Real Men Life is on this week!

Real Men Life the 2008 men's conference for C3 Oxford Falls is on this Friday night and Saturday. Conferences like this are part of the reason mega-churches are so popular and successful. I'm part of the Real Men team, so I'd like to encourage anyone who can make it to go along. Friday night is free, and Saturday is only $85 if you register before Friday (otherwise $95) - writing material, drinks and food are included.

This is what the leader of Real Men, Greg French, has to say about the Life conference:

The irony of our time is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, bigger cities and less friends, wider roads but narrower viewpoints. We have larger houses and smaller families, more money but less time, more knowledge but less judgement, more experts yet more problems.

We’ve learned how to make a living but not a life, added years to life not life to years, been to the moon and back but not crossed the street to meet a neighbour.

We’ve conquered outer space but not inner space, have more degrees but less sense, talked too much and listened too little, loved seldom and hated too often. We’ve cleaned the air but polluted the soul, written more but learnt less, planned more but accomplished less, learned to rush but not to wait. We laugh little, drive fast, stay up late, get tired, read little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

These are the days of fast foods and poor digestion, big men with small characters, steep profits and shallow relationships, disposable nappies and throwaway morality.

That can be the sum total of a man’s life. The colour and meaning of LIFE can be lost because we lose our perspective about what really matters. ‘Doing LIFE well’ doesn’t just happen. REALMEN ’08 conference ‘LIFE’ will help men adjust their worlds so as to enjoy the journey and do LIFE well. Look forward to seeing you there. It will be LIFE transforming!

Greg French

Here is the story of how one man's life has been transformed, through marriage, divorce and then eventually re-marrying his wife. The key? A relationship with Jesus Christ, and most importantly, with men he could learn from and relate to:

A parable of 4 investments

I entered this presentation into SlideShare's World's Best Presentation Contest. If you like it then go and give it a vote!

A Parable Of 4 Investments

view presentation (tags: business christian religious creative)

Bless those who persecute you ...

It is great seeing a little church really living out the commandment of "bless those who persecute you" - Romans 12:14. Kinetic Church had a bunch of their stuff stolen earlier this year and went out of their way to launch a set of billboards addressed to the thief. The culmination of their campaign was this video:

from: ThinkChristian

Change your nature, not your rules

I came across this great article Why Christians do not believe in morality today by Peter Sellick, an Anglican associate deacon:

I have said before that Christianity is not primarily a system of ethics, unlike Islam. Rather, it is a practice that transforms the individual by situating him in the story of God. It is this transformation that produces the moral life which we know we could not live if left by ourselves.

...

This is because the gospel forms our desires. We find that greed and the exercise of power have disappeared from our repertoire and we look forward to becoming people of peace, not people who are for peace but a people who are by their nature peaceable.

The point is that Christianity, because it involves an encounter with God, changes our nature, which trumps any planned change in the rules we live by. As the Bible puts it:

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Ezekiel 36:26

This is the heart of Christianity, and actually forms one of the great criticisms of it, that the church is full of hypocrites (as my pastor has said, “It's best place for them!”). The point is that the transformation has an element of continuity to it:

“And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. ”

2 Corinthians 3:18

Obviously this is classic Christian theology (actually basic knowledge for any believer), but it's rare to see it so well explained, and that in a secular source. Well done Peter!