Another quality message (10 minutes total time) from Rollins. I really find myself connecting with this guys words the possibilities he dreams and shares.

I hear his words of participation and transformation!

Here is a really good talk from Peter Rollins on the emergent church. I find that I really connect with what he is saying here.

And for those of you who scan my ramblings here, or hang out with us at the open house, Jem and I are going to be reading and discussing Rollins book How (Not) to Speak of God – Marks of the Emerging Church starting in September. It will be open to everyone.

More to come on that. Enjoy.

Explaining Emergent Churches – Inner Compass from Calvin College on Vimeo.

Today is Blog Action Day (thanks nick).

Today thousands of bloggers will unite to discuss a single issue – poverty. We aim to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web!

I wanted to let people know of two Vancouver groups fighting poverty.

Shalom Seekers:

Shalom Seekers is an associate Ministry of City In Focus formed in 2004 to network, train, and resource Metro Vancouver’s Christian Community to be fully engaged in seeking “the welfare of the city” where God has placed us (Jeremiah 29). We labour toward the day that Metro Vancouver lives up to its reputation as “the most livable city in the world” for all who call it home, especially our most vulnerable neighbours.

Shalom Seekers are putting on a great event this weekend coming up. Check it out here.

Streams of Justice:

Streams of Justice – the name is drawn from the biblical prophetic text of Amos 5:24 “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” The stream envisioned in this passage is one that doesn’t dry up in the hot summer months, but flows constantly throughout the year. As such it nourishes and sustains the life of the community and its members. So too social justice is something that must be constantly practiced if communal life is to be nourished and sustained. The biblical notion of justice is centrally concerned with the protection, support and care of the most vulnerable members of the society, those who are particularly exposed to abuse, violence and exploitation, and susceptible to deprivation of basic resources. Consequently, it is not limited to fairness in legal and judicial matters, but entails equitable access to resources, sufficient economic means for meaningful social participation, valued input into collective decision-making, ensured personal dignity and mutual respect, and non-exclusionary community practises.

Rooted in the biblical prophetic tradition and the life and teaching of Jesus, Streams of Justice actively pursues a more just, equitable, inclusive, and compassionate society through 1) analysis, action and reflection that expose and challenge unjust social structures, and 2) creative initiatives that open up space for imagining and embodying alternative possibilities of human solidarity and communal life.

Hey everyone, more and more details are shaping up for the open house this October. We are slowly working toward a new space to meet, and Project 51 is coming on strong. We look forward to hanging out this Sunday at the usual location @ 6pm for potluck and a discussion around P51.

In light of P51 I wanted to make known to you a conference that is coming up this October. It’s called The Church and Affordable Housing Conference and it’s running October 17 & 18, 2008 put on by the Shalom Seekers. I went a couple years ago and it was awesome. I highly recommended it if you can make it out.

The costs are as follows:

$60 Regular (September 1- October 10)
$70 Late/Onsite(October 10- October 18)
$25 Student and Senior (aged 60+)

In fact, because I am not sure if I can go and I would really like a representative from the open house at the conference the church is willing to support 2 people to go together from the open house to be our advocates. This to me is P51 at work. So let me know if you want to go and I will get you set up.

The Church and Affordable Housing Conference

I am not going to rate this book (although i did on amazon), because it was basically a book I needed to read to feel alive and not one to judge on whether its worthy of my wonderful rating. Thanks to Randy for sharing it, and for Adrian for writing it.

This is the story of long lost youth group friends reuniting for a retreat of sorts where they share their current and greatest fears. The book never resolved all of the fears of the characters (as one might suppose a Christian fiction might do), but instead it challenged the reader and myself to ask the question of what makes you feel alive. I haven’t felt alive like i know i have felt and many of the issues the characters were going through are issues I am going through now. That fact alone really helped me swiftly read through this book in two days.

At the end of reading this book I felt a twitch of being alive again. I have felt helpless a lot at times, but never hopeless. My hope moved me into believing there is help on the way.

So here comes the pitch: Read this for pleasure and for the hope of being understood as a Christian amongst an uncertain world that doesn’t seem to get us too much and for the hope that we might begin to understand each other as well.

You might find it hard to follow, but I think NT did a great job with Colbert being well….Colbert.

“Our age has been called the age of anxiety, and I think it’s probably a good description for this time. We no longer know where our foundations are. When we’re not sure what is certain, when the world and our worldview keep being redefined every few months, we’re going to be anxious. We want to get rid of that anxiety as quickly as we can. Yet, to be a good leader of anything today – to be a good pastor, a good bishop or, I’m sure, a good father or mother – you have to be able to contain, to hold patiently a certain degree of anxiety. Probably the higher the level of leader you are, the more anxiety you must be capable of holding. Leaders who cannot hold anxiety will never lead you to anyplace new.

That’s probably why the Bible says so often, “Do not be afraid.” I have a print out that actually proves the phrase appears 365 times! If you cannot hold a certain degree of anxiety you will always be looking for somewhere to expel it. Expelling what you can’t embrace gives you an identity, but it’s a negative identity. It’s not life energy, it’s death energy. Formulating what you are against gives you a very quick, clear and clean sense of yourself. Thus, most people fall for it. People more easily define themselves by what they are against, by who they hate, by who else is wrong, instead of by what they believe in and by whom they love.”

—Richard Rohr in Hope Against Darkness

I have a lot on my mind right now. Richard Rohr just reached into my chest and gave my heart a pump…

brilliant stuff. I saw Wallis in Toronto last year and he blew my mind. This will be an important book.

via

As some of you know I have slowly become a fan of Douglas Coupland. Maybe its my search for an identity in Vancouver or how Coupland makes everything I see around me feel real and not some temporary state. Either way I have enjoyed his dark humour, and way of telling a story.

I have already read in my coupland past, Eleanor Rigby, jpod, and Hey Nostradamus all of which i enjoyed immensely. So a nice Christmas present led me to Life After God.

Firstly i will say, Coupland was always ahead of his time. Reading this book that was printed in 1994 about a few people living life in postmodern Vancouver made me feel like i was in 2008. He is so in tune with culture shifts that you realize how far ahead of the times he was with this book. I can’t wait to read his acclaimed Generation X, which i have on slot after this.

However, I will say that Life After God didn’t excite me in the same way as the others I have read. It was a little random for me, and connecting the stories in the book was really hard to do, and I left wondering if that was even the point. But even so, I was entertained throughout the text, and I will ask more questions of it over time.

Anyway, Coupland is a great Canadian author and I hope to include a few more reviews during this years seemingly impossible run to 48 books.

cheers