well i got here! fantastic to visit australia for the first time…

the first day i spent recovering from the flight in melbourne. in the morning i caught up with darren rowse who started living room a few years back and has now left it to stand on its own two feet. darren is the most entrpreneurial blogger i know – problogger and digiital photoography are two of the sites he runs. he had a book out earlier this year which looks good. then i wandered round melbourne soaking up the autumn sun, visiting its wonderful cafes down side streets and perusing the street art. i have taken some photos which i’ll sort out and add at some point soon.

then it was off to tasmania, a beautiful island. after a delayed flight we didn’t have much free time so just went up wellington mountain overlooking hobart. the delay meant that we arrived just as the sun was starting to set and it was astonishing light. the triangle you can see in the photo is the shadow of the mountain with sun going down behind us. it created these two shafts of light that looked like some thing almost sci fi! looking the other way the sunset was beautiful. there are a few photos that hardly begin to capture it but give a sense at least of what we experienced.

in the evening it was a meal with conversation with several leaders from the uniting church. i guess it shouldn’t surprise me but it was weird that having travelled half way round the world, as the conversation ranged from cultural change, church being stuck, newness, mission, change, leadership and so on, the issues were almost exactly the same as if i’d been with a group of leaders in the uk. this was followed up with a training day for a larger group of people which was more focused on alt worship but touched on mission and church issues. it was a really good day. i hope i was able to offer some encouragement. it was great to meet graham who talked about an alt worship experience he had set up in hobart in his home with a number of stations – there are photos and explanations of it here. i loved the idea of using the treadmill. the idea was that you had to write a prayer in chalk on the treadmill as it moved which i assume is difficult even at a slow pace and the thought with it was is it any wonder we find it difficult to hear god when our lives go at such a fast pace. there were also people involved in lacuna, a creative/meditative approach to worship – i really like this water in the desert meditation on their web site. often when i talk about alt worship, whilst i emphasise imagination, creativity and ideas and relating worship to your context, people still feel that they can’t do it or that it requires more technical toys. i had a conversation with one woman ros who sort of said she couldn’t do alternative worship but went on to describe a wonderful idea. every easter she invites members of the congregation to take a piece of broken candle wax as a symbol of their own brokenness. they then come forward offering the piece of wax as a symbol of themselves and place it in a huge mould for an easter candle. ros then adds in hot wax to create the easter candle, symbolising god’s love holding the community together in their brokenness. that is exactly the creativity we are talking about!

similar to the uk at the moment the climate seems to be one now in which everyone knows there needs to be new stuff happening on the edges and change must happen. it used to be that you had to persuade people but not in tasmania. they were very open, and prayerfully taking one step forward at a time. i look forward to seeing what emerges in tasmanian soil over the next ten years…

i am making the things mentioned above a combined tasmanian worship trick [no 36 series three]
treadmill station | lacuna water in the desert meditation | candle of brokenness

if anyone from tasmania is visiting hi!

[update: links broken]