William Chong

Website: http://www.cession.org.nz; Ph: (09) 279 9332; The Depot, Lloyd Elsmore Park, Pakuranga; Senior Pastor/Speaker: Brett Jones; Sermon topic: “Bland Death Auto Pt 1: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over”; 21.6.08; 5:45pm.

Rating: nearly AA
(A=return worshipper, AA=excellent and growing, AAA=must be my home church lol)

You’ll like this church if you: like new ways of presenting Jesus Christ in a postmodern generation; seek a balance between youth-centered relevance and timeless truth, have an aversion to fake happy clapping and/or sitting amongst the pew masses, are a Christian looking for an open-minded church environment, want a church where it’s easy to get to know everyone.

You won’t like this church if you: are a true-blue emergent dude/dudette, don’t like holding on to early-church traditions such as Lent and the Stations of the Cross, hold to a more conservative/fundamental approach to church services, would be confused in a dark room on a Sunday evening, like to slip in and slip out of church anonymously.

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Dim lighting and roundtable seating. Bible readings in Klingon. Blogging church elders. Re-enactments of Grand Theft Auto 4 cutscenes. Playstation metaphors juxtaposed with James chapter 1. Yes, this is a church, and a surprisingly faithful one at that.

To me, cession|community is much like the TNIV translation of the Bible. They’re both narrative-driven, gender neutral, very easily accessible to young-at-hearts, with more of the legalistics tucked away in a not-worth-the-conflict box or left open-ended. And much like the TNIV, cession would probably be frowned upon by more conservative folks that don’t believe that the church-wheel ever needs revisioning/reinventing.

This was our first evening church service in a long time, and we arrived just as their “chow” session was finishing up. Senior Pastor Brett Jones himself (oooooh) showed us into a room set out like a dinner show: tablecloth-draped round tables with coffee chatter amongst patrons of Jesus Christ. We were feeling a bit shy and uninitiated to this unique set up and Jones was kind enough to “hide us in a corner”. We sat down in eager anticipation and watched the projected countdown clock behind the stage, well, count down to cession|launch.

Worship: Run-of-the-mill CCM, this would probably be the most “mainstream church” aspect of cession. An energetic and lively six-pack of worship bandies worked with a chilled out of about 40-odd worshippers responding with about the same fervour as café patrons would respond to Norah Jones on the muzak tracks. The music was tight and polished, (“mad awesome riffs” etc), but I liked the sincerity of the songs they chose that night. As a personal note, I’m pretty partial to any song set that includes Brooke Fraser-penned praises.

Teaching: An English-subtitled, Cantonese video of a dysfunctional family took me by surprise first (and was a bit tricky to piece together), but I eventually recognised it as an introduction to struggles and trials in life. Senior pastor Brett Jones then took the stage, sharing clear and eloquent thoughts on a 4-part series on the book of James. As per the out-of-the-box creative core presentation ethos, the teaching is presented within the metaphor of video gaming, if you ever wanted teaching notes with Playstation controller configurations on them, this church will appeal.

Digesting the teaching, I felt that analogy between the decision-making in a video game was pretty effective in illustrating points such as:

• considering the gameplay in life’s trials and whether it’s really about the miserable things
• sharpening up our wisdom/hand-eye coordination/anything by asking for God’s help
• our free will in choosing not to repeat our mistakes and challenging our sin-nature programming.

I also appreciated Jones’s willingness to share real stories and real struggles (including a heart-wrenching ancedote of sexual temptation) to illustrate how tough living the Christian life can get and that even when you’ve slipped up horribly, there’s still The Light at the end of the tunnel.

Church history: Their own history page does it best, but I will add that their name comes from the Latin noun “cessio”, which roughly means one who yields or surrenders. Cession seems to pride itself in approaching Christianity with an open mind about those thorny, divisive theological issues that tear many a church apart. Elder Frank Ritchie in a Wesleyanz article termed this the “radical middle”, being neither conservative nor liberal. If it weren’t for the affiliation with the Wesleyan Methodist Church, one could imagine cession joining the “conversation” of emergent churches (of which I have mixed feelings about). But I’m happy that cession’s not emergent enough that they start�questioning the core truths like Jesus being God, salvation being a global necessity and so on.

