Tuesday, July 30, 2002




A new day for a new generation. 100,000 people attended The Call New York City on Saturday 29th June. The prayer/worship event ran from 6am until 6pm and was held at Flushing Meadows - also known as the field of dreams. 16,000 people attended The Call England on Saturday 13th July. The prayer/worship event ran from 10am until 9pm and was held at the Madejski Stadium, Reading. 200,000 people attended the Catholic World Youth Days in Toronto between 22 and 28 July.



Also read some of the stuff Jonny suggested on 'churchless faith'. Gives good insight in why people leave the church. Alan Jamieson interviewed 108 people who have left churches in New Zealand and was surprised by what he found: people were not leaving 'mainline' or 'traditional' churches, but evangelical or pentecostal/charismatic churches, predominantly between the ages of 30-45, the vast majority held key leaderships positions before leaving, and had done either full-time Christian study/work, they had been involved in churches for an average of 15.8 years and the majority retain their faith while leaving the church.

who lives next door?

i spent the weekend in the san francisco/oakland area this past weekend and i found out something very interesting. i was looking for a particular church and only had a general cross streets as a location (14th and market). as i was searching for this church i decided to stop and ask some of the other churches where the church was. i approached a roman catholic church and through a small inforced window the women told me that she thought that they were the only church in the area. i turned around and right across the street was a very large lutheran church - they ministered in the same city, on the same street on blocks next to each other and believe it or not, neither knew the other was there. the luthern church had no idea where the other church was, and had no idea there was a roman catholic church across the street - how could this be? then it dawned on me - most of us have no idea who lives next door to us, so what makes me think the church would be any different? (pastor john)

Monday, July 29, 2002

Churchless faith - coming and going from evangelical churches

don't know if you've come across the book 'churchless faith' by alan jamieson. it's a piece of research of in depth interviews with people who have left (mainly evangelical/pentecostal churches) as to why they left and how they are pursuing faith now. it's both fascinating and compelling.

anyway the author/researcher is in london in sept giving a lecture/seminar at kings university. i attach details below that pete ward sent me. if you are interested in going e-mail pete

Got Alan Jamieson author of Churchless Faith coming to The Theology Mission and Culture Seminar at Kings College London on 25th Sept 12:30-2:00

The session will be in The Department of Education and Professional Studies, Waterloo Bridge Wing The Franklin Wilkins Building.There will be posters in the Lobby giving a room number.

Alan is from New Zealand and his recently published book is about the spiritual journeys of evangelicals who have left the Church. This is obviously a key area for most of us to consider. His paper is titled Churchless faith - coming and going from evangelical churches

Thursday, July 25, 2002

Creative Class

Here's a verbatim from my own blog, the wonderful world of eggbert:

I'm checking out The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida. It's a look at creative and innovative people as a social group, and how they transform communities the more they are concentrated in a community.

I saw immediate parallels to what's happening in not-yet institutionalized new christian faith communities (that's cynical. We'll never institutionalize, of course!) forming around the country. My guess is that a large portion of those in these faith communities are among the creative class. Hmm...

Wednesday, July 24, 2002

Information on Soularize 2002 is available at http://www.theooze.com/soularize.
Joel News International published a summary of three articles on organic and subversive churches.

Etrek

Etrek starts up in September for those looking for ministry training that is experiential. I have been asked to be a faculty adviser. This should be a great way to get training. Aug 15 is the deadline for signing up.

Sunday, July 14, 2002

I am in Italy checking out what God is doing and wants to do. Assisi was an amazing city and experience. It is a pilgrimage city and I expect the legacy of Francis will flavor the ministry of God in this country if He wants to do something new.

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

a blog trick!

paul prodigal fromont put me onto this cool thing for your blog where you can add comments after each posting. and guess what? - it's free! go to enetation and log in and then you just get a few lines of code to add in your template and it's that simple.

Saturday, July 06, 2002

Ahoy, I am working at getting some Canadian pastors networked together and talking to one another (online at first and then in person). I have started a Yahoo! Groups e-mail list that you can sign up by sending an e-mail to canadiancontext-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. If you can pass the word along, that would be helpful.

envy

me, i'm looking for weather, food, night life, excitement, entertainment. i'm looking for a city that's open 24/7 and has so much to offer you could never do it all in a day - it would take weeks. a place where you can get a pizza, hot and fresh, at 3:00am or a primerib dinner for $5.00. a place where the people are young, or young at heart, and can turn party at the drop of a dime - that's what i would envy - but then again, i live in las vegas nevada and have all that ;-)

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

great. now I've got prague, seattle AND london envy! Can't even find a *%#$*&^% decent cup of coffee in a place called souderton (get a magnifying glass and search southeastern PA).

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

prague envy shared by me karen! i'm in london in the rain. ho hum....

Gliding

Sometimes it feels like I'm gliding on something so huge, so "of God", that it takes my breath away. Reading everybody's blogs, listening to stories, yearning for some fresh wind of the Spirit that is blowing so strong right now in our world - it's huge. And it's small. An orange house in Prague. A woman winging it in Seattle - a postmodern Lutheran! who would have thought it. Prayer ministers. Artists. Theologians. It's a great time to dance, to knock off a few sacred cows. It's huge, but it seems rather simple, too. I often try to make things complex, but having a little God party in your home - it takes a little planning (who's bringing the potato salad?), but it can also just kind of flow. We're getting a hot tub tomorrow, and my wife and I both thought, "now there's the start of a great house church!". Peace and blessings.

Monday, July 01, 2002

chill and pray in cyberspace

i'm bummed i could not be in prague. i'm gonna pray to god to get rid of my "prague envy." gonna do it at my computer... you too can carve out a bit of prayer time and sacred space while computing, by clicking over to jesuit "sacred space prayer" online. it is very relaxing and focusing to do this prayer before a hard day of blogging and cyber-jockeying. try it... just follow the onscreen directions, click, mediate, click, mediate, chill... via sacred space prayer