nations that we see on T.V. through World Vision (and other groups) ads. This is extreme poverty, the sort of thing that the Make Poverty History campaign is aiming to eradicate. Fortunately for those facing extreme poverty, this form of poverty is easily marketable; for those of us that have not been desensitised by the ads, the injustice and suffering of the sunken eyed, swollen bellied kids standing in the squalor of the slums they live in breaks our hearts.

Unfortunately, poverty affects many here at home too. It is not the same sort of poverty, and it is difficult to market, in fact many of the people facing poverty in Australia have been vilified in the minds of the general public. Thanks to people like Derryn Hinch and other similar talkback radio presenters, these people are labelled as dole bludgers or no hopers or other derogatory titles that just help in keeping these marginalised people in their place.

There is this financial measuring stick in Australia known as the Henderson Poverty Line. The HPL was developed in the 70’s as a guide for what it would take for individuals in Australia to cover their essential living costs. This figure takes into account whether a person is living as an individual or as part of a family of differing sizes and is adjusted every three months in relation to costs of living, inflation etc. Obviously, the HPL is the line that is used to say if a person is living in poverty or not; a person living on full Centrelink payments is living below the HPL. Having said that then, a person living on Centrelink cannot meet their day to day costs of living; this is probably done in the government’s infinite wisdom to encourage people to get a job, however, for many this is not possible.

For myself, I have gone through a stage in my life where I was classed as long term unemployed. I know how degrading it is to be in this situation, and I came from a privileged background… I had a stable and loving family, I had all my needs and most of my wants met as I grew up, I had a good education, yet I could not get a Job. Every fortnight as I filled out my jobseekers diary, I felt the humiliation. Every time I had to queue up and hand in the form I felt the same oppression as those around me.

The people who I meet and walk with every day all have different stories, some of them suffer from physical disabilities, some have had unstable childhoods, that resulted in them not getting a great education, many have fallen into the trap of addiction, many of them are mentally ill, and many come from third world countries where even if they were educated and employed back home (and few of them are), they find themselves without recognised skills here in Australia. Some more of these people have simply made bad choices, but what ties these people all together is that they are trapped within the welfare system; a system that is very hard to claw your way out of.

Few of these people will have the opportunity to work their way out of the welfare trap, some will try and fail time and time again, and others are doomed to be dependant on the welfare system for the rest of their lives with no support structures in place to help them out. Those stuck in the trap will continue to live in a situation where they don’t have enough money to meet their basic needs, for those facing addictions, the problem is only made worse, as they need to gain money to feed that habit and eat as well. Rehab, psychiatric, counselling and medical help is hard to come by, it is expensive or inadequate; free support is often stretched thin and as a result only basic care can be offered.

These people do not have the family support that many of us have, they often have been ostracised from their family, and have worn out any friendships they had. So they are alone, the only contact they have with people is with case workers or centrelink staff (where they are usually only a number or a commodity – I once heard of a centrelink manager referring to people who come through their doors as “STOCK!!!”). Our society in general looks down on those suffering with issues of poverty, if they recognise them at all, so there are very few supportive, healthy relationships that these people can create. These broken, hurting and lonely people can build friendships with others in similar situations, however this too can often lead to further hurt and hardship, and people can find themselves deeper in the trap of oppression, depression and degradation.

My aim in this blog entry was to try and make a case for poverty in Australia, it may not look the same as third world poverty, but it is still robbing people of a decent quality of life. Hopefully I have conveyed the hopelessness that these people face – this is not what God wants for any of his children, and it is something that we as Christians need to face. The Salvation Army estimate that 2.5 million Australians live in poverty, that is 12% of our population. According to a report by the Salvos, this is an increase of 400,000 over the last 3 years. There is a big job ahead of us, and we can no longer justify living for ourselves…

Quote of the moment

I have to admit that I ripped this quote directly off a fellow unoh workers newsletter, but I'm sure he wont mind....

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause.. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid… You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…You’re afraid that you will loose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticised or that you will loose your popularity, or you are afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot you, or bomb your house, so you refuse to take a stand. Well, you may go on to live until you are 90, but you’re as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit”

Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
November 5th, 1968.

I Need Some Friends

Hello everyone,

I have been playing around with myspace a bit of late, as everyone tells me it is soooo good and the wave of the future...

Personally I don't like it that much yet, but maybe it will grow on me...

anyway, I've got no mates - well actually I've got 3, but I need a few more...

if you are into myspace please visit my page and become a friend so I don't feel like such a looser...

http://www.myspace.com/dekkersjourney

thanks - Peter

analogy...much!

I was at one of my favourite blog sites today and I saw this youtube video, I thought it was so good that I wanted to share it with you...

what do you think the fleas teach us about ourselves and the circus ... uh, I mean church???