Visitor treatment: We had the pleasure of chatting with two churchgoers Katie and Sarah (she sang in the worship team earlier) after the service, who shared that they’ve just started a new service at 10.30am. As I mentioned earlier, the pastor was astute enough to stay clear of any overt jump-and-join approaches, and I picked out a genuine servant heart feel from the congregation present (from the media team to the caffeine technicians).

Other faculties: For those who love free food, cession worshippers make great sacrifices in contributing each week to a cession “chow”, basically a shared meal that begins at 5.00pm before the service proper. Unfortunately this review couldn’t extend into the food options afforded and so on, but it’s a unique and encouraging outreach that works pretty well for the church’s community size. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to dig deeper into the rest of the current teaching series or attend one of their regular Plugging-In sessions for those interested in finding out more.

Ultimately, there is a catch-22 in trying to reach out to the transient, postmodern generation that easily slides in and out of church like its a commodity, or a social event and not something as significant as the Bride of Jesus Christ. On the one hand, cession is a tight group of creative, forward-thinking Christians specialising in presenting a relevant gospel to the young in the area (young people reach young people the best). On the other hand, it doesn’t seem “mainstream” enough to appeal to mums and dads and extended families (no SuperGold card holders at this church, guaranteed), and there’s a danger of only being relevant as long as you’re young, and as Suzanne Paul can testify, people age. To stand the test of time eventually cession may need to assess whether they’ll continue to reach out to lost younguns or whether they’ll need to mature into an across-the-spectrum faith community (perhaps when the leadership team hits their 50s or something!).

Conclusion: A young, thinking person’s counterculture church which gets it right in balancing both being relevant and being true.

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(Disclosures: none at the time of visit, though 1 pastoral teamer is now fb friends.)
Next week: International Baptist Church.

(This review may not be representative of all of the church’s ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)

Hello there. Couple of points:

• Taught my last class at Remuera Music School for the time being. It was a bittersweet day, and I’m definitely going to miss the lively and outgoing violin students that made such huge strides and worked hard over the years. I got lots of thank you cards, and I have to say that I would love having kids if they gave me hand-made thank you cards. Yeah!
• Cheryl and Henry finished their last exams for the semester, which was great
• My general manager’s certificate expires in about a week, which I may consider renewing if I’m not too late
• Oh yeah, my work contract expires in about a week too! Some prayer/kind advice on direction could help!

Website: www.cityside.org.nz; Ph: (09) 377 3512; 8A Mt Eden Rd, Newton, Auckland; Senior Pastor: Brenda Rockell; Sermon topic: “teach, heal and cast out evil“; 15.6.08; 10.30am.

Rating: none given
(A=return worshipper, AA=excellent and growing, AAA=must be my home church lol)

You’ll like this church if you: want an all-inclusive community of faith, are looking for a church that’s moving away from polished feel-good concert worship, seek new ways of thinking and practising your faith outside the confines of “church” or “doctrine”.

You won’t like this church if you: stick to propositional truths of the Bible, don’t approve of women serving in leadership roles, take exception to emergent theology and its lack of clear and Bible-based definitions, see church as a place to fill your spiritual needs rather contribute to conversations and doubts.

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One of the hallmarks of the Baptist church in general is a certain degree of independence of each church from a main organisational hierarchy, or a structure. This means that, though there are generally some common threads between different Baptist churches (for example, believer’s baptism), each church does certain things differently from the next. Our ongoing quest to find a home church has showed quite clearly that no two Baptist churches, or no two churches of any sort, are quite the same. So perhaps it’s in this environment of greater religious freedom that you’d find one of New Zealand’s emergent church communities at Cityside Baptist Church.

