am off to toronto on friday for a week's teaching with my good friend pete ward at the anglican theological college. looking forward to sharing some stories, nuggets and worship tricks across the water. will also be catching up with some friends who first introduced me to the delights of belgian trappist beer - feels good to know that the finest beer in the world comes out of our tradition eh?!

moving right along

Beer drinking Christians, dogs walking around, sitting around, tongues hanging out of windows eating bugs. What is all this? What are we seeing? It's not all tidy and neet and quantifyable is it. I don't even totally know what I'm saying. This is our life - going around trying to see what we can see, as clearly as possible - to hear rightly - and still not totally knowing. That's fine though.

We're finding out that we're "in process" and don't have to "be there" yet. We're being on a journey and we're finding partners to travel with. We're starting not to say "come on in the church, this is the end of the line, we're all perfect here, and if you're not we don't really want to fool with you too much." We are learning that a thought process like that is total crap and we're casting the crap aside. Didn't the Catholics figure out long ago that you can have a beer and be a follower of Jesus at the same time? Do they even think twice about it? Or is it just American evangelical Christians who have gotten hung up like that?

Am I rambling? Yes. The newest wave of emerging church leaders, apostolic planters, etc. are breaking those old molds. They don't (we don't) even recognize the molds any more. "Oh, we were supposed to be poured into some freakin' mold and be like you guys - I'm sorry." We're sorry, but we won't be poured. We won't be molded - not by that. We will get those molds, those shells out of the way so God can get His hands on us and make us into something that possibly even the "church" won't be able to fully recognize. Let's become unrecognizable - Jesus did.

the dog story: a dog is walking down the road. as he walks, he notices that as he moves his feet the trees move. "feet move, trees move; feet move, trees move" he thought to himself - he is happy, life is good. then, after his walk, he sits down and starts to wonder over the events that just happened. but, as he sits he notices that when his butt is down the trees stop moving. "butt down, trees not move; butt down, trees not move," he thought to himself - he is happy. he thought to himself, "my world is complete - legs move, trees move; butt down, trees don't move." all life came to an understanding and he was happy, and the world had meaning - all he has is defined by his walk, tree, sit, tree life style - everything is centered, he knew his purpose.

one day as the dog was sitting on his butt contemplating the world around him, his master called him for a trip to the beach - the dog had never gone to the beach, and he was excited about seeing all that he had heard about. as he lay on the back set of the car he was happy - the world was good; his life had meaning and he was off to the beach. as the car approached a light and stopped the dog picked up his head and looked around - all was good, the world was centered; he laid back down to sleep. the ride was long, and as the car was driving down the freeway the dog looked out the window - and his world fell apart before him. his butt was down, but the trees were moving - this was impossible, and against all he knew - how could this be? the dogs world needed to be redefined.

did you ever notice that some dogs riding in the back seat of a car just can't sit still as the car is moving? that's because, as long as they keep moving they do not need to redefine the world around them.

modern people are dogs living a complete life, some are pacing around the back seats of cars, ignoring the change that is taking place around them - postmodern people are riding in the back of the car. some are walking around, trying to keep their world in a logical order, like moderns - while a great many of us are riding with our faces out the windows and our tongues hanging out in the wind. yea, it can get sloppy, and on occasion we get a bug in the mouth - but it's fun and we are loving it. punk monkey

just a little something i felt i needed to share from your friends at http://www.ginkworld.net

Cheers!

Hey Alan, you guys drink beer?! Is this allowed for christians? ;-)

We JesusFreaks also have good connections to Vineyard, to Manhattan Vineyard. Mike Turrigiano, his wife Char and others often visited us last years. They are kind of spiritual parents for us. Last visit has been at Easter, at our annual leader meeting. Very nice and caring people!

At our meeting Taade (one of the guys who has been in Chile, see below) told us from these guys in Chile. He said, it's exactly the same we have in Germany - it's just another language. And it was very funny to hear of their festival, and to hear they called it Christock - similar to Freakstock. (BTW: From 1999 to 2000 we've had Froststock, a small festival, or should I better say freezetival, at the same place where Freakstock happens.) God bless these guys there! I hope some day I can meet them, see what happens there...

