Welcome to Tobias Mackay Orr [aka Toby]

From Katherine’s mum, Helen:

[Toby] arrived 11.21pm on Easter Tuesday, 2 hours 20 minutes after arriving at the hospital and just 40 minutes before my birthday but as I was born on Easter Tuesday, and my Mum and my Nana were also born on Easter Tuesday it was a delightful way of keeping up a Carmichael/Taylor/Burns family tradition. He weiged in at 3.220kg (a smidgin over 7lb) and, of course, is such a precious wee man.

From Dan and Katherine:

Thank you so much for your prayers. God is good and He continues to confirm this through showing His love and care through family and friends. Many thanks!

Congratulations Orrs!

If you’re keen to help with providing meals, then get in touch with Erin at erinrobinson82 AT gmail.com.

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.

 …….

This Monk had first gone wrong when it was simply given too much to believe in one day. It was, by mistake, cross-connected to a video recorder that was watching eleven TV channels simultaneously, and this caused it to blow a bank of illogic circuits. The video recorder only had to watch them, of course. It didn’t have to believe them as well. This is why instruction manuals are so important.

So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that thirty-five percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. The man from the Monk shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that the new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-tasking Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating system errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of the old model.

Only eleven days before our first ever church camp.  We’re excited to be joined by Bryson Smith from Dubbo who wrote the book ‘Faith’ - published last year by Matthias Media.  It’s a topic we’re keen to explore together given the huge misunderstandings on the whole question of what it means to trust Jesus as a Christian.

It’s also our desire for the weekend to be a great opportunity for building relationships with incoming students and existing members of Campus Church.  What a great way to start the year.

You can register online through the church website.

Campus Church celebrated her first birthday last week with style.  Twelve months of public meetings on Sunday nights at Ilam School have brought all kinds of encouragements for us as a church.  People are getting converted, increasing numbers are getting involved in serving others and there are dozens of stories of growth and challenge.

To celebrate the occasion, we shared in a huge mudcake.  Agnetha Korevaar the Head Residential Advisor at Bishop Julius Hall blew out the single candle:

As a church we’re really thankful to God for providing for all our needs in the last twelve months and look forward to seeing Campus Church used to care for and challenge a new generation of university students passing through UC.

If you’ve ever been to our website before (or you have just been looking around it), you may have noticed that we have a section where you can download recordings of lot of our talks. Up until today we’ve entitled that section “Sermons”, because, well that was the only type of talk we put up there. But there were two problems: first, that when most people hear the word “sermon” they think of a lengthy and maybe angry speech of disapproval; and second, that we had a lot more audio than just those ’sermons’ that we could put up. So, from today we’ve banished the word “sermon”, and everything is now just known as a talk. With a re-titled section, that has meant we’ve been able to put up a whole lot more material - all of the long talks, most of the short talks, and even a couple of special-event talks. All up it’s just under 34 hours’ worth at the moment. Not too bad for a church that’s only been going for 46 weeks is it?

But the changes haven’t just been to the name and to the content. We’ve tried to make it look nicer and be more useful. You can now email your friends a link to a talk you like directly from our site, and you can make a comment on a talk in much the same way as you could do on the contact cards we have attached to our Sunday-night handouts. And you can do things like filter talks by book, by series, by date, or even by speaker. Our facebook app has duly been updated, and a few bugs fixed. There are lots of things we’d still love to do, but we have more ideas than we have time to do them.

So, give it a whirl, and tell us what you think. We hope it’s an improvement!

Cameron - for the web team

Here’s a conference I wish we could send some people to..shame it’s in Sydney.

I’m encouraged to see Christians committed to working at creative communication.  Of all the groups in our context clamoring for attention, Christians have something to say.  You might be forgiven for missing that judging from the effort and resources we put into the communication process.

They’ve also got a blog on the conference.  There’s some interesting thoughts on Obama’s campaign as an example of clear and persuasive communication.  Be worth reflecting on.

Mark Thompson recently visited Christchurch at the invitation of the Latimer Fellowship in New Zealand.  Latimer Fellowship is an evangelical Anglican body encouraging biblically faithful Anglican churches across New Zealand.

Mark was speaking on the topic of the clarity of Scripture - particularly in response to the commonly expressed sentiment: ‘the Bible’s a complex book, surely no one can claim THE right reading of a passage..’

It’s assertions like that that Mark is addressing in the talk he gave last Sunday.  There were about 20 Campus Church people there - I think they really enjoyed themselves.

