Happy Birthday Derek Chapman!!!
Derek, we wish you a happy birthday and wish you were here in London to celebrate it with us. You are the man who brings God's COLOR into the emerging church
And i am marking this occasion by including color in the writing of this blog. Never before have my blogs had color in their fonts - not Andrew's Tea Salon (1997 - which Derek used to read - which is interesting because he does not usually read my current blog -too busy praying for me i think), nor the TallSkinnyKiwi blogs since 2001. Never. Until today.
And you would think that i would be using GREEN to mark St Patricks Day, but, St Patricks Day has officially been upstaged by Derek's Birthday.
Again, Happy birthday!
Here is Derek, Mr ColorMan, with us in our RV pilgrimage of USA - Derek (wearing the wig) has been our wonderful friend and official prophet - guiding us, praying for us, cheering us on, advising us. I have come to believe that much of apostolic ministry is turning up in the right place at the right time. And it has been Derek that has been behind the scenes making sure that happens. We owe A LOT to him and Amy. We would not, could not, be where we are today without them.
Derek and Amy blog at thebearablelight.com. Read on for some of Derek's adventures, and learn how to add a little derek to your blog today . . .
Derek got himself in the paper in Prague when he went to see Matrix but
Derek is also famous for . . .
- For going to Golden Gate Baptist Seminary as Elvis (I have photos)
- For turning up in New York city, the morning of Sep 11, 2001 (God told him to go the night before)
- For being the co-author of "The 5 Love Languages for Children", which he wrote with his father Gary, an aspiring writer and struggling conference speaker in North Carolina ;-)
- For giving his wife a golden 1963 Fiat Bambina.
- For his sideburns.
- For his naked communion (dont ask)
- For tracking with the Jones family since 1997, traveling with us, living with us, putting up with us.
-For getting married during our Epicentrum event in Prague, in the back yard of our house
I blogged the announcement of their wedding. It was quite unusual. These photos were taken from the Tribal Generation Brazil photo page. Thats me in the vintage tux, and Mal Calladine officiating, and Derek and Amy tying the knot in the tent-tabernacle in our back yard.
Derek explains the wedding:
- "Well it is less of a sort of theme orientation and more of a living symbolic event taking place ironically within a sort of church happening. Ok, I mean that Amy and I are getting hitched as an ironic participation in this...ok hell, I mean God wants to make us a living portent..like David you know like when we ARE the tabernacle not like talking about it...so come and make our wedding with God and us."
AMY (who looks like the movie star behind her)- "We think it would be perfect and fun to actually have a "ceremony" where we celebrated unity and oneness--which is what this season is all about, right? And a ceremony where we were actually participating in a kingdom event--bringing bride and bridegroom, Bride and Bridegroom together. Personally, because Derek and I are artists, we would love nothing better if we were able to get married in the presence of others who loved making creative spaces for Him to enter as fully as He wishes. And also we wanted to get married in the context of community, and this is one of the rare times--or only times--when many of the people we care about and will pilgrimage with in our lives--will be present. So come and build our kingdom space together."
Some of you may want to celebrate Derek's birthday by colorising your writng palette, and you are asking . . .
How do I add color to my blog writing?
Well, I am using Ecto (for Mac), a $10 blog writing program that lets me add my own custom built html tags. Color was not included so i did some research and came up with the appropriate xhtml tags that i added to my list.
But you can do it without such a program - You can do it through your own program by manually adding the following tag to whatever you write.
Here is a screen shot for one of the colors (blue)
You can find other xhtml tags here, like SIZE, and you can find your colors at this online color table if you don't have photoshop or fireworks. Green, for those of you who want to honor St Paddy today, is color: #66CC00
So go ahead.
Add a little Derek to your blog today!!!
