Month: July 2005

I am delighted to point out a new blog with John White and Tim Pynes called House Church Chronicles.  I have been on John’s house church email list for a couple of years now and always, always find his writing to be relevant, insightful, and on-the-mark. Both John and Tim are involved in house churches…

My desire is to be part of community life that is both authentic/supportive AND missional.  Mike Lyon, of Organic Connection, sent out this email on "Breaking Camp."  I thought it was so important that I would quote it here in its entirety: Every so often, you have to break camp. I think the act of…

Like everyone in blogo-land, I’m reading my way through James Rutz’s "Megashift."  I have already seen enough quotes from it to know that He has some awesome things to say about what God is doing all over the world and how He is working through simple, organic expressions.  Here’s a great summary. But… His first…

The church as missional seems to bring up many, many apparent contradictions in its discussion. 1. Do we build community first that is attractive to others (John 17) or is community to be build around its mission as a core identity of that community?  I’ve never come up with a solid answer to this question……

Prodigal Kiwi has posted some "missional questions"  he uses in interacting with Scripture.  Take a look. I want to update my own thinking on the subject of "community as mission" as we prepare for some gatherings in which we focus on the missional aspect of our own community…  More to come.

Phil Goodacre reports on a Re:source conference in which Andrew Jones was sharing…  Some great basics: He (Andrew Jones, aka Tallskinikiwi) started off by reflecting on how the Kingdom of God is like yeast (Matthew 13:33). As yeast is worked throughout the dough the yeast cells divide, yet it’s impact is what makes the bread…

I have been talking about the need to have the fire alive IN us before we gather to share it with others. Henri Nouwen has a classic article on this called "Moving From Solitude to Community to Ministry."  Here are a couple of excerpts: Solitude is being with God and God alone. Is there any…

Mark Van S has an excellent article, over at the new issue of NextWave, that challenges the way the church takes anything and everything (in this case the use of the arts) and turns it into a commodity… You see, western culture (especially American culture) turns all of the finer things of life into prostitutes…pawning…

My "theme of the week" seems to be about "Bringing the Fire With You" when you gather (see previous post)…  which means that we are learning to live the radical Jesus-life every day of our lives in every situation we are in. This reminds me of John Michael Talbot’s book on Francis of Assisi and…

This theme keeps coming up in more than one church I have been involved in this week: "Bring the fire with you." In other words, don’t "come to church" in order to experience God and rely on whatever takes place during the time of the gathering to create the fire.  Recognize that when we gather,…