The Fourth Sector and Emerging Mission

UPDATE: That article is now online at the CMS website under “Mission and the Fourth Sector”. ORIGINAL: I just wrote an article about Co-operatives and social enterprises for a missions publication. I made reference to our new venture – The Old Sorting Room – which we will launch in a few months and which can…

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Birthdays in the house.

Birthday rush here at our home. Samuel’s birthday today. He turns 17. Elizabeth turned 15 on Friday. Hannah had her tenth birthday party this weekend – a special Dr Who themed party that was a lot of fun but it really wore us out. Special dinner tonight for Sam and then a combined party next…

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Visualizing the Bible

My geeky web-designing friend Joshua Rudd sent me a cool link this morning. Visualizing the Bible by Chris Harrison. The image below is from the various cross references.

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Politics, Environmentalism, and Christianity

Politics, environmentalism and hot issues around election time. – The issues of politics and environment will play a role in this weeks New Baptist Covenant gathering in Atlanta. Download The Agenda here and read some thoughts from Luke 4 that participants will be interacting with at the conference. Check out Bruce Prescott’s New Baptist Covenant…

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The Davos Question: Can You Answer It?

Have an answer for the leaders at DAVOS? Submit a video here or watch others answer it. Related: And this isn’t the answer for the world’s problems, I admit. But I have spent part of this morning researching the use of co-operatives as an equitable means of doing micro-