Tall Skinny Kiwi

Family at the End of 2005

Half the family is sick right now so New Years Celebrations will be a dampened celebration compared to last years loud partying on the streets of Stromness. And no . . I am not going to compete in the local New Years Ba' like I did last year.

We are renting this apartment above a restaurant. Its smaller than we are used to and one toilet for a family of 7 can be a lesson in patience, but its warm and cosy and conveniently located in the middle of our town.

That's our cat Bubbles in the window. Her sister Squeak is missing again - bad sense of direction.

Christmas was a good family time. We ate a local goose. Hate to show off . . but it was fantastic.

Anyway, thanks for being a part of our lives in 2005. God go with you into the New Year.

gReeNDAY ROX!

I have been wondering why so many Green Day fans come here and leave a comment on a post called "Virtual Chatroom for Dummies" that has nothing to do with Green Day. Except for the fact that someone mentioned them in the comments section and started off a small Green Day fan club on my post. Many of the posts have been deleted because of language but many are still there . . . like this one:

"Billie Joe i LOVE U!!!
n Green Day roXxX!!!!! =)
u guyz rok! ur heeps awesome!!! ROK ON!"

This morning i tracked it back to Google search engine. When you type in "Green Day, Chat Room" my post is number 4. I guess visitors read the Green Day comments and leave their own. Anyway . . Happy New Year to all the Green Day fans that end up on one of my posts. And yes . . as you day . . . "Dude!GREEN DAY ROX MY SOX!

Recent Books

The most enjoyable book i read all year was "Linked" by Albert- Lazlo Barabasi.

This week I re-read Transforming Mission by David Bosch. New stuff everytime I look at it. What an incredible book! I also read "Shaping of Things to Come" by Alan Hirsh and Mike Frost for the third time. These two books work well together and form a good basis for the missiology of the emerging-missional church.

Re-imagining Cyberchurch

An article i wrote for Relevant mag just came out.It was originally called "Reimagining Cyberchurch" as a nod to Doug Pagitt. But the editors have called it "Linking to Cyberchurch" and thats fine with me. Relevant Magazine holds very high standards in both content and graphics so I am just happy to have them publish something of mine.

"Will it be a simple upgrade of the same cheesy graphics, spinning GIFs, heavy flash intros and online tithing options that we experienced in the nineties? Or will the church online take on a new identity and shape, sharing life in fresh genres that are native to the Internet?" More

Key Ideas:
- Cyberchurch is people, not institutions.
- Cyberchurch is not a department store for consumers.
- Cyberchurch is neither democratic nor non-hierarchical.
- Cyberchurch does not replace the physical and it does a poor job reproducing it.

Technorati Tags: cyberchurch, new media, web 2.0

Early At Dawn

I am working on a team blog for DAWN Europe today. The blog will be released in January and will cover missiology, church planting movements and significant resources, events, etc. Should be good. It will be called EarlyAtDawn.

Not sure if i will use this graphic or not. Is it too cheesy?

The Probabilist Age

Chris Anderson of The Long Tail Blog has a good post on The Probalist Age and the Wikipedia vs Britannica debate. Chris has also found a way to cheat Google - by using unpopular keywords on his ultra-lame Google Ad, he gets thousands of page impressions but because there are no click-throughs, he doesn't have to pay. Thats free advertising by having an unattractive ad. Pretty smart. Do Chris a favor - don't click on his Long Tail Blog ad or it will cost him O.40 cents a click.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, wikipedia

XFN for Social Networking

I am tired of joining silly social software systems and I don't want to answer any more dumb questions about myself. If the web is so smart, why are we always repeating ourselves? On the other hand, I am excited about the possibilities for social networking through the media I already maintain. Like my blog.

Give me some time and my blog will be .
XFN (XHTML Friends Network) seems to be a good system of adding meta tags to our existing links of friends or blogrolls. If I had the time, I could go through my lists of friends and add these tags. The XFN site shows how to add the code to our personal hyperlinks.

