Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

The union war

K-Rudd has declared an end to the History Wars that crippling battle for supremacy between Australia’s academic elite… but there’s one philosophical battle between the elite and the working class that will not be ended by Prime Ministerial decree…

We’re flying to Brisbane this weekend. We’re heading south for a Rugby match. Of all the things to head south for… I don’t really like Rugby. But Robyn does. So we’re going to watch Australia play South Africa.

Robyn really likes Rugby. She owns a number of jerseys and actually understands the rules enough to yell at the ref about an infringement before he gives a penalty. This is what marriage is about.

But, so that my protest is recorded for posterities sake – here are three areas where Rugby League is clearly the superior game…

  1. Pointscoring – the union point scoring matrix is messed up. It discourages attacking play. Union can not hope to be a spectacle while a penalty goal is worth more than half an unconverted try. There is no incentive to chance your arm for a try when you can do half the work and score more than half the points. Drop goals are also significantly overvalued. If Union swallowed its pride and adopted League’s point scoring methodology attack would be suitably rewarded.
  2. Penalties – Penalty goals are only such an issue because penalties are so common. Seriously. Is there anything in Union that you’re actually allowed to do? Every time the ref watches the play closely he blows his whistle and the team in possession boots the ball between the posts.
  3. Scrums – The claim by Union fans that I find most risible is that their scrums are superior to those used in League. Contested, yes, superior, no. 98% of scrums contested in a Union test are packed more than once, 65% result in penalties. 12% result in wins against the feed (I made these stats up). They’re just as pointless as the scrums in league – it’s like a coin toss to see whether the attacking side gets a penalty or has to stand around in a hemorrhoid inducing group hug.

But I’m a good husband. So I’ll go along without pointing out too many of these areas.

September 4, 2009

Argument with argument

I have a bone to pick with logic. I am sick to death of putting forward great arguments backed by examples and employing a suitable amount of pathos only to be ignored because I’ve broken one of the codified rules of “logical argument”.

I have news for you Messrs Logic and Reason – nobody cares if you think I’m arguing with a “straw man” or producing some sort of syllogismic fallacy. Nobody cares if you hate analogies so much that the very presence of one as a piece of supporting evidence is enough for you to completely ignore the material at hand and instead dish out a lecture on what are essentially the “Queensbury Rules” of discourse. Nobody likes the Queensbury rules. They’re for losers who can’t fight with all the tools at their disposal.

Perhaps my line of reasoning is a straw man – but your job isn’t to point out that this invalidates my argument, it’s to correct my thinking. Perhaps my analogy isn’t perfect. Few are. A perfect analogy is like a rare pearl – hard to find and expensive.

When did the style of a debate become more important than the substance?

September 4, 2009

Visible Holiness

I mentioned my theory of the “Holiness Shelf” back when I had about ten readers (but curiously could attract 31 comments on a trivial post).

The Holiness Shelf is a dedicated space on a public bookshelf. Typically at eye level. The idea is that people judge you by the books in your collection, and your music and DVDs. If the first thing they see is overwhelming holiness manifested in your well thumbed “Gospel and Kingdom” or “The Cross of Christ” they’ll judge you positively.

It’s a tactic I recommended to many single guys, while I was myself single. I’m not sure it works.

Ali makes a good point in this post that people are now judged by their online presence. Facebook has replaced the bookshelf. Which is why it’s important to list good bands and intelligent books in your Facebook profile (I’ll post a list of impressive books for your profile later). Christians are pretty bad at judging each other on the basis of faith and holiness too – so the availability of information like what books, movies and music you like opens you up to all sorts of questions from others. Should I tell everybody that my favourite movies are Fight Club and the Godfather (both R rated)? Or should I pretend I love the Passion of the Christ (which I’ve never seen), and Amazing Grace (which I did like)?

The personal “brand” we build online opens us up in a new way to Christians who may or may not be weaker brothers, and may or may not be the judgemental type who emphasise the “not of the world” part of “in the world, but not of it”. This raises questions about what you should and shouldn’t blog about if you’re bloggingly inclined. You should read Ali’s post, and join the discussion there.

I post just about anything. I’m not sure I’d want people making an assessment of my holiness on the basis of that which appears in the right hand column of this page. Especially the bits about toilet paper.

I don’t want to be more discerning about what I blog about, it would take away half the fun. But nor do I want to be judged solely on what I blog about.

September 3, 2009

Cereal Offender

I love cereal. I eat it all the time. I think that cereal companies should be most upset that they’ve been pigeon-holed as “breakfast cereal”.

