Easter

I was searching throught some hymn lyrics online when I found this site, entitled Ivylyn and Paulina’s Pentecostal Choruses, and the whole page was stuff like this:

I am so happy, I am so free;
Jesus brought me out of darkness
Into marvellous light;
Oh what a great change in me.
255 l%r heart is overflowing with joy,
Sometimes I feel like sit down and cry,
But it is better to pray than to sit down
and cry;
~ heart is overflowing with joy.
ZA
I
c,'~. -'£
I 1 ii
Not I, not I, but the Christ of God
that liveth in me.
257 Saints dont stop praying, for the Lord is
nigh;

and at first I thought it was like a browser problem, or some other thing to do with computers, but then I thought, Pentecostal Choruses.. hmm, its probably their way of typing out someone singing in tongues.


This is what I've been doing over Easter.. Playing lots and lots of Hearts:


The most incredible game ever.. I thought I'd be able to get a perfect game, but that backfired; but still, shooting 3 times in a row is pretty good.

I'm feeling pretty guilty that I didnt go to Houseparty, because I stayed at home to work, and I havent started any of that yet. Hopefully I will start tomorrow.

And on Friday, I went to the Cathedral for the Cathedral Easter Convention. There were 2 talks by Phillip Jensen and John Woodhouse on The Judgements of God and the Grace of God.

I thought Phillip's talk on the Judgements of God was particularly good; one of the things he said was that judgement is both corporate and individual. On the one hand, Ezekiel18:20 says "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son." But on the other hand, judgement also falls corporately because we are together in Adam. Corporate judgement can be seen in the Church. As a member of the Anglican Church, I will share in any good or bad that falls on the Church. When an Anglican priest abuses a kid, fellow Anglicans will be criticised and disliked, even though we did nothing wrong personally. Similarly for the shareholders of Thomas Hardy, they were willing to share the profits when they were killing their employees with asbestoes, but now they refuse to take responsibility, saying that they werent personally guilty. But you cant say that; you were happy to share in the profits; you have to take responsibility too. Even if you didnt do anything wrong. I think this is useful in addressing the tsunami; which is what the talk was meant to be about; there is an individual judgement for all of us on judgement day, but also, because we are part of humanity, even Christians are under this corporate judgement (although this judgement is not eternal).


And just randomly, this is my food for these few days..

depressed; and random thoughts on music

I've been really tired and a bit depressed lately, I'm being with all my work and I feel overwhelmed with my work and ministry. It must sound really stupid, because I am so lazy and do so little work, but I've always been easily stressed, and now I'm back to biting my nails, having a bit of trouble breathing, and having lots of nightmares where I get killed. Now that I'm living just with my brother, things are even worse. At times I just feel like I want to lock myself into my room and not see him at all. So I stay in my room all day except when I need food, or am going out. I wish I could get on with him, but he is making feel very much like I want to move out and live by myself.

Last week, I was meant to be leading a faculty group for the first time but then I felt really really depressed, and that made me feel like I was really sinful, and that made me feel like I'm not really mature enough to lead a bible study group. So in the end I got Pete Lim to lead for me for the first few weeks. I dont know if I should lead this week or ask him to do it again. I spent a while last night reading through Ephesians 1:1-14, trying to figure out how Paul could have such bad grammar, particularly around verse 7-10, which feels like the longest and most complicated sentence I've ever seen. So I've sort of prepared a study around this massive, but it seems so hard, so many questions I can't answer, and also considering the ESV and the NIV is so different here, what am I suppose to do with the people who use NIVs?

My SOTE (no way I'm calling it TABS) group at church is going quite well, though our first study was too long (went from 7:30 - 10ish). That was partly because we had 2 very new Christians so we need to explain a lot of basic stuff. By the time we worked through all the meanings, functions, benefits of Fearing the Lord, we were all too tired to think about application, how it related to Jesus, and what do we do with passages that say fearing the lord will give us money; Proverbs 22:4. I wish there was at least some attempt to comment on it, instead of just saying, oh, fearing the Lord will give us "riches and honor and life". Oh ok, thats good, next question. But the two new Christians are going really well; really good to see that keen people do exist, by God's grace.


Just a random thought on church music; church music is not about entertainment. If we wanted entertainment, we would go to a concert. Church music leaders should not be drawing attention to themselves and have people say how great their singing is, and how beautifully they sing. When preachers draw attention to themselves, and have people say, he is such a great preacher, he has drawn attention away from God. The faithful preacher will cause people to say that God is great, and not even care who the preacher is. Similarly for music leaders. When they draw attention to themselves and show off their musical ability, you will not help people look at God.

I'm not saying church should be boring, but it is the Word of God that draws people in (or pushes them away), not entertaining music or entertaining sermons. Nor am I saying you cant sing well, its good to sing well, but dont show it off. The music leader is leading people through the song, not trying to sing higher than everyone, or so loudly that no one can hear themselves sing. That was a big problem at NTE and at some churches, where the music is so loud that you might as well not sing at all, because if you cant hear yourself, how can you "[address] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs"?

