Happy Easter everyone!

I didn’t have my heart set on going to church on Good Friday morning, but I’m so glad that I did. It was quite moving to hear the whole of Jesus’ execution story read. I’ve heard it in pieces many times before and have probably read it in its entirety before as well, but some things really stood out this time, for the first time in my mind.

We often talk about Judas’ betrayal, we even refer to people who betray others as ‘Judas’, and it’s easy to hate him. However, rarely talk about what he did after that: he said, “I have sinned, for I have betrayed innocent blood.”, and he threw the money into the temple and hanged himself. How can you hate a man who turned away from his wrong actions so completely?

And when I heard,

[Pilate] took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”

I was astounded! I’m not sure what was behind their desire to kill him: whether it be a general hatred, or whether they really thought it was right (because they thought him a blasphemer), or whether they were just in a mob mentality that they later went on to question and wonder what they had done. Whatever it was, I just think WOW.

Thankfully Jesus’ crucifixion isn’t the end of the story! Read Matthew’s account of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Oh, and you can download the song embedded above, Jesus Lives, for free! I’m not sure for how long, so get it while you can.

The goal

Last year I decided to read the bible in chronological order (i.e., the approximate order that the books are set or written, not canonical order). I was doing well until I had surgery and then I wasn’t really able to read anything while in hospital. Then when I got out and recovered, my routine was completely shot. Well, excuses excuses, I haven’t made much progress since then.

So, I was looking for a simple bible reading plan that I could add to my calendar to encourage me to continue. There are some nice bible reading plans on this ESV Bible site, and they’re available as calendar feeds, but they seem to start on the 1^st of January and I couldn’t find any way to change that. I want to pick up where I left off, or at least start from today.

My solution: CSV file

Google Calendar can import CSV files, so I thought it couldn’t be too hard to make a simple CSV file to import into my calendar. All I needed to do was:

• Find an ordered list of passages to read
• Copy the list into a spreadsheet under a column heading of “Subject”
• In the next column, with a heading of “Start Date”, add the dates on which to read the passages
• Import into Google calendar

Passage break-up

I got my bible reading plan from BiblePlan.org, where you can select to see the whole plan in undated form. I just copied the whole block of text from the web page. I could have pasted it directly into my spreadsheet and it would have populated my Subject column, but I pasted into Coda first to use the wildcard search to remove the day numbering.

Assigning dates

The magic of the dates is that you only need to type in the first two and then you can use autofill to populate the rest of the column. To use autofill (in most spreadsheet applications) select the two sequential date fields, grab the bottom right corner and drag down until you’ve filled as many rows as you need.

There are other columns that you can add to your CSV to import with your reading events. You can view an example in this Google article About CSV files.

Importing to Google Calendar

Finally, I exported my spreadsheet as a CSV file and imported it into Google Calendar (under Settings > Calendar). I added it to a new calendar called “Bible Reading”. I wouldn’t recommend adding it to your main calendar, because it will become harder to isolate all those events and make changes if you want to switch to a different reading plan or change from an all-day event to a timed event, etc.

Further improvements

Now, if I could find out if OliveTree BibleReader has a URL structure with which to open the application on the iPhone, I could add a link to each passage in the description of each event and open each passage straight from my calendar.

I hope someone finds this useful. I hope it ends up being useful for me!

The Website

Last Saturday I attended the launch of Fervr: a website to encourage young Christians to live Christ-centred lives, encourage non-Christians to think about the values of our society, a resource for Christian leaders who are teaching young people, and also a place to connect people with Christian groups in their area.

The Fervr mission:

Using new media to help local communities of Christ proclaim His gospel to the next generation.

The launch was great. It was challenging for us to think through how we connect with people and to think about how we can or should do this in a rapidly evolving society. It was also encouraging to hear about what is planned for the website and what it can be used for.

Fervr went live in November or December last year, but since then it has undergone a massive overhaul of the user interface. You can see the old design in the back of a video of Al Stewart talking about Fervr — it’s the red and orange one. It is still undergoing an overhaul of the underlying structure, which you can read about on the development blog.