Media and worship media

A friend who I work with and I have been frustrated over the price of what some ministries are charging for just basic worship and media images. We thought it would be cool just to give Lakeview's weekend and teaching stuff away so we put together all of the original and royalty free stuff that we have used (we also use comp images that we can't distribute) and post them online for free. You can find them here. There is generic title slides (Lakeview logos have been taken out) and some background slides (for teaching and worship). All are set up around a metaphor. We know how strapped churches can be financially and I have been priviledged to work with a really talented artist so spread the word and steal the images if they are worth while. Everything is free and we hope to add another 30-40 weeks of images a year. If you know of any churches that are struggling in the area of media images, let them know of the site.

...aaaand we're off!

Hey people - PEOPLE! PEOPLE!! I'm glad you've all come together here today to see the unveiling of such an ultra cool thing - akingdomspace. Where is akingdomspace? Everywhere! If you answered anything else, please restart the quiz and begin again. We are everywhere. We are at Search Party. We are in Lexington, Kentucky, USA - at least this part of "we" is, are, whatever.. I think this will be an amazing touchpoint for many in the world to be able to see whaas hatnin'.

I've actually never used Blogger before. My blog (there's that funky word again - is next week the due date for a new term?) ...as I was saying, my "blaaahhhg" is independent - meaning it's not "powered by blogger." It's powered my me. I'm a web designer so it was easier for me that way.

Here I am though - part of the team. I'm glad to be here. Thanks, Andrew, for asking me to be part of this thing. I'm in the ongoing process of planting a new faith community in Lexington - it's called Vine & Branches Christian Community. Some kind of hybrid between cells and house churches - relational ministry - integrating ancient liturgical "stuff" with new freeform "stuff" - et cetera. We're a small group that meets in my home. We go to bars and coffee houses - we drink beer and coffee. We wait for God to connect us with people here.

I'm married to Liz, for 14 years next month - yeee haw! I'm 35 years old. We have 4 great kids from 12 to 6 - busy life. I also know that Kevin character down there and the folks at Vineyard Central. God brought us together a year ago and we love these guys. We're learning from them. The way God has been connecting me with so many people around the states and world who are doing/seeing/thinking similar things is amazing. I look forward to much more of this. God's Grace be with you!

greetings from CedarLily

I've spent ages trying to think of a snappy introduction, but guess I should probably just take a deep breath and go for it! I feel like I'm in very hallowed company, being allowed to sit on the table with the grown-ups overhearing their dinner conversation- so thank you for inviting me!
My name is Abigail, and I'm in Sheffield, UK. God's shaking everything up for me at the moment, but I'm mainly involved in a group called Home, which is one of the clusters of small groups at St Thomas Church, Crookes. We're a group of 50 or so young adults trying to work out how to be church with integrity, in a way true to who we are, and also seeking to release the creatives. I'm also personally interested in releasing the prophetic in the cluster, and having a safe space for us baby prophets to be free to have a go (and quite often mess up!).
There's quite a lot of exciting stuff happening here in Sheffield at the moment- feels like a fresh wave is coming imminently- and so I'll try and be brief in what I write (though that does tend to be a problem!) Anyhow, enough waffle, I'm going to sit back and listen now. Man, it's so good to be part of something! I love it!
ps. if you're interested, I'm currently pulling together a website at www.cedarlily.com which contains my blogs- I'm teaching myself html so it might be a bit ropey, but feel free to have a nose round. God bless!

i enter the blog -

this is too cool. i love the idea, the community and the ability to connect in deep and meaningful ways. as i look at my life, and the life of those around me, i see changes taking place on deep personal levels - and this blog is one of those deep levels, or it could be - and prayerfully will be - as time moves on. reach, teach, connect, comfort, embrace, commune, and most of all - love. truth is in the narrative - and it is found in the heart of the story.

here's an interesting site note - when you do a spell check on this blog, the world "blog" goes up as a miss-spelling. just my little punk monkey mind working - blessings, punk monkey

Did you know about the SEED STORIES event for church planters in LA next month? Worth going to.

Hi all... I'm having some technical difficulties so I'll experiment with a short one just so I don't lose it and waste a lot of time...

Kevin Rains here from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA ... is this thing on? Can you hear me in the back?

More to come when I iron out my technical difficulties....

Christian music musings. The Gospel Music Association handed out its version of the Grammys, the Dove Awards, last night. How nice that we have our very own ghettoized awards ceremony, complete with Christian celebrities to host them. Anyway, surfing around brought me to this article about the state of so-called contemporary Christian music. I found this quote quite interesting:

It's becoming clear that most non-Christians will be no more attracted to a genre called 'Christian Music' than Christians would be attracted to a genre called 'Buddhist Music.' By ditching the label Buddhist Music, prominent Buddhists like Duncan Sheik have won a hearing among non-Buddhists for their music and their ideas. Christians who won't abandon the label 'Christian music,' even when doing so will bring this music and its lyrical content to more non-believers, are making a serious and critical mistake.

