Pray for the City runs on 1 WAY FM in Canberra on 91.9 three or four times a day: 7:30 am; 12:30 pm; 6:30 pm

I do a little radio slot that comes on three or four times a day just about every day on our local Christian radio station.

They run for between four and five minutes –  if you are interested.

Brian

1205.1 The new covenant #1

1205.1 The new covenant #2

1205.1 The new covenant #3

For some reason segment #4 won’t load.  Watch this space.

1205.1 The new covenant #5

We knew it as the Ainslie Rex, called the Grand Old Lady of Canberra

A week or so ago, Nola told me to keep April 24th free for a surprise she was organising but didn’t tell me what it was.  it had to do with going out somewhere and I was happy at the time to leave her unhounded.  I usually have an aggressive de-surprising streak in me that will keep asking until someone cracks and tells me what the secret is.

But the non-de-surprising mode ran out of steam last weekend and, when pressed, Nola told me that she had booked for us to go out to dinner.  The occasion was the forty fifth anniversary of our very first date.  I have been returning to think about it ever since  - and at nearly-sixty-five I can still recall many of the details.

We are talking about 1967 in Gunning.  I was entering my third year of working with my father on our sheep property and earthmoving business.  A very contented moderate ratbag who poured most of his modest wage making his car drive faster, make more noise and get closer to the ground. This quest had attracted the attention of the local police sergeant but his threats had gone unheeded.

A VIEW FROM AFAR   Gunning was a very small country town and Nola was a new beautiful young kindergarten teacher at the school.  When me and my tech. college mates did a few laps around the schoolyard during a February lunch break I was immediately attracted.  It was an intellectual thing of course.  Being such a deep thinker myself, I relished the thought of long conversations that only a highly educated person like a school teacher and a widely acclaimed academic like myself would be capable of – WRONG, VERY WRONG.  I just thought she looked beautiful and she was young and female while I was young and male.  That just about covered it all from my position.

Actually the reverse was true.  I was dead scared of dating a school teacher.  I who had used most of my years of education for rampant socialising and getting into trouble.  I didn’t know whether I was going to be able to match the suave sophistication that accompanied my idea of the world of a schoolteacher.

It used to be called the Ainslie Rex and, believe it or not, it was one of the classy places to go in Canberra

CONTACT  My shaky ambitions gained a little more confidence when providence found us sitting in the same tennis shed on a rather cool evening in early April during the annual autumn night tennis competition.  She was sitting on a rug that was along the seat and offered to share the rug with me.  We talked for a bit.  She was in a team with one of the other young teachers (a bloke) and I thought he and Nola were an item (they were really just good friends).  We talked ‘Gunning-eze’ for ten minutes.  That’s an anthropological term for small town local gossip.  A very important part of the fabric of small country town life.  My capacities for it had been advanced for a while when I dated one of the girls who worked on the phone exchange.  Those girls somehow knew everything about everybody even though they vowed and declared that they never listened in on a single phone conversation.  Anyway, Nola and I talked away for a bit and I went home feeling good –  Gunning-eze or not I had made contact.

SECRET BUT MUTUAL ATTRACTION     What I didn’t know was that Nola wasn’t an item with fellow staff member Robert.  She had cast her eye on ME !  How about that.  Her flat mate, the Home Economics teacher and her plotted this dinner deal with a few others but with a particular invitation to me.  I showed up thinking she was with the other bloke and was surprised when he wasn’t there.  It was a busy little social engagement and the flat Nola lived in was a really really small flat – but somehow we found a small corner and continued our very tempered, heavily secreted, flirtation.

A BOLD MILITARY ADVANCE  Not many days after that I decided to make my move

Some of the memorabilia for the Carlton Lounge, Ainslie Rex Hotel, Canberra. Birthplace of a life long love affair

and invite Nola on a date.  I figured I would need to hold nothing back and plan something fitting for an educated city girl.  I asked a few of my old Telopea Park Hight School mates where was a high class place to go for a Saturday night in Canberra.  They seemed to think the place was the Carlton Lounge at the Ainslie Rex Hotel.  They had something there on a Saturday night called a “Dinner Dance.”  Sounded plush and impressive to me.  So I summoned my emotional stamina and made the phone call, inviting Nola to accompany me to Canberra for the evening.  To my total amazement and delight, she accepted.  I was floating.