I don’t think trivial rebrands solve any problems, so I don’t understand the NRL’s pitch to change their logo in order to resurrect its credibility.

If a lobby group consisting of Kellogs, Sanitarium and other major cereal players was to form in a bid to rebrand their products as all day things I would totally understand that sort of thing. And support it.

I am eating a bowl of Fruit Loops as I write this.

That is all. 

September 3, 2009

When to make unpopular decisions

John Howard has re-entered the political fray – and probably done more bolster Rudd’s leadership than to aid his former parliamentary colleagues. He’s commended Rudd on a couple of points – and made this interesting comment, which I think probably applies to starting at a new church too…

From the SMH.

The time for unpopular or difficult reforms should always be in the first term for new prime ministers, who tended to be cut a lot of slack by the public.

When you’ve been there two years, you haven’t done anything that’s the least bit unfriendly – jeez, it gets hard in the third year.

September 3, 2009

Leaning tower of pizzas

No posts yesterday. I’m a slacker. Actually, it’s quite the reverse. I was busy. I’ll try to rectify this today.

Round two of my little “cooking school” is happening tonight. We’re doing gourmet pizzas. By popular demand. Anybody got a favourite pizza topping/strategy?

Oh, and check out this cool optical illusion…

Find out what’s so special about it here.

September 3, 2009

YouTube Toosday: Mario Cart the movie

This joins a long list of old games being turned into movie trailers. And it’s amusing, if you like this sort of thing…

September 1, 2009

YouTube Twosday: Ricky Gervais on Christianity

Anyone who checked out the iMonk’s post on atheism may have seen this already… but this is the “new” new atheism. Not rabid, but friendly. Not insulting, but funny. Not arrogant, but “humble”, not scientific, but cultural…

How do you counter these arguments of religion as a positive form of social control that isn’t necessary for “enlightened” people?

I’d suggest it’s not like the Pyromaniac Centuri0n would have us do it… he suggests, in a series of posts, that we move away from apologetics, and just preach the gospel – both the iMonk and Frank Turk (Centuri0n) suggest the likes of William Lane Craig have the approach wrong – and we should either be cultural or biblical – not philosophical.

Me, being a pragmatist, I think we need to have a balance of all three. You can’t use the Bible on people who reject the fundamental premise of a book authored by God. Especially if they insist on deduction rather than induction. So you need to take the philosophical apologetic when arguing for the existence of God. And you can’t do any of this without getting the cultural element right – and I’d say one of the big issues there is the damage done to our reputation by nominal or apathetic Christians. So don’t be one of those.

September 1, 2009

YouTube Tuesday: Irreverant irrelevance

This one’s from Vimeo, not YouTube. But it’ll do. It’s another terrible piece of “relevant” worship. Shorter this time. So that’s something to be thankful for.

Boom Boom Pow from Tim Corder on Vimeo.

September 1, 2009

The father of all links posts

Ah, another week, another post chock full of links from the narrow sector of the world wide that I like to call the blogosphere.

I thought I’d get a little bit geographically specific with this little link edition. Just to give you an idea of the spread of blogs that I read (that you should too). This is by no means comprehensive – but here are some of the homes of regular commenters, people I know, and people I reckon you should discover (along with some choice posts from their sites).

Right-o. Lets go.

Starting with those in my own neck of the woods – the Townsville scene… (in no particular order). 

  1. Tim – doesn’t post often and when he does it’s usually a YouTube video.
  2. Leah – is the Andrew Bolt of the North Queensland Christian blogosphere, or perhaps the Tim Blair. She also covered North Queensland’s lost and found saga this week where a local lad from a local church went missing in the bush, and was found a couple of days later.
  3. Stuss – has picked up the pace a little, though most of what she’s saying is about gardening and decluttering. Which is fine. Because both are good things.
  4. Phoebe – hasn’t really said anything for 21 days. I just counted. But no list of bloggers from Townsville would be complete without her.
  5. Joel – if Leah is the Tim Blair of the Townsville blogosphere then Joel is the Piers Ackerman.
  6. Carly – is an education student and gives some interesting insight into the female psyche with pieces like the one she wrote last week about Oprah.
  7. Chris barely posts enough to rank a mention. But he’s a blogger. In Townsville. So he sneaks in.

If you’re in Townsville, and I’ve missed you, let me know in the comments.

