restless

Its 11:15pm on Thursday night, and i have been in bed for ablut 2 hours now, but I just cant sleep. Im so restless! Im tired, but I cant fall asleep. Im not even close to falling asleep. My mind is racing, but there are no thoughts. So here I am, blogging about nothing in the hope that whatever is in my head might come out as I type. No luck so far.









(thats the pause while I think about what to write)






I miss having a place where I knew that I could experience the abiding presence of Jesus! As much as I love worshipping by myself, it's just not the same without a fellowship of unified believers, all pushing and pressing in for more, together. I miss you guys!

The Internship

So, yesterday I started the Internship with FORGE, and I just thought that id do a post explaining in a little more detail what that is going to entail for me in this coming year.
There are 4 parts, streams if you will, to the Internship. The Intensives, the Intern Gatherings, Coaching, and a Missions Placement.
The Intensives:
These are 3 separate, yet progressive, times throughout the year, consisting of 4-5 days of "intense" teaching and information, hence the name Intensives. They start over a weekend, Friday night thru Sunday, which is set up as a conference that is open to the public, and then the following 2-3 days are closed sessions just for the Interns and those doing FORGE for College accreditation. Each Intensive has a different theme, and well regarded, expert practitioners are brought in to teach and share on the specific topic. The first Intensive is "Paradigms of the Missional Revolution", and it is all about reshaping the way you think about Church and Missions, creating a new paradigm within which to "be church" rather than "do church". And this year's theme is "Jesus: Prophet of the Revolution", and we are blessed to have Brian McLaren as the keynote speaker.
The second Intensive is "Spirituality, Sustainability and Discipleship", which builds on the new paradigm of Church and Missions by imparting teaching and tools to grow, sustain and maintain communities and cultures of faith.
And the third Intensive is "Developing Pioneering Leadership", which aims to basically do what it is called, develop pioneering leadership, raising up leaders who will inspire creative and entrepreneurial ways of becoming "church" within a community and culture, taking the Gospel to the world.

Intern Gatherings:
The Intern Gatherings are a once-a-month event where all the Interns in your group (there are two groups of Interns, divided up by region: North+West, and South+East) get together to share, fellowship, pray and encourage eachother over a meal. One at a time, each Intern in your group gets the opportunity to host the evening, and that night is centered and focused around them. It is their responsibility to organize the meal, the activities for the night, and their opportunity to share about themselves. The Gatherings are the place where all the Interns really get to know eachother, and has often become the highlight of the year. (I cant wait to host an evening...tofu and lettuce, baby, Oh Yeah! And grass for desert if they're lucky! Ha!)

Coaching
The coaching is some fairly intense and focused mentoring that is individualized and tailored to each Interns specific needs and Missions Placement. After answering some basic questions, ("what do you expect from your coach?, what type of coaching do you respond to better, an aggressive type coach, or a more pastoral relational type coach?, and what do you want to get out of your coach?" etc.), the FORGE leadership places you with a coach that they believe will be best for you. Each Intern has their own coach who they meet with once or twice every week or two, for 2-3 hours. The coach is there to challenge and inspire and focus the Intern in implementing all that they have learned and discovered during the Intensives, Intern Gatherings and on-the-job training and experience during the Missions Placement. The coaching is mainly focused and directed towards the Interns' Missions Placement, but is more about how everything learned can be implemented into regular, daily life. I am really looking forward to the coaching. It is probably the main reason that I decided to do this internship, cause I know that I need some coaching and I really desire it. And the coach I have, Warwick, is apparently the "Spiritual Guru" of the FORGE world, and whenever someone finds out that he is my coach, they are like, "Warwick, hey. You're lucky. He is so great!" So I am really looking forward to meeting him, as I haven't yet, and beginning coaching with him. From what I've heard, my impression is that he is kind of like a mix of Renee, Fish, and Mike Higgs, for those of you who know them! I am really excited about getting down to some serious mentoring and discipleship.

Missions Placement
The Missions Placement is pretty much whatever you choose it to be. It involves about 10-15 hrs per week doing some form of missions work. In my group of Interns there are many variations of placements. One guy is starting a Cafe with his church, just around the corner from one of the big Universities in Melbourne, where on Thursday nights it will be open for a college crowd, with chill groves, live bands, open mic type stuff, and on Friday nights it will be open more for the street teens around the area. They are in an arcade (like a small Mall) and they are the only shop open at night, so they are going to put up big screens and have xbox comps, DJ's and do Hip Hop, Break Dancing and Beat Box stuff, as a lot of the local crowd are really into that. There is another couple who are starting a community Co-op garden in an area that does not have one. Another guy is really into the who fantasy card game scene, so he is starting a fantasy card game group. I am doing my placement with LiveWires, a group that runs an after-school program in a group of commission flats (government housing complex). It is basically the same thing that I was doing with Portland Kids Intl in Porland. LiveWires has only been running for 1 year, so I am really looking forward to being a part of the development of it, and there are already some suggestions that I have made that are being implemented. I find it really funny how working with kids is not really my passion, yet everything that I have done so far has been working and centered around kids. The college training I did was elementary teaching, working with PKI in the States, and now with LiveWires. I still don't understand fully, but I know that God is trying to show me something, and that there is something great that I am to learn from these kids.
So anyway, that is pretty much my year with FORGE. There are a number of other opportunities that have presented themselves to me, and I am still deciding on whether they would be beneficial and profitable for me to pursue, and how they would interact with what I have already committed to.
I know that this year is going to be excellent though! God is so good, and all His plans and purposes for us are to grow us, prospering us and not harming us, giving us a hope and a future. And we can be assured that the hope and the future that God has planned for us is far and exceedingly beyond anything we can ask or imagine.