What is emergent? It’s hard to nail this right, but generally it could be church which is actively trying to reinvent how “church” is done, is open to people of all orientations, races, and gender, and promotes an ongoing dialogue and discussion rather than set-in-stone doctrine and truths. I’d say that Cityside is a particularly attractive place for Christians who are disillusioned with being washed up in corporate-style megachurches, as well as attractive for people who don’t consider themselves Christians but relate with this community’s social mission and push for interfaith dialogue. In any case, we knew this would be an intriguing experience from the moment we walked up the antique wooden steps and sat down in one of the many trademe couches, arranged around a room filled with hand and footprints on the walls, avant garde artwork and lighting fixtures, and offering bags sewn out of colourful, woolly socks.

Worship: A very informal affair, led by Fergus McKinlay who put some songs up on an overhead projector in between short, simple prayers. The song choice definitely reflected Cityside’s social activism focus, with song lyrics that implore worshippers “to make the earth the place in which the kingdom comes”, and most importantly, to “love your neighbour as you love yourself”. I’m a bit mixed about the efficacy of the social gospel (since we’re fighting against a world that’s irrevocably breaking down), but the sincerity of the worship relaxes me. It’s a joy to observe an interesting demographic mix, from Remuera mums to young couples, men in jandals to beanie-wearing ladies in long, flowing dresses and half-dreads, all singing “Jubilate Deo” in canon form. All songs were accompanied on the humble chords of a well-used piano – definitely no mike amps or guitar riffs in this time of worship.

Speaker: Brenda Rockell offered a half-hour discourse on her thoughts on what it was like to be one of the 12 original disciples, and what the “Good News” was actually being preached in Jesus’s years of ministry. Her main argument was that the good news of Jesus didn’t depend on His resurrection, summing up JC as a man of substance and a great role-model. Rockell urged the 50-strong congregation to look at a different commission: rather than proselyting and converting people to be Christians by title, she contended there was a different focus to the actions Jesus told his disciples to do when they were sent out into various townships of the day. [edited 29.7.08]

It all sounded very well and good, but even a cursory glance at the most well-known verses would quickly reveal that Jesus wasn’t just a preacher of positive action. His execution was the direct result of His making claims that He was God, not that He was a good role model for society in helping the poor and the sick, as applaudable as that may be. Even the verses surrounding Jesus’s proclamation of the Great Commission at the conclusion of the book of Matthew shows how the disciples not only modelled Christ, they worshipped Him too (Mt 28:1-20). Rockell’s scant use of Biblical references to back up her thoughts on meant that it ended up being almost a blog-post like opinion (much like this one here) surmising what may or may not have happened – it just felt like a thread in an forum post, rather than any sort of detailed look at God’s Word. Perhaps this one verse could sum up the viewpoint of Cityside Baptist: “Whey they saw Him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.” (Mt 28:17). Nevertheless, I appreciated the subsequent open discussion that gave a very smallgroup or bible study session feel to the service.

Church history: If the building looks like its seen a lot of history, that’s because it has. It was built at its present site a stones’ throw from old-school pub Galbraith’s in 1906, and Mt Eden Baptist Church enjoyed its status as one of the larger Baptist churches in New Zealand at the time. Increasing suburbisation led to the decline of worshippers and the building was turned over to the Auckland Baptist Mission in 1960. Eventually a change to a church-focus saw the name changed to Cityside Baptist Church and City Mission in 1993. Cityside retains its strong roots in missional service, and chatting with members of the congregation reveals the same enthusiasm for serving the community as their forebears.

Visitor treatment: After the service we chatted with two friendly women; Pauline and Kristin, as well as a father-of-two. Everyone we spoke to was friendly and amiable, and all shared their common passion for helping each other and the community at large. Pauline also shared her experiences of serving on a short-term mission onboard the Logos II, which is an OM sister ship of the Doulos that we went off to visit after the service.

