Anna in New York City

Originally uploaded by urbanplanter.

I thought I would post a rad picture of my wife Anna in New York City since today is her 28th birthday.

Man do i have a cool wife!

Happy birthday Anna!

Lacey has a great post on the topic of salvation (her notes) that she gleaned from her time in Michigan at the Mars Hill conference entitled, “Isn’t She Beautiful.”

“Salvation is this ongoing way of life we enter from all sorts of different ways. God wants to save us from a heart that doesn’t care about what God cares about. Its about the inner-transformation of our hearts and in this we will start caring about the things that God cares about or something is seriously wrong with what salvation is.” _rob bell

give them a read…

The week at toh we are going to explore the concept of community. The word itself has so many different meanings and expressions, but we hope that together we can explore a concept that connects to our experience of it in the bible and expressed in the quote below taken from the toh website.

We don’t profess to be experts of life, but we want to offer a place where you can build authentic relationships, reflect on the spiritual and the profound, ask questions, share in conversation and experience, laugh and cry. We desire to cultivate a humble, selfless life just as Jesus demonstrated in His life on earth. We value people and want to be generous in giving of our resources, time, talents, and gifts to serve and meet the needs of individuals, our community, and the world. We invite you to simply be in community with people who are committed to caring for each other and to making a difference in a world marred with brokenness and uncertainty. In essence, we want to be the kind of place where you feel like you belong. A place you can call “home.”

I had a great chat with Jared and Scott last night about bringing resonate greenhouse to BC.

Greenhouses are basically organic networks for church planters and those interested in creating new forms of church.

I will be there for sure!

It looks like we are going to meet in Langley on February 12th, 2007 at a local restaurant (I believe it will be Kelsey’s). The goal is to split off and hold these gatherings in specific areas of BC, and for me hopefully eventually in Vancouver.

Keep updated and let me know if you want to come!

I think Sarah said it best,

Kyle, if we could just knock down the wall to the room next to the living room we could keep everyone together.

Last night, for the second straight week we had almost 30 people in our house for church. I am a little dumb founded, excited and prayerful as what to do next.

With the topic being on mission (or missional), and the passage being 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 the ministry of reconciliation, I saw the continuous need for us move out from here, and to be reconcilers in and to the world. Our gatherings have been a place of growth, deepening and excitement as people are ready to join Jesus in this Christian way of life again for the first time and we wouldn’t want to lose that…but what does that look like?

What I loved about church though, were the ideas of how we can become reconcilers. People talked of deepening our relationships with those we know, making ourselves more available, becoming aware of what’s going on in others lives, being bridges for people, helping people be reconciled in their relationships, being in and for the world and understanding what it means to reach out and save people from present trouble.

All of these thoughts are hope are swimming and stretching us. I can’t wait for our community forum to talk practically ways we can begin to make all this God-talk become God-action.

Hey everyone, wanted to give you a heads up that my good friend and co-planter of the open house has officially launched her photo blog.

check it out and give her some encouragement.

The church is the single, multiethnic family promised by the creator God to Abraham. It was brought into being through Israel’s Messiah, Jesus; it was energized by God’s Spirit; and it was called to bring the transformative news of God’s rescuing justice to the whole creation.

–NT Wright (Simply Christian)

Today I had the privilege of preaching at local baptist church in Vancouver. It reminded me of my time in Calgary with Truth church, Anna and I were quite nostalgic.

Personally, I have been getting really used to the discussions we have at toh that I almost feel awkward preaching in front of a crowd, almost like I shouldn’t be up there and that we all should just for a huge scrum and really work through the issues of the Bible together.

I think most learning does happen through interaction and so I think I will keep leaning this way, but it will be interesting to see how this is maintained with a larger group.

Anna and Andrea came with me to this small Chinese Baptist church where I spoke on the importance of inviting people outside your church circles to do life with you. The hard thing for them will be have enough time to do so. They would have to drop a number of their programs to allow their people to have more time to develop relationships outside of church…but that’s another issue.

The passage I taught from was Ephesians 2:1-22, and it mainly focussed on the dis-unity of the Jews and the Gentiles in how the Jews were making the Gentiles become more Jewish in order to be a Christians. I compared this to how we (the church) have created our own cultures that normal people have to adapt to in order to be Christians. We need to break these down and go outside our church walls where ministry exists. I think I kept the attention of the group (average age 18), especially when I used the word circumcision…heh.

All in all it was a great time, the church was so friendly (I even had my own parking spot), had a great lunch with Anna and Andrea at the Swiss and we got to go back to Sunday morning church again!

I will try and summarize some of my notes and make them available if anyone wants to read what I taught today.

Originally uploaded by laceybeth.

OK, firstly i look like a deer caught in headlights. (thanks Lacey)

But secondly i thought i would post this since it dictates our office and meetings perfectly. Me trying to get some work done, but Lacey taking odd pictures and Kristin talking to her many friends and ignoring my LEADERSHIP!

Just kidding. We have a great time together, and perhaps it is cause we have to meet in public spaces (urban promise house) like this one.