Community House - Residential Training

These people are my friends. God has connected us in a great way in the last couple of years. If you feel like some time in a situation like this would help you down the path to find the next step - I would highly recommend checking this deal out. Pax vobiscum.

IndieAllies

find out more at indieallies.meetup.comNext-Wave, TheOOZE.com and a couple of other sites and networks have come together to form an independent alliance of people working together. One of the first things we are trying to do globally is to create a place where people can meet face to face in their communities. The first initiative of the IndieAllies is at http://indieallies.meetup.com. Meetup.com organizes face to face meetings in small groups of like minded people. If you are interested, sign up, and Meetup.com will take care of the rest of the details.

You can read the TIME article on Christianity in Europe online

Seeking our brothers...book recommendation

Thought a lot about the whole issue of church and social action recently.
And discovered a great book (a friend sent it to me as a gift - friends are great) and read it in one go.
Bart Pierce: Seeking your brother. Restoring compassionate Christiantiy to the church.

A fascinating book, describing how one church is aiming to reach out to their community. "If you will take care of the ones nobody wants, I will give you the ones everybody is after" was a word God spoke to the pastor Bart Pierce, himself a drug addict.
And he acted on it.
He describes not only the various way the church is reaching out to the poor, destitute and needy in Baltimore where they are located and gives practical advice on how to go about. But he also shows that passion for god and compassion for men are just the two sides of the coins of love. Their church is an example of both: They experience long, deep intimate times of sensing the presence of God and being close to Him. And they reach out in compassion to their city in a meaningful practical way: Serving single moms, streetsleepers, hungy people and changing whole blocks - one at a time.
The church has often split the two aspects of serving Jesus. Some churches focus on the "Martha" aspect of caring for
the "human" Jesus by caring for people. Other focus on the "Mary" aspect of ministering to the "divine" Jesus by ministering to him in worship, adoration and contemplation.
However we need both "Mary and Martha" for the church to be a place where Jesus and people are welcome.
The book is encouraging, practical and most needed in this time of increasing spiritual and practical need. I highly recommed it to anyone hungry for wholesome Christianity.

Some spotlights from the Gathering of the Lutheran and Catholic Churches in Germany:
- One newspaper headline about the Kirchentag (Church gathering) read: "Germans want one [unified] church." We also wanted one unified nations - but now 10 years after the wall came down are still in the process of learning to accept, understand and love the members of the "other" Germany....that had been separated from one another for 40 years. How can unity and understanding work in the "nation of the church" after 500 years of separation?

- I asked a pastor what characterized the spiritual power of the Waldense Christians that survived persecution, inquisition and all the rest of it. He simply said: "Their live. They took the sermon of the mount litearal!"

- Talked with one member of the Normal Generation band a christian band popular in Germany, about Christians and artists. He said that most christian (music) artist find it hard to see that anything that is not explicitly worship music can be art, too. We spoke about the fact How God enjoys to be worshipped by beauty and general expression of mankind even if it does not have an explicit christian label on it. He recommende I read Imagine. A vision for Christians in the Art, in his opinion the one book he would give to every Christian artist in Germany if he had money....
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When I talked to people about the Transformation Videos which are a documentation of how God is changing whole communities through a praying, unified and responsible church, people asked me again and again: "Who is the preacher on the video?" It made me sad to realize how often we have exchanged the dynamics of the kingdom of God, transforming societies, people groups and nation (the salt of the earth) to mere preaching. What a pity. For all of those who are sitting through thousands of boring sermons through their lifetimes and missing the experience of God working through them to transform their world. And a pity for all of those who never get a chance to see the kingdom of God first hand because the christians are busy listening to sermons. What a pity!!!

Nullsoft's "Waste"

Most of you probably read about Nullsoft's Waste that was online just a couple of hours and then pulled. It is a p2p file sharing product that is for a closed network. I don't know if any of you got it but it would be an amazing tool to share worship media and resources with over a closed group of people (Waste limited itself to 50 users). Just an idea.