Moving south, here are some of the notables in Brisbane…

  1. Kutz – I mentioned his new endeavour last week. It’s been trickling along. I’m sure more comments from nice friendly readers would keep his motivation levels up.
  2. Tim and Amy – The same could be said for these two. They’ve kept a pretty steady pace and you should go over, read what they have to say, and say hello.
  3. Simone – well, I’ve talked about her blog enough for you to know what goes down over there. She gets a prize for being the third blogger to mention my dad* this week. Her little piece of speculation about narrative in the new creation was interesting enough to get my hippocampus firing today.
  4. Will Henderson – gets the prize for being the first to mention dad*, and also for being the first Acts 29 affiliated church planter in Australia – a story that apparently hadn’t received all that much coverage before I mentioned it the other day (based on some posts like this one from Jeff Attack)… check out the website for his upcoming plant. Unfortunately it’s a bit grungy. And we all know how I feel about grunge.

Now, on to Sydney. The city of my birth and home of many good blogs.

  1. Izaac is back from a holiday and taking on the challenge of posting about Christian love and social justice.
  2. Ben celebrated his birthday yesterday – and I promised him a link. Then he posted a story about how the Governator has the Conan sword in his office – that I was all set to feature in my next little string of “Curiosities” posts.
  3. At the fountainside Soph asks the important questions about train etiquette – something we’ll have to (re)familiarise ourselves with next year.
  4. Ben (of the Bathgate variety) lists five things that made him tough(er). I score one on his list.
  5. Dave Miers managed to scoop Mikey Lynch by posting an interview with Andrew Heard, one of the Geneva Church planting crew (another post on the network from Dave), before Mikey could wrap up his series of similar interviews with church planting figures (including Will Henderson and Al Stewart).

Mikey (from Tasmania) was also the second person to, somewhat vicariously, mention dad this week because his name came up in one of the posts from the aforementioned series of interviews.

It has also become apparent – from what Andrew Heard said on Dave’s blog and what Al Stewart said on Mikey’s – that the Geneva portmanteau was only a vicious rumour, and that the name is actually a reference to Calvin’s work in that city. Which is a good thing.

And to conclude, here are my favourite ten posts from my blog this week (including bits from Robyn and Benny).

  1. Benny on Ministry
  2. Robyn on Grammar (PS – you should all encourage Robyn to blog more – she needs some comment love…)
  3. Good bad haircuts
  4. Bad relevance
  5. How to pick a cafe
  6. Cool stuff to do with your photos/iPhone
  7. Tips from a guru (my dad – since he’s the flavour of the blogosphere these days…*)
  8. The one about being wrong.
  9. The one about yawning.
  10.  The one about being a PK, and the follow up about being a PK being a bit like being Harry Potter.

* I should point out that these constant mentions of dad being mentioned are a mixture of patri-pride and because I think it’s slightly funny that he feels a sense of discomfort about being in the spotlight. It’s not because I think he’s super special (though he is). And if you want to join the fan club here’s the video I made for his 50th.

September 1, 2009

On forgiveness

Forgiveness is hard. I’ve been talking to someone about that today and dug up these posts from around the blogosphere.

August 31, 2009

If I ran a law firm…

I’d call any charitable work “antibono” because I think Bono gets too much free publicity in social justice spheres already.

I’m just saying.

August 31, 2009

Franky does acrobatics

Turtles are the best pets. They’re funny. Clean. And they do cool stuff. Like this. Most of the fun finishes about halfway into this video. But it’s only 48 seconds.

August 31, 2009

Preach or Perish

My grandfather (aka Fafa aka Donald Howard) wrote a book. About preaching. I’m reading it. It has been helpful. When I finish reading it I’ll post a proper review. In the meantime you should know that it did not win the 2009 Australian Christian Book of the Year – but it was an equal joint second prize winner with two others. A little like Townsville’s Rachel Finch in the Miss Universe competition…

It was self published. It features chapters from plenty of well known preachers. You can buy it here.

August 31, 2009

Scruntch time

A while back I posted a bunch of novelty toilet paper designs. You should check out that post – and these other fantastic bathroom fillers.

Sometimes you just really have to go at night. And finding the light switch is hard. Glow in the dark toilet paper is there in case of emergency.

Some people like to read while sitting on the toilet. My mum always warned me about hemorrhoids that occur as a result. You can take that warning, or leave it. If you leave it perhaps you’d like to have some brainteasers at hand (which reminds me of the one about the constipated mathematician – he worked it out with a pencil*).

Other people like to jot down thoughts and journal ideas on notepads. Artist Michael Gondry turned his notepad doodlings into toilet paper – I assume only the bad ideas made it.

*Not even my favourite toilet humour joke – which is “a doctor was walking the corridors of the hospital when a pharmacist approached and said “doctor, doctor, there’s a suppository behind you ear,” the doctor paused, checked his ear and said “oh no, some bum has got my pen.”

August 30, 2009