Hillsong College Online Open Day

It’s HEEEERE! HILLSONG COLLEGE ONLINE OPEN DAY!!! Yiihaaa. It’s a 24 hour event, streaming a 20 minute TV program about College & college life, as well as possibility to chat with current students from all around the world. If you’re lucky - or blessed - you might run into someone from your own country!

Why are we doing this?! - It’s simple. We can’t fly everyone here to see what Hillsong College is like - but we can give you a pretty good picture of it through the web.

We’ve created a unique web page for this event - featuring

• Staff blog
• Interviews with students around the world
• Common questions

And coming up on October 9th, and only that day, for 24 hours:

• Live chat with current Students
• 20 min TV program about Hillsong College

Make sure you don’t miss that day - on the page you can sign up for a reminder!

This is a great opportunity to get insight information from first, second and third year students across all different streams and pathways.

Book in 30 minutes on your Friday (or Thursday or Saturday depending on your timezone) and make a Virtual visit to Hillsong Church & College in Sydney!

College Online Open Day

Into second year at Hillsong College!

My first semester of second year at HILC started some weeks ago. It’s been quite a rapid jump into a lot of things. Our two intensive weeks at the beginning was under the subject Leadership Theory and Development. Mark Hopkins, executive vice president, Ps. Duncan Corby and Ps. Daniela Duarte taught on subjects such as contemporary leadership, leadership vs. ministry, growth & influence and situational leadership.

Decision making
One thing that stood out was the huge difference between ministry-based and leadership-based decision making. Where the first one is initiated by external needs leading to feelings and resulting in an action, the second one is initiated by a persons core beliefs, leading to decisions that result in actions.
So simple, but so true. All to often decisions in churches and in the life of Christians are based on many other things than core beliefs. When it comes to a Scandinavian setting I believe this is what will make a difference. When we get our core beliefs right, that forms our values, visions and goals of course inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is the best possible base for great decision making and creating direction for a church. This will empower people to work for the Kingdom with passion and purpose.

Ethics and Outreach development
Two other interesting subjects are Christian Ethics, lectured by Ps. Amanda Ferguson and Ministry and Outreach Development by Ps. Daniela Duarte. The purpose of MaOD is to learn how to develop different programs in the society in a way that is actually making an impact and difference. Too often we assume we know the needs and assume we know a certain people group or subculture and we don’t. Creating a community program on these assumptions often fails, and takes up a lot of effort in vain. Typically the planning phase for a good program takes around 18 months to develop. But – when it’s done well, based on good research and understanding of the target audience, it can actually make a huge impact and bring the Kingdom to people that otherwise never would have been reached.

This is a great season to be part of Hillsong College – and… the best is yet to come!

Hillsong College - Mid-semester update: Season of new strength

We’re half-way through the first semester of year 2009. Nine months have flown by in no time at all. And life at Hillsong College just becomes even more interesting.

This is the time of the semester when everyone is starting to be settled, kind of a quite smooth season, leading up to the mid-semester break in a couple of weeks.

The Colour Conference was a great experience - seeing all the college students and other volunteers working together, to make it possible for some 13000+ woman to meet up at the Sydney Entertainment center for a few days of fellowship, worship and teaching sessions.

I believe the months ahead will be a time of personal growth for everyone wanting to go further with the Lord. There are the times of obvious growth through challenges we face, sort of the more rough seasons when you feel you’re getting stretched in almost every aspect of life. An then there are the silent seasons where God comes an meets you, as he did with Elijah through a “gentle and quiet whisper” - a time when God wants to affirm in depth who He is. I believe this is such a season. I believe God wants us to come closer to him without fear - that kind of fear that the people of Israel had by the mount of Sinai. They realized God is holy, and they were not, so they were filled with fear that they would be destroyed because of their sins. But we are able to come close to him because Jesus made it possible. He took the wrath of God on him, and that’s why we can have a clean consciousness and boldly come before him. That’s why we can be friends with the Most Holy God. And I believe the time is now - to strengthen that friendship, to say to God: “Here I am, I want to fellowship with you”.

And out of the quite affirming whisper will come new hope, new strength, new passion and new life!

Hillsong Stockholm - welcomed by Swedish church leaders

So - a Hillsong Church has entered the Scandinavian map. Sunday was a big day for former Passion Church lead by Andreas Nielsen, when it was announced that they change their name to Hillsong Stockholm. And according to Andreas himself and people related to the church, in many ways it’s nothing more than that, a name change - an acknowledgment of them being a part of the Hillsong family, as they’ve been from the beginning.

