new site...

emergingchurch.info is a new emerging church web site. it's a place for stories of what is happening, reflections on what is emerging, discussion on anything and everything related to emerging church on the sites discussion boards, a selection of blogs and the obligatory links. i am excited about the site - do visit, join in the discussion, bookmark it, tell others, blog about it, and if you are involved in something that might fall under the loose label 'emerging church' then please add your story to the site....

rss xhtml?

have just checked kingdom space blog for the first time in ages and fixed a broken link from my blog to it.... i'll be honest - i haven't got a clue about RSS and XHTML - life is too short to keep up with these things!!! any suggestions for a novice wondering what on earth it is all about and why is hould bother to switch?....

Changes to this blog

Hi everyone. Hope your summer was great. We are changing a lot of things on this site at the moment. We are switching to xhtml, adding RSS, and trying to find some non-Western bloggers who can keep us in tune with what God is doing in their countries. Let me know if you have any suggestions. And if you like the way this new blog looks, then you are welcome to use the template for your own blog.

When do we have understanding?

Check out, More about being embarrassed about not knowing more.... .

A great story about what it really means to understand something, and how the interchangeable notion of weakness and strength is a truth which is not contained within the walls of the church.

Short words work well

I just read a very interesting techincal paper. It was about extending the Java programming language, and as a way of making his point, the author of the paper decided to only use words of one syllable, and then to allow himself to define words of more than one syllable in the course of the paper.

If you have PDF reader, and you can deal with a technical discussion of programming languages, you can read the paper, but for this blog, the thing which was so interesting to me was the last part, where the author reflects on the process of writing the paper.

...

I would like to tell you what I have learned from the task of designing this talk. In choosing to give up the many long words that I have come to know since I was a child, words that have many fine shades of meaning, I made this task much harder than it needed to be. I hope that you have not found it too hard on your ears. But I found that sticking to this rule made me think. I had to take time to think through how to phrase each thought. And there was this choice for each new word: is it worth the work to define it, or should I just stick with the words I have? Should I do the work of defining a new word such as mirror, or should I just say “looking glass” each time I want to speak of one? (As an example, I was tempted more than once to state the “ly” rule for making new words that change what verbs mean, but in the end I chose to cast all such words to one side and make do. And I came that close to defining the word without, but each time, for better or for worse, I found some other way to phrase my thought.)

I learned in my youth, from the books of such great teachers of writing as Strunk and White, that it is better to choose short words when I can. I should not choose long, hard words just to make other persons think that I know a lot. I should try to make my thoughts clear; if they are clear and right, then other persons can judge my work as it ought to be judged.

From the work of planning this talk, in which I have tried to go with this rule much more far than in the past, I found that for the most part they were right. Short words work well, if I choose them well.

Thus I think that programming languages need to be more like the languages we speak—but it might be good, too, if we were to use the languages we speak more in the way that we now use programming languages. All in all, I think it might be a good thing if those who rule our lives—those in high places who do the work of state, those who judge what we do, and most of all those who make the laws—were made to define their terms and to say all else that they say in words of one syllable. For I have found that this mode of speech makes it hard to hedge. It takes work, and great care, and some skill, to find just the right way to say what you want to say, but in the end you seem to have no choice but to talk straight. If you do not veer wide of the truth, you are forced to hit it dead on.

I urge you, too, to give it a try.

From "Growing a Language", by Guy L. Steele Jr.

I think it would be a good thing to add "those who love God and want to do what He says" to that list. We should give it a try.

Ranchero Software: NetNewsWire

Thanks Mike on the tip re: Ranchero Software: NetNewsWire. I am redoing my site with RSS feeds in XHTML. Any more tips?

Plea for RSS

As I expand the list of blogs I try to keep up with, the need to automate the process of "which blogs have changed since the last time I read them" has become greater and greatter.

The solution for this is something called RSS, which is a way for content providers to provide an index to their content.

I run a program which scans the RSS feeds for all the blogs I have subscribed to, and I get a list of the posts which are new since the last time I looked. Right now, 5 out of the 21 blogs I follow have RSS feeds.

