from jesus to christ: jesus' many faces

An interesting (if debatable) website from PBS. via

Resonate Photo Pool

First of all, the Resonate Photo Pool now has over 500 pictures in it. That's very cool and thank you to everyone who contributes. You are all amazing (but you knew that already). TheOoze.com's co-founder and noted photographer Spencer Burke has recently uploaded some pictures to our group and has awaken from his long blog nap. That's cool too.

One of the questions we had was, "what kind of pictures do we post to it?". That discussion is still happening and as part of the answer, I created a place called Resonate Stories, that is a place where people can upload pictures too that are what we see God doing across Canada. A kind of visual almanac of our faith journey. If you want to post, it is easy and free to join Flickr and even easier to join our visual almanac space.

Christendom-era Church DNA flaws

Jonny Baker points to an amazing article by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost about the church's DNA flaws.

The Christendom-era church has these three flaws in its DNA; it is attractional, dualistic and hierarchical.

By attractional, I mean the church plants itself within a particular neighbourhood and expects that people will come to it to meet God and find fellowship with others. There's nothing unbiblical about being attractive to unbelievers. There was certainly an element to which the early church was attractive to the wider community (Acts 2:47), though there is much more evidence that the church was reviled and avoided in its early days. Nonetheless, when I say it is a flaw for the church to be attractional, I'm referring more to the stance the church is taking in its community. By anticipating that if we get our internal features right, people will flock to our services, the church betrays its belief in attractionalism. It's the "If you build it, they will come" mentality. How much of the traditional church's energy goes into adjusting their programs and their public meetings to cater to an unseen constituency. The emerging missional church recognizes is compelled to move out from itself into its community as salt and light.

When I have consulted with churches that recognize the need to embrace a missionary stance in their communities, I'm amazed at the number of times, when asked to discuss specific ways they can recalibrate themselves to become missional churches, they begin talking about how to change their Sunday service. It betrays their fundamental allegiance to being attractional. The tailoring of worship services is a lot further down the priority list for missional church leaders. The Come-To-Us stance taken by the attractional church is unbiblical. It's not found in the Gospels or the epistles. Jesus, Paul, the disciples, the early church leaders had a Go-To-Them mentality.

That is just a short exerpt. The rest of the article is excellent and is a much read.

Resonate Studio

Just a note to mention Resonate Studio, a gathering on the Canadian prairies in the middle of February (yes, apparently we are stupid) to share, learn, and dream about what God is doing in western Canada. If you are in the neighborhood...

is the emerging church racist?

thats a question i have been pondering for awhile and for that matter is christianity in north america racist? it seems every event/gathering i attend is overwhelmingly populated by white males, most affluent. rarely does a women speak in a roll of authority, rarely, no never have i heard a person of color speak, well i did attend a workshop at the 2001 soularize lead by karen ward. anyway why is it that the emerging church is so white and so male. is there an undercurrent of domination that needs to be dealt with? why aren't there more people of color involved in this new "church" is it a matter of style? or is it truly deeper than that. if we are racist do we have the courage to confront it? i was trained to be racist as i grew up, no one sat me down and layed it out but it was clear, i was better than others. it wasnt until i became a follower of the triune God and meet a man from south africa, read james cone, and finished our first adoption, who was biracial that God destroyed my ideas of being better, it was painful and gut wrenching and at times i ran and hid but God prevailed and i can now say i am a recovering racist. the seeds will always be there sown years ago but i have a greater power now to overcome it. my prayer is that instead of all this rhetoric about what/how church is we would start a dialogue that is open and honest about the sins of our past and the hope of creating a new world together because thats what it needs to be a new world not a remodeled version of our old world, but a new dwelling built together with all God's people planning and building. then we may begin to heal and embrace each other again.can we truly have community without diversity, (racial and economic), please lets begin this discussion before we build another system that seperates and destroys.