What will be more interesting is the response in Sweden and Scandinavia.
Some might argue that the response doesn’t matter, really. And for Hillsong Stockholm, it might not matter that much, I’m sure they will do their mission to reach Sweden anyway. But the respons will matter for Scandinavia in general.

I was very happy to read in the Swedish news paper Dagen that Pelle Hörnmark, Superintendent of the Swedish pentecostal movement, was present on Sunday and acknowledged Hillsong Stockholm. Hörnmark says he believes that Hillsong can contribute to the Swedish Pentecostal movement.

Stefan Swärd, pioneer pastor at Söderhöjdskyrkan, points out important it is that the churches do reach the young people, and congratulates Hillsong Stockholm at his blog.

Others church leaders congratulating the “new” church are Richard Svensson pastoring Norrortskyrkan and Per-Johan Stenstrand pastoring LifeCenter, a Hillsong-like church.

Sweden, scandinavia and Europe is in a great need of contemporary churches. Last week Dagen wrote a series of articles about the huge amount young adults leaving churches in Sweden. Also in Finland the fact that young people leave many churches received wide attention in media last year. Of course there are great examples of churches breaking the trend, and attracting young people. But the need is so much greater.

It’s easy to make church politics about new churches, and unfortunately in Finland there have been extremely few church plants the last decades, and even fewer successful ones. Sweden and Norway haven’t been as conservative, and are somewhat better of with new growing churches, as well as some older churches turning into a positive trend.

In the beginning of the 20th century there wasn’t room for what became the pentecostal movement, in the existing denominations. In the coming decades, I believe the pentecostal churches, as well as other, will have their chance not to do the same mistake, but to embrace the new churches (not saying it’s a new movement!), and if willing, to find that the new churches brings necessary life and new thinking which will contribute to Christianity on wider scale.

It is indeed great to see Hillsong on the Scandinavian map. Congratulations to Andreas & Lina Nielsen!

Hillsong Vision Sunday 2008!!

Building a church of 25000 people is incredible.
Leading a church of 25000 people is a big task.
Empowering the body of Christ, building strong well-rooted Christians is what every spiritual leader is called to do.

Seeing the life of Hillsong Church with my own eyes is breath taking, challenging and extremely inspiring.
Seeing the sincerity of the leaders, to truly equip every Christian to live successful lives and to fulfill their calling is good for my twisted European view of what a big church is and can be about.

Today Pastors Brian and Bobbie shared the vision for year 2009 (which wasn’t just their own thoughts, but that of the eldership and leadership in the church!), mainly through a great film/multimedia presentation. And shortly put, it can be concluded with the three words: FAITH, HOPE and LOVE.

Two big new things were announced amongst many other:

- the Gift Exchange an opportunity for people skilled in an area to train others

- Hillsong Stockholm was launched! Passion Church, lead by Andreas & Lina Nielsen, has from the beginning been built on Hillsong values and has been overseed by Hillsong. So it wasn’t necessarily a big surprise for everyone, but it will definetly impact Sweden and Scandinavia.

Also they’ve launched their new website at http://www.hillsong.com

I’m personally very thrilled to see what 2009 has waiting. I believe it will be a great year when the people of God has the opportunity to draw close to him, and experience his limitless grace and abundant love, and to rise up as light in the world!

College Break & brief update….

Wooow, time flies fast when you have fun. Or just quite a lot to do.

So the first semester at Hillsong College ended last week monday. We had a great graduation dinner and graduation cermony. These five months have been truely amazing, and I’m extremely joyful that we did choose to come to Sydney. It’s really impossible to understand on beforehand what an impact it will have to move to the other side of the world.

Perspective

Being some what of an explorer, I’ve enjoyed every bit of it, getting into and exploring the country as well as culture and church and college life. The best part though, has been and is, to learn from a great church. And doing so on a healthy distance from Europe and what used to be everyday life back home. I enjoyed every bit of that too, but the more perspective on something, the better. And the further away the better perspective. So already that’s a good excuse to come to Australia.

I’m planning on writing some more about the college and Hillsong. One thing is sure, if you think about investing a year in a Bible College, make sure to consider and pray about Hillsong College. And if you have questions, feel free to contact us!

During the college break I’ll be working full-time in December as a web development consultant, in January we’ll be doing some traveling. But I’m already looking very much forward to the next semester, as we’ll get into new interesting areas of serving and new subjects.

