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Reflections of a fearful man coming off vacation and looking for rest The rules of Keepy uppy could not be easier to understand. You inflate a balloon, choose an arena, find an opponent, and serve. Each player takes turns tapping the balloon to keep it alive, and person who allows it to touch the ground loses. Last year, some grownups turned this kid game into an official tournament with its own World Cup . This highlight is insane.  Abby loves playing Keepy uppy. She was introduced to it through the Australian cartoon that took over the kid’s world in the last couple of years. Here, click this link and give it a go yourself and ruin your productivity for the rest of the day. Pro tip: If you play on an iPad, you can tap the balloons with with both thumbs and last way longer than on a computer with a mouse.  When Abby and I play, we aren’t in competition. Naturally as a kid, she plays as if we’re on the same team with the same objective. Every time we play, she works himself ...

The other night I was part of a meeting for the children's ministry committee at my church. As we planned for the start of the school year we faced a thorny issue that many other churches across the city have been tackling: Should we run Sunday school in-person or over Zoom ?  To be fair, for many churches this is a no-brainer for one reason or the other. Since the vaccination rate for NSW hit over 95% at the end of last year many churches have reopened normal physical service and never looked back. But there are also plenty of churches who still meet primarily over Zoom.  My church falls more into the latter category. Currently as I write, only two of our six Sunday services is meeting physically, while the rest are still operating fully online. Let me say that my purpose in sharing this is not to make a judgment on whether churches should fully open up or stay online. If I had a general opinion on that, it would be that no one should generalize such a complicated issue and c...

In one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons, Homer takes his family out to a steakhouse where he challenges trucker Red Barclay to a steak eating contest; whoever could finish a 16 pound (7.3kg) steak first wins. As the contest begins, We see Red confidently carve into his steak when the camera pans to a panicky Homer, frantically buttering a bread roll . No Homer! Don’t fill up on bread!  I always try to share original insights into the world of ministry when I write, but sometimes the truth about how I’m feeling comes in a deep shade of cliché. I am struggling with how busy ministry is. There is always more I could do, always something I could do better, always more great ideas that I just don’t have time for. This is the downside to the exceptional freedom that most pastors have with their time. Week to week, there are certain responsibilities that are both urgent and important. You can’t not write a sermon if you are preaching this Sunday. You must drop everything to visit a...