Journey towards the poor...

I was recently asked what it was that started my journey in ministering to the poor and marginalised. As I thought about it my mind initially went to my introduction to UNOH, visiting and volunteering at Foodbank during my RDO every second Tuesday, or reading some fantastic books by Ash Barker, or even attending the Surrender conference and hearing Jackie Pullinger or Tony Campolo speak. But as I thought about it more, I realised that the Lord had introduced me to the need for ministry to the poor much earlier than I had originally thought.
It was many year earlier as I was just beginning to be introduced to the concept of Missions that I had the opportunity to visit a church plant in Sri Lanka. My home church at the time was a kind of parent church to the church in Sri Lanka, and was a major financial supporter of the church. I was asked to go and visit the church on an annual basis to touch base with them, check them out and let them know they were supported (I guess morally more than financially).

There are many things that today bother me about this scenario, and there were many things that were being done by both the Parent and Daughter church that I would struggle with today. But regardless of the fact that the Church in Sri Lanka relied on outside support to function and that the relationship was fairly imperialistic, the church was essentially reaching out to the poorest people in the city of Kandy, and the reality was that the structure of the church (with two paid full-time pastors) could not have functioned without outside support as the congregation barely had enough money to feed themselves let alone support any sort of church structure. The church was trying to model itself after the classic mega-church model of Australia and trying to emulate our worship, preaching styles and trappings. They were being influenced by the teachings of Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland by video that some well meaning but direly misguided supporter was posting out to them on a monthly basis.

When I visited I was expected to preach every Sunday as the VIP western Pastor, and although I preach predominantly on how much this church had to offer the wider church and how they should not try to emulate the west but recognise their own forms of worship as pleasing to the Lord, I was obligated to hold an altar call and pray for each and every member of the congregation and see them ‘slain in the Spirit’. But besides the heavily colonial dynamic of the Sunday service it was on the day to day of church life that the true church amongst the poor could be seen.

It was in the nightly bible studies and prayer meetings that various members of the congregation came together to share a meal and simply fellowship, it was at these times that worship was casual and much more culturally relevant, and prayer and study were dialogical and passionate. The congregation were committed to visiting each other on a regular basis and helping each other out when things were difficult. As I reflect back on the church I realise how much they emulated the Church seen in Acts 4. The real inspiration to me was one of the paid pastors who lived on a bare minimum despite being given a very generous income from our church. The rest of his money was given to those in the church who were really struggling, the widows and the lame and he spent all his time visiting congregation members and being a real hands-on support to anyone who needed it.

Unfortunately my involvement with that church was cut short due to the other full time pastor being sent to study in Australia and having his head filled with grand visions of mega-churches, his decision was to no longer come under the cover of our church but to look for support from another bigger, more impressive Aussie mega church who said they would support them for six months after which time they would have to be self supporting. This concept at face value sounds great, however the reality of it was that when they asked how they could support themselves the suggestion was that they should stop trying to attract the poor in the community but should rather aim their church towards the middle class of Kandy. Needless to say the dream of a shiny rich mega church won out in the end for this pastor and they decided to follow that course.

I have not heard from that church since that time, I have no idea if they are still operating. I often think about the generous pastor and what he is doing with his life at the moment. Although I have a lot of sadness about the future of this congregation, I thank God for the experience of this church and the chance to see how a real church amongst the poor can function. This experience was truly foundational to my current vocation even if at the time I did not realise it… But then I guess most of our formation is done on a subconscious level through experiences like this.

belated update - yet again...

Ahhh, after all my resolve to get disciplined in preparation for my study next year it has yet again been over a month since my last blog entry.... I guess though it does say that I have been busy and have more important things on my plate.

Well, things have been going exceedingly well for us over the past month or so we have thrown ourselves in amongst the Muslim Burmese community here in Springvale intensely, and are enjoying the fruit of our hard work. We have really been accepted as part of their community, being invited to various family dinners, parties and religious celebrations and we have been able to return the favour too. The biggest highlight for us was Christmas day, where we ended up spending the day in the local park with over 150 Burmese friends, we were able to give out Christmas presents to all the children who were there as well as break open 2 massive Christmas pinatas, play tug of war, have running races and of course eat plenty of food (it was an interesting mix of traditional Christmas food, traditional Burmese food and the good old Aussie BBQ).

