Virtually Paul

The Best Thing Ever

“I wanna be a rockstar but I ain’t got what it takes.” - from “Rockstar” by Third Day

Wednesday night marked the third time that my favourite band, Third Day, have toured Australia. I first heard them in 2001 when they came to Sonfest in Ballarat. They were fantastic then and they just keep on getting better. Last time they toured, in 2005, I organised a small army of friends to go along and see them. I even drove out and bought tickets in advance for everyone. This time around, I was thoroughly disappointed that no one wanted to go with me. However, undeterred, I bought my ticket anyway. I wasn’t going to miss it. And I’m glad that happened because it was a key factor in what came next. Keep reading whilst I build the suspense.

See, as everyone knows, when you go to some sort of concert, people all sit with their friends. In a packed out venue, due to people’s somewhat impractical ideas of personal space, this generally means that there are lots of single good seats in really good spots where two groups have allowed a ’spacer’. After a quick chat with a very nice mum, who’s 12 year old son quite obviously didn’t want to sit next to a stranger until I made an effort to befriend him, I snaffled myself a seat in the third row on the aisle.

The support act, although their name currently escapes me, we’re pretty entertaining… but I was hanging out for Third Day. It’s been a couple of days since the concert so I don’t have a hope of remembering the set list. I like all of their songs. I’m a bit of an all-round Third Day fan. So there I am. At a Third Day concert. How cool is that! I’ve gotta say, their music really stirs me up and touches me. I’ve been doing the church musician thing for quite a while now… and in recent times, particularly in the last two years where a lot of us have sacrificed our own personal spiritual interaction in worship services, to run a church that has no permanent pastors, I’ve really felt numb to the music and words of songs with Christian spiritual themes.

In that process, where the music has still been happening every Sunday, I haven’t really had a pathway to deal with some stuff that’s really been bugging me for a long time. I have felt like I’ve been continually living in the fragments - the debris - of a church family that once worked well, that once wrapped its arms around me and embraced me… that once loved me. I’ve been a bit resentful since things became unsettled those few years ago. I think that’s normal to an extent. Close relationships change dramatically, in ways were people disconnect from each other, and we ask ourselves the question “Who is going to love me now?”. I’ve been waiting for someone to answer that question for me. I’ve been waiting for someone to be the answer to that question for me. It hasn’t happened. But the answer was right in front of my eyes the whole time.

“When you think your life is shattered and there’s no way to be fixed again, love heals your heart.” - from “Love Heals Your Heart” by Third Day

Third Day opened the floodgates for me again. The words to their songs and the absolutely fantastic musical arrangements broke through the walls that I’ve had up for a long time. It’s been such a long time since music was something that I let speak to me. And then, the absolutely unthinkable happened. Mac Powell, the lead singer, got the band to do something unrehearsed. “Who would like to sing for some Third Day Karaoke?” (thick southern American accent that is much cooler than Dr Phil’s). My hand was in the air before I could really think about it. I’ve actually imagined many times, what it would be like to sing with Third Day in concert. I’ve got their CDs, so in some senses I feel like I sing with Third Day all the time… but yeah… Mac picked me out of the crowd along with three others.

I’d been on the stage for about 2 seconds when he asked me my name, asked the audience to “give it up for Paul” and told me I was about to sing one of my favourite songs… “Love Song”. So there I am on the stage at Richmond AOG with Third Day, in front of 2000 people who I could see all looking at me. My legs were shaking like absolute jelly and I was worried that I was going to fall over. I couldn’t look. I shut my eyes. I didn’t even have to think about when to come in. It was one of the freakiest things listening to my voice boom out from the lead singer’s microphone. It was intense. And it was an absolutely beautiful experience. I even got a little bit of a cheer after the first line. I knew the words by heart but I would have gone completely blank, if it wasn’t for Mac saying the next line into my ear as each one passed.

