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After reading Mega Church Watch I have come to the conclusion (or maybe I did years ago) that it’s alot easier to form cynical attitudes to things that grow than applaud someone or something thats doing better than you are.

I love the fact that things grow, I don’t sit around being resentful that the tree outside my window is growing do I?

I’m growing too, just differently to the tree. I don’t get hurt and resentful because I’m not growing as fast as the sapling outside – it just grows differently to me.

When something is growing and baring fruit in the form of local and international mission, fostering the growth of individuals in the workplace, then at best give it praise, at worst leave it alone.

The tall poppy syndrome is alive and well in Australia.

As Christians, shouldn’t we know better?

Or is the syncretistic appropriation of secular values ok?

Check out my new personal weblog:
www.matthewsweet.net

Not much their yet, but it wil be more personal stuff whereas freedom generation will be more about God and Jesus and stuff!!

I also want to start reviewing podcasts of great preachers like Ps Brian Houston, Joel Osteen and Ed Young, to name a few!!

Hi Just spent two days with a fellow Pastor Ian Rumsey at Charity Computers in our nations capital.

I wasn’t sure what to expect but to say I was blown away when we entered their massive warehouse was an understatement!

I was the size of two tennis courts and stacked with pallet after pallet of donated computers!

They source their computers from Industry and Government and then refurbish the machines which are then sold or given away to other not-for-profit organisations or needy individuals or families in the community.

It’s an amazing way for the church to connect with the community and help people get a computer when it’s financially impossible for say a single parent family to afford a new PC.

I have been listening to Bill Hybels Podcast today. He was preaching from the book of Malachi. He is one of the most passionate and thought provoking speakers I have ever heard.

Malachi is all about living a life of excellence by offering your best to God, not your second best!

God hates scraps, it’s a hard message to hear, but he commands our best.

As leaders, we are responsible to build an ever increasing level of excellence in our businesses and ministries.

Things left untouched, will decrease, but we need to allow God to work though our lives to increase.

This requires effort and hard work, not settling for mediocrity or second best but offering every area of our life to Him as a pleasing and acceptable offering.

Pastor Vanessa on Sunday morning reiterated the sound that our house has been making for many months!

She clearly verbalised our vision and mission statements so clearly that I was overcome with dumbness! Of course! Duh…

Vision: A house of healing, a house of hope, a house that brings heaven to earth.

Mission: Serving locally, impacting globally.

I was so excited to hear it. We are now two years old and allthough I have always carried the vision of the house in my heart, I now can carry it on my lips too!

With those who ask “what is the vision of Generation Church?”, I can give them a very clear answer in seconds rather than rambling on for five minutes.

Well,

We have managed to traverse a potentially error prone and disasterous move to new offices with flying colours!!

Everything ran very smoothly with our server down less than an hour and a half.

The new studios are phenominal. As the central location for all our IT and multi-sites, it’s the perfect location for hosting a virtual office for multi-sites and pastors working from home.

The building we are in hosts the main fiber-optic link for the Gold Coast, servicing a data centre in our building and Bond University.

Cerum has provisioned a very fast open port onto the internet that has the capacity to easily service 4 or 5 branch offices and campuses across the Gold Coast.

VOIP is perfect for this kind of link, with low latency and high upstream speeds. We can potentially even host our own websites and streaming servers there, right from within our own offices.

I’m in the process of working with Faktortel and Dean Davis from Cerum to build our own IAX Server to host all our IP phones spread across all sites. Ah the wonders of open source software!

Over the next week, the PBX (phone server) will be built and tested with each of the 12 VOIP handests we currently have.

Initially we were going to host our phones on a Virtual PBX from Faktortel, but due to restrictions with NAT traversal and stun servers with our 6 Polycom i301 handsets, we needed to build our own VOIP server located on the same subnet as the phones.

Which means that we get our own PBX 3 months ahead of time!

The next few things to happen over the coming weeks:

1. Terminal Server – Allows pastors and sites to access Excellerate externally
2. VPN – binding all site networks to the server through encrypted tunnels.

Well, we are about to embark on a new chapter at Generation Church.

Multi-Site church.

Tomorrow we plant our first service at Pacific Pines on the north side of the Gold Coast.

It’s exciting times as we see our church grow and expand to new levels. I would not have though we would reach this point after only 18 months of ministry as a team on the Gold Coast.

Every part of my life is being stretched right now and I’m loving it. How much more easy is it to be stretched whan you are doing something you love? It makes the journey so much easier.

And so the Generation Journey continues, faithfully and forcefully moving forward.

As I prayed while walking the streets of Helensvale doing a letterbox drop, I could only imagine salvation in those streets. We passed home after home filled with dreams and visions of unchurched people yet to be realised. They need to know the freedom and hope that God has to offer them through the church. My prayer is that our church, and every church in our area will touch their lives with power and see dynamic and transformational change in our city.

How do you recover from this?

Come back! Come back!

The said “Lot pinched his tits” as opposed to “Lot pitched his tents”

Maybe it was intentional? I would personally side on the opinion that it was a mistake…