After the lunch in the park was finished our celebrations continued as many people came to visit us until about 10pm. And after that day, more relationships have been established and those that were already there have grown. In some ways it was with hesitation that we headed out on our two weeks holiday to Naomi's parents in the central coast (NSW), this time of year has afforded us so many amazing opportunities. But we were able to enjoy ourselves and when we returned the community was still here and they welcomed us back with open hands!


I will write again soon i promise, right now i need to go and cook some dinner...


peter

God's Timing

What an amazingly busy time we have had since we have moved in here to Springvale. We were a bit worried at first, most of the Burmese that we work with are Muslim, and we moved in right at the start of Ramadan, this meant that our homework club grounded to a halt almost instantly. From what I understand, you do as little as you can get away with during Ramadan, as exerting yourself of course makes the fasting a lot more difficult (particularly if you can’t even drink water!). This also meant that there was not many of our usual local Burmese walking around the street, as they were mostly keeping indoors and quiet.

However, God’s timing in all of this seems to be perfect. Just when we were accepting that we had a quiet month ahead of us, the protests in Burma broke out, the protests and ensuing military crackdown, have left the Burmese refugees here with mixed feelings. On the up side, it has been nearly 20 years since there have been any large scale protests in Burma, and these protests were being lead by the Buddhist monks, a unique and amazing situation. The Buddhist monks are the one organization that was not able to be bought out by the junta, and indeed the junta itself recognizes itself as Buddhist, so when they were facing off the protesting monks, they were facing off their spiritual leaders. The other thing that was exciting about this situation is that the world was sitting up and taking notice. 19 years ago it was not until after the fact that the world found out that 3,000 peaceful protesters were slaughtered by the junta on the 8th of August. This time around, modern technology made it impossible to go by un-noticed. Thanks to the internet and cameras in mobile phones, an army of lay-journalists were able to blog the excitement and horrors of the protests for a week or so before the junta could effectively shut them down.

The negative side of this for our local Burmese community is of course that they are stuck here in Australia worrying about loved ones left in Burma, and in many cases reliving the memories of what they went through 19 years ago (many of the families are missing fathers or elder brothers because they were lost during this time.)

During this time we have been able to stand with our Burmese friends, visiting many of them, letting them know that we share in their misery (as much as we can being non-Burmese), supporting them wherever possible. We have also been able to stand with them in protest marches and rallies and through setting up a project team with some of the community leaders here in Springvale, the project team is dedicated to three aims of raising awareness of the Burmese plight, raising funds to help support families that have lost their main bread winner through death or imprisonment, and those political activists in Burma who are fighting foor their countries freedom (click here to learn more). We also aim to get involved in some political actin here, calling on our government to do all it can to put pressure on the Burmese Junta, and calling local companies that are involved in trade in Burma to cease their activities.

All of this activity has been very time consuming and exhausting, though exciting. However it has definitely galvanised our friendship and trust within the community here, so much so that this weekend, as our Burmese Muslim friends celebrated the end of Ramadan, we were invited to more of these celebrations than we could possibly attend. It was an honour to attend these celebrations, and a great time to meet up with many of the community who until now have been standing on the fringes. This time for them was probably very similar to our own Christmas or new years celebrations, where heaps of friends and family get together, eat copious amounts of food, laugh, play, and generally celebrate life.

Fasting for Burma

What an amazing and shocking week it has been for the people of Burma... if you have been living under a rock, since about the 19th, Burmese Buddhist Monks have been rising up in protest marches in the main cities of Burma, from what the news reports have been saying there have been up to 30,000 monks and nuns protesting and many other Burmese Civilians, numbers have apparently been over the 100,000 mark, this has been phenomenal for the nation and the cause on a global scale with all the media attention it has been getting...

However in the past 24ish hours the Military Junta has finally said enough is enough, they have enforced dusk till dawn curfews in an attempt to stem the protests, they have been bashing, imprisoning and in some cases killing these peaceful protesters. Rumor has it that the countries democratically elected leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been taken from her home where she has been under house arrest by the junta and been put back into prison.

