TallSkinnyKiwi

Our view

Heres a picture taken from my front yard last week in Stromness, at exactly 9am, on Oct 23rd, 2004 AD, a moment that some would call significant. The photo was uploaded here on Flicker using a free beta client for Mac called 1001. The software is great. It streams recent photos from my Flickr account onto my desktop - photos from my friends, that is.

Thoughts from Aberdeen

My 2 hour meeting with Steve Steele went well. Steve flew up to see me on his way to Cairo, and I took a ferry over to see him in Aberdeen. Long rough ride, though. And now i am home again but i cant sleep.
Steve had a lot of wisdom and good advice for me. He reminded me that the leaders in India always have like 5 "Timothy's" around them and those apprentices are always moving on to train others. He also suggested that I figure out how to measure success in the emerging culture churches, so that it can be translated back to conservatives. Some of this is already going on and the measurement is often related to changed society, transformation, reduced crime rates, etc.
He also suggested I send out a short "executive summary" of the global emerging church to organizations and foundations. I used to send out The Boaz Report as an email, but stopped it, partly in reaction to the Christian email spam that is everywhere, and partly because I throw pieces of it on this blog. But i probably should send something out in an old fashioned email for those organizations that still dont have RSS readers or prefer an email.
Right . . . off to bed again.

Update: oct 27

Here's an update on whats up with us:
- Internet access is sporadic right now - I apologize for the comment spammers and their porno sites - they have been very active but i have deleted them all. The worst thing about not having regular access to my site is the time it takes to weed out spammers. They must lie in waiting until we are away from a phone line before posting their links.
Guideline for my comments: If someone or something called "Adult Gallery" posts an irrelevant comment to an obscure blog posting of mine, dont follow the link. Repeat. Don't follow the link!
- Abigail is well. They kept her in hospital for an extra couple of days and we picked her up from the hospital to take her straight over to France and then up to Orkney. Diabetics have a really hard time when they get the flu. She was REALLY sickly and dehydrated. She went into ketosis. Black gothic shadows under her eyes - very Tim Burton! But now is totally back to normal. she received a flu shot yesterday.

Abderdeen

Off tonight to Aberdeen for a meeting tomorrow with Steve Steele, who used to head up DAWN Ministries. We will be discussing emerging culture ministries around the world and will be figuring out how to save the world on a budget. I will take the ferry across for £13
There is a possibility that i need to fly to Australia this weekend. My Dad might be dying. He refuses to eat, and hasn't eaten for a long time. More about my Dad. We should pray for a change of mind for him so that he chooses life. i would like him to stay around.
UDATE: Just called my dad - he sounds all right, but still thinks he will throw up if he eats anything. He told me he would try and eat tomorrow - so i will wait longer.

All is well

Our house is great!!!! bigger than we thought. Just right for us. And it overlooks the harbour. Debbie and I get a bedroom to ourselves for the first time in over a year. It even has more than one toilet which is a bonus. We are unpacking and making sense of the furniture. Its a rental house, but it feels warm and solid and loved. We are overjoyed, happy, and looking forward to see what God is about to do up here and around Europe.
Hope you all have a great weekend.

Books: Sweet and McNeal

2 new books that look worth buying. No Skinny review here, because THE PUBLISHERS DID NOT SEND ME ANY FREE COPIES OF THEM (HINT) but here they are anyway . . .
Out of the Question by Len Sweet. Check out the tasteful website for this book. And Coop is raving about Reggie McNeal's The Present Future on his blog, so much so, that if he continues blogging about it, the entire book will be online (not a bad idea).

In the Beginning

In the beginning God created . . .
I just had to say that, at exactly 9am, because 9am on 23rd of October, 4004 BC, the world was apparently created by God who kept a very tight schedule.

"Dr. John Lightfoot, (1602 - 1675), an Anglican clergyman, rabbinical scholar, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge had already arrived at an estimate of 4004-OCT-23 BCE, at 9 AM." ReligiousTolerance.org
The date, based on James Ussher's scientific research, was printed in many King James Bibles.
The late Stephen Jay Gould, however, played with the date enough to bring Ussher's date back to Oct 23, 1997. At noon, to be exact . . .
The Freemasons are not at all impressed by these dates. Hope they dont list me on their website for research errors.

Moving to Orkney (updated)

UPDATE: ahhhhhhhh . . .we be here . . . at last. what a long and exhausting trip!!! Thanks for your prayers and thoughts - we felt God's covering the whole time.

We couldnt get back in the country at the border. They told us to go to Lille, France and apply there for a missionary visa. Which we did. The consulate people in Lille could not issue visas, so we went to Brussels. YES! BRUSSELLS, BELGUIM. And they could not help us either. So we went back to Calais and they let us in on a 6 month tourist visa. We were exhausted by the time we returned to our house in London. We picked up our caravan, thankful that it was still there on the road, with all our stuff, and we drove up north a bit and spent the night in a rest area. Surprising how all 7 of us can sleep in our van. We drove all day and stayed the following night in a rest area near Perth. Next day we took a ferry from Aberdeen. A 6 hour trip and very rough. Most people were sick. Vomit City! And we eventually arrived at our new house at 2 in the morning.

Having said all that, the house is great, orkney is great. We were welcomed by our neighbors and some new friends. And we are very excited about being here.

No internet access in our house right now so i will be visiting this internet cafe until we get things figured out.

This is it. All our possessions are being loaded up. We are cleaning the house and getting ready to leave today to Orkney Islands, north of Scotland. And we are traveling by way of France (have to get new visas). You can read why here, although we probably wont know why God is sending us up here until much later.
Appreciate prayers for FAVOUR at the border so we can get a missionary visa for UK - Americans can pray for FAVOR.
And pray for safety in driving, for us to stay awake all night, and for our tires to hold up with all the weight. Our £150 caravan is our moving truck, along with roof-space on our van. Not as bad as this picture though . . .

Sleepless in London

Cant sleep. Wife is at the hospital for another night with Abigail. The house is not as packed up as it should be, for a family moving tomorrow and having to squeeze in a family drive to FRANCE this afternoon. Maybe i should drink some Olvatine or something.

100 Worship Tricks

Jonny Baker has exceeded himself with his absolutely incredible collection of worship experiences (he calls them tricks but i dont like that word much). Check out Jonny's Worship Tricks when you need some inspiration for Sunday's worship, or if you are just curious what worship looks like at alt. worship emerging churches in UK and sometimes USA. If this was a DVD, you would buy it. But the whole thing has been blogged over many months and is totally free and accessible . . . so you will probably ignore it. Lamers!!!!
Worship trick Number 100 includes an impressive video to download for you broadband junkies, and a poetic liturgy to read with it. Of course you could write your own . . .