I remeber Peter Mortlock saying one night in church that he would never ever again take out advertising in the New Zealand herald because of the fact that they printed, in his words "lies about Destiny Church". And surprise surprise, who was on the christmas messages advertising of the New Zealand herald weekend herald. I guess its much harder to hold onto ones convictions when one is offered a free space for advertisements.....

Technically they had offered a few of the major churches words for christmas, however city impacts was the only one that read like an advertisement

Hypocrites

Merry Christmas one and all, may your days be healthy and blesses

Had the first MADD event today. A bunch of us went up the the ranui campground and did a sausage sizzle, lolly scrambles, A Santa who gave out christmas pressies, provided drinks, chips etc.

The Ranui campground could best be desribed as low socio economic. It was an incredibly sad place really, mothers on their owns with three plus kids in a caravan or a small cabin. Ok, so adults have choices about where they will live etc, but what about the kids. They dont get to choose where they grow up. Apparently the place was full of gang members, drug addicts and alcoholics. L said when they were going round knocking, many didnt answer or were very clearly stoned or pissed. The whole experience while it was a touch scary was also very profound specially with mums comming up to thank us, because they werent going to have anything special for Christmas nor were their kids going to have anything amazing for christmas...

It got me thinking to the CIC summer impact. A group of young adults go to a campground over the summer, and basically help out, do summer holiday programes for the kids etc. It sounds all very cool on the surface, however when its a campgroud like Pauanui or one of those, where rich aucklanders vacate to for the summer, how much of an amazing thing is it. I remember feeling awefully disapointed last year when I was told I couldnt go on summer impact. The few hours we spent out at Ranui today, were more impacting that a whole ten days on summer impact could have been, and it was much cooler because it felt like we were meeting a genuine need

"What we do in life echoes in eternity", (Russell Crowe, Gladiator)

Labels: Gladiator, Russell Crowe

This is something I am encountering alot lately, people who have this mistken delusion that they should be praying against occultists and stopping the damage that they do against christians. All I can say is thankyou very much frank peretti, too many people have taken your novels for fact.

People if you want to make a positive difference in the life of someone not following Almighty God, take them into the throneroom of the King, pray that they will be able to encounter God in all his amazingness, pray that they will be able to experiemce the full impact of Gods love, pray that Gods love will flood every area of their life and they will want to know more about God. Pray that hearts of stone will be melted and become hearts of warm living beating flesh.

But dont pray against them, for one thing the deities that they serve, while they may be able to roar and make alot of noise, their power is limited and they are in subjugation to almightly God. Gods promises to protect those who are his are well spelled out in the bible, Psalm 91 for example. For a person who is walking with God, they have nothing to fear from the evil one. Occultists are hurting people, who are looking for the answers in all the wrong places.

If you feel lead to pray, pray they will find God

Labels: Frank Perretti, Pentagram, Psalm 91

The last post I made

The single greatest cause of atheisim in the world today, is christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable. (DC Talk)

I think this is something the christian church needs to get their head around. The world looks at the church and sees them protesting against civil unions bill, the prositution law reform bill. They dont tend to see the groups of christians like M.A.D.D, project awi, even the salvation army who are working tirelessly in their small corner of the world trying to make a difference.

I wonder if some of the megachurches would do better putting their money into these sorts of ministies, than spending it on personalised number plates, election spending, advertising campaigns etc...

Just finished having a chat to my mum and felt the need to post this here

Mum

You drive me absolutley nucking futs at times.
I am convinced that your only purpose on this earth is to confuse, and confuddle
Then something happens and I realise that you are a hurted and broken person
Trying to do the best you can with what life has handed you.
When you were left with three kids and no money
You worked your ass of to ensure that we kids never went without
You did your best to ensure we grew up with good values
And even after all the craizness was over and done with
I found the values that you'd attempted to instill in me so long ago
They were buried, but you had done your job well
With time I was able to find resurrect them and put them back into practice

And now here I stand, 2 years of a degree down, and 2 years to go. Its been a long road and it isnt over yet, but I hold on tight to the values that you gave me, hard working, compassion, commitment

Mum, you drive me nuts, but I love you loads and appreciate that when things were crap and hideous, you didnt give up on me.

After my time at CIC, when I got rid of all my piercings in order to conform to their picture of what a christian looks like.

I'm getting pierced, going to get a nose piercing done

Labels: nose piercings, piercing

To PM and the other Pastors

One day you will have to stand before God and account for the people whose faith you have ship wrecked. You will have to explain why all those people left CIC, never again to darken the doors of a church again and who spent the rest of their lives running from God as a result of your actions.

You may be seeing 10s of people comming to faith each week, however how many more of those people are you missing as they walk out the backdoor fed up with all your bollicks.

Its not a position that I would want to be in

Let me be clear, I am absolutley opposed to abortion. I think its a hideous thing to do to a child that hasnt had the chance to be born yet. I remember S my sister, did a project on abortion when she was a kid. The methods she reported on were salaineinjected into the mothers womb that disolved the foetus, or when they put a vacum cleaner like thing into the mothers womb and suck out the child piece by piece. Yip, the picture is hideous.

And there is many having abortions. In New Zealand in 2005 there were 18,000 abortions. Thats alot of people. So how do we stop this horrible thing happening. As christians, whats the most effective way of stopping abortion. Standing up on TV and going "abortion is murder, and people who abort are murders". Its an effective way to get our faces on the news, whether it stops anyone having an abortion is debatable.

what the church needs to do is get of their proverbial asses, and look at how they can offer practical assistance to these women. Look at what these women need in order to either be able to keep the child, or carry the child to term. They need to walk the walk and stop spouting the inane retoric that changes nothing...