Nola told me later that when Saturday came she spent the whole day getting ready.  First the bath, then hair in curlers (no driers in those days), then who knows what else and at five o’clock the distinctive sound of my hotted-up Holden is heard out in the street and we are in business.  I was reeeeeeeely nervous and tried to think of all the cultured things I could to talk about – and then realised that I didn’t really know any.  She wasn’t interested in carburettors and racing suspension and I had deliberately forgotten everything about school.  But we got along okay.  We arrived early and went for a ‘romantic’ walk around the outside of the War Memorial opposite.  Then we got to the dinner.  I took one look at the prices on the menu and began to worry whether I had brought enough money to pay for everything.  I even skipped dessert just to try everything I could to keep the price down (no credit cards in those days).  But we ate, and danced a bit.  I didn’t really care what we did.  I was just happy being with Nola away from the eagle eyes of fellow Gunning residents in the glorious anonymity of a swishy Canberra night spot.  So incredibly innocent and naive.  How comparatively simple.  We held hands on the way back to the car and I wasn’t game to blow it all on chancing a kiss when we said goodnight back in Gunning.  I rolled my car down the hill without starting the motor in an attempt to avoid attracting nosey or unwanted attention from any Gunning-ites and drove home without a chance in the world of going to sleep for nearly two hours.  Just totally elated.

And that’s what Nola and I are going to celebrate tonight at what is now the Mercure Hotel.  What a hoot.

And here is the evidence for all the world to see: laundered money !!!

Nola and I have a deep level of trust.  It is built on a number of foundation pillars.  One is the fact that we have a lot of kilometres behind us and anything that might have happened generally hasn’t. The second great ally in the trust department is that we forget many more things that we did in former times.  We forget what we were cranky about yesterday and forget what one or the other did or didn’t do that annoyed us.  Such are the spoils of the aging process.  The New Testament tells us that we should forgive one another and “not let the sun go down on our anger.”  It could well have said:  “if you live long enough, don’t worry – by sundown you’ll have forgotten it anyway.”  (see Medway 4:17).

This morning something happened that has aroused unexpected suspicions.  I haven’t confronted Nola about is yet, so you might know before she does.  But when I rose before dawn and went to collect some clothing items for the day I turned on the light in the laundry, was about to open the dryer door and saw what I have shown in this photo.  The evidence.  There in full view were two ten dollar notes.

I would never have expected that Nola was running a money-laundering racket, but I now have as explicit evidence as any prosecutor would ever need.  It must have been the left-overs of a late night stash of money.  Who knows where it comes from?  Of course I confiscated the money and as I used it to purchase coffee later on today I was a bit worried that the guy behind the counter might recognise a set of numbers and call the police.  So far I am still at large -  and so is Nola.  We’ll keep you posted.

dreaded by aspiring roses who wish to go on living and unromantic Aussie blokes –  but eagerly anticipated by florists and romantic Aussie females who are hooked up to liberated Aussie blokes (such as myself of course).

As you are probably aware, the origins of St. Valentine are among the most obscure in Catholic tradition and the fourteen or so people of that name who were among the early Christian martyrs have even less to do with the secret and no-so-secret admiration that is hyped up every year by purveyors of chocolates and roses. It seems more likely that it was Geoffrey Chaucer who needed the patronage of a Saint to mobilize the cause of romantic affection among members of the English court sometime during the fourteenth century.  Most of the pictures of Geoffrey don’t give much evidence of the heart of a romantic

As romantics go and on a scale of 1 to 10, I am something of a hybrid.  Somewhere inside of me lives an above-average  romantic. At the same time there is the product of twenty-something years of life as a small town farm-boy and a hundred or so of ancestral tradition of firmly closeted emotions.