The Keynote

Eugene Hor speaking at the Fervr Launch

Eugene Hor spoke about how we can use social media to encourage people towards Christ. He spoke about how a significant proportion of people have established their online presence. They are connected with so many online networks, social circles and interest groups that they spend much more time absorbing information from them than some of their in-the-flesh connections. The fact you’re reading this probably means that’s of no surprise to you, but judging by the speed at which most churches have come to the party you’d think it was a brand new revelation.

Eugene challenged us in how we might encourage people towards Christ-centred living through our interactions with them on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. He gave a few examples of the kinds of things he does, including praying for the points he sees in Facebook status updates, befriending people on Twitter who are doing similar work across the world, and even using tokbox to run a bible study for young fathers who find it difficult to find a time when they can all get out of the house and meet up.

We were also exhorted to declare the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light in our statements and conversations on the internet as well as in our in-person interactions.

I really appreciate the point Eugene made:

The genie is out of the bottle. You can’t go back to a time when things did not exist.

We are already living in a society and world (a good chunk of the world at least) revolving around the internet: it has become essential (or at least the norm) for learning, communications and business. If you want to connect with people, you need to go to where the people are. It is no longer a question of whether your church or group should be on the internet or not, it’s a question of how you are going to be an effective, godly and encouraging voice on the internet and in social networking circles.

The Panel

Fervr Launch Panel (left to right) Nick Hood, Dave Miers, Alison opdeVeigh

Rich Beeston moderated a panel discussing using new media to connect with young people and in ministry.

Members of the panel were Nick Hood from Crusaders, Dave Miers, Alison opdeVeigh, Dave Parker who works at EMI and Dave Symonds a Googler (no one was representing their employers, but speaking from their own experience).

Fervr Launch Panel (left to right) Alison opdeVeigh, Dave Parker, Dave Symonds

Some great points were made:

• You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. You are already creating resources like bible studies, fliers, possibly recording talks, taking photos, recording videos… So use an easy and established tool like Blogger or WordPress and distribute the things you’ve worked so hard on, making it easier for people to access, remember and use. — Dave Miers
• Kids are more honest online. Connect with them on Facebook (or wherever they are) to pray for them and to understand them better, to talk to, teach and encourage them. — Alison
• Consider the medium you will use to connect with young people and facilitate community interactions among them. The medium will determine how things can be moderated, which is important for remaining above reproach and to reassure parents of the transparency of your relationship with their kids. — Nick
• (In response to the question, “Will Google Wave replace Fervr?”) Google Wave connects many modes of communication. It doesn’t need to replace Fervr, but (as shown on a blog with photos and comments in the Google demo) it can enhance it with its transparent integration. — Dave Symonds
• Fresh content brings people back. — Dave Mier
• Music online has evolved so quickly and it took a while for record companies to catch on . They’re working hard to catch up now and people move through music much faster than they used to. It’s important to grasp technologies (that your audience/communities are using) and use them thoughtfully and effectively before they leave us behind. — Dave Parker
• In response to the question, “Do you still need youth groups?”
  Yes. It’s not that youth groups can’t happen online, meeting online is better than not meeting at all, but people want to meet/see/talk to people.
  Online interaction helps foster and build existing relationships. — several of the panel had their say

Rich Beeston (left) asked Dave Symonds (centre) whether Google Wave will replace Fervr

The Cupcakes

Another highlight of the launch was the beautiful cupcakes made by Jordan‘s lovely wife.

Check it out

I have really liked what I’ve seen of Fervr. They publish really thoughtful articles, and the groups are great for publishing photos, videos and articles for your group to see.

As part of generation Y, even though I’m no longer a teen, I find many of the articles on Fervr also challenge me in godly-living. For example, Take a hammer to your downloads, But I don’t know any non-Christians! (okay, so it’s obviously geared to a younger crowd, but it’s a good reminder that not everyone in church is a Christian), and Worship — not about Sundays.

I’d love to know: How are you using new media to encourage people to live Christ-centred lives and glorify the name of Jesus?