Other faculties: For its size, the church had a surprisingly large number of children frolicking around with great abandon, running between chairs and tables in the kitchen area in front of a small fair-trade espresso machine station ($3 for a good conscience/cause). With church attendance “rather fluid” (there’s around 100 registered members but attendance levels vary greatly), as put by someone, it’s good to know that there’s still a range of activities like Playgroup (small child not a requirement), Monastic Group, and even after-work drinks. It’s hard to say what exactly some of these events entail without actually attending one or two of them – I’d say a Cityside brochure would be one of the few places you’d find a Benediction next to a call to drinks at Galbraiths.

Conclusion: Church on couches, love all your neighbours, sincere postmodern thought and banter – yet on the day, nary a mention that Christ crucified is why we have a church in the first place.

N.B. [29.7.08]: Have a look at the comments section below for a responses and clarifications on the sermon from Brenda Rockell, and visit this link for the full sermon.

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(Disclosures: none.)
Next week: cession|community.

(This review may not be representative of all of the church’s ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)

*sighs* “Times are tough.” – NPC, RPG World Comic #9.

The above picture shows what you can get for NZ$40:

• a loaf of bread
• 2 bags of onions
• 6 assorted muffins
• a bag of tomatoes
• 500g minced pork
• 1kg NZ rose apples
• 35g of mesclun salad
• 200g brie
• 2 boxes of biscuits
• Philips energysaver light bulbs

OK, this has got to be the most inane song ever. I’m talking about it from a musical point of view – from its earthy Dsus9 chord on the piano, it flips back and forth between that and B, giving it a very unorthodox feel to it. If you keep listening it’s definitely complex in its harmonies, and throws interesting modulation to C Minor at you (about 1:41 in the video, Vanessa Hudgens kinda just slides into it; this book explains how odd a semitone modulation is to achieve).

Rhythm and melody-wise it’s somewhat catchy, if you can get past the distraction of a particularly nasal singing quality by Hudgens, who nevertheless is trying her best. Whether it’s an attempt to try a different vocal style/music genre or not, her voice does doesn’t have that depth or soul-feel. I could picture someone like Alicia Keys, Joss Stone or Mary J Blige pulling this off better. But then again none of them would really be singing about shoes, would they?

Thanks to this High School Musical alumna, I’m picking this song to create a fashion-craze that involves young girls going clubbing in sneakers. Bonus points if your shoelaces glow in the dark.

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Website: http://www.pakbapt.org.nz; Ph: (09) 576 8403; 2 Fremantle Place, Pakuranga, Auckland; Senior Pastor: Andrew Brown; Sermon topic: “Servants with a High Calling” (2 Cor 5:11-7:16); 8.6.08; 9.00am.

Rating: none given
(A=return worshipper, AA=excellent and growing, AAA=must be my home church lol)

You’ll like this church if you: live locally in the Pakuranga central area, want to be involved in an ambitious church-growing venture, seek a church that is multicultural and inclusive.

You won’t like this church if you: are looking for a more traditional Baptist service, don’t like the worship band dominating the service, prefer better production values at your church service, don’t like splitting the church into 2 worship times.

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Note to ponder: denominational names aren’t a particularly surefire indicator of what the Christian teaching, demographic, music, outreach or ministry is really like – we’ve seen significant variation between the churches we’ve come across so far in our ongoing homechurch hunt.

I’ve known about Pakuranga Baptist Church for a good few years now, having attended youth services at next-door-neighbour Pakuranga Chinese Baptist Church in my young and carefree days, sometimes wondering what PBC would be like. So I finally took the opportunity to visit with a blank-slate mind. It was eerily quiet in the parking spaces outside as we walked in wondering if it had started…

Worship: … and we found ourselves half an hour late into the service, battling our way through kids running out the doors to take part in their kids church events. This surprised us until we learned that PBC has recently changed their services from a single 9.30 service to a 9.00am and a 10.45am split. Despite our late arrival, the 6-piece worship band was still able to take up a big segment of the time, working studiously through 2 contemporary praise songs for another 20 minutes. A sizeable part of the 80-odd congregation seemed content just listening to the words and the music. One thing I didn’t like was the worship band’s liberal use of instrumental sections, which works for some people as contemplative but not to me. I’m very aware of the temptation for church bands to take more limelight than is necessary, and this one with attempted guitar solos and repeated refrains stretched a bit borderline (though maybe the band on the day wasn’t representative of normal worship). Two of the backup singers on the day could have used some remedial training as well to better mesh with the band – nevertheless, I’m sure it was worship acceptable to God, which is always the main thing.