No I am not criticising any music team, let alone the music team at CCC, though clearly no music team is perfect and I am stating what I believe to be what the bible is saying. I am, however, willing to say, I am criticising Hillsong, which teaches and practises things contrary to the bible. And I can criticise other churches, shock horror; much of the Anglican Church in England is clearly heretical. Anyone who has ever gone into the cathedrals in London, or stayed for a bit of "worship" will know that. How can anyone say I cant criticise them just because they claim to be Christian. And even if they are Christian, we should be willing to scrutinise each other, to make sure that we are doctrinally correct. If anyone suspects that Sydney Anglicans are wrong on infant baptism, how unloving for them to not bring it up. And if they brought it up, would you expect us to say,

How can you attack us?
Oh that is so unloving.

I must forward your email to our public relations department.

not divinely inspired..?

Yes, this is my blog, the one that Peter Ko spoke of on Friday night, the blog that he attacked as not being divinely inspired, not God breathed. My papal delusions are now gone. Thanks for the clarification.

I dont know why I'm always blogging about stuff from weeks ago; but 3 weeks ago after I came back from HK, I went to Kick On, O Day, and O Week mission. I was glad that a lot of people managed to turn up to Kick On despite the apparent high cost. Evidently, only the rich Asians had problems with the cost; the rest of us manage to turn up and pay.

O week went pretty well, I thought; although the turnout to the bible talks were quite bad (less than 5 first yrs for each of the 4 talks). This will probably be ditched next year. But the BBQ was great, conversations were taking place, and contacts were made. One disappointing thing was that people didnt manage to turn up every day. Yes, it was tiring, but by Wednesday, so many people failed to turn up that we had to ditch our carefully crafted "ministry teams" system. By Thursday, everyone was just standing around the main walkway while jobs like postering, prayer, walk up, leafletting were all being neglected to varying degrees. Next year I will be more realistic. While almost 100 registered, only some days we had less than 30. But overall the organisation was done well from what I could see.

Personally, I got a lot out of it; I got to do some walk up with an MTSer, and we spoke to this Brazilian guy who had the weirdest beliefs in things like reincarnation and "the force" kind of stuff. It took an hour before we sort through all of that and presented the gospel to him through 2wtl. But he couldnt get away from his doubting of any kind of knowledge, so we couldnt get anyway. Whenever his non sensical beliefs became obviously contradictory, he just said, well, I am not saying this is the only possible truth, etc..

I also got to have a few conversations with people at the BBQ queues. Two Jews I was talking to were in a rush, and I told them to join the queue anyway. And I said it'd only be around 5 minutes. They said, if they got food within 5 minutes, they'd become Christians. 5 minutes later, we still werent close. I said, surely, in 5 minutes, you'll get your food. They said, if you dont get our food in 5 minutes, you have to become a Jew. Sure enough, 5 minutes later, we were still 5 minutes away from getting food.
Also talked to a few Chinese guys. I didnt think I could speak mandarin; but evidently I can when I needed to.. I couldnt explain the gospel, but I could just hold a half decent conversation.

O Week mission helped me affirm my theological understanding that evangelism isnt about conversion. The end purpose of my evangelism is not to convert someone, but simply to preach the message faithfully. No one was converted by my walk up, and I'm sure I'd rejoice if someone did become a Christian through me, but I dont think I failed just because I didnt convert anyone.

There were lots of cults and false teachers at O week. The Sufi's ran a BBQ in competition to CBS, but they charged 2$ per person, so we got most of the people. Apparently the Sufi's is some mutant strand of Islam. There was a group called UNSW Christian Students that handed out a pamplet called the Purpose of Man, which was on how we were created like a glove so that God could live in us. There were the Hillsongers who decided that gambling is not a sin by running a raffle with a PS2 as the prize. Falun Gong also had a stall, and I found out someone I know is now the head of the UNSW division.

Last week I went to MKC, which was on work. It was good, except it wasnt really for students, so the things they covered is different to say Club 5, which is more useful for someone like me. The 2 lingering questions I had afterwards was:
1/ is there an intrinsic value to secular work? that is, in our secular work, is it all in vain, or are in expanding the Kingdom in some small way. Vaughan Roberts seem to suggest that from the creation picture of work, we are doing something of value in secular work (though not of as great value as "saving work"),
2/ how do I not hate my job? Over the weekend they spoke against people like me who look forward all day til the end of the working day, and til the end of the week, etc. Because we are made to work, we as humans should be working, even if we dont need the money. But if your work is totally boring and meaningless, how can I not hate my job?

And finally I get to today. Today I went to SCCCA training day, on "career". It was quite useful, and Ying helped me greatly to appreciate how our faith in Christ means that we have freedom in our work. We are free to say to our boss, no, I wont do over time so that I can spend more time with my family, because I have a bigger boss than you.

In the afternoon, I went to a seminar called "Needs in Chinese Churches in Sydney and Beyond" or something. It was quite interesting. The speaker didnt know what we expected him to say, so we just talked about general stuff. Afterwards I had a slightly better image of Chinese Churches, and a slightly worse view of ABC congregations within Anglican Churches. Not that I think they are wrong or anything, just that.. there are many things I didnt consider before, and maybe I just thought too highly of the ABCs in the Anglican system, and too little of Chinese Churches.

Also I heard about a new inititive called remote MTS, and it sounds really exciting!

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