Where do you live and go to church?

Our little family live at First Home Project with 11 recently arrived refugees and others who feel called to serve them. It’s located in working class Midland, Perth. Our church community is on the other side of the city, Westcity Church in Wembley where I am a Teaching Pastor.

Name a Bible character you resonate with and why.

If I can be vulnerable, I had a powerful experience after the death of my best friend when I was 19. Like a dream, I saw myself on a cross surrounded by those mocking. Looking across my arm I realised I was alongside King Jesus being crucified. With fierce love Christ looked back at me. Crying, I said, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom”. Jesus in his fierce love replied, “Today you will be with me”. Still to this day, I resonate so strongly with the thief on the cross, I rarely read this passage without crying. I pray I never stop being overwhelmed by God’s grace.

What are you reading in the Bible at the moment?

Passages that I’m preaching aside, like many Christians I read the lectionary readings as part of my morning prayer time. I love the thought that I join Christians around the world in praying through the same passages.

Where do you read the Bible?

Well, I listen to Scripture on my bed as the first thing of my day and often (but not always) re-listen to the same passage at the end of the day. But I mostly read Scripture in a chair in my backyard. If I’m surfing early in the morning before work, I’ll often do it down at Trigg Beach.

What’s one thing from the Bible that’s stuck in your brain at the moment?

In quiet moments, there’s a passage from the lectionary last month that keeps coming back to me. I felt really stirred that sometimes before someone can “pick up their mat and walk” they need mates that will bust a hole in a roof to get you into Jesus’ presence. I want to be like those guys about getting my mates into Jesus’ presence.

Name one part of the Bible you keep coming back to again and again and why.

Judging by the grubby finger marks on the sides of the Bibles in our house, there is no question that the Gospels, and the Sermon on the Mount is where I earn most of my “frequent flyer points”. I guess the “why” is that I feel I have a particular call on my life to teach the Sermon on the Mount as the “how” of living God’s grace. It’s how we live the love God has shown us.