Even better - it appears that the impending release of WordPress 2.0 has in-built support for XFN. John Loppnow gives  "10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.0" including:
6. Use WordPress for Social Networking -
There are probably a thousand social networking tools out there - many of which have plugins for WordPress available to them. Someof these are Flickr , del.icio.us or Digg. However, WordPress has built-in integration with such a tool in that allows search engines understand your relationships with other bloggers. It is called the XFN (XHTML Friends Network). XFN allows bloggers to establish links in their link manager (blogroll) as “friend”, “co-worker” or “crush” among others. It even allows you to designate whether you’ve physically met the person.

Technorati Tags: blog, tags

Reading the Bible in 2006

I am getting an early start on reading the Bible through in 2006. I am embarrassed to say that I didn't stick to the plan in 2005 but instead meandered off and ended up reading and re-reading the passages I prefer and that support my greatest theories. Thats not always a good thing. I like it better when the Scriptures challenge my thinking and make me change my mind or think differently. That often happens when I find myself in Biblical territory that I don't normally wander into. And thats why a daily reading plan is essential.

Its also a really good idea to read the whole Bible through each year to gain a wider perspective and see patterns that you wouldn't see otherwise. When I first opened my heart to God as a teenager, I read 3-4 chapters of the Bible every day so that I could make it through the whole Bible every year. I never missed a single day for the first six years. After that, it has been more sporadic and adventuresome, although not as regular and disciplined. But I miss that regularity.

So 2006 is approaching and I have already started on the Bible reading plan - hoping to get a running start to the New Year. At the very top of my NewsReader box is the RSS feed for One Year Bible Blog. Since I use my NewsReader so much during the day, there is no way to avoid my Bible readings. And the good people at OneYearBibleBlog send out pictures and thoughts to accompany the readings so its a multi-media start to my day.
The feed is Atom or RSS but you should visit there and sign up for the email as well.

Technorati Tags: Bible

Tagging Your Blogs Over The Break

Its a holiday break for your blog - and for you to get it sorted out - new design, tidied up (thats me), listed with search engines (like Jonny) and my big recommendation this season . . . to start tagging your posts and even go back through your blog and tag the important posts.

Can you imagine how much hassle it would have been for Noah to collect and count all the animals if Adam had not tagged them all in the first place? Adam was closer to the creative process than Noah in both time and location, so it makes sense that Adam was the Tagger and Noah the Aggregator.

Tagging your posts allows your data to be easily found by people who need it, and allows your posts to ride the long tail of the blogosphere. If you tag your posts well, people will be finding and reading them in years to come, even if they don't read them now.

I use Technorati tags for my posts. Its easy for me because my blog editor (Ecto) allows me to ascribe technorati tags before publishing. Today is the last day of their 20% off sale. Its totally worth buying! Trust me. Its 11 pounds or $US 17 and worth every penny or cent.
If you dont have a blog editor, Technorati tells you how to add tags manually to your posts.

- My photos are not tagged. I started off with Flickr almost a year ago but have lapsed. I just took a look and i have 47 new messages, most of them "New Contacts" I need to take Flickr more seriously. I will start using it again and tag my photos.
- I have also neglected Del.icio.us but hope to rectify that in the New Year.
- BlogFresh has more advice on tagging.

GeoTagging
I wish I had been geotagging my posts for the past 5 years - especially since i have blogged from so many countries. I have tried to add the country or city names to a few posts and images, but I about to add the right code with longitude and latitude (as well as attitude). Ravi says WordPress users can download a Geopress plug in that will work with Yahoo Maps geocoder.
UPDATE: I found a way to add geotags to my feed using FeedBurner
MakeZine tells you how to geotag your del.icio.us bookmarks.
Geourl.org will help you find your co-ordinates.

And for other ideas on sorting out your blog, Problogger Darren has some good ideas on how to use this quiet patch:
" 1. Some take advantage of the quiet news patch and low traffic and go on vacation
2. Others use the next few weeks to do redesigns
3. Experience bloggers often use the end of the year to do reviews, look at stats and set direction and goals for the year ahead
4. Quite a few bloggers use the time to launch new blogs
5. Some bloggers use this time to start up other projects like writing books, recording podcasts etc
6. Others use the time to write posts and series that they’ll use later in the year
7. A few bloggers I know spend January going through their current blogs with a fine tooth comb to do SEO, delete dead links and basically get everything in ship shape order"

Now . . . how shall i tag this post?