More of the Jabster

So im here at home alone, my first day off work in a couple of weeks, and I have no idea what to do. Ive got the intern dinner tonight for the internship that im doing this year, and im looking forward to meeting everyone. But anyway, for now, here are some more pics of Jabs.
The "Man' and his Beast


Jabs rockin out on his drum kit

Worshipping in Spirit and in Truth

This last week I pretty much chose to be away from the Lord. Not like I woke up in the morning and said to myself, "Ben, today I think that im going to be separate from God", but rather just that I did not choose to be with Him at all. And I know that there were times when I felt God calling me away, but I chose not to go. Why are we (I) so stupid, that even when we (I) know God is calling us (me) into the garden to love us (me), we (I) for some reason decide that whatever we (I) are doing at the time is better? It doesn't really make any sense!
Anyway, as I was coming home from work today, God started speaking to me about worshipping in Spirit and in Truth. And it was so cool, cause even in the act of hearing the Lord speak to me there was confirmation about what He was saying. He was telling me that worshipping in Spirit is what those who love Him do all the time. It is their inner man giving glory to God and praising Him. It is the Spirit inside of us that communicates all the time with His Spirit, worshipping God. And worshipping in Truth is everything we do out of our Spirits worship. Every thought, act, feeling, decision and choice etc, we make from the place of Spirit worship in Truth worship. So when Jesus calls us to worship in Spirit and in Truth, He is calling us to be intimate with him, and live out of a place of intimacy. That is Spirit and Truth!
and that alone is Spirit and Truth. There is no "right way" to worship in Spirit. Everything you do that is connecting with God, feeling His heart, loving and adoring His Son, communicating with the Spirit is worshipping in Spirit. And there is no "right way" to worship in Truth. I used to think that it was some sort of doctrine, or level of understanding of the Bible that was the "truth", that was worshipping in Truth. But there is no "right way". Everything that comes out of Spirit worship is Truth worship, and there is nothing that is Truth worship that does not come out of Spirit worship. So even if you are doing something good, or have an understanding of the "word", if it doesn't come from experiential understanding of the "Word", it is not Truth, just an imitation. And it all makes perfect sense, cause this way it is not about me at all. There is no striving, no performance, no attaining something. Just simply me and God, doing our thang! In whichever so way we choose to do it! It is so cool. And so coming home today, when God spoke to me, it was not just about revealing a deeper level of something really cool to me, He was also encouraging me by telling me that I am still worshipping him in Spirit. I cant get away from that. He IS going to have my worship! Even when I do not choose to worship (worshipping in Truth, the action that comes from worshipping in Spirit), I am worshipping Him in Spirit. And this is by no means an excuse for not worshipping in Truth. I know that we are all called to do both. I believe that it is when we do both that the Kingdom of heaven advances in the earth, and that this is how Gods will is done here, just as it is in heaven. But when God calls to me and says, "Ben, you cant help but worship Me, cause your spirit is always doing it. Ha! So there!", it's like as though it draws me up to a higher place. The Wind blows and I rise on "wings like eagles". Just his voice is enough to lift me to a greater place than where I am at now. It is so awesome. Jesus I love you!

Fight!

"How much do you really know about yourself until you've been in a fight?" I have no idea, cause i've never been in a fight, except with my little bro, and that doesnt caount cause he's my little bro and I always beat him up in a playful way. And I always won. And I always will win. And so will every other "oldest" out there. So none of you youngsters try anything.
Well, I nearly got into a fight today. There was this girl....Ok, so there was nothing romantic or chiverolous or anything like that. I just got really pissed off. I actually cant remember too many times when ive been angrier than I was today. And I definately cant remember any other times where ive had this driving urge just to hit someone. I mean DRIVING urge. I was still in control, but everything inside of me was screaming "knock the guys block off" (Australian for punch him in the head). And tonight as I was processing the day, I had to laugh, cause I think it's kinda funny. Yet at the same time, it's kinda scary. How much control do I really have if one little situation can build up to something so explosive. And this is seriously the first time something like this haas happened. There have been people who have annoyed me, frustrated me, and even provoked me to retaliate, but ive never had this deep desire to do anything about it. And I know that this situation is going to arise again. Will I act the same, or will it not bother me next time, or will I just hit the guy? I have no idea. Bet you want to know the story dont you? Lets make it a competition. A "choose your own" adventure competition. Ill tell you if you guess right, and see who can come up with the closest story to what happened.
Yea, what fun we'll have!