Hey everyone, we have decided to have a Halloween Party tomorrow instead of the usual!

However a few items have remained the same.

Time: 7pm – 10ish
Place: 2541 William St. map
To Bring: Potluck as usual…bring a main dish; the open house will provide the treats (drinks and candy)! Bring your friends, it will be a basically low key night, of chilling and chatting.
To Wear: Dress up in your favourite costume.

If you want to come earlier, a few of us will be decorating and giving out candy to kids who come to the house.

See you there!

OK, coming back from Seattle Anna and I decided to listen to the Christian radio station. Since Anna and I don’t go to church on Sunday, or have a traditional band with music in our current church it’s always nice to listen to the radio and hope maybe a familiar song from back in those days arises.

I have to say we knew every song. OK that sounded weird, what i mean is we knew all the songs cause all the “worship” songs haven’t changed. Are Christians that unoriginal? Sure we enjoyed hearing a few familiar songs, but come on people lets get innovative!

I’m starting to think that Christian music is now the equivalent of Christmas music…all the same songs but every year a different artist from a different niche group re-records all the same songs in order to make a profit, and because no one creates new Christmas music.

Please someone get original, I believe we were created to be creative.

P1010007.JPG

Originally uploaded by urbanplanter.

I’m sorry but I can only imagine what people have tried to bring into the exhibit.

It’s a good thing I left my roman candles back at the hotel. heh

P1010008.JPG

Originally uploaded by urbanplanter.

Well sorry everyone, this is where the photos end. They said i couldn’t take any pictures because my flash will hurt the scrolls. lame excuse i think…heh.

Anyway, it was pretty fun and really interesting. i picked up a book while i was there as well: The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible…Now i have the original!

I am just finishing my coffee at the cherry cafe in Seattle, and now am gong to walk 3 blocks (yes it’s that close) to see the dead sea scrolls at the Pacific Science Centre.

I am pretty stoked, and almost forgot they were here. maybe I will take a few photos and blog about my experience a little later today.

Any body want a copy?

seattle public library (10th floor)

Originally uploaded by urbanplanter.

Well, Anna had to go to Seattle for a conference called the Blog Business Summit, so I decided I would join her for the ride.

Of course it’s not quite a holiday, it’s more of a working vacation…low on the vacation, high on the work.

Anyway here I am on the 10th floor of the library (please excuse the mullet), getting ready to get working!

In you had taken a quick glance to the left of the post to read the information before moving to the post itself, you would have noticed that this isn’t written by Kyle. Instead, Kyle’s given me the privilege of being an occasional guest writer, and today is the first of those guest writings. It’s your lucky day.

Last night I was driving in a car with a group of friends on our way to band practice and one of the guys started reading the lyrics to a song he had just written. This friend, “Friend A”, isn’t too sure what he believes. He feels the vast majority of Church, religious practices, and a bunch of other parts of the Christian faith are bogus, but yet still longs to have connection to God. In this particular song he had written a verse loosely based on the patterns in church history: using violence to gain Christian territory in the past, using niceness to gain Christian territory today. I thought it was a good bunch of lyrics, and something we could discuss here, but that’s not where I’m heading right now.

In response to the song, Friend B, the other guy sitting in the back seat, proclaimed, “What do you mean you don’t know what you believe! That’s a song from a man who believes something, who has something to say!” He went on to tell his own story of growing up with parents who hated his faith and made him feel guilty a lot of the time. Friend B explained that even after he had found freedom from his guilt and sin in Christ he lived spiritually as a solitary figure, not having a group for community or whatever you’d like to call it. He referred to this time as being like John the Baptist – John lived alone in the desert and had no community for a long time, but he still sought God with all his heart and when called by God he would only then emerge from the wilderness to act. This, I thought, was a very interesting analogy.

