TallSkinnyKiwi

Blast From the Past

I popped onto the website of one of my old churches (North Beach Baptist) where I used to pastor and clicked on the "beliefs" button. And there in front of me is the statement of belief that i wrote for their welcoming literature back in 1992. Word for word. 15 years later. Thats weird. Its also nice.

Bono, Porpoise Diving Life and Tartan Theology

Some chatter on the internet and suggestions from emails:

- PBS: U2's Bono got candid about his spiritual life at a recent prayer breakfast. [HT: Brad Culver]
- The Porpoise Diving Life is now online [thanks Brian]
- Alan Hirsch's recent talk in California was summarized on Sam Metcalf's blog.
- End of a Spear response from a Youderian family member.
- BeneDiction asks: "Why do bloggers blog? According to Hewitt, “Two reasons: to persuade; and, to leave a record of having been there.” Link
- WeeBeautifulPict, of tartantheology fame, shifts his blog location and offers free downloads of DJ Haggis's tartan beats on his wee pict player.
- Blogs4God captures the Christian bloggers response on the Mohammed Cartoon Madness.

Technorati Tags: emerging church

World Reformed Communion

WARC + REC = WFC
80 million Protestants will be represented by this new convergence of World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC). The new group will be called World Reformed Communion. They are hoping for a renewed emphasis on mission.
Anyone out there on the inside of this?
HT: ChristianToday

Technorati Tags: church, religion

Blogging and Tagging

Time again to take your fingers off your keyboard and read the State of the Blogosphere, released this morning.

Highlights:
- Blogosphere is over 60 times larger than it was 3 years ago.
- a new blog is created every second.
- 1.2 million blog posts a day, 400,000 of those are TAGGED.
- "Sping" (spam and fake pings) are creating a lot of NOISE

I guess blogging didn't die off with disco after all.

There is a lot of information out there and we all need to TAG better or the right people will never find our stuff. I nominate Adam from the Garden of Eden as the Patron Saint of Tagging. If Adam didn't take the time to tag the animals, Noah would have had a helluva time sorting out what's what when it came time to fill the ark. And thats all i have to say about that.

Technorati Tags: blog, tags, web 2.0

Younger Leaders Gathering

500 young people (25-35) from 100 countries will be traveling to Malaysia this September for the Younger Leaders Gathering, sponsored by Lausanne. You get to recommend who should be there and you have until March 31st to do so. I will be putting some names of YOUNG people forward. Here is the Recommendation Form

Alas, I am too old, to be considered this time and am being shelved with the old fogies on the dusty bookcase of history past. But back in 2001, when they were not too strict on age requirements, I got to stir up things at the 2001 Great Commission Roundtable, also in Malaysia. The GCR was actually a combined effort on the part of Lausanne, World Evangelical Fellowship and the AD2000 movement.

For my presentation, I showed some footage from the Epicenter event (Austin, 2001) and gave stories of the artists and young church planters that were participating. The other presenter, who was representing the emerging generation from the non-western world, was Donny from Indonesia who is part of a ministry seeing punks give their lives to Jesus on the streets of Jakarta.

But this year I will be absent from the meetings altogether . . probably smoking a pipe on my rocking chair, with all my old mates at the nursing home down the road.

Technorati Tags: emerging church, mission, missional

John Piper in a Postmodern World

I have never met John Piper but some of his parishioners joined a church i was pastoring in USA and they spoke well of him. Piper has just written on William Tyndale who gave up his homeland (and his life) so that the English speaking world might read the Bible in their heart language (a fan of contextualization long before the term was coined).

John Piper and Desiring God are hosting a conference on postmodernism called "The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World" Sounds like the conferences we used to do back in the 90's. Despite what might be the longest and most commented on protest ever on emergentno.blogspot.com, I think its a good move, even though its a decade too late. I kinda wish they were tackling something more immediate - like the "Supremacy of Christ in a COMPLEX world" but that would mean their speakers would have to read some new books and deal with a subject that, although more timely, does not yet have a recognized canon of published works or recognized experts (or critics). And despite incredible leaps of understanding in the last few years, we still don't have a general theory of complexity. But that shouldn't stop us from bringing the wisdom of Scripture to bear on our present condition. Hey . . . maybe next year???

