I'm hopeless

Jesus' brother James, who ended up an elder of the church in Jerusalem during the period of the book of Acts, was so gifted at what he did he was given the surname 'the Just', and it is recorded in the tradition of the church that his "knees had become callous like a camel's" from praying.

I wish I could live up to a point where people could attribute something half as amazing to me.

How do Churches really know what the right decision is?

I'm writing a theology essay on Church Governance at the moment.  It raises a few questions to my traditional ideas on how we make decisions in our congregations.

Here's a quote from Page Patterson's paper in "Who Runs The Church?"

Even regenerate congregants are still not infallible in discerning the direction of the Holy Spirit. Worse still, some churches such as Corinth in the New Testament era exhibit more than a little carnality among infantile saints. Even more debilitating, everyone knows that unregenerate people hold membership in churches, and this paradigm gives less than mature Christians and even unbelievers a voice in the affairs of the church.

How do you think we get around this?

Bathurst 2011 Race Day

With much eager anticipation I awoke at 5:45am this morning to begin the live telecast from Mt Panorama.  I wasn't disappointed.  The Touring Car Masters race was great, so many historical US and Australian Muscle cars roaring around the track.  Plus Glen Seaton won, giving him his first ever win on a Sunday at Bathurst (kind of corny but funny and warm hearted knowing the history Glen has at the mountain).

Then after a few more support races it was time for the big one.  Garry Coleman's prayer before the race brought a tear to my eye in the simplicity and completeness in which he presented the Gospel.

The race itself was the closest, most intense and hard fought I think I can remember.  For the entire 161 laps there was no clear leader, always two or three fighting it out for first place.  There was the customary big crash (David Besnard in the #17 Dick Johnson Racing Falcon), the customary co-driver mistake (Luke Youlden crashing the #6 FPR Falcon at the end of a safety car period), the customary hard luck failure (Jamie Whincup's alternator then flat battery - costing him the race win), the customary unlucky fortune (Mark Winterbottom being caught out by the safe car for Jamie Whincup and missing the pits being pushed from 2nd to 6th), and the customary come from no where lucky buggers (Greg Murphy's third place finish).

The race had it all.  With a clincher of a finish, Craig Lowndes hunting down Garth Tander in the dying laps, only to finish 0.2 of a second apart.  Such a great fight - and I never thought I'd be sitting there cheering on a HRT car, but I wanted Garth and his rookie co-driver Nick Percat to come out over Triple 8 Racing (I don't like seeing T8 win anything these days, let alone when Mark Skaife is part of the driver line up).

The biggest talking point is obviously the crash of David Besnard.  Firstly it shouldn't have happened. These guys should know by now to pump the brake pistons back out in the pits after a pad change, but also the dramatic fuel fire, and the speed and ability of the fire marshals to get that fire out so efficiently.   David was fine, the most discomfort he had was from fire extinguisher powder getting in his eyes.

Well that's another year of the Great Race done with, I enjoyed every moment, even with a Holden victory.  The sport and the track make it such a great event - I'm already hanging out for next years.

Bathurst 2011 Day 3

Exciting day at the Mountain today.

For the V8s it was all about the Top Ten shootout, leading up to that though were a few support races that were pretty intense.

For the shootout though all eyes were on Will Davidson as he headed out first, being elevated from 11th to 10th due to a penalty being handed to Lee Holdsworth yesterday.  Will posted a really quick time that was unbeaten until Greg Murphy came out fourth last.  As Jamie Whincup warmed up for his lap the rain fell and that was it.  He, Mark Winterbottom and Garth Tander had no hope of posting a fast lap as the track got wet.  So the surprise of the day was seeing Murph get pole... the disappointment was seeing Frosty unable to post a time and end up 10th... and the joy of the day was seeing Will come through to end up on the front row in second spot.

So Mark Winterbottom and Steve Richards will start from 10th, but it's a long race and they are still my pick for the victory tomorrow.

Bathurst 2011 Day 2

I had to work all day today, but luckily I remembered to set the recorder for the televised support race and V8 Supercar qualifying that happened today at Mt Panorama.

It was an exciting qualifying session.  40 minutes long, which is double the usual session.  The track was dry, so normal slick tyres were back in play, and the lap times came down real quick.  It ended with Garth Tander from HRT on provisional pole (decided tomorrow after the top 10 shootout), with Mark Winterbottom in the FPR Falcon .05 of a second behind him (so close!) - Mark's final lap was beauty and it was exciting to watch, hoping that he would take the top spot.

The final lap also saw Jason Bargwanna hit the wall quite hard.  Looks like a lot of work for the mechanics to do to get his car back on the track tomorrow.

It's also not Bathurst without some controversy.  It seems Lee Holdsworth, who qualified 8th, has been pushed back 5 places as a penalty for not going to the weigh area when told.  This brings Will Davidson from FPR into the top 10 for the Shootout tomorrow.

Ahhh I love it!

Bathurst 2011 Day 1

The V8s are hitting the track in Bathurst, and I am still in Brisbane.  Things didn't pan out the way I planned this year.  Dad is in Bathurst with his caravan set up in the pits at Mt Panorama.  I would have loved to have been there with him, but being in my last 4 weeks of my Masters Degree I couldn't really get away.

However I have managed to keep up with everything going on at the track, I've even found a website that live streams the Race Control radio frequency - which is a novel way to keep tabs on what's happening.

The big talking point this week is weather... it looks like it will be wet for the entire event.  This has put huge pressure on Dunlop and their supply of wet-weather tyres.  It will make for some interesting test, qualifying and race sessions I am sure.

Many teams are running alternate liveries for the weekend, some for special promotions of their sponsor's product, others for special team, driver or sponsor milestones.  All-in-all it makes a very fresh looking field.

And James Moffat may now have the best looking car on the grid!!

Today saw three practice sessions, with the third one cancelled due to fog on top of the mountain.  The first two sessions were dominated by Fords, which is great to see - hopefully they can keep that up all weekend.

Genuine Friends

Something I've been experiencing a bit lately has led me to wonder about what makes a genuine friend.  What is the right idea of true friendship, what does that relationship include.

I've come to realise many people are not genuine friends at all, they are simply people who don't want anyone to think bad of them, so they do the bare minimum to appear 'friend-ish', to project the image that they are friendly so that you think there is a friendship connection there.  But in a real sense unless you keep instigating the development of that friendship relationship it would just fade away.

I am inherently a very genuine person - I want genuine connections and interactions with others.  So in taking a review of my social interaction I have noticed that many of my social interactions are only 'friendship connections' because I continually try and meet up with, socialise or develop relationship with these people.  Part of my review was to have a break from my continual attempts to cultivate these connections and I found that 70% of the people I usually socialise with would not think to actually invite me out to anything they were doing - the only reason I had been socialising with them in the past was because I would do the inviting, or be asking what they were doing.

Obviously this has been quite a breaking down experience.  Realising that I don't have the genuineness of friendship with many people I thought I had.  But I have also come to realise who genuine friends are.  They are not the obvious ones either, and this has been a great blessing.  Finding out that some people do genuinely care for my well being, how I am doing, and what I am up to is worth more than my (now apparently vain) attempts at keeping other friendship connections alive.