Yeah, I think about the Jesus telling the parables of Canada costs of the, the general has to count the cost before he tacks another army. Totally. You have to count the cost of building the city before you build otherwise you end up with a half inch and you're a life and stock in the community and yeah, cheekily thought, I never hear an evangelistic sermon or a court, an altar call where people will say, "Slow down. Maybe you don't come." Like, "Don't come down the front. We actually don't want you to. We want you to go home and think about this." So, but that seems to be part of Jesus' strategy and I think this is a good moment to actually have that kind of passage and that kind of challenge in front of people like, "You don't have to be here." If you're following Jesus, this is not going to change anything, or you're still going to follow Jesus with you, do it or not. And if you're not following Jesus, then it's not helpful to stand up and make these declarations. Welcome back everyone to The Shock Observer podcast and it's awesome to have you along with us. My name is Joel and we're going to talk about plenty of stuff to do with church and I have two people to join me in doing so, which is Tim. Hello, Joel. Hello, Tim. First of all, week it's horrible. It is. And stuff, as we talked about last week, it's very cool. It's very exciting. And, guess, a peer, a peer, a peer in so, I don't know if that's the right word, sorry. It's a good word, sorry. It's a good word. It's a good word. Yes, regular. Regular. Regular. Returning. You are returning. Fi. Hello. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. Thank you. I don't like the whole good thing. You say well. I'm well. I'm good. Yeah. It's not really good. Yeah. It's in a funny in Australia how we just go. How are you? Yeah, good. I love it when you go, how are you? And the person goes, how are you? And then you go, how are you? We're programmed. Yes. It's not ideal. Anyway, Fi. You're on the podcast and it's good to have you on because you have just returned last week from Sorvival's second ever youth camp called Origin Camp. Yeah. Highlights, please. Highlights. Wow. Okay. That's very vague. There's lots of good stuff. I'm going to be, um, highlights, highlights, highlights. I'll look. Well, you told me you stayed up until 2.30 on Saturday night writing Mormon fuzzies to every single person. No, no. It was not every single person. Oh, it wasn't. It was all the girls. Oh, okay. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I did not write them to every single person. Some people I think did write them for every single person and hats off to them. Mm-hmm. But, um, yeah. I, I struggled to sit down for an extended length of time when I'm at camp because I always want to be making sure what's happening and taking that opportunity to be with people. So I see people doing it. Yeah. No. Um, so, yeah. When the munchkins went to bed. Yep. Uh, yeah. So I, I did not write any for the leaders and I did not write any for the boys, but I wrote them for all the girls. So that was my cut-off point that I decided on, which was a sad cut-off point because there were others that I would have loved to have, but I didn't want to just write a little one-liner either, so I wanted to write a little bit. Yeah. So, yeah. Um, well, I mean, a highlight was when I went to bed, the kids were all in bed. Oh, okay. You shouldn't say kids to the crew. Um, yeah. 230 is pretty late, though. Oh, well, they were in bed, like, before 230. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Well, they go into their rooms and they sort of, they wake up and they can and that sort of stuff. And now the, um, you know, we, like the leaders are in a separate room to the crew. So, um, so it's just a matter of keeping an eye, but also trusting, you know, that they actually are asleep at some point. Um, but yes, it was, it was very quiet. Mm. That was almost the 30 kids. That's the 30 crew. Exactly. There you go. Yep. Exactly. Um, yeah. And a good bunch of leaders and a number of leaders who it was their first camp. Okay. Um, and a number of those leaders who it was their first camp put their hand up to run like significant activities and did an amazing job. So that was a real highlight seeing people just step up and go, I don't know, I'm German, but I'll do it. And like, yeah, really having fun with it. Um, we, we introduced something a bit different this year that we didn't do last year. Um, a lot of camps like we'll, um, get the kids into teams, um, and a positive of that is it's a really good way of encouraging a good camp, uh, uh, I suppose, ethic or dynamic. Um, and rather than just saying he was the rules, do this, don't do that, which obviously in any situation like that, there are going to be rules. Even if we choose not to have any, the campsite will have some. And last year we had a 930 curfew for noise, which was, you know, at a different campsite army. We did not have yet. So that was, it looked that the crew did really, really well with it, but it just meant a particular vibe of the camp. Um, so there'll always be, be things like that. Um, but, um, but one of the things I like about doing teams is you can say, well, these things will get your points for your team and these things will get you penalties and you'll lose points for the team. So it actually creates a better way, I feel, of doing that. But we hadn't done it in the past because we wanted to sort of not be too stressed in on that. And we also were not sure how our crew would go being in teams. And it was surprising, not surprisingly, it was encouragingly great. Um, we, we tried to make sure nobody was completely out of their comfort zone, but also mixed up crew, um, with different people. Um, and I, my, one of my big prayers coming out of the camp, as well as what we learned, but, um, from a, um, a cultural point of view is that that will help them to, uh, connect more across the age groups. And build friendships here. Yeah, because we've got U7s, U10s and U7 and U10 are quite different. Um, and a U7 girl and a U10 boy, or a U7 boy and a U10 girl are incredibly different. So just putting them in that same space and, and getting them to have good, um, interactions with each other, just like, you know, creating those zones where they can do that, um, I think just shows them, this is, this is good. So that was really awesome to see that. And you read this green team one, that's a green team. Yeah. What is it? It was actually very cool. So, so the theme for the camp was ancient Rome, uh, and we did Romans as the talk series as well. We did. We did Romans eight. We've been doing Romans, uh, at the gathering on a Friday night. This term. And, um, so Stu came down to be our teacher and we said, it'll be our preacher, our speaker. And, uh, he, we asked him to look at Romans eight, which he did, which was fantastic. So we just, um, looked at that one chapter, um, and the, um, uh, Braden, the guys on Friday night managed to sort of massage it. So we were up to Romans eight the way that we've done the series. So that was really, really cool. Um, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, so that led to the whole idea of ancient Rome and, and that having being the theme. Uh, yes. So why was I saying about that? That was saying I was going to do it. Yeah. It was said in one of one of the things you get points for. I actually don't know. I'll have to check with Gemma because Gemma is our queen of points. She's the hostess with the most us and she looked after all that and made sure she kept track, um, of all the points and penalties and, um, which was a big job because constantly she had people come to go, oh, I saw a crew. One of the things we love is like it's not just about like achieving things in teams, but the thing we really want to promote is you get points for we see you helping someone or we see you doing something cool or we see you staying back and like finishing off the old leaves when the rest of your team is, you know, already wandered off that, that's sort of stuff. That was what we really wanted to encourage, um, points for. And there was a lot of that. So there was a lot of leaders came up to Gemma, I saw this, I saw this, I saw this person do this. I saw this person do that. And that's super encouraging. Um, so we got lots of points that way, uh, but, um, the ancient Rome theme, one of the points that you could get is if you worked out the names of the teams, which was Viridus and then I can't say the other two, but basically Viridus is Latin for green and the other one was Latin for blue and Latin for red. Okay. So I reckon somebody would have worked it out by the end of camp. But we also, um, had trialled something else this time, this time, which was a no device policy, um, which we had a level of flexibility about, uh, because we do have some young crew whose, uh, um, whose