mightychurch.com

The Idea for this thread has come from one of michaels last posts.Where he talks about the good commercial practice of asking the customers who are not using your services any more WHY NOT.I describe myself as amongrel Christian Emancipated catholic.having attended services at many different flavours and enjoyed most of them . What this varied journey has taught me is that God is GOD—
_——is GOD how do I know because——-GOD is and it does not have to be any more complicated than that.I will endeavour to post every day as my vision impairment permits .The last church service I went to was a pentecostal service and I will tell tou about it with my next batch of good eye time.
              Cheers Ian Lawther.

How was it Ian? 

Must profess I haven’t had any direct experience of Pentacostalism.  Only indirectly through interdenominational ministry Kairos Cafe (which uses quite a few Pentacostal as well as Evangelical speakers) and a few snippets on the Australian Christian Channel (which is incidentally broadcasting the ‘best bits’ of the Hillsong Conference this week, lined that up on PVR to see how the Pentacostal denominations are going).

Hi Arthur ,thanks to Luke and his Page zoom tip I type this at 400% and thecomputer does the rest if the gramars not too hot I have to ask you all to understand.I was in grafton when I met Bill and the conversation got round to God and Church He said he was a Pentacostal Elder and I stepped back two paces held up the sign of the cross to ward off evil spirits and said OH NO A HAPPY CLAPPER,he laughed and asked if I had ever been to one of their services I told him not a complete one and so I was invited.Gotta tell ya I came away very very impressed.The minister came across as more of a very competent Emcee enjoying his job than a man of the cloth who deserved to be there because he was closer to god than any one else ‘Back later’

The service started with the pastor saying a few words on chritianity and how important it was that as true christians they support each other then he asked if anyone had anything to say,four people came and stood out the front and off the cuff gave testomonials as to where god had played an important part in their life,because Iam big on individualism I loved this bit so different to the catholic system .Then a father and his two daughters came up with Guitars and a mouth organ and started on christian songs and Vow did that place come alive and I now know why the name HAPPY CLAPPERS.
I was made to feel welcome from the time I got there and I enjoyed the wonderful experience.Here was a group of people coming together to celebrate God and to appreciate life.
            Cheers Ian Lawther.

Thanks for sharing that Ian. It is indeed great to have positive spiritual experiences. I look forward to reading future episodes.

Thanks Kevin it was great I am now wondering how many flavours of christianity will fit into my Mongrel Christian breeding because I am definitely going to try some more. Had awonderful 40k ride on the tandem today .Great day sun shining fresh air and feeling on top of the world I said to my front rider “Rob what a wonderful day how lucky are we Life doesn’t get any better than this I wonder what the poor people are doing today . His instant comeback/put down was——————-“Probably riding push bikes”
                                                  Cheers Ian Lawther.

first venture into mainstream Christianity was a salvation army Sunday school and it came about like this and with zero parental input I should add When I was 7 my elder brother came home with a wonderful shiny brand new trumpet (cornet actually) and I wanted one I still can taste how bad I wanted one I just had to have one .
/Hey Al where’d ya steal that.
/I didn’t the salvo ‘s gave it to me
/unreal Al we goin down golf course to find some golf balls
/ Nah not allowed to steal any more golf balls
WHAAT I’m talking finding you talking STEEELING where’s this coming from you sick stupid or been knocking off maccas baccy again.
/Al/Captian says If we pick up a golf ball that’s still moving its stealing
/ I say we call them fresh Al F R E S H where you get the rocks in ya head.
/Al Captain says God will know and punish us .And that was the very first time I heard the GOD word and what a fantastic wonderful Journey I have had since then .Even though my brother and I never went golf ball finding???? Again. Al was obsessed with his music by Golly Gee (not Als Words) I am going to play in the Salvo’s Band. And I was obsessed with the cornet. So I said I really want to play in the Salvo’s band.
Al/  you gotta come to Sunday school with me become a Junior Soldier and
Me / We go to school MTWTF and you want to go Sunday as well YOU HAVE FLIPPED.
Al/ do you want a cornet or not. So offto the Salvo’s Sunday School I went.
I have to say here I took up golf 15 years after this and for every golf ball I found??? as a kid I lost ten. And more often than not there was a young boy disappearing in the distance.
(As ye sew oops sow so ye shall Reap springs to mind here.)  More Later.
      Cheers Ian Lawther.

