21st September, 2006

Rev Michael Frost is the founding director of the Centre for Evangelism and Global Mission at Morling College in Sydney, a renowned author and evangelist. Married to Carolyn, he has three daughters - Courtney, Kendall and Fielding. In 2002, he planted the missional community - Small Boat, Big Sea - in Manly...

Small Boat, Big Sea is...my community, my comrades - a Christian faith collective based in Manly committed to promoting spirituality, justice and art.

My earliest recollection of church is...as a teenager, being invited there by mates from school. Don't remember being blown away by the church service, but I was deeply impacted by my mates' faith in Jesus.

Church to me now means...very little if by 'church' you mean the institution, the building or the Sunday service. If you mean 'church' in the Biblical sense, then I am intrinsically part of the church as it is centrally part of me. I get sick of us discussing 'church' as though it's a third party 'out there'. The church is 'in here' - it is an organic, messy, Godly, dynamic collective of followers of Jesus and i continue to be amazed that I've been called to join its company.

The words “emerging church” mean...different things to different people! I hardly ever use the term myself now. Some people want to demonise it as a threat to the established churches. Others want to see it as the latest hip fad. It's neither. I'm hoping that whatever's emerging will be a missional community of the faithful, devoted to serving those who've not yet been set free by Christ.

My role at Small Boat, Big Sea involves...lots of eating, laughing and creativity, some tears and heartache, plenty of learning and prayer, and an ever evolving web of fascinating relationships if I wasn’t doing that, I’d be... lonely.

A passage I really relate to from the Bible is...well, relate to? Not sure about that, but I'm currently doing a study of Jesus' teaching about money and wealth in Luke's Gospel - terribly convicting stuff. He's such a radical, that Messiah of ours!

I recently heard from God when...I was paddling my kayak on Sydney Harbour this morning and watched the sun come up over South Head while bobbing on the swell at Grotto Point. Moments of such aching beauty leave you having to put your gratitude somewhere.

To me, Jesus is...scary, exciting, wild, strange, wonderful, good.

If I could change one thing about the world, it would be...that everyone experienced the freedom of God's grace and the liberation of His forgiveness

Issues I’m passionate about include...global warming, Aboriginal reconciliation, debt relief for poor nations, the Millennial Development Goals.

A movie I recently saw was...Nacho Libre (about a wrestling monk who fights for the orphans in his care) and it was pure and sublime stupidity, but if a movie was made for me it's one about a religious man who doesn't fit in either the monastery or the wrestling ring.

It really annoys me when...people try to force me to stay in the monastery.

I admire people like...Soren Kierkegaard, Johnny Cash, Simone Weil, Flannery O'Connor, William Wilberforce, Bono, John Steinbeck, Vaclev Havel, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Vincent van Gogh, John Smith...should I continue? All Christians committed to changing the world beneath their feet.

I wished you’d asked me...about my amazing wife, my love for Antarctica, the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, the joys of teaching theology, my daughters, the vegetarian breakfast at the Bluewater Cafe in Manly, the early movies of the Coen Brothers, the music of Xavier Rudd, the poor and beautiful people of Cambodia, my abiding hope in the world to come.
 

~ www.smallboatbigsea.org

~ www.morling.nsw.edu.au

If you'd like to nominate someone for 'Inside the Church',

send an email to editor@sightmagazine.com.au with details...