Technorati Tags: andrew-says-tag-your-bloody-blog, blog, tags, web 2.0

Christmas Day

Its here. Christmas Day. Last night we went to the carol service at Stromness Baptist Church. Today we are cooking and hanging out and seeing friends. I am cooking a wicked free range Goose that grew up just over the hill from us. Stuffed with a chestnut/cranberry/bacon/mushroom stuffing and awaiting a 2001 Babich Pinot Noir - from the same vineyard in New Zealand that my dad used to buy his flagons of Golden Sherry from. Nice to have a touch of home on Christmas.

- Big present this year was a Tanglewood Rebel bass guitar and Marshall amp for kids who all want to learn to play bass. Got it used but really good condition.

- Called my Mum - she is well and the sisters in Australia all had a good Christmas with their families. We miss our families back home -in USA and Australia. But thats the price we pay for our adventure with God.

Anyway, have a good Christmas everyone.

Our Post-Reformation Christmas

Our kids are off school now and working on the celebrations for our Christmas day - our second Christmas in Scotland.

Christmas was squashed by the Reformers in Scotland about 400 years ago because it was too Catholic (read this) and its taken a long time for it to recover. As recently as the 1960's, workers in Scotland were given Christmas day off to celebrate with their families. And there are still reformers who are reminding us of the possible pagan connection to Christmas.

I guess we are having a Post-Reformation Christmas. Not out of rebellion against John Knox or the Reformed folk. We need to exegete our culture just like they did, and figure out ways to make celebration of Christ more public. And Christmas for us is a way to celebrate that.

Anyway . .  a merry start to the CHRISTmas weekend to you all.

A Little Help on my Church 2.0 Article?

Help save my Christmas! I am really struggling with this article. And i need to write it before Christmas for Next-Wave because I SAID I WOULD.

I want to locate the parallels between Web 2.0 and the emerging church (Church 2.0) because there is a lot that both conversations can learn from each other. I want to explore what we are getting from and adding to the conversation. The similarities are startling. I wrote a little on Church 2.0 and went a little further with The Ajax Love of God. But I haven't nailed it yet. The geeks trying to explain Web 2.0 are also struggling to define it (sounds like the same emerging church definition struggle of 2004) and the criticisms that "Web 2.0 is what the web was supposed to be about in the first place" also ring a bell.

Image (click to enlarge) is from Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 blog which is a good place to start.

Here are some parallels:
- participation, interactivity, pre-emptiveness, emergent behavior, importance of macro and large scale, lightweight teams operating with small budgets, distrust of wikipedia and other self-correcting systems, power of the many, power of the long tail, importance of modularity . . . what else?

Technorati Tags: church, Emergent, emerging church, web 2.0

Blogging from Restricted Countires

You want to blog but your country clamps down on free expression on the web. What do you do?

If you want to start blogging without risking your neck, I highly recommend a new resource in downloadable PDF called "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents".
You will find 2 chapters that will be of immense value to you:
- How To Blog Anonymously (best chapter)
- Technical Ways to Get Around Censorship

Some of this info is from How To Blog Safely from The Electronic Frontier Foundation. They say you should:
1. Use a Pseudonym and Don't Give Away Any Identifying Details
2. Use Anonymizing Technologies
3. Use Ping Servers
4. Limit Your Audience
5. Don't Be Googleable
6. Register Your Domain Name Anonymously
Ethan from Global Voices takes this further in "A Technical Guide to Anonymous Blogging"

If you don't have time to read all that . . . then here are 3 services you will find essential:
1. Hushmail.com - a free email service for highly encrypted email
2. Invisiblog.com - an anonymous blog service from the Australians at Vigilant.tv
3. Visit web sites by starting at the-cloak.com and leave your trail behind.

