Month: November 2004

Chip Brogden, at Watchmen.net (thanks, John for pointing me to the article), has some strong words to say about "organized religion."  This is a short excerpt from a much longer article: What is Babylon? It is the marriage of church and state, religion and government; or to be more direct, it is allowing the leaven…

I find myself falling into the trap of putting too much focus on the church as a gathering and forgetting that the church, in its fullness, is more about going and being than about gathering. Yes, the church gathers to fellowship, break bread, and pray. But there is much more written in Scripture about the…

We are firming up plans for a House Church Conference on May 6-7 in Santa Maria, California with Tony and Felicity Dale and Neil Cole. I will keep y’all posted, but if you would like to receive details by email send me a note.

I would like to provide some context for the previous post’s discussion.  It seems to me that, in some ways, we are debating the question: "just how sinful are the institutional church’s structures" and thus "how harsh should we be in judging it?" I suggest we look at how we deal with "sin" on a…

Chris Miliken comments (with some enthusiasm) on a recent post in which I quoted a short excerpt from Tony at theoblogy.  I thought the original quote was worth repeating along with Chris’ comments… for the sake of dialogue… Tony said: "More and more of us are now convinced that something new cannot happen within the…

Here is a tip (not a yahoo promotion) to stay in touch with a handful of your favorite blogs.  Yahoo now has a blog reader (RSS) that can be personalized at www.my.yahoo.com.  You can subscribe to the blogs you follow and the current posts, along with summaries, will appear on your yahoo home page.  I…

Notes from an Anabaptist church planting conference: We may agree church is people rather than a building, but we need to remember it is not just people in services – it is people dispersed as well i.e. people both gathered and scattered. This requires a more holistic attitude. Church planters should not be aiming at…

Tony at theoblogy just out and out says it… More and more of us are now convinced that something new cannot happen within the existing organizations and institutions. They are irredeemably reified into patterns of institutional conservatism and survival; they are irredeemably sold out to market forces and have thus commodified the radical, liberating message…

Next Wave has their November issue out.  Always good reading.  Here’s an excerpt from an article called "Incarnational Mentoring": Learning the ways of Jesus is more like making pickles than listing the fruits of the Spirit in a classroom using a PowerPoint presentation. You cannot diagram or sprinkle salt on a cucumber to get a…

I always find it interesting and fun to peek in on someone else’s house church gathering.  Following is from Rachelle at a gathering called thursdaypm: Mike broke out his electric guitar and worked up a worship set. I asked him to only bring us songs that focused on praising God and naming God’s attributes. I’m…