St Andrew’s Day

Today is St Andrews Day, a day to remember St Andrew, one of Jesus’ disciples. St Andrew’s feast has been celebrated with various kinds of food in Scotland over the years ranging from wild hare, singed sheep’ head, haggis, and fish because Andrew was a fisherman when Jesus called him to follow. Some say any…

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Emerging Church: Does The Hat Still Fit?

I ask this every year. This year, MOST people in my world say that the label “emerging church” or “emergent church” does not define or describe the kinds of ministries they are doing. That also means that many books on the subject do not speak for these people and most of the criticism misses its…

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Christmas Ale

I made 2 casks of Christmas Ale today. One is for The Orcadian Newspaper’s christmas party next month. They were kind enough to sell me some printing equipment for a good deal and were hoping tyo get some more beer money for their party. I am sure my 2007 Orcadian Christmas Ale will do the…

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Left brain, right heart

– "The heart of philanthropy is spiritual." Left brain, right heart is a great concept, used here on the subject of philanthropy by Randall Ottinger. I might add that the "right" also could refer to being ‘upright’ or even ‘righteous’ in our generosity. – NYTimes has an article on philanthropy and blogs. Quote: "Philanthropy has…

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Christmas Message From Stromness

Tonight I give the Christmas message at the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony for our little town of Stromness, Orkney. Thanks to Rev. Fiona Lillie of the Church of Scotland for the invitation. My plan is to read out a short poem by Orkney’s most famous poet, the late George Mackay Brown from Stromness. Its called…

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Fellowship of the Eggs

We had a meeting last night with members of our Egg Co-op and a new group of couples that are taking over our original hens to form a new Co-op. They had lots of questions about hen management and egg gathering and we, with our many months of experience, were able to pass on some…

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Bible Study Tools from Christianity.com

The good people at Christianity.com have me know that a beta version of their Bible Study tools is now available online at bible.christianity.com. Apparently you can customize your Bible, write notes, and highlight it with colors which means that some of my über-reformed friends can now create their own Red Letter Version of the Bible…

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NET in London

Last night we went with Shannon Hopkins to her NET meeting – Network of Entrepreneurial Talent – on the HMS President. Nathalie McDermott of OnRoad Media gave a really good talk on social enterprise as did some other young ladies from a fair trade startup. After that we saw our mutual friend Jo Faith perform…

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hOME crowd

Matt Rees and many of the folk from hOME – where i spoke last year in Oxford, turned up last night for the party in Jim Barker’s house. They all seem to be doing well. Also got to meet Captain Sacrament (Kyle Potter) from Tennessee.oopps . . i mean Kentucky {sorry)

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Fusion Reflections

Great time yesterday at Fusion Student weekend. I loved the worship/prayer stations and the whole place was really alive. The heating was out so it was freezing cold. We did some warm up exercises during my talk to deNUMBify our bodies. It was fun, though. Good to catch up with Rich Wilson, Roger Ellis, Laurence…

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Schedule: Oxford, Guilford, London

Traveling and hooking up with some cool ministries over the next few days: Friday: Jonny Baker – CMS/emergingchurch.info in London Saturday: Fusion 2007 in Oxford Saturday evening: Figerdy Fig event in Oxford with Jim Barker. Sleeping on Jim’s couch. Sunday: 24-7 Prayer with Pete Grieg in Guildford. Sleeping on Pete’s couch. Monday: Protest 4 and…

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Love Your Uni : Virtual University

On Saturday morning at 11:30 I am speaking in Oxford at the Fusion Weekend event. My talk is called “Love Your Uni: Virtual University Part 1” and I was there last year also. Fusion is an exciting ministry in the universities of UK. Their vision for 2008 is to start another 1000 student cells and…

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Roger Oakland and Faith Undone

Hot topic on the internet right now – Roger Oakland, of Understanding the Times, author of the hard hitting book against the emerging church "Faith Undone: the emerging church—a new reformation or an end-time deception", and anti-emerging church activist on YouTube, has been removed from his office at the Calvary Chapel Logos building and has…

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Emerging Philanthropy

Ideas from and for the new wave of emerging philanthropy: Using Facebook – Philanthropy.com looks at Raising money on facebook One Dollar at a Time – Andy Porteous tells me a faith community in Australia is trying to raise over $7 million, one dollar at a time,  by Christmas 2008. Check it out on OneHitWonder…

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Typepad templates

Typepad is no longer the best looking blogging platform. It hasnt been for a long time. You may have noticed that i cleaned up my blog last month and for the past few weeks i have roadtested some new templates with Typepad. I dont know what it is but Typepad templates are not even half…

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Ravenna Document

Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church. Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority Ravenna, 13 October 2007 Introduction 1. “That they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us so that the world may believe that you have…

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Ravenna Document – RCC and Orthodox

I doubt that 950 years of separation will be healed this easy but it will be interesting to watch it unfold. It looks like if the current plans prevail, the Orthodox will come under the Pope but the Pope’s power will be diluted. Or in other words . . . the POPE gets more SCOPE…

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Emerging Church and Web 2.0 in the Press

– Nice to see USA Today do a piece on the emerging church. Imago Dei in Portland OR is the church they landed on. Pastor Rick McKinley is a great guy. We hung out a few times in the early stages of Acts 29 – a network he used to help run. In fact, when…

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Narnia Secrets: Whats coming up

Attention C.S. Lewis fans: Walden Media’s Bob Beltz told me he can share with us what to expect with the upcoming films in the Narnia series. In fact, you can ask him yourself tomorrow (Monday) on my Happy Hour because he is one of my guests. Technorati Tags: narnia

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Stones Rocks and Mountains

I preached this morning at the local Baptist church on stones, rocks and mountains – Peter the rock, Transfiguration, the demon possessed boy and how that relates to the new community of God. We had to go through Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Hosea to get there [the people were very patient] and we ended up…

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