Fire From The North

Shetland Islands. Fire From the North Strategic Prayer Conference, August 2005
This silent movie is Quicktime .mov
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weblog :: jordoncooper.com: The Personal M.Div

40 books, 20 articles. A Personal M.Div. Enter your suggestions here.

The Resonate Journal :: Coming September 1, 2005

Along with other church leaders across Canada, we are publishing a journal of theology, spirituality, and praxis in a postmodern Canadian culture. While the publication isn't ready to launch yet (it's going live on September 1st), you can sign up for more information at www.resonate.ca/journal/

a survey worth taking :)

i know, i am not big on surveys - but i thought this one was worth taking - and it is very short, very short.

a friend of mine at "forministry.com" is considering starting a new blog exclusively devoted to scripture engagement in a emerging/postmodern context. what i love most about this idea is that they are not saying "this is what we are going to be." here is what my friend tells me about the blog:

"I wish I could give you a compact blurb regarding what our new blog will be, but we're still trying to determine that. The best I can do is tell you that it'll be committed to the evolving dialog taking place around the Bible in the emerging postmodern context."

that is just so cool - if you can, please take the time to hit this link and take the survey - it's helping build the kingdom and getting more people involved in the conversation.

link

D A Carson and Conversant with Emergent

Scott McKnight had the office next to DA Carson for years and has a review of Conversant with Emergent on his blog. Both entries are worth reading.

• Part 1


• Part 2

Spain: Contra Corriente at Art3

The Contra Corriente Network in Spain ask for prayer tomorrow (16th) as as they take part in the Art3 Festival in Madrid.

Worship Art and Literacy Conference

April 18-21 at Asbury Theological Seminary. Some of the main speakers include Sister Rose Pacatte, Brian McLaren, Maggi Dawn, Fr. Thomas Hopko, Robert Webber, Claude Nikondeha, and others. Looks good. Check out the website for more information.

Kubik: Emerging Church in Germany

I preached at a great church in Germany last week called Kubik. Details here.

Pilgrimage Rest

Bruce Anderson has a new discussion group out contemplative spirituality at Yahoo! Groups and a group blog here. Check the site out for more information.

Resonate, The Magazine

Resonate is launching a webzine about the Gospel in a Canadian postmodern culture on June 1st, 2005. Check out this space for more details.

Soularize and Flickr

For those of you who are heading to Soularize and even for those of you who are gathering online, make sure you upload your pictures and screenshots to Flickr and tag them with Soularize so the rest of the world will be able to see what is happening. If you do tag your images with Soularize, anyone can see them on Flickr by going to http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/soularize.

You don't have to do anything else and it gives everyone a glimpse into Soularize even if they were not able to attend (how cool is that?). If you don't have a Flickr account, you can get a basic on by heading to www.flickr.com and signing up. It's free for a basic account and only $30 annually for the pro version.

Soularize is a month away!

One month till Soularize 05, in sunny Southern California, March 9-11, three full days for $99.

If in the past you have found TheOoze to be a valuable resource you will want to know you can join us face to face in one of the most alternative communities in the nation - Venice Beach, CA - for our 6th annual "Learning Party".

Always on the cutting/bleeding edge of the postmodern/ALT/emerging church, Soularize 05 is filled with innovation (free high speed wifi access, webcasting, simulations regional gatherings), grass roots leaders (voices you may already know and so many surprising friends you won't hear anywhere else), proactive daily themes (fleshing out the issues the church will be addressing in the next 5 years - Kingdom, Community, Rhythm, AIDS...), and multiple learning styles (Large gatherings, interactive labs, hands-on/in-the-field small groups, collaborative web postings and parties - 2nd annual Ooze booze cruise - celebrating what we have discovered).

Join Heather Reynolds (the woman, who introduced Oprah Winfrey to the AIDS pandemic through her South African orphanage "Gods Golden Acre"), fellow learners - Todd Hunter and Patrick Burke (living out the Gospel in Harlem), Voices of conscience - Christine Sine (Spirituality and Rhythm) and Shirin Taber (the Muslim Next Door), Now famous targets Brian McLaren and John Franke (via live Web uplinks), Bloggers (Sarah Dylan Breuer, Rudy Carrasco, Andrew Jones, Jordon Cooper, Malcolm Hawker, Chris Marrow, Jason Evans, Dwight J. Friesen, Todd Hunter and John O'Keefe) and the unconventional minds of Barry Taylor and Jerry Peloquin (a founding member of Jefferson Airplane).

Anyone who has attended a Soularize will tell you it is a one-of-a-kind event, never to be repeated, full of unexpected moments that have become legendary in the emerging church story... where you become the event and you leave with life long friendships.

Hope you can join me and let your community know about it too,
Spencer

Soularize 2005

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience - Books & Culture

Ron Sider asks, "Why don't Christians live what they preach?" in Christianity Today

Not surprisingly, the movement's numbers translated into political influence. And the renewal movement was so confident of its beliefs and claims that it persuaded the nation's top political leader to have the government work more closely with religious social service organizations to solve the nation's horrendous social problems. Members of the renewal movement knew that miraculous moral transformation of character frequently happened when broken persons embraced the great religion. They also lobbied politicians to strengthen the traditional definition of marriage because their ancient texts taught that a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman was at the center of the Creator's design for the family.

Then the pollsters started conducting scientific polls of the general population. In spite of the renewal movement's proud claims to miraculous transformation, the polls showed that members of the movement divorced their spouses just as often as their secular neighbors. They beat their wives as often as their neighbors. They were almost as materialistic and even more racist than their pagan friends. The hard-core skeptics smiled in cynical amusement at this blatant hypocrisy. The general population was puzzled and disgusted. Many of the renewal movement's leaders simply stepped up the tempo of their now enormously successful, highly sophisticated promotional programs. Others wept.

This, alas, is roughly the situation of Western or at least American evangelicalism today.

Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most "Christians" regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment.

The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general."1 Divorce is more common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers.

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