I had a brief conversation on Twitter with @niphal today that really echoed in my mind during the event I attended tonight.

niphal “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” http://twurl.nl/j5depe Reactions?
kristarella Reaction: they can advertise atheism if they want, but I’ve never seen a religious advert on a bus, esp. a threatening one. Also ?
niphal yeah me either but I haven’t lived in London :) Maybe they’re ‘out there’ in London?
kristarella I’m sadly skeptical of any religious activity outside Sydney… I think I might be a bible snob. I need to get out more!
niphal I think that could be true! ;)

My faults

I have always been a bit of an intellectual snob. It’s something that has caused discord in my mind and heart. Of course, I have friends that aren’t necessarily brainy, or don’t spend their time being geeky, but I usually connect more with those that are and do.

Often this seeps into my Christian life. In Sydney we have been blessed with amazing opportunities to study and learn; if we really wanted to we could= manage to spend a huge portion of our lives as students and never find a “real job”. Sometimes, in some “Sydney Evangelical” circles, we are in danger of loving God’s word more than we love God. Sometimes we spend more time understanding what it says than putting it into action; although the two are by no means mutually exclusive. Truly understanding God’s word will mean doing it, and our church(es) will be edified because we are of one mind and one spirit.

Fair trade

So back to the event I was at… We had a Tribes & Nations evening where we were able to buy products as well as hear from Grant about the purpose and goals of Tribes & Nations. We also heard from Naomi Reed.

Naomi told us that when she was (almost) a teenager she felt like there was something out of place in her life, like something was missing or wrong. When she heard about the God who loves her and sent his son Jesus to redeem her, she knew that it was true and that the wrong thing in her life was her broken relationship with her creator.

Naomi and her husband went to Nepal as a physiotherapists (a place that in 1993 had 1 physiotherapist to tend to all 20 million people in Nepal). There, they were able to not only help treat people’s physical needs, but their spiritual needs too. As representatives of the living God they were able to love the people of Nepal as whole people.

Naomi worked in the Leprosy hospital. Many of the patients there had been outcast from (even by) their families or villages and had no hope. They had a hole in their life that wasn’t only caused by their disease, and they didn’t have knowledge, money, jobs, science, computers, cameras, iPods, cars… anything to distract them from the truth that Naomi had felt too when she was younger, they were incomplete.

Today, many of them (about 700,000!) know the God who made them and loves them. One Nepali man (who recovered and has a job and place to live) said that he was thankful for the leprosy; he would rather have had leprosy and hear about Jesus than not have leprosy and not hear.

Dichotomy

I live in a world that manages to segregate into a couple of dichotomies: Christian, or not Christian; Jesus Christ alone for salvation, or claiming that you must be baptised/speak in tongues/bear the mark/take the sacraments to be saved.

Tonight I heard about and saw a different world. One where people struggle to produce enough food for the year, where they don’t receive medical treatment, where they grow up to appease gods of destruction, gods of fear, gods of stone. Yet, a world in which God works to bring people to him, to heal their spirits and give them peace in physical, political and other kinds of unrest.

I can’t pretend that my struggles are going to just disappear. I can’t say that I won’t still question whether I can call certain people brothers and sisters. I can’t say that I won’t get angry the next time I hear someone twist the words of the bible. I hope that I can say that I will remember that God works. He works across the whole world, not just in my intellectual bubble. I hope that I will remember that he gives us his Spirit to know him and understand his word, and the people who twist that word don’t need my anger, they need my prayers.

God works.

At bible study a few weeks ago we were finishing looking at 2 Timothy. We were having some solo time to go over the book and see what we could summarise from it. Sadly, I missed about half of the studies from 2 Timothy and only got to the end of chapter 2 when I was summarising.

In order to try to get my head around what chapter 2 was talking about I did some sketches, or doodles.

first share of the crops, no crown w/out playing by the rules, soldier doesn't get entangled

I thought that perhaps verses 3–6,

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.

might somehow relate to verses 11-13,

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself

Soldiers die suffer and may die, denying Christ would really not be playing according the the rules if we wish to inherit eternal life and whether it is us, Christ, the Holy Spirit, who works hard — someone will get the first share of the crops. Whatever those crops are!

