culture
social justice
sprirituality
a taste of
liquid
in a nut shell
not quite knowing
exactly what to expect
five Ballaratians
Tab,
Christop, lil Tab, Haydn and
myself
ventured down to Melbourne's nothern suburb of Preston
in the evening we were joined by
Trav as Haydn departed
so in the first session we had
i felt a bit out of it to say the least
see while i am consider myself to be a smart person
i am not an academic type
and don't have a great vocabulary
big words just go straight over my head
and so did the first session
thankfully at the end of that session
one of the oraganisers got up and mentioned
that this might be a problem
this kind of freed up those who were a bit intimidated maybe
like me
to pull up people using big words and get them explained
so in the next session
the workshops
which topic did i choose
incarnation
big word
good thing it was one big word i knew how to explain
pretty well anyways
we talked about how incarnation
is like how Jesus being God
became a man on this earth
and how for us
incarnation is about going into other people's worlds
and being like one of them
in order that God may reveal himself through us
that the opposite of incarnation would be to say
you come out of your world and into ours
but Jesus prayed for our protection
as we are in the world
(
john 17:15)
it is kinda all about how christians
if we were doing overseas mission
would change the way we dress and behave
in order to fit in with and relate to
what ever culture you are in
so the cross cultural mission idea
needs to be also used in our native land
especially since the christian church
has created its own culture
that is very distant to any other culture
that someone in the "real world"
may be apart of
we brought up the question many times
in the incarnation workshop
of how far is too far
like when have you crossed the line of
doing something Jesus wouldn't have
how do you make sure you are
still being Jesus to them
because Jesus may have been accused of being a drunk
but he never was and said not to be
(
luke 7:34 luke 21:34)
i don't know if we ever really answered this question
we didn't end up with enough time to talk about it either
the last thing we talked about with incarnation
was the question
is can everyone be incarnational in some way
i spoke up and said yes
becasue i see that God has all gifted us
with passions
with interests
with abilities
and what ever else
that we can use to be incarnational
in some form of a culture community
like God made me a bit of an athlete
and the ability to play sports
i have a passion for
football
and i can relate to the people in that community
one of my friends likes model airplanes
he can relate to those in the model airplane club
i don't know much about them
the people or the planes but he does
one of my best friends Kelly
she is really good at craft
and does craft stuff
and makes jewerly from beads
she build relationships with other people
who are into bead jewerly
and craft
being Jesus to them in whatever ways she can
i belive we all have something
and some of us even have the ability
to incarnate into a totally different culture
one that you may know nothing of
like if i were to go and join
in a Muslim community
during dinner
pizza that was delivered
Tab, Christop and I
had a good chat with a guy we knew about
but didn't really know well
we invited him
well Christop did
with our agreement
to come eat dinner where we were sitting
he asked us some good questions
that definantly came from wisdom
and prayer
and we needed it
thanks man
after dinner
there were people telling their stories
of their experiments with church
church planting
incarnation
social justice
creating christian community
and emerging churches
that was just awesome
there is this couple
who are incarnating
into a new age community
very cool!
they rock!
that's risky
that's taking love to those the people
the other bit that was great was talking afterwards
meeting
Digger and others
chatting with them
oh and the
blogger list we put up
well Christop put it up and stuff
i just said we should have somewhere to write them
and Christop got to action
lostsa bloggers yay!