Speaker: The pastor Andrew Brown shared a message from 2 Cor 5:11-7:16, explaining Paul’s response to attacks from his congregation. After getting over his interesting accent, his message was pretty well-grounded and a good attempt at explaining the context behind Paul’s lovingly-worded scold session to the Corinthian church. One good thing I got out of the sermon was a better understanding of Paul’s preaching demeanour, with members of the early church accusing him of being 1) not Jewish enough, 2) not as close to Jesus as the 12 apostles, 3) not charismatic (in terms of gifts) enough of a speaker. In fact, Brown explained, Paul was a very plain preacher, whose response was to say that “Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation” (7:10). Also noted that the pastor referenced philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche at one point – don’t remember why, but I do recall that if anyone was a pastor’s kid gone sour, Nietzsche would be it (his father was a Lutheran priest).

I’m not sure why, but Brown then weaved in the blue-ribbon story. Basically it’s a self-esteem building exercise where you give blue ribbon acknowledgements to people, and everyone gets more positive (you can read about it here). Personally I hold a bit of skepticism as to its long-term benefits beyond the initial feelgood factor, though the online testimonies seem to indicate otherwise. The presentation shared was taken straight from this testimonial, which as heartfelt as it was, didn’t really strike me as anything more than “love your neighbour as yourself” – something which I guess is worth encouraging. It struck me as odd that Brown focused on this story rather than letting the Scripture do the talking, but the congregation seemed to enjoy it nonetheless.

Church history: PBC boldly announces that 2008 is “the year of service”, essentially an outreach with the hopes of growth in numbers. Mandarin pastor James Bin shared that this is also the motive behind the 2-service strategy. The church has been a regular fixture for many years now, operating as a member church of the Baptist Churches of NZ.

Other faculties: Alpha groups, SUBLIME youth with age-group splits catering from 10 to 30 year-olds, small groups and a strong church focus on overseas missions mentioned during our visit. Pastor Andrew Brown seems pretty keen on rotating through areas of focus throughout 2008, and it would be interesting to find out what other “focus” is planned for the future.

Visitor treatment: We slipped in, and we slipped out with nary a conversation with anyone in the pews. We chatted amicably with Pastor Bin as mentioned previously as a courtesy, but it was surprisingly easy to remain anonymous, it seemed.

Conclusion: A good local church catering adequately to its demographic spread, yet only moderately exciting/innovative/challenging for the most part.

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(Disclosures: 1 friend/relative is an associate pastor.)
Next week: Cityside Baptist Church.�

(This review may not be representative of all of the church’s ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)

Lots of people having exam stress at the moment. I can’t say I envy any of you, though I myself seem to have caught something from one of my students. Should request they all wash their hands before class or something! So for some reason I ended up staying home on Monday and today. However, I actually did more work at home than in the office yesterday, thanks to the ability to access my work email.

It’s when your sinuses clog up that you appreciate their role in giving you a voice that doesn’t sound idiotic. Am enjoying reacquainting myself with this large music collection at home though. And I can’t say I don’t enjoy saving that driving-to-work petrol money for a better cause.

A couple of movie characters making appearances in cinemas, they all sound interesting: Prince Caspian, Zohan, Kung Fu Panda, etc. I wonder if I’ll have the time/health to go see any of them.

