We have it pretty good in this country. I know I do. Most of us have a roof over our heads and access to reasonably useful food. And for those who don’t, there’s access to services, welfare and community aid programs. No-one in a privileged place like Australia really has much to complain about.
And yet…
I’m having a hard time finding a job. I mean… I have a job, but my contract expires in June and there’s no funding available to keep me on after that, so I’m looking for a new one. I’ve had a couple of close calls for jobs which would have been fantastic, but even after making it to the interview stages, I’ve been denied. So that’s disappointing.
Another thing that’s annoying me more than it should lately is the NT Literary Awards. More specifically, my failure to get shortlisted for them. I don’t want to seem like a bad sport or like I have a higher opinion of my own writing than I should, but I was quite disappointed not to make the last round with a play I submitted. That’s fine. I decided to submit a request for feedback to find out what went wrong. I got this reply from the organisers:
Unfortunately, of your four pieces, only one has received written comments. It’s one of the hardships of dealing with a panel of volunteer judges, that you can’t tick them off for failing to follow orders! Please find one piece of feedback attached for Traditional English Hospitality.
I don’t want to bag the Lit. Awards too hard, because they do a great job promoting NT writing, but I do wonder how they made the decision not to shortlist me when there was no feedback on anything I’d written. Well… whatever. I’m not bitter. I’m never at home to Mr Bitterbottom.
And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve always been of the opinion that as long as I’ve got my keyboard and my car, there’s nothing I can’t do. It seems a strange thing to base my independence and self-confidence on, but there you have it. If I can go anywhere and I’ve got Samantha with me, we’re all good.
On Saturday night my car broke down. This is a calamity in anyone’s life, but in Darwin it’s particularly disastrous, as buses tend to come about once every fifteen years. And for me it was a double blow as I watched the otherwise faithful GSS Unity being hoisted onto the tow truck: Genius that I am I left my keyboard sitting on the back seat.
Fortunately I’m in a position where I can walk to both work and church from my house, so the loss of my car doesn’t cripple me completely like it did when I was without a car in Palmerston. But here I am in the middle of the year when everything was supposed to be falling into place for me and I can’t get a job, apparently I can’t write, and now I have no car and no keyboard. At times like this a man falls back on the only recourse left to him: Whinging about it on his blog. I mean… praying.
Fresh from last week's spectacular demonstration of things going right for me, I'm just a little frustrated at my seeming inability to catch a single break. Ah well. One Body and Happy Yess comedy are both coming up. Hopefully that will turn things around.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
Showing posts with label One Body. Show all posts
Showing posts with label One Body. Show all posts
23 May 2013
04 March 2013
This is How it Starts
I’ve always had a rather strange relationship with prayer meetings. I’ve grown up in the Church, and I’ve acknowledged how important prayer is for people who claim to be in relationship with God, but special corporate prayer services have always struck me as being a bit like health food: I know it’s a good idea, but I don’t really get excited about it until someone guilts me into it.
I’m kind of a rubbish Christian when you look at it. Don’t get me started on my diet either.
I think part of the reason is that I’ve been to too many prayer meetings that are just opportunities for people to stand up in public and demonstrate how super-spiritual they are, not just by the fact that they like to go to prayer meetings, but by showing us all how fluent they are in the use of whatever spiritual buzzwords happen to be fashionable at the moment.
I don’t care what the dictionary says: “Prideful” is not a word! And even if it is I don’t think God is going to be impressed by how many times we can fit it into a paragraph.
But let’s be honest, I can babble on just as self-righteously as the next guy. I just do it on my blog instead of in a church service. The real reason I don’t go to prayer events is because I’m lazy and complacent.
But recently a bunch of people who run One Body with me have started calling random prayer and praise get-togethers. I went along mainly for solidarity, but I’ve been really struck by the power of what’s going on here.
This is no inner circle talk fest. This is a small group of young people who are quite passionate and committed to meeting together to seek the Lord. And we’re already seeing signs of a response. We met together at ten o’clock on Saturday night (because we’re all young and reckless like that. It’s absolutely a logical time to get together) and kept praying through to midnight, when we decided we’d better head home because we all had church in the morning.
My sister posted an article on Facebook this morning about something called Poe’s law, so now I’m all concerned that you’re not going to understand how sincerely excited I am (see my last post) to find more people in Darwin who are sick of the division and disunity that’s been crippling us for the last decade or so. If so, that’s fine. I’m sure this post makes for excellent satire if that’s how you want to read it.
If, on the other hand, you’ve decided that I’m dead serious, then keep an eye on the right sidebar. I’ll keep it as up to date as I can with news of the next get together. It’s on.
Make of that what you will. Unless you can’t tell whether I’m serious or not. In that case, make of that something else. If you will.
Will you?
Garry with 2 Rs
I’m kind of a rubbish Christian when you look at it. Don’t get me started on my diet either.
