Behind The Scenes

The past month has been absolutely insane for us, and coming from the month prior to that where Mr Queller was severely injured six ways to Sunday and in recuperation, let's say we've been a little busy trying to catch up.

From June and the injuries, family losses, and what would come down to just bad luck (web server outages, hard line outages from the massive flooding in Indiana, plus the tornadoes and lightening storms) and now into and soon to be the end of July...

Massive infrastructure failures near where the Queller Technology servers are located have kept them offline this month and in sporadic communications with the rest of what appears to be civilization. Luckily Andromeda3D is their only concern so they aren't answering to any other clients like another company would be at this point.

Which brings me to Andromeda3D as a project, and a long overdue status update for those of you who read the blog or have it delivered automatically to your email.

For the time being we've decided to continue on with development of other things concerning the systems integration while we try to figure out the remaining issues with the System Analyzer (nVidia cards are still not reporting back to us their hardware specs). Not to say things are not moving forward, they just took a lateral step for other things. So more progress, just on other things not related to the system analyzer portion.

We're again getting back on track, and making progress pulling the rest of the system together for your A3D goodness. Apologies to the beta team who was looking forward to the June 1st milestone, we know you had your hopes set on it (as we did too prior to June + July just working out very badly in RL). We promise that we are making progress and have been since the end of June, so when we do release that first stage, you can expect a better polished system in place for your wait.

August is the month to look out for, but since I am barred from making any definite dates or giving out progress details publicly, this is all I am going to say for now.

Dog Tired and Still Typing

William Burns
Andromeda Media Universe

Little Fluffy Clouds

Stephanie has introduced me to a cool new online toy! Wordle is a nifty little application that makes a word cloud of a bunch of text, or a website, or blog etc.

And for those not in the know, that's a visual display of the most common words sized by occurrence.

Pandora's Hideaway looks something like this:



(Click for bigger)

The key words seem to be "funny", "updates", "pictures". "Outfit", "genre" and "tranny" are quite popular too!

July Prayer Points

These prayer points were recently sent out on our prayer email list.

1) Praise God for some of the excellent testimonies that have been shared during our Sunday meetings. It has taken some courage for some to speak up the front but each time of sharing has been helpful for many.

2) Please pray for the amount of administrative things that are happening in the coming month. Our first clear Connections-related budget is being produced along with financial projections and so forth.

3) Please pray for our next venue. We are in the process of considering a move into a local primary school and have begun to consider what the various and ongoing logistics would entail. Please pray for wisdom and creativity.

4) There have been a number of health and other crises amongst our members recently. Please pray for those impacted and those caring.

5) The local pastors group has organised an ongoing "pray-for-Burnie flag" that passes form church to church each month - the idea is that the church who has the flag focuses on the local region for prayer. It is our turn during July - please pray for the city of Burnie and its local region, of which Somerset is a part.

6) Please continue to pray for growth in small groups - an increase in their number, the raising up of leaders, and growth within them also.

The Emotionally Healthy Church (a sort-of-book-review)

This comes straight from a book that I've just read (Scazzero and Bird's The Emotionally Healthy Church, which is also sold in Australia) but it fits so well with our current focus at Connections that I thought I'd put it here rather than on my other blog where I often put book reviews.

Our focus is on taking responsbility for our response to God's grace. As mentioned in a previous article, we are to have a shape that emphasises “the spiritual growth of Christians [formation] and the finding of spiritual life by those who have not yet encountered Christ [transformation].” We have a responsibility to "work our our salvation with fear and trembling" as God does his work in us (Phil 2:12) and so be a community of people who desire maturity and wholeness in Christ and are willing to count the cost for pressing on towards that goal.

Scazzero's book taps into this desire as he outlines some of the principles that he has learned from his own spiritual growth journey. For him spiritual growth isn't about some nebulous "out-there" form of spiritual experience, it's about real and substantial growth as a person of Christ. And key to this is the need to be emotionally healthy. He writes:

"The sad truth is that too little difference exists, in terms of emotional and relational maturity, between, between God's people inside the church and those outside who claim no relationship to Jesus Christ. Even more alarming, when you go beyond the praise and worship of our large meetings and conventions and into the homes and small-group meetings of God's people, you often find a valley littered by broken and failed relationships." (p17)

My response is "ain't that the truth." One of the little idealisms that I had when the Connections Project was first conceived in 2004 was a thought that "if only we can get a church of young people together, we'll change the world" but the truth is, now that we do have such a church is that, even as young people, we are just like humanity has always been - a littered valley of brokenness, sorrows, sinfulnesses, weaknesses, shames and misdeanours. We need to grow as spiritual, emotional, persons.

