The Crazy Australian

Merry Christmas from Tokyo! Christmas feels lacking without 40-degree days, the smell of bushfires in the air, the beach on boxing-day to try out new presents, sausages, carols on TV, hundreds of prawns and still more relatives. All the same, it’s good to be with family, and Tokyo Baptist Church sure knows how to party.

My gift to you: 5 remarkable links from all 5 corners of the interweb:

“As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God” - a remarkable article! Will be re-reading it again and again.

“Don’t Waste Your Sexuality” – a radically different way of thinking about sexuality. It makes sense to me – we say “I can do what I want, it’s my sexuality”, but in no other area of life does that attitude bring happiness. We are happiest in relationship; and, in relationship, happiest when each serves the other. Like the rest of life, our sexuality is not all about me.

Craig reviews NiteEV Live, with great insight from his experience as a muso

Dave offers his own review, plus a bunch of sweet pics taken on the night.

Finally, Penn (an atheist commedian, of Penn & Teller fame) talks about recieving a Bible. To my non-Christian friends – this is why I have a one-track mind. To my Christian friends – why is this the sternest, most urgent exhortation to evangelism I have ever heard?

How much do you have to hate someone to not tell them about eternal life?

I’m stoked! The live album Nite.EV Live had its official online launch this week.

I was there on the night, belting it out, and it really was an awesome night of praising God – a bunch of people from all congregations taking over a movie theatre, joyfully and freely using our lips and our bodies to express the emotions our heart felt in response to the truths our heads knew. We could have sung forever – in fact, we made the band play another set – but there were more than a few hoarse voices when we finally did stop.

I’ve just sampled the album, and I’m thrilled: the energy of the night carries onto the record!

This was literally my first chance to hear it, in the mac shop at Kuala Lumpur airport. The CD sounds… awesome!!! I wonder if the Japanese guy standing next to me had any idea just what he was tapping his foot to…

What I love about it is that it sounds different, authentic. There’s great diversity across the album, the result of having 3 different bands playing. The words express deep, wonderful truth, the music is stylistically excellent and technically tight, but somehow the whole package comes out sounding different to your standard Christian album. (I think the best way to understand what I mean is to listen for yourself.)

The ‘head music guy’ at night church, Dan Godden, gave his thoughts:

I think that in Australia we have tons and tons of Christian CDs but few genuine Church CDs… we wanted to buck that trend. We wanted to record something that wasn’t a sweetened up studio version of our songs, but rather an authentic expression of who we are, what we live for, and some of the joy we have in singing together as a church to our Saviour and to each other. 

If you haven’t listened, listen (www.niteEV.com/live). If you haven’t bought it, buy it. If you haven’t told your friends to buy it, tell them. And if you’re not planning to give it away for Christmas, you’re nuts.

Have you listened, or bought a copy? What did you think? Leave a comment, or, if you have a blog, why not review it? – let me know in a comment and I’ll add a link to your review.

I’m in Kuala Lumpur all afternoon today, in transit from Thailand, where I spend the last 10 days with some friends, to Japan, where I’ll meet up with my family and stay the next 2 weeks.

I couldn’t think of anything to do – until I remembered that its Sunday – and I thought, Let’s go to a church! Finding out where to go proved to be a challenge in this Muslim country, but something drove me on: a kind of hunger from having no Christian fellowship for 2 weeks.

At last I found a Tamil Methodist Church. I was an hour late, and dressed totally inappropriately (thongs and shorts don’t cut it, apparently).

And yet, I cannot begin to describe the joy I felt as I sang a hymn with brothers and sisters in another country! It was like coming home to family.

Yesterday I listened to Mark Driscoll explain the unity of fellowship with Christ, and today I experienced it. It’s true: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

In other news – the live worship album NiteEV Live launched this week. It’s awesome – I’ll write a full review later, but for now head to niteEV.com/live to listen for yourself (and grab a copy).