I spent the majority of last week on retreat with college undertaking the third year of the subject "Personal Formation". It was simultaneously completely invigorating and completely draining.

I've written about personal formation and the process before but I'll briefly recap. Basically you are put into a group with about 6 other people (there were 9 in my group this year) and you each have a turn telling your story. Afterwards, the group gives you feedback on connections with your story and theirs, they probe you to understand the forming moments of your life or to provoke you (both good things), and then they give you affirmation and prayer.
After the retreat we all meet formally (about 4 or 5 times during the year) to discuss how life has gone since the last meeting and help each other process any issues.

This year was exactly like the year before, in that it was completely different from the year before. I was challenged by both God and my wife (a most potent combination) to take a sideways look at my life and de-emphasis the BIG experiences of my life and see what flavor God would reveal to me.

My discussion circled around the theme of my last post about being faithful in the small things which turned out to be very insightful to me. It's interesting what you can see in your life if you look beyond the obvious.

In my (secular) employment, we use a financial methodology called "Value At Risk" or "VaR" to determine the overall risk associated with the firms investments in equity markets. (Don't worry if that didn't mean much to you :)  In the VaR methodology you are trying to predict how much a particular stock will rise or fall based on past performance. The problem with this however is there are several large events that happen in the life of a stock that can skew the data. Say you are looking back at the past year and on one particular day the stock went up 500% but every other day it moved up or down around 1%. That 500% isn't the real indicator of the stock, it's the slow and steady 1%.

If your a math nerd (I'm looking at you Andrew) in the VaR model we fit all the years observation onto a log normal distribution and chop the top and bottom 2.5% off (this is the tail). What remains is the story of 95% of the stocks life and what is typically the most indicative of how it reacts.
 
Here is my challenge to you, think about your life and the moments that form and shape you. Now knock out the tail end of the extremes of your life and see if God can show you something new about your character.

Over the past three days I've been attending the Higher conference, which is the annual Churches of Christ NSW Youth Ministry event for training and refreshing youth group leaders and youth pastors.

I have in fact no desire, compulsion (or ability) to be a youth pastor. My 2 years as a youth worker has shown me that it is not my gifting that I should never again entertain the idea :)

So why was I there you ask? No? I'll tell you anyway. I went to learn.

I consider learning as one of the most valuable activities you can apply yourself to. In this case I wanted to learn more about Youth Ministry in general and how best to support any such ministry that may one day be under my responsibility as the leader of a church.

In the past I've had some disagreements with people about the best way a certain ministry should or shouldn't be run. It's a sad thing to say, but sometimes the leadership of a church doesn't have a clue about what a particular ministry needs by way of support and can impose unfair boundaries or unreachable goals because they simple don't get it.

I don't want to be one of those people who simple speak from ignorance or from my own self-importance or my own gut feel on how I think something should run, and I also don't want the wool pulled over my eyes when someone says that to be successful, ministry X needs Y.

When I was first appointed an Elder in my church one of the first things I did was to contact several of ministry leaders and ask "So what do you do and why?" It wasn't for critique of their practices (although an outside set of eyes is often good for that sort of thing), but an exercise that helped me to gain a holistic view of the church I was asked to help lead.

There was a lot of great learning to be had at the conference and a lot that can be applied outside youth ministry. I particularly liked this idea.

 One youth pastor with a rather large youth group in the opening minutes of the night gets everybody to ask three questions of the person beside them. The first two don't matter, they are icebreakers the third question is "Is this your first time here tonight?" He then asks if anyone has a new person next to them and sends someone over with a drink bottle full of lollies, a letter home to the parents about what the youth group is about and a voucher (valid for two weeks) to have a free can of drink or chocolate the next time they come.

It's a great welcome idea, but in a youth group of 500 kids it also makes it easy to spot the new ones (their the ones holding the bottle) and get beside them and tell them about Jesus.

You could easily modify something similar in your church services, and I think it's an exciting idea :)

When I first started studying theology for ministry I had no idea what I would learn. A mentor of mine at the time said that going through college dried him out and nearly burnt him out and told me to be very weary of it all. His fear was that my fresh conversion zeal would be sapped away by constant study as was his.

My experience of study has been quite the opposite, although it's tiring getting all the assessment work completed and trying to balance work, study, ministry and life, I find that I am energized by the company of great minds who have thought deeply and inspire my own deep thoughts.

Study has made parts of Scripture come alive, have new meaning and deliver a depth of meaning that I would have never encountered simply sitting in a pew.

One of those times occurred while reading "Theology for the community of God" which introduced me to the theology of the Trinity, how it works, why it is important and the consequences of having a God who lives in community with Himself.