These came to the fore this past Valentine’s Day.  I left for the church premises in Belconnen under the cover of darkness as I commonly do.  At about 8:00 am. I received an SMS from Nola with a Valentine’s Day greeting and the invitation to a special dinner she was going to cook at home in honour of our love for each other.

About mid morning I decided to spring into action.  The plan was to go across to the mall, get some roses and a card and take them around to her work place – not far from the church.  When I got outside the building the idea of walking through the mall with a bunch of roses and a card seemed a bit much for the farmer boy to contemplate.  Plan B was to drive to Jamison – a smaller centre with a Florist who was only interested in my money.

The exercise was no trouble for the incurable romantic, but the farm-boy was having some problems.  Standing at the Valentine’s Day card section at the Newsagent was the first challenge.  How do you look through the cards and remain “normal.”  I caught my eyes in the act of looking around to see whether anyone was looking at me (and why in the world would they have been doing THAT).  When I had waded my way through the crude ones and found something that was in my emotional range I then had to muster up my nonchalance to engage with the girl at the counter – hoping like mad that she wouldn’t make any reference to my actions.  Victory !   She just took the money and said nothing.

Then it was the Florist.  This is a different challenge.  Florists are much more competent at dealing with farm-boys who want to be Rudolphs (Valentino – the movie idol of the 1930’s).  The trick is to avoid being shamed into spending a lot of money but not to come across as cheap and nasty.  I have learned how to do this over the years.  First of all, I don’t ask for advice.  I stand back and make a choice from that distance and then move in for a quick purchase with minimum comment.  I found a single rose in a nice long box and made my move – all the time looking around hoping that there would be no familiar faces.

Making the purchase is only half the challenge.   You then have to run the gauntlet from the shop to the car while maintaining that demeanor you have when you have bought a roast from the butcher.  But the farm-boy just knows that everyone is looking.  You know they are summing you up.  The blokes are looking with either covert jealousy or disdain – which come out pretty much the same way.  The women may look with approval but it isn’t the kind of approval that helps.  And, of course, you KNOW this is so without a word being said or without genuine evidence.  It’s one of those things you just KNOW.

In the safety of the car I can then write my lines with romantic abandonment and when I make the presentation to Nola, meeting her as she walked toward the car on her way to do a visit you get to smell the fragrance of  victory and an opportunity to enjoy the spoils of the great Valentine’s Day battle.

And the dinner was fantastic.  Good on you Geoffrey (Chaucer).

Brian

Anyway, we would always set out to fly exactly along the track.  Sometimes we would find ourselves a few miles to the left or right and it would require a slight adjustment.  They had a thing called the one-in-sixty rule got you back on track with not too much lost time.

I can readily understand someone getting a few miles off track.  A bit more cross-wind than was forecast was all you needed.  I can’t imagine flying in the complete opposite direction to what was intended.  Everything instrument and everything you could see would scream at you and tell you what was happening.

You have to be a follower of Jesus to find yourself going in completely the opposite direction to the one intended.  You have to belong to the church to be doing that and NOT KNOW ABOUT IT.

One way this happens is when we persist in taking our identity and our reference points from the past.  When we do this we can find ourselves defending and protecting the past rather than using the past as it really is – a stepping stone to the future.  The past is to be remembered, celebrated and appreciated, but never slavishly replicated, worse still, defended.

This was an issue when the Israelites came back from exile.  A little group of passionate believers left the comfort of the rivers of Babylon and the majority of their fellow Jews and risked life and limb trekking through harsh and dangerous country to end up looking at the pile of burnt rocks that was the remains of Jerusalem.  When they tried to rebuild the temple it was hard, there was fierce opposition and it was not going to be anything like the one that had stood there before.

We have to finish what we started.

