What Trash?
If you don’t know my name is Jeremy Barry Randall.
I’m 4 months off turning 26.
Born and raised in the capital city of Australia – Canberra. 340,000 people.
I grew up the second son, third child of Stephen Richard and Willie Allie Randall, pastors of a church for 30 years.
I saw many weird and wonderful people come through our doors, stay at our house, eat dinner with us, just be around us.
I love community. I love people, I love how freaky weird they are and I love how passionate and individual Gods love is for us. I’m slowly learning that God has great plans for all of us. Great plans that we have to risk certain normalcy to accomplish. But in Gods eyes these risks are the normal. They are the things we’ve been created for.
I just recently went on missions trips to Ukraine and India and something clicked in me to make me write.
I have had a unique view of community in many ways and because of my church history I have had unique views of the church. The origins of this project lay in this:
in India cows are treated like gods. They were transport for the gods so they are treated with a strange respect. Where when you build a house the first visitor must be a cow to bless it. You cant hit cows on the road although it would be easy to do. And cows are just free to roam the streets.
So you have these god like creatures roaming the streets and not being looked after at all so they just eat trash. They eat whatever they can find. And just munch on plastic bags. And to me that seems disrespectful. If they are really godly wouldn’t you put them all up in a five star hotel and feed them only the best??
And then I started thinking about church. The community God invited into his family. We too, milk church in the morning. And respectfully let it into our homes when we build them. But then outside of these times a lot of the time we just let the cow roam and eat trash.
So I thought id explore the communities I find myself in and see if they could apply to making church less of a cow that eats trash. And more of a place that uses the space god has given us to make space for other people and jesus. We as humans are good at making agendas but how good are we at letting god set the agendas of our lives and churches.
I want this to be a dialogue with brothers and sisters world wide, in love, in submission. I want to learn and process with others what church could be and how we get it there more then just who is wrong or right.
I love the bride, I love the body, I love the house and i want us to enjoy it and eat and drink deeply of the heavenly realities that paul talks about whilst bringing the kingdom to earth.
Join me.
Don’t Eat Trash
Jeremy – the Holy Spirit move in you is super good, I love it brother!
This is what a mission trip is suppose to stir in us, and I can tell your journey is in the right path.
Excited to see the fresh fire Lord has poured in you, my fire in me is kindled today – thank you, burn bright for Christ!
Thank you brother
Dude….seriously good writing. hits it home for sure.
thanks heaps.
thank you. A lot. Is your experience similar?
Kind of. I don’t come from a background of ANYTHING to do with church, i am a first gen christian. and to start with, it was hard, because i sort of was like ‘ok so i’m coming to church, and thats cool, i’ll be really good and super spiritual on sundays, then whatever…” I have been saved for two and a half years (got saved in canberra actually!- i live in Byron Bay now) and only in the last six months, and especially really in the last month I have been fully into reading my bible and living a life that doesn’t treat God or church, like this cow (as you put it) that just kind of wanders around and is sacred when i desire it to be. I’m finally starting to have this actual relationship with God, which was kind of always there, but i just didn’t really put effort into it. Loving your blog.I just started writing becuase I love telling stories, making people laugh and relating to people, and now God’s taken that and really put on my heart the actual direction I can take it in, to share the gospel with people who are like i once was. So that is my work in progress
thats awesome. I love when God gives direction to stuff we love doing. Byron is sweet. are you enjoying living there?
Jeremy, I just woke up in Kona, Hawaii, saw a post from my friend Breno, who posted a link to your blog. And it is…amazing! Keep doing it. Maybe we can meet some day!
that would be very fun to meet. and thanks. this blog has been something that has continued to fascinate me with how this journey with God keeps changing everything. hahahaha. Its fun even for me to watch where i go. what are you doing this week?
This week? helping initiate some writers do an online ‘Campus Times’ for our campus. Packing for a trip to Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Leaving in 3 days. Waking up early cause of 11 hours jetlag coming, trying to adjust in advance.Trying to raise more money than I have ever done, to buy a home for my wife and I here in Kona. Meeting with some amazing young leaders. Reminding myself of words from the living God, to keep me from falling short of His purposes, fighting unbelief. Enjoying a short visit from my photographer daughter and our grand daughter, who live in Brooklyn, New York. http://www.brookelynphotography.com Downloading some writings from Donald Miller, who is one of the best storytellers I know of. Trying to change the date of a board meeting. Getting ready to give a short enouraging word on worship that is costly to about 800 YWAMers who gather here each Monday morning for an hour. Kind of normal thing.
wow. you have an adventurous and glorious life. im honoured that you would visit this comment. hahaha.. i agree, donald miller is incredible. how did your monday word go?
LOVE IT JEZ!