This news has of course hit the Burmese refugees here in Springvale very hard, as a result, and to show that we are serious about our concerns for the plight of the Burmese, we have chosen to go on a fast and pray for the nation. Unlike the fasts mentioned by Jesus in the bible, we are not keeping this fast a secret, whilst the purpose of this fast is to come to the Lord in prayer, it is also to make a point and to take a stand... So I ask that you stand with us in prayer if not in fasting (also you can SIGN THIS PETITION).
My main prayers for this time will be...

• that this bloodshed will mark the end of the Junta's rule
• that no more lives will be lost
• that the world will stand up, take notice and say ENOUGH!
• for peace of mind for refugees in other countries separated from loved-ones.

Springvale update

Well, it has been a very busy last couple of weeks, it's not long now until we are back online at home and so will be able to write more regular updates, but to fill you in on what has happened over the last few weeks..

A few weeks ago we had an amazing working bee at our new home, we had approximately 20 volunteers come through from Swanson Street Church of Christ to help clean up, and they did an amazing job. The clean up was so effective that we were able to bring forward our moving date, which happened on the 5th and we had a small but dedicated team and we had all our furniture, boxes and junk moved in by the early afternoon. Since then, we have been working hard at getting settled in as well as cleaning up our old place (which was also done with a working bee of amazing UNOH workers and locals - thanks guys!), and getting familiar with our new neighbourhood.

The welcome we have received from the local UNOH workers and members of "Open Hands" church has been amazing - I think in the time that we have been moved in we have had dinner at our house once or maybe twice!

Springvale itself is a much different place to Noble Park, even though they are neighbouring suburbs Springvale is a much larger suburb and as many of you would know, very Asian in flavour, the town centre has the real hustle and bustle of an Asian city, and you could almost think that you were walking down a street in Bangkok... if you had a really vivid imagination.

Drugs, and everything that comes with them seem to be a much larger problem here, there are definite signs of drug use, we have already found a number of syringes in and around our front yard, there are discarded "chroming bags" along the sides of the alleyway behind our house, and probably the most disturbing of all for us was finding someone shooting up in our front yard. The main reason that this person was shooting up there was because we had an easily accessible source of fresh water in our driveway, and it is not uncommon to come home and find that the tap had been used. The scary thing about this encounter was the realisation of any fresh paraphernalia being left behind... fortunately this individual took his syringe with him, however there was a fair amount of blood left on one of the boxes that he was sitting on.

I was struck once again with the opposing forces of fear for my family and trusting in the Lord, I think that this is a struggle that all Christian parents go through... some respond to this fear by trying to pull their children out of any danger or negative influence... we have tried another response, a response that unfortunately means that we need to face this battle between fear and trust sometimes on a daily basis... I probably need to reflect of this topic a bit more at a later date... but having said this I did change the tap head in our front yard over to one of those ones with the removable handle, so hopefully this will reduce the really in-your-face encounters that we have.

It has been great to be so close to many of the Burmese that we have been getting to know, I have been privileged to be able to play some volley ball with some of them, and have had regular visits from one of our closer and more out going friends... As we get more settled in, the week to come will hopefully be more intentional with our visiting our Burmese friends and making new contacts, as well as familiarising ourselves with the exciting town centre and all its sights, sounds and smells.

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.

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

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…

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.

Thankyou

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to get this message done a couple of weeks ago, but I have not taken my wife's own advice about busy-ness and so have not had a chance...

I want to thank everyone out there, all our regular readers and supporters, the support we are getting is phenomenal, and really means a lot to us.

A few weeks ago we had a commissioning service at our sending church, it was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, a lot of our new friends (both UNOH workers & community people) also turned up, as well as family. It was great to get the feeling of support from everyone, it is easy to feel alone when you are doing these things, especially when you are so busy working within the community that you don't have the time you would like to catch up with those outside who care about you.