And then I saw some relevant links on Karen Ward's blog.
An invite. I'd like to pass along an invitation to all to subscribe to an email newsletter I send out on the topic of evangelism on the Internet. You can read more about it here. I'm about to upload the latest issue.

i predict that people will come

from east and west,

and north and south

to sit with abraham, isaac and jacob

at the amazing party in the

kingdom of heaven.

those who think the

kingdom of god

belongs to them will be thrown out

into the darkness

where they will cry tears of bitter regret.

Q64



jesus speaks of a kingdom without ownership.



when we begin to attempt to broker this kingdom

we join those weeping with regret.

we do not sell this thing called the kingdom...



WE ENACT IT!



peace and love from dallas, tx, usa.
dan hughes
http://theyblinked.blogspot.com

jonny baker, from london, england. i've been blogging for exactly one week, learned my first piece of html in the process (making a link - wow!), and now i find i have been invited to join a global blog.... weird week! hi to all. it's early in the morning here and i can't think of anything overly inspirational to write to introduce myself. i'm involved in grace, an alternative worship community. i've also been in youth ministry for 14 years (don't let that put you off). i run a small record label, proost. love all things creative. i guess the reason i'm here is because andrew has slept in my lounge! cheers

Checking in...

I guess we're supposed to introduce ourselves in this first blog. At least that's what everyone else is doing. So here's the boring formalities...My name is Mike Bishop and I am a church planter (sounds like an AA meeting - I often feel church planting is one long AA meeting). To be more accurate, I am a willing participant in the Church God is building in West Palm Beach, Florida. My wife and I moved here last year, had a baby boy, and started a baby church. Somewhere along the way I decided to launch a website to chronicle our journey and called it whatischurch.com. We were inspired to start blogging by everybody's blogging hero - Andrew Jones himself. I say "we" because ours is a community blog like akingdomspace.



Okay, now that the formalities are over, let the fun begin. It seems to me that one of the common pieces to the "where do we go from here" puzzle seems to be a theological and practical (those should bleed into each other, right?) understanding that "the Kingdom of God is among us." Two of my heroes (and literary mentors) at this stage in my life are N.T. Wright and Dallas Willard. They have been valuable friends on our journey this past year. I believe, unless we grapple with the implications that the Gospel of Jesus is "The Kingdom is here and available for real life," we will simply be repackaging the consumer spiritualities the modern church helped to create. That's what I'm thinking about most days...well, that and changing dirty diapers.

Hi, I am Jakob Salzmann from Germany, 22 years old. When Andrew asked me for blogging here, my first thought was ...eeh, which was my first thought? But I remember my feelings, I was very excited - for he was asking me! Wow. But the longer I thought about, I asked myself: Who am I for that he asks me to take part at this great blog project?! I am just a boring student at a theological seminary which is in a small village at the ass of the world, as we say in Germany. The next city is just a small city, only 6000 people live there. And the next bigger city is Cologne, hours away, and I get there just may be one or two times a year. Normal people, I mean people who don't know anything of God I just meet in holidays (three times a year). At this seminary everything is about schoolstuff, about theology. We talk, for example, about the structure of verse 4 in Psalm 32 and we spend hours, I mean weeks! in discussing the role of women in church, or about what Barth thinks about dialectic. And this continues at our homes. (We live together as students in private houses...) For example today in the kitchen Andi asked me about my lecture I've had in NT Theology about how Bultmann and others understood λογος in John 1,1ff. This is our everyday life. Well, really not interesting for people who read this blog, isn't it? We just hang around on our "holy hill", don't know what is going on outside.

What I want to say is that I really don't know if I have to tell you anything. I am actually not really involved in any network. Well, I am a JesusFreak, and there I am part of WorldWidePizzaService, which is our mission section - but it is just small, there doesn't really happen big things. (I mean in WWPS, not at JesusFreaks. JesusFreaks: We have a very nice festival in summer: Freakstock. Ask Andrew...)

I sent Andrew a mail and said, sorry, but I am not the right man. Like Moses, in Ex 4,13: "O Lord, please send someone else to do it." What should I have to share with you? Later I thought about it, and I remembered my prayer: "...enlarge my territory." (you know it, Jabez, 1 Chr 4,10) May this invitation to blog here be an answer? O Lord, it is too big! But Jabez' prayer continues: "Let your hand be with me." And I also remembered Moses, who had to hear answer an angry God, who wanted Moses and not someone else to go. Just trust and go when God calls you.