I might be way off base with all of that, but I think the main point of 2 Timothy 2 is that we should be prepared to suffer and ready for every good work, that we might be useful to God for the calling of the elect.

Last time I left some questions that were raised during the talks at MYC.

Most of my initial responses were validated by the talks, but I learnt a lot and I think my understanding of the topic was deepened.

What is Worship?

Grimmo (the speaker) asked us to write down what we thought he would spend the week talking about. I wrote,

I am expecting Grimmo to talk about living your life in obedience to God.

It turned out to be pretty close to the mark (mainly because the first MYC I went to, four years ago, was on the same topic). However, the journey is often more important than the destination, or in this case it’s the process of understanding the parts that lead to understanding the whole.

The word “worship”

It turns out that there’s four words in the bible that can be translated as “worship”.

• Liteurgo — priestly service
• Latreuo — to serve (e.g. Acts 7:7)
• Prokuneo — bow or fall down (e.g. Matt 28:9, where the women worship the resurrected Jesus, or Mark 5:6, where the demon possessed man falls before Jesus, but not really in reverence in the way we usually think of worship)
• Sebomai — to fear or stand in awe of (e.g. Acts 17:4, the word devout)

There’s a few things from that list that, I think, aren’t included in most people’s idea of worship:

• Worship can be given to people other than God. For example, Matt 18:26 — the servant falls on his knees and implores his master.
• Worship includes things the priests used to do — yes, sacrifice is worship.
• There is no mention of singing! I’m not saying that these words are never translated in the context of singing, I don’t know enough of the Bible or Greek to say that. However, while the idea of singing praises to God comes up in the Bible a lot, the concept is not represented by any of these “worship” words.

Worship is what you do to treat god as god. It’s not defined by one set of rules, but by who or what it is that you worship. To know what worship is as a Christian, you need to know who the God and father of Jesus Christ is: the creator and sustainer of the world, and the judge.

Failures at worship

The essence of sin is to decide what is good for ourselves rather than listening to what God has said. Not only do we not treat God as God, but because every part of us is stained by sin, we can’t worship God.

Looking at the Old Testament requirements for coming before God (see Leviticus), an enormous amount of blood had to be shed, the temple had to be built to perfection, the priests had to remain pure… Sin is serious, it seriously separates us from God. We can’t just walk up to the holy and righteous God and shake his hand.

We also can’t worship him anyway we want. There seem to be a lot of people who think they have an understanding with God, that they have their own relationship with him that is free from “religious” expectations… they don’t. God has revealed himself through the prophets and now through his Son (Hebrews 1), he actually calls us to worship him his way, not our sinful way.

Perfect worship

I mentioned sacrifice, the temple and priests. These were all given to Israel to worship God. We don’t have them now as they were described then, but we do have all these things in Jesus. He is our sin sacrifice (Hebrews 10:1-10), he is the temple and we are built in him (Ephesians 2), he is our high priest (Hebrews 7).

Jesus death on the cross was the perfect act of worship that we could never achieve. The best way we can worship God is to accept Christ’s worship on our behalf.

Worship into action

The ideas above get to the heart of what worship is, but not necessarily how we do it (beyond accepting Jesus).

I think writing about these things would take up a whole other post, but they include having a heart passionate for worshipping God, listening to God and obeying God (much of which is described in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7).

I was challenged by a lot of things at MYC, the specifics of which I’m not going to mention now, but if you want to ask me about them, or more about what we covered while looking at this topic, please do!

MYC happenings

This year’s Mid Year Conference was on Worship. The whole conference was excellent. I couldn’t help learning a lot, being encouraged and really challenged.

It was actually the same topic as the first MYC I went to four years ago, but there’s always more to learn.

Each day we had seminars, bible studies, electives and a talk. The seminars went through the Old Testament law: the role of the temple, priests and sacrifices in worshipping God, how that relates to Jesus and how we should respond to that. The bible studies were in manuscript discovery style (not exactly the same, but similar to the description by Chris Sommerfield) on the book of Joel. I attended electives on the controversial passages, 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 (which, I think, would not be so controversial if people read them properly in context). The talks were excellent and raised some interesting questions.