Technorati Tags: blog

All I Want For Christmas is AJAX

All I want for Christmas is Ajax
I don't want a tall skinny tree
or lots of presents under it.
All I ask for are some Web 2.0 goodies
that are zipped and not wrapped.
I want PHP and not PAJAMAS.
Give me widgets and not gadgets.
Give me a torrent of flashy de.licio.us gifts that flickr brightly under MySQL clouds.
I want Wiki and not wassel.
I want Christmas feeds and not Christmas food.
I want shareware and freeware and not underwear.
I want my OPML Christmas list to be meta-tagged and checked twice by automated folksonomy-based aggregators exhibiting an emergent Christmas cheer that can be mapped visually and dynamically on my poor and miserable blog that limps along like Tiny Tim on the pathetic crutches of Web 1.0 architecture.
All I want for Christmas is Ajax.
And may God bless us . . everyone.

Related: Check your site on the Web 2.0 validator to see what your blog might need for a happy Christmas (don't take it too seriously)
HT: Damon Snyder who has just posted a very cool Emerging Church vs. Web 2.0 cloud based on blogs that link to tallskinnykiwi.
Further: Dion Hinchcliffe has compiled The best Web 2.0 software of 2005 and More Great Web 2.0 software

Technorati Tags: ajax, christmas, web 2.0

Emerging Church TagCloud

Emerging Church TagCloud created by Damon Snyder who mashed the Tallskinnykiwi blog feed with 20 emerging church blog feeds.

I gave it a shot myself but havent seen much sucess. Below is my first attempt - a simple Tallskinnykiwi Cloud based on recent posts. I am not sure how to get it to aggregate my entire blog. Needs some more work, I guess. And BTW - I only used the word "orgy" once and that was in relation to a consumer "spending orgy" after Thanksgiving.
[gosh . . . how embarrassing!!!!!]

Technorati Tags: blog, Emergent, emerging church, web 2.0

Your Best Stewardess Now!

Lots of discussion about Victoria Osteen (wife of Joel Osteen of USA's largest church) getting kicked off yesterday's plane to Vail, Colorado. - an incident called "minor" although although it involved Continental Airlines, FBI agents, and the Associated Press.

Yahoo News gives no reasons but Houston Clear Thinkers and Houston Chronicle say it was the spill on her tray that was not cleaned to her satisfaction and she asked for another stewardess who might be able to clean it up. . . better! I guess her tone was a little too sharp . . but hey . . . everyone is human. Joel's book "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential" is a best seller. I feel another coming up: "Your Best Stewardess Now: 7 Steps to Flying at your First-Class Potential "

Viola on Five Fold Ministry

"What is needed, then, is the restoration of the experience of the Body of Christ."

Frank Viola just sent me his latest article which tackles the idea of "Five Fold Ministry" - something that has cropped up a number of times in the comments section. FIVEFOLD.doc

Frank is great. He has some kickbutt books - "Who is Your Covering" deals with apostolic abuse and Rethinking the Wineskin is a must read for house church folk and others getting into organic-simple church.

As I mentioned in April, Frank wrote a criticism on the emerging church earlier this year called Will the Emerging Church Fully Emerge? But so many of us agreed with it - and have been saying the same thing as Frank - that it didn't get as much coverage as other criticisms that caught the public eye. Nor did it have had a catchy title like . . . say . . . "Emergent Church is Satan's Deception"

Franks main criticism is that the emerging church, as he sees it, has not gone far enough to bring the church back to what it needs to be. Fair enough.

Technorati Tags: books, church, Emergent, emerging church, mission

Blog Flashback

Heres how my blog looked in 2001. Amazing how things have changed so quickly and its good to be reminded of how lucky we are today with all our bells and whistles. This old blog is now parked permanently at tallskinnykiwi.blogspot.com

Note that there are NO comments because they hadn't been invented yet - I had to write email comments back onto the blog by hand. And check out my RSS news feed - a free gift from Moreover News and a very rare item on a 2001 blog - in fact - i would be interested to know if anyone out there had an RSS news feed on their blog in 2001. My QT movies of emerging churches and worship events that was started in 2000 was deleted by Apple when they decided to charge for .Mac accounts. But you can see the original page (with missing links) here.
Ahhh . . . memories . . ..

