When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight. If prayers are offered in tongues, two or three's the limit, and then only if someone is present who can interpret what you're saying. Otherwise, keep it between God and yourself. And no more than two or three speakers at a meeting, with the rest of you listening and taking it to heart. Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other. If you choose to speak, you're also responsible for how and when you speak. When we worship the right way, God doesn't stir us up into confusion; he brings us into harmony. This goes for all the churches—no exceptions.

The Message, 1 Corinthians 14:26-33.

Herein lies my quandry with the construct of 'Church' as it now stands. Why don't we do as the above verse states?

Why does Church require singing, then sermon, then ministry time, then finish?

Does our very tradition of 'Church' limit the way God can move and minister to those who follow Him (and want to follow Him)?

I don't know what's been going on lately, but I've been questioning the very essence of Church as I've known it for the 26 years I've attened (ie. my entire life). Sometimes I wonder if the way Church is 'done' actually allows God to move the way He wants to?

It's a struggle to go to Church somedays. I don't want it to be for MY blessing; but I do feel very stunted and restricted in the way Church is 'done' (and it's not just my Church - pretty much every Church I've ever gone to uses the same formula to create a Church service). My spirit soars when we look outside the traditional form of church (worship, sermon, ministry), and look into valuable dialogue as a group of peers, rather than a minister/ministry team/flock system.

I don't know if I make any sense with this. I don't even know really where I'm going with it. All I know is that there's a lot of questions in my head right now about what 'Church' really means, and if God gets limited by the way we 'make' Church.

Home Church appeals. I don't know how that fits in with my commitment to my home Church (one I've had to make as part of a missions team), but I'm enjoying studying the concept of Home/Organic Church, and how that links up with the Church of Acts.

I'll keep you posted as to how my thoughts and feelings evolve. I just feel very disatisfied right now.

Cows held responsible for late night chaos & disorder

Why is it morning???

Yesterday was a very LONG day. Ended up scrubbed in for 4 hours on one case, and really knocked me around a bit (very frantic). Only to unscrub, and agree to being oncall again last night (I was oncall on Saturday night - no call in).

Now, I knew I was going to be called in, and here's why.

a) I NEVER get called in, whenever I'm on-call.

Fluke, luck, blessed - doesn't matter what you call it. Been on-call once a month every month since January, and always had a full night's reprieve (which is good, except then you wake up feeling very grumpy that you COULD have gone out/had that glass of wine/watched that late movie/etc etc).

This pretty much shows I should have a giant target on my chest saying 'due for call in'.


b) The woman who called in sick, seems to attract patients.

As soon as I heard who I was covering for - I knew it. I even told Brad. That's it, I'm getting called in. She's just a magnet for it. And I knew if I was 'playing' her, the magnet would follow me.


And the REAL reason I got called in???

c) I didn't see any cows.

Now, to your garden variety theatre nurse working in a city of 1 million people (or whatever) - this seems like a hallucination. Cows? What cows???

But, you have to understand - it's the Ekka. Which means cows. LOTS of cows. Thousands of them (ok, slight overstatement, but you get the point). Cows walking around, calving, getting judged, eating, mooing - just being cows.

I.
LOVE.
COWS.

Biggest crackup of my life is seeing cows on highways and roads. Ask Brad. We go for a drive - the ultimate goal is to see a free range cow.

And the Ekka means cows. Cows on the side of the road diagonal from the hospital I work at every single day. BLISS!

But there were no cows on the way to and from work. And DID I LOOK? You betcha!! No cows. Udder tradegy (ha!).

So there it was - I knew I'd be called in. And called in I was.




10:50pm, phone rings. Sasch, knowing ahead of time the lack of cows GUARANTEED a call-in, went to bed at 8pm. So she was ready!

11:25-2am was her time in theatre. Recovery room nurse.

(I should add, to further the reasoning, there still were no cows as she went down the road. This DEFINITELY meant chaos and disorder)

And chaos and disorder there was.

So now, she has a 12 hour break. Which means 3 hours at work.

(A side note - there were still no cows as she drove home this morning).

Sasch is NOT happy.

Night shift over for another month

Well this month's night duty's over. Birth Suite was overrun both nights, so kept us up and on our toes through the nights. A few other 'interesting' cases floating around too (in other parts of the hospital), so we had to be prepared in case we had to leave the floor to tend to them.

Other than that - been a really quiet week! Poor hubby's been rolling out a project, so he worked overtime almost every night last week, and then Saturday. He was supposed to have today off with me, but now has a facilitated meeting instead. They've given him 3 days off next week instead (including public holiday). Which means he now has 11 days off in total for our 'break' to Melbourne. Some people get all the luck!

But what have we done? Hmmm...

My stepsister was up for a week before heading on her year's holiday travelling overseas (NZ, North America, South America, UK, Africa & Europe). Had a family dinner for that (mum your dinner was SUPERB!)

And after reading my diary, it looks like the rest of my week was spent either working, or asleep! Fun times! :)

We went out to Lone Star last night, which was lovely. Hadn't been since about February. We have a soft spot for the Young Care Cocktail (non-alcoholic). BRIGHT pink (tastes like a redskin), but it's for a good cause!

Oh yeah, and been doing a bit more work on research for Zimbabwe, and also a bit for Rwanda. The Rwanda team is all finalised now (with 9 members), so it means we can REALLY go (we can't go until there are workable numbers on things like this).

As to Zimbabwe, I'm part of the 'focus group' for our work alongside Vana Ministries, so we're working on things like mission statement/aims/core values and whatnot. My part is working on an intecessory team, as well as 'focus nights' (dinners, cultural awareness), so that will undoubtedly keep me busy.

And I had a meeting with our minister the other day, and it looks like I might be running a term 'girls only' group next year about Women's Health & Sexuality. It's something I've wanted to do for a long long time, so it was a blessing our minister was so receptive to it. Churches unfortunately have a very long history of 'taboos' when it came to sexuality, so to have someone welcome it with open arms (and have NO problem with the topics I'd discuss - which was huge!), made me appreciate our Church even more.

It's still in the early stages, and I still need to work out a lesson plan - but it's something at least!