Many of you who are family and friends will have received (or will soon) an invite to a special information afternoon we are holding, already from those invites, we are getting some great feedback from people, and again it lets us know that we are not alone, it is great to have such prayer and moral support behind us as we do the work we are doing.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers, and don't hesitate to drop us a line (either on the blog here or over e-mail) if you would like to get together... we have started on our support raising, and if you would like to support us, and wanted to chat about it or wanted us to speak in your church or small group or something, don't hesitate to ask, we strongly believe that one of our callings in working in UNOH is to bring the message of Jesus' heart for the poor and marginalised to the wider Church body...

Anyway - thank you again, you are all really appreciated...

Peter

Riots & Stabbings & Murders.... OH MY!!!

Hi everyone, forgive me for being so slack...

Things have really rev'ed up since the apprenticeship started 2 weeks ago - there has been a lot of training and meetings to get through to get us up to speed, and when those things happen, it seems that you need to play catch-up with everything else...

having said that, things are slowly starting to normalise... so hopefully I'll start to blog again soon.

I read a local newspaper yesterday that had a front page story about how Noble Park is in the grip of fear, after the riots, a local stabbing murder, and various other unrelated acts of violence... Now, I would not say that Noble Park is the safest, nicest place to live in the world - if it was there would be no need for the presence of a group like UNOH, but what purpose does an article like this serve?? There are enough people in this neighbourhood hiding behind massive security fences and roller shutters, people are already living in fear of the random attackers out there... I just wish that the newspapers would actually care to mention that in the vast majority of attacks and murders, there is some sort of a reason for it - the murder that happened a few days ago here was drug related, it was not just some random attacker breaking into someones house to murder them for the fun of it...

maybe our "entertainment" has a lot to answer for all of this as well, I have to admit, when it came out "silence of the lambs" was a bit of a hit with me, but as time has gone on, we have begun to swallow more and more crap that deals with death, rape, murder, so much so that they now serialise such things, with CSI, SVU, NCIS, Medium etc... they even advertise episodes of SVU dealing with paedophilia along the lines of "an episode no parent will want to miss..." WHAT IS THAT ABOUT!!!!!!! - have we gotten so thick in the head that feeding fears is now seen as educational, or at least being aware of what is going on in the world.

Little wonder community in general is dying out, little wonder people lock themselves up in their palace like prisons they call home, never having any sort of relationship with neighbours, and I guess, if we are to believe the increase of violence in the streets and unruly bands of teenagers causing terror in neighbourhoods this is the reason for that too...

here are some thoughts...

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. "Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened." But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. (1 Peter 3:13-15ish)

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:16-18)

There are plenty of other scriptures that deal with fear and how we should not be a slave to it, but I keep being told to keep my blog entries short, so I wont go into them all...

We as the Kingdom of God, are the answer to this problem, I am certain of it, but how can we solve this problem, when we are a slave to it ourselves???

Transforming Lives

The last few weeks have seen the loss of 2 valuable families to the Springvale Team as they head off to continue their UNOH work in Bangkok and Sydney. They will be missed, but they have important work to do in other parts, & God goes with them as they head out to make a difference...

With the loss of 2 couples from UNOH Melbourne, comes the inclusion of 4 new UNOH apprentices, of which Naomi & I are included, we will go through a year of training to become part of the team (before we go through another 2 years of training as novices but thats another story...).

It is an important work that needs to be done here... there are many lonely and hurting people here, it is amazing the divide that we make in society between rich and poor, a place like Noble Park seems to be ignored by most, until something like the Riots happen and then the commentary is on for young and old - well mostly old - as you listen to talk back radio about the the riots, and why they apparently happened... its never our fault (our being the wider community)... that's too hard a thought to deal with...

But transformation is happening here, it seems to be a slow process of 3 steps forward 2 steps back at times, and there are many questions that I have as a newby here that I know will be answered over the next year or so, but the rewards are obvious...

Recently I heard the testimony of a community member who had just been baptised. It was an amazing story... this person has had a very lonely life, particularly over the last however long... he had been looking for a place to belong, getting involved in various church and community groups, but never feeling a sense of belonging until coming to Rainbow. This person is old, and has many health issues and comes across quite ruff and gruff, but he is a person, and when you get along side him, you get to see an amazing man, and occasionally you get a smile out of him. He has an amazing smile, when he gives it, you are given a gift, and you know it really means something...