When Zechariah starts getting visions about  what God wants to do with Jerusalem and the temple there are more surprises.  He gets a vision about the new priesthood.  Joshua and his fellow priests are told that they are neither to reflect nor replicate the past but they are to be a sign of the future.  That future we are told (Zechariah 3) is to do with the coming of the Chosen King (Jesus).

That’s the way it is always meant to be.  Why does it seem impossible for us to appreciate and remember without feeling the need to freeze-frame some moment in history and think that by locking it down we are serving God. Why is it in Christian history that the next reformational movement found their most vicious enemies among the people who were part of the previous most recent reformation movement.  We are subject to a deadly virus that says “Let’s keep it like it is” rather than “let’s become more like Jesus.”  We seem to be able to find a way to justify doing that to the point where we continue to crucify anyone who just may have MORE.   It was true when Jesus was leaving footprints on the earth and it is still true.

Zechariah’s vision involving Joshua and the renewed priesthood was all about the future.  God required them to be a continual sign of the future rather than being custodians of the past. I have a serious suspicion that the “good old days” were not nearly as good as they are sometimes made out to be.  The challenge for us is not to become endlessly faddish or voguish.  The challenge is to use the past and the present as stepping stones to a future that we can discover but never control, one that we can embrace but never possess.  The only measure of it will be its capacity to reflect more of the glory that only belongs to Jesus.

Here are some Power Point slides that sum up last Sunday’s teaching.

FINISH THE UNFINISHED WORK – THE THIRD VISION – Joshua the High Priest

What confronted the Jewish remnant when they returned to Judea was a hill piled high with the burnt stones that were once the city and Solomon's temple

It was great to be together today.  Worshipping, listening to some stories, hearing the word and seeking God in prayer.  All good.

For those of you who didn’t get the chance to show up, we have a few resources that will help us connect around the first chapters of the book of Zechariah.  I think God has alerted us to this and the exercise will be to discover what HE has in mind regarding unfinished things that need finishing at this time.

Today I tried to give some background to the whole bit:  ”520 BC and all that…”  There is some information here that will help us get the full big picture so that we can start to look at some of the detail stuff.  Glen will be doing the first bit next week.

The powerpoint should be able to be downloaded in PDF format.

Brian

Finish the Unfinished Work – Getting the Big Picture

I am amazed how the message that God gave to me to preach came together.  A few things had been hanging around in me for few weeks, but they were not connected and just sat there waiting for the Holy Spirit assembly line to spring into action.  A bit like the Ford car making plant in Geelong. Shelves of otherwise disconnected parts sitting there waiting to be lifted into a sequence and put together in sequence and according to a detailed plan.

Because there was a labour market shortage over Christmas and New Year, I got a chance to rekindle a ministry area that hadn’t been used for a while.  I rang Cathy Macfarlane and asked her to play keys and despite the fact that she had also not led worship for a number of years agreed.  We were both encouraged greatly of the services of Mick Brown who has continued to lead worship and with Mick’s wife Lyn capably operating the computer we were a team to be reckoned with.  The reason I say this is because it took me a lot of work to get things prepared.  All of this was decided on the day before, New Year’s Eve. I was going to call Glen and see if he had a sharp and powerful word to preach – but then decided not to dump that on him at last notice.

Sunday morning came and I was putting together all of the bits and having a run through myself just to reassure myself that I was still capable.  Still no message –  not even a single power point slide.

While I was doing all of this a reference popped into my mind – from Zechariah Chapter Four.  It was the vision of Zechariah when an angel woke him up and he saw the candlestick and the olive trees. It wasn’t until I started preaching that the other bits came together – stuff about God wanting to finish things that had been started.  The phrase had been  ”finish the unfinished business.”

You can listen to the audio.  I think it is an important message for us.  For a person who doesn’t put a lot of weight on getting a “new theme” every January and then trying to pump people up about it,  I have had two years in a  row where God has given me a prophetic kind of word at the beginning – with an image.  Last January it was log jams and unploughed fields.  This January it is “finish the unfinished work.”  I have been looking at my own spheres and personal life and am aware of a number of things that I had started but have been neglected.  The experience of the people who returned from Babylon to rebuild the temple and the city of Jerusalem is a very powerful picture.