It’s probably “as ye sow so ye shall reap” happening here Ian, you may be right!

Thanks for sharing.

1st PVR has already recorded the first Hillsong Conference highlights session.  Might play some/all of that (90min) before going to my Workers Bible Study tonite.

@ Arthur :  What’s “1st PVR” ?

@ Ian : Thanks for sharing those memories. Brought back a few of my own. I’m feeling a bit nostalgic as I just got back from a funeral of a young 57 year old sweet woman of God who succumbed to cancer - after being given three months to live - back in 1996 ! A very inspirational eulogy was delivered by her husband. My wife got to know her whilst in high school many years ago, and I went through high school classes with her husband. Small world indeed. I shall write more about Christine’s journey another time.  Cheers, Kevin

attempt 5 cyber space gotta be
getting close to full.
Kevin. sorry to hear about your friend. Yeah Nostalgia What did we do before Nostalgia.
          Cheers Ian Lawther.

Before I continue with my journey into Salvationania I feel I should tell a bit of my background.I Grew up on the Housing Commission      
Concrete House Project estate in Alamein Melbourne near Ashburton. Built especially to house the returned soldiers from WW2.Talk about being born into controversy. The people in Ashburton objected to having the estate in their suburb (Fight to protect their Country FINE .But do they have to be OUR niegbors they kicked up such a row about devalued realestate prices the class of people , The Powers that be extended the railway line put in a new station and called it Alamein.Tothis day it has the same pst code as ashburton but Alamein will always be where I grew up.I had Three Brothers two two sisters and thirty one friends in the street (Baby Boomers)Every kid had a bike the kids in our street had it made (I lived in Markham ave)We had the paddock which later became the oval we had the Big tree , still there today this paddock was home to the BIG tree which was the foundation for many many tree houses.The paddock was bordered by gardiners creek and Abig jump away was the East Malvern golf course———or a soaking.
But hey get this our street had what was the envy of all the other kids in all the other streets .We had the council TIP. This gave us an endless supply of building materials
For our tree houses billy carts and boats.Eight kids could make aboat in 5 minutes flat here are the instructions.
1/kids 1.2.3.4 distract the tipman to the far end of the tip.
2/kids 5.6.7.8 .armed with tomahawks run one to each corner of selected car and chop through roof pillars throw roof over fence and invert in the creek. and there in less than five minutes we had a boat .an F.X. Holden roof on a sink test could hold 14 kids but it had to be a hot day.An Anglia roof 9 Kids
Every house had a Mum in it and no kid had to run any further than the nearest house to have a band aid applied or to get a spot of dettol. I often think of these days and Iknow that our kids have had to pay too high a price for our shorter working hours.It was near this Big tree that as a ten year old I
Had my first truly spiritual experience .I will tell you about that one after the Salvo’s experience.
      Cheers Ian Lawther.

Hi Ian, I am enjoying reading your tales of days past. Your style reminds me a little bit of the radio show ” A Prairie Home Companion”  by Garrison Keillor. ( Went for years and was broadcast here each Saturday afternoon on the ABC ).His book “Lake Wobegon Days”  is a novel that was based on material from his radio show - the book brought Keillor’s work to a much wider audience and achieved international success.

The work is a humorous account of life in fictitious Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, a heartland small town. Its early chapters are written in the form and style of a history of the town and later ones chronicle the lives, concerns, and activities of its inhabitants, with intergenerational tensions and relationships forming a major theme. Most of the latter material was originally delivered on radio in the form of monologues. Due to the nature of the original material, the second half of the novel has many recurring characters but little in the way of plot, resembling an incompletely integrated group of short stories.

But even more so, your tale-telling reminds me of Gordon Moyes’ series of short stories that he broadcast on his weekly Sydney radio show - and later were published in book form. You see he grew up in Box Hill ( not that far from Alamein and Ashburton ) and his first 47 short stories were a series called “When Box Hill Was A Village”.  You can read all his short stories online at :
http://www.gordonmoyes.com/about-gordon-moyes/australian-short-stories/

Happy browsing, cheers Kevin

@ Kev

1st refers to first recording of a series

PVR refers to a hard disk recorder that can record digital TV - not just the usual channels but stuff like the Australian Christian Channel as well.