Anyway, this guy got baptised at rainbow a few weeks back, he has been involved with the wider church quite a bit, and has been baptised as an infant as well as later on in life to become accepted by another church. but this time he was baptised because he wanted to show that he belonged to God, & was involved in a group that was majorly important to his life. Baptism was not something he had to do to gain acceptance, it was something he chose to do to show that he was at home...

The difference in this man's life is obvious, even over the six months that we have lived here (I have know him for quite a bit longer than that but it is only over this time that I have been able to get involved in his life). This is one story that to me shows what UNOH is here for, what transformation is about - it is not about winning souls, or growing rainbow numbers, it is about giving value and purpose to a person who is lonely & often forgotten by the wide community.

To see UNOH reach out into the Mt Druit area in Sydney and grow larger in Bangkok, fills me with hope and a sense of purpose - God is seeing his Kingdom established on Earth, it is a slow hard process, but it is happening....

finally a second to blog

well, what a week it has been, it is annoying that at the busy times when there is so much to write about there is never enough time to actually sit down and blog... the MEC went well, poor Sammy was quite unwell, so we sort of had to tag team the whole experience.

The best part for me was pretending to be homeless in Danenong, trying to find accommodation and other things for the night. It was quite a desperate situation - finding only one place in the whole of the city of Dandenong that was willing to help with accommodation, and they were focused on helping youth only, I got to experience judgmental reactions by supposedly loving Christians, as well as true care by other truly loving Christians (we visited a lot of churches in our search for accommodation). We got a great feed at cornerstone - a mission established by three Dandenong churches, got to visit the needle exchange program (there was an experience!! - I had to organise rehab for myself as part of the project!), and generally walk around Dandenong, being directed from one place to another looking for help...

Naomi and I had out psyc assessment on Monday, that was an interesting experience too (a good one) - we got to find out that we were not nuts, so we are a bit worried that UNOH will not want us anymore, because you probably need to be nuts to join them... but seriously, the psyc assessment was the final hurdle that we needed to jump to get into UNOH - so i guess now we are officially in!!!

the apprenticeship starts in February...

Peter

Mission Exposure Course

Well, it has begun, the mission exposure course...

this is a 9 day course running here through UNOH to introduce people to the idea of working amongst the poor and marginalised. It is one of those pre-requisites to joining UNOH that I talked about earlier - so even though we already live and work in the community, we are required to do the course...

having said that, I believe it will be a benificial and enjoyable time, there are about 12 people doing the course, including ourselves, and the other 10 people are farmed out to different unoh workers homes for the 9 days (you are expected to live in the community during the 9 days) - we have been fortunate enough to be included in one of the houses that will be hosting the course attendees, so we will be having a young married couple and their 8 month old daughter living with us.

Anyway, that is about all I have to say at this stage, We have to get prepared for our first big MEC activity toomorrow - going to the beach with the kids!!! - ahh, mission life is tough, but someone has to do it.

Peter

Walking the Streets of Noble Park

Over the last few weeks, a change has happened to the way I view my work here in NP. Over the last 6 months of life here, my time has been about getting to know the community that revolves around the UNOH work and Rainbow church. It has been about getting to know the people, building relationships with those in the community, and seeing where I can help out... It has been a great time, a time of affirmation, a time of finding purpose in life.

But mission is not about maintenance, it is about going out (well strictly speaking being sent out - but I guess the important bit here is the word "OUT"). It is too easy to focus purely on maintenance, to get caught up on the busy work of keeping a church community running smoothly. It is so easy to continually look inward, and forget about looking out. This is the big error of the western church, in my opinion, it is the same error that the nation of Israel made, that in many ways resulted in the Kingdom being taken from them and given to others (I can't be bothered proving this right now - maybe some other time). But if the church is not looking out it is not doing its job. Likewise, if an individual Christian is not looking out he is not doing his job either. I could keep going on about this, discuss different models of church; centripetal verses centrifugal and really get stuck into the nitty gritty of it all - it actually is a topic I am very passionate about...