If you want to read some background before listening to the message I suggest you read bits of the following books:

Ezra 3-6

Haggai 1,2

Then, you can read Zechariah 4 a couple of times.

In reflecting more specifically on what God may be saying I remembered the words of Jesus in John 4(v.34).

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish the work he has given me to do.”

Let me know what God says to you about your own world and about our common world. I hope the pieces come together to produce something even more swanky than this 1934 Pontiac, which the men in the previous photo were probably assembling.  In our case the finished product will glorify only God and complete his plan and purpose.  Sounds like we have work to do.

Brian

Here is the audio file:

120101 Brian Medway Finish the Unfinished Business

Full marks to someone who seized the moment to engage with me in a conversation that was never meant to happen

Here is a funny little sidelight to the string of Christmas events of the past few days.  As I mentioned previously, we had a choir for the Grace Canberra Christmas Eve service.  It wouldn’t have given the Kings College Chapel boys a run for their money but it was made up of full-hearted individuals.  Amber Nicholls has an amazing singing voice, so when we had our last rehearsal I asked her if she would choose a song to sing as a solo and she said she couldn’t think of anything in particular but would give it a think or two and let me know.

On Saturday morning I decided to text and the text conversation went something like this:

B:            have you thought of a song for tonight?

A:            ‘Semi-charmed life’ by Third Eye Blind might be good.

B:            What kind of backing would you need?

A:            Keys, bass and drums would do.

B:            What about downloading a backing tape?

A:            That would work okay.

B:            Can you download it?

A:            I’m a bit busy, can you do it?

B:            I think so, where is the web site?

In the interim before the next reply I found the web site and downloaded both the lead vocal version as well as the backing vocal version AND the lyrics. So the conversation went a little further:

B:            I’ve found the site and downloaded the audio.

A:            Thx

I had a look at the lyrics and just couldn’t get the connection to anything that seemed to have Christian faith about it, and even less about Christmas.  Being a genuine baby-boomer I figured there was some deep symbolism and thought Amber would explain it to me.

When Amber arrived at our final run through before the service I asked her about the song. She replied, “What song?”  I said, “The Three Blind Mice” song or whatever you called that band.”  She replied, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”  I said, you know, the text conversation we had and where you asked me to download a song.  She said, “I didn’t get any text message from you this morning.”

The strangest feeling came over me to realize I had had a full on two-way conversation with someone who was NOT Amber but who had carried the matter so well that I had followed along without question.  Amber knew the song, as did a few other people around.  For those like me who have to Google the name of the band and the song to know, “Third Eye Blind” is an alternative rock band from San Francisco in the late nineties.  “Semi-Charmed Life” is a song written as a San Francisco version of “Walk on the Wild Side” written by Lou Reed (1972) about some of the wilder experiences to be had in New York city.  Not a regulation Christmas song.  The question going around in my mind is the obvious one:  who in the world was I talking to?

I had their number in my phone of course so I decided that sometime the next day (Christmas Day) I would send a message and say something like:  “I know you are not Amber.”  We were on our way to the Christmas lunch we put on for people who don’t have family homes to go to.  My phone buzzed and there was the following message:

(not) A:            How did the song go?

B:                        The reeely funny thing is that I discovered you aren’t Amber

(not) A:            Lol and merry Christmas

B:                        and the same to you. This was genuine fun.

(not) A:            same, take care.

And that was the end of it.  “(not) A:” contributed to a very funny little Christmas aside – and we didn’t sing: Semi Charmed Life during the service.  But I do have a copy of the backing tapes if anyone ever needs it.

