1. The Barna Research Group reports that 38% of adults believe it is “morally acceptable”to look at pictures of nudity or explicit sexual behavior.
2. Every second of every day—28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography.
3. A new pornographic video is being created in the United States every 39 minutes.
4. There are 4.2 million pornographic website making up 12% of all total websites.
5. Every day, there are 68 million pornographic search engine requests, which represent one-quarter of all requests.
6. The pornographic industry is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink.
7. Christians are susceptible as well — 47% of Christians reported, “Pornography is a major problem in the home.”

Growth of a church = people getting saved + people from other churches – people leaving

People will come from other churches, stay for awhile and move on. Also, a lot of people get saved but leave after a bit.

So cancelling them out means that the equation can be simplified down to:
Growth of a church = people getting saved (and staying saved)

So with reaching a community:

• People are in their homes or at the shops.
• Mail-outs will attract some people
• But ultimately it boils down to somebody talking to them and explaining the gospel.
• Once all the people have had the gospel explained to them (regardless of their decision), the community has been reached.

It’s not rocket science.

So in our marriages, church, ministry and lives I think we need to be like Jesus and focus on the positives! Its easier to focus on the negatives of your wife (trust me – just ask my wife) but it is not worth it!

We all know about Men, boobs is the way to their heart but what about the women? Yes some are trapped by visual pornography but they are quite likely to instead be involved in such media as Internet romance or the old-fashioned romance novel.

Recently on a crosswalk.com article they explore the dangers of reading Christian or normal romance novels. I wont quote the whole article which you can find here but some of it needs to be repeated. I would encourage you to read it and while they just focus on romance novels do not forget the Internet romance aka facebook…

“Romance novels rarely have a sequel,” the book concludes. “Once the hero and heroine are joined in love or matrimony, they get their Happily-Ever-After, presumably with a bevy of children and domestic bliss. Further adventures would violate the female fantasy of true, committed, eternal love.”

…these scholars explain all of these archetypal female desires in a Darwinian need for the woman to seek out a mate who can be simultaneously monogamous and protective of the offspring. This evolutionary desire is seen in the strong male who pours out his feelings of devotion, and whose lifelong commitment is frozen in time and certainty in the Happily-Ever-After moment.

A lot of this genre, though, is simply a Christianization of a form not intended to enhance intimacy but to escape to an artificial illusion of it. Granted, there’s no graphic sexuality here. The hero and heroine don’t sleep together; they pray together. But that’s just the point. How many disappointed middle-aged women in our congregations are reading these novels as a means of comparing the “strong spiritual leaders” depicted there with what by comparison must seem to be underachieving lumps lying next to them on the couch?

I know with me and Ariana we had heaps of preconceived ideas going into marriage, you do not need more from a soppy stupid untrue book.

As I was praying this morning I was praying and asking God what do men in church need? Do they need someone to baby them? Someone to put a rocket up their bum or someone who can always be there when needed?

I personally think men need a mixture of these depending on the situation they find themselves in. Sometimes they just need the encouragement to tell them that God has already justified them and they do not need to live in the guilt of their sin while others need a few rockets…

As I was questioning this God told me to read how Paul dealt with Timothy, so now once I read my homework I will write what I find out from it here. In the meantime please write down what you think Men need in todays church in the comments below.

OK if your still reading. Quick question – How do you battle being bored by church? Have you ever battled being bored by church? Have you sat or stood (depending on the denomination) in church and asked yourself “what am I doing hear?”

I will admit, I have been there and even get there at times now but the question is, what do you do? Do you just leave and blame the church? Or do you do something about it?

First of all let me say that you being bored is not the churches or Gods fault, its yours… You do not change the church, you need to change your mindset!

How do we change our mindset?

If you have any ideas/ suggestions or how you changed your mindset, please write them down below in the comments field.