“I’ve heard it said that a man would climb a mountain
Just to be with the one he loves
How many times has he broken that promise
It has never been done”

The rest of the verse which the next guy sang, goes like this:
“Well I never climbed the highest mountain
But I walked the hill of Calvary”

It was, of course, the chorus of that song, that answered the question I walked into the concert with… and the question that I’ve been wrestling with for these last few years… “Who is going to love me now?”. The whole, complete and all-consuming love of Christ, claims to be more powerful than anything that other people can offer us. That’s not to say that the love of others isn’t necessary. I’m still interested in having happy, healthy, loving relationships. But this - this is something more.

“And just to be with you, I would do anything
There is no price I would not pay
And just to be with you, I would give anything
Yes, I would give my life away”

-From “Love Song” by Third Day

My Career Moves

For those who don’t know, I’ve been working in IT support alongside by Business Information Systems degree, since the end of my first year of uni. I work for a wonderful company that I’m deliberately choosing not to name. I will tell you that it’s an accounting firm and that in this accounting firm I have met a group of people who are not only highly professional but have also been a huge encouragement to me personally over the learning curve that has been my life over the last four years.

It all came to a fork in the road when my Dad introduced me to a Project Manager who is overseeing a construction project for the same company that Dad works for. The guy offered me a job… and an incredibly well paid job at that, doing admin in the office for the construction project. The only catch was the 10 hour work days and 7am starts. Needless to say, I liked that idea about as much as a fat kid likes exercise, although the actual work would probably have been an interesting challenge in a different industry.

Unfortunately for my Dad, who did a fair bit of nagging to try to get me to take the job, my current fantastic workplace made me what I consider to be a better offer. I’ll be winding up my role in IT there over the next few weeks, with a view to joining their audit division as a graduate, part time this year, while picking up a Graduate Certificate in Accounting to cover some of the skill gaps.

The decision wasn’t an easy one. I’d planned, with 4/8 subjects completed for my Grad Dip B&M, to finish that course full-time in second semester this year. But that wasn’t going to be an option if I took the job, so I was faced with the difficult decision of shelving those plans. I haven’t completely dismissed the theological study though. The firm is so fantastic that they’re even probably going to let me work 3 days a week, to give me time to complete another subject towards my bible college course at Ridley along with the part-time accounting study.

I’m pretty excited about it all and really looking forward to the challenges that the new role will bring.

House Sitting

I’ve spent this week house and dog sitting for my friends Mark and Sonia, while they’ve taken their kids away for a holiday.

It’s been really nice having a house - a nice house at that - completely to myself to potter around in. It has a nice kitchen, a driveway for my car… and the lounge room where I’m writing this right now has windows along one side, which let the sunlight in and make the place feel fantastic to be in.

It has been a wonderful blessing to be here this week. I’ve been able to slow down, kick back and take stock of things. And I’ve been able to rest during a bit of a tumultuous week where a lot of decisions have needed to be made.

Thanks guys! Please invite me back!

MarkSpace: Attention Bible Nerds

Hopefully the title of this post captures the attention of the relevant audience sufficiently.

I’d like to take a moment to introduce a friend of mine, or, more accurately, his blog.

Mark-MarkSpace

By way of introduction, Mark was the interim youth pastor at my church for a while, which gave me the chance to get to know him pretty well. Mark is now the full-time pastor at another baptist church and the blog, for the moment, seems to be an online rendition of his Sunday sermon text. I recommend that you RSS it for now. I’ll try to get him to let me fix up the tech side of it (including the URL).
By way of a real introduction, Mark could quite easily get himself a reputation for being a bit of a liberal theologian if he put his mind to it. He was the interim youth pastor who got into trouble for wearing a soccer jumper with a Heineken logo on the stage at church. We were thinking about burning him at the stake for it but no one could find a copy of the church constitution to work out how many votes we’d need to do it. Personally I find Mark far too interesting to box him like that. He has a unique way of drawing connections between scriptural concepts and suggesting some application to our present context. (As opposed to wrapping the bible around our present day presuppositions, which he regularly does a good job of avoiding.)
I’m not afraid to say that in the past, the exegetical amateur in me occasionally wants to red flag some of his ponderings when they appear to draw a bit of a long bow. In practice though, when I’ve thought about it, the long bow usually just means he’s tried to skip over an otherwise overcomplicated tangent, or that he’s made a conceptual jump that I wasn’t ready for just yet. Mark is also smarter than me and has spent a lot more time with his head in books, so I generally don’t mess with him on theological grounds and stick to criticising his poor attempts at web publishing to make myself feel better.
If you’re a 20-something single theological student who goes to a church where most of the preaching is focused on newbies or married people, then Mark’s blog is certainly for you.