devices are a bit of a safety net for them, um, when social interaction gets a little bit tough. Uh, so it was really lovely. And one of the, actually one of the highlights for me was it would have been obvious to some of the crew that did what we asked and didn't bring their phone, that there were other crew there that had their phones because some of them were a bit more subtle with it, some of them not. And I did not, perhaps it was said, um, but I did not hear any complaints or anything about that. They just rolled with it, which was really, really lovely, um, because I think that's one of the things that really makes youth and church and any sort of gathering of people are lovely, when you can have things like that, we're like, we're, we're going to attempt to create this culture, but we're actually going to be aware that that culture will be difficult for some people and we actually don't want to make the rule more important than the relationships. So being able to do that was just a real gift, um, yeah, so that was really lovely. Uh, yeah, so Stewie had a lot of fun with the talks, um, he hit them with some really important stuff about where's your focus, um, what are you, um, what are you going to, um, what are you going to put your time and your effort and where your relationship's going to be and where is your focus going to be, um, around your faith. Um, he talked to them a lot about, uh, youth group and, and our way of doing youth as a revival, which is not the same as every other youth group, so I think that would have been really cool for some of the crew to be thinking that through. Um, he talked about the whole idea of what we've done and what we've been privileged to be able to do over the years. So he went back to things like the Jesus movement, um, and connecting up with smaller churches and rather than having the model of, you know, the big churches or the big youth groups, sorry, I should say, suck up all the people from the little youth groups. I actually want to support. And so that was actually wonderful because talking about that as a real history of what we've done for many years, it's so revival in different contexts, um, opened up for them a bit more of an understanding of what we're doing with Miranda, because so many people have said, oh, why don't you just get Miranda to come to curaway. And that's not how we're doing it. Now, it's not to say that that may be something that happens at some point in the future, but, um, but what we want to do is support the youth group that's happening here and help that to flourish and grow. And so we've taken leaders from, and Stu talked about, um, other times where we've sent people to different places over the years, uh, to support a smaller church and to encourage people to say, my church is the main game. So from that, he talked about, well, what are you guys going to do? Is your church going to be the main game? And he talked, he, he told some stories he got on the Sunday morning on the last talk. He actually threw to a couple of people in the room and asked us to talk about different things that had happened. Um, so he talked a little bit about Eli and his experience of youth, which was not many crew. Um, and then he talked a little bit to Luca about his experience of, um, of youth where a number of his friends, uh, got to the point where they said, not the action somewhere else. Um, he told some of his own stories of that. And he asked me to talk a little bit about my experience of coming into some revival and having different groups. So it was, yeah, it was very, um, I think it would have been a real challenge. For the crew. And we had, for most of the talks, we had a discussion group with them afterwards, which is a pattern we like to do. So we give them a chance to, to feed back and to pray and to think through what's been going on. Um, and, um, I, uh, get the privilege of going with some of the younger girls and it was just really amazing to see some of the things that, that were coming out of that and things that they'd heard, um, from the talks and things that they were, they were challenged by. Yeah, cool. We did a massive wide games. That was awesome. Uh, we did a color fight. We did a color fight. Yep. Yeah. Um, there's, if, if you're interested, check out the survival socials. I think it's on Instagram and Facebook and there's video footage of that sort of stuff. Um, we, we, uh, had another guy, Schlocker. I'm not even going to bother, but if you don't know, you don't know, Schlocker is a fun game. And it's a mishmash of different sports and it's a three sided, like a triangular size field. Perfect. Cause we had three teams. Yep. Uh, yep. That was really fun. Speaking of names, Blue, I think is Carol, Carol, Carol, Ian. Carol, Ian. Okay. And that's funny because I don't know, I don't know if this is just a weird thing in my family or if other people are aware of this, but there is a particular scene in the Devil Wears Prada, you know, the Meryl Streep, anyway, they in Hathaway, um, where Anne is very new to the fashion world and she sort of makes a disparaging noise when they're talking about two, I think it's two belts, it's two blue belts and they're like, oh, I can't tell which one we want to use. They're so different. And Anne sort of goes, and then whatever our character name is, I don't remember. And then Meryl Streep does this incredible monologue. Yeah. Absolutely. About Cerulean Blue and the jumper that she's wearing and how the people in this room selected that color for you and anyway, it's, it's great. My sister loves it. She often likes to quote it. And so when we had that word, I'm like, oh, it's like Cerulean from the Devil Wears Prada. So there you go. And what's red? Rubrum? Yep. So they were our teams. There you go. That's pretty fun. Yeah. It was fun. Yeah. And we had, so we had people dressed up as Roman centurions. We had standards. So every, every team had like a, like a big standard in their color. And one of the things we did was decorate it. We came up with Team Chance. It was, it was a lot of time. These spores on them like, oh, they, they were very good or they were good. They were great. Ours was based around, I'm not going to put that on record as, as was based around a funny song that we changed the name of. But you've been crucial, kept on saying the real words, which were not a satisfying. Okay. That's it. So we were joking a lot about that. We did a four leaf clover because it was green and the kids came up with a four leaf clover. But then we're thinking about being lucky and it was very, very funny because as the green team, the thing that we won by winning the points, which I actually wasn't aware of, I'm not sure whether I just missed the memo or whether it was something that was held in quite a secretive way, was getting to pick the theme for youth next term, which is awesome. It was really cute because some of the crew afterwards were like, oh, we could like, the theme could be like, luck and lucky and like, yeah, girls, I don't really believe in like us Christians. And they went, oh, yeah. That's a little moment. It's fun. Yeah. But yeah, then they came up with some other ideas, which have escaped me at this moment, but what were really cool. Well, it sounds like a great time. Even though I had never went on a youth camp, so that I would say it's my heart sad. But it also would say that it sounds like it would be really impactful for the crew that went. So that's really cool about it. Yes. Yeah. That's it. So like just solidly getting in there, getting relationships with the cohort, getting relationships to the leaders, getting a solid series of Bible talks and a chance to think that all through like there's so much value. And we got Josh Roberts, came along as our camp all rounder. Yeah. He did an awesome job. He loves camp ministry. And he was willing to give up his weekend to come away with us. And yeah, he obviously has chosen to pursue a life path of focusing on camp ministry because he values it so much. So it's really nice to sort of see that, and I should mention the bonfire. Oh. It was big. It was very impressive. It was like this massive, you know, like the teepee sort of style. Yeah. Yeah. It was very, very, very impressive. Oh, that's impressive. I'm terrible at lighting fires anyway. That's great. And Tim, you've been to the theatre recently, twice, and you say you went to Sister Act and then what did you guys see? Julia. Oh, I've did not review Sister Act very well. Right. She was not quite proud of it. But you also saw Julia. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't mind Sister Act once I realised what it was. But I went into it thinking that it would be like the movie just expanded because there's a lot of stage shows that they've taken a movie and they're just like, oh, this is good. It went well. Let's do this for just add a few more songs. It was great. Was that originally a movie or was it originally a musical? I don't know. I can't remember, actually. But anyway, there's a great musical. There was a great musical. Yeah. So that was very similar to it. Yes. And so I thought this would be, and I've got, you know, it was one of the videos we were often rent from Korea the video easy and watched the family. So I got a lot of nostalgia attached to Sister Act. So I thought this was great. You know, it was playing the movie soundtrack again in the car as we drive around. But I know where this is going because I've heard. Yeah. And it's the musical and it's exactly the same storyline. None of the songs. And is it because they couldn't get the rights? I've got no idea. I've actually looked at it. I think that's what Karen said. It wouldn't surprise me. I feel like it must be something like that. Yeah. And so, yes. So there was that little bit of me. I was like, what is going on? Why aren't we hearing all these songs? Yeah. Once I kind of got over that, I was just, yeah, okay, I appreciate stagecraft. I mean, I quite like musicals and stagecraft and particularly like sets and all those lighting, all that kind of bits and pieces. So it was fun. And then yes, last night went to see Julia, which is a single person, almost single person. There's another character that kind of comes in now, but largely just single person play 90 minutes on Julia Gillard. So our first only female prime minister. And it sort of tells her story and it's largely based around her famous misogyny speech where she just rips into Tony Abbott. And about the misogyny she experienced in her leadership, but then it also goes back into her past and all those kinds of things. So it's all those kinds of themes. Justine Clark is the actress and just from play school, but play school. Yeah. She does a lot of stuff. Yeah. Like serious acting. Yeah. Very, very good. Yeah. So, yeah. So, again, from an acting stagecraft. Why don't you, like, just excellent. Yeah. Yeah. And Rose and I sort of, you know, made a conscious choices here to choose to use theater as one of our sort of, you know, hangout, date themes. Seems a little bit different. Seems a little bit different. Double. Is that a couple? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we don't go away as a family. And so we don't have a holiday spot. We don't have a caravan. We don't really go on holidays. The only time we go on holidays is we go away. But yeah, going out to the theater or something is kind of our family's way of going and have any experience. So, yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. That was, that was it. My cultural artifact. Oh, cultural artifact? Yes. Many people will be familiar with Carl Truman or Carl R Truman as he likes to have his books signed with. As opposed to all the other Carl trimmons. I don't know how many trimmons there are. Yeah. Maybe on the Truman show. Not spell the same. Lots of cals. I don't know. That's trimmons. I don't know if he's Carl Truman. And you'd be familiar with the book, "Rise and Triumph for the Modern Self." Tim, you're not going to ever have read that story. Yeah. You really loved it? I am. I'm reading his latest one, which is Crisis of Confidence. Now, we had a shout out to Lewis, who's been on this podcast before. He tried to get us to read it before week away, which was back in July. And I said, "Yes, yes. I'll do that." And very kindly bought me the book on sale. And then I didn't finish it. So I'm still halfway through it. But it's been quite interesting learning about kind of the historical significance of things like creeds and those gatherings that happened around to, well, around kind of like, when you would say it was kind of from like 100 AD onwards, in terms of the Nicene Creed and how they counseled, chalcedon, and all those kind of things that happened in order to establish doctrinal statements to ensure that the historical significance but also the ongoing message of the gospel was preached correctly and used it as a way to ensure that people weren't preaching the gospel perhaps in an unhelpful way. And I thought it's been really cool, like, that's stuff I didn't really know. So now reading about things like the Nicene Creed, I'm like, "I want to know more about what happened to that time of history and something like that." But Truman's message behind it is that he says that a lot of evangelicals would become concerned with being more relevant to the culture. And that kind of comes out of his last book, "Rise and try it for the modern self," but also the fact that instead of looking at how to be relevant, he suggests that we should have a return to the historic confessions of the church that are related around creeds and confessions. He also starts to look at other things like the West-- what's it called? The Westminster? Catechism? Catechism? The Westminster Confession. And the Confession. So, that's the section I'm in right now. It is rather dense. You need to take some time to get into, like, just same as "Rise and try it for the modern self." You need to spend quite a bit of time just getting into the flow of his writing style. I find that, anyway, because I do like to concentrate and really take him on a reading. But when I manage to find that time, I really enjoy it because it's really just fascinating to read about. But he says that one of the way to reject that consumer driven idea of church is to, yeah, return to those historic confessions and make sure that we still have sound doctrine and that's why they exist, they don't supersede the Bible, the Bible is priority number one. But he says it's really important in how they've also adapted to match things that have happened in culture as well in order to maintain that real importance of the gospel and sound doctrine. So, those where I'm at the moment, I know that you guys probably have a bit more idea of those things. I know a couple of people that go to Orthodox Church and that really, that schism kind of happened around the Council of Chalcet on around certain things, so I know you would know more about that. But I'm, yeah, I'm finding the historical cinemets quite fascinating. Kind of like Tim when my children asked me, "Why is it called Protestant Scripture?" And so he went about the Reformation and things like that and I said, "I don't know enough about this. I need a book and you provided a book for me." That was really cool. I might be asking you to provide me with another book that might help me understand the Council of Chalcet on or the Nicene Creed or many of the other things that happened around that time. Yeah. It's usually they all happened in that kind of Asia Minor area as well, but that's obviously where the gospel first spread. Yeah. I mean, the early church, that's where it's happening. That's where it's coming out of and that was also like lots of what was located around that area. So I suppose the gravity of where leadership was sort of around there and I don't know what the year is, but at some point the gravity shifts to Rome and part of it is there were a number of bishops around and in the early days it was kind of, you know, sort of an almost a quality egalitarian between the different bishops as they were all kind of, you know, a vehicle standing and then I can't remember exactly where it is. I'm not very good with dates and names, but there became a time when the bishop in Rome started to refer to himself as the bishop of bishops and so the gravity starts to shift away from all the bishops in the area in the different areas being equal to all being equal under the head of the bishop of Rome. And that's where the legacy of the papacy and the pope comes from is he becomes the bishop of bishops and you kind of get the rise of the pope out of that. Yeah. And I think that's what I find fascinating about any kind of history is that these things or these maybe even seen relatively minor things sometimes are really impactful in the historical like timeline of things happening even when certain empires have come through and then another empire comes through the other way and like you think about even you had the Greek Empire then the Roman Empire and then etc. etc. That's the stuff that I find really fascinating. That's why I'm like, oh, I need to read more about these councils that happened. I don't understand how they impact now even now, which is probably what Truman's trying to do is say like this is impacted the way that we think about doctrine and what it actually means to be a Christian, we need to return to those things to understand what were they trying to achieve and do we need to keep looking at these kind of things now because we're saying there's a story in that book that he talks about where someone in a church stood up and one of the pastors stood up and said, oh, the only creed we need is this and held up the Bible. Now, while