Moore Mission, Day 2
Last night we had the 7pm service here at St George North. It was a great night spending time with a truly great group of Christians. After the morning services, a team meeting and some walk up evangelism/flier drop most of us were pretty tired, so the smiling faces at Church in the Bank were really encouraging for us as a team. The stories this morning of conversations had last night were a testament to this encouragement.
Today was a much quieter day. Today we spent most of the day planning for this coming week, along with a tour of St George North. Because nothing much happened today, I thought I would let you know of some stats.
St George North is a vastly multicultural area. Looking at Census data from 2006 for the suburb of Kogarah the population sits at 11,715 people with a pretty 5,810/5,905 Male/Female split.
- The 25 to 54 age group is the highest represented with 5,703 people.
- 2,697 people were born in Asia, with 1,325 of them being born in China.
- Because of this, Mandarin and Cantonese speaking homes are high in proportion with a combined 16.6%
So with a quick look at these stats, it is evident that St George North is a very multicultural area. Sadly this is not the case within the Church here. But it is something that they are spending time and energy trying to change. We have been really thankful that there are a few people on our Mission team, who can speak both Mandarin and Cantonese. Meaning that we are able to make vital contact with these groups in Kogarah.
Moore Mission, Day 1
This morning the St George North mission kicked off with 3 services in 3 different buildings in Bexley, Bexley North and Carlton. St George North Anglican Church is a multi site church, with a total of 4 services over 4 different sites in and around Bexley.
This morning our mission team was split between these 3 different services with 3 people from the team preaching. Tonight we will all combine for a 7pm service in a bank in Kogarah.
If you are the kind if person that likes to pray, we would love it if you would pray for the beginning of our mission here in St George North. Pray for the churches we will be working with over the next week, and that this mission will only be the beginnings of a wider and longer lasting mission here in St George.
Week 5 is over.
I thought it was about time to write something about how college is going.
One thing about college that has genuinely surprised me has been how busy the place is. I’ve been at college for 7 weeks now, and is feels like it has been about 2. I mostly have classes in the morning, which I can manage with a good coffee. But along with other various meetings and groups, the day ends up rounding out with some revision, some readings and then an assignment or two. Along with church responsibilities and other things, by week seems to be over just when it is beginning.
Another aspect of college that has surprised me has been the friendliness of the staff here at college. The experience is like nothing I have ever experienced at an educational institution before. This week I was encouraged by their genuine care for their students. I’ve had many random conversations with faculty where this care has been demonstrated.
Along with this care, college has still be quite challenging. Mostly because I have not studied formally in 5 years.
So far college has been brilliant, I have learnt heaps and I’m looking forward to what the next 4 years will bring.
Moore Mission 2011
This last couple of weeks have been exciting. But first a short story.
A couple of years ago Kirsty and I stopped leading on Kiama Beach Mission. Kirsty led on it for two years, and I led for eight. Finishing up mission was both a sad and happy time. Sad to be finishing up in a ministry we had loved, with people we loved and sad at the prospect of not being able to keep in touch with the churches in Kiama. But also happy because we were getting married, and felt that the leadership had passed on to new people with fresh ideas. KBM was in safe hands.
Why would I share this story? Next week Moore College mission for 2011 begins. It has been great being able to be part of plans for a new mission. Even if there will be considerably less beach involved. The whole college is splitting up for the week to tell people from all over Sydney about Jesus. With a few other groups heading to places like Hong Kong and Port Macquarie. Personally I will be heading to St George North, around Carlton, which is near Sydney airport.
If you want too read about what is happening during the week. Ill be contributing to a combined blog over the course of the week. My posts will be the ones with less text and more fun stuff like photos, and possibly a video or two.
But if you are reading this, then I want to invite you to be part of our Moore Mission street team. We need people to spread the word that Moore College is having a mission. There are 4 basic things that you can do.
1) if you have a blog – get the word out! let people know about mooremission.wordpress.com
2) if you’re on twitter – tweet about us. if you have mission related tweets, use the hashtag #MooreMission
3) if you’re on facebook – share the love.
4) if you have family, friends, churches that would be interested in following Moore Mission 2011 – let ‘em know!
This just got real…
This week has been an especially busy one, College started for real this week, and the busyness also started for real. I generally have different subjects on each day of the week, which is good for consolidation of learning.
My week is generally made up of Chapel a couple of times a week, Lectures and a couple of study groups. I’m studying full time, so I’m doing 6 different subjects. New Testament, Old Testament, Greek, Communication in Ministry, Ministry and Mission and Biblical Theology are the subjects.
I also have a whole bunch of readings to get done each week, and I got my first assignment on Monday morning. A 1000 word comparison between a historical document and a biblical document of some dudes in the book of Mark.
It was nice having a few subjects in English this week. I’m really thankful for all of my lecturers at college, all Godly and Humble christian people. I have also made some awesome friends.
2 weeks in…
Thought it would be a good time to update you on how college is going after almost two weeks of Greek intensive.
