Elevate

Mike Breen's Top Tip

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:36:19 -0700

Click here for a link to my other blog for Mike Breen's top tip.

Mark Seyers on Screenagers and Leadership

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:55:46 -0700

If you follow this link you can read a really short but non the less thought provoking post by Mark Sayers on screenagers and their perspective of leadership.

I've just seen Jesus on the treadmill.....

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:39:42 -0700

Seriously.
There he was, sweating away on the treadmill at my local gym. I had to do a double take, and then check again, but it was definitely, definitely him.
I'm not talking definitely him in the way that that bloke in the film"Notting Hill" thought he had seen Ringo Star, (or maybe Topol) from a distance and then on reflection had come to the conclusion it probably hadn't been him at all.

3 Minutes in

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:13:44 -0700

About 3 minutes in I thought that my heart was going to explode. I knew that it would get worse before it got better.
It's at moments like these that you face a choice: Comfort or glory.
I have to be honest and say that comfort seemed like a hugely attractive option at that moment. No more pain, no more straining, no more agony.

Give A Little Love

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:54:16 -0700

The fact is that I'm always the last to hear everything, so you might already have seen this, but a question struck me as I watched it- what if it was Jesus and not a drink.

I'm a vandal

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:22:19 -0700

Sad, but apparently true.
It all started when I came across a page on Wikipedia which was inaccurate and had an article attached which did not seem to be have any place in a respectable encyclopedia- free and online or not. So I logged in and amended the text and took the article out.
I figured that for an online encyclopedia to be of any use it should at the very lest be both accurate and objective. It was then put back in, so I took it out again. I then got a message telling me in no uncertain terms that I had been reported for vandalizing a page and if I continued to do this I would be blocked.

Confession

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:38:29 -0700

As I got to it I stopped, closed my eyes and cried out to God, asking if in some miraculous way he might shut the shop I was stood in front of.
It wasn't a sex shop pedalling pornography or a new age boutique that offered tarot card reading. It was a Christian bookshop.
Don't get me wrong, I still love Jesus, but as I stood outside and looked in as I had many times before I could not bear it any longer.

Bankrupted

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:30:20 -0700

I suppose that if I am being honest I admire his recklessness. He didn't have a strategy. He spent what he had, sat back and enjoyed the ride. He asked questions when he wasn't sure what to do, made a few smart investments, and then watched the money roll in. In the process he bankrupted me. Not bad for a four and a half year old who only learnt to play Monopoly a week ago.

The Story: re-mix

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:08:03 -0800

My friend and I got talking one evening. It was one of those conversations that awakens the imagination. We got talking about how we might be able to tell The Story in a way that retains its integrity, but is also an expression of worship and mission using the creative arts. I am the first to recognise that it will not be to everyones taste, but hope that it in some way points to the one we are expressing our worship to, and that it might whet the appetites of those unfamiliar with The Story.

re-mix

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:04:37 -0800

Maybe it's because I came across Greg Laswell's cover version of the classic "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" this week. I knew I had heard it before, it was just that it sounded so different, so haunting. The sense of 1980's abandon and confidence re-interpreted with a Gen Y sense of angst.
The same song re-mixed for a different generation. It got me thinking about church. How do we re-mix it for this generation? I'm not talking about throwing orthodox doctrine out of the window and re-interpreting it so that it becomes more in line with where the culture is, I'm thinking more about how we re-mix what we do. Re-mixing the song for a generation who are increasingly biblically illiterate.

The Etching

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:21:22 -0800

At the time I simply thought that it was a rather sweet thing to do, but as I thought about it more I was struck by the beauty and generosity of it. And the more I thought about it, the more I found myself challenged by it. (Rewind to December '07...) I don't really remember much about the rest of the day, or that week actually, but I do remember that Miles and Sarah had come up to visit with the children. I'm sure that we had fun- we always do when we get together.

Pete Greig is a top bloke

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:04:41 -0800

If he had known the kind of person that I am he probably would have politely asked to be moved to a different row of chalets. The thing is that I love asking people questions. Loads of questions. All the time. My friend Justin put it a little better: "if you are a football coach for some small club on the outskirts of somewhere and meet a premiership manager you would want to get all the tips you could." It was kind of like that. Every opportunity I got I would ask him something else. The amazing thing was that he was so generous. Not just to me, but my friends as well.It wasn't just a one off chat- he sat up till nearly two in the morning hanging out with us- and answering a lot of questions. Like a mass of them. He hung out with all of us for the best part of four days. Sat and had coffee outside our chalets with us, talked about football as well as God, told some funny stories, encouraged us, let us get to know him.