What African Theologians Can Teach the Emerging Church

Full article over at emergingchurch.info

Emerging Montreal

This was posted on the e-mail discussion list for Resonate by David Brazzeal. It made my heart sing a bit and I thought I would post it here. Montreal is one of the least reached areas in North America but there are some really cool things emerging out in Montreal.

For those who are interested, there ARE several emerging things happening in Québec and Montréal in specific.

1) Nick Brotherwood started a new Anglican church (English) for young adults called Emerge about 18 months ago. Their website is http://www.emergemontreal.com

2) Chantal Vallée, a women's basketball coach at Vanier College, started a new churched called Agapé (français) about a year ago. Chantal also has hosted for 2 years now an excellent summer project for students who want spend about 5 weeks in the postmodern waters of Montreal. Besides a giving lot of insight into Québec culture, Chantal encourages students to find their niche in the city and simply ask God to make things happen.

3) Guy Rocheleau, former director of Le Roc, started a church called l'Eglise Urbaine (français) which meets at UQUM (University de Québec à Montréal). Guy should have a website up in a few days.

4) Dave and Heidi Gray are starting a new church called Journey Fellowship of Montreal (English) www.journeymontreal.ca

5) Pierre LeBel, the Montreal director of YWAM is also very much a part of the conversation. His French Bible study for intellectuals will be starting again in the fall.

6) Christian Direction, www.direction.ca plays a role in this emerging conversation in Montreal, especially through their arts ministry called Innovation
http://www.direction.ca
http://www.direction.ca/EN/innovation.htm (there's more info and pictures on the French version.

7) River's Edge Church (English) http://www.riversedgeonline.ca lead by Lorenzo della Foresta in another new church in Montreal.

8) Ron Melanson has been a pastor to street people in downtown Montreal for about 12 years now. He's one of my heroes of the faith because in many ways Ron was on the streets doing "postmodern" ministry before it became cool.

9) Then there is Curieux, I'm the leader of this experimental community of faith that has been meeting for about 2 years now. Our site is www.curieux.ca

10) Also there is a once a month meeting called La Cohorte / The Cohort. It is for leaders who are trying to navigate these postmodern waters. We meet in a coffee shop on a certain Wednesday morning of each month.

11) Oh, and don't forget Québec City. There are indications that the conversation is beginning to surface up there as well. Richard Klopp and Jean-Yves Cossette among others are very interested in the emerging church.

If you would like more information about any of the above people or groups, I would be glad to give you their "coordonnés"

Keep praying for Québec. Personally one of the things that really excites me about this emerging conversation, is that it fits Québec much better that other models and religious systems that have been thrust upon it in the past. I could go into details but I've already written too much.

How cool is that? I get excited everytime I read it.

Resonate is now online.

Resonate.ca, a new conversation about the Gospel and culture in a Canadian context is now online. Even if you are not a Canuck, we do have something that some of you may want to be a part of. It is a worship and media sharing site at Flickr. A space where you can download for free, pictures and visual media for your own use and also upload some of your best stuff. It's all free. Details here.

Now ad-free

Blogspot is now ad-free. There is that little Blogger-bar up there but no more offers to date attractive Baptists in your area!

the lesson?

one day jesus took his disciples up the mountain and gathered them around him. as they gathered he looked at each and everyone of them with a smile on his face. he then turned to them and started to teach them by saying:

"blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. blessed are the meek. blessed are those who mourn. blessed are the merciful. blessed are those who thirst for justice. blessed are you when you are persecuted. blessed are you when you suffer. be glad and rejoice for your reward is great in heaven."

as jesus was speaking the disciples started to talk among themselves;
peter looked around and asked, "are we supposed to know this?"
andrew, looking puzzled, said, "do we have to write this down?"
james, franticly looking for something to write with whined, "will we have this on a test?"
philip, pushing james aside said, "i have no paper."
bartholomew, with a tear in his eye said, "do we have to turn this in?"
while john complained, "the other disciples didn't have to learn this."
matthew, looking up at jesus said, "could you go over this again?
judas, shaking his head said, "what does this have to do with real life?"

just then one of the local pharisees asked to see jesus' lesson plan. he wanted to know the scripture used, and quoted and he also desired to know the hermeneutics used to structure the lesson. he inquired of Jesus, "where is your anticipatory set and your objectives in the cognitive domain?"