The Doxology Event

I must be the last one to blog on this - shame on me! Here are some images I took of the Doxology installation last October in Houston. This was one of the events I was involved in last year that DID NOT SUCK! Click on the images to enlarge them.

Rob Pepper, a friend and artist from London, created a series of large enamels picturing Christ as seen in church stained glass windows around London. Rob uses the 'conscious reflex drawing' method of creating these pictures, which are a significant part of his own spiritual journey towards Christ.

The Germans from Kubik came over to help, including their pastor Mark Reichmann (who let me preach at his church last year). Many of us wrote a chapter each for a book that will accompany the Doxology tour in its journey from here. The chapter that Debbie and I wrote was based on the woman at the well. Mark Fletcher (Rob's minister) gave some good spiritual direction to the flow of the book.

After viewing the pictures, there was a discussion with the artist about what inspired him to draw these images. There were also some spaces for people to pray and reflect in quiet.

Here are 3 images with my finger over the lens of my tiny camera. Hey . . at least I try! Here's some more . .

Emergent Plug-in for Mega Church Game

Its about time. I can't tell you how frustrated our family has been in playing this pathetic game called Mega Church, having to create large Orthodox cathedrals and Pentecostal mega-church stage shows and overgrown, resource-hungry EvangeMega WillowBackySaddle OsteenyServices for annoying yuppies who complain about the temperature of the Starbucks before the service. My kids are just TOTALLY SICK of building massive parking lots for SUV driving Christians who destroy the environment every time they drive across the other side of their city just to attend a slicker church service.

But wait . . .

Now, thanks to the emergent plug-in provided by the game's creator Tim Bednar (of "We Know More Than Our Pastors .PDF" fame), my family and I can enjoy hours of productive, informative family fun, and create churches with couches, candles, karaoke machines and video ipod stations with wireless connection to the main projection screen. How refreshing it is to have our virtual parishioners complain about the chai rather than the coffee.

So now . .  with the emergent plug -in (included free-of charge), I highly recommend this game for families everywhere seeking a new level of eccumenatainment that will transform the way we think about church.

Buy it here and vote for it at the Contagious Festival (number 21 when i looked) and don't believe a word i just said. Thanks Tim for your parody!

Sam's birthday

Samuel turned 15 on Saturday. He's doing well. Getting taller by the minute. Thats a screenshot of Sam on the left enjoying his birthday inside the online Runescape world. You know you have a geek for a son when you have to take screenshots to get a good image of him. Happy birthday, dude!!

What I Mean When I Say "Emerging-Missional" Church

I was asked again today so here is me, again, waffling on about  the "emerging-missional church" for those of you who are trying to either understand or tell the story correctly. If you hear other versions, know this . . . they are wrong and i am right. And if i am not right, please tell me because one day people might actually read this stuff and i want them to read WHAT ACTUALLY happened rather than someone's convenient "truth". So . . . this is what i mean when i say the "emerging-missional" church and why i prefer to keep the two words together. Add this to my other thoughts and the plot will thicken.

emerging

- a nod to the newness of the movement and its fluidity
- it is coming up out the previous wave of ministry, but not necessarily in protest to it.
- it displays characteristics of emergent behavior that are evident in any system when chaos finds order through self-organisation and other emergent criteria.
- the ministry is a biblically informed contextual response to the local emerging cultural context - something similar to what the wider church used to call youth culture, Gen X culture, postmodern culture, etc.
- it addresses issues of culture as well as mindset (postmodern) and life-stage (youth, genX)

Technorati Tags: Emergent, emerging church, missio dei, mission, missional