I think part of the reason is that I’ve been to too many prayer meetings that are just opportunities for people to stand up in public and demonstrate how super-spiritual they are, not just by the fact that they like to go to prayer meetings, but by showing us all how fluent they are in the use of whatever spiritual buzzwords happen to be fashionable at the moment.
I don’t care what the dictionary says: “Prideful” is not a word! And even if it is I don’t think God is going to be impressed by how many times we can fit it into a paragraph.
But let’s be honest, I can babble on just as self-righteously as the next guy. I just do it on my blog instead of in a church service. The real reason I don’t go to prayer events is because I’m lazy and complacent.
But recently a bunch of people who run One Body with me have started calling random prayer and praise get-togethers. I went along mainly for solidarity, but I’ve been really struck by the power of what’s going on here.
This is no inner circle talk fest. This is a small group of young people who are quite passionate and committed to meeting together to seek the Lord. And we’re already seeing signs of a response. We met together at ten o’clock on Saturday night (because we’re all young and reckless like that. It’s absolutely a logical time to get together) and kept praying through to midnight, when we decided we’d better head home because we all had church in the morning.
My sister posted an article on Facebook this morning about something called Poe’s law, so now I’m all concerned that you’re not going to understand how sincerely excited I am (see my last post) to find more people in Darwin who are sick of the division and disunity that’s been crippling us for the last decade or so. If so, that’s fine. I’m sure this post makes for excellent satire if that’s how you want to read it.
If, on the other hand, you’ve decided that I’m dead serious, then keep an eye on the right sidebar. I’ll keep it as up to date as I can with news of the next get together. It’s on.
Make of that what you will. Unless you can’t tell whether I’m serious or not. In that case, make of that something else. If you will.
Will you?
Garry with 2 Rs
11 February 2012
One Body
And now for the main event.
You know how for the past three years or so I've been chirping incessantly about how I'm going to start up an intercongregational worship event among the Church of Darwin? And you know how for those same three years I've not provided a shred of evidence that I'll ever follow through on that chirping?
Well the shredless days are over baby. Last weekend we finally kicked off the first ever One Body worship service. It was the culmination of months and months of talking and about a week and a hlaf of frantically running around making things happen.
Look, I'll be honest; we ended up with just a three piece band, playing just seven songs, and only ten people came. But the point is we made a start, and got people there from three different congregations hanging out and getting to know each other. Plenty of locals have offered to help run the next one, which hopefully means there's some chance of it being organised properly.
Things we learned from One Body:
1) Twenty minutes before the service is not the right time to see if the data projector works.
2) It is possible to fit an enitre drum kit in my Ford Focus hatchback.
3) Nobody responds to Facebook invitations anymore.
4) Bass players are over-rated.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
You know how for the past three years or so I've been chirping incessantly about how I'm going to start up an intercongregational worship event among the Church of Darwin? And you know how for those same three years I've not provided a shred of evidence that I'll ever follow through on that chirping?
Well the shredless days are over baby. Last weekend we finally kicked off the first ever One Body worship service. It was the culmination of months and months of talking and about a week and a hlaf of frantically running around making things happen.
Look, I'll be honest; we ended up with just a three piece band, playing just seven songs, and only ten people came. But the point is we made a start, and got people there from three different congregations hanging out and getting to know each other. Plenty of locals have offered to help run the next one, which hopefully means there's some chance of it being organised properly.
Things we learned from One Body:
1) Twenty minutes before the service is not the right time to see if the data projector works.
2) It is possible to fit an enitre drum kit in my Ford Focus hatchback.
3) Nobody responds to Facebook invitations anymore.
4) Bass players are over-rated.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
10 June 2010
Half a Dozen Good Reasons Why I Should Have Studied Statistics at Uni.
A few posts ago I alluded to the possibility of backing up my rather controversial claim that Darwin has too many religious leaders. I say controversial because everyone I’ve spoken to about this idea has had a slightly different opinion on the matter and, in a state of affairs that may be without precedent, only about half of them thought I was completely off my rocker. And when I say religious, for the time being I’m just talking about Christian Church leaders. I have no facts to hand on how many leaders other faith communities might have in the area.
The amount of difficulty I had getting my hands on the figures I do have is almost worth another post of its own down the track a bit, but for now I’m just a little perplexed at the stats in front of me.
According to my guy in the Darwin Christian Minsters’ Fraternal, Darwin has no fewer than 52 different church groups*. And even that list is not comprehensive as it leaves out a few Catholic parishes and small home groups who are off doing their own thing. And then there are inter-congregational organisations like Scripture Union, YWAM, Rhema FM and the Bible Society. In a movement which is, in general terms and with a few exceptions, struggling for membership locally, this strikes me as strange. Why do we need so many congregations?
But then I did some sums. They are only simple multiplications and fractions, but in my advanced state of number hating, it took me about half a day to compile them.
