Wednesday, March 31

confessions of a backchannel queen

mamamusings: confessions of a backchannel queen

I don't spend a lot of time in IRC when I'm home or at work, but when I travel it becomes a wonderful "home away from home" for me. A place that provides familiarity in new settings, and friendly voices when I'm feeling isolated.

At SXSW this year there was a whole sub-culture of IRC participants who would use the backchannel as a means of commenting on the presentation underway as well as asking and answering questions to others on the channel--generally connecting the audience in a manner not unlike passing notes in elementary school. Except, unlike in school, one could pass notes to everyone signed onto the channel not simply to individuals.

When churches are wifi-enabled this is an interesting potential outcome. While blogging a sermon or conference is akin to reporting or commentary and fact checking such events is research--sitting in the backchannel is silent, real-time interaction by those without the microphone.


posted by Dan | 7:19 AM | |


Tuesday, March 30

Patience

There are times I get discouraged about our efforts to begin a new faith community. But today I wrote down a list of people who we have relational connections with, who have expressed some level of interest in this community. It's not a huge list, but it's not small, either. God grant me patience--again!

I'm gonna use some discussion around Church of the Saviour in the next round of gatherings at the pub and at St. Arbucks. They are living the kingdom big-time. It's not a perfect community, but one from whom there it lots to learn.

I'd be very interested in your "start up" stories. What did things look like as you were just begining your community of faith? What does it look like now? What have been some of the ups and downs. Post your comments. Help a brother out.

posted by Craig | 3:57 AM | |


Monday, March 29

My friend Peter

Obedience?

I like Peter Rabbit--for all the wrong reasons!

You see, I identify with him, especially the fact that he gets into so much mischief. Although a first-born, I have a strong craving for risk. The moral fabric of my soul is frayed from the constant battle I wage between the desire to obey the rules and my spirit of adventure.

If one were choosing role models, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail--Peter's siblings--should be the obvious choices. After all, because they are "good" and obedient, they get the bread and milk and blackberries for supper while Peter gets none. Plus, their cute little bunny outfits stay clean and neat while Peter's gets stranded all over Mr. McGregor's garden. Even though they are the ones the story honors, their lives seem droll and drab, lacking fun and interest.

The story highlights Peter's misadventures in Mr. McGregor's garden to tell us the moral of the story--"See what happens to those who disobey?" My response? "Okay. But I still want to join Peter for tomorrow's escapade."

The nagging question that emerges from Peter's story is, "What kind of person would I be had I obeyed my parents 100% of the time?" Strange as it may sound, disobedience has been a better teacher than obedience in my life. Instead being "obedient" like Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who were "good little bunnies," it was the times I was squeezing myself under Mr. McGregor's gate that have taught me most about myself.

Is God asking me to lead a life of total obedience? Is that the kind of existence that awaits me as a follower?


  • When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son in a pagan ritual was God asking for total obedience or was he asking Abraham to argue/converse with Him as Abraham had done many times before?
  • When God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden was His hope for obedience or a conversation about why the knowledge of good and evil would lead to death?
  • When the lost son returns and Father throws a massive party, it is, ironically, the "obedient" older brother whose heart has turned to stone. The older son, for all his "obedience" has not experienced what a relationship with his father could mean. So, what good was his obedience? This seems to be the question the story ends with.


100% obedience doesn't sound like the life God asks me to live. It doesn't sound as whole and healthy as it once did.

Lord may I not wonder so far as to lose my way home.


