What does a business gain by pursuing legal action? Well, money of course. They’re either looking for damages or protecting their profits. In business it all comes down to money. But the decision to sue for damages over a controversial issue is one that has to be very carefully thought out – otherwise the act of suing may cause you more damages than what the act you’re suing for did in the first place.

That’s business though. For a church, should money be the sole driver of the way you conduct yourselves? No! The church is called to reach out to society, to go beyond the walls of the church and proclaim the gospel to the nations.

The church in general (but particularly Hillsong) already has a reputation for wanting money. And like any ministry, money is needed to fund it. But this reputation, in my experience, is part of the reason that non-church goers don’t go to church. Let me put that another way, the way that it should be thought of: because churches have a reputation of wanting money, secular society as a whole ignores Christianity like it’s a cult. Let’s not care that people don’t go to our churches. We should be caring that they are not seeing the truth of the gospel because of the way we are acting!!

What sort of damages could Hillsong sustain from Today Tonight’s “stories”? It could well turn a few more people off church. Others would see it as frivolous reporting and, ignoring it, stick to what they already thought about church. Hillsong may lose a few members, and thus a few extra donations into the offering. But because this is a controversial issue – and I’d say the majority of the members of society are not on Hillsong’s side – litigating against Today Tonight would fuel a storm of criticism against Hillsong and the church in general, resulting in even more and more people turning away from the idea of church.

But remember, church is not the point here. We should not be caring about getting more members in our churches. And many churches don’t. But many churches do. If Hillsong decides to sue, they’ll be showing the rest of the Christian population – and in fact, every single person in this world – that they care more about money (i.e. getting members) than they do about proclaiming the gospel. And because that would put them in direct contradiction to the Bible, it’s a sticky situation.

Hillsong, we’re supposed to be reaching out to society, not turning them against us. As Brennen Manning said, “The greatest single cause of atheism today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny Him with their lifestyle. That’s what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” Don’t cause an unbelieving world to deny Jesus because of the way you conduct business. Imagine what you’d have to answer to on Judgement Day.

Hillsong, please don’t sue, for the love of mankind.

– Hillsong church may sue over Idol vote-rigging claims, The Daily Telegraph, Saturday 13th October 2007

Leslie spoke of God’s will, and how it certainly differs for each and every one of us. Most of us also never carry out his perfect will for our lives, because we simply decide not to – either blatantly or by thinking we’re doing the right thing when we’re really not fully seeking Him. God does work through this though, and still builds a will for our lives despite our non-compliance with the way he would have liked to have had it.

The bulk of Leslie’s talk, however, focussed on God’s general will for our lives. God’s specific will can only be fully uncovered when we start following His general will.

So, what is it?

It’s written throughout the Bible. As someone who grew up in a Christian family, I knew most of this in the back of my mind already. But was I doing it? No. Leslie’s talk gave me the further knowledge and prompting I needed to start trying to do His general will and through that, seek His specific will for me.

Following is a list of verses that I wrote down from the talk:

• 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
• 1 Thessalonians 5:17-22
• 1 Timothy 2:1-4
• 1 Peter 2:13-15
• Matthew 5:44
• Matthew 18:21-22
• Psalm 66:18
• Proverbs 18:19
• Luke 17:1-2
• Malachi 3:8-11

Each of these says something about what God expects each of us to do. Some of it is easy to follow, and some of it isn’t. There’s certainly some things I can put some effort into improving on! If you think God may be wanting to reveal to you more of His specific will for your life, have a read of these verses and see what you can do to follow His general will first.

This morning Korske and I went to Vision Christian Fellowship because I left my stuff there last night, and in the afternoon we ended up just hanging out at our church. Korske decided to do some climbing, so I thought I’d use a photo of that for today (if you know Korske, you’ll know why he did it, and if you don’t know him, well, that’s your loss ).

07/08/2005: Korske climbing the church building

Ok, here we go. This is what we did on Saturday night .

It started with a game of paint tag. We covered the kids’ (and our) backs with butcher’s paper to keep the clothes a bit cleaner, then ran around tagging people on their paper with our paint-covered hands. Once the game finished, the winner was the team with the least amount of tags, or the most amount of tags on other teams (we tagged in our team colours).

Next, we had to run and grab laminated puzzle pieces of our team’s colour out of a bucket of green rice-bubble slime, and put the pieces together then somehow work out what the puzzle was depicting (they were leaders’ faces scanned on the photocopier).

For something a bit cleaner, we then had to pass an orange from underneath our chin to the next team member in line, without using hands – only our chins! Then as soon as we made it through that, we raced onto the next activity, which involved throwing cheetos at the shaving-cream-coverered-face of our fellow team member. We got points for the amount of cheetos that stuck and stayed.