Thinking Questions

I’d like to pose some of those questions here before I write about what I learnt this week. If you have any response to them that you care to share, leave a comment.

I guess the obvious one, before the week even started: What is worship?

Not as obvious ones:
Does asking to be worshipped make God unworthy of worship?

Should we be the ones to decide what’s good and evil?

Limericks

One of the tidbits during the week was the writing of limericks. People wrote limericks about the seminars, Joel, and Grimmo (Paul Grimmond) — who we’ve just said goodbye to as the pastor of UniChurch and Chaplain of UNSW.

I wrote a limerick…

Ode to Blood Spilled

Adam and Eve in the garden
Having sinned could receive no pardon
Blood spilled from the beast
Could not perfect in the least
But now Jesus’ blood brings us great freedom

Yeah, I know. Garden, pardon, freedom is not a great rhyme, but the only other rhyming word I had was “harden”… I couldn’t make it fit. There were some much better and more humourous ones, but I didn’t write them down.

Let me know what you think of the questions above. I’ll be writing at least one more post about what I learnt, as well as posting some new haiku.

Easter is good

This time last year I was feeling a little cynical about Easter.

I’m happy to report that I don’t feel cynical or apathetic this year. The best way I can think to explain why is in the words of the song we’ll be performing on Sunday:

Those nails that drove into his hands of freedom
That locked him to the cross of pain he knew
Were crafted by the sins I have committed
The punishment for all that I would do…

And limp his body hung for my salvation
And in a grave so cold they laid his head
But when they did return they found him risen
Returned to life again just as he said

Those bits sound the best when we’re singing too because most of the harmonies are going at once. Yay for meaningful words with sweet music. ;)

Hate is bad

On a slightly related note: there was some odd talk at a meeting yesterday.

Someone suggested we make a Facebook group for our uni society. Then, she mentioned how she’d joined an atheist Facebook group. Even though she is agnostic, it was the only group that hates CBS. Someone else then said that she liked the atheist saying “Adults with imaginary friends are stupid”. Although, she got the quote wrong and it just came at as “[mumble] imaginary friend [mumble]“.

I couldn’t help thinking that it seems unusual, unnatural and sort of pathetic that people join groups to hate. Generally people band together when they have a common, somewhat positive goal (e.g. they like science fiction, they like football, they like God, they fight for life, they fight for rights, they fight for democracy). Sure, there are some obvious cases of mass hating: Ku Klux Klan, Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, Hitler regime… none of these are remembered as good, these people are not remembered as intelligent.

In the comments of a previous post I was told that most atheists don’t feel the need to form groups like this. Personally, I get annoyed when people do awful or stupid things in the name of Jesus, they can make us all seem like fools. Does anyone care that these small groups make atheists look like insensitive fools?

We can’t force people to accept life from Jesus, but at least we can share a four day weekend. ;)

Here’s wishing you all a Merry Christmas! Hope it’s full of joy and peace, not stress and road rage. :P

Check it out: even my phone (using the Everchanging theme) knew it was Christmas! Totally cool. :grin:

I hope that you also get a chance to pay some mind to what Christmas is about. Sometimes I wonder if we should just change the name to December Holiday or Giving and Receiving Day, but as long as it’s still Christmas…

Damn it’s annoying! It is so frustrating when people give you a bad name.

I was researching the previous topic and came across what seems to be a discussion blog. The title, the way to Christ is simple, caught my attention. It turned out to be an impersonal and uninvited summary of how to becoming a Christian… on a blog for atheists.

The verses from the bible used are fairly key ones that are used by lots of people because they’re simple yet comprehensive statements. I even think that what was said in the post was true. However, it’s unacceptable to beat people over the head with it. If they ask you to tell them then go ahead, if you ask to share what you believe and they let – fine. How can you preach on how to be forgiven by God to people who don’t believe there’s a god at all?
It’s pretty amazing and maybe a little small minded to call what Christians say “threats”. If you think of it as something that they believe then to them it’s a fact, not a threat. However, if some low-life is going around sending people violent bible verses that’s a little different.

Adding to the absurdity of the message, it seems to be spam for a “Christian” bookstore. I wonder if they know that people are getting these kind of messages.