that's still true to a certain degree, his argument is the creeds have been used in one way to adapt to culture and still maintain sound doctrine and remain steadfast to the gospel. So anyway, that was very interesting to me and I'm going to continue reading it when I find the time. Yeah. Moving on though, and it kind of relates to that is something similar as we, this weekend is confirmation. By the time people hear this, we can just go on. But you've been in charge of that kind of fear, you're helping with that at least. And I actually took confirmation classes with you however many years ago. It must have been maybe 18 years ago, I think something like that. It's crazy. Back in the day it came. Yeah. I used to do that. Yeah. I had privileged to doing that for a number of years. And privileged to doing it helping with it right now. But again, it's one of those traditions that I still we consider, especially as an Anglican Church, really important. Do you want to give us your thoughts around it and why you think it's a great thing to do and why you're excited about it? Yeah, lots of things. I think it is a great thing to do because it gives a certain level of gravity to a young person or an older person because we have a mixture of ages. Most times when there's a confirmation there'll be a couple of older crew. We do have a couple of older crew this time as well. But for those who've grown up in the church, some of them wait for the point. And look, there's a certain level of - oh, what's the word - like, it's a bit arbitrary, but we have decided that U10 is a good point to do that. And actually I historically had a little bit of influence on that back in the day when we were doing that at Grimey Anglican, not a store of our church. I was confirmed in the eight and when I first started leading the confirmation, it was a younger age cut off and I encouraged it to be older. Because of what I'd seen and also my own experience of I feel like as it is not something that you need to do, it's not something that makes you a Christian, there are certain points at which young crew are more likely to go along because their friends are going on. And as they get a little bit older, I feel like they have a little bit more in that way that a teenager grows and develops a little bit more of that moment of an individual choice, which is funny because most of the time when I'm talking about Christianity with them, I want them to be thinking about the group and thinking about relationships and not being an individual. But this is one of those choices that you're going to get up and you're going to make some promises about God and it's a significant thing that you're doing. And it's not, you don't have to do it, but to make those promises without sincerity, I don't think he's wise. And so I would never want to encourage a young person to do that. So the couple of extra years, I know some churches wait until you're 11 or you're 12 and there's different ways that people can do it, but for us we've said you're 10 is a moment where we encourage them to do that. Some of them were baptized as children, babies and others made the promises on their behalf. Some of them were baptized when they were older themselves and I said no, we want to get involved. And we open up the option to both of them. So traditionally the whole idea of confirmation is you are making the promises for yourself that were made on your behalf, when you were baptized. But even for some of the younger ones who have been baptized in the past, and there's an opportunity for them to say, no, I want to affirm this in a public way. And one of the things that I think confirmation offers that is not really a part of baptism and that's not a criticism of baptism, it's just something that isn't part of it, is the group context. So one of the things I like to encourage them to think about as we're preparing for confirmation is as much as you want it to be, this can be your crew. You can come back to this moment and it's lovely looking back to some of those people that are part of survival now and I couldn't tell you off the top of my head, but there's been a few moments with people where I've been like, I don't know, your confirmation classes didn't know because many of them I was like the youth leader or even a kids church leader for them. So it's like what was the thing that I had with you, but there's been a number of people who have and there's a couple of companies who I was able to look after the classes for their parents, and I'm pretty next to one of them, so that is super cool, yeah, but yeah, there's a few and one of the things we did in the classes is we wanted to engage a few other people in church and I asked Queen who was on gyplant recently to come to one of the classes and she shared a bit about her confirmation experience which was really lovely and those who are in your ten are just less than a term away from going, being invited to our late night gathering and Queen is part of the leadership of late night, so yeah, I wanted to highlight for them that and just many of them, no Queen anyway, Queen's done the cooking for our two camps, she and Rachel, both the youth camps that we've had as a revival church, they have cooked for us and done an amazing job, they're really servant and hearted and have just really stepped up and done that, so the crew are aware of Queen but just to sort of have her in that mix, yeah, Braden and Ethan have come along with the classes as well, but all of the crew have got either the younger ones have got other youth leaders or they've got Bible study leaders, other people in the church that are looking out for them, but the privilege I've had is to plan four weeks of classes in the lead up to that and what we've done predominantly because that sounds like a bit of time, it's not actually a lot of time, is I've tried to encourage a familiarity with those young crew in some of the things that are part of the service and the Apostles' Creed is part of the service and the Lord's Prayer is part of the service, so we looked at those, we looked at the promises they're going to make, one of the interesting things, I wasn't involved in the preparation for last, because we had one other confirmation, it's our revival church, I wasn't involved in that and so in preparing for this I looked at the order of the service and went, it doesn't look, anyway, it looked different and it was different, so the promises that you make as a confer me have changed slightly, and so that was great, I looked at the ones that I did, the ones I used to prepare crew for, looked at the new ones and that was one of the things I was able to say to the crew, I said look at this, this has changed, and it's been very discussional, the classes, so rather than me telling them it's like well what do you think, and generally that will draw out the answers and then myself or Ethan or Braden could come in, we've spent some time splitting into smaller groups, we had a really, really interesting discussion because I recognised after a couple of weeks that there was a quite key split between those who have long-term Christian families and go to Christian school and those who either haven't had long-term Christian families, but many of them have, but don't go to Christian school, and we got them into two different groups and they talked about, we used an example, there's an illustration, actually I found out it came from Martin Luther King about being a thermostat or a thermometer, I don't know if you've heard it, so a thermometer reflects the temperature of what's going on and a thermostat sets the temperature, and he uses it in the context, it was a letter that he wrote, he expressed this in a letter that was when there was criticism of his peaceful protesting and other things that were going on, so that was a specific thing, but it was in a church context and he was talking to the people in the church and saying back in the day, the times when the church was really impacting culture was when they were being a thermostat, like people coming into one that often gets trotted out and I don't want to be trite, but it's a good example is the plagues, everybody went oh get out here, we don't want to touch you and Christians brought people into their homes, children left on the street, cared for them, that is a classic illustration of being a thermostat and not a thermometer, letting your faith make a difference in the world around you. And I stumbled across that, actually it was funny, it was something I heard briefly on the radio and I went oh that's good, and then went down the rabbit hole and went oh wow there's so much and then had to draw it back in and what's the helpful thing to share with them, we talked about that, so then we talked about how can you be a thermostat in a Christian school, how can you be a thermostat in a state school, and it was really