Greek has been a hard slog, exciting, but still hard. Early this week I couldn’t help but think that it was all a bit beyond me. Learning verbs, as well as all the other vocab we have learnt was maxing out my brains ability to store new information. Then yesterday everything clicked, almost.
I’m a practical kind of person, which means that I work best when I’m actually doing what I am learning. Which is what we started doing yesterday. Yesterday we started doing some translations of whole sentences, from scratch. It was such a relief to be able to see where different words fitted in to the sentence. It was also nice to see that all the formulas that I had been working on perfecting was actually leading to something more tangible. Remembering most of the vocab was nice too.
So we have one more day of intensive to go, no doubt we will learn more tomorrow. So Greek is proving to be the challenge I thought it would be, but it is also more enjoyable than I thought it would be too.
Oh, that’s what that says…
Didn’t get to post last night. Kirsty and I have our date night on Thursday nights, it’s something we both really look forward to. It also means that I try and remain free of digital stuff, facebook, twitter and website. If you are married, even if you have children, we would highly recommend it.
Yesterday I learnt the importance of learning vocab, translating from Greek is going to be easier if I can learn specific words, how to pronounce them and what an equivalent English word might be.
I’ve been trying to learn all this vocab by using an awesome iPhone app called ivocabulary. Basically you load in all the words that you want to learn. (we have a list of words we have to learn each day) ivocabulary is great, in each session it gives you a slideshow of words and their English equivalents and then tests you on all the words, while telling you if you are wrong or right.
So my vocab is going really well, thanks to my iPhone. On Wednesday night I even dreamt in Greek… Not sure if that is a good thing.
Getting translation right
Today we learnt some of the important things you should do when you are translating Greek to English. Firstly its generally a good principal to get the word you are translating right in the first place. Translating the greek word Jesus into the english word desert would be an example of breaking the first rule.
Along with many other things you should do, getting the words translated in the correct order is one that stuck in my head. English has many rules that govern what words can go together to form a sentence. For example, the words (ran the ball after dog the) don’t really mean much when placed randomly together. English has rules that mean that those six words can be constructed into the sentence “The dog ran after the ball” or of you are Yoda “After the ball the dog ran” is possible.
Translating into Greek is challenging because the rules that govern Greek are not the same as the ones which govern English, meaning that sentences can seem pretty random.
Anyway, all that was just so I could introduce you to a few mis-translations that we were given today. Enjoy!
alpha to omega, and all the zēta’s in between.
Today myself and the whole 1st year group at Moore College year kicked off what will be 2 weeks of intensively learning Koiné Greek.
I had a mixture of both excitement and trepidation going into today. Learning a new language is something that I have never really done before. My language experience so far had amounted to a lady from Italy I worked with once who taught me how to swear in Italian, not the best preparation for learning at a bible college.
However the day was great. Today we focussed on the alphabet, sounds, and a couple of commonly found words in Mark’s gospel. I had done some work on my Greek in the last few weeks which made life easier. All my new classmates were helping each other out with problems, which was great!
It is exciting to see the beginnings of the ability to read the New Testament in the language it was written. At this stage I still feel a bit like a little kid trying to learn english for the first time. Sometimes the word comes out perfectly, other times I might as well be speaking… well Greek.
Koiné Greek is a great language, It was what Greek’s spoke on the street, it had street cred (not in a Jenny from the block kind of way). It was perfect for evangelism because most people in the known world knew how to read and speak it, meaning language barriers that we might have now were not as present.
Now to do my homework… And prepare to learn more tomorrow.
Thanks for coming over…
Hi There,
Thanks for coming over.
I hope that this website will serve a couple of functions, firstly as a way for me to keep all my friends updated while I am studying at Moore Theological College, and secondly I hope that this site will give you some insight into what it is like to work in full time ministry and therefore help you to support it in the future.
Firstly let me give you a quick history of the last few years.
After leaving High School in 2001 I studied a combination of Business Management and Nursing. Being involved in the Business world was satisfying in the beginning, it offered the prospect of earning lots of money and the feeling of achieving great success. After a few years of doing this, I found myself feeling un-fulfilled being in a world which was mostly consumed by the constant (and only) pursuit of money. So in a quest for something that would enable me to actually help people, nursing was a logical next step. It gave me opportunities to help people physically, and I even had an inkling that it would be good if I could also share my faith with them. As I found out relatively quickly, this was not really an option in the NSW health system.
Soon after this, I had a conversation with a minister (Gav Perkins) at my home church, Christ Church St Ives. And after a few conversations, and 6 months, I started a 2 year ministry apprenticeship (MTS).
Most recently Ive been working as a Graphic Designer at Christ Church.
This brings you completely up to speed, it is 2011, and this year I will become a Bible College Student.
Over time, more stuff will put up on here that, hopefully, will be worthy of you reading.
I also love good graphic design, so you will most probably get a bit of that too.
timbo
