An “Obadiah Slope” Column
Ro-manse: There’s been some online reminiscing by Baptists with their former Marrickville manse selling for $3,500,000. Its a nice little house, on a block not far from the railway station in an inner Sydney suburb. I suspect the house won’t be with us much longer. The church itself is listed for an auction on the 8th. We’ve grabbed the drone shot.
Obadiah gets sad when he sees a church-shaped property being used for something else – a space that once used to ring with the voices of a gathering praising our heavenly father., is a shop, warehouse or lovely spacious home.
The Baptists can be trusted to put the proceeds to good use – they want to build 1,000 congregations in NSW. The Baptists are keen on church planting and Obadiah notes that there was an attempt to re-plant Marrickville. It hurts when church plants don’t work out and no judgment should be inferred. Some of that team are at the fabled inner city Church Newtown Mission – a place full of good stories.
Obadiah has seen regrets and feelings of abandonment from those who served at Marrickville.
Of course, Marrickville is just one place where buildings are losing their religion. Obadiah has heart pangs when he goes past a “once was” church building.
He knows it’s not always a bad thing to sell a building. Years ago his local church merged with one with a larger property which we have gone on to fill – it’s arguably too small for us now. (Another church then moved in, it has happened a bit around here.) So he’s certainly not suggesting a total moratorium on selling property. But rarely do we see new churches installed on property that another church has sold for non-church use.
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Coming soon: However, Obadiah does have a story in the works of a church building that became a yoga studio coming back as a church:
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Keeping on the property theme, Sydney’s Anglicans meanwhile will start their Synod (church parliament) next month by touring around Oran Park in the far southwest of their city. Its meant to shock the synod members into realising that the Sydney Anglicans face a slow-moving crisis. Sydney is growing west rapidly and the Anglicans could be reduced to a niche church by the city’s emerging geography. So travel west, Synod members and see how far huge parts of Sydney are from where most Anglican churches are.
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So the story of Marrickville Baptist is about putting the resources into areas of highest need. That can mean tough decisions. For all church networks.
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Spammed: One theothercheek reader reports his posts, all his posts, get caught in a FB filter.
Posts like these:
And the message from Facebook is “Your post goes against our community standards on spam.
Maybe “Facebookesque” is about to replace “Kafkaesque”
(Dictionary definition of “Kafkaesque” is “relating to, characteristic of, or resembling the literary work of Franz Kafka; marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity”)
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The madness of teaching scripture: Sometimes it goes a bit wrong. Obadiah came up with what he thought was a good idea to teach the story of the healing of the official’s son from John 4. the main idea was to teach that Jesus could heal at a distance, more evidence of his power. Obadiah volunteers to teach Special Religious Education each week at the local public school.
Obadiah’s big idea was to show that some things can – and can’t – be done at a distance. So he wrote in what he thought was tiny letters on the whiteboard some non-words, got the class to stand at the rear of the classroom, to do an impromptu eye test.
Problem was they all passed. they could read my tiny writing at a distance.
So I wheeled the whiteboard out into the corridor and got them to stand two classrooms away. Nearr 100% perfect reading.
Finally I cracked it – moved the whitbaord a classroom to so down the corridor. and some kids – the ones who had not memorised the letters – could not read it.
Did I get the point across, Dunno. But I love telling jesus stories.