interesting because as they came back in, the discussion went a lot longer than I thought we had to get our acts together for the rest of that class because within an hour I'm like oh wow but I just, I couldn't stop it because there was a real engagement in listening to each other and going oh I thought this or I thought that and seeing that, you know, one of the things that I think they were surprised by is it wasn't as different as they thought it would be, which was interesting, in terms of the way they relate to their peers on a daily basis. There were some key differences but yeah, so being able to do things like that, being able to read the Lord's Prayer with them, as she said that we said it's called the Lord's Prayer but it's not really the Lord's Prayer, it's the prayer the Lord gave us because it was Lord teach us to pray. So it wasn't Jesus telling us how he prays, I'm sure there would be some similarities with how he would have prayed when he withdrew to pray and when he prayed but the impact was well this is how we should pray and we looked at that and we looked at the creed and we also looked at, so most of our crew are very familiar with the colours of life, the Jesus beads, I wanted to introduce something a little bit different, some of them did have a little bit of familiarity, I'm not quite sure there was some context in which they'd heard it could have been possibly LRT with two ways to live, which is a gospel presentation that was around when I was younger and yeah, so we looked at those, we compared and contrasted them like what's some things that are different, what's some things that are the same and then interesting like what Truman's saying, that's how the doctor knows how you keep the gospel there, what I presented to them was the Apostles Creed is just a gospel presentation, so it was lovely to sort of create those links and look at the Lord's Prayer, slightly different but still if you read through the Lord's Prayer you see what Christian faith is, it is another form, you know, loose essence of gospel presentation, which is funny because I remember when I was teaching scripture a number of years ago there was an interesting moment where one of the Christian websites that I would direct students to look at questions did a big update and when they updated the point at which they talked through what it is to become a Christian instead of a more traditional sinners prayer, they popped the Lord's Prayer in there and John Dickson had a bit to do with that, so I was like, oh, I'm interested in that and I shut off an email to them saying, hey look I noticed you've made this change, I just wanted to hear about why you've made the change, my God, a very short sharp, I shouldn't say sharp, very short email back from John Dickson saying, well it's Jesus's Prayer so it's the best one, pretty much, I'm paraphrasing but I was like, oh and I wasn't really what I was asking but I took what he was saying, okay, I was interested in a discussion about like how they'd come to that decision to make that change but he was, yes, probably, was a busy nap and it was literally a one-line email, I was like, okay, I'll just get back in my box, I think they took it as me criticising which was not my intent, it was just asking the question like, hey you've changed it, I'm interested, that's a change but yeah the Lord's Prayer is a beautiful prayer so being able to have that time with them, split up, get them to pray and another, there's been a few heart moments which has been delightful, but this is what Trim is talking about right is that trying to have those important statements of faith or greed and stuff to help people and I have those are heart moments ago, oh yeah that is what I believe, I'm clarifying just clarifying as what I'm saying, when we were going through two ways to live, when we got to the point about Jesus rising again, we split up into girls and guys for that discussion and one of the girls said, so like, what a matter if Jesus didn't come back to life because he died on the crossfire, it was brilliant, yeah, then we had to say to the guys, wait, wait, we're still going, I said, given the set period of time and they were finished and all that, oh the girls were stuffing around, I'm like the girls were not stuffing around, we were having a very important discussion and it was, yeah, it was really cool and like, you know, there's a mixture of crew in that group and a number of them know each other quite well, in fact yeah, Lucas and Mackay were baptised together, which is pretty special. That's cool. And they're getting confirmed together. They're getting confirmed together, I know he's not lovely, so yeah, there's some really beautiful long-term connections but there's also some that have met each other more recently and just seeing that group, yeah, interact, one of us being very careful. And Timmy, we just mentioned your son Mackay, he's getting confirmed, he was baptised together with Lucas, he's another boy. Can you give us your reflections on, must be cool, you must be excited for tomorrow, but also like, tell us about what your, if you can remember, your experience of confirmation as well. I remember doing it, yeah, I remember sitting in the classes, I don't remember what we talked about, I'm sure we talked about really good things, would have been all that same sort of stuff. You wouldn't even mind if I wanted to ask someone a question? Yeah, probably. Yeah. Because you were always confident too. Yeah, that's true. I think for me, I don't know if it was exactly the confirmation, it was around that time, you know, it is those year nine, ten years that are really significant. I think as someone who grew up in a Christian home, Christian school, every week of church to be thinking through, okay, what does this actually mean to continue in this faith for myself? The idea of confirmation, yeah, baptism as an infant in the Anglican church, you have other people making promises on your behalf that they will raise you to know and love Jesus every day of your life. And we pray over those kids, may there never be a day that they don't know Jesus? And confirmation is that yes, actually those promises that were made, God has been faithful to those promises and has kept me in that. And so it's not a conversion moment, it's a confirmation. It's a good life. It's confirming. Yes, actually all of those parents, God parents and those who promised to raise me to the Bible and love Jesus have done that and I am confirming that that is continually true of me. I'm going to say something about that in a minute but finish what you're saying. Okay, cool. And so I think that's, yeah, and so I do remember, I'm sure the confirmation class is brought out, there's a number of conversations at school and at church, thinking through, okay, so what does it actually mean for me to take this on, well, I need to see it in that language I'm uncomfortable with, to continue to confirm that yes, this is true of me. It has always been true of me and it continues to be true and you publicly declaring it. And so I do remember those that been the time. And I also was conscious, there were a couple of people in that class who, that was pretty much the last time we saw them. And interesting. And it was like, and I've read this in church history stuff more recently, actually in just the last year, my colleague, Youthhurst College, Ruth Lecabio has written a lot of church history stuff. And then one of the things that she quotes is that confirmation was often seen as graduation. So you sort of, you had to put up with Sunday school and church attendance until you were confirmed. And that was seen as a graduation from church. And even though that language has only been recently in my mind, I can remember thinking that in year 10, that actually there's these people here in this class who, there's one guy who I think was the first time I've ever met him and his family's like, "No, no, no. This is our church." I'm like, "Oh, okay, I've never met you before in my life." And I never saw you again. So it was just, you know, it was an odd thing. And that's one of the things we actually talked about in classes with the crew. Right, yeah, yeah. We've talked about that. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. But I said to them, "If you're not ready, don't get up and make that promise in front of God if it's not. And it's not checking a box. And it's not actually going to achieve anything if you're not ready for it." But yeah, one of the reasons I loved doing confirmation was because I saw that. And I don't, I mean, you don't remember, one of the things in the class, like the first class I would do was basically trying to talk everybody out of it. Right, yeah. And I did the same thing this time. Okay, good. In a nice way. Yeah. And uncertainty, if you're not sure, you know, talk to your leaders, talk to people, you know, like, don't just, you know, but, but, you know, if you're not sure, don't. I think that's really good. Yeah. I think about the Jesus telling the parables of counting the costs of the, the general has to count the cost before he takes another army to count the costs of building the city before you build otherwise you end up with a half inch and you're a laughing stock in the community. And it, yeah, cheekily thought, I never hear an evangelistic sermon or a court, an altar call where people will say, slow down, maybe you don't come, like, don't come down the front. We actually don't want you to. We want you to go home and think about this, as I, but that seems to be part of Jesus strategy. And I think this is a good moment to actually have that kind of passage and that kind of challenge in front of people like, you don't have to be here. Like, it's, if you're following Jesus, this is not going to change anything for you. It's still going to follow Jesus whether you do it or not. And if you're not following Jesus, then it's not helpful to stand up and make these declarations without having really considered what that actually means for you. So I think it's, it's, it's right to hold it as a weighty thing in front of people. And that's it. And so you're, you're sort of doing those two things, you're saying it, it doesn't actually do anything. It doesn't make you a Christian, it doesn't make you, so in that sense, and it's, it's not a, it's not a sacrament, it's not baptism. It's not me. And the other thing we did, we looked a little bit at Communion and what's up up because tradition that was something that, that was, and I explained to them, once upon a time, you would wait till you were confirmed before you would take a communion. And we don't now, but it's a good moment and just sort of use that moment to, to talk through how that is. And that's actually part of that catechism that we were talking about in the, in the prayer book that was a bit of a basis for looking at what would be some good touch points for them to learn about. But you're so, you're balancing that, yeah, like it doesn't, you know, it doesn't make a difference. It's not something you have to do. But if you do it thoughtlessly, that's probably the most significant being actually, you know, so you can make much of it in the way you do it, in the way you talk to people about it, in the way you invite people along, which a number of the crew have done in, you know, in the way that you think through like where you're at and use it at that moment in your faith. But the actual act of getting confirmed doesn't actually do anything except a moment where we pray, you know, obviously prayer is powerful, but, yeah, for them, it's the, yeah, it's the doing it for the wrong reasons. And it reminds me, and I did tell the crew a story, I talked a little bit about people who'd been confirmed and you'd never seen them again, yeah, and trying to discourage that. But also there was a young woman who was part of our ministry, the ministry back at Gunner Anglican many years ago, who had come along and had sort of just gone through the motions with her friends and had, you know, faked it, not in an awful way, but just done all the Christian stuff, but wasn't actually a Christian. And her testimony when I heard it was that she'd only become a Christian recently and people were like, "What?" And she's like, "Yeah, when I became a Christian and there was actually a period of time between, I couldn't tell anyone because you all thought I already was a Christian." Interesting. Yeah. And so that has always stuck with me for two reasons. One is, like, in terms of youth ministry, never talk to the crew like they're a Christian just because they're there, being there doesn't make you a Christian. I think they've perhaps been a little bit of that mistake there. But also, you know, this is a commitment, you can't be half a Christian, you know, and coming along and her people assuming that she was a Christian and never having that real conversation with her meant that she was, like, overwhelmed. I don't know how to tell people because people will be weird, they will think, like, "What's going on?" So it took her a period of time before she was confident to actually say, "No, I have actually committed my life to Jesus." That's cool. Yeah. And she came from a non-Christian background, so it wasn't the growing up in church and then moving away, but it was, like, coming in and having an interest in things of faith and wanting to be there, but initially being part of a group and she hadn't actually made a decision to put her own trust in Jesus. Yeah, that's cool. Just to answer your other point, just about being a father, yeah, I'm just, I'm really stoked, obviously, that MacKiah is taking this on and the, I think he's made a number of choices in how he uses his time and that I've been watching him grow more and more confident in his own personal faith, which is great. And, you know, there's, in sort of, you know, faith development theory, you look at young kids, very young kids, preschool kids, I saw in a show this morning about this, but they, their experience of faith is experienced through the life of those who care for them. So we're thinking, yeah, preschoolers, yeah, they're just there around why you read the Bible, why you pray, and they have an experienced faith, which, you know, as Anglicans we would not say is not real, it's just, that's the, that's where they're up to developmentally. And then, you know, sort of early to late primary school is this one, one theorist calls it Affiliative Faith. So you're affiliating with and you're just joining in, you want to join in with the things that people are doing because you see them doing it. So I see this in my scripture class all the time, I ask my year three is who wants to pray, and they all put their hand up, yeah, I want to pray, because that's what you're doing scripture. Like, they're, so they're affiliating with the faith of the group, which, again, is not necessarily indicative of a personal relationship with Jesus as if we could tell that anyway, but you know, so that, but they're just affiliating with that, but then you need to go through a part where you go do that self differentiation, which all teenagers do and that one listens do of working out, okay, I've carried all of these things with me from children adolescents, and that's totally appropriate. That's exactly how God has made us to be. And it's that working out, and that's why confirmation, I think is appropriate, like that sort of 15, 16 is a good age because there should be at an age where they can think for themselves, okay, it's no longer just carrying with me because of household, school, church, whatever it is, it's no, it's a, it's a confirmation, no, no, this, this is true of me, and I'm continuing to, to carry that through as an owned faith, which is now very much something that I've consciously walk, continue to walk in. And so as I watch my client as I see him, you know, wanting to read his Bible, wanting to pray, you know, taking leadership positions at church and at school, he's doing talks, you know, feels like every second week he's doing a talk at school or leading the prayers or something, and he's a lunchtime group doing it with Fuse, and just a lot of that, well, actually, almost none of that is directed by me, as I'm not pushing him to do all these things, he is actively taking these on and wanting to do them. And one of the conversations I had with him really early, when we, they went across from a public school to a Christian school, and it was also an age where he was 12, I think, and he was doing that, so it was almost high school, and thinking again about knowing that he was at that age, we have to start differentiating and working out what does faith mean. And I said, one of the biggest challenges of a Christian school is this assumption that everyone's Christian, particularly at a school like where my kids are at, where it is, majority church parents. And so it's very, and I said to him, it's very easy to be a vanilla Christian. And that was one of those things that the state school kids thought, and the Christian school kids were able to say, actually, no, I've got friends who aren't. Yeah. So there are friends who have, which are from non-Christian homes, and so they need to work that out for themselves, just like, you know, every non, you know, church time, teenager, this workout, and there'll be those who are from Christian homes who in their self differentiation from their parents are actually losing faith or questioning or searching faith. But I said to Macuire, like, it's to, to be a vanilla Christian is going to be really easy, to just kind of walk along and, you know, get fine grades, be a nice person, do okay in biblical studies, but to stick your head above the parapet and to actually be a really out there known to be weirdly Christian, that's going to take guts, and it's going to take a real faith and it's going to take ownership. And so I've challenged him with that really early on, and that's kind of really the only conversation we've had about it, but I've seen him do that and go on and, you know, he goes to the lunchtime group and the first few times he was going to the lunchtime group, I said, oh, so you and your mates when he goes, no, just me, no one mates wanted to come. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And so, yeah, even just those little moments, it was really lovely to see. So yeah, sort of stoked to the dad. Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic, and I'm just thinking about confirmation and all these kind of traditions that we're saying that are important to hold on to, it flicks back to a couple of episodes ago. She was talking about, was asked a question, what pitfalls have you seen for the last three years of ministry? And he says that prayerfully consider what traditions you hold on to, and what traditions you change at a coming because of culture, and those kind of statements, like we've said statements of faith, creeds, apostles creed, et cetera, et cetera, all those different things are important way to pass, are we sticking to the gospel or are we not? And it seems like some of those experiences you've had during confirmation classes fee, and you've said it as well, Tim, if it's almost like a filter of do you actually believe this? And you need to know if you believe it or not before you stand up in front of a large group of people and confirm it, because if you do, and then you don't like, what's that going to look like, what does it say about your character, if you've gone through all the confirmation classes and gone up and say, I believe it, and then you behave in a completely different way. I think that's why. It does say that what you think it is, is ticking your box or graduating, or you use the phrase of graduating, which I think is really helpful for the phrase I've used with the kids, it's not ticking your box, there's no box duty, so it's no point. Now that was my experience of getting confirmed. I was in your eight when I was confirmed, it was a massive group of crew, and at least half of them walked out the door at the end, just like Tim said, and it was actually, so Jack Derritt was the pastor of our church at the time, it was only a year or so out from his retirement, I believe, timing was, because I was in your eight, and then by the time I was in your twelve, there was a different pastor there, so I don't know the exact timing, but yeah, definitely that happened over that period of time. And it was, yeah, and he impressed upon us that we were going to get up and say, "I turned to Christ," and I left that class and went, "I don't know if I do." And I had that moment, and so one of the things I got to share with the crew was, that was, for me, confirmation, that period of time, which we did the classes, and it was like half an hour before church, it could have, it feels like it was probably, it might have been eight weeks, it was quite an extended period of time, where we would just meet before church. And the senior pastor put his time aside to do it, it was brilliant. And I had to pray, "Oh, should I do this? Why don't I?" But it was actually, for me, nobody had actually, to that point, sort of asked me that question of like, "Do you turn to Christ for you?" I was just, you know, I was vanilla in that I was doing good things, but my family went to Christian, so I was a complete Sunday Christian, when I was at church, I did the church stuff, when I wasn't doing anything about it. So it solidified your faith? Yeah, well, it was the moment in which I made a commitment to Jesus, so it's the point of which I, like, my testimony is that's when I became a Christian. Right, right, right. Yeah, it absolutely was. I had not turned to Christ before that point. But then you got up and then you said that you had, that's pretty cool. Yeah, 'cause that's it, 'cause like in that class preparation, I'm like, "I either pull out of this and that's going to be hard." And that's one of the other things when I talk to the crew about, you know, don't go through with it. I'm like, "It is a brave thing to say, 'I've put my hand up for this and I'm actually not going to do it.'" Yeah. It's not an easy thing for a young person to do. I said, "I will absolutely respect and there will be," you know, and over the years that I did it in the past, yeah, there've definitely been times where, yeah, Chris said, "No, I'm not." And I'm like, "Yep, that's excellent. We want to keep walking alongside you and help you to get there, but if you're not, don't make it up and say you are, that's not helpful." Just like for, you know, a woman I mentioned, it wasn't helpful that we all thought she was a Christian, 'cause it made it really hard for her when she actually made that decision to share that with her church family, which was impacted me that she hadn't been able to do that. But you mentioned baptism, that's awesome, 'cause one of the things that we were able to do, Ethan was able to share his baptism story, which was one of the unique things about that was Stu and Lou decided to invite anybody who wanted to, who was at Ethan's baptism, to stand up as his godparents. So I'm one of Ethan's godparents. Exactly. And he, and so, you know, you mentioned that at a baptism like this parents and his godparents who make the promises, and then, you know, it's a wonderful affirmation of what's happened over time. Ethan shared his baptism story, I shared my baptism story, which was, I mean, I'm being a little bit facetious, but the only Christian there was God. My parents were not Christians, they were getting me done. One of my aunties, one of my uncles was my godparents, and I actually, I'm not sure, 'cause they basically picked two of them for me and two of them for my sister, and I could go back and look, but I've never, like, haven't done that. It was at the church that my parents got married in, which was not a church that they were regularly attending or anything at all, neither of them were going to church. It was, yeah, so, you know. And I have had conversations with people who sent who are advocates of adult baptism and not so much a fan of infant baptism, who said, "You need to get baptized again, 'cause yours doesn't count." That's my stuff. But basically that's what they're saying, I'm like, "No, mine does count." And the fact that I then got confirmed, and then God used that confirmation, what it, beautiful, you know, moment, irony, whatever you want to call it, that because I'd been baptized as a child, I wouldn't have got confirmed. My mum signed me up for confirmation class, I'm like, "I don't want to do this thing, what's this thing?" And then I found out one of my friends was doing, "Oh, okay, I'll do it." So that was also that moment, if I could do it, and then I would, through the thing, "Oh, actually, maybe I shouldn't do it," so there was this whole back and forth. But yeah, so I've said to those people, I'm like, "No, no, God, knew what he was doing." Definitely. I said, "It doesn't matter." So there's a beautiful moment for those comp for me, it's because some of them are similar to me, like the baptism was getting done. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, either way, like there's such an encouragement for those who've had a baptism that was Faithful Christian saying, "We want to bring up this child to know Jesus." But for those that it was only God watching going, "Yep, that one's mine." Yep. Yep. That's really beautiful too. Yeah, I think it's cool that we've highlighted the importance of confirmation, it kind of seems like, "Oh, yeah, confirmation," but it's really important to highlight the fact that it does, in terms of solidifying faith or clarifying, that's a really cool thing to do. I think it's just chicken a box and it's a tradition, like, we should think about it. Is this a tradition we want to keep on? With those things in mind, I think it is. But yeah, for some people, it is more of a chicken box and I'm like, "Well, don't do it." And that's how you're feeling. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Yeah. Just to wrap up the episode, we've had someone getting contact with us, Tim. Yes. The name of Greg, who I believe send us the A.I. Jesus. He did Twitch Jesus. Which I believe was the last, one of the, maybe the last episode that you were on for you. Wasn't that it? But I don't remember. Yeah. Close to anyway. But Tim, he has a comment on A.I. because we've been talking A.I. Yeah. On and off for the last few episodes. Yeah. And I think it was last week we were talking particularly about, that's right, I was reflecting on the future is slow. Yes. Because having A.I. right to your sermon or Bible study. Yes. Yeah. And it was my prophetic plea to not use, efficiency is not necessarily, efficiency doesn't mean good. Yeah. And certainly efficiency doesn't form us in the way that I think God wants us to be formed. And anyway, he's just, Greg just sent through a few thoughts about different A.I. models and things that are happening in the world of A.I. He's very much into that world. And I'm not. So it's a great to learn from him. But he said one of the interesting things is that the A.I. is now these sort of learning algorithms where they read the material and so they learn how to respect. It's people that need to be cautious because now A.I. people are using A.I. to generate new content, then publishing that content, then the A.I. reads that content and it's now read publishing and cycling itself back through, which is curious. And the concern in our community is that it's like when you photocopy a copy and you keep this degrading quality because we know that what comes out of generative A.I. is not necessarily the best quality research, you know, it's not even necessarily true because being programmed to tell you what it thinks you want to hear rather than actually having the ability to actually genuinely be intelligent and tell you truth or whatever it is. So yeah, one of the things that they need to be thinking about is not just recycling A.I. back into A.I. otherwise becomes dumber and he said there is though there are people who are aware that the A.I. models when they're continually fed with new content becomes better, becomes more balanced because you don't, but I'm not quite sure how you factor for that because if people are generating, say blog articles or essays and throwing that up online and that was largely A.I. generated, they haven't in fact checked, is there a way for the A.I. modelers, the ones who are training the A.I. programs to know, anyway, but maybe filter that out somehow, it's massive. Orinacens is going to consume itself in a kind of, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, which is, he says it's very similar to that, the telegraph game where you sort of whisper a message into someone's ear and then you pass it along, you know, it's sort of, by the end it's absolutely hilarious and nothing like what it started with, or like illustrations, like that game. Are you in the game? Yeah, we have to draw a picture and then you write the word and then you draw the picture and you write the word, some very hilarious things that come out of that. And then the other thing he said is that, just a comment about the risks and the boundaries around open source models of generation content and he said there's been a number of issues with particularly image-generated things producing problematic pictures and, but again, this comes back to the point where I think I raised last week that we can't assume that A.I. is neutral. It's all been trained by something and has particular boundaries in place. And so people were noticing when they put requests into, I think it was Google's A.I. A lot of it would come back with lots of diverse equity inclusion type models even when you're asking it for, yeah, give me a picture of Vikings and it would have a whole lot of Vikings that were African-American and Chinese and because it's one of the things that they try and build into it is let's be inclusive in the images we create, but they're just not going to be a Viking. So there's those kinds of things. And then also he tells his story about the Microsoft bot Tay, which was trained on Twitter. And so it learned from Twitter and then was self-generating content to people, he writes, overnight, the bot started swearing, lying, making Nazi claims and abusing people, which probably, well, it is indicative of what it's been learning. So if it's learning from Twitter, which, you know, a lot of people notice as a cesspool of all sorts of terrible things, if that's what it's learning, then that's what it's spitting out. And so anyway, we could do a whole other episode of those interesting things, but yeah, thanks Greg for sharing those things. And I think, yeah, we are this cusp of a new technology and thinking through both society, what do we do with these things? But then also Christianly, how do we actually use this? Can we use it? What's the right use of A.I. in church work, ministry work, those kinds of things, but also, you know, actual personal faith formation as well. Yeah, I think that's a massively open question, which we're going to play around with in, you know, generations time, our grandkids will tell us how we got it all wrong. So that's exciting. And it kind of feeds back into that thing of having these doctrinal statements that will make sure that we don't stray too far away from things like that. So if we're letting A.I. stray away from those things, that's why it's important to have that. Yeah, that's right. We don't have core doctrines, boundaries of things. And I think, yeah, this is about an analogy, but if our generation of Christian content has these boundaries in it, obviously the scripture is paramount in that, but I think Truman is right. I haven't read the book, but yeah, his premise is right that these other doctrinal statements that came out of the early church, really good guardrails. Like if you cross the boundaries of the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed or some of these other formularies and go outside of those boundaries, then you're probably in the realm of heresy because they have tried to articulate true things about scripture and try to summarise. The Apostles Creed doesn't say everything there is to be about a Christian, you know. We have to go to the text of scripture. You know, it is a summary of some of the important points and some of the things about these creeds. We have to, it's good to know about the councils that came out of. It's good to know about the culture because they were answering particular questions and our culture will have different questions. And so there are times where we need to write new formularies or new creeds and things, but they, you know, I think... But they capture the heart. They capture the heart. Yeah. Because in the early church, was trying to work it out for the first time. I would go so far as saying there's nothing necessary to know in terms of having a genuine faith that's not there. Catch it there. Yeah. Yeah. So there are many other things to learn. Yes. So you know, faith, a child and faith that you can spend your whole life investigating. Yeah. But if you know the truths of those creeds, you know what you need to know to make a true faith decision about just you and you. And that's why memorizing those things are really key because it's often talk about catechisms, for example, in children's ministry training. And so, you know, it's like learning your timestales off by heart. It's not because that's where you stop in maths. It's because if you do know it off by heart, it's going to make all your higher order maths so much easier. Yeah. When you learn a language, if you don't learn the vocabulary, like what are you going to do? You need those basic tools so that you can then work with them and become creative and yes. Yeah. And share with a question that somebody asks you about faith that you've never heard of before, "Oh, but I've got my tools and I can engage with that." Yeah. And so like if we're learning the creeds, the formularies, the catechisms, and obviously scripture itself, if that is our, if that's what we're learning on, then the things we generate and spit out should be in line with those things. I think that's super cool. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Have a fun episode. Thank you for, thank you to Greg for getting in touch with us and we really like it when our listeners or watchers get involved. It was really cool. You can, if you want to do that, you can email me, jol@chalkazorba.com.au. Having said that, give us a like and subscribe on YouTube if you like or subscribe in your favorite podcast app and we'll be back next week talking about more things related to church, church planning, church traditions, and many more things, culture. I can't think of anything else at the moment, but ministry. Ministry. That's a good one. But thank you, Tim. Thank you. Thank you very much. And, for you, thank you for joining us. Yeah. And great. I thought I was just going to sit here while you guys talked about stuff and jumping and then it was all my stuff. That's great. That's all right. But you might be back. It felt worthwhile to be here. Yeah, that's right. Well, you might be back in the next couple of episodes because she's on holidays at the moment. So we'll see how it goes. But thank you everyone, listening and watching again. And as always, we finish with it one way, one way, one way. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)