(click to enlarge)

The WayBack Machine picks up my blog by 2002 and it looks a little better by then. But not much better. Can you believe I spelled 'Lomographer' wrong on my header?

On June 4, 2006 I will be throwing a blog- party celebrating 5 years of tallskinnykiwi. Consider yourself invited.

Technorati Tags: blog

Tip Jar Feature

I am installing a Tip Jar for those that want to say thanks with a quick click.

I also put up Firefox's referral badge on my right column. If you download and start using Firefox's Google Toolbar, then I get $1. This is something worth roadtesting for other bloggers - especially my blogging friends overseas who might be able to partly support themselves in ministry by a few tricks like these.

Megachurches, Christmas and Video

A few decades ago, Willow Creek Community Church was in trouble with the critics for shifting the believers worship time from Sunday to Wednesday. Now they are generating an even greater amount of conversation with their decision to close for Christmas day.
- BlogCritics.org is not impressed.
- Neither are Ben Witherington or Tim Challies.
- Ingrid at Slice of Laodicea also thinks its a bad idea but sees value in closing Willow down - "Who's in the mood for comedians and clown shows on Christmas?"
- Time Magazine noted the decision among a number of megachurches, including Willow and Fellowship Church.

As for me and my house, I think Willow should have the right to determine the appropriate programing for their goals. Church is more than an hour on a Sunday and if people want to stay home and enjoy Christmas with their families and relatives and close friends RATHER than a gizzillion church attenders then leave them alone to get on with it.

While we are talking about megachurch . ..

- The first church in the world, as far as we know, to stream live HD video from scratch is Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. I have driven by this megachurch a hundred times but never gone in. Leave it Behind tells you how they manage the video streams.
- Lakewood Church in Houston has $4 million worth of video technology. (Edward Cone, Link)
- Willow Creek spend about $1million a year on technology which includes a 15 person IT team and 600 PC's. Link

Technorati Tags: christmas

GoogleFight for Emerging Church

By the sheer luck of my geeky son using the computer before me, i discovered the joy and addiction of Google Fighting.

Emerging Church vs Emergent Church. Click here to see which is the winner.

After 3 or 4 fights, I walked away from the computer . . . and from blogging. Hope you can do the same. Good night.

Emerging Church is . . .

". . . a bottom-up movement, driven by a desire among 20s and 30s to create spiritual homes appropriate to their culture."
Steve Adams, from a pretty good article - Emerging Options, Christianity Magazine

Tim Berners-Lee Gets a Blog

Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web, gets a blog and posts some thoughts about blogging and creative space:

"In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.

Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor. WWW was soon full of lots of interesting stuff, but not a space for communal design, for discource through communal authorship.

Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space." Read more on Tim's blog

Technorati Tags: blog, web 2.0

Intel's New Platform

eWeek gives a closer look at the Intel processor that will probably power the new Mac powerbooks next year (Jan??) and PCs. The new mobile platform is called Napa and the dual-core Yonah processor is supposed to outperform their current laptops by 68%. I hope to replace my iBook early next year and are waiting to see the new line up. HT: MacRumors

Nice to see Intel and Apple coming together. My brother in law in Oregon works for Intel. I havent mentioned him much because he has always been a PC man and supported the Babylonian world of Microsoft. But now that Intel and Apple are dancing, Kirk Brannock - my dear brother in law - has suddenly come into my life in a new way . . for it is he and his colleagues at Intel who are finding new ways for my Mac to run faster. Thanks Kirk. Welcome back into the family. Sooooo glad your life has finally found its purpose.

Signs the EC Is Not For You

Hilarious post: Emergent What? suggests that the Emergent Church is not for you if

. . your church is lit by:

and not:

and there are plenty more at Signs the EC is Not For You over there.
Related: You might be emergent if . . .

Technorati Tags: Emergent, emerging church

Family Update

Snow everywhere here in Stromness and we are hanging out in our town this weekend.

