Friday, May 16, 2008

Men's Conference 2008


This weekend has seen Cornerstone's second annual Men's Conference, so I've been spending the past forty-eight hours being all manly and stuff. It's tiring work and as a result I need to go and have a nice lie down and sponge my fevered brow with a cold flannel. I think it was the harsh brutality of the paintball that did it. A few of the other guys went to play paintball. I didn't go, but I got so tired and nervous just thinking about it that I had to come and sit down in a darkened room for three hours. Oh the humanity!


One of the things that we did was based on Joshua chapters 3 & 4. In the story, the Israelites have just crossed the river Jordan and build a stone memorial so that they will remember what God has done. The idea was that when the children of the Israelites said "Dad, what's that pile of stones doing there?" then the story would be told and so it would be that God's goodness would be remembered from generation to generation. Someone thought that it would be good if we did a similar thing, so we built a wall. We were divided into groups depending on which training centre in Cornerstone's history that we represented. Then each group was responsible for laying a couple of bricks (seconds from the brick-makers that used to run on the Cornerstone site - in other words, we used stones that the builders had rejected...) on the site of a wall. The idea was that when the wall was complete we would lay on top some bricks we've had for a while that were marked with one of Cornerstone's 'mottos' ('To Understand, To Live, To Teach'). I thought it was a pretty cool idea, and I assume that the purpose is the same as it was in Old Testament times - we will look at it and others will be told the story of what it represents and God's goodness will be remembered.


After the monument was completed there was an opportunity for us to make a gesture of commitment / re-commitment to the path that God wants for our lives. It was something worth doing. We don't usually do symbols well in the evangelical tradition, which is a shame because we can miss out on good stuff like this.

Enjoy your week, and try and do something that gives you a physical reminder of God's goodness to look back upon.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The Woman from Snowy River


Well, it's been a long time since I updated this - sorry about that, by the way - but I'm finally ready to let you know what's been going on over here.

The big news is that my parents have been with us for the past two weeks. They'll actually be flying home as I'm writing this. In a plane, of course. We had a great time with them and it was great that they were able to come and see how the other half lives. They claim that they had a great time and particularly enjoyed the Cornerstone lifestyle. If I'm forced to take that back in my next post I won't be happy. Still, at the current rate of updating I won't have to write that apology for a couple of months, leaving plenty of time for "Webb Parents Enjoyed Cornerstone" rumours to make their way around the world.


We did plenty of fun things with my parents, such as visiting Dubbo Zoo (the first time I've actually been, despite living in Dubbo for over a year and having a wife who has actually appeared on TV looking like someone who lives there), riding horses (Well, Xanthe, Ruth and Calvin rode some horses) and more animal related things. We also spent a few days in Sydney together. We visited the Australian Museum where they had a dinosaur display on (because dinosaurs are now Australian, apparently) and went to Sydney Aquarium. Sydney Aquarium is billed as Australia's Number One Tourist Attraction, and I must say it was the best Aquarium that I've ever visited - and I've visited about two others in my life.


Reid liked the dinosaurs and the sharks. Calvin liked the dinosaurs and the sharks. Xanthe liked the stuffed koala. That's probably the difference between boys and girls summed up right there.


I'll put up a few photos now and leave it at that. Hopefully it won't be so long until my next post, but I can't promise anything. Except that I won't try and inhale Lego. I could promise that.