Archives For Life

This is Life? – Website

August 11, 2010 — 1 Comment

At the University of Sydney. A campus consuming mission is coming up! It is going to be absolutely massive! There is an awesome website up at the moment. Check it out.

thisislife.com.au

I reckon you all fit into one of the following categories

  • Christian at Usyd – Pray for mission and invite your friends! Chat to them about mission and aim to have good conversations with them.
  • Non-Christian at Usyd – Come along to an event, there are tons on (see here for details).
  • Christian not at Usyd – Please pray for us, and pray that God will work.
  • Non-Christian at Usyd – check out this website also, or ask me a question.

God is good!

Continue Reading…

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Ancon 2010 – SWED Committee Tells All

May 23, 2010 — Leave a comment

Here’s a video that I made with the SWED (Social Work and Education) Committee recently, advertising Ancon (the SUEU’s Annual Conference).

This video was actually made to joke around with the fact that so often when people tell others about Ancon, they don’t actually say anything factual, they just use lots of adjectives to say how good it is. I hope you enjoy it.

O, and register for Ancon.

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RSVPing/Registering is Loving

May 21, 2010 — Leave a comment

I suck at RSVPing, and I’m only slightly better at Registering for conferences and the like. I have realised that this is a flaw that I need to address.

As someone who has invited people to events (parties, weekends away, etc.), it can be really frustrating when people don’t RSVP or rego early. This is for a number of reasons, including the fact that you need to know numbers for catering and to know that you need to cover minimal costs. Therefore, it is awesome when people say that they’re coming early, and really frustrating when people leave it to the last minute. For this same reason it is frustrating when people pull out at the last minute.

Please Register

I’m sure you can all sympathise with me. Almost everyone has had a birthday party, and a lot of people I know have been in charge of running conferences. It is really frustrating when people don’t RSVP or rego for your event.

Therefore let us serve and love each other by RSVPing and registering early for events. I have said before that I am not very good at doing this, and I am sorry if I have not RSVPed for your event. But I am going to try and be better at it. It honestly doesn’t take long to check your calender and see if you can make it, and if you’re just waiting for a better invitation then don’t, the invitation you have is probably pretty good.

So, go now, register for Ancon and calm the nerves of the Ancon team, RSVP for that 21st and reassure the person organising it, and rego for that weekend away coming up. It’s loving.

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Reflections on Burnout

May 19, 2010 — 4 Comments

Recently I burnt out. Basically I came to a time in the semester where I was doing too much, and this meant that I got overly tired and stopped working properly. It’s a really weird thing to happen, but my mind stopped running at full speed, and went into conserve energy mode. Thankfully now that time is over, and I’m feeling a lot better.

Burnout

After this time I have been thinking (surprise) about why it happened, and how I can avoid burnout in the future, here are some thoughts.

  1. As a Uni student, you life is broken up into many different areas, including Uni study, church, social life, part time work, Christian commitments at Uni etc… And these areas all have their seasons of business. It is vital to plan ahead for these seasons of business, especially if they coincide (this happened to me).
  2. It is also ok to not be busy all the time. As a Uni student you will be very busy at times, but also you have lots of time off. It is ok to take that time off and not to overload yourself all the time. Although having said that, planning a year out ahead of time is very useful, and in those months of holidays, try doing one off things that don’t take time from you in the rest of the year (e.g. lead on a CRU camp).
  3. God is good, and he can use us even in our weakness. Some of the times when I can see God working in my life have been the times when I have been most down. God is good.
  4. Prayer is awesome. God listens and answers our prayers, and we have such a privilege to be able to personally communicate with the creator of the universe!

Well, that’s it for now, and look forward to more posts from me in the upcoming weeks, the will come…

UPDATE: Check out this awesome burnout fail from failblog. Very appropriate.

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Tweets from SWED Faculty Weekend Away

April 30, 2010 — 1 Comment

SWEDOnce again I am going away this weekend. This time on an SUEU weekend away with the faculty that I lead. That is the amazing social work and education faculty. There are a few of us on the weekend that will be tweeting away, so check all of these tweets out in the nifty little box below.

This weekend we’re going to be learning about Justice, and these talks will be brought to us by Jeremy Smith, check out his blog here.

Hope you enjoy the Tweeting action!