An average Australian church has an attendance of about 65 people*. That takes into account average-wreckers at both ends of the scale, like home churches with only half a dozen people and places like Hillsong with half a dozen thousand or so*. If you multiply those 65 people by the 52 congregations in Darwin, that gives you a local Church of about 3380. Despite my previous assertions, that doesn’t sound anything like enough. So now I find myself, asserting we have too many leaders, but not enough Christians. I haven’t yet made up my mind whether that’s complete nonsense or not.
Then there’s the national average church attendance rate of 11.7 percent of the population* to consider. If you run that percentage through the greater Darwin population of 120,000*, you get a weekly church attendance of about thirteen and a half thousand, give or take.
So where the bloody hell is everybody?
There are two possible explanations for this discrepancy in the figures, which are of course based on averages rather than role calls. The first is that my list of churches is even more uncomprehensive than I thought, and there are actually more like 200 congregations out there somewhere. Somehow that seems unlikely.
The more likely explanation is that the national averages don’t actually apply to Darwin, which is culturally an entirely different country (some might say planet). I suspect weekly attendance here might be well below the national average, given the transient nature of the population and high proportion of military personnel, who aren’t generally renowned for their religious piety. I also think on average, from what I’ve seen, our congregations do better than 65. I’m not sure why. Of course, I’ve only really been around the larger congregations. I guess we have little ones out there too.
So essentially I’m back where I started. I have no idea what percentage of Darwinites attends a Christian church. I have an incomplete, if surprisingly long list of local congregations, but no information on the attendance figures for them. And conspicuous by its absence is a record of the total number of local Christians. I’ve tried to get at that, but short of placing an enquiry with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (a pursuit that experience has taught me to avoid) that information doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. Somehow that bothers me, but I don't know why.
I still think we have too many churches and not enough members, but for now it doesn’t seem possible to prove it mathematically. At least not for this numerically disinclined stunt linguist. And therein lies an issue for another day.
And that’s the good news.
Garry with 2 Rs
*What? You weren’t actually expecting a reference, were you? What kind of legitimate researcher do you take me for?
The amount of difficulty I had getting my hands on the figures I do have is almost worth another post of its own down the track a bit, but for now I’m just a little perplexed at the stats in front of me.
According to my guy in the Darwin Christian Minsters’ Fraternal, Darwin has no fewer than 52 different church groups*. And even that list is not comprehensive as it leaves out a few Catholic parishes and small home groups who are off doing their own thing. And then there are inter-congregational organisations like Scripture Union, YWAM, Rhema FM and the Bible Society. In a movement which is, in general terms and with a few exceptions, struggling for membership locally, this strikes me as strange. Why do we need so many congregations?
But then I did some sums. They are only simple multiplications and fractions, but in my advanced state of number hating, it took me about half a day to compile them.
An average Australian church has an attendance of about 65 people*. That takes into account average-wreckers at both ends of the scale, like home churches with only half a dozen people and places like Hillsong with half a dozen thousand or so*. If you multiply those 65 people by the 52 congregations in Darwin, that gives you a local Church of about 3380. Despite my previous assertions, that doesn’t sound anything like enough. So now I find myself, asserting we have too many leaders, but not enough Christians. I haven’t yet made up my mind whether that’s complete nonsense or not.
Then there’s the national average church attendance rate of 11.7 percent of the population* to consider. If you run that percentage through the greater Darwin population of 120,000*, you get a weekly church attendance of about thirteen and a half thousand, give or take.
So where the bloody hell is everybody?
There are two possible explanations for this discrepancy in the figures, which are of course based on averages rather than role calls. The first is that my list of churches is even more uncomprehensive than I thought, and there are actually more like 200 congregations out there somewhere. Somehow that seems unlikely.
The more likely explanation is that the national averages don’t actually apply to Darwin, which is culturally an entirely different country (some might say planet). I suspect weekly attendance here might be well below the national average, given the transient nature of the population and high proportion of military personnel, who aren’t generally renowned for their religious piety. I also think on average, from what I’ve seen, our congregations do better than 65. I’m not sure why. Of course, I’ve only really been around the larger congregations. I guess we have little ones out there too.
So essentially I’m back where I started. I have no idea what percentage of Darwinites attends a Christian church. I have an incomplete, if surprisingly long list of local congregations, but no information on the attendance figures for them. And conspicuous by its absence is a record of the total number of local Christians. I’ve tried to get at that, but short of placing an enquiry with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (a pursuit that experience has taught me to avoid) that information doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. Somehow that bothers me, but I don't know why.
I still think we have too many churches and not enough members, but for now it doesn’t seem possible to prove it mathematically. At least not for this numerically disinclined stunt linguist. And therein lies an issue for another day.
And that’s the good news.
Garry with 2 Rs
*What? You weren’t actually expecting a reference, were you? What kind of legitimate researcher do you take me for?
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