Boys in da Hood

One of the main ministries that we have found ourselves in here in Noble Park is amongst young boys. This is mostly out of organic growth, a direct result of having 3 boys ourselves. Most afternoons and weekends we have at least 2 extra kids hanging around our home, sometimes we will even have up to six extra kids hanging out, running up and down the driveway, riding bikes, rollerblading, playing on Playstation, board games or computer… it can sometimes be quite mad, and always very noisy…

We were confronted a night or two ago about the importance of this ministry, and has changed my view point on it, to view it as an actual ministry, rather than just a bunch of kids hanging around giving me a headache (yes… I am a grumpy old fart). Two nights ago we had a kid that often hangs around our place turn up with a gang of five or six early-pubescent friends to beat up on another kid who was hanging around our place that night for a sleepover…

As you may or may not be aware, Noble Park has a bit of a reputation for its gangs, they are a bit of a problem, and there are certain areas your average Joe Bloggs would not like to go at night. That night, we were confronted with the next generation of NP gang members, six 12-14 year olds, leaning up against our car, with the body language of the worst of the U.S. gangs, talking tough to Jake and his friend, that was until I came on the scene, then all of a sudden these kids seemed to have messed their pants (it is nice to have that sort of a presence in this sort of a situation, though it wont last long I’m sure…). The next day, this same boy who brought his gang to our house turned up, and was happy to play with his enemy again, in fun innocent kids games, there was a bit of tension to start with, but that quickly melted away, and soon these hardened gang-bangers that I saw the night before, were fun loving innocent kids, running around playing hide and seek.

We have the opportunity here to be at a cross-road of these children’s lives. We have the opportunity to impact their lives, to give them a safe haven to hang around in, where they can be kids, where they can have safe, innocent enjoyment, rather than hanging around on the streets, learning how to behave from those they inevitably will look up to, the real gangs out on our streets. These kids are at the point where they will be choosing the sort of life that they want to live, we pray and hope that the experience of seeing the life we live, of having input from our own children as well as ourselves, and the opportunity to speak a word of wisdom into their lives when the opportunity arises, will see these children start to take the correct choices. It would be naïve to believe that we would solve all of these kids problems and protect them from the dark path that many of them will choose in the future, but any impact we can have is better than none at all, any seed that we can sow, has to be better than allowing the field to remain barren.

Blood Diamond

It was Naomi and my wedding anniversary on Monday - it has been thirteen years. We thought that we would celebrate our special day by going to a movie, you know, something romantic... something like BLOOD DIAMOND??????

Well, it was not exactly romantic, but it was the only movie worth seeing at the moment so even though we knew we were in for a heavy time we thought we would go see it anyway...

If you have not seen it, Blood Diamond is based in Sierra Leone during the civil war (it is officially at peace at the moment), following the story of a fisherman who is captured by the RUF and forced to work in a diamond mine where he finds and hides a massive pink diamond, the mine is attacked by the government troops, the fisherman "Solomon" is captured by the troops and put into prison where he meets "Archer" a diamond smuggler who wants to get his hands on the diamond and sell it to a UK diamond company (ripping off Solomon in the process). Meanwhile Solomons son Dia is captured by the RUF and trained to be a child soldier.

I won't go into any more details about the movie, however I have a few reflections to make...

We recently made the acquaintance of a family of 11 from Sierra Leone who just came to Australia (we were asked to help find them housing and clothing and other such things as they came out with next to nothing). The stories told by this family are very similar to what happened in the movie, however the real horrors of rape that they had to endure were not depicted in the movie (thankfully).

From what I understand the SL family were quite happy that the movie was released as it shows the plight of the people and raises awareness of what is going on in war torn countries. And I agree with that, a person who is sensitive to what is going on in the world will be shocked into a sense of urgency and desperation... unfortunately there is no real hope presented in the movie, even though it does have a happy Hollywood ending (I guess that is where the quote by Dave Andrews comes in - we can see change).

The most disturbing thing for me in this movie however was the audiences attitude. We had a young couple in the cinema with us who chatted through the whole movie, making excited noises at signs of violence, and walked out of the cinema as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile Naomi and I were shattered by the harsh reality of the movie. Is there really any advantage in making a movie like this if it is only viewed as entertainment? To see the horror that real life human beings have had to go through viewed as nothing more than another Lethal Weapon movie or something like that is really disturbing...

Anyway, this movie brings home the reality of many of the refugees that we work with here in Noble Park and Springvale, it explains the tendency of these refugees to hide away and keep to themselves, not participating in the wider community, not interacting and not learning English. It also highlights the ignorance of people who complain about immigrants entering Australia and behaving this way.

At one of the houses that we stayed in when we first moved into Noble Park, there was a young African child living there, this child would often have nightmares, waking and screaming in absolute terror. What had this child seen? How can we ignore the evil that is going on in the world, or reduce it to entertainment....

anyway that's about enough from me....

Peter

Quote from Dave Andrews

Hi,

I am currently reading "Can You Hear the Heartbeat" by Dave Andrews of the Waiters Union, which is a great little book Andrews' personal reflections and lessons learnt. Sorry, it is not up on the side panel as books we are reading because it is an old book and out of print and I could not find a pic of it anywhere...

Anyway, this Quote stood out to me, it is probably not the most insightful or deep, it just really struck something in me when I read it...

We must grow into a new maturity. A maturity which neither rejects faith in the possibility of change nor ignores the facts that say change is impossible, which acknowledges the difference between dreams and realities; yet recognises the difference God can make in turning Utopian dreams for the community into practical reality. We must begin to live as if the impossible is possible, because unless we do, nothing will Change.

Peter