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Website: http://www.ecw.org.nz; Ph: (09) 533 4956; 219 Burswood Drive, East Tamaki; Senior Pastor: Rev Richard Waugh; Speaker: Rev Ian Croudace; Sermon topic: “Holiness” (Luke 10:25-28); 1.6.08, 9.30am.

Rating: AA
(A=return worshipper, AA=excellent and growing, AAA=must be my home church lol)

You’ll like this church if you: are looking for a church in the Wesleyan Methodist (WM) tradition, seek a family-friendly church environment, want a church that’s also concerned about ongoing sanctification, champion for women’s rights in all aspects of life.

You won’t like this church if you: have a preconceived idea that WM means old and creaky worship, don’t believe in the authority of Tradition in the church, see no place for women in church leadership or eldership, want slick concert-style worship with a youth focus, get bored with expositional preaching.

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UPDATE (23.8.08): Click here for an in-depth interview with ECW’s Richard Waugh on a wide range of matters.

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It’s interesting how local East Auckland can sometimes be, especially when people you know from childhood days reemerge in your lives in new and interesting ways. I first met East City Wesleyan pastor Richard Waugh and his family as a young and naïve primary-schooler living on Penruddocke Rd, Pakuranga when they owned the biggest front yard on the entire street. There used to be annual street parties which, fun as it were, I remembered most for their hospitable nature. After a chance meeting at a Pizza Hut a few years ago (my parents approached them quite warmly) and discovering Waugh’s role as pastor of ECW, I made it a thought to visit his church at some stage.

Unfortunately, quite a few people were away on a national conference on the day we chose to visit, and Waugh himself was in the endstages of an overseas sabbatical. The church have only recently moved into their new premises in East Tamaki, and so we dropped in being aware that it wouldn’t be a normal service by any means.

Worship: If you’ve ever been brought up Methodist, you know that the services are traditionally very structured, with call and response, recited prayers, and set hymns for each portion of the service. Think “The peace of God be with you all.” “And with you also.” “Let us greet one another with a sign of peace.” – that sorta thing – indeed, traditional Methodist churches keep this going. ECW on the other hand has joined more and more churches in embracing modern worship, throwing out all the rote-learning of yesteryear for lots of CCLI-licensed worship songs. The music and projector team were noticeably grappling with the new equipment, though the half-full congregation didn’t have any problems with words – this is a church that sings praises in a heartfelt way. I was more impressed with the band’s earnestness than anything else, though. I was also touched by a prayer time which involved the whole congregation (the type you usually do in smallgroups or prayergroups) where everyone was free to just offer up their prayers – normally a large church gathering loses most, if not all of that intimacy and fellowship.

Speaker: A particularly methodical lesson was shared by Rev Ian Croudace, one of the few church elders not at the national conference in a covering role. Today’s sermon was focused on the first half of the oft-quoted command in Luke 10:27: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind…”. Croudace offered a rather complicated diagram to explain the verse which included temptation lines, plotted series for the carnal/spiritual, and distinct X-intercept lines at physical and spiritual births, a phase called “death to self-will” and physical death.

If all that sounded confusing to you, that’s because it was a little. Though as he explained it, it made a bit more sense, though you never quite got over the density of the material. Croudace was pretty good at drawing in anecdotes and stories to make the message a bit more palatable. However, both Cheryl and I offered huge raised eyebrows to the story of the amazing building-block-in-our-body-miracle-cross-shaped-laminin: there’s many a Christian website that’s jumped headlong into this as definitive proof of God’s creation stamp. I think to single out laminins (which in molecular reality aren’t always cross-shaped) and not every other cell that God designed is a bit misguided. I mean, I know the intentions are good, but the laminin thing’s still a touch overzealous in my opinion (look at this video at about 3:00 for an example).

Molecular biology aside, the sermon did what it set out to do: explain the verse. ECW has been pretty expositional in its teaching over the year that Waugh has been away on sabbatical: someone shared that they had just finished a “Genesis to Revelation” walkthrough that spanned a good year or two. It’s good to know that they’re not selective in teaching then, though I can’t be sure without coming back to really know.

