Start Freedom, Stop the Traffik (featuring Nickarooni)

salvos and sexpo

Amanda Hart posed for the Herald Sun who featured an article on our decision to run a stall at sexpo in Melbourne later this month. After about 6 radio interviews I'm getting the idea that it's a hot topic. If you have the time please go the Herald Sun article and enter your opinion on their online pole about if it's appropriate for the Salvos to be present at Sexpo. Just for the record we are operating a stall at Sexpo for two reasons:
1. We want to stop human trafficking. We will be featuring Stop The Traffik and awareness and education around human traffickng for sex. What better way and to who better than sexpo to spread the word!
2. Jesus. Where people are gathering who are hungry for meaning, purpose, intimacy, love and an alternative lifestyle - what better crowd to offer the answer? Jesus is the only way to fill our empty souls... Jesus loves porn stars is a New Testament with a testimony... check it out at triple X church...

In many ways this reminds me of some Holiness debates going on these days.
The purity of holiness is not contaminated by being 'in' the world... that's where it belongs. Light belongs in the darkness... holiness is infectious and as a holy people we can enter into 'unholy' places without fear and without compromise and bring a holy Jesus with us... who can transform us from the inside out.
Years ago a drunk man stumbling into a drop in I was running in an inner city asked if the 's's' on my uniform meant 'sexy soldier'... now, I think he may have been on to something! ;-)

If you want to join our efforts we welcome any prayer support you could offer on the last weekend of November.

An interview with a hero...

hattip: sean attard - you rock!

tear down the wall

20 years today that the Berlin Wall was torn down... East and West Germany were finally united after years of oppression and separation. it's incredible what has happened in history. Like the iron curtain many people found it impossible to believe that communism (at least the eastern block sort) could so suddenly collapse... read some classic escape stories here for evidence of people's desperate plea for freedom. I was privileged to be in East Germany shortly after the wall was removed - it was still very clearly a different world at the time - economics and social segregation had created it's own wall. The same was true in Russia.. again, I spent almost a year there shortly after the fall of communism.. yet the residue of communism existed still - fear, oppression, judgement, etc..
All this leads me to wonder about the residue of the enemy in our lives. We were walled in by fear, death and sin... and Jesus really knocks down that wall and invites us out and Him in... a free world... but I wonder about the marks... the scars... if we are technically free - but afraid to enter the fullness of that freedom. I want all the walls removed. Let's live in a spacious land like God promised... let the only scars remaining be the ones on His body for us. And let wholeness, freedom and peace (shalom) reign in and through us... tear down the wall.
I'm praying that a united Germany would be free from the spiritual and social walls of it's past and enter into the fullness of God's spacious and abundant life through Jesus.

Catherine Booth.

We Christians profess to have in the Gospel of Christ a mighty lever which, rightly and universally applied, would lift the entire burden of sin and misery from the shoulders (that is from the souls) of our fellow man - a total remedy for all the moral and spiritual woes of humanity. We all profess to believe this - Christians have professed to believe this for generations - and yet look at the world, look at so-called "Christian England and America." The great majority in these nations utterly ignore God, not even making a pretense of remembering Him even one day a week. And then look at the rest of the world. I have often become so depressed with this view of things that I have felt as if my heart would break. I don't know how other Christians feel, but I can truly say that "My eyes shed streams of water, because they do not keep Thy law." (Psalm 119:136) And because it seems to me that this dispensation compared with what God intended it to be, has been, and still is, as great a failure as the one that preceded it...

just a taste of Aggressive Christianity (a book of messages from Catherine Booth - a Christian hero). read more here.

a modern parable?

well, I can't really get past it. I've tried to relax a bit a just enjoy the fun of melbourne cup day celebrations... but I find it an incredible source of discomfort... last year Australian's spent 217 million dollars on Cup day. 217 million dollars on cup day. two hundred and seventeen million dollars on cup day!! now, at the same time there is a boat of impoverished and very hungry indonesians off the coast of Australia and we aren't sure that we have the resources to help them. Wow. They are now embarking on a hunger strike to try and get the attention of our nation but someone obviously forgot to tell them that we are awfully busy right now... betting on horses and buying extravagant clothes and hats and drinking ourselves into oblivion - too blinded by our own excess and greed that we can't help a boatload of poor people... God help us. God help us. God help us.
If Jesus' parables are right we are in some serious trouble on the other side of eternity. God help us.

Asylum seekers threaten suicide

Some of the 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers onboard Australian Customs ship the Oceanic Viking have threatened to kill themselves rather than go to Indonesia.

Speaking to the ABC from a phone hidden from customs officers, the asylum seekers pleaded with Australia to give them a new home. read the rest here...

Asylum Seekers and how we receive them will remain a major justice issue in our future (and our past). Jesus once asked a question about who our neighbour is... I think these situations are opportunities to answer him. How's your hospitality these days? Ever consider hosting an asylum seeker family in your corps/church? You may be surprised to learn that The salvation Army's history is well rooted and experienced in helping migrants find new opportunities and possibilities - including community and support and new family... perhaps we could be digging that old well for new opportunities to share the love of Jesus with those in need... just thinking.