posted by joe | 4:02 PM | |

Rethinking Evangelism

A conversation with Dallas Willard
Evangelism
Much of evangelism today is rooted in a misunderstanding of salvation. People have been told they are Christians because they have confessed they believe that Jesus died for their sins, but the total package is presented in such a way that it leaves the general life untouched.
Biblically, salvation means deliverance; the question is, “Deliverance from what?” The common message is “deliverance from guilt.” But the full concept of salvation in the New Testament is deliverance from our present sins. Deliverance from sins comes from the new life of God’s Kingdom when we place our confidence in Jesus the person.
The problem is that we have been obsessed with this idea that the real issue is “making the cut” to get to heaven. We have taken the discipleship out of conversion.
The Gospel
In today’s presentation of the gospel, Jesus’ death is primarily presented as a ransom that deals with guilt and the effects of guilt regarding our standing before God. But there is more to life than guilt. Once you have been forgiven, you still have to live. Jesus is about the redemption of actual life from actual sin. It is by entering into his life, which is still ongoing on earth, that we are delivered from actual sin. The New Testament is absolutely clear on this. You just take Colossians 3, Philippians 3, 1 John and Titus 3. All make it clear that the righteousness which is by faith is a matter of being delivered from the evil that is around us in action and that we are in danger of falling into ourselves.
Faith in the living Christ raises us above merely being delivered from the consequences of sin. We need a doctrine not only of justification but of regeneration. We need a picture of our life in God that does not leave most of our life untouched. What has happened today is that we’ve reduced salvation to justification. We’ve reduced the saving work of Christ to his death on the cross. So what relevance has the resurrected Christ? None! Apparently, we would have gone to heaven even if Christ had never risen from the dead, because the payment was made in full on the cross. At that point, we would have all gone to heaven because God could not have found anything against us; it would have all been forgiven. Nothing else would have been available to us to make us ready for heaven, so that we would be comfortable when we get there! I shudder when I think of many people who are professing Christians today winding up in heaven; I don’t know what’s going to happen to them. I think they could not be very happy in heaven if they have not gotten acclimated here.
Discipleship
The leading assumption in the American church is that you can be a Christian but not a disciple. That has placed a tremendous burden on a mass of Christians who are not disciples. We tell them to come to church, participate in our programs and give money. But we see a church that knows nothing of commitment. We have settled for the marginal, and so we carry this awful burden of trying to motivate people to do what they don’t want to do. We can’t think about church the way we have been.
We need to clear in our heads about what discipleship is. My definition: A disciple is a person who has decided that the most important thing in their life is to learn how to do what Jesus said to do. A disciple is not a person who has things under control, or knows a lot of things. Disciples simply are people who are constantly revising their affairs to carry through on their decision to follow Jesus.
Dialogue
Evangelism is for the lost. People who regard themselves as not in need can be enjoyed as good company, but there is not much that will be done for them if they think they don’t have a need.
Now, for those who have a need, it’s very simple. You help them understand their need, and then you tell them that if they put their confidence in Christ now, in the sense that “confidence” ordinarily has in human life—which is to trust and to act on that trust—they will come to know a different kind of life than they presently have. They will enter into an interactive life with God and his Kingdom, and there will be differences in their life which can only be understood in those terms.
We can invite people to find out about this. A standard move for me when I find someone who would like to know more is to say “Why don’t you read the Gospel of Mark and come back next week and we’ll talk about it?”
Evangelism and the Church
The primary function of the church is not evangelism, but to be a place for the dwelling of God on the earth. This requires that people grow and receive God and occupy their place with God. That would have a natural effect of evangelism. What we want is not just evangelism that makes converts. We want disciples...and if you are intent on making disciples and keep on that track, evangelism will take care of itself.
Of course, understanding that evangelism is a natural function of a healthy Body doesn’t preclude specific efforts. But the role of the community would be a primary factor in this. Many people will be drawn in without any special strategy but simply by the health of the people.
Right now, evangelism with big meetings is in a very hard place—not only in trying to keep it going, but because of its results. Three out of four people who make professions at crusades never show up in any church. That’s partly due to the fact that in our notions of evangelism today, being converted has nothing to do with community; it just has to do with your “personal relationship” with God.
Link via Jason Clark

posted by Jordon | 3:26 PM | |

A Magna Carta

Dan Hughes just posted this
...We believe that there is an inherent risk in the theologies and ecclesiologies that have come to dominate the memory of the man Jesus. We envision a direct, participatory spirituality whose modalities rest more in the patterns of day-to-day life than in the cycles of attendance and consumption that have come to define the dominate brands soliciting patronage in the name of Christ.

We believe that the fattened, current systems of empowered Christianity are vulnerable to one thing: less. These systems are built on the presumption that people will always want more. The organizational master plans presume this. The staffing levels, the building projects, the criteria of success all circumambulate the idol of more. These systems are unable to cope with less: people who find community in the normal connections of their daily lives rather than purpose-driven programs with a community label; those not interested in the system's alternatives to Disneyland and MTV, who don't need another Jesus-coloring-book Adult Sunday School class or desire to contribute to the capital stewardship drive to build the new wing.

