January 30, 2011
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Each year we have a goal at Church by the Bridge and in 2011 the goal is this: “Reaching Those We Know”
Challenge: Choose 3 people that you do know, and think how can you can reach them with the good news of Jesus “
Q How will you pray?
Q How will you love as Jesus loves?
Q How will you take every opportunity to speak about Jesus?
…all for the glory of God
January 23, 2011
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John Piper in his sermon The Line of Prayer
November 26, 2010
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September 3, 2010
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GUEST POST by Christy Tennant, International Arts Movement (Part 2 of 2)
Christy serves the movement as Director of Public Relations: Global Community | Musician | Actor | Writer
In the summer of 2005, I was selected to teach English as a Foreign Language at a university in China, and one of the reasons they selected me was because I had a background in theater. They wanted me to stage a play for the students I would be teaching. I laughed privately at the irony that I had given up theater in order to serve God as a missionary, and what he wanted me to do as a missionary depended on my expertise in theater arts. After that summer, I came back to the United States and continued to prepare to go overseas, not quite getting that God still had a plan for my artistic passion. But over the next two years, my path continued to cross with people working in the arts who were also devoted Christians. They were both excellent at their crafts, whether painters or writers or dancers or actors, as well as devout in their faith.
In 2007, I reconnected with Laurie Horvath, who was hosting wine and cheese gatherings for female NYC-based singer/songwriters. Her husband, Bryan, had become the Executive Director of International Arts Movement. Over the course of several months, with meals at their home and Starbucks meetings with Bryan and Mako Fujimura, I had a moment that I call my “Signs” moment. At the end of the movie “Signs,” many seemingly unrelated things come together for one great purpose. That was how I felt after those months of meetings. I realized that my passion for the arts, married to my passion for making the world a better place by serving people, could be the very best way for me to serve both God and humanity. I accepted a position on staff with IAM and have been growing consistently in my own artistic career ever since, even as I devote much of my time each day to building up a movement of artists and creative catalysts around the globe.
In 2009, I began noticing that I had a desire to act again. I started to pray periodically about how that might look in the bigger picture of my role at IAM and the work I do there. Then, a few projects literally came to me – a new stage musical, which turned into a recording project; a short film shot in D.C.; a 48-hour film challenge. After several years off-stage and off-set, it felt wonderful to be back in front of the camera, going through my lines and hitting my marks. I rejoined the actors unions and got new headshots, and am now very excited about what the future holds, both in my role at IAM as the host of IAM Conversations, as well as possible future roles on stage that are yet to be determined.
I think the thing I have continued to marvel at over and over is that God loves the arts. He loves creativity, and he honors those who long to serve him vocationally as artists. I feel God’s pleasure when I sing, when I dance, when I act. There is incredible joy and freedom in realizing that God actually appoints some people to be artists, and that being the best artist they can be is their holy act of worship.
That is my hope in everything I do: that the fragrance that rises from my life, both on stage and off, is a pleasing offering to the God I love.
August 24, 2010
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GUEST POST by Christy Tennant, International Arts Movement (Part 1 of 2)
Christy serves the movement as Director of Public Relations: Global Community | Musician | Actor | Writer
The legend around my home is that I could plunk out recognizable melodies on the piano before I could walk, so I guess it’s safe to say my journey as a performing artist goes back to the very beginning – at least, my beginning. I was six years old the first time I held a microphone and sang the “special music” at my church. My grandfather cried, and I knew I had a gift. I knew that I loved to stir people by singing or, later, acting and dancing for them.
I was twelve when I did my first show in a real theater, and I was sixteen when I started getting paid for it. By the time I was nineteen, I was spending my days and nights traveling around the United States as part of a professional theater company, staying in hotels for weeks on end, performing on some of the most endearing stages in the country, including the historic Tivoli (Chattanooga), Andy Griffith Playhouse (Mt. Airy, NC), and the Grand Ol’ Opry (Nashville). That touring experience was one of the most educational times of my life, as I spent time listening to actors who were much older and more seasoned, and who took great delight in getting me to drink margaritas. I became a better actor, but I also began losing sight of who I had been taught I was. My childhood faith in Jesus Christ began to disappear in the glare of the stage lights, and a chasm grew between my faith and my career.
By the time I was twenty-four, I had added many more roles to my resume, on stage and screen. I was well on my way to a successful performing career, when a series of conversations and events, including a boyfriend who followed and Indian guru, caused me to revisit my own faith. I knew that my lifestyle and the faith I claimed to have did not jive. I was professing Jesus with my lips, but denying him with my actions, and that became a real problem for me.
One day, confronted by the passage from Revelation 3:15-16, I knew that it was time for the rubber to meet the road in my life; I knew that I needed to decide whether I was a Christian or not. I chose Christ and began following him with all my heart practically overnight. Unfortunately, I did not have a paradigm at that time to understand how my vocation as an actress fit in with my new commitment to Christ. So, after a couple of years in my new faith, I quit auditioning and began preparing for a life as a missionary overseas. (To be continued…)
June 1, 2010
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Erin Hodder was quoted in Sunday Telegraph (p17) that caring full-time for her mother, who suffers from MS, has ‘sort of made me more of a human being. It has made me realise what is important in life and it has helped me to grow and make good choices’.
Amazing isn’t it that we can find ourselves feeling most human when we are serving someone.
Jesus was the perfect human. No deceit or sin was found in him. He loved the Father with his whole heart, mind and strength. He served God and fellow human-kind.
