#Jesus – Page 3 – Melbourne Welsh Church

31
Mar 15
0

‘popup church’.

Category:#Jesus,be excellent to each other,Bubba,Cafe,catch up,Coffee,Community,Family,Godsmacked,Hope,Hospitality,LISTEN,Love,Neighbour,News,Peace,rant,respect

POPUP is an informal get together of people, who have faith communities, but sometimes like to to discuss, vent, encourage, be encouraged and heard in a different setting.
Today three of us spent one and a half hours drinking coffee/hot chocolate and discussing matters of faith and personal stuff.
We are quite different, rather than look for differences we share what we have in common and challenge and are challenged to think and rethink what we believe and why.
It is always good to listen and be heard, and to go away knowing we love and care for each other.
One person who is a regular, has recently moved back with partner and family after a time of separation,another is a single dad coping with all the stuff of life and who hangs out with ‘dangerous’ people, then there is me, who struggles to make sense of doubt and faith.

Together we travel this road we call ‘our faith journey’, and together discover the importance of life before death!!

It’s a mixed group, crazy group, and its sinners and saints together making sense of life

17
Mar 15
0

The voice of a faith is not always the voice of its leaders

Category:#Jesus,Church sign of the week

It continually astounds me how people can live their faith despite what the leaders of that faith say it should be.

Take Ali – a young lady who is one of the most Christian people I have ever met. She is a good Catholic girl, follows her faith, lives it out in all she does, serves others and works hard in her parish, her priest thinks she is one of the greatest assets to the community. All sounds great except the leaders of her church would disown her because she is gay.

Eric works hard for the church. He is the caretaker. Almost everyday he goes in and scrubs and polishes, buffs and shines. He picks up the rubbish left by the congregations that meet during the week, he cleans the toilets and even makes sure that the gardens look tidy. Expect Eric can’t attend the church, the preacher has said it’s for whites only and Eric has a little too much colour – he’s black.

Take a look at this picture

– this is one of hundreds that you can find online. It’s an image of Muslim men protecting their Christian brothers as they hold their service. What’s wrong with this image…? Well the main thing wrong (or right) with it is that if these men listened to many of their Imams they would be burning the church not protecting it.

Zac was a thief. He hid it well under the guise of his job but he always took a little off the side. Despite this the Man had come to dinner at his place. Despite what the leaders said (He eats with that kind) the Man still came. Zac changed, the high ups didn’t; they still whined and moaned about what’s wrong, but Zac had changed. He came to realise that people usually do change when they meet the Man, but what does that say about the high ups??

14
Mar 15
0

Live like Jesus not like Christians

Category:#Jesus,Church sign of the week

Live like Jesus not like Christians (please) –

You don’t have to read very wide or very deeply around the idea of Church and Christianity before you come across some dirty laundry. I would venture to say that pretty much all of the stuff the church doesn’t want aired is because someone (or some few) are not living like Jesus.

Look at some of the so called T.V. Evangelists – preying on the weak to grab as much cash as they can because, after all and let’s be fair here, every minister needs a private plane or two to fulfil their potential as the messenger of God. I seem to have misplaced mine – I thought I’d left it on my yacht but obviously not, ah well it’s only a few mill, I can just buy another one for my missionary work. Please send your cash to The usual address and I’ll inscribe your name on the fuselage of my jet if you give more than $10,000.

Since I started to write this blog this article has come to my attention. (Update – after a major social media backlash the campaign has been taken down).

If you actually read your New Testament you will read about a guy called Jesus. He didn’t have a plane or a car in fact he had to borrow a donkey to ride into Jerusalem.

Unfortunately many of us ‘Christians’ seem to have forgotten about what this Jesus guy actually did and what he actually said. If we did things might be very different – or at least the church would be!

We wouldn’t want planes, we actually shouldn’t want planes, we should want to use the $65million to feed the hungry, to help the poor, to do what Jesus would have done. (Which in my view would not be jet setting in a multi – million dollar plane around the country and world for, what is essentially, self glorification thinly disguised as doing God’s work.)

That of course is not the only problem with the Church and Christianity. Among many others there are many splits and rifts which many people take as signs of disunity; there are the disturbing incidents of child abuse that are intolerable in any area of society but even more so in a body whose leader blesses the little children for, as he says, the Kingdom of God belongs to such as them; there are the hate gangs that call themselves Churches – Westbro Baptists (who hate everyone it seems), various racist congregations (who hate those who don’t have the same colour skin as them), rich churches (who hate the poor) and poor churches (that hate the rich) and so the list goes on.

I urge you all to go and read the New Testament, (start with the Gospel of Mark, it’s nice and short) to see who this Jesus guy was, what he did and what he would want us to do.

But remember this…..