Brian

It is approximately 3:30 am on Christmas morning.  Don’t ask me why I am not sleeping at this time – but I am wide-awake and there are some things stirring deeply within me. Yesterday was a weird kind of day.  It ended in a slightly messy but wonderful Christmas Eve celebration at Grace Canberra.  Christmas in Canberra can be a trifle stark for churches.  So many people still head out of town to family (all fine and good I need to say) that the Christmas gathering for us is often quite low key.  This year Rachel (Horne) did a great job in stirring the “special occasion” in us and we had a collage of skits, kids song, a Christmas parody of “Bohemian Rhapsody” (very clever), a choir of full-hearted people that was a bit scrappy in musical terms but did the job in terms of encouraging the overall celebration.  I wasn’t going to preach a message at all but ended up telling a couple of stories that were meant to show that Jesus came to re-connect what had been disconnected.  It was also a bit rough, but still worked.  There were lots of people with us who were special – families of our families and the like.  Jinwook and Susan were there from Orange, having just returned to Australia this week after their marriage in Korea and a short honeymoon on an island somewhere near Guam.  Elizabeth was there from Geraldton.  So, all in all it was a great time.  We had a short afterwards pizza and drink time at Rachel and Chris’s place and then I came home stuffed – and I am not talking about the pizza.

So why the stirring?  It might sound a little trite but I am carrying a very particular desire to see change to a small number of situations that I have been connected to and that need profound change.

At home and with respect to Grace Canberra I am conscious that if we are to fulfill what God has called us to we need much more Holy Spirit power and presence pointed in the direction of the people in our spheres who need the transforming touch of the gospel.  I can think of plenty of connections I have, but little experience of heavenly power is at large.  I want to see what God really intends to DO in those spheres and commit to that rather than just tip toeing around the tulips.  I fear we have tailored our work of Christ around what safely leaves our own borders intact and tries to leave as many of other people’s borders intact also when the real need is to smash those borders in both cases in the direction of what God wants for us and them.

I feel that in Australia at least we haven’t really taken heed of much.  There are so many people who are as self centred as ever and we have produced churches that accommodate them thinking we will be able to lure them into a passionate abandonment to Jesus and the work of the gospel.  We are still not passionate enough about making disciples who will also then passionately make disciples.  And even though I am involved in the Liberal Party as a missionary I don’t really think any party has enough courage and wisdom to give good leadership in the nation.  I think it’s more of a question of who will make the least mess.  I find myself getting up at odd hours and praying for all the people I know who need the transforming power that Jesus alone can bring – not just a moral tidy up – but a deep foundational shift of trust.

I have been more involved this year with the Iranians who are committed to resisting and opposing the current regime in Iran.  They are represented here by a group called “Australian Friends of Iranian Democracy.”  That links me with people who belong to an international movement known by a few different names – People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).  This links me with people I would not hang out with in normal circumstances.  It is a kingdom ministry for me and I am committed to the well being of Iranian refugees in Australia, and others in places like Camp Ashraf in Iraq.  The latter are in a dire situation because the Iranian mullah dominated regime now have a major influence in what is happening in Iraq and these people have been living on this piece of dirt following their expulsion from France and an offer by Saddam Hussein to provide a place for them to live in 1986.  But God has connected me with these people and their cause in a very clear way.  Right now around 3,400 unarmed Iranian refugees are being denied basic human rights by the Iraqi Prime Minister and are under constant threat of attack.  Many of the personnel involved in this daily intimidation and mistreatment are members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Terrorist force.  They were previously told that they would be removed from the camp by the end of the year but that has now been delayed.  The threats remain and the pathetic inactivity of the US government (for one) only gives courage to the oppressors.  I have come to love the people I have come to know very deeply and I so deeply desire God to intervene – not just for the sake of their safety, but for the sake of the well being of the people of this great nation who have suffered for so long under the decisions of western empires and the oppression of nation al leaders.  I want there to be a thousand “Daniel’s to be raised up to once again challenge the Persian rulers – not just with political opposition but with redemptive power as has been modeled by Jesus Christ.

So here I am calling out to the Lord that this next season will be the one where we will see the breaking out of Holy Spirit love and power in these important (and no doubt many other) spheres of purpose.  I am desperate to figure out how to proclaim and represent that purpose in a hundred small ways as well as a few bigger ones.