Jesus lived the life we were supposed to live. To be most human is to be without sin, to worship God, to serve Him and others.
May 17, 2010
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Guest Post | The importance of Stories is undispute
Author | Toby Neal
web: www.middlechildrenofhistory.info | twitter: tobiasneal | facebook: toby.neal1
Alasdair MacIntyre writes, ‘Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words.’ That is if you don’t hear stories as a kid, not only do you not know how to talk, because you are not familiar with language, but you don’t know how to act as a character in their life story. Aristotle said, ‘When the storytelling goes bad in society, the result is decadence.’ Yet one of the essences of postmodernism is that there is no overarching story that rules over all times, cultures, histories, and people. Everything is contingent on culture and perspective. Lyotard defines postmodernism simply as ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’. In the novel, Fight Club, writer Chuck Palahniuk, through the character Tyler Durden, gives voice to a generation without a Metanarrative:
“We are the middle children of history—no purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very ****** off.”
Palahniuk shows that notices that a world without a great war or great depression is left to create its own futile story. What the world needs is a story which is not only worth living for, but worth dying for. In 1 Corinthians, there is such a story. A story which has been foretold and revealed by a divine storyteller (2:10), which Paul reminds the young and troubled church in Corinth, to lead them out of decadence. Such a story, if McIntyre is correct, is eminently practical for, ‘I can only answer the question “What am I to do?” if I can answer the prior question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”.’
The Story of the Jesus the most important story you will hear: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, … he was buried, … raised, and … appeared’ (1 Cor 15:3-5). This story is all about Jesus first and foremost, not about us and our salvation. One of my favourite lecturer’s at Moore college used to say, ‘It is Christ‘s story which gives meaning to our lives, not our story which gives meaning to Christ’s life.’ It is no wonder Dietrich Bonhoeffer can expound: ‘I find salvation not in my life story, but only in the story of Jesus Christ.’
And yet, the surprising twist in this story is that the main character notices the minor characters. In fact in a display of love for those characters, Jesus Christ, although being God himself, gives up his privileged position and becomes one of us in order to die for us. In a “Great Exchange” Jesus is punished in our place for our sin of writing God out of our life stories and in exchange we are forgiven and written back into the story of faith, hope and love which God is telling. This story so affected JRR Tolkien that he wrote,
The Gospels contain…a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. But this story has entered history and the primary world…. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath…. This story is supreme; and it is true. God is Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.
*Toby and a team of people are excited to tell this story to the world, starting in the inner-city of Sydney. If you would be interested to find out more about the church-plant, please check out his website or get in contact with him via Facebook or Twitter.
April 25, 2010
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The doctrine of the Trinity is often seen as a problem or embarrassment for the Christian to explain, however the truth of the one true living God of the Bible being that of three mutual indwelling persons encapsulates the heart and mind of the gospel. The doctrine of the Trinity has pertinent relevance for each of our lives today.
This week, I went to hang-out with some friends who run an organic fruit and vegetable markets. While I was at the market I experienced the great relevance of the doctrine of the Trinity. I walked away from the afternoon saddened by the busyness of life that means we don’t take time to relate and engage in each others lives and also excited after tasting the glorious truth life is really all about making space for others. I watched people pass by, I entered conversations, I was invited to join conversations and lives of others. I bumped into people from my church, local community, made contact with some strangers, saw people dance and laugh with each other, I had one long conversation about spiritual things and generally just got to enjoy the love and joy of life lived in relationship with fellow humans.
This is one of the reasons why I love supporting my organic food friends as they are striving, through quality food, to see people come together in their local communities – connecting, playing and working together. They encourage people to make space for others… which is how God created us to live.
God, since the beginning of creation, has been in relationship. As theologians would put it ‘perichoresis‘ which comes from the Greek verb ‘perichorein’ that means ‘to contain’ and in that way ‘ a making space for the other, ‘a dynamic containing and making room for another’. A similar Greek word, ‘perichoreuein‘, which means ‘to dance around’ which has been used as a metaphor for the relation of the Persons. The later Church Fathers came to apply the term and its concept to God: the divine mutual indwelling of the three Persons in the one Being God.
Tim Keller describes The Trinity as:
“a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. The early leaders of the Greek church had a word for this– perichoresis. Notice our word “choreography” within it. It means literally to “dance or flow around”.”
— The Reason for God, Timothy Keller pg 215
and the great philosopher and writer CS Lewis explains:
God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing – not even just one person – but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance … (The) pattern of this three-personal life is … the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality.”– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The fact that the Godhead is made of of three-persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, means God was, is and will always be personal and committed to engaging with others. And if this is the God whose image all humans have been created in likeness of and mirror forth into this world then there is a profound overflow effect into our everyday lives, not only in our attitudes towards Him but also others:
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The Trinity | If you want to read more about The Trinity, check out the Desiring God’s topic index or check Christianity.net for quick answers to some common questions. OR Why not check out how Jesus talks about His experience of His relationship as God the Son with God the Father and God the Spirit in John 17.
Make Connections | If you are keen to see how Food Connect can help build relationships in your local community why not check out the Sydney Food Connect Website.
Get in contact with the team or feel free to contact me and I would love to help you make connections.
You Can Afford Organics | If you are a local to Crows Nest… pop along to Crows Next Plaza on Thursdays between 9am-3pm to say hello to Brock & Tsung from ‘You Can Afford Organics‘ and grab some tasty, fresh and 100% organic produce.
Connections & partnerships with local businesses (3 of 3)
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