Calling all bloggers, please please please check with your blog software to figure out how to generate an RSS feed. I am currently using TypePad for my faith-rambling blog, which is a subscription service and it provides an RSS feed for everyone. I understand that currently blogger/blogspot only provide RSS feeds for the "Pro" level blogs. I don't know about any other blog services.

For Mac users, the software I am using to both read AND post to all my blogs is NetNewsWire. Sorry, don't know what PC users are doing.

Heretics?!

Discovered a books whose title caught me:
Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up: A New Look at Today's Evangelical Church in the Light of Early Christianityby David W. Bercot
Haven´t read it. But sounds cool! I think we must think and rethink Christianity ...in the light of (present and past) culture, history and what the early church was really like. Guess some interessting discoveries await us.

Ecclesia Network is now online.

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....
.

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.

Look at Jesus and find an interessting collection of what people think Jesus might look like!

Hi everyone. We just moved this site back to its original address. The conversation we had last year was a great one. Then it stopped. We need to start another- I am open to suggestions.
How do we want to use this site?
At present, it is the largest, longest running international Christian blog site. But still, if we all dont need it, I would be happy to kill it and start something else.
I was hoping that more developing countries would be involved but that has not happened. Lets see if we can extend the technology to them as well as an invitation.
In the meantime, this is your site.What do you want to do with it?
oh yeah - I put a comments link on the site.

What's up in Europe?

Hey guys, things are moving in Europe. Check out some developments at Marc's Messages. Topics: raising up apostolic leaders (with unexpected lessons from the Church in China), Lighthouses take off in Norway, influencing our culture, multi-media worship, Pim Fortuyn remembered, seven reasons why I blog, a report from E:merge, thoughts about church planting in youth/student culture, no more tithing, Pete Greig's gripes about the pomo-pogo arty crowd, and more...

My new Blog. Check it our FutureMargins.com

"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic."
Anonymous

A big global confab on Islam starts up at Oxford in a few days.

Conflicting Leadership Styles
Consider this paradox...Faith communities lead by ministers who are "pastoral types" generally don't grow, but you can't grow unless you care for people. (Crop rotation doesn't count as growth)
If a community becomes a spiritual hospital, focused primarily on bandaging wounds--it tends not to develop the muscular faith necessary to engage the postmodern world. I wonder--are pastoral care and visionary leadership incompatible?

Comment & Question: I authored a blog titled "GraceAwakening" I discontiunued that blog at the end of 2002. I am ready to begin blogging again...but I need someone to help me design a cool looking blog...anyone have a contact for me?

"As Christians we tend to put the Great Commission [to preach the Gospel to all mankind] before the great commandement [to love God and to love men]...Quote found in Jack Frost Experiencing the fathers Embrace (cool book for those who find it hard to love - themselves, God or others...).

Happy Easter to Everybody...Everybody...and every member of the body, too!

Marc, the nice guy from Joel News wrote about what is happening in Berlin:

JN438-2. PRAYER FOCUS: 50 days of prayer for Berlin

From Easter to Pentecost the Berlin city network 'Together for Berlin' is calling the church to prayer for their city. A booklet has been produced in German and English to provide specific prayer information.

Let's pray that the '50 days' will fan the spirit of prayer in Berlin and elsewhere, that people will be ignited with new love for their city, and that churches of all sorts would be motivated to join in.

Coordinator Kerstin Hack writes: "In German there is a saying 'Not allowing anybody to steal the butter from your slice of bread' - meaning 'Not allowing anybody to take from you what is rightfully yours'. More and more Christians in Berlin are fed up with the enemy having stolen so much 'butter' right from under our eyes and we are more and more motivated to start a godly revolution against this. We are grateful for all the support we get in this endeavour from other cities and places. Thanks for joining hands with us!"

Get the booklet and join in. The English version is for free (download).
English version for Download

If you want the German verison in Print mail to shop@down-to-earth.de (it costs 3 Euro + postage) and is really nice (if you understand German).

Here in Berlin we are really excited about all the encouragement we get from outside of Berlin (Germany and the World!) - joining hands and prayers with us to make Berlin a God place.