Infertility – Year One

We spent 9 years of our life in a small country town in North Queensland called Charters Towers. These are my memories of the people and events that were a part of our life during that time.

April and I began to be concerned about not having children after our first wedding anniversary. A local doctor in Emerald referred us to the public gynecologist. This began a sometimes heartbreaking experience of dealing with infertility.

Relying of the public hospital system can be a humiliating experience. You are at the doctor’s mercy. In rural areas there is little recourse if there is a problem with a doctor. A patient’s right to a second opinion is worthless if there is no one else to see. We had to deal with arrogant incompetence, insensitivity and rudeness. It annoyed me to see this man later extolled on a current affairs show as a rough saint of the bush. Many times after a consultation this “saint’s” rudeness and insensitivity would leave April in tears.

Moving to Charters Towers allowed us access to an excellent private specialist in Townsville. We began what was to be an emotional roller-coaster in our efforts to have children. April was prescribed increasing levels of clomid, a hormone that encourages ovulation. A good part of this year was spent taking April’s temperature to see if ovulation had occurred.

The years of dealing with infertility were taking their toll on our relationship. The drugs alone cause hormonal imbalances that result in mood swings. At the end of the year we decided to take a break. We joined a private health insurance fund and needed to wait for 12 months before we could claim on a pre-existing condition. This was a welcome relief for our relationship. We decided to wait a year and then look at further options.

Struggling Beginnings – Year One

April and I had felt quite clearly for a number of years God calling us to Charters Towers since we had spent a year working in the town as a part of a “Cornerstone” mission team in 1990. We returned in 1995 when I was offered the job as pastor of the Church of Christ.

I remember very clearly the struggle when beginning our ministry at the Church of Christ in Charters Towers. It was a radical change from the busyness of life leading a Christian community. Although life in Cornerstone was often difficult it was never dull and the community life always had its own energy.

I was promised one year’s paid work with the assurance of plenty of unpaid work beyond that. That was the amount of money the church had saved during its Pastorless time. One church leader said the expectation was that I was hired to fix the church. His analogy was, “If you call a plumber in to fix a broken pipe you expect the pipe to be fixed.” Our church was broken because it was low on people, the most important resource of God’s community. I wasn’t quite as sure about the analogy between the pastor and the plumber Read more

Homeless Lessons

Tonight I did my usual Sunday evening routine of feeding the homeless at a popular beach near our place. I have been doing for a few months now and am getting to know some of the people quite well. It is a good reminder when talking with these people to realise that life is capable of giving us all some hard knocks.

As I have listened to the stories of these people I have realised that wherever we live and whatever we look like life can deal some very unfair hands. Who am I to say that I would react any differently if I were placed in the same situation.

What I have also sought to do is to listen to their stories and value these people’s lives. I have learned the value of community and that we all have a need to connect to each other’s story. For example tonight one of the guys told me that he was battling bone cancer. For a year and a half the doctors had treated him as less than human and failed to diagnose and treat his cancer properly in its early stages. Because of this the cancer has spread and has become far more serious. In the midst of this the homeless community has cared for him and shown a genuine concern. What a shame his life wasn’t valued higher at an earlier stage of his cancer.
I have learned that life is about caring and giving. If my faith is just about myself and my knowledge of God then it is sadly lacking. In this situation where I thought that it was up to me to give I have realised that I have also received. But this has not been the case in this work, I have also received greatly through being able to give.

Creativity in the Church

This is so true of many movements. I am not sure that these things are all bad. For example a lack of accountability can be a bad thing. We only need to look at the failed TV evangelists of the 80’s and 90’s and I am sure that some are still failing to realise this. But then on the other hand the opportunity to run ahead and be creative can happen in institutions. In fact it is often the institutions that allow the freedom for that occur.

When I look at so many of the voices of the Emergent church movement I see that most of them are safely locked behind the doors of institutions. Very often the institutions that they are spending so much time emerging from. I think that many of them would not be able to do the things they do like blog for example without this protection.

Don’t get me wrong I get as frustrated as the next person with the church. But I still love it and its people. I have found that in many cases it has fostered a climate of innovation and encouraged new things to occur. The church is in fact the ideal place for a ‘mucker’ because it can be so forgiving of failure or at least it should be.

I continue to be amazed at how movements can ossify and institutionalize. Organizational gravity inevitably pulls toward institutionalization. The justifications used by the bean counters, policy makers, and those who must have rules and regulation are legion: ..accountability..stewardship…excellence…can all be admirable labels for clubs that are used to beat innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit out of an organizational culture.

In my experience the only way to keep an edge and a step ahead of the maintainers is to recruit and empower a steady stream of what Edison called ‘muckers.’ They are the trailblazers who simply need running room and someone to believe in them. (http://www.undertheiceberg.com/)

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A Review of 5 Views of Church Growth

From the guys at 9 Marks a look at the church growth movement from a range of perspectives. I thought that it had pretty much run its course with so much talk of the emergent movement but the some of its core ideas are still hanging around. “Lest we Forget”! The full article is here

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