The textbook brought me back to the fundamental nature of God, God is love.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

John 4:7-21

When we say that God is love we sometimes seem like we are reading a bumper sticker, it's the right next to the "In case of rapture this car will be unmanned" sticker. But what we are conferring is the fundamental cause of the universe, God is love, and out of that love we came.

God is love.

God = love.

John in the passage above says it 6 ways from Sunday that when we love we are showing God to the world. When we speak of love we are speaking of God and the things of God.

In mathematics such as algebra you can substitute certain symbols to mean something else.

For example:

x = a + b

y = 5 * x

Therefore

y = 5 * (a + b)

Think this one through with me.

I'm seeking love = I'm seeking God.

I want to experience love = I want to experience God.

I want to know love = I want to know God.

When we seek love, we seek God.

For some of us this may re-invigorate our relationship with God because we know something about love and so we can start applying this to God. We can look at the hearts of our parents, or the love we have for our children and we get something of a glimpse of what this means with a relationship with our Heavenly Father.

For me it grows in me the desire to grow in holiness in my relationships. To love someone deeply means to impart something of the things of God into their lives. When I seek to serve the lost, the hopeless and the unloved in my community, the people who don't have a job, live on welfare, smell, when I minister to them to show them the things of God what I am really trying to do is show them love.

If I have not loved them then I have not shown them God.

I want to share with you this Scripture from 2 Timothy 2:1-7. This Scripture is the text I'm required to base my message on for my subject on advanced preaching subject techniques.

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.

When I read this I see Paul profiling the life of an emerging pastor. So lets dissect it!

This semester at college I'm studying an advanced preaching subject, it's all about preaching to the post-modern world and understanding what that means as far as traditional preaching styles and their assumptions go.

One thing I have heard in church meetings has been complaints that the people aren't coming in because we're not preaching 'em like we used to. To that they mean either some real fire and brimstone or some Billy Graham style evangelical message. I've started to see the same thinking begin to creep into my church because one of the services is faltering.

It seems to me that when a church finds itself in a state of decline it does what every other organization does, tries to recapture the past. It remembers the good old days when people were stacked to the rafters and the tithes were bountiful. They look back and say, well we used to sing hymns and preach the Word of God (usually a complaint about the style of preaching not the content) and the people flocked in.

Thinking like this is both right and wrong! It's right thinking because it recognizes that people have changed, they have moved address and we need to change along with them. It's wrong thinking to then say, well we'll just move back into the past and people will follow.

An emerging pastor has the responsibility to track down their post-modern sheep and understand their thinking to reach them in a way that both honours God and listens to people.

Interested in that kind of job?

One of my favorite college subjects is one called "Personal Formation". It is 3 years long and works to grow the individual in themselves. It's run as a small group (typically about 8 people) who get together over regular periods during the year to reflect on themselves, life and ministry and how God is forming them. I had my third session this year on Monday and we were introduced to the term, Missionalism. This is the tipping point from being a sucessful leader and drawing yourself into a cult of personality and sucess. And I'm prone for it!

I'm currently working feverously to complete my four assignment on biblical ethics. As I'm completing the reference list for my major assignment about the doctrine of Just War (which I'll post soon) I realize that two of my primary sources are Osama Bin Laden and the CIA.

Never did I expect theological training would take me there :)

I've reached way back into the archives, May 2002, almost before the interwebs were born in a cosmic collision between a rouge datacenter and the sun to bring you this article on the book of Romans.

It explores the reasons for Paul writing the letter as well as Paul's gospel. It was the first article I ever wrote so be nice :)

In my travels around the interwebs I found this cool blog post with a list of biblical Greek terms. Like the author I thought there are some potentially great ministry names in there. I had to give Greek a miss this year although I am busting to learn it properly, there is just too much else going on to add "learn a new language" to the list.

My favorites from the site are probably:

• Ta Tou Theou -  the things of God
• En Kairo Therismou - in time of harvest
• Mathetas Autou - his disciples

Take a look for yourself... http://sphodra.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/whats-in-a-name/

I've been studying one subject for nearly a whole year now. It's called the ministers personal growth and it's about understanding the psychological issues facing pastors as well as their congregations. The culmination of the subject is a thesis length report on your own personal growth as a pastor, the challenges your facing and developing strategies to combat issues like burn out, fatigue and moral failure.

It has been perhaps the best subject I have every studied and I'd commend it to anyone in ministry.

I've been reading and re-reading as well as tweeking the last parts of my thesis to make it as full possible and as I re-read it I'm reminded of the lessons I have learned and have taken on board which have made a huge difference in my life and ministry.

While I'm not going to publish it online, over the next few weeks I'm going to share some of the insights I've learned along the way starting with Triangulation. Bet you can't wait :)