From his own experience and research Scazzero proposes "six principles of an emotionally healthy church" which are helpful for us:

Principle 1 - Look Beneath The Service
This principle covers our need to be honest with ourselves about ourselves - to face pains and weaknesses and acknowledge behaviours and attitudes that come from them. It's looking beneath the service in the light of God's love:

"A revelation of God's free grace gives us the courage to face the painful truth about ourselves. As we step out onto the tightrope of discovering the unpleasant things about ourselves, we have a safety net below - the Gospel of Jesus Christ." (p83)

Principle 2 - Break the Power of the Past
This principle causes us to consider the roots of our emotional and other issues in the light of our backgrounds and past - particularly our family of origin which "is the most powerful, influential group that has affected who we are today." (p95). He writes:

"To become a Christian and to be adopted into God's family... does not erase the past. God does not give us amnesia or emergency emotional/spiritual reconstructive surgry. God does forgive the past, but he does not erase it. We are given a new start, but we still come in as babies drinking milk and are expected to die daily to the parts of our lives that do not honor God and follow Jesus... Discipleship, then, must include honest reflection on the positive and negative impact of my family of origin as well as other major influences." (p99)

Principle 3 - Live in Brokenness and Vulnerability
This principle acknowledges that emotional growth lies not in self-reliance or even self-resilience but in a brokenness -brought-to-Jesus. We can look to the example of Saint Paul who's "growth in Christ parallels his increasing sense of weakness and sinfulness." (p118) This principle is counter-cultural:

"Twenty-first-century culture measures strength in terms of power... Brilliant people dazzle us with their intellectual and verbal abilities... We look for building, finances, numbers of people, and large budgets to demonstrate the strength and success of our churches... Yet... Paul argues for the authenticity of his leadership by appealing, not to his visions and revelations from God, not to his successes and gifts, but instead to his weakness!" (p116)

Principle 4 - Receive the Gift of Limits
Each one of us lives within natural limits - the limits of our personality, season of life, life situation, emotional, physical and intellectual capacities, and the scars and wounds of our past (ppp142-143). This principle acknowledges the fact that the world is inherently out of our control and causes us to run headlong into the "core spiritual issue for us if we are to be faithful to living within our God-given boundaries and limits: Is God good and and is God really sovereign?" (p150). He recognises:

"Maturity in life is when someone is living joyfully within their God-given limits. I find most of us resent limits - in ourselves and in others. We expect far too much from ourselves and each other and often live frustrated and angry lives. Much of burnout is a result of giving what we do not possess." (p144)

Principle 5 - Embrace Grieving and Loss
This principle recognises that emotional maturity lies not in superficiality but in acknowledging and, indeed, embracing the losses and sufferings that are at the heart of substantial living. It recognises that that path to Christlikeness is necessarily the path of grief, dying to self, and living for him.
Using forgiveness as an example, he writes:

"Forgiveness is not a quick process. I do not believe it is possible to truly forgive another person from he heart until we allow ourselves to feel the pain of what was lost. People who say it is simply an act of the will do not understand grieving." (p157)

Principle 6 - Make Incarnation Your Model for Loving Well
Finally, the last principle of emotional health recognises that one cannot "love well" unless there is a willingness to "be Christ" to the other person - and that that means loving with a model of "incarnation." Basically, this means willing to be authentically oneself, but truly engaged with another person's world, rather than simply ministering or advice-giving from the outside.

"As I sit, I close my eyes and reflect on the experience of asking people, "What is it like to be you? To walk in your skin?" I am aware of the truth that when we go out of ourselves and live briefly in the world of another person, we never return to our own lives the same person. God changes us into the image of his Son through the process. We learn to die to the ugly parts of ourselves. Our feet are kept on the ground." (p191)

This book has many blessings, and insights for us and our church. I am getting copies for the members of the Connections Leadership Team (CLT) to read. If anyone is interested, I can find a copy for you!

Time Is An Illusion - Downtime Doubly So

Estimated time until the server came back on - 5 Days

Actual Time It Took - about 12 hours.

That is some serious speed right there.

One Stage At A Time

The Diocesan Ministry Council recently received a report from a Youth Ministry consultation process with Tim Hawkins. The report has been made public now and so I am free to talk about it.

If and when the recommendations of the consultation are adopted there will be much to talk about in relation to how Connections can join in with the Diocesan youth strategy - in particular with regard to any regional youth coordinators that may eventuate.

In this article, however, I don't want to unpack possible futures but have a look at some of Tim's insights - in particular with regard to a recommendation surrounding a "20 year strategy for every Anglican Church that wants to grow."