@ all

Only got to see the first bit of the HIllsong Conference but am glad to report that on the whole they are fiercely evangelical.  Started with a light and sound show on: Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins, how salvation is available to all who accept Him, and how renewal can transform lives (even the downtrodden).  The four speakers appear to be quite evangelical apart from Joel Osteen hehe, but will see how the talks match up to evangelical Christianity.

Pentacostalism, if Hillsong is representative of it, has a great future in the Australian Christian spectrum.

Now if only I could stop watching my Prison Break, I can have time to watch the rest of it - 6 hours worth over four recordings!

Thanks for the info Kev, there is nothing fictitious in this story. The streets are still there. The tree is still there. The oval is still there. The scars are in the oval where we dug an underground hut big enough to hold every kid in the street. We called this the submarine. It had a periscope in the centre made from down pipe and broken mirrors (from the tip of course) and 2 cracker guns at either end. The cracker guns made from VW torsion bar strut ends and the right size to take a threepenny bunger, could fire a tom bowler (large marble) 250 metres with deadly accuracy. Our best sling shot, made from a tree trunk and 11 car tubes, and dug 6 feet into the ground, and primed by 10 boys, could launch a house brick 300 feet. The pledge was taken everyday to defend our domain (the oval) to the last man if the Ambon Street kids invaded. Out arsenal was very inventive and a credit to the initiative of young boys. So where is the spirituality in all this? Well, every time I think of these games, I truly thank god that nobody was ever seriously hurt.

Box Hill was only a bike ride away for us and a day at the Surrey Dive in Elgar Road was only half to three quarters of an hour away and was done many times on hot days. The amount of freedom we had was truly wonderful and although the majority of children were not really churchified their concern and willingness to help each other was an incredible picture of true Christianity. But I digress now and I must get back to the Salvos.

More later, the footy is on telly.
Cheers Ian Lawther.

Surrey Dive ........now that was a legendary spot.
Fashioned from an old quarry that had filled with water .....it was always said to be bottomless.  Possibly 60 - 80ft from the rim of the quarry down to top of the water.
This swimming hole was accessed through the BoxHill baths and you had to have you ‘Senior’ swimming qualification to get in. (or climb the fence)
Fond memories of Surrey Dive ......was one of those places where the boys practised their manhood .......maybe jumping off the crows nest .......or that spectacular swan dive off one of the sheer drops into the water.
Girls mainly sat around on the grass and giggled in those days.

Hi Brother,
I’ve been reading your story on Mighty Church.com…....I can’t wait for the next installment…
Our world really was Markham Ave, and what a great childhood!!  Sometimes I feel a little envious, because by the time I came along, it was too late for the tip, chasing golf balls etc. etc. and my brothers and sister had grown up and were working.  But, I was even more blessed to grow up with all my brothers and my sister…caring for and loving me.
My generation (the 1964 kids) knew the tree, Mr Mac used to call me Princess….I loved him!! (I must have been 4 or 5) He would take me for rides in his wheel barrow…when he would take his lawn cuttings and dump them beneath the tree.
We had Gardiner’s Creek, we had a willow tree down near the creek, we had “THE CUTTING” where we got up to what we weren’t supposed to!!!!  Like you, we didn’t really mix with the outsiders…..(Ambon Street, Alamein Ave etc.etc.) we didn’t need to…we had all there in Markham Ave!
Ian, do you think Mum might be looking down and nodding her head, I can just hear her saying “You have no idea what I knew, I wasn’t silly”  I miss her!!!!
please keep your memories going, I love it.
Love Brenxxx
This is My kid sister Brenda talking 16yrs my junior she provided me with good training for when I had a 16yo daughter.
Gunna have to have a big brother talk to her about this cutting buisiness.NAAAH dont think I Will bother wouldn’t listen to me at 15 Why would she at 45.
 
