Some thoughts on heresy from Dr Victor Choudrie, medical doctor and a big fan of simple meals in homes for believers as the best way to celebrate the Lord’s supper. Most new churches planted worldwide, Victor observes, are started by housewives. Technorati Tags: christianity, communion, home church, house church
Read MoreHouse Church Today: China
Today we are having a house church love feast with a Peking Duck that i marinated all night. I just downloaded the story of Gladys Aylward. There are some prayers at the end we might pray together. One of my daughters (Elizabeth) is fascinated with China so she is cooking up the chinese pancakes as…
Read MoreGaming and Training
Hats off to the Christian Century Magazine who just published a (paper-only?) special on theological education for the future. Its entitled “Seminary 2050” and my copy just came to the door. Great to see other voices on the same topic from friends of mine like Brian McLaren and Maggi Dawn. Great also, to see my…
Read MoreChurch and Internet Study
“Presbyterian churches, at 92 percent, are the major denominational group most likely to be using the Internet.” (LifeWay Study, BP News) Technorati Tags: church, new media
Read More2 House Church Books
2 Books and 1 Conference call 1. The Global House Church Movement arrived a few days ago. Canadian Rad Zhero has done a good job is writing a well-rounded full-bodied yet compact little book on house church. He covers history, theology, practice, and almost everything you need to know. I feel the title of the…
Read MoreMajor Trends Ten Years On
Steve Addison is talking with Howard Synder about the ten major trends he wrote about in 1986, including: 1. The coming of online global society (Internet, etc.) 2. Economic globalization 3. The feminist revolution 4. Environment at risk—global warming, species depletion, water, etc. 5. The genetics and quantum physics revolutions (DNA, superstrings) 6. Virtual reality…
Read MoreA Little Help on my Church 2.0 Article?
Help save my Christmas! I am really struggling with this article. And i need to write it before Christmas for Next-Wave because I SAID I WOULD. I want to locate the parallels between Web 2.0 and the emerging church (Church 2.0) because there is a lot that both conversations can learn from each other. I…
Read MoreMegachurches, Christmas and Video
A few decades ago, Willow Creek Community Church was in trouble with the critics for shifting the believers worship time from Sunday to Wednesday. Now they are generating an even greater amount of conversation with their decision to close for Christmas day. – BlogCritics.org is not impressed. – Neither are Ben Witherington or Tim Challies.…
Read MoreSkinny on China
The fifth most visited web site in the world is www.baidu.com, a Chinese search engine that resembles Google but offers MP3 and SWF file searches in addition to everything on Google (Wikipedia) Apparently, music is free and legal to download in China (makes you want to learn Chinese, dunnit?) which is why Baidu is being…
Read MoreMy DAWN Homies
I met with my DAWN Europe buddies last week in Zurich. DAWN stands for Discipling a Whole Nation and I work part time for them as an Associate. We meet at least 3x a year and its always a great time of talking mission-geek stuff – strategy, numbers, trends, research, challenges, books . .. I…
Read MoreIn Switzerland This Week
This week I am in Zurich, Switzerland for 4 days of strategic meetings related to DAWN Europe – getting serious, drinking coffee, talking shop, throwing snowballs, looking at counties on powerpoint presentations, drinking more coffee, thinking about one million new churches for Europe, wondering where the funds will come from, drinking coffee, getting hit by…
Read MoreHammett on Emerging Church 6.0 (final)
Dr Hammett Thank you for the email that was sent to Emerging Church leaders. It was helpful to hear from you. I am writing this as an open post – not because you need to respond to it [you dont] but because my apology to you should be public and i want to honor those…
Read MoreDont Pigeon Hole Me
Thanks for taking the poll yesterday. Sorry for pigeon-holing you into a modern construct – squeezy and cheezy and painful to try it on but sometimes you have to do your best to communicate to people who live in different worlds. Speaking of pigeon-holing, here’s a passionate apologetic called Emerging Church – A Response To…
Read MoreHammett on Emerging Church 4.1
Intro, 1,2, 3 and now . . . I feel with many critics, the talking and arguing goes on and we keep missing each other because of the words we use and the different meanings behind them. Conversations can sound a lot like this . . . church? emerging church! ahhh . . . no…
Read MoreThe Ajax Love of God
I had an idea for an article yesterday but it was too late to submit it to Charlie at Next-Wave. He says he will publish it on the Jan issue. Here’s the thought : The Ajax love of God. Londoner Rev. Mark Fletcher started me thinking about this a few days ago on my post…
Read MoreHammett on Emerging Church 3.1
Must Our Churches Deal with Postmodernism? Further discussion on John Hammett’s critique of emerging church. From Intro, 1.0 and 2.0 Ahhh the postmodern thang. . . Can I make a prediction? Ten years from now there will be a wave of books criticizing the new forms of church for not dealing adequately with the challenges…
Read MoreHammett on Emerging Church 1.2
[continued from Hammett : Intro] If I had a candle for every minister who believes the emerging church is a runaway faction of anti-establishment philosophers, sipping starbucks on leopard-skin couches and projecting the Matrix movie onto labyrinths, then I could probably light up the entire worship space at an Emergent Convention. But there are 2…
Read MoreHammett on Emerging Church – Intro
[Update: The original title for this series was “Emerging Church Hammering”. Out of respect for John Hammett, because it did not fairly reflect his intentions towards the emerging church, I have edited the titles] So . . . what about the latest ‘hammering’ on the emerging church? I don’t respond to many of these critiques,…
Read MoreChurch 2.0
much talk about Web 2.0. much hype about Bubble 2.0 much skepticism about Burst 2.0 more thought needed about Emerging Church 2.0 As I type these words into my blog editor, the term “Web 2.0” is currently the most searched phrase or key word on Technorati’s blog search. There is a lot of discussion and…
Read MoreWill We Have Mega-Cyberchurches?
Hi, Andrew. hope you are fine. right now we are working on the German edition of Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods. He writes a lot about strategic centres…and defines them geographically. Could you write a (longer) comment on what strategic centres are / can be in the present world (cultural centres, virtual centres?) and what this…
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