Mission in Action

Cashed-Up Bogans, or CUBs for short, are an interesting phenomenon. In Australian parlance a Bogan is a… is a… well, it’s kinda hard to describe to other cultures, but imagine a bloke in an AC/DC t-shirt, tight black jeans, a hotted-up car, a mullet and a pair of Ugg Boots.? You get the idea.?

Anyway here in Western Australia we are in a resources boom and it is affecting the whole country.? So bouyant is the economy that interest rates are going up while all across the western world they are falling. We have microscopic unemployment, and many tradesmen and unskilled labourers are making it big on the mine-sites or building sites. Hence the Cashed-Up Bogans.

Swan View (our suburb) is a particularly boganesque part of the country, and I was chatting last week with Tim Chester from TCH about the difficulties of church planting in this kind of area.? He said something very interesting, albeit using terminologies more at home in the UK than Oz.? He believes the CUB types? are hard to make contact with with the gospel because they are not asking the philosophical questions like the middle class do, nor are they asking the existential questions as the working class poor do. In other words they are not going to ask you “But what does it all mean?”, nor are they likely to? wonder “Why has life dealt me? such a difficult hand?” (unless of course being a CUB is anathema to you in the same way being a Simpson is hard to handle for Lisa).

Where do we start? In? a curious way I might find out tomorrow.? I’ve been contacted by someone in the mining town of Kalgoorlie and? given the number of a fly-in-fly-out miner (someone working on a mine who goes to the site hundreds? of kilometres away for two weeks on and then back home for two weeks off) who? lives in our area? and? has just? hit a huge marriage crisis. He phoned a men’s helpline and the person got in touch with a church in Kalgoorlie, who then got in touch with? Backyard Misso-? Hamo who then said that I would be the person to speak to since I lived in the same area as the aforementioned miner.? Whether or not he is a CUB remains to be seen, however he fits several of the criteria.? What I am intrigued by is how God refuses to be left out of peoples’ lives -? whether they are the types who ask? philosophical/existential questions or not.? ? ? I will keep you posted.

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I should feel that after so long without being able to post anything I would have heaps to say. I’m not sure I do actually. The reality is that we have been back in the country six months (surely not! -Ed) and we’re both feeling a trifle tired. The whole come-back-sort-out-house-find-job-have-baby-start-thinking-about-household-church-planting has been slightly wearing.

Work has been interesting – in both senses of the word. I’m getting to do some creative PD deliveries that I enjoy, but at the same time I have bumped into the frustration of a lack of communication about the nature of my role, and a lack of resources to be able to carry it out. In other words, it’s a bit hard at the moment. It is at times like this that the idea of a household congregation style network (of which I would be the leader) is both attractive and an idol. I hear the siren call of “professional ministry” and feel I need to avoid it. The problem is that vocationally I feel that much of what I am good at (as opposed to what I am being paid to do at the moment) is no longer an option for me to do. I have found myself saying yes to probably one too many speaking engagements. I am having to reassess why I say yes to these.
If you feel inclined to pray for me, please do.

BTW – many thanks to my young(ish) brother Paul for figuring out the problem with my blog log-in.

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My blog is no longer ashamed to own me. Normal services to resume within the next day!

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