But the point is, that even with my passion, I got sucked into an inward focused mindset (centripetal - sucked in - its a pun! -get it? - geeze I'm a nerd!!). And God has begun doing a job on me, shifting my focus back outwards, back onto the wider community of Noble Park. I have begun to purposefully walk the streets of this community, firstly in the morning I go for a prayer walk, visit all of the major community centers within walking distance, praying and seeking God as I go along - there is not much ministry going on here, as there are not that many people out and about at 6am, but this is laying the ground work on a spiritual level, and allowing God to increase my passion for this neighborhood. I also intentionally walk places as much as possible to get to know the people out and about. Time permitting (and I feel I need to make a conscious effort to make more time for this) I will also go for a walk around the community at times that people are more likely to be around, becoming more familiar with the people and places of NP, and looking to build entry level relationships with the people I meet.

Burmese Outing 2 - Electric Boogaloo

Well, there really were no flash dance related activities on our second Burmese outing, it just sounds like such a great title for a sequel I had to resurrect it...

Our outing this time around was to have a bit of a tour of the wonderful city of Me!bourne (the advertising is obviously getting to me!) . We had about 50 Burmese coming along on our trip with us again this time round - so obviously these guys enjoy our company, and we just toured around the city walking down southbank; seeing the buskers (with mixed reactions from our Burmese friends) hanging out by the crystal clear waters of the Yarra River, having a delicious lunch of Burmese curry, jam packed full of tripe and liver and other stuff I could not identify! (yum yum! - my missions training is really paying off!). We also took a tour around the city on the Melbourne circle tram to see all the sights.

It was a great day of building relationships with these people, Jacob made a bit of a friendship with a 12 year old boy named Cubby, and Sam as usual was adopted straight away and was being looked after and fed all day long (which did pose a bit of a problem when it came to the offal curry!).

People were quite eager to pose for photos with members of the team as well as getting group photos with the Melbourne skyline behind them. It was great when we arrived back at springvale station to have everyone thank us for a fun day out and shake our hands - I think we are really making inroads into this community.

Peter

Learning lessons

I think sometimes we can be a bit elitist when we move into a ministry position, particularly missions based ones. We do have this mindset so caricatured by so many Hollywood movies of the all knowing Man of God, here to save the savage, uneducated heathens. I'm not suggesting that our view of things is this extreme, however, we can still come to our mission field thinking that we have the answers. No matter how much we loathe the idea of being typecast into this sort of missionary, I think that we still have that outlook buried deep in our psyche somewhere.

For myself, I struggle with the terms mission or missionary, when I apply them to myself (or many others who are doing the same sort of thing around the world), just like I struggle with the term Christian when applying it to myself. In a theoretical sense these terms are fine, but I don't like taking them on myself because of the stigma attached. The sigma suggests arrogance, it holds values of colonialism, brashness, stubbornness, pride, greed, arrogance etc. We have to admit that this caricature does not hold up well against what the bible calls a Christian to be (as opposed to the caricature of a Christian, which is another matter all together),certainly they are values that I do not hold to or are trying to eradicate from my life (stubbornness is a big problem for me).

But having said all of that I feel I probably did come to this new ministry with a sense of arrogance. Not blatant "I am the centre of the Universe" type arrogance, but I did have some element of arrogance, I thought that I would come in, I would befriend people, I would make a difference in their lives, I would be doing a good work!!

The reality has been quite different however - I should have remembered my days back in Sri-Lanka, when I was too wet behind the ears to have this sort of opinion of myself. The stuff that I learnt there was amazing. Above all, in Sri Lanka I learnt the truth behind a God who has a bias towards the poor and marginalised (though it took me quite a few years to be able to articulate this lesson), I learnt the glory of worship done in church through a cheap casio and beaten up old acoustic guitar, I saw the love in genuine community as people of humble standing in life supported and cared for one another. Coming to Noble Park however I didn't think that I would be learning such lessons. I don't know why I felt this way, it was probably because the move was not such a major cultural change, I kind of felt that these people were still aussies; even if they did come from different socio-economic backgrounds and in some cases different countries to me, I thought that we would still hold a similar world view.