So, that's why I am here at all. I will try to blog here, guessing it is Gods will.
I hope we get to know us better. See you!

(Hi Andrew - this is my revocation!)

Hello! I'm Andrew Careaga, tucked away in the Missouri Ozarks. Thanks to Andrew for inviting me to take part in this community. What a fantastic adventure it is to be alive and blogging during this pivotal moment in the kingdom. Karen, your recommendation of Steven Johnson's book sounds like a fascinating read. I've always been fascinated by ants and their cooperative societies. You might be interested in this story about a 3,600-mile-long ant colony recently discovered in Europe. Well, there's my two cents' worth for today. I look forward to getting to know you all via this medium. Peace!

Brand new blogger from Berlin. Kerstin is a crazy chick who was with me in Seattle last year and comes down to annoy us sometimes from Prague. She is one of God's favourite people in Berlin and for Berlin. Her blog is really raw but I am convinced it will be one that we all will be going back to with amazment. Kerstin looks like Pee-Wee Herman . Sorry, she just does. We love her very much. Meet her at Berlin Rocks

"we are the world" ?!

hi everyone. i'm karen ward, a church planter and roving god watcher in seattle, washington. when i got my invite from andrew to be on the blogging team, and i read about how kingdom bloggers would be networked all over the globe, i thought, this is massive... this is an organic living example of "emergence theory" becoming a reality in the global church.

all of this jives with this book (from a non church vantage point) that i recently read called "emergence- the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software" by steven johnson. it is not an "easy read," but is a quirky, fascinating and hugely relevant foray into the science of complexity and the rising theory of emergence (as the "bottom up" organizational paradigm that is increasingly guiding research across a myriad of disciplines). emergence theory already underlies the internet, and will increasingly inform the patterning of the 21st century church (as this akingdom space blog is a prime example).

about the title of this post. when i got the blog invite, i also thought of those catchy global aide songs that were popular back in the 80's (when i was in college), where people swayed and sang "we are the world, we are the children..." well, in many ways, kingdomspace blogging is a making a reality of something that was formerly and mostly swayed. we are the world. we are god's children. we are helping to connect what god is doing all over the globe.

cheers!

wow.

Thanks to Andrew for the invitation to join this team.

I never thought I'd say this, but it's an exciting time to be a Mennonite. Churchwide the question of raising up young leaders and reaching unchurched young adults has reached a fever pitch. I'm pretty convinced this time of transition from the modern world means creating new spaces for young leaders and young adults. A hearty welcome into existing churches may work for some, but the vast majority of the emerging culture simply will not connect to existing congregations in my denomination (big news flash to most of you, right?)

Pray that God will strengthen my voice on this subject, and that those with ears will hear.

Peace.

Praise

"Proclaim every day the good news that we are saved. Proclaim his glory to the nations, his mighty deeds to all people" (1 Chronicles 16). This is what David said to the Levites when he charged them with the responsibility of singing praises to God.
Today I have to do the same thing. There are about 20 bloggers that are in tune with what God is doing in their world and I will be asking them to put their voices together on one blog page. It will eventually be released on akingdomspace.org (not there yet so dont go there, uh uh, dont go there, girlfriend). I expect there to be 100 bloggers soon and having them speak from all over the world will be a great way of making known what God is doing.
BTW - the word "praise" means to publically acknowledge. Praise is not praise unless it is shared or made public. It is also something that we do to each other, not to God. The word "Hallelujah" means 'Hey you, go ahead and publically acknowlege Yahweh.' I think Blogging will become a great way to do that.

I am speaking at this event in Budapest this weekend - Sunday from 2-4:30. Hope 21 "The DAWN European Network and the Alliance of Saturation Church Planting have for the first time combined their annual consultations to meet together at Hope 21."

This afternoon 10 of us travel up to Usti Nad Ladem, in Czech Republic, to meet with a group of young people who are starting their own house church.

Billy Graham.org More Than 2,000 Commit Their Lives to Christ at North Central Florida Festival. Pray for College Station crusade in Texas May 2-5.

This weekend I will be at Kraftwerk Youth Church in Germany. Karsten Wolff is the pastor - great guy and great church.

Rambo IV: First Blog

In the beginning was the word.