Less brings with it the spectre of irrelevance. That gnawing sense that there may in fact be little purpose now in the things that have passed as Church....
You can read the rest of it here.

posted by Jordon | 12:04 PM | |


Saturday, March 27

Larry Lessig's book Free Culture

Available as a free download here.

posted by Jordon | 2:09 PM | |

create an e-mail to send to the future

right here

posted by Jordon | 11:56 AM | |


Friday, March 26

Persecution and the emerging church

Losing your life

The above link takes you to a thread where someone asked about what type of persecution the emerging church faces. I won't rehash everything I did in a post on the thread, but there are some thoughts I wanted to share with THEOOZE blog community.

I think a major theme in the emerging church which underlies much of what we do is that we want to make the only offense of the gospel to be the message of the gospel. If that is offensive, so be it. For me, I see the established church as bringing much persecution on itself for things which are unnecessary. Whether it be aligning with a political party or trying to become the morals police for our culture, there are things which bring about hatred and persecution that are unnecessary.

I can see how someone could think the emerging church is just trying to make everyone happy. When we talk of changing to engage culture, there could be a sense of compromise. For some, I believe this is probably an accurate assessment. But it would be wrong to characterize the entire movement as driven by a need to fit in and not offend. Some of my beliefs, and the conviction by which I share them, are still not accepted by a "postmodern" world. I am okay with that, because I believe I am holding to essentials of my faith. And maybe essentials isn't even an accurate description, because much of what I hold to be true I am okay with being wrong about. Not all, but there are some things. If I never fully comprehend how God views those who have sexual lifestyles I am not okay with, I am okay with that. It won't break me if in eternity I am spending it with those who disagreed with me on it, and... they were right and I was wrong.

I will, however, not condone things I can't fully support. I will relate and love and cherish friendships with those who think differently, especially if they can do the same with me. I have many friends and acquaintances who think very differently than me on certain issues. For some, they may just assume I approve because I don't condemn them with my words or my actions towards them. When the discussion presents itself, however, I am not afraid to share my convictions and discuss the issues. Most of the time, this doesn't result in persecution. Sometimes, it does.

I realize I use the word persecution loosely, because anything we face here in Western society is miniscule compared to the martyrs of the past and other cultural persecution in regions where religion is a dividing line for all people.

posted by Alan | 7:12 PM | |

Convert your Atom feed to RSS

Here (useful for you Blogger users out there that actually care about such things)

posted by Jordon | 3:51 PM | |

Conferences & Festivals & Gatherings

Caterina Fake has a great post on the different spaces in which people gather.

posted by Jordon | 9:38 AM | |


Wednesday, March 24

Creativity toys, anyone?

I'm planning to invest in some creativity toys for my staff and me. We work for a secular university, where we write news releases, feature articles, stories about university research, etc., and we're in need of some stimuli. Anyone got any good ideas for creativity toys? Besides this? I'd love to hear your recommendations. Thanks.

posted by Andrew | 1:51 PM | |


Monday, March 22

If we worshipped the Northern Lights

God and the Northern Lights are stunningly similar in some ways. This thought came to me as I was driving to the cabin this winter. Just before I hit Shell Lake I noticed this incredible display in the sky. I stopped the car, grabbed my camera and tried to capture this image digitally but all my camera could see was darkness. I know some photographers with the right equipment and the correct settings on their camera can capture Aurora Borealis, but it was beyond my capability. My mind began to explore the analogy.

The Northern Lights are so much like God in many ways.
You can’t fully capture essence and experience of God with human words. Much in the same way my camera can’t capture the Northern Lights. My half hearted attempt rendered no results at all. There are some that are as skillful with their words as some are with their cameras. They can deliver a likeness, a still shot which captures one facet of the beauty of what they observe but it is nothing like the real thing.

Those that first put words to the experience with the Northern Lights wrote about it. Some are letters from a group of light aficionados; others are historical accounts of the first discoverers. They form the first body of literature surrounding the lights and an organization is formed to experience the Lights. It is called the Holy Church of Lights.