So here’s my punchline: I’m not going to ask, “where is your community?”, or “do you like locust and honey enough to do this?”; actually, my question comes from something Kyle touched on in his last post and I thought I would tell this whole story to build on…

Who are you when no one is around? I know Bill Hybels has asked this question before, but I think it’s a good one. Another Christian heavy-weight has been on the scene for a while… “community living/community interaction”. We spend a LOT of time trying to live out a Jesus-like community existence, developing and honing our ability to get along, share testimony, pray and encourage, be humble, call each other out on stuff – and it’s all good. But what of our Garden of Gethsemane moments, our Temptation in the Desert moments, our eating locusts and honey (?) moments? I’m not saying this is the new replacement, to be solitary. I hope that’s not the point you’re taking from this. Friend B went on to find a girl who showed him there was a much richer Christian life in a community. But I think those times still need to have a profound existence in our journeys, and they become defining times for how we co-exist when others walk next with us.

It is so easy for us to go along with the crowd. I see it all the time. We may have a better idea, saw the wrong, and had a right action, but the crowd in some way draws us into their memorizing influence, and we sink back and forget why we ever thought differently.

I think of the mockery of a friend behind their back, voting or not voting a certain way in an election, or pursuing inadequacy because you are worried about what someone "cool" might think if you excelled at something socially unacceptable (like playing the clarinet, a story for another time).

Someone asked me, "How does living a Christian way of life look any different?" A great question, especially with so many non-Christians seemingly pursuing excellent and praiseworthy things. Let me suggest that Paul hints at it, when he describes in this passage about the "new way of life" in verses 20-24 that we are to live.

But that’s no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.

A precious word, "character" comes alive here. As we pursue truth in the person of Jesus, and reject the "crowd" way of life, we begin to enter into this God-fashioned life (as Eugene Peterson so elegantly phrases). A life filled with justice and genuine holiness and what I believe is encompassed by a life filled with integrity.

Now that is a lot of verbiage in order to say that what we say we believe and how we live that out have to be connected. It is not okay to simply say I believe this or that about justice and morality, if we have no intention of living it out in all areas of life.

And it must in all areas of life, not simply when we are in church, or with family or in a crowd. Integrity of character must happen when no one is looking.

Paul then in the following verses gives us some practical ways to live, which have a lot more depth to them then we may realize from first glance. These teachings of kindness, forgiveness, and sacrifice draw us into what it means to live differently in today’s world.

We will meet many people who are doing great things, powerful things, and merciful things in this world and we can point that out and say that is good, and that is from God. But we mustn’t leave it at that and ask whats the point, instead we must look at ourselves, look into our own hearts and minds and become imitators of God, thus unleashing the integrity and character of what it means to be a follower of Christ and partaker in the Spirit God gives to us.

We can’t be worried about those who do good and believe not. We must be concerned with our own way of life,  pursue God with our whole hearts and mind, seek justice with a kind spirit, and live out this new humanity that God gives to us that throws off the pull of the crowd and seeks God’s goodness in all we do; individually and in community.

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Tags: the open house, vancouver, church, ephesians

Hello Family and Friends of the open house,

We have a new great project we want to let you know about, and of which has already started!

We are attempting to raise $6,000 to help support our intern, Lacey Hearty, so that she can live and serve in east Vancouver for one year.

Some of you may remember that name from the newsletter we just sent out. Lacey Hearty has committed a year of her life to help us in our church plant, through serving the community in which we live by leading new small groups, organizing community events, volunteering in the neighbourhood, and bringing leadership to support our growing church.

Since we are still growing and are short on resources we want to invite you to consider supporting her in this endeavor, so that not only she will be changed by this experience, but that a few lives in east Vancouver will be changed as well.

To raise this money, a special webpage has been created to show exactly how our contributions are making a difference.

Best of all, 100% of the funds we raise goes directly to the open house, and thus Lacey.

To view this webpage, please click on the following link:
http://www.givemeaning.com/donate/n-ggprofile.aspx?gg=436

The GiveMeaning Foundation is a registered charitable foundation in Canada.

We continue to thank you for your prayers for us in this work, and for your support financially.

Tags: givemeaning, the open house, vancouver, internship, Lacey Hearty

Now, i am not a flyer fan, but this just needed to happen.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Flyers general manager Bob Clarke resigned and coach Ken Hitchcock was fired in a major shakeup Sunday, with Philadelphia off to its worst start in more than 15 years.

via

bye bye bobby