Making your life count.

Great quotes from John Piper from Dontwasteyourlife.com on making your life count:

"You do not need to know a lot of things to make a huge difference for the Lord".

"People that make a difference in the world are not people who have mastered a lot of things, they are people who have been mastered by a very few things that are very, very great."

Minature Earth

This is an incredibly fascinating and at times shocking looking at the make-up of the world that we live in.



As well as the command from Christ that we are to be salt and light in this world, this verse in Luke came to mind while watching this.

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." - Luke 12:48 (NIV).

There is much expected of us as followers of Christ in the Western world. I'd love to hear comments.

Bushmills Whiskey Distillery

Last week I went to the Bushmills Whiskey Distillery with some friends for a tour of the distillery. Some of the other interns wanted to do the tour especially so I decided to join them as it was something I have always wanted to do but never got around to. I found the tour quite interesting learning that this year they celebrate their 400th anniversary. Here are a few photos.


Afterwards we went to the Nook Bar beside the Giant's Causeway for some lunch and viewing of the Scotland-France game before walking down to the rocks.

Vineyard Leadership Conference

I spent last week at the Vineyard UK National Leadership Conference. So Erik, Matt and I headed off to a hotel near Portsmouth, England for four days of worship, teaching and fellowship. We got to meet a lot of new people and hang out with old friends. We got to use the leisure facilities and ate like kings every night which was sweet! Speakers at the conference were Rich Nathan ( Senior Pastor of Vineyard Church of Columbus, Ohio) and Simon Ponsonby (Pastor of Theology at St. Aldates Church, Oxford). I enjoyed both their ministry for different reasons. Rich was a wealth of knowledge calling the church to contextualize the Gospel for a now post- Christian culture, by being both faithful to Scripture yet relevant to our culture and the many pressing issues of the day. A lot of what I heard from Rich, I have heard from various leaders in the church today (Piper, Keller, Driscoll, Molher) so it was good to see the vineyard engaging with the same missiological emphasis. Simon was a refreshing character who taught through Jude 20-25 in the morning bible readings. The overview of his teaching was as follows: verse 20-21 reminding us to first look inward, verses 22-23 to focus outward and verses 24-25 calling us to upward worship. There is a real need for us as Christians to be rooted in Scripture, understanding the complete Gospel we have to offer the world, and yet engaging with our given culture and contextualizing the message to speak hope into peoples lives.

Through out the conference the band from Trent lead worship along with various leaders. In the afternoon we had a selection of seminars to attend. All in all it was a pretty intense week with a lot to take in and consider.