An early church theologian would look at the Northern Lights and say. They are not reflections in the sky, fire, or smoke. They are not the sun, the moon or the stars. They aren’t anything people put in the sky. They dance, they have colour, they are found in the North, and often light up the sky. Some even say you can hear them crackle.

This would be just about perfect because this framework gives people just enough information to go and experience the Northern Lights and know what they are experiencing is the Northern Lights.

Eventually people would develop methods for viewing the lights and begin to define them even further. The lights are green. The lights are purple. The lights are blue. The lights crackle. They don’t crackle. People should watch the lights standing up. People should watch the lights lying down. The followers of the lights would get mad at each other over the other’s apparent heresy and split up.

Then someone would come along and say all this stuff written about the Northern Lights is inconsistent. We need to go back the earliest writings about the Northern Lights and view them as the sole authority over our theology of the lights. The traditionalists will counter by saying if you do that people will begin to interpret the writings themselves and it will fracture the Holy Church of Lights. This is exactly what happened.

A new age of enlightenment came and people began to consider the whole scope and relevance of the lights. People began to live in large cities with electric lights obscuring their vision of the sky. One group looked at the body of literature surrounding the Lights and concluded that the lights are not real because the writings are inconsistent. One person says they are green and crackle. The other says they are blue and don’t crackle. 'These lights are just a superstition' they said.

Some people objected and said 'All you need to do is go to the north, get out of the city and you will see them'. The enlightened people respond 'I went once and didn’t see anything, it is all myth'. The faithful 'No, they don’t appear every night, and sometimes it is only for a short while. You need to make some sort of dedication to see them'. The enlightened answer 'You guys have just tricked yourself in to believing those things are real. I have all the light I need in this little city.'

There were some who were frightened by new critical approach to the ancient writings so they formed a coalition against them. The Perfectionists. They declared all early writings to be total consistent and perfect. They began to study them in earnest. An entire culture developed around this coalition to the point where studying the writings took precedence over seeing the lights. Eventually a culture of organizational success came over these people. They began to build large organizations dedicated in name to the lights. The fractured segments the Holy Church of Lights began to compete earnestly with each other and flocked to conferences that gave them the latest method to build their organizations. The followers of the lights became cogs in an organizational machine.

The faithful began to come in to conflict with the perfectionists. Especially if they didn’t believe the ancient texts were totally perfect or if they thought some of the writings were flavoured by the author’s perception and context. The perfectionists thought that once you gave up on their view of the ancient texts you would slide down the slippery slope to the enlightenment camp.

Some people in the perfectionist coalition began to become disillusioned. They lost faith in the institutions that guided them. Some felt abused. Others questioned the consistency and integrity of the institutions that claimed to follow the lights. Some became so tired of the hollow dogmatism they embraced all forms of light to find truth. They dabbled in electric light, fires, candle light. They concluded that no one can ever be really sure that they’ve seen the lights. No one sees anything perfectly anyway.

Those that had actually seen the Northern Lights said 'You should come North with us in the winter time. If you get away from the electrical light you will see some dazzling Northern lights'. The disillusioned responded 'You guys are just being a bunch of intolerant fundamentalists. Who are you to say that there isn’t truth in the electric light.'

posted by LT | 10:16 AM | |


Sunday, March 21

To Grad School I (Won't) Go.

And that's my final answer, at least for now. One of the toughest things about being a senior in college is finally having to answer the question of what one wants To Do with the rest of one's life. Problem is, this One - i.e. me - has absolutely no idea what she wants to do. And even after months of prayer, God isn't lighting any shrubbery on fire or sending winged men to deliver otherwordly messages to me. So I'm at a loss of what to do.

One of the benefits - or in this specific case, downfalls - of attending a private college is that intelligent, hardworking young people are often assumed to be headed to grad school after graduation. Especially when a major like Psychology is chosen. Or at least, that's what I have been feeling from professors and other college employees that know and like me. the phrase Graduate School clings to me like a cloud of stuffy perfume - or like a lump of dog doo on the bottom of my sneaker that refuses to be scraped off.