Hear are some quick questions…

1. Are you serving and following Jesus or yourself?
2. Are you going to church to serve yourself or others?
3. Why are you going to church?
4. Are you growing as a Christian?
5. Do you have hidden sins you are not dealing with?
6. Do you have real (ie: David & Jonathan) Christian friends?

Ok you ma be asking what that has to do with the price of eggs, let alone the title of this post.

Back in at the end of 2009 I decided to put away my dream of running my freelance business to follow my wives dream of owning our own house. The job I landed at lasted three months until they went bankrupt, two months later of living off the one wage still trying to save for our house, I landed another job with less pay but 20 times more responsibility and it drained me big time.

After feeling like I was switching my calling from God to trying to keep my boss happy I prayed to God and said if this job is taking over you, take it away from me. Guess what? He did!

I then landed another job one week later at my last job. Again at an even lower wage but to get this house, I needed a job asap so I can get my 6 months probation over so we can get our loan approved by the bank. One week before the bank would have approved our loan, I lost the job!

Now they gave reasons why and I do not want to rubbish any of the companies as I learned a lot from all these jobs but each ‘reason’ I got for why I lost the job was rubbish and a total personal attack. So now I am jobless again for the third time in 1.5 years.

I have a fear and that is to be a failure, I fear failing my wife, my God, myself and fear people seeing me as a failure… Yes I have problems, welcome to the club!

On top of the job fiasco’s I also feel my ministry being pulled from me which has had me questioning myself and what I thought my calling was. At my local church I do mens ministry and ‘run’ a bible study/ small group and both have been a struggle at times. All up it has me questioning myself and feeling like a failure. Yes you can see a common trend cant you?

Now I have a great mate in Canberra who is like a mirror image of me (or maybe I am a mirror image of him) which is kinder scary and in taking to him recently he said four words that God recently spoke to him and they spoke loudly to me and they where “Let Me, I Will“.

I hate waiting on God and letting people in, I struggle being accountable but maybe this is why, maybe God is just waiting on the outer waiting patiently and that I need to let God take control of this situation and when I let God have control he will have his hand over it. I am not saying that God is my magic genie (it would be nice) as you look at the bible and people much more Godly than I went through worse than me.

What I am saying is that Gods blessing (which means favour) will be over me, that no matter what happens  I have faith that God is there…. So now comes the hard bit, to let God have control of my current situation.

1. The real funny people like Stuff Christians Like
2. The Bitter armchair critics and
3. The ones who want to help

Now every Christian blogger has one thing in common and that is that they want to see change for the better (I like to believe this). Some do it through humour, while others spend all their time following the pastors and churches they hate trying to pick up on their mistakes/ humanity.

Now I fully believe that pastors need to be held accountable to the people they pastor – if your a pastor or minister and you cannot handle people talking about or asking you questions, get a different job! However as a Christian blogger myself, something that gets me is the continous negative comments from most of them. Now instead of posting that, why do they not use their knowledge to help, lift and build the (world) church instead?

If a pastor falls to immorality, yes highlight where they went wrong, teach us how we can use it as a warning for us but how about finishing off the post with a prayer for the poor people involved? If a pastor preaches heretic rubbish, instead of labeling them as a cult leader, how about doing a productive post on the truth instead? If you do not like the way a church does an event, how about talking about ways to improve it?

Now as a note, yes I have been one of those bitter Christian bloggers and I am not perfect! I have a past of going to a church I do not agree to but instead of being bitter, lets get better… Is your post productive and trying to give people a positive spin on the church or you giving them an excuse to stay away?

Maybe just maybe they are reading the bible from the wrong prospective. The bible is not a road map to life. My bible did not tell me to marry Ariana or to go to Perth to study. Yes it has maps in it but they do not say “Road map to Jermayns life” it is about the bible and the characters in it.

So what is the purpose of the bible if its not about me/ us? Well it is about God. I am sorry to burst your little sensitive bubble but if you or your pastor wont do it, I guess I will