Then, Jesus wept.

Random Blogger Strikes Again!

I checked out my other neglected blog, and decided to change my template. After doing that I started checking out the other blogs that I have been neglecting to look at for quite some time. Lo and behold, I check out a kingdom space and what do I see? It is the exact same template that I picked for my blog. Well, to save embarrassment, I quickly changed my template. I was looking at the pink one with the Barbie head, but thought different when I thought of explaining the whole story to my kids. (Just doing this is wearing me out. I'm weak....)

I have been making failed attempts to get into blogging on a regular basis. My last post anywhere was in March! Before that it has been touch and go.

I am at a transition in my life. My father passed away in November, I have been feeling the push of God to move into pastoral counseling (the call that I have been ignoring until recently) and find myself reevaluating my priorities. I am sure of one thing..God has yet again picked a fool to do something. I would like to sit back and watch it unfold, but He won't let me.

I leave with 2 things.
1. Check out my blog...(please)Leave comments/criticisms etc..
2. As the "emerging" church are we becoming more missional? And if we are, do we then become submergent?
Chuck

an event of theological proportions

New look

I am having a shot at redesigning this blog site using the existing templates and hacking into them as little as i can. expect a little mess while i do this, but when i am finished, i will have another custom template available to whoever wants it.

Back??

Are we back? I hope so. It has been ages since I've been around to this neck of the woods. It's good to be back. I agree with the monkey...I promise to be active and all that other jazz he had to say.

back - so are we :)

andrew - it's good to see posting :) i have tried over the past, but life seems to be getting in the way - but i am back - as you are back - as we are all back :) (just could not do a "you and me" thing - needed to bring the whole community in) - i will, as i have promised on other blogs, to be active - proactive and not reactive :)

i think it would be a great idea to expand the global voice to others - i love hearing the voices of people all over the place - i have been feeling a touch in my heart to head overseas - just trying to figure out where God is telling me to head - ireland? england? australia? only God knows, and right now it's a secret :)

pax

nice to be back

wow - its been ages since i came here, but blogger has changed its interface so i thought i would try a new posting.
also, a kingdom space blog turned 2 year old in april. we have suggested closing down this blog but for some reason we never seem to. i am kinda hoping that people from africa and asia would join us herer for some good conversation - which was on of the original goals.
what do you think?
be nice to keep this going in blogger as a free site.

Tiny Loans Have Big Impact on Poor

From the New York Times

Microfinance is a long way from the world of venture capital where Mr. Khosla, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, a venture capital business, and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has earned a formidable reputation as the man with the Midas touch. But in February he said he would start working part time at his company to spend more time with his family and on his passion: supporting microcredit initiatives for impoverished regions.
The Share program, or Society for Helping and Awakening Rural Poor Through Education, was founded in 1991 by M. Udaia Kumar, who had been involved in providing training programs to poor rural entrepreneurs. The program has reached 300,000 needy families with loans totaling $75 million.