Good news:
- We are all well and enjoying life.
- A school building has come up for sale
- Squeak, our second cat, came home after 2 months away
- Tamara's chicken pox are gone
- Debbie found a old CD from The Seekers at a thrift store.

Bad News:
- Sasa Flek in Prague lost his mother this week. Prayed for him often this week
- Our beloved 1991 Volvo was stolen by drunken joy-riders and crashed. Beyond repair. Sob . .
- Van is broken and awaiting a starter motor. No transport except bus.

Emerging Church Update

- Andy Dragt of The Branch has created a beta Squidoo on Emerging Church

- Tony Jones of Emergent Village spoke at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary yesterday, and enjoyed a generous ecumenical handshaking of President Al Mohler's hand. Read Tony's account.

- YS Marko has just completed his "Rant by a Runt" on the American Church. Links to whole series are here.

- Planet Emergent blog changes its name to Emerging Church Blogs

- Scot McKnight posts Seven Habits of Successful Emerging Discussions

- EmergentKiwi Steve Taylor invites emerging churches (of the non-USA variety - which BTW are the majority) to send an image of their community. He will be posting them in Jan 06.

"This Christmas I am collecting a series of postcards from the edge. To qualify I am inviting you to email me;
a) 1 photo of your emerging community this year; plus a paragraph answer to these 4 questions;
b) how were you as an emerging community birthed?;
c) what do you as an emerging community value?;
d) what music track sums up your year;
e) what was your best mission moment in 05?
Oh, I nearly forgot. I will only be posting postcards from emerging churches outside the US. I'm tired of the UScentrism of the emerging church blog world. Postcards05 is not for Americans. It's a blog-stake in the ground; a visual reminder that God is active outside the bounds of America." More at EmergentKiwi

Anything else deserve a mention?

Best Books on Emerging-Missional Church

Kevin Cawley has a Readers Guide for Missional Church. Good list and great books. Anyone who writes a blog series on the emerging church who does not read a few of these good books on the missional church should be slapped silly with their keyboard. Shaping of Things to Come by Hirsch and Frost (blogged it here) is a good start . . wait . . that one is not on Kevin's Readers Guide . . but it should be.

I was asked by someone recently for a list of essential books written recently on the emerging church. I still think the best stuff is online in blog form, articles and PDF's but for the book reading population, here are is my choice:

From Australia - Shaping of Things to Come, Alan Hirsch and Mike Frost
From New Zealand - Out of Bounds Church, Steve Taylor
From UK - The Complex Christ, by Kester Brewin
From USA - Emerging Churches, by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs
From Germany - Houses That Change the World, by Wolfgang Simson
From Canada ? . . . You tell me.

When Your Blogging Host Goes South

Typepad.com seems to be coming up for air - good to see the text restored and signs that my images might come back this weekend.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Its a good reminder to BACK UP YOUR BLOGS, despite how stable your blogging host. I have done it many times with the free version of PageSucker.

Blogging Church

BloggingChurch.com is a book, a web site, and a series of podcasts that are worth listening to . . . especially if you are a Rex Miller fan.

Technorati Tags: blog, church, emerging church

Emergent Twins

Separated from birth. From the recent Emergent Gathering in New Mexico. Featured twins are Doug Pagitt, Freddy Hellstrom, and Randy Haney of The Harbor Photos of the event are available here and here if anyone cares find more.

Technorati Tags: Emergent, emerging church

Emergent Beards

(image found on Aaron's blog)

The Emergent Controversy has been raging through the American churches and I wish to put an end to once and for all. Right now. The official Emergent™ Beard pointed out by Kester and named "The Crowder" by Bob is NOT . . . I repeat . . NOT the official beard.

I hate to bring up the USA vs. Euro divide again. And no disrespect intended to David Crowder - who we love, despite his funky looks - but Bryce Wagner of Fuse Factory (Lausanne) fame and VJ at many of our worship events, has a beard that is significantly longer and more prominent . . by far a contender for the ultimate Emergent™ Beard. I call it . . "THE WAGNER"

Related Emergent news
- Marc at Purgatorio follows up his famous You might be Emergent if . . post with Help: I'm Going Hyper: 25 warning signs that you might be obsessing over Calvinism. I want you to know that i was led to this post and did not choose it out of my own free will.