Weddings, Pirates, Koreans and self-analysis

I’m back from a challenging week as a co-director on the bi-annual Junior Camp. Last week was my 8th Junior Camp in a row. The theme being “The Quest for Treasure Island”. We had a bit of a pirate thing happening, as I’ve previously mentioned.

I missed the first day thanks to my groomsmanly responsibilities in Nathan and Liz’s wedding. It was a great day. The ceremony was completely them and the reception was a great night too. I loved all of it. I was given the honour of making a speech which I thoroughly enjoyed preparing and delivering. But the best part of it all was watching my good friend Nathan, who I’ve journeyed with as a friend in life and faith for 5 years, including 2 and a half as housemates, make a commitment to a girl he loves to bits. We also both had a chance to talk to each other the night before and bring our era as housemates to a close in a really positive way. It was a really edifying experience as well as an extremely happy occasion. I drove up to camp on the Sunday morning.

The camp was very different this time for a number of reasons. For a start, the director who has run them for twice as long as I have been involved, resigned from involvement with the campsite some months back. That forced a few role changes for some of us. We had to take more of a hands on approach to running the camp program and all of the administrative stuff that comes with that. Additionally, our study leader pulled out less than a month before camp, prompting me to step up and take on that role as well.

That would have been fine in and of itself. What made the camp really difficult, for someone like me who likes to feel like they’re in control, was the presence of a visiting school group from South Korea. The kids spoke basic conversational English. One-on-one you could generally communicate with them well enough without knowing any Korean. Addressing the whole group or playing crowd controller was a different story though. The language barrier, for me, was quite frustrating. Fortunately, before camp I managed to track down a married couple who both speak Korean. They generously volunteered their time to come along to the camp (with their young family) and were instrumental in helping us with translation stuff. The guy who booked the school group into the camp seriously under-prepared us for all of the language and cultural issues that we had to deal with. All in all, I’d have to say the frustration nearly got the best of me.

That said, I think the leadership team did a superb job. There wasn’t a single leader on this camp who was just there to make up the numbers. Everyone who participated brought along a unique blend of gifts, talents and strengths to add to the overall team. I was incredibly impressed with everyone’s contribution. It was great to see some good friends (and also some new ones) really flourishing, rising to the occasion and coming into their own.

We finished up the week with a leaders’ retreat at a friend’s place. This was a great way to end the week. It made the camp feel a little bit more relaxed because no one felt as though they were having to try and force some social time into the scarce periods where there wasn’t anything happening. We were all pretty emotionally tired from a week of pouring ourselves into the camp program, so it was pretty easy to just kick back and soak up a very easy community atmosphere amongst the group. I pulled out the guitar at one stage and we all sang along to different songs, which was good fun. We all did a personality typing quiz thanks to a certain Myers-Briggs enthusiast who shall remain nameless. And I got to lay on a trampoline for a few happy minutes of solitude and silence and look at the stars in the country night sky.

I’ve mentioned before that coming back from camp is a curious experience. I’ve described this already but I’ll say it again. The whole regimented camp schedule is extremely predictable. Expectations are clear, activities are constantly scheduled, meals are a routine that happen without any real effort. When you finally do get a bit of downtime, you generally use it to rest up rather than reflect and evaluate things, because you know the next day is going to require the same amount of energy from a lowering set of reserves.

The effect is a total life reset. You don’t really have a choice. You have to put yourself and your usual rhythms on hold. So I’ve come back to earth and piece by piece I’m starting to pick up my life, examining each fragment as I go. I don’t really have much to say about all of that yet. I don’t know if I’m really ready for any major practical life changes. I’m going back to work on Wednesday. I’m kind of looking forward to that, having had a good rest and some distance from it for a few weeks. I suspect there will be a few attitudinal changes to make… but I haven’t quite come to grips with everything just for the moment.

Stay tuned.