  MIKE. thanks for coming in here mate,all these years I thought the Markham ave boys had snuck over that fence at surrey dive once to often and so the council put razor wire up and it looks to me as though the Wattle Park boys are equally responsible,God Bless your Honesty. 
Bren.of course the Old Girls looking down on us she begged me to write this after ALS’funeral.Hey betcha BIG Als having a cuppa right now and he’s Still laughing at the fact that I had to clean up his mess after 20 years in one rental.
great to hear from you SIS XOXO IAN.

Its taken a while to get to this point but today we are off to the Salvos. We go to the end of Markham ave and climb to the top of the railway embankment (the old outer circle line) at the top alan and I have a bit of a blue because I realized it was Sunday and always had reservations about Sunday school Al wants to go right to play his music to the left we have the cutting, the creek, the golf links, the BIG pipe. Als getting real upset with me and angrily lets me know that it is his duty to get me taught about God. And besides that he gets another star if he brings a new kid to Sunday school. I never found out any thing more about this scalp bounty. So down the other side of the embankment we go dragging sticks along the fence to make Rusty the Millsteps Alsatian bark crazily SHADDUP YA MUTT comes from inside the fence Al and I yell in perfect unison and at a much louder volume than him “good morning mister Millstep have a nice daaay ,we are running by this time and a clod of dirt hits the fence three feet behind us. Al and I know instinctively we will find another way home. So my first Sunday School lesson and I listen to stories of God and Jesus who are the same person ( I am 8yo at this point ) I can relate to this point because my old man can go from a nice bloke to an absolute mongrel in the time it takes him to drink a bottle of beer. Please don’t read anything into this I adored my dad at this stage of my life, all kids do.The thing that helped me through this was the fact that I had heaps of friends in the same boat and we all talked about it amongst ourselves and I don’t believe any one ever felt they couldn’t talk if they felt the need. While I would like to think I was unaffected by Dads drinking I clearly remember that the first time I spent more than an hour with some one my own age without the subject of abusive Dads coming up I was 22 yo. 
    Mum?  she was great she was always there.
More later   Cheers Ian Lawther

The Sunday School lessons go on for ever it seems and I ask the teacher about a cornet, am told I can get one by becoming a junior soldier and to do this all I have to do isgo out the front when captain calls and ask god for forgiveness .
  I reply   what am I asking to be forgiven
Teach/we are all sinners and god will forgive us our sins.
Ian/yess but what have I done (now at this stage I am sitting there with three golf balls in my pocket of rather dubious lineage because of Als’ new definition of finding) and am hoping for a definition of finding that leans alittle more my way.
Teach/were all sinners Ian
Ian/yeah but if I knew what I did I could say sorry I did that.
Teach/growing very impatient with me ‘were out of time you will have to do it next week’.
    Next week I drop three golf balls on the floor and have to fight to retain ownership naturally I get kicked out .Bewdy BIG pipe here I come. So through the cutting over the creek onto the golf course and start flogging golf balls ,and because it is Sunday,I don’t even try to find ?? any replacement stock, a kid had to hedge his bets every now and then. Didn’t he?
By the time I got back to Markham ave I had sold four golf balls, a great day, and I still had the Arvo to go.
      These discussions went on at Sunday school for the next ten lessons(twenty probably if you want to(be nit picky and count the ones I wagged) and the teacher was giving me stronger and stronger hellfire and brimstone lectures and I couldn’t see the god that I knew looked after me being that cruel so I succumbed to the call of the creek, the big tree the golf course and the tip. My number of found?? Golf balls did decrease markedly.
    Nobody from the salvos ever came to ask me why I wasn’t coming there any more,though writing this down it is a little clearer to see why.Not that Ithought about it until
I read that post of mikes.
    If some one had asked I would have simply said {too much pressure to make me see teaches point of view. But they didn’t and I probably told 100 kids stay away Too pushy! Like Mike says Good Commercial practice.
    More later Cheers Ian Lawther.

