ONE REFLECTION FROM ORIGINS '09

In the last address that Erwin McManus gave, we heard him talking about the "three places" Christ followers go, or can go. Telling us his basis for his address about places, Erwin read from the book of Acts chapter 9 about Paul's experience of relating to other Jewish and non-Jewish people in the city of Corinth.

The first place Paul was in was the Syngagogue (related today to the gathering place of Christ followers, namely the Church). His second place was the Market Square, the public space where people met and ideas were exchanged. Today it might be a pub, the beach or the coffee shop. His third place was when he was invited "led by the hand" to the meeting place of the philosophers so that they could hear more about Paul's strange teaching. Today this third place is the party, the dinner celebration or club where you need an "invite" to go.

In our 'Church without walls' ministry that we are starting, we have no first place in contrast to most Christians who only serve in the Church (the first place). Our second place is Centrepoint and other places like the Choir, Hiking group or Film/Interest group we start/join in. We spend most of our ministry in this second place.

We have been privileged to be invited to third places on a fairly regular basis. Often we are two among several invitees. We are not necessarily the Paul as shown in Acts 9, but we have some opportunity to share more deeply with people.

Where do you "hang out" in your ministry? All Christ followers are in ministry/service? Where do you have most of your in-depth conversations? Are they with fellow followers of Christ, or with those who are not yet followers of Christ?

We would love to hear your responses to this! Please leave a comment.

In the cause of Christ,
Roger

UPDATE ON MOSAIC ORIGINS CONFERENCE - GERMANY 2009

Mosaic Origins 2009 met at Eimeldingen, Germany with Erwin McManus and many of his team coming to encourage Christians who gathered together from all over Europe for this conference. The conference was in English with German and French translation. Approximately 300 people attended the conference.

It began at 9.30am on Thurs. 8 January and concluded at 5pm Saturday.
Erwin's first talk was entitled "Momentum" (Mosaic story).
Second session was Ethos - 5 Core Values (see below)
Synergy
Narrative - Apostolic Ethos

The 2 other speakers were Naeem Fazal on "Essentials of Transformational Growth"
Eric Bryant "Organizing for Innovation"

There were 6 Breakout sessions held during the conference. They were:

1. Wind - Commission
Mission is why the Church exists. "People matter most"

2. Water - Community
Love is the context of all mission "Love permeates everything"

3. Wood - Connection
Structure must always submit to Spirit "Passion fuels action"

4. Fire - Communion
Relevance to culture is not optional "Relevance communicates truth"

5. Earth - Character
Creativity is the natural result of spirituality "Character creates change"

As you can imagine, the conference was fairly full on with much to take in, process, learn. It was great to catch up with so many like minded people and we found this a great encouragement.

I've given the 'bones' of the conference and hopefully tomorrow Roger will write more in detail about what we got out of the conference.

The Bloors

Geoff, Ann and Claire Bloor arrived on Sunday 11 January and have been staying in Loerrach. They are visiting in this area for 2 weeks. It has been great to share our time with them over meals, showing them around Basel, doing a prayer walk together as we look for a location/meeting place in Basel; travelling into France, playing cards on a cold, wet Sunday afternoon. We've had lots of chatting together and they have been a great encouragement to us in our ministry here.

They also came to our German Church FeG Loerrach. Our Youth Pastor David Gut, who is currently only Pastor at the Church, gave the sermon. I think this was a great experience for them.

The Bloors will be in our area until they fly out of Basel on Sunday. Although we have a busier week this week, we plan to catch up for a few meals together and also to take them back into Centrepoint on Friday morning for coffee.

Visitors

We love having visitors from Australia here in our home. It helps us to stay connected and to work on our accent!!

It was wonderful to have Dudley Tann from Adelaide stay with us overnight back at the end of November. We had 24 hours of good chatting!! Dudley brought with him a signed copy of "The Shack" by W Paul Young which we have both enjoyed reading. Dudley was en route to visiting his new grandson in Nice.