More to come!

A heck of a stunning wife

Prayer meeting with 4500 people @ church

Is Hillsong a church that believes in prayer? How important do they thing prayer is? Do they pray for the sick? Does people get healed? Can you see God performing miracles? - Many people think it’s mostly about the music. How wrong they are.

In every weekend service there is time for prayer requests. AND - for prayer reports. It’s amazing what God does. Every week there are reports about people getting healed, marriages reconciled, people restored, financial miracles. And - most importantly, through out the week, there is a solid prayer life through out the whole city - of course in peoples personal time with God, but also in the connect groups that gather - and form a network of people ready to pray for their friends at any time of the day or night.

Last sunday Pastor Brian had wanted to gather the church to a big prayer meeting - in times when many people face financial challenges and a lot of stress and pressure due to the circumstances in the global financial markets. So two evening meetings where changed to one big prayer meeting at 6pm.

The church was packed, and the atmosphere full of expectation. The church prayed together - for all prayer requests - and in sections, for the continents and their specific situations. There was a strong sense of togetherness, and that God walks through all seasons and situations with his people. Mighty is he!

Two new photo albums!

Some time ago we visited the Blue Mountains, and a couple of weeks ago the most beautiful Nelson Bay. Take a check at the photo albums below and get a taste of the nature and life of Australia!

Go to the Blue Mountains album

Go to the Nelson Bay Album

Food, friends and a pool: Married couples potluck

One great thing since we’ve arrived has been the parties with the married couples from college. We’ve met about once a month, and it’s been really fun to get to know other married couples at college. As some girl expressed it: “I’d want to be married just to get to go to those parties” Yepp - you bet it’d be worth it!

At saturday we had a married couples party at our place. Barbecue, salad, fellowship, and games in the pool. Quite a few turned up, and it was great fun from the beginning to the end. Especially nice was to once again get to know some new people. You’ll find more pictures below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Getting under the surface - five weeks at Hillsong college

I wrote some thoughts in August when we had been 5 weeks at college. It gives a pretty good picture on some areas of what Hillsong College is about. And with two months more perspective, it’s just gotten even better.

Written 28th of August:

It’s amazing how fast time can fly. It’s soon three weeks since we started college - and almost 2 weeks since we were isolated from cyberspace and thrown into the jungle of northern Sydney. Finally able to write some posts.

Two first weeks we had two subjects as intense courses - Introduction to pastoral leadership and Teamwork. This week the actual subjects for this semester starts off.

What stands out

There are a few things that stands out already during our first weeks here at Hillsong, and the college. One of my personal concerns during times of decision what Bible College or pastoral education to attend, was not to know the actual profile of Hillsong Church never the less the college. But every day so far, I’ve found myself concluding that what I see and experience is very good.

Wisdom and balance

Hillsong is a pentecostal church, but born in an postmodern age. Traditional old-time pentecostals would ask where the shouting in tongues and all the profecies are. Traditional evangelicals might find the sound a bit too loud or the worship too enthusiastic. Or as someone put it: Too relevant. But it seems nothing is left to chance, but that things are done a certain way for a reason. And, the main reason that actually determines what is reasonable is the vision statement of the church, which is mainly based on the Great Commission.
Shortly put - the church [the people that are the church] exists for the lost and for its community, not to serve itself. That’s the cause of the church, and what ever that takes, is to be lived out through the life of the people that are the church.

Personal growth

The emphasis is - in words of the College Vice President Mark Hopkins - in both knowing AND experiencing God. It’s not so much about performing (as many would think) as about serving. It’s not so much about your gifts as about your attitude. Character is valued more then charisma. Charisma might be a good bonus, but worthless without character.

Atmosphere and expectance

Atmosphere is highly valued - and not without reason. Starting from when people enter the parking area, everyone will know they are valued and important - not only through words, but through how they are met. Also at College I sense an attitude of respect, warmth and care that seems very genuine.

Depth

During our first lessons in Introduction to Pastoral Leadership I was taken by the insight shared by the pastors from all the different departments. It was easy to tell that these people had really put thought into their specific age-group or area of responsibility, to understand their task not merely on a theological or typically pastoral, but also on a sociological level which looks into the situation in the community and the everyday lives of the people that are to be reached, won for Jesus, and discipled.

Observe that these are just a few points that covers some areas that stood out the very first weeks. Much more could be said about the contents of the teaching itself etc. But will be for a later post.