2007 Men’s Training Event, Mt Tambourine – ‘The Perfect Man’

Whilst the format of this years Men’s Training Event (MTE) was slightly altered from previous years (instead of a workshop we just had talks all weekend), this was certainly another year for many challenges to reflect upon.

Keith Birchley, from the University of Queensland’s ‘Evangelical Students’, took three talks on the book of James. Phil Campbell, from Mitchelton Presbyterian, gave two talks from the book of Judges. Both speakers had different speaking styles, but both hit me square between the eyes with their biblical teaching.

Of the many lessons drawn from James, these were some of the highlights:

• in regards to the trials of this life: God is more concerned with me response to trials rather than the change of circumstances
• When it comes to my ‘Trial Processing Programme’ whilst I’d like to think that I have a relatively realistic outlook, I can’t help but also realise that I’m slightly naïve when it comes to trials (with respect to [wrt] the gravity of some trials)
• WRT contemplating our fear of God as our ‘cosmic Father’ – those we love the most are the ones we fear offending
• WRT the utterly consistent goodness of God – my consistency needs to flow from God’s consistency: this is called integrity
• WRT Godly wisdom – wisdom is more walk than talk – intelligent ideas might be right, they might be sharp, but without godly discernment it is bound to be earthly, unspiritual and ultimately demonic (!)
• WRT to Godly peace – it’s usually what’s going on internally which creates what’s going on externally.
• And to finish, something seemingly random but very well related - Thomas Cranmer’s Anthropology: What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.

Highlights from the two Judges talks were:

• WRT Judges 4-5: whilst these passages are sometimes used to justify the position that women should be ordained as ministers, etc (cf the fact that Deborah was a prophetess and leader over Israel), we should quickly note that the bigger issue within Judges 4-5 is the lack of real men to be leaders
• Campbell insightfully pointed out that Judges 5 contains no references to the ‘men’ in the battle won by Israel, instead the focus of the song is on the women – a very back handed reference to the state of Israel’s men at the time
• WRT Judges 9-11: we see a man, Jephthah who was willing to sacrifice everything in order to get what he wanted. As Campbell preached on this section my mind wandered to how Erwin McManus used portions of this part of scripture in his book ‘The Barbarian Way’. As I continued to listen to Campbell expound on the text he mentioned that the NIV translation says, ‘A group of adventurers gathered around [Jephthah]’ (Judges 11:3). Campbell wasn’t sure why the NIV had translated it this way since the original wording, a literal translation, would have read something more like, ‘a group of empty men gathered around…’ In this way McManus’ use of this portion of scripture as a founding principle for his book is taken incredibly out of context and poorly explained.
• Pointing to Jesus: in reflection upon the two talks Campbell made some insightful connections to Jesus Christ. In Judges 4-5 the problem was a lack of real men. Jesus is the real man (as ironically declared in John 19:5) who in spite of the fear (compared to Barak in Judges 4) stood firm. And compared to Jephthah, who would sacrifice anything to get what he wanted (and tragically ending with the sacrifice of his one and only daughter), Jesus was a man who would sacrifice himself in order to give what we needed.

But aside from the great talks was also another chance to just get away with some guys and grow in our fellowship and encouragement of one another. Please keep praying for next year’s MTE and for many more ‘real men’ to head up the mountain again.

Myself up on stage getting interviewed - thanks Chi for the panoramic pic!