But that is not the case, sure these people are a bit rough around the edges and have a long way to go in their own journeys with the Lord (as we all do), but the Lord has instilled in them some amazing truths, stuff that people from richer middle class backgrounds are missing, and often yearning for.

One of the most precious values that they have here, is the willingness to take people as they are. There is no need to keep up false appearances here. Sure there are arguments, gossip and people hurting each other just like in other Christian communities, (though they are more up front than in most other communities that I have been in - but that is probably a good thing too). All the people here have failed or are imperfect or broken in some way. They cannot hide this side of who they are, so they don't even try, I wont say there are no masks, because I know there are, however, the masks are different. These people are not trying to live up to some clonesque concept of what a perfect Christian living in victory should be. Nor are they expecting me to live up to this sort of value.

For me, I have become more comfortable in my disability in this community that I ever had in my life. For those of you who don't know me too well, I suffer from a mild form of cerebral palsy that affects the right side of my body. The Lord has done some amazing things in my life in regards to my disability, but the fact remains that he has not completely removed it from my life (I have seen improvement, I would say I am at least 90% better than when I was a child). This sort of disability is looked down on in the middle class church and society as a whole. For many Christians it is a sign of a lack of faith, or God's judgment, or sin in your life or some other horrible thing like that. As a result I can tell my testimony of the Lords healing in my life, and celebrate in the fact that He has helped me forgive those who teased me through my childhood, I can even say that I believe that the Lord has kept the disability in my life as a reminder of his authority & power as well as to keep me humble (and I strongly do believe these things), and everyone will be touched and praise the Lord with me.

But I still needed to hide the fact that I have a disability otherwise the illusion comes crashing down, all of a sudden it is not so worthy a story to praise the Lord for. So I have to hide, I don't dance, I don't play sports, because these things make it obvious that I am not quite right. But here, in this community I am surrounded by others that are not quite right, and in many ways some of them are less right that I am. Now, I find myself free to kick a ball around, I find myself free to dance with my wife. Friends in the community are calling me to play in a cricket competition with them, even though they know I am not the best sportsman in the world, in fact, I think they actually enjoy that fact. Unfortunately I cannot make it to the competition due to other commitments, but my friends rib me about it, and I enjoy it. I don't have to hide. I can be me.

Thanks Lord!

Peter

Finally an Update

Forgive me bloggers for I have sinned... it has been over 2 weeks since my last blog entry..

We have just gotten to the end of the school holidays, and what a mad time it has been... Mad, but Fun! Between women's retreats, men's retreats, Family retreats, extra kids for the holidays, A Burmese outing to Phillip Island & a huge grand final party, we have not had much time to think, let alone blog...

We were privileged to get the use of a house in the middle of farmland in Pakenham over the school holidays, first off the women of Noble Park got a chance to get away for 3 days, there was lots of eating and girlie talk (which is about all women do when they get together) . After this our family got to go away for a couple of days with a couple of the boys from the neighbourhood. The boys kept themselves entertained quite well, and so Naomi & I got some real relaxation time and got to watch a few DVDs along the way!
Once that was done, The guys got a chance to go for a couple of days, We got to spend a bit of time in bible study, but mostly it was about kicking a footy (yes Steve even me!) playing basketball and fishing.

We also got to spend the day up there this past Saturday for the grand Final (yes Steve I even watched a lot of it!). There was a massive crowd of us and we had a BBQ and played on the Trilampoline (spelt this way on purpose - its a Simpsons thing) - well it was probably more like wrestling...



Then today we got the privilege of taking around 40 Burmese immigrants on a day trip to the giant worm and Phillip Island, this was a great opportunity for these people to have a day out and see a side of Australia that they have probably not seen yet, they got to feed some kangaroos, pat a wombat & koala, play on the beach (even try to drink some sea water) and see some awesome sights it was a great day and a great opportunity to connect even though they all had little or no English.

So, now we are exhausted, and are looking forward to the kids going back to school so that life can get back to the usual hectic rush (as opposed to the madder than ever hectic rush of the last 2 weeks)...

Peter