Now here I am almost ten yo No Sunday school and no cornet. Als still mad keen on his music and he and Phil (an Ambon st kid) who also had a trumpet would play duets over the fence ,Phils dad had a eurofone, I couldn’t say it then and I cant spell it now,a large trumpet that wraps around the musician and also a trombone , and he also played in the Tramways Brass Band   ,which played in wattle park every month and at least fifteen kids would take a ride to listen every month.  Phils’dad would join in sometimes and the whole area would be treated to a wonderful impromptu concert I had no regrets about Sunday school but I still loved that cornet so I went down the tip looking for something to make music with. PAYDIRT, a length of rubber hose as long as I was high when I blow in the end I can get all sorts of sounds out of it .With a few variations to the end like six inches of bike tube I get a real great sound like cats fighting. Purely by accident I am in the cutting with my not quite a cornet and I let this cat fighting sound sound go all of a sudden dogs are barking every where. The next day I went back on my bike and rode the length of the cutting and embankment and had every dog on both sides barking their heads off.I reckon at least 30 dogs all singing along to my cornet, what a racket. Did the same the next night. Pushing my luck I try for a fourth night and old man Collins, who has no kids that we know of ,and certainly no appreciation for my music, collars me and threatens me with a size nine work boot where it hurts. My cornet was confiscated . This didn’t worry me cos I know there is more in the tip.
  Even before Sunday school I had this fantastic feeling of being part of something bigger and my wanderings down the creek would leave me amazed at how animals fish birds insects even water rats if you smoked them out of their burrows would run back into the smoke to rescue the babies (wonderful wonderful nature)Heck could even be a bit of Buddhism in this Mongrel       Christian. Fifty years later I am left to ponder the question ….WHY ??? ARE THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY NOT INTERESTED in protecting our young.

Hi arthur,
      Gotta thank you mate for taking me back to my tech school days,I once left for school on a monday and got there on wednesday—————-of the following week.conned a job out of a builder helping to pitch a very special roof,Dutch gable ends with four dormer windows.told my Granpa about it and he said Snowy school aint the only place for learnin but do the right thing by your mum and tell her.
  Arthur its taken me more than a week to get here and I thank you for the grammar lesson so subtly given it is as ye sow not as ye sew I have now corrected it.
    Thanks mate
            Cheers Ian Lawther.

Now I am ten yo and living in an estate full of returned soldiers who have been demobbed with little or no councelling and told its is not manly to go back over old hurts and just get on with the job of making a living . The ones who did seek help were told they had a touch of melancholia or a touch of shell shock it will go away eventually. This was the time of six o’clock closing for the Pubs and 6:30pm the conga line of ex-service men would
Weave into the street.
    One day Dad wasn’t part of the line and I was told by one of the other men better get up the station and get him off the next train. This
Became a regular habit as Dad became more and more attached to his beer. Now I should point out that Dad came back from the war with extremely bad Malaria(he was in the
New Guinea Islands) to this day I can remember his sweat soaked night mares and his horror as another of his friends was killed.
    I would try to get Dad to talk to me after these night mares but all he would say is ‘a man cant help what he dreams When ever I recall these incidents I never fail to thank God for giving me the empathy I needed at such a young age to be able to deal with this.
  Around about this time The Government in all its wisdom built the Migrant Hostel, half round corrugated iron Nissan Huts,About amile away’ and comments like these would be heard all over the neighborhood ,
      Paid to kill em a couple of years ago now were supposed to be good neighbors.
      They don’t have real blood their not human you know .
      Gut less just gut less
      They work for nothing they will take allof the jobs.
      Yellow right thru just yellow.
      Cant trust them.
  As kids we followed the standard set by the adults and repeated and shared opinions with one another .
  Now back to the Big Tree and my first real spiritual experience, The Migrants decided they were going to play their funny game of foot ball on OUR oval and the adults were a absolutely livid and so were the kids.
      When four car loads of Migrants showed up and started to set up their funny goal posts an altercation broke out and stones were thrown heaps of them .A migrant kid was hit on the cheek and started to cry real tears and then real red blood started to trickle down his cheek here was a real person with real red blood and real tears was I the only one that could see it were they all blind. So I ran screaming between the two groups shouting for them to stop that these were real people just like us. God really looked after me that day because not a stone or a stick hit me.
    The feeling of spiritual revelation was soon taken over by a feeling of deep shame of what I
Had been taking part in and a feeling of absolute betrayal I had been lied to by the very adults who would tell a kid it is wrong to lie. 
  I walked over to the Migrant hostel every night for a month and saw mothers looking after babies kids playing on bikes and in play grounds Dads coming home from work they were the same as us in every way .
  To this day I have not forgotten that sense of awe as that boy bled red blood, nor the feeling of betrayal that I had been lied to and I Always act slowly.
  Ten years after this Incident I enlisted in the Army Myself (C.M.F. Field Engineers) and during combat training I realized that what all the men had said to us kids was what they had been taught in the army to desensitize their feelings as they faced the horrors of war.
    WHAT PRICE WAR???