Labels: Abortion

Worked at BS respite yesterday, only four hours, so it was quite nice. We had a full house, but one person left early. Apparently the bed was filled before she left. It seems quite mad that its either a feast or a famine, either the respite beds are in huge demand, and they are booked up before they are empty. Or the respite services are empty or only have a few in. It would be good if there were temporary respote beds that could be called into action whe the need was there and could be left when not needed.

Bishop Brian Tamaki makes the least trusted person in New Zealand. Thats mildly disturbing

Labels: Brian Tamaki, New Zealand

I bought this book when I was still involved in CIC, to this day am not sure why the heck I picked it up, however I did. I read it at the time, and it was a good book, however never made any connections between the groups he wrote about, and CIC. Picked it up today, and read it through again and it was like holey moley.

Authoritarian leadership that is beyond question by ordinary church members, how many times did I hear PM say something and it just went quick in my spirit. How many times was I told that he was ok, and knew what he was talking about.

I remember watching a nation under siege and being completely hacked off by the factual inaccuracies that Brian tamaki managed to cram into the DVD, including infering that the prostitution law reform bill had lead to the emergence of youth prostitutes. For someone who wasnt involved in the social services arena, they may think this was correct, however anyhow, youth prositutes were around along time before the prositution bill was passed. I remeber an article that appeared in the christchurch press exposing youth prostitutes at least six months before the bill was passed. Anyhow, I digress. Remeber sharing my concerns with CJ, and her completely glossing over the fact that Brians DVD was unfactual, ignoring my concerns and then praising him for the work he was doing.

Labels: Brian Tamaki, Churches that abuse, CIC, Ronald M Enroth, youth prostitution

I was beyond gutted,I missed out on a really cheap ticket to the friday night U2 concert. However one of my workmates went, and got some video footage of the show. lol, all that did was make me feel sadder because I'd missed out on going. But never mind

anyhow, Utube now has different clips of both shows for showing. but for Auckland they should have renamed this song no tree hill. Ok, so that was just an incredibly cheesy joke.... Would like to have gone, oh well never mind. Heres hoping I may get a chance later on

For any american readers, no offence, however the second version isnt nearly as cool as the first. I was like 7years old when this was first released. I feel so old

The song is a touch cheesy, however after listening to both versions, the 1984 and the 2004, the latest version doesnt have the same depth. Its got quite a superfical feel to it and rap, arrgggh, why trash a perfecly good song with rap. Ok, so the song was rubbish, however importantly both songs raised money for a very good cause, and which went to starving children in africa



the version from bandaid. Still looks old, look at all the retro clothes they have one

Not sure when this one was shot

this is the last one, however while the money was for a good cause,the song was rubbish. It lacked amoung other things soul and depth

Labels: Bandaid, Bob Geldof, do they know its christmas

I was pondering this one this week

What makes good leadership whether its in the christian world of the seculalr world?

Leaders who are prepared to be open and honest about how they run their ministry, not only to their fellow staff people, but to the people they are there to serve. A leader who is walking in honesty and integrity should have no issues with allowing other people to audit their ministries.

Leaders should also be able to deal with differing opinions without feeling that they are under attack, or accusing the other person of spreadding dissension. A leader should be secure enough in what they believe to be able to deal with the different opinions of others

As someone who works in social services, not only do i have to be accountable to my fellow staff, but I also have to be prepared to be open and accountable to my clients, and their families. I wonder why alot of the time, this is such a hard thing to do within christian ministries. A person makes a false prohecy that has a huge negative impact on peoples lives, they have made a mistake and it simply should be forgotten and shoved under the rug.

Luckily the shift didnt continue in the vein it started out in. Did the sleepover at work yesterday, it was cool, a few extra dollars. Slept ok, watched hotel rwanda on DVD, and made it into bed about midnight.

This morning as I lay in bed contemplating whether or not to get up and have a leisurley showever before starting work, I could have sworn I heard K's voice in the hallway. K is a young lady who I have worked with on occasion, she has prader willi syndrome, in the last week or so, we've been having issues with her knocking on Ms door, and asking to be let in. M being the polite person is is, lets her in. We have managed to get locks on the pantry door, however have been unable to get the fridge lock on.

Anyhow, after thinking I heard Ks voice this morning, I got out of bed, and sure enough there she was heading out the door, with two sandwiches in her hand. Cornered her, and told her to hand over the sandwiches. Then noticed as she was leaving that her foot was bleeding. I asked her what she did and she said that she'd cut it on the roof. It turned out that she had come up the stairs to Ms room and then climbed on to the roof, worked her way round to Js room, banged on his window, and then worked her way back to Ms stairway. The kittens I had were just arrrgggh. I felt that we were incredibly lucky the worst injury that she had was a small cut on her foot. Visions of her splatted on the concrete kept crossing my mind.

Anyhow, the rest of the day was alot better. Got some crepe paper from the warehouse, and made some christmas decorations, hang some in the lounge and in the hallway. It looked pretty cool.

I went to the hairdressers yesterday and got a number six clipper cut. The poor hairdresser got a bit of a fright I think, she kept asking me was I sure? was I really sure? Its kind of funny how people cant handle different and out there ideas, or people that look different. I can imagine the reaction that I would get if I was still at CIC. Girls with clipper cuts dont fufill the nice idea of the perfect christian