And while the "G" word is lapped up with only the sound of lips smacking together by many of my classmates, I don't find myself liking the taste of it very much. It's a little too rich for my tastes. So, after halfheartedly perusing a few grad school sites and search engines, I've decided to give up. Not on my continuing desire to learn after I graduate, just on my desire to earn yet another degree or write any more papers or take any more exams.

After my bachelor's degree, I'm through. And through is a pretty good place to be right now.

posted by Lydia | 4:56 PM | |


Saturday, March 20

We are so sorry...

Condolences to Rudy. Stanford lost.

posted by Jordon | 6:29 PM | |

Snam, snam, snam, snam...

Fast Company taught me a new word this week: snam.

It's short for "social network spam" -- those annoying, impersonal messages from social networking services like orkut, the "online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends." (The "snam" story is so far only available in the paper version of April's Fast Company so don't bother trying to find it via the link above.) This past week, I received three invitations to join orkut. I haven't acted on any of the invitations, other than to write my trusted friends a personal email thanking them for the invitation but explaining my reservations about the entire schemed.

There are a few things about this snam business that stick in my craw. I mention a few of them here. I know a few folks on this blog use orkut or perhaps some other online social networking service but I'm not convinced they're good tools for strengthening social networks in cyberspace.

Opinions, anyone?

posted by Andrew | 10:25 AM | |


Friday, March 19

20x2


20x2 is a thoughtful, frenzied, mind-numbing event of rapid-fire creative thinking on big, open questions. It has taken place four times in the last three years. It usually runs within the weeks of SXSW events in Austin. Twenty thought leaders, artists and interesting people at large are invited to speak for two minutes each on a particular topic. This year was, "What's the big idea." In under an hour you have heard from 20 top cultural creatives and you walk away with scores of fresh ideas that their concise, insightful words have sparked in your own thinking.

I am planning a trip to Nashville in May to attend EC'04 (site not Mozilla friendly). I had an email exchange with Mark Oestreicher, President of YS today about trying to arrange a Book Club morning get together with Jack Caputo sometime during the conference. I also suggested that we try to arrange a 20x2-like event. Getting 20 thoughtful bloggers, artists, authors, theologians and pastors would not be difficult at an event like this. Mark suggested that we hold off a year and do it in both California and Nashville next year. That is probably the wise thing to do... but, then again, perhaps there are enough people interested to pull off an unofficial 20x2? What do you think?


posted by Dan | 3:13 PM | |

a very rough draft

a magna carta of sorts
plagiarizing some thoughts together

...WE HAVE LOST PATIENCE waiting for reform. The corporations that are actively trading on the name and reputation of a homeless man will not be the source for personal healing, local renewal, ecological stewardship and international, interracial or intercommunal peacemaking so long as they find their purpose in the empty excellence of the various trickle-down spiritualities that make up Christianity, Inc.


posted by Dan | 9:41 AM | |


Thursday, March 18

Howard Rheinhold's

talk at SXSW as blogged by Dan Hughes

posted by Jordon | 8:33 PM | |


Wednesday, March 17

Why America's young are being crushed by debt—and why no one seems to care

in the Village Voice
The cumulative effect is that merely keeping one's head above water, rather than getting ahead, has become the top priority for Americans between the ages of 18 and 34. Pursuing the relatively modest dream of doing better than the generation before requires serious capital—up front in the form of tuition and loans, and hidden in the form of lost opportunities. Call it the ambition tax—the money you've got to pony up if you want a college degree and a shot at middle-class bliss. But it's really more of a gamble, as there's no guarantee those tens of thousands of dollars will get you where you want to go.

"The next generation is starting their economic race 50 yards behind the starting line," says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor and author of The Two-Income Trap. "They've got to pay off the equivalent of one full mortgage before they make it to flat broke, in order to pay for their education. They can never get ahead of the game, because they're constantly trying to play catch-up.

"And once you've got accumulated debt, the debt takes on a life of its own. It demands to be fed, and it takes that first bite out of the paycheck. And it means the opportunity to accumulate a little, to get a little ahead, to maybe put together a down payment—it's just never there. It's just staggering to me that this is not a part of our national debate right now."