My burden and desperation is not based on despair – it is the stirring of a greater sense of hope than I have ever had.  That hope is the result understanding from the Scriptures and from the life that was modeled by Jesus Christ. There are so many things that I just don’t care about or have time for that I used to.  I don’t care about running a church club anymore I just want to make disciples and train missionaries.  I don’t want to get involved in a veritable “Vogue” line up of Christian causes that never result in mobilizing believers to preach the gospel to every person – I just want to learn how to do that  - do it and encourage others to do it.  I am finding myself reading fewer books at the expense of “the” Book and that is stirring and shaping my attitudes, perspectives and priorities like never before.  At the age of 64 I am staring down the barrel of a very finite number of years representing the opportunity to get it right.  The same age bracket makes me less susceptible to arrogance and self-centredness.  I have less need to please people than I have ever had in all of my forty years plus of serving Jesus.  I think I also have a greater sense of what serving Jesus is about.  It is different to what I was taught and from what is commonly espoused by Christian leaders from western nations like ours.  I think I might learn more from spending time in the presence of an Indian female church planter or a Chinese believer than I would going to hear one or other of the endless names that headline conferences that a lot of people attend.  I am more likely to look beyond what someone says to see what they are doing on any day of any week when they are not standing on a platform or in front of a camera.

It’s Christmas morning where I am sitting, very early.  I love the idea of following Jesus and am as passionate about Him as I have ever been.  I rejoice in his birth, am amazed at his life, I am sobered by his death and excited about his resurrection.  I look forward to re-defining what it means to be filled with the Spirit and to preach the gospel to every person.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

Do we need yet another version of the Bible ? Yes indeed. One that has no copyright limitations.

This past week I have been working on a new version of the Bible.  Well at least one of the sixty six books to begin with.  The issue has arisen out of our disciple making work here at Grace Canberra.  We have been using a tool known as “Life Stream.”  It provides a tool for small discipling or mentoring groups to learn to do four things better:  hear from God through the Bible, relate to God through prayer and worship, implement what God says in daily life and work as a team.

Hearing what God wants to say through the Bible seems pretty normal.  We have found that the challenge is to hear what God wants to say rather than hearing what we want him to say.  We have so many defaults when it comes to hearing from God.  Theological, cultural and personality all play a part in enabling us to notice some pieces of information at the expense of others.  The need to understand meaning on the basis of context has caused us to want to read the Bible in segments that are natural and original – i.e. whole books, not just a few verses or a string of individual reference verses with no regard to context.

We wanted to be able to print out a whole book – or even divide a large book (e.g. Isaiah) into a couple of sections.  We also wanted to be able to work over the text to notice everything that was being said. The idea of printing the full text in .docx (Word) or similar seemed to be the way to go.  The problem is that it is  illegal unless you get specific copyright permission.  I have been talking with a number of Bible publishing groups and it is a bit of a bureaucratic labyrinth.  While we await the out come of that process (or the second coming of Jesus whichever comes first) I decided to see how hard it might be to produce a version of my own.

I used the interlinear Greek New Testament as the basis and discovered that it didn’t take as long as I thought.  I’m not announcing the full Bible by February 2012 at this point, but at least I have a version that can be copied without restraint.  I have called it the NCV (the no copyright version).  I figured that if I found ten or a dozen mates we could come up with a fair bit of the whole Bible without having to be put in prison like Luther was and there he produced the German version at the time of the Reformation.  I don’t think it is important to pour over every word and answer every deep exegetical question.  I am just looking for a version that will enable disciples to read the Bible in chunks that represent the original –  the Bible is, after all, a collection of pieces written by a number of authors.  What they wrote was a book.  I am not interested in source theories or anything of the sort.  Just a text that can be copied.

Have a read of the copy of Galatians I have included here. It should be downloadable.  Let me know what you think.

Brian Medway

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians NCV verse numbered