As we headed inside, we aimed to keep the carpet clean from dripping paint, slime, and shaving cream, and we headed to the kitchen for our next two challenges. Each team had a tray of icing sugar, and we had to get from it all the hidden jellybeans, using only our mouths. It was hard to see (and to breathe!) once some people decided to blow on the icing sugar to reveal the whereabouts of the jellybeans.

Next we had to lick nutella off cling-wrap. Both sides of the sheet of cling-wrap were covered in nutella, and whilst one team member cleaned off one side, another team member would clean off the other side. The team with the cleanest cling-wrap got the most points!

Once we all finished that set of games (which were all a race, by the way), we came back outside and lay down on the pavement, ready to play “Can You Hack It?”. In this game, increasingly gooey and unpleasant substances were poured on our faces to try to make us give up and get up and wipe our faces. Each team member that didn’t give up won the team more points. The first substance poured on our faces was good ol’ water, which we had almost no problems with. I, and I’m sure others did to, forgot to hold my nose, and thus the water made it up there. Next we had undiluted lime green cordial, and we found out that it can burn eyes (woops!). Then chocolate topping was smeard over our cheeks and foreheads, followed by some sort of slimey greey concoction. Beaten eggs were next, or oil for those allergic to eggs, and then baked beans. I liked the beans, as I hadn’t had dinner yet and was getting hungry…..

Next was cat food. Yeah. We had a choice between Jellymeat, or Chicken & Liver. I chose Chicken & Liver, and I was glad, because it smelt alot better than the Jellymeat. Finally, we finished with some off milk, and needless to say it didn’t smell that nice.

Amazingly, only three people pulled out.

The teams were very close, all less than about 50 points apart. The yellow team came second – we all live in a yellow submarine! (our team chant)

That was our first youth activity for this year. We’re running them for the high school/college aged people, and it’s led by us mostly university-aged people. In a couple of weeks time, we go to it again and have a giant cook-off. Most likely it’ll be complete with mess, again!

In the last two weeks I’ve been out at the office 9-5 most days, which is something I’m not used to. And most nights I end up going out with friends, and quite often staying out late (a 3.30am finish after spending a few hours at Kambah Adventure Playground was the latest). No wonder I’m tired – and feeling busy!

I could also use the “forgot password” excuse for not posting here much recently. I just had to scour my WordPress files for the database password, log into my hosting control panel to add my current IP address as an allowed host, connect to the database, md5 hash a new password, and stick that in. Hopefully now I’ll remember it .

Another area of my site I’m hoping to update again soon is the photo gallery. After being away for so long, lots of things change, and I have hardly taken any new photos. But in time the snap-happy habit will come back – hopefully (but much to the disappointment of a few close friends). The guitar cords pages will also be populated with new songs – once I get back into playing the guitar more often! (and when I buy new strings, too…..)

Ranting on for too long is just going to make this a boring post, so…. a few weeks ago our youth cell co-ordinator gave us youth leaders a Bible journal – The Aussie Life Journal – with a reading-the-Bible-in-a-year reading plan. I’ve started the plan (albeit a week or so behind) and I’m definitely looking forward to actually getting through the whole Bible in a year! So far it’s fantastic, as it really gives me the motivation I need to read every day. And already I’m starting to see new things unfold, and get an idea of what God may have in store for me later down the track (it’s exciting!).

Last Thursday I attended the Ministry Council meeting at church, and was co-opted as the youth representative for this year. Most people think I’m crazy – but I love meetings, and organising and running things! It gives me more to do, and ensures that I don’t waste my time doing nothing.

My rant for the last 30 minutes is that electronics manufacturers should take into account usability factors when designing their products. I’m referring to the huge power packs that won’t fit next to another plug in a power board, and the speakers without un-pluggable plugs, so you have to weave the speakers through cords and behind desks rather than just a much smaller cord….arghh. It makes rearranging an office alot of work.

And a rant for the last couple of days? Why can’t people realise when a virus is being sent to them, and know not to accept and run it? I have to backup everyone’s data from the main family computer now, and then format it and do the reinstallation job, because of a new MSN virus being run by someone in my family…. This is the virus I’m talking about. Oh yeah, and the computer is filled with spyware and adware and free smileys and IE toolbars and all that too….

As a conclusion to this random, here-there-and-everywhere post, I’m really looking forward to what this year will bring, and am loving it all at the moment (well, except for those rants, but they’re nothing ). The only thing that’s nagging me is that for “some” things I have to wait for God’s timing on them… but it’ll all turn out good in the end!