If the early rhetoric in the presidential race is any indicator, neither candidate cares a whit about the struggles of America's young. George Bush and John Kerry are happy to trade barbs about draft dodging and flip-flopping. But they've yet to utter more than a few peeps about alleviating the unique economic burdens of the next generation, and the one after, and the one after. It's almost as if Americans under the age of 35 don't exist.
via Bob Carlton. It's not just an American problem either, it is Wendy and I and a whole bunch of people I know. Tom Sine has some interesting thoughts on this and its impact on the church and missions but as the article said, not too many people care.

posted by Jordon | 4:29 PM | |

Consider the Turtles of the Field

Many evangelicals find themselves in an emerging theological habitat, where care of creation is central to mission. by Brian McLaren in Sojourners
The surface causes of environmental carelessness among conservative Protestants are legion, including subcontracting the evangelical mind out to right-wing politicians and greedy business interests…putting the gospel of Jesus through the strainer of consumerist-capitalism and retaining only the thin broth that this modern-day Caesar lets pass through...a tendency to be against whatever "liberals" are for. Even more important, though, are the deeper theological roots of environmental disinterest - and the emerging theological values that many of us are embracing instead.
People who are sensitive to creation know that creation is in constant flux. Continents drift, climates change, magnetic poles flip-flop, and bogs like this one gradually give way to wet meadows and then various kinds of forests. There's a natural succession out here under the sun, and I think there's a kind of natural succession going on theologically for many Christians as well. Let me mention three of these elements.
FIRST, INCREASED CONCERN for the poor and oppressed leads to increased concern for all of creation. The same forces that hurt widows and orphans, minorities and women, children and the elderly also hurt the songbirds and trout, the ferns and old growth forests: greed, impatience, selfishness, arrogance, hurry, anger, competition, irreverence - plus a spirituality that cares for souls but neglects bodies, that prepares for eternity in heaven but abandons history on earth.
When greed and consumerism are exposed, when arrogance and irreverence are unplugged, when hurry and selfishness are named and repented of, the world and all it contains (widows, orphans, trees, soil) are revalued (or re-deemed) and made sacred again. No, in this emerging view, these little bog turtles we're looking for today are a priceless treasure, an original creation of the greatest Artist in (and beyond) history - even though they are deemed precisely worthless to someone who would want to build a interstate highway through this bog.
Second, the eschatology of abandonment is being replaced by an engaging gospel of the kingdom. The phenomenon of evangelical-dispensational eschatology (doctrine of last things or end times) makes perfect sense in the modern world. Understandably, Christians in the power centers of modernity (England in the 1800s, the United States in the 1900s) saw nothing ahead in the story of modernity - nothing but destruction. Their only hope? A skyhook Second Coming, wrapping up the whole of creation like an empty candy wrapper and throwing it in the trash can, and the sooner the better, so God could bring us all to heaven, beyond time, beyond matter, beyond this creation entirely. In this model, virtually no continuity exists between this creation and the new heavenly creation; this creation is discarded like a non-recyclable milk carton. Why get sentimental about a cheap container destined for the cosmic dumpster of nothingness?
This pop-evangelical eschatology made one understandable but serious mistake: It assumed that modernity was all there was or ever would be. Just as the early Christians could not imagine the gospel outlasting the Roman Empire (unless they got the point of the Apocalypse of John), 19th and 20th century evangelicals couldn't imagine the gospel outlasting modernity, the empire of reason, consumerism, and individualism. For pop-evangelical eschatology to proliferate and maintain hegemony, it had to reinterpret the Hebrew prophets. Their prophetic visions of reconciliation and shalom within history (metaphorically conveyed via lions and lambs, children and serpents, swords and plowshares, spears and pruning hooks) had to be pushed beyond history, either into a spiritualized heaven or a millennial middle ground - between history and eternity, so to speak.

The eschatology of abandonment also had to marginalize Jesus (which they did, to a degree, by letting Jesus remain as savior but promoting Paul to master-teacher). But now, as more and more of us rediscover Jesus as master-teacher, we are struck by the centrality of "the kingdom of God" in Jesus' message (and Paul's too). And it is clear to us that this kingdom is not just about heaven after we die: It's about God's will (or wish) being "done on earth" now, in history.
Read the rest of the article here

posted by Jordon | 9:01 AM | |


Monday, March 15

New edition of 28mm is now online

Here. 28mm is one of the finest photography webzines online.

posted by Jordon | 3:21 PM | |

How to write better by Rebecca Blood

This explains why she is a better writer than I.

posted by Jordon | 11:02 AM | |


Sunday, March 14

The Spirit at the hair salon...

Jen Lemen posts about ministering at the hair salon. I love this kind of stuff, don't you?

posted by Charlie Wear | 7:39 AM | |


Friday, March 12

Robert Webber at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto

Join Dr. Robert Webber as he speaks on "Ancient-Future Faith" as part of the Honeyman Memorial Lectures. All are welcome to attend this free event. The lectures, to be held in Tyndale's Hooper Chapel, Toronto - include:

Tuesday, March 23, 2004
11:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
Topic:The Shape of Things to Come: The Road to the Future runs through the Past(followed by a book signing outside the chapel)

Tuesday, March 23, 2004
7:30 p.m. - 8:45 p.m.
Topic: Ancient-Future Evangelism

Wednesday, March 24, 2004
11:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
Topic: Ancient-Future Worship

Dr. Webber occupies the William R. and Geraldyne B. Myers Chair of Ministry at Northern Baptist Seminary, and previously served as Professor of Theology at Wheaton College for 32 years. He is among the most respected evangelical theologians and a widely recognized authority on spirituality and worship. He has published numerous articles and over 40 books. Among his recent books are Worship, Evangelism and Nurture: the Missional Church in a Postmodern World (Abingdon, 2001) and The Younger Evangelical: a New Kind of Conservative in the Postmodern World (Baker, 2001).

Tyndale University College & Seminary is proud to be the host of the John Honeyman Memorial Lectures since 1996.

For more information contact Demi Hu at 416-226-6620 ext 2138.

posted by Jordon | 7:07 PM | |


Wednesday, March 10

Alternative Worship FAQ

Link

posted by Jordon | 5:05 PM | |

Fifty years ago, the mall was born. America would never be the same.

by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. via Anil Dash

posted by Jordon | 2:16 PM | |


Tuesday, March 9

Islam 'will be dominant UK religion'

via Religion News Blog
Islam will be the most widely practised religion in the UK by 2020, according to British and Muslim magazine editor Sarah Joseph.
She says mosque attendance is expected to outstrip church attendance over the next 16 years.
Estimates suggest that anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people a year convert to Islam in the UK, which is currently home to approximately 1.8 million Muslims.
"We are the second largest faith in Britain and will be the largest practising faith in Britain by 2020 if you use church and mosque attendance as a measure," she told the GDN.
Sarah Joseph does have a stake in saying such things but it is an interesting comment. Islam is growing very fast in the west and will continue to have more and more of an influence.

posted by Jordon | 7:11 PM | |

Passionate, but Not for Mel's Movie

Why The Passion 'outreach' was all hype, and I didn't fall for it by Brian McLaren
In one world, modern American Christians can be trusted to bounce and bound like golden retrievers from one silver-bullet "outreach opportunity" to the next—seeking single source shortcuts to complete our mission, which we hope to finish as soon as possible, I guess so we can all get to heaven so the world and its troubles are left behind™. Maybe it's a boxed set of books and videos, mass rallies, radio/TV/satellites, the Internet, PowerPoint, or seeker services. Or else it's adult contemporary praise music, electing Republicans, or a new booklet or tract. Maybe it's candles! Or a new model (take your pick from traditional-modern, contemporary-modern, or postmodern-modern) for "doing church." Or a new film.

posted by Jordon | 10:15 AM | |


Monday, March 8

When Gadget Blogs Collide

Link

posted by Jordon | 5:45 PM | |


Friday, March 5

Bless the Lord

Karen Neudorf posted a link to Bless the Lord sung by the Taize community over at One House. It is amazing. It is in Real Audio format.

posted by Jordon | 11:43 AM | |


Thursday, March 4

Mar04 issue of Next-Wave is online

Check out the latest issue of Next-Wave....

posted by Charlie Wear | 7:52 PM | |


Wednesday, March 3

Solomon’s Porch Theology Pub

Doug Pagitt is posting about Solomon's Porch Theology Pub over at his blog.

posted by Jordon | 8:15 PM | |