The link to the mp3 of the talk is here - it would be great to have a listen when you get a chance.  You can also listen to Mark’s sermon at Campus Church on Revelation 1:1-8 from our talk archive.

Mark also has a book on the topic - A Clear and Present Word.  Looks fantastic.

Blogging -

“Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.”

from despair.com

1.  9/11 represents a clash of ideologies.

I was reflecting on Samuel Huntington’s thesis in ‘The Clash of Civilisations’ (written pre 9/11) - that the next major conflict would be between civilisations rather than the traditional East-West tensions.

I spent 2002-2005 studying theology, which was framed by the events of 2001.  How do Christians understand the ideology that shapes our society?  What aspects of secular western liberal democratic tradition flow out of Christian thought?  Are there aspects that are incompatible?

Oliver O’Donovan’s political theology remains a long term exploration project for me - but he would certainly argue that secular democracy comes out of the framework of the Christian tradition - and can only be understood properly within the context of that tradition.  The version of secularism that sees religion as a contaminant to a church / state separation is significantly flawed.  It stands on top of the intellectual framework inherited from the Christian position yet won’t acknowledge it.  It assumes that all agree that secular democracy is the platform we all stand upon.  Yet what happens if this is not the reality of the world we live in?  What then?

Christians need to think more carefully about these issues if we are not to retreat into isolationism for fear of imposing our values or perhaps worse, engage the political process in a narrow and moralistic way that is highly selective and simply longs for the ‘good old days’ - as if there was a high water mark for Christian culture.

2.  9/11 reminds us that evil exists in this world.

Some worldviews have no category or explanation for evil in this world.  The liberal intelligentsia did not even appear to have the ability to name 9/11 as an act of evil.

Christians who know their Bible expect this world to be a place of evil - evil that infects the hearts of individuals as well as the structures of society and government.

Yet this acknowledgment of evil must not be hijacked for political purposes.  We must be wary of those who would declare evil as something outside of us, beyond us and ‘over there’.  Evil is not something we can declare war on.  This may seem decisive and bold, yet it doesn’t see the depth of the problem.

The Abu Ghraib scandals and the reported abuses at Guantanamo Bay remind us that evil must not be used to justify even worse crimes in the protection of ourselves.  Moreover, it reminds us that evil is not the preserve of our enemies - it dwells in us.  Interrogators found themselves scouring internet sites for techniques to humiliate and to hurt.

The Christian understands something of the depth of the problem and recognises why the cross is required.  Education and financial resources can mask the worst of the problem -  but they can never solve it at depth.  Only the work of Christ can take evil seriously and provide a way forward.

3.  Understand the difference between the responsibility of the Christian and the role of the State.

Romans 12:9-21 is one of the clearest passages in the New Testament on forgiveness and failing to take revenge.  Christians are to bless those who persecute - to bless and not to curse (v14) - something only possible in the light of the mercy show to us in the gospel (12:1ff).

Yet, straight after in chapter 13 is a very clear statement on the responsibility of the state to promote and reward good behaviour and to punish evil - and for Christians to submit to it willingly.  Interestingly it has nothing to do with whether the government is ‘Christian’ or not.  Christians ought to have no problem submitting to pagan rulers - for they know they are ultimately under the authority of God - we see his hand at work.

The difference is the recipient of each command.  We as individuals are not called to judge our neighbour - nor is the state called to turn the other cheek.  That does not mean that the state does not judge with mercy.  Yet it has a responsibility to judge - recognising that the final Judge will return and hold them to account for their provisional judgements.

4.  Remember that God is sovereign in the midst of an evil world.

The Book of Revelation is one of many places that ought to remind us that even when the most terrible things happen in this world, that God remains on his throne.

Of course we will not be able to explain why God allows particularly evil people to prosper.  The suffering of the innocent is not unknown in the pages of Scripture, yet we are not offered simple answers.

We do clearly see the Bible ascribe multiple authorship to a single action - not least in the betrayal of Jesus - which is attributed to Judas, God and the devil.  God is clearly able to weave evil into his plans for the universe without becoming evil himself:

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (Gen 50:20)

Attempts to ‘protect God’ from responsibility for our evil by denying that He is in control of all things, ultimately backfire.  It is a strategy that removes the one comfort that a sufferer has - to know that God remains in control - even when we can’t see how God chooses to use events for our good.  Much more can and should be said, but the strategy is doomed to failure as well as being unfaithful to Scripture.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession — to the praise of his glory.     (Ephesians 1:11-14)

 

God bless,

Nick