Technorati Tags: Emergent, emerging church

Skinny on China

The fifth most visited web site in the world is www.baidu.com, a Chinese search engine that resembles Google but offers MP3 and SWF file searches in addition to everything on Google (Wikipedia) Apparently, music is free and legal to download in China (makes you want to learn Chinese, dunnit?) which is why Baidu is being sued by music companies in USA. Baidu accounts for 37% of search engine traffic and Google takes 23% (as of September, 2005) but Google owns a stake in Baidu.

Also:
Government officials have been censoring bloggers in China. The fast-growing blogging community has ran into problems when they were discussing the police incident last week which left 20 people dead.
"The domestic news blocking system is really interesting," wrote one blogger. "I heard something happened in Shanwei and wanted to find out whether it was true or just the invention of a few people. So I started searching with Baidu, and Baidu went out of service at once. I could open their site, but couldn't do any searches." Baidu is one of the country's leading search engines.
"I don't dare to talk," another blogger wrote. "There are sensitive words everywhere - our motherland is so sensitive. China's body is covered with sensitive zones." Link

Report today from UnfoldingProphecy:
The China Aid Association condemns the arrest of 29 house church leaders in Henan Province and the confiscation of their possessions. They were gathering to discuss how to minister to AIDS victims. More

Related:
How To Blog Anonymously
Edwyn Chan, China's Blogfather?
interview with Matthew Bell in Shanghai
interview with an early Chinese blogger

Technorati Tags: asia, blog, china, church

Who Defines Orthodoxy?

Good question. Brian McLaren was asked it recently. I am not sure what answer was expected, but here is my answer.

Question:
Who defines orthodoxy?
Answer:
In the 19th Century it was the English
In the 20th Century it was the North Americans
In the 21st Century it will be the Africans

My DAWN Homies

I met with my DAWN Europe buddies last week in Zurich. DAWN stands for Discipling a Whole Nation and I work part time for them as an Associate. We meet at least 3x a year and its always a great time of talking mission-geek stuff - strategy, numbers, trends, research, challenges, books . .. I just love it and my mind goes into hyper drive.

I usually have a hundred ideas and most of them are absolute rubbish - Thankfully, I am on a team that can shoot them down and laugh at me as well as with me. One of my crazy ideas this time, apart from Discybling a Web Network (DAWN) was a t-shirt for all the DAWN Associates with a Visa Card logo. The idea is that DAWN is to the church what Visa is to the banking industry. Visa did not set up to be another bank but rather accomplished its goals by working inside and alongside existing financial structures. Which is why Visa is a part of so many transactions. Kinda like Dawn Ministries and our low profile, high impact way of leveraging ministry through mission groups and denominations. Well . . . I liked the idea!! Maybe i will make up a t-shirt anyway. Despite my wife calling it "LAME"

Here are some images of the DAWN Europe team that met together last week in Zurich. I know these photos are hard to see, but I don't like the artificial nature of flash photography and most of our strategic discussions and decision-making happen late at night in places with bad lighting. We did have a conference room in Zurich last week but most of my memories are from our times in dank, dark pubs and restaurants.

Marc Van Der Woude, chewing his pen, is into prayer and missions. He blogs at Marcs Messages but a lot of people know him as the guy behind Joel News. He is really excited about a new network of emerging church leaders called Connect Europe.

Reinhold Scharnowski is the Abott of our monastic team, the Director of DAWN Europe. He keeps us all sorted and he blogs at Reinhold's Journey. He is like a dad to us and we LOVE him.
Read on to meet the rest of the team.