It goes on with this

An estimated 3,000 microfinance initiatives serve the world's poor but a scarcity of money has limited their expansion. More than 70 percent of them serve fewer than 2,500 borrowers each.
Only 30 microfinance initiatives have grown to serve more than 100,000 poor borrowers. One of them, the pioneering Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, reaches more than three million borrowers. A total of $4 billion has been disbursed since Grameen started making loans in 1976 with seed loans starting as small as $35.
The majority of the microfinance initiatives struggle to find grant financing and to stay in business. The money they do receive is often in small grants of $5,000 to $50,000. The ventures are typically viewed as risky propositions for loans from commercial banks.
But advocates hope Mr. Khosla's evangelism for the initiatives will help them increase support from mainstream institutions.
Some microfinance projects are tapping into commercial financial institutions. In India, the Grameen Foundation is starting a company called Grameen Capital India in partnership with Citigroup and India's leading ICICI Bank to help microfinance initiatives get guarantees for financing.
And business leaders and entrepreneurs are increasingly seeking to support microfinance organizations because of their financial soundness and broad social impact, said Julie Stahl, program officer of the Grameen Foundation USA.
"We are seeing a groundswell of support coming from leaders in the high-tech and venture capital worlds," Ms. Stahl said. Bob Gay, managing director of Bain Capital; Mike Murray, a former vice president at Microsoft; Rob Glaser, founder of RealNetworks; and Craig McCaw, a pioneer in the wireless industry, for example, have all been involved with microfinance projects.
It was heartening, Mr. Khosla said, to see that the entrepreneurial principles of Silicon Valley applied just as well in rural India and Bangladesh. "Granted, they are not as profitable as Google, but they have the same level of social impact."

Islam 'will be dominant UK religion'

via Religion News Blog

Islam will be the most widely practised religion in the UK by 2020, according to British and Muslim magazine editor Sarah Joseph.
She says mosque attendance is expected to outstrip church attendance over the next 16 years.
Estimates suggest that anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people a year convert to Islam in the UK, which is currently home to approximately 1.8 million Muslims.
"We are the second largest faith in Britain and will be the largest practising faith in Britain by 2020 if you use church and mosque attendance as a measure," she told the GDN.

Sarah Joseph does have a stake in saying such things but it is an interesting comment. Islam is growing very fast in the west and will continue to have more and more of an influence.

Everythings a'changing

Hi everyone, this is Andrew. I want to thank everyone for contributing to this discussion over the past (almost) two years. This blog will be winding down and will pop up on another blog system (Typepad) that will enable us to do some new things and do all things better.
The theme will continue to be what God is doing around the world. I will try to get more non-Western bloggers to be involved this time- something that I had tried to do but never succeeded.
The conversation level will also be upgraded to an in-depth discussion of missiology in the global emerging culture. I will be sending out invitations shortly, and if you would like to be one of the bloggers who contributes to this conversation, then please email me tallskinnykiwi at hotmail.com
The name may stay the same (or you could suggest a new name) but the address will change - i will put a link here when we have it.
Sometime this month.
Thanks everyone.

Andrew Jones

Can you help me get rid of a nuisance ?!

Some unfriendly people in Germany have written some very unfriendly stuff about me. That´s okay. People are free to say what they want. The problem is, that that their homepage is quite popular, so it is high up in Google. Whenever someone types in my name at google their bad stuff about me turns up on page one of the search. So anyone looking for me first gets to read that junk about me! YIKES.

Can you help me kick them out?

The best way would be to ask all your friends to make a link on their homepages to one of my homepages. That should get my own pages higher in Google and should be enough to kick them out of the first page of the google search! (providing you really have a number of nice friends...)

The Link could be to any (or even better all !!!) of my pages:
http://kerstinpur.blogspot.com [my German personal blog]
http://berlinrocks.blogspot.com [Stories about God and Berlin and both]
http://www.downtoearth.de [My internet shop for stuff on transformation of cities and people]

THANK YOU (and your friends!) A LOT!

Mayhem notes

Jeremiah Smith has some excellent notes from Mayhem posted on his blog.

Study cuts Kenya HIV estimates

From the BBC

A survey in Kenya has found fewer people may be infected with HIV than previously thought.
The study, carried out by the Kenyan government, suggests 6.7% of people have the disease.
Previous estimates had put the figure as high as 15% or 4.8m people.
Experts said the figures based on a sample of 8,561 households across the country are the most comprehensive to date.
The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey is carried out every five years and is used by ministers to plan health and social policies.