Church history: The Wesleyan Methodist Church made its split from the Methodist family of churches over the question of slavery in 1843 (WM on the against-side), and since then it’s grown to encompass a worldwide community of over 60 million people. The name comes from famous evangelical pioneer John Wesley, an Anglican minister and early leader of the Methodist movement. The Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand seems to have kept faithfully to his teachings, including that of “Christian perfection” (hence the focus in the sermon on holiness). Admittedly titles, denominations and the finer points of theology don’t always mean as much to the general congregation here, but the leaders do point out the differences in their church literature, including: emphasis on salvation and ongoing holiness, women in ministry, being evangelical and missional, and dynamic orthodoxy (translate: same theology, new packaging). WMCNZ churches may not all share the same theology: one of their pastors is Lifefm radio announcer/DJ Frank Ritchie who writes in the Wesleyan magazine with a particularly emergent conviction.

Other faculties: Their new church building sports an instant coffee machine – nice! Alright, let’s be serious – all in all they’re equipped for all the standard fare, kid’s church (there was a mini-playground in the foyer area for creche too), youth group on Sunday nights, homegroups and so on. As a show of progressiveness and “dynamic orthodoxy”, ECW started a youth-oriented church plant in the Highland Park area called cession|community, which seems to be pretty successful so far.

Visitor treatment: Was welcomed very cordially by a lady as we came in, who gave us all we needed to acquaint ourself with the church. I spent the after-church chat talking to a friend’s mother, who was very enthusiastic in wanting us to stay. Meet and greet during the service was pretty good too.

Conclusion: A faithful and growing community that shows a closeness you don’t usually see in corporate worship – ECW sticks true to its word as a place “where people are growing”.

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(Disclosures: 1 friend is an existing worshipper.)
Next week: Pakuranga Baptist Church.

(This review may not be representative of all of the church’s ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)

This is what’s left of my iPod headphones.

I normally use them at work, but they were left on the floor over the weekend, and a cleaner’s overzealous approach to vacuuming has left a mangled mess of frayed wires and broken audibles, and nary a note in sight to explain themselves. Pfft.

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In other news, who remembers Doulos from their childhood? No? Well this was the one ship that got my dad in a ruffle of excitement, back when I was still growing up in kampung-town Kuching. It’s known to many people as “the floating book store” because of its massive collection of over half a million books onboard. One of the few snippets I remembered from my childhood was my dad talking excitedly about a ship full of books, seeds for a lifetime of knowledge – Doulos had docked in when I was just 4 years old, and I recall a jigsaw puzzle with a picture of the almost mythical boat that we bought. I don’t remember what the ship looked like in real life, but the name has always pricked my subconscious once in a while, though I thought no more of it for a long time.

What I eventually found out as I grew older was that Doulos is a ship bringing more than just knowledge – it’s a volunteer-run ship under the umbrella of Operation Mobilisation, that supplies literature resources and the gospel message to , This is a ship on a mission, and the more I think about it, the more I’m impressed about the creativity of this method of reaching out to the ends of the earth.

It’s berthing in Auckland next week, which sounds pretty cool. Apparently it’s the last time it’ll be here because it’s due to retire, so I’ll have to try and set aside a time to go check it out, to come full circle and to finally clarify an aspect of my childhood I never fully remembered.

Big. respect. Hope everyone is well.

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DOULOS – (Gr) from deo?; a slave (literally or figuratively, involuntarily or voluntarily; frequently therefore in a qualified sense of subjection or subserviency): – bondservant.

Hehe, I now have william.hc.chong and fruitcocoon @ gmayle. Very cool.

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[you are in a cocoon. a fruit cocoon.] Has anyone noticed that the two syllables in the word “cocoon” are both pronounced with an “u” or “ooh” sound, but one is spelt with 1 o and the other is spelt with two o’s. strange.

I actually should be working, so I’ll leave it at that for today. Sorry guys!

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