Christmas Time

I have suddenly and quite joyfully entered the Christmas season. My traveling is over for the month and Christmas carols are playing in our house. I am buying a few gifts, thinking about reading some Max Lucado books and eating rich foods drizzled with custard. I have been viewing and collecting some consumery virtual Christmas junk in preparation for this season, including

- 70 Christmas images from belightsoft.com

- Boinx Christmas Widget for Mac

- Santastic Holiday downloads in a stocking. (Thanks Bob)

- Crisp Christmas screensaver for Mac OSX - Cheesy but good. The trial lasts for only 4 days but for some unknown reason, it is still running on our old iMac in the living room - and nooo . . I did not tweak it to run beyond its expiry date - must be a gift of God.

- Bestest and Silliest and Funnest Christmas video download has to be Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End) by The Darkness. I just downloaded the matching Christmas Time free ringtone.

My Christmas blog banner has just gone up - you can see it above you. Its a blend of a few images :

The lights are from the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in Stromness, Orkney that happened earlier this month. Those metallic donkeys and biblical looking characters are from a hill in Spain on the Camino de Santiago. We saw them in 2003, after trudging up that hill, and my daughter was there this summer with Cindy. Thanks Cindy for the photo. Makes me think of the circumstances of Jesus' birth - the traveling, the uncertainty of accommodation and how similar that is to the kind of life God calls us into also.

Black Smoke Over London

I arrived in London a few hours after the actual explosion at Hemel-Hampstead yesterday and I watched the smoke over London from the window at Heathrow airport. The same image was on the TV all day. Kinda weird - watching this black towering shape on the TV and seeing the real life version outside from a distance. (Images from BBC)

Happy . . . that no one died
Hoping . . . there is no negative spiritual significance
Hoping . . . there is no permanent environmental damage
Happy . . . that no one died

Technorati Tags: hemel

On Narnia

I was in London the same night as the Narnia release event but sadly I could not go. I almost saw the movie in Switzerland but thought my kids would kill me if i saw it before them. We will wait another week until it comes here to Orkney.

USA Today tackles the "religious" side of Narnia and Blogs4God have a large aggregation of 40 different opinions on the Chronicles of Narnia from various Christian blogs.

Technorati Tags: narnia, religion, spirituality

Countries in 2006

During our meeting in Zurich, I was given some new assignments and have tightened up my schedule for 2006 and will be posting the exact dates before the end of the year. God willing, these are the countries I will be traveling to for conferences, roundtables and training events:

Sweden, India, South Africa, Hungary, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Australia, Greece?? USA, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Denmark and of course the UK.

Back From Zurich

almost, anyway. i am in london again hanging out at the airport for my flight to Orkney.

Great time in Zurich with teammates and friends from the continent. We made a lot of plans for next year = web sites, trips, research. Tell you more later.

Leaving London

Off to the airport. London was a good trip. Stayed with Cindy Blick and Shannon Hopkins in Bow. Yesterday I met with Jonny C and Paul T at Church Missionary Society.

In London Today

Today I am in my favorite city - London. At 3:30 pm I will be having a coffee at Scooterworks - join me if you like. Jonny Baker is. Off to Zurich tomorrow

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Nothing Will Stop Them

"Hi Andrew
…more then 200 people are meeting weekly to pray for the nation…what about that…from different denominations :-) no barriers…nothing will stop them…

O.K., I´m going.
PEACE
Barbara,"

NOTE: Barbara is one of the key people at the beginning stages of a movement in Portugal that some of us think will be HUGE! She needs your prayer. She doesnt have a computer but needs one for communicating to churches and conferences. Badly. If you can help her, let her know on her blog, Shantii Pilgrim. More about Barbara here in her story (from RiverTribe), in my Emerging Church in Portugal and in my 2004 Visit to Portugal.

Technorati Tags: emerging church, Europe

'Podcast' - Word of The Year

"Podcast" has been awarded the word of the year by the New Oxford English Dictionary. I personally think the revolution in podcasting is overhyped. Its just audio - there is no way to search through it like you can do with text. I believe the revolution in video blogging over the past 6 months, especially in available storage and free bandwidth, will be seen to be far more significant in the long run than podcasting. But thats just me.

Jordon Cooper has a new podcast page that is podcasting some recent hits from Frosty the Aussie. He also