CHONGLAND

During my time working in the city one of the great experiences has been gathering together with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to share in a meal. Lately it seems as though this has happened less frequently as the global financial crisis has hit and as my St Paulian counterparts have moved away from working in the city.

Another difficulty has been the limited time in which we are able to meet together, with people having to include travelling to the location of choice. As a result, dinner one evening was suggested, yet met with little enthusiasm. Adri was keen, being one who wasn’t often able to make it to the lunch meets since she worked fairly out of the way, and so tonight I met up with her and Simon to have dinner at the Redoak Brewery.

We met after work and opted to dine in the bar over the restaurant due to the price of the meals. We gentlemen opened with an Aussie Ale. Simon opted for the Tajima Wagyu, tomato and Root Vegetable Pie, Adri chose the Steak Sandwich on damper roll with homemade beer and tomato relish and hand-cut chips and I settled on the 9″ Redoak Pizza topped with Cinnamon and black tea smoked chicken, roasted pumpkin, salsa verde and Swiss cheese and roquette with Redoak Hand-Cut Chips. The meals were satisfactory, but not great…

Post dinner I settled in with a Blackberry Wheat Beer, not sure what exquisite beer Guthers enjoyed, I’m sure he’ll mention it here…, as we retired to the more comfortable loungey chairs… Despite the intriguing desserts on the menu, we decided that a cheaper alternative was required and so we left the Redoak in search of some form of frozen goodness.

After searching underneath the QVB to find places closed, we surfaced to find Passionflower. Simon had Chocolate Hazelnut, Adri went with the Strawberry Swirl and I gave up one of my favourites: Jaffa for Lychee Rose. The benefits of being a student even came into play to the tune of 10%, thank you Moore College!!!

All in all a pleasant evening with a lovely and extremely attractive couple, one that would welcome numerous repetitions. Love youse both!!

Last night, the 31st January 2010, we stepped into a new era as our church launched afresh as Graceat6, complete with a new website [graceat6.com].

It’s an exciting time and we had a large number of people gathered together, new and old, to mark the occasion. What is changing is the feel of the service and how we go about being a part of the body of Christ.

Our Mission statement reads:
Real with God
Real with Each Other
Real with The World

Each week we will be meeting together for a meal, reading & learning from the bible, praying and singing together.

We’ll be hearing Mike preach from Luke 19-24 as a lead up to Easter. We’ve also been given a helpful daily reading guide with questions to ponder. It’s available to view and download on the website if you’re keen to follow along as well. It’s a great tool for those that find it difficult to commit to reading, thinking, and praying through passages in the bible and will hopefully instil some great reading habits.

I’m interested to see how things pan out, how we meld together in love and service with each other, and how, if at all, the dynamics of our church change.

p.s. I had a small video cameo in the growth groups video, which you can see on the website under partners -> growth groups.

I’m on my away home on the train after the second of 3 Christmas parties that were on offer for me this year. We were treated to grace The IVY ballroom thanks to the NAB business bank.

There was a variety of hors d’oeuvres on offer, from mini pies topped with avocado, smoked salmon on crackers, spring rolls and mini bruchetta to name a few and I’ve been drinking Boags all night long, about 5 or 6 in the span of 3 hours… Free stuff is great, but over-indulgence is never far away.

The third Christmas party is tomorrow night at The Italian Village in The Rocks. I’m not going along for a number of reasons; it’s $50, we went there last year for our Christmas party and the food was pretty average.