The strategy revolves around the fact that "to have a growing and lasting youth ministry in your church you ideally need a few other key age groups." In particular, the 35-50 year age group who are the parents of teenagers, the 0-11 year age group in a children's ministry who will feed into a youth ministry, and the parents of the 0-11 year group - aged 20-35 years. Tim offers a diagram something like this:

Parents aged 35-50	→	Teenagers 11-18
		↑
Parents aged 20-35	→	Children 0-11

He then proposes a 20 year strategy that would provide a step-by-step set of "stages" for building a church that contains all age groups. The beauty of his suggestion is that it is incremental, and therefore in the reach of pretty much any church that has the desire to grow and the inclination to incorporate the necessary changes.

The strategy is simple - it begins with outreach to young parents and children, and slowly builds up through junior high ministry and high school ministry, aided by the parents and children who are growing older and entering into the subsequent age areas. In summary it goes like this:

Stage 1	The first 2 years	Reach out to 20-35 yr olds
Stage 2	The first 5 years	Build a children's ministry
Stage 3	5-10 years	Reach out to 30-40 yr olds
Stage 4	5-10 years	Build a junior high ministry
Stage 5	10-15 years	Build a high school ministry
Stage 6	15-20 years	Build a young adult's ministry

This isn't anything particularly complicated - which is how most strategy's of merit are! And it is interesting to note that it maps a path that Connections has been on over the last three and a half years and continues to be on.

We are at about stage 3, moving into stage 4. Our 0-11 year olds that joined us with their parents in their 20's and 30's are quickly becoming junior high youth. And we are also beginning to pick up youth of that age as newcomers with their parents in their 30's and 40's. And so we are in the process of looking to begin and budget for a junior high youth ministry.

We also need to shore up our children's ministry - to bolster "stage 2" in this model (again we are looking at some plans and budgets for this). And of course, we need to continue to care for parents of all ages - and everybody else who are with us whatever stage of life they are in.

Tim's analysis should encourage us - including an encouragement to pray as we make that next step with our youth.

Website Is Down

The server that our site resided on apparently had a full out meltdown from traffic. Hard drive failure ensued. The admins are looking into it and probably going to replace the hardware this week with a shiny new hard drive.

Estimated time till completion is about 5 days. Again, sorry the site rocked so hard it blew up the server. We'll try to tone down the awesomeness next time.

Until then, the forums are still alive and kicking offsite at http://forums.ugngamestudios.com

Sorry for the inconvenience. Luckily we did a full website backup about a week ago, so we didn't lose anything.

The (un)Official List of Tranny Cliches

Inspired by some chat over on Rachel's blog, I thought I'd have a go at compiling a list myself.

So lets have a think (and feel fee to suggest more)

• Maid/Waitress
• Nurse
• Schoolgirl
• Secretary/Businesswoman
• Bride
• Tart/streetwalker
• Policewoman
• Dominatrix
• Can-can/Moulin Rouge dancer
• Wonder Woman (or other super heroine)
• Air Hostess*
  
• Geisha
• Lingerie
• Any outfit showing stocking tops
• Any outfit showing cleavage
• Any outfit involving a greyhound skirt
  

I've done eight out of fifteen, which isn't bad..

For fun here's some general photography tranny cliches. And I'm not suggesting any of these are bad, just recurring themes in the community.

• MySpace angle
• Hotel room (bonus points for including the door, or being at a Travelodge)
• Picture including a radiator
  
• Picture with a fellow tranny
• Posed on the stairs/landing*
• Posed at home, extremely cropped picture*
• Posed at home with background blurred or removed**
  
• Posed at home with curtains closed and lights off*
• All full-length shots*
• Photo taken looking down at shoes*
  
• Photo taken in the mirror
  
• Blurry nightclub picture
• Dressing service picture
• Cartoon avatar (Simpsons, Zwinky, Meez etc)
• Photo of clothes
• Photo of make up containers
• Photo of hotel room swamped in clothes and accessories
  

And finally, the tranny no-nos

• Claiming a picture of a real girl as yourself
• Claiming a picture of another T-Girl as yourself
• Full-length photo with face blurred/obscured
  
• Photoshopping your head on another body
• As above and adding a fake teardrop tattoo
• Photoshoping yourself into another location/background*
  
• Having a favourites list of T-Girl lingerie shots with no pictures of your own
• As above and not having a avatar :|
• Only having photographs featuring your genitals poking out of underwear
• Commenting a real girl's ability to pass as female***
  
• Presuming everyone on Flickr is a tranny*
  

So what have I missed?

*= Thanks Steph
**= Thanks Lynn
***= Thanks Lucy