Tim and Amy arrived in Schopfheim to a heavy snowfall on 17 December. Amy was very excited to make a snowman (and I can't believe I didn't get a photo!!). It was lots of fun. Amy named him "Crusty" and there is still a little bit of him left in our front garden! We had a wonderful Christmas celebration with Tim and Amy and then on Sat. 27 December we caught the train with them to Colmar in France where they were catching up with Amy's family. We had a special 1 day catch up again in Luzern on 3 January.

Late on Sunday night 11 January Roger's niece Anna arrived by train with her friend Hannah. They were touring around Europe with huge backpacks (oh to be young again - but I still don't think I'd like it!). They stayed a couple of nights and enjoyed a Roast Dinner with us!

A BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY AFTERNOON

I received an email from my lovely German girlfriend Marianne on Friday to find out if we could catch up Sunday afternoon.

Marianne and Wolfram came for afternoon tea and then stayed for soup. Wolfram wanted to discuss the poem "Tyger, Tyger" by William Blake with Roger. We had the most delightful afternoon and covered lots of topics. We do enjoy their friendship. Marianne was one of the first German ladies I met when we arrived here. She lives in a small mountain village about 1/2 drive from Schopfheim.

We had another wonderful opportunity to offer friendship and a listening ear.

God is so good.

Live experience - right place, right time

Following on from "Just Walk Across the Room" I thought I'd tell you this little story.

Yesterday Roger and I had the absolute privilege of going to Luzern with a group of friends from Centrepoint Basel to have a tour of the KKL Cultural Centre. There were 16 of us altogether. Most of us took the train down there.

At this bad economic time for us Aussies living abroad, we wondered whether we should go ahead with this tour, but we had committed ourselves over a month ago and would have had to pay anyway.

I knew everyone on the trip apart from 2 people. One Aussie lady visiting her daughter who has just had a baby and another English lady who has been living in Basel for 20 years.

To save money Roger and I had brought our own lunch with us and we were going to sit in the sun on Lake Luzern and enjoy the surrounds whilst most of the others sat in a stuffy restaurant! We walked with 3 other ladies of which one was the English lady I had never met. Of course the question "why are you here" was asked so I shared with her about 'building' an Christian Community in Basel. Well........my goodness........! Can I say at this point that sometimes we wonder if we are making inroads here, wasting our time, going to slow, etc, etc, etc. Then an experience like this happens and we go ' W O W ' ! ! ! This lady just poured her heart out to me and at the end wondered herself why she had done it! Her husband of 28 years just walked out on her 3 months ago and she was totally devastated! But things are happening in her life, she is finding herself again, making good decisions and knows people are coming into her life for a reasons.

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

It's that easy - or that hard, whichever way we want to look at it.

We are both sick so are probably just a little bit down at the moment. Would value your prayers for us both for a quick and full recovery (it's been too long). Coughs are bad.

"JUST WALK ACROSS THE ROOM"

"Just Walk Across the Room" by Bill Hybels

Simple steps pointing people to faith

Bill Hybels the well known American pastor has written this book that answers this question; What if redirecting a person’s forever really is as simple as walking across a room? This book opens with a story of Bill finding himself opposite a person at a luncheon who started up a conversation and agreed to talk later at another break in the conference they were attending. This person Bill discovered was of another faith and could have been easily avoided but Bill took the opportunity to talk with him. You need to read the book to find what happened!

There are many good stories in this book that show that you just need to be noticing people around you and use the natural circumstances to start a conversation. It can be as easy as two men saying hello to each other when they see each other taking out the garbage bins.
Many people are just longing for someone to take an interest in them. Bill shows us who these people are: for example; two fathers standing together watching their kids play football, saying hello to a waiter in a café or helping an old lady enter a shopping centre.

But this book has more than good stories, it also has practical and easy tools that any of us can use to make our conversations with people more effective. Hybels also tells us how to make our own story concise and effective.

This is also a plea to make evangelism a way of normal living rather than a program to take to people. What it means to care about others and as Hybels says to live in 3-D relating to others and asking the Holy Spirit to be with you in your conversations. Friendships are essential and the basis of taking the gospel to people.

The book has easy to read short chapters which end with a page of study questions. I heartily commend this book for everyone and especially for home groups.

Roger