ABC Dialogue

You may know about YouTobe.com, the world’s leading video content internet site but the latest imitator has a Christian flavour - it’s www.GodTube.com.

Here’s what they say about themselves…

GodTube.com is a dynamic community of people who are looking to connect, share, and belong. In its simplest form, GodTube is a video-driven social network where users can explore their faith and the tenets of Christianity. Read more »

It was no accident that when both major political parties were invited to participate in a live web cast to some 700 churches across the country, both the Prime Minister, John Howard, and Opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, chose to appear themselves rather than delegating the opportunity.The importance with which both leaders treated the ‘faith vote’ is not simply reflective of a looming election that will be hard fought. It is also recognition of the growing emergence of believers as a major influence in Australian politics. Read more »

Source: Media release by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL)

With four weeks to go until the Federal election, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) today launched a website that will inform hundreds of thousands of Christians throughout Australia - including many in marginal seats - about the different political party standpoints on key issues they care about.

The website www.australiavotes.org provides the responses of six political parties, including the Coalition and Labor, to 25 questions of interest to Christians ranging from homelessness and refugees to family life and abortion. Responses include new initiatives in areas such as film classification and strengthening families, and in some cases clearly define party positions on contentious issues for the first time.

The launch dovetails with the release today of the results of specially commissioned research which shows that the top issues of concern to Christians are marriage/family matters and poverty in Australia, followed by abortion, drugs/substance abuse and Third World poverty.

Read more »

Message from Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO

Fr Frank Brennan had planned to open the Higgins Forum on human rights at Malvern Town Hall on 10 October but was unable to attend. This is the text of his address. The event was chaired by the Hon Stephen Charles QC.

We Australians are fortunate to live in one of the world’s freest, most secure, and well endowed countries. We prize the rule of law and we enjoy the benefits of a robust democracy. On the cusp of a tightly fought election, community groups are able to organise and call for a reckoning from their candidates. Security and national economic growth are always the big ticket items for the electorate choosing between the major political parties. Some voters see little to separate the major parties on those items and thus look to other issues or reasons to determine their vote. Some other voters prefer to give a higher priority to other questions which do not enjoy the same populist support as security and the economy. Read more »

What would you attempt in your life if you really knew ahead of time that you could not fail?

Most of us don’t put ourselves in that position, because often we have this terrible fear of failure and humiliation. We don’t want to lose; we want to win. So when we are faced with a challenge, with an invitation to do something meaningful, to do something significant, often we take a step back because the fear of failure overwhelms us. Read more »

Mission Possible 3

Acts 16:1-15

Over the last few weeks we have been talking about mission, and I hope that I have given you some material to think about and reflect on.

But it has been an amazing few weeks in Australia. We have had the G20 meeting - streets were blocked off, police dressed in riot gear. Barricades and protesters. All this is quite strange in our usually peaceful city.

In the middle of this there was a ‘Make Poverty History’ concert on Friday night where U2 and many other bands played. Tim Costello in the concert declared that when it comes to government generosity, Australia is amongst the wooden spooners: 19th out of 22 countries. He through down the challenge for his brother, Peter Costello the Federal Treasurer to meet U2 lead singer Bono, and Peter responded with an hour long chat.

We have also been able to listen to an interview with Bono on Enough Rope with Andrew Denton, if you want to read the transcript you can find it on the enough Rope Web site (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1591037.htm).

Here’s some of what Bono had to say:

BONO: Yeah… I think this is a real moment in time where it is possible, if we want to, to be the first generation that says no to extreme poverty. And by ‘extreme poverty’ we mean, you know, stupid poverty, kids dying for lack of food in their belly in the 21st century, 3,000 Africans, mostly children, dying every day from a mosquito bite. That is ridiculous.

And I think, in a way, we shouldn’t be blaming the politicians, because we have to give them permission to spend what is in the end our money. So, we’re asking for 0.7 per cent of GDP. That’s what it will take to stop this. That’s less than one per cent.

I don’t know an Australian that I’ve met in the last week that isn’t up for that. It’s 0.7, now - you’re at 0.28, I think, now and there’s talk of increasing by 2010. I would say, if you get to point five by 2010, you could be very proud as a nation, but push and push and push. Because you may think, ‘We’ll it’s just Australia, Australia’s just one piece of the puzzle.’ Wrong. Everyone looks at everyone else. the Canadians are looking at Australia, so this is a critical moment.

And, if you go to point five by 2010, I think that’s like 11 million people would have access to clean water, 18,000 deaths avoided to AIDS and TB. These are real lives, real numbers and what an opportunity to be able to do that. So, look, everyone knows how I feel about Australia but you have to give the politicians, whoever’s in power, permission to do this.’

Christian Response? So how do we process all this? How do we take our Christian framework, how do we take our Biblical understanding of God and faith and apply it to what was going on? In other words if we apply our theology, our understanding of what God and the gospel is all about, what does it say about the issues that we are talking about. In particular, what does it say about our mission? Read more »

Acts 8:26-38

Today we are talking about mission in terms of our own locality.

We read last week in Acts 1 the words of Jesus that said,

⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’

In this series we are taking Jesus’ principle of looking at mission in ever larger geographical circles of influence. Last week we looked at mission in our close group of family and friends. This week the circle of influence widens to look at the wider community around us.

By this I mean the surrounding community in which we live. In our case, since we meet in Armadale, we will think about our ministry to the Armadale community and it’s surrounding suburbs. Read more »

Acts 1:1-11

Over the next few weeks we will be talking about the theme, ‘Mission: Possible’. This will be an attempt to understand what it means to engage in Christian mission. I used to watch the TV series ‘Mission: Impossible’. There are a lot of parallels in understanding our life mission, except of course the message doesn’t destruct in 5 seconds. Whether we know it or not, each one of us is given a mission by God.

When people talk with each other often the most used word is ‘busy’. It’s true we all have much to do in a week, and little time to do it in. We rush from one thing to the next and the word busy describes our lives well.

But I often wonder if the ‘busy-ness’ we experience is really about doing the important things in life, or is it just about being busy. Read more »

This morning I am going to talk about obedience and authority.  The bible reading is about obedience and authority and how Jesus dealt with the issues involved.  But more of that later.

Let’s start with Stanley Milgram – he was American and he was a professor in the 1960s.  Now Stanley was a pretty controversial guy in his time and one of the reasons for this is an experiment he conducted on learning.

He organised for 2 volunteers, picked at random, to participate in a study to test memory learning.  1 person was the teacher and 1 the learner. 

The teacher was under the direct supervision of Professor Milgram and his job was to ask the learner a set of questions. 

The learner’s job was to memorize a long list of words and repeat them in pairs when the teacher asked.  The catch for the learner was that he or she was hooked up to a machine that administered electric shocks each time they got a word wrong.  The machine had 1 switch for each 15 volts.  It was the Teacher’s job to administer the electric shocks.  And even worse, if as more questions were asked, the learner got more words wrong, … the voltage of the shock increases by 15 volts for each error. Read more »

Welcome to ABC Dialogue. This is the first post of hopefully many.

Our plan is to publish the messages from the services at Armadale Baptist as well as links to other interesting web sites. We’ll also have an events calender.

We hope you enjoy it!