          CHEERS IAN LAWTHER.

Ten years after this Incident I enlisted in the Army Myself (C.M.F. Field Engineers) and during combat training I realized that what all the men had said to us kids was what they had been taught in the army to desensitize their feelings as they faced the horrors of war.

That is an interesting thought.  Last night I saw a video game review on Good Game regarding army combat simulation, and the sensitivities of killing or seeing the dead were brought right home to the player (as they naturally would).  Although never having actually done combat training, I would understand them doing that.  Lack of confidence in anything will only bring disaster.

PS. Didn’t intend to give a grammar lesson hehe, I was simply writing the post as it was!

Ended up seeing the Hillsong Conference PVR (hard disk) recordings, yep all ~5hrs of it.

Revised opinion: It was quite interesting as Hillsong appears to have one foot firmly planted on evangelical soil, and another in empowerment/positivity soil, not that they’re totally distinct or anything though.

Craig Groeschel and Brian Houston seemed to really hammer home the gospel, emphasising an approrpiate balance between sin and salvation.  That is not deemphasising sin at all.

Joel Osteen - previously I thought really bad of him.  He talked on Proverbs 15:4 truthfully, touching on sensitivity/empathy/their effects.  In his words, “it was about being a healer to others”.  Nevertheless, although the gospel doesn’t come much into that verse he didn’t really weave the gospel into the talk.  His wife also spoke about 5-10min on relationships.

Jentzen Franklin was the worst in my opinion.  He ‘talked’ on the Great Commission from Matthew 28 but never really talked about the gospel.  Just empowerment - “God is with you”, “God is at the bottom [with you]”.

They all of course used stage / psychological techniques, not sure how they’d go in Sydney Anglican circles.

Hi Arthur,once in a fifth form (year Eleven) chemistry class the teacher left the room and I drew a characture of a mad proffessor on the blackboard and wrote underneath it “alas poor Gabe (teachers name)is dead
we see his face no more .
for what he thought was H2O was H2SO4 (sulphuric acid).This caused ahellm of a furore in the school because the chem teacher said I was casting aspersions on his chemistry knowledge .Talking to a classmate 46 years later he informed me the only thing he could thing he could remember from chemistry was H2O and H2SO4.Ihad not intended to give a chemistry lesson but I had.
    And sew it is with me Arthur I will never forget your sew and sow.
    Cheers Ian Lawther.

Must confess Ian that I don’t know the slightest thing about chemistry.  Chemistry, physics etc were far too technical for me and put me off.  Didn’t even do science in the last years of high school!

So if you say something questionable about chemistry I might end up believing you!

Just after my training started and at the very first kit inspection the sergeant came into my room and called me a low life maggot that was not worth his effort to step on wanted to know if those filthy lumps of leather were supposed to be clean and I had better use a lot more elbow grease if I was going to present on parade with them ,(my shoes were absolutely spot less ) and he wanted to know how a mongrel like me could possibly call that bunk made when it had all those creases in the pillow slip all this as he ripped the bed apart. All the time this is going on all I could think was ‘this bloke is a rank amateur he needs lessons off my father if he wants to know how to abuse people ’.I stood their with a small smirk on my face trying very hard not to laugh and the harder I tried the more enraged the sergeant became .Today when I look back on mompents like this and I remember the long wistful looks on the face of my father and most of the other men in the street as they sat drinking yet another beer ,I realize that their lives were locked in yesteryear lives changed irreversibly by a war that forced them into the most inhumane situations and situations from which they could find no real escape apart from ANOTHER BEER.
  And to a lesser extent My brother Alan and my own lack of any real fatherly interaction was really just another un accounted cost of a brutal war.
  More later we will go up the station and get Dad off the train and I will introduce you to one of the most Bigotted christians I ever had the mis fortune to meet.         
                                     

                          Cheers Ian Lawther.