2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. Click here to see the complete report.

I’m Starting To Think Bigger!

I know that will annoy some people. Some people who know me think I already think big enough – but I don’t think God agrees. He’s been growing my vision and faith recently. Other people think small is beautiful. I agree. But bigger is beautifuller, when it comes to thinking. Some years ago I read a book called ‘The Present Future’– and I hated it. Why did I hate the book? It was like going to the Doctors and hearing that while you may look okay, just about everything is wrong with you, you’re really unhealthy and on the way toward slipping off the plate; then being told various obvious things that if you did them, would avoid that fate; but not being allowed to do them. It was like a mechanic looking at the engine, ‘Here’s what’s wrong with your car and here’s what you need to do to fix it,’ but while you really want that to happen, you know you can’t. It’s not possible. At the time I was leading an institutional church, with great people, meeting locally […]

Why God Uses Shepherds – Nativity Lessons And More

Preparing for next Sunday’s talk, which we’re filming soon, I found a great deal of interesting detail from various sources.   SHEEP IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL Large Numbers of Sheep in Bible Times From the days of Abraham right through to modern times, sheep have been abundant in the Holy Land. Arab peoples of the region have depended heavily on sheep for their livelihood. The Jews in Bible times were first shepherds and then farmers, but they never completely left the shepherd life. The sheer number of sheep is seen in examples like: Job having 14,000 sheep (Job 42:12) Solomon sacrificing 120,000 sheep at the dedication of the Temple (1 Kings 8:63) Fat-Tailed Sheep The most common type is the fat-tailed sheep. The large, fatty tail acts as a reserve of energy, much like the hump of a camel. When the animal is butchered, the tail is valuable and may be bought separately to use for frying. This kind of sheep was already in use in Bible times: “Also thou shalt take of the ram the fat and the […]

OMG! My talk from our last baptism service, and a BIG resource for free next year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U5cYL6oUqk You’ve heard people say OMG a lot. You’re going to hear a lot more about OMG in 2014. Thanks to the amazing people at UCB there’s a mini-book in preproduction I’ve written which will see 50,000 copies handed out next year, together with multiple thousands of FREE booklets, a DVD, a website full of OMG moments – and a FREE follow up course and book to help people who change their minds about God through it learn what it it is to follow. You can get a free sneaky peek at the content by watching this talk which a lot of it came out of. Let me know what you think, please.