St. Saviour's, 6pm Sunday 18th November....

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 05:11:19 -0800

Sandy Millar speaking on Matthew 21:28-32 from the middle of the church, surrounded by 70 or so young people. One word. Awesome.

the son's story

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:13:54 -0800

I don’t know if I ever told you about the time my Father ran.

Forgive me, I'm getting ahead of myself....

It’s probably worth me starting the story from the beginning.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like being on my Father's estate, it was just that, well, I thought that maybe there was more out there than there was at home. I’d heard about the city and thought if I went there maybe I would find what I was looking for.
So I went and spoke to my Father.

“Father, give me my share of the estate.”

Looking back now I realize how callous it must have sounded. It was kind of like saying, “You’re going to die at some point, and when you do I’ll get my share of your estate, so why not just let me have it now?”

He looked sad, but he agreed.

Within a few days I had turned the assets into cash- that’s a polite way of saying that I had sold off my share of the estate- I knew that I wasn’t actually allowed to do that, but I figured where I was going I was going to need all the cash that I could get my hands on.

And then I was gone.

It didn’t take me long to make new friends in the city. We’d meet and go and hang out. Maybe party a little. I don’t really remember when, but eventually that was all we did. At first I felt bad spending the money on partying, but then, well, I was having such a good time.

Looking back I did a lot of things that I am ashamed of now. Occasionally I would feel a pang of guilt. But I would tell myself that it wasn’t as if I was hurting anyone.
And then, before I knew it, the money was all gone. All of it. The whole lot. I had spent all of the money I made from my Fathers estate.

And I was alone.

The famine that hit later on in the year was much worse than anyone anticipated. Friends didn’t return my calls and suddenly I was in the city on my own. No money, no friends and out of options.
Eventually I managed to persuade someone to give me a job.

Feeding pigs.

You have no idea how humiliating that was. I had arrived in the city with big plans and an even larger wallet. And there I was, feeding pigs. It was kind of the ultimate insult. A respectable Jew like me feeding animals that were deemed to be unclean.More than that, no-one actually gave me any food to eat myself.

I don’t know if you have ever been so hungry that even if you were offered dog food you’d be up for it, but that was how hungry I was.

I kept thinking about my Father. Of how I had told him that I was going to go to the city and make something of myself. I thought about how disappointed he would be if he could see me there, having blown everything he had given me.

And I missed him.

I guess it’s only when you have lost everything that you realize how much you had. I thought of the people who worked for him. They were well looked after, they were well fed.
So I decided to go home.

I’d love to say that the decision to go home was motivated by, well, pretty much anything other than the fact that the servants who worked at my Fathers estate were treated better.
Maybe if I went home and said I was sorry he might let me work as a servant on the estate.

Maybe.

I spent the journey back home thinking about what I would say to him. I had this whole speech prepared. That was assuming that he would see me at all. I had blown everything that he had given me, I knew that word would probably have got back to him. He would be totally within his rights to slap me across the face, tell me that I was no longer his son, and send me packing. But by that stage anything was worth a try.The closer I got to home, the faster I could her my heart beating, until finally as I got to the gate I thought it was going to explode.

And that’s when I saw him.

That’s when I saw my father run.

Where I come from, men don’t run. It is deeply undignified. They do not show emotion publicly.

And yet my Father was running.

Tears were in his eyes. He grabbed me and held me tight.

“Father I have sinned against heaven and against you”

He didn’t give me the chance to finish.

“My son, my son. You’re home.” he kept saying.

It all happened so fast.

The family ring back on my finger. My fathers best robe . Shoes for my feet-something no servant would be given . The fattened calf that was meant to be saved for an honored guest.

And a celebration.

“My son, my son, you’re home” He kept saying to me, “You were dead, and now you are alive. You were lost, but now you are home again.”

And I was.

I was home.

Jesus told people my story to show what God is really like.

You see, I think we get God wrong sometimes. When we mess up we think of him as this stren school teacher dressed in tweed sitting in a cold classroom shaking his head disapprovingly and telling us how we have let ourselves down. How he is very disappointed and expected better of us.

But he isn’t like that at all.

He is the father who forgives, who welcomes us home.

He is the Father who runs.

(C) Copyright Bill Cahusac 2007 All Rights Reserved.

Having a Coke?

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:24:47 -0800

I probably told you that I love Coca-Cola. The good news is that now I can get a "healthy version".....