Surrender 2008

We were at Urban Neighbours of Hope's Surrender Conference on the weekend. This is Spriggsy driving the van on EastLink when we realised we weren't going to be late for the panel that Gin was going to be on:

This is where Spriggsy, John, Jono, Mehrin and I camped:

Spriggsy, Mehrin and I were looking after the Urban Seed table. (They had this area where there were tables for mission organisations to put propaganda on.) We built a wall out of cardboard around our table, to hide it. On the outside it had images and 'beatitudes' representing what the global economy promotes as success, and on the inside (hidden, for people to find) it had the beatitudes of Jesus, along with images to represent the economy of God. (I also used the vine from State Youth Games.) Here are some pics (some from when we were still constructing):

I don't think what we did was that worthwhile, but that's okay because it's the first time we've done something like that at a conference, and I know how I'd want to do it differently next time. And someone from one of the other missions organisations (with a much bigger budget) said they wanted to copy our idea.

'The Economy of God'

Cookie (currently in Aotearoa/New Zealand)'s done a post on his blog at The Age about how the Kingdom (or economy) of God differs from our globalised economy:

Whenever church clergy in Australia speak up on issues of politics or economics, the standard response from the likes of Prime Minister John Howard is that religious leaders should stay out of politics and get back into the realm of the spiritual where they belong.
Often the message from politicians is that Christian faith is only relevant to the realm of the personal and is separate from all other aspects of society - leave politics and economics to the "experts" who understand such things.
It's a reflection of a culture that has individualised and commodified spirituality, separating the "sacred" from the "secular" and ignoring the implications of Christian faith for all of human life, particularly economics.

Read the whole thing here.

The laneway - whose space?

Tuesday afternoon we had a discussion about the laneway, and whose space it is. A lot of people use the laneway. The staff of Collins Street Baptist church park there. This morning most of the church people came in through the laneway. Last weekend we (the Urban Seed residents) moved all our stuff in via the laneway. Three days a week we'll be cleaning it up. Heroin users go to the steps at the back of the Victoria Hotel, just next to our garage, to inject. Foot Patrol come into the laneway every morning to empty the fit bin. People come into Credo lunches via the laneway. Green Collect (particularly EcoPaul) use the laneway a lot, because they keep their compost and recycling bins in the garage. Staff from the Vic's restaurant come out into the laneway for smoke breaks. As of last week a team from Sydney have set up scaffolding, so they can spend the next six months repairing the Vic's 'concrete cancer'. And during the Commonwealth Games there'll be a lot of police and security services around, because the Vic will be part of the International Village.
So the laneway is very much a shared space, between a lot of different groups.

We had a look at the final chapter of the letter to the Hebrews.
The author encourages the Jewish Christians to offer hospitality to strangers (1-3). The laneway is a place where we have an opportunity to do this, by keeping it clean and well lit, in order to minimise the harm of injecting drugs. It's also a half-way point between the street and the building, a kind of neutral ground where we can meet people from the street culture, and gain each others trust enough to venture into each others' spaces, such as our living room or the Flinders Street steps, where a lot of street people congregate.
The author also talks about how he (or she) doesn't consider him(or her)self to be part of the city, but is in fact looking forward to the new city that God is reconstructing (14). The laneway has the potential to be a gateway to God's city. I was talking today to someone who comes to Credo a lot, and he said, 'The thing I like about Credo is that the worst of enemies can come and eat together, and have a civilised conversation.' Sounded like God's city, and reminded me of what Isaiah prophecies about God's kingdom:

The cattle will graze among bears. Cubs and calves will lie down together. And lions will eat grass as the livestock do.
(Isaiah 11:6)

Is God generous?

I’m in Melbourne at the moment, so tonight (Sunday night) I went to my old church, where I was baptised four years ago.
We read the parable (or riddle, as I’ve been thinking of them) about the workers at the winery (Matthew 20:1-16), and then Mark (the pastor) got us to talk about whether God is generous. He got us to look through some papers, and talk about whether the things that we found made God seem generous or not.
What stood out to me was a photograph of this guy at his eightieth birthday party. I thought, Maybe that’s an example of God being generous; he’s let this guy live to see his eightieth birthday. It was in the ‘Review’ section of The Age, in a review of a book about the last fifty years of African history. I then realised that it was Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe. This made me really angry. Why should this corrupt politician get to live to see eighty years?
I realised later I was being a lot like the winery workers who worked all day. They were cranky because they’d worked all day but got paid the same as those who’d worked only a little while. I was cranky because I thought God shouldn’t be generous to Mr Mugabe. I thought I was better than Mugabe because I’m only a corrupt, European civilian, which is (supposedly) much better than being a corrupt, African politician.

Like little kids

Yesterday, Alt Tab and I were at home watching Dr. Phil, who was saying that normally little kids don't notice if another kid is 'abnormal' - like if they're really tall or short for their age.
It reminded me that when I started school, in one of the most racially diverse parts of Melbourne, I never noticed race - until it was pointed out by adults. The Asian, Indian and Arab kids didn't seem particularly different to me or the other European kids.
Jesus said that his Kingdom is made up of people who are like little kids (Luke 18:15-17).