07
Aug 13
0

Love thy neighbour

Category:BeAPPtitudes,Church sign if the week,Church sign of the week,News

Love thy neighbour as thy iPhone

#BeAPPtitudes

We’re going to write some new BeAPPtitudes. They are like the Beatitudes only moderner. Occasionally we’ll find one and put up a blog about it.

Feel free to send them in – @MelbWelshChurch and we’ll use them (if they are any good of course).

The first one, shamelessly stolen from the monks at @UnvirtuousAbbey, is “Love thy neighbour as thy iPhone.” Before any of you take the fun out of fundamentalist and tell me that “Love thy neighbour as thyself” is not a Beatitude – remember this – I know it isn’t – but we’re writing the BeAPPtitudes and we can take any piece of scripture we want and BeAPPify it!

So

Love thy neighbour as thy iPhone!

If Apple’s numbers are to be believed 402,000 iPhones are sold every day (figure from the first quarter of January 2012) and almost all of them are treasured by someone. I know I would be completely lost if I misplaced mine.

It goes almost everywhere with me. It knows everything I do each day, it gets me up (with the alarm app); it’s my address book; it guides me (with my TomTom App); it entertains me (with my music and audiobooks); it reminds me of what I should do (with my iCal and Reminders); it helps me to pass time (with Angry Birds); it keeps me in touch with people (with my Twitter and Facebook Apps); it helps me write my sermons (via the Internet and Dropbox); it expands my knowledge (with iBooks); it helps with my Bible reading (with my Glo Bible); I can take pictures and video with it (with the camera); I do my banking on it; it keeps my plane and cinema tickets (in passbook); I wrote this blog on it (via WordPress); I track my runs on it (with run keeper); it holds my emails; it tells me the weather (with the weather Oz app) and I can even use it as a phone – if I need to!

I love my iPhone, I would be lost without it. I look after it, I make sure nothing happens to it. In short I take very good care of it. I’m sure most people do the same. Most people would take care of their $500+ iPhone.

Imagine how much better the world would be if we took as much care of other people as we do of our technology. Imagine if other people meant as much to us as our iPhones (or Samsungs or whatever else you have), we would live in a very caring world where everyone saw everyone else as important and not someone to beat down and climb over on the way to the top.

So I say, in a clear and loud voice,

“Listen to a new BeAPPtitude – Love thy neighbour as thy iPhone!”

07
Aug 13
0

Love thy neighbour

Category:BeAPPtitudes,Church sign of the week Tags : BeAPPtitudes Church sign if the week news

Love thy neighbour as thy iPhone

#BeAPPtitudes

We’re going to write some new BeAPPtitudes. They are like the Beatitudes only moderner. Occasionally we’ll find one and put up a blog about it.

Feel free to send them in – @MelbWelshChurch and we’ll use them (if they are any good of course).

The first one, shamelessly stolen from the monks at @UnvirtuousAbbey, is “Love thy neighbour as thy iPhone.” Before any of you take the fun out of fundamentalist and tell me that “Love thy neighbour as thyself” is not a Beatitude – remember this – I know it isn’t – but we’re writing the BeAPPtitudes and we can take any piece of scripture we want and BeAPPify it!

So

Love thy neighbour as thy iPhone!

If Apple’s numbers are to be believed 402,000 iPhones are sold every day (figure from the first quarter of January 2012) and almost all of them are treasured by someone. I know I would be completely lost if I misplaced mine.

It goes almost everywhere with me. It knows everything I do each day, it gets me up (with the alarm app); it’s my address book; it guides me (with my TomTom App); it entertains me (with my music and audiobooks); it reminds me of what I should do (with my iCal and Reminders); it helps me to pass time (with Angry Birds); it keeps me in touch with people (with my Twitter and Facebook Apps); it helps me write my sermons (via the Internet and Dropbox); it expands my knowledge (with iBooks); it helps with my Bible reading (with my Glo Bible); I can take pictures and video with it (with the camera); I do my banking on it; it keeps my plane and cinema tickets (in passbook); I wrote this blog on it (via WordPress); I track my runs on it (with run keeper); it holds my emails; it tells me the weather (with the weather Oz app) and I can even use it as a phone – if I need to!

I love my iPhone, I would be lost without it. I look after it, I make sure nothing happens to it. In short I take very good care of it. I’m sure most people do the same. Most people would take care of their $500+ iPhone.

Imagine how much better the world would be if we took as much care of other people as we do of our technology. Imagine if other people meant as much to us as our iPhones (or Samsungs or whatever else you have), we would live in a very caring world where everyone saw everyone else as important and not someone to beat down and climb over on the way to the top.

So I say, in a clear and loud voice,

“Listen to a new BeAPPtitude – Love thy neighbour as thy iPhone!”

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