Also, below the jump is a video I made telling people why they should come on the weekend. (o, and get ready for a stack of new videos here, I have a few more made that I need to upload.)
Continue Reading…

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Teachers Teach Ethics

April 28, 2010 — Leave a comment

Tech eyeAs an Christian Education student at University, I have been watching the recent debate over ethics classes in place of SRE (Special Religious Education) very closely, so closely in fact that I did a research assignment on the issue last term. This was a media analysis of the debate, and I have decided to break my blogging silence on the issue (thanks to a push from Dave Miers and the heat that surrounds the issue at the moment). This post is not directly related to my paper, although I will blog a series directly from the paper. This post is about the fact that Teachers should be teaching ethics.

One point that has not really be raised in this discussion is the fact that ethics should be part of the hidden curriculum, what is the hidden curriculum I hear you say. The hidden curriculum is the part of the curriculum that is not explicit, but that teachers teach anyway. Students know not to lie, and should learn that from their teachers. Students know to respect their teachers, and this is not directly in the curriculum. Same with ethics, students should be learning how to think critically and should be learning how to live in regular class time.

My fear is that if ethics classes become mainstream then ethics will no longer have any place whatsoever in the regular classroom. What about the students in SRE, ethics isn’t explicitly taught in SRE, the truth is. At least I hope the truth is, especially in Protestant SRE. Will these students miss out on critical thinking about how to live?

Stay tuned for a barrage of further thoughts on the issue… It has been on my mind for a while.

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Ancon 2010 has Launched!

April 22, 2010 — Leave a comment

Ancon, the annual conference of the Sydney Uni Evangelical Union has launched. It is all happening and is ready to go.

Ancon 2010

Ancon is a 5 day conference form 28 June – 3rd July 2010, and the topic this year is Jesus: Revealing Reality.

A brand new website has launched today and you can view it at http://ancon.org.au/. It looks great, very minimalistic and sheek (is that the right word?). Only a few days ago I was chatting to Richard Glover about the splendour of the new design.

And not only is there a new website, but on that website is a pimping new video, one of the best Christian advertising videos that I have seen and easily the best video to come out of the SUEU for the past two years. You can view it below as well.

Ancon is going to be a great conference, and if you’re a Uni student at USyd (or not) interested in finding out more about Jesus, then you should register now!

I’ll see you there.

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Top Ten Reasons To Come On SWED Weekend Away 2010

April 18, 2010 — Leave a comment

SWED

I’m the male faculty leader for the Social Work and Education Faculty within the SUEU as many of you will know. And we have our weekend away coming up in 2 weeks time! So I made this video to encourage people to come…

This video is just me speaking over a presentation and I do realise that I read from the presentation at times which is very naughty and not a very good thing to do in a PPT presentation. So I apologise for that.

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Moore Mission At Willoughby

March 22, 2010 — Leave a comment

Yesterday a team of around 20 students and lecturers from Moore College descended on the church that I go to, St Stephen’s Anglican, Willoughby.

St Stephens Banner

A big task for this mission team will be to hang out with members of the congregation and partner with them in regular ministries. I’m really excited to see how God will use this time to grow and change his people.

Some of the Moore students have set up a blog with updates from a lot of the different missions going on all over the place. You can see that blog here, and there has already been a post from a student who is at Willoughby (here).

It’s really exciting to see a group of students who are so excited to tell people about Jesus flooding God’s church all over the place.

If you don’t know why people would want to tell others about Jesus, then maybe read this…

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God is Working at Sydney Uni!

March 18, 2010 — Leave a comment
SUEU O-Day

SUEU O-Day

I am so incredibly excited by what God is doing at Sydney Uni this year!

I’m a faculty leader within the SUEU (Sydney Uni Evangelical Union) of the Social Work and Education faculty. From the inside of a Christian group on campus, it has been great to see God working amongst students.

Here are a few really exciting statistics.

  • So far from O-Week, week 1 and week 2 we have 584 new contacts to add to the almost 700 students who were in small groups last year!
  • At public meetings in week 1 there were 690 people over 3 days, including a Thursday public meeting that had students sitting on the floor (Also including a performance from the 5SyncBoys)
  • In Social Work and Education small groups we had 86 people in week 1, and it appears that the number of students in small group is growing each week! So much so that we have had to create 2 extra small groups in our faculty!

At Sydney Uni, we have been praying for a revival of our campus. We want God to work amongst the students here and bring many into a relationship with him. I think that what has happened so far this year is the start of God’s work. And I will continue to pray that through his mercy he may save as many as possible.

“Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation”

2 Peter 3:15

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