Tall Skinny Kiwi

hanging with john smith

im at greenbelt - john smith is standing next to me, having a coffee and talking about web sites. our worship thingy went well a few minutes ago.

The Skinny on Greenbelt 1.3

Latest info on Greenbelt and Epicentre Roundtable.
- Mark Pierson will be teaching on worship - I just added the times to the schedule (keep reading)
- Ron Willoughby turned up at my house last night. He will be our official delegate to the Lausanne/Great Commission Roundtable event in Thailand next month. This is something i was a part of 3 years ago in Malaysia, but am not able to make it to Thailand.

Greenbelt Festival is upon us. I will be at the Festival from Friday onwards. Among the 15,000 people coming are a few dozen leaders of emerging church ministries from 15 countries that will gather secretly on Friday afternoon for the Epicentre Roundtable for Global Emerging Church. Shannon Hopkins and Jonny Baker are helping me lead this event. We have had similar roundtables around the world over the past 4 years. This one will be dispersed inside the Greenbelt Festival. If you are participating in the Roundtable, you will be rubbing shoulders with many of the speakers and artists who will be sharing at the Festival. What i have below is the beginning of a 4 day schedule that will be a guide to the right events.

Resonate: Canada Online

I have been waiting for this one . . . resonate.ca , and their blog, went online yesterday.  This will be a significant website for the emerging church in Canada. They told me about it months ago, and its great to see it finally up and online.
Next country to get their stuff together? Emergent Germany (November?)

WabiSabi at Greenbelt 03

Greenbelt last year: We did a thing called Wabi Sabi. It was a multi-generational worship experience with VJ Travis Reed and friends of highway video. There are pictures on the Smallfire site(Thanks Steve). German VJs are lined up to help us this year, but we dont have a lot of people lining up to help put something together (many are already involved in other events) so we need to rethink it.

Roundtable on Friday? It should be great. Lots of fun.

Sep 11 Evangelist

Sujo John called out to Jesus from the World Trade Center. Now he is telling the story of Jesus worldwide . . .

Connect Europe Gathering

The Connect Europe Gathering starts today. They invited me to Geneva to take part in this but . . I have been too busy and still am too busy to attend. What a pity! 50 really cool young leaders from all over Europe. This is one network that I expect great things from. Some of them will be at our Roundtable next week at Greenbelt and they will no doubt get us up to date on what is going on with them. Marc is blogging it.

(WIRED) Cell Phone Users Are Finding God

WIRED NEWS: From Muslims who use their phones to point them toward Mecca, to Roman Catholics who collect text messages from the Vatican, religious observers across the globe are turning to their cell phones for aid and inspiration in practicing their faith. . . (more)

Wagners in da house

Bryce and Sam Wagner (Fuse Factory) and their family are in da house!!!. Great to have them here. They are some of the most talented and disciplined artists i know of. They train up VJ's and DJ's for God at their base in Lausanne. Bryce also produces the graphical publications for Mercy Ships. Great people. Check out their DVD and the video wallpaper that you could use in your service or installation. And check out their web site for weekly updates.
The Wagners have been doing visuals at our roundtables for about 3 years - but they won't be with us at Greenbelt this year.

Gutter Punk

[This is something I wrote in 1998 about my experience with street kids. I found it on an old file - it never got published and i publish it now in its original form because it is also my confession of spiritual abuse. As a pastor, a minister, and a street worker, I sometimes found myself in a position to take advantage of people and find ways to use their story to make my ministry seem stronger or more successful. Its straight-up spiritual abuse, its ugly, and i have seen it before in my own life, despite my crusade against it. This is a constant struggle for missionaries and ministers, and I am not immune to it. I invite you to read it, to hear my story, to offer forgiveness to me. In a few weeks, we will be discussing spiritual abuse at Suddenly Seminary, and it would be helpful for you to read this before turning up.]

Gutter Punk
[Andrew Jones - 1998]

One of her many bracelets was made of car parts. A silvery string of carburator cable to wind around her puny wrist. A treasure, scored form the streets she had called home since being abandoned in New York City as a bewildered child of 11 years.

King's Kruzin - altar call for hot rods

Ever since the Most Right.eous Paul Jackson went on sabbatical, the church members have been running things their own way. Apparently,they have jettisoned the traditional ministries and have turned Glenwood Community Church into a Hot-Rod club. Today's Saturday Service is called "Kings Kruzin'" - I can only guess that this will be a highly 'charged' event where hotted up cars are called to the church for annointing with oil. (Castrol or GTX?). The Bible readings will be from Chev 3:51 and Hemi 4:27 and the childrens Bible story will be about Jehu (2 Kings 9), who "drove his chariot furiously". I am just guessing, of course . . they might actually be having drag races up and down the aisle of their new church sanctuary and the hymn numbers on the wall have probably been converted to red and green flashing lights.
And where is the Rev. Paul Jackson while this is going on behind his back????? He is in our house, with his whole family - Nancy his wife, and their 4 teenagers. Thats a total of 16 hommies in da little 3 bedroom house last night. We had a good pizza night last night and are enjoying all the company. I picked up the Jackson family from Heathrow yesterday.

Something you don't know - I used to be one of their ministers - back in a previous life. Glenwood Community Church, Vancouver, Washington, a church still recovering from having the TallSkinnyKiwi on staff for 2 years, a church of about 1800 in attendance on a good Sunday, although it might be significantly larger and stronger if the Post-TallSkinnyKiwi Healing Process had not taken so long.
Nahhhhh - only joking! We had a great time together and i killed very few of their ministries. The church was a lot smaller when I was the Outreach Pastor (1989-1991) but it is still a very relational church and some great people are there. My job as a pastor back then was to position the church for growth and impact, so I think its only fair if i take ALL the credit for the church's success, despite the fact that i have not be working there for 14 years.
But the King's Kruzin Hot-Rod Altar Call??? That has nothing to do with me - I swear!

The Gospel in a Post Christian Culture

Papers presented at this 2004 Evangelism Roundtable sponsored by the Billy Graham Center's Institute of Strategic Evangelism are available for you to download and read. Brian M. and Brad K. have good papers. Especially Brian, who mentions my concept of "deep ecclesiology". Curse my vanity!!!. Thanks Steve Knight for the tip.

A rotten, no-good, very-bad, horrible day

Last night was a bad night and today is not looking any better.
- Samuel got taken to the hospital early this morning with what might be an asthmatic attack - They are diagnosing him now.
- I was up all night fighting a flu - periods of shivering cold, and then hot smelly sweating. I still feel horrible and sick.
- Our van got tagged by gangs last night with black paint on the back door.
- Bank is not accepting wire deposit.
- Might have a computer virus that is sending out emails to people.

Well, that should be enough to cheer you all up. Hope your day goes better. As for me, I will side up with Job who said, in the Bible's oldest book,
"Though He slay me (Hebrew is 'fillet me', like a fish), yet will I trust in Him".

update: samuel is back with all kinds of blowers and squeezy shwoshy plastic toys to help him breathe and sleep. Good news is that it may just be a temporary viral chest infection. thanks for your prayers . . .

Orkney was incredible

Feels good to be back in london. We had a good drive last night and are all recovering and cleaning up.
I have uploaded some photos at Flickr and you can see them on the sidebar. Here is one of my favourites - taken at a 1000 year old church in Orkney Islands. . .

Fringe Festival and 17th

We are winding up the trip and are almost home. we are in edinburgh today and are enjoying the Fringe Festival - lots of comedians and street performers. its the largest festival in the world - a million tickets sold last year and thousands of shows on every day.
its our 17th wedding anniversary today - julie is going to watch the kids and debbie and i will go out on the town. i have tickets to a comedy show and also a short movie festival. should be fun.
looking forward to getting home (tomorrow). we have been camping for a long time and we all feel GRUNGY!!!!!!!!
last night we saw a team of new zealand comedians performing in one of teh cave venues. not bad for kiwis!

Pilgrimage continues

Things are great for us up here. I met with the monks from Papay, and have been visiting other monastic sites here in Orkney. There are so many here that i will not get to all of them.
BTW - we never actually made it to Iona. We were camping right off the island, and our funds were low. Since they did not offer camping on Iona, and since everything cost so much money, we thought we would avoid all the spiritual tourists and complete that journey at another time.
Besides that, Orkney Islands offers a huge amount of Celtic monasteries and pilgrimage sites, all of them off the usual map and much more interesting to us. So here we are, having a great time. The kids insist on praying inside the old chapels and monasteries. We will leave tomorrow and start our descent down to London. We might stop again at Holy Island on the way down.
Pictures coming later - when i get connected again and dont have to rely on internet cafes and libraries.
Wifi on Orkney? Not yet.

ChristianCounterCulture?

I was just looking at the ChristianCounterChristian.com web site. Good graphics, but it seems to be more ChristianAntiCulture than 'counter'. By that i mean the thrust seems to be about non-patriotism, pulling out of media, withdrawing from secular agencies, rather than seeking the prosperity of our nations, while staying unstained by the world's influences. By and large, I would hope the counter culture is seeking a holistic lifestyle in accordance with God's law, one that addresses the deficiencies of the modern culture, rather than a renewed modern dualistic approach to life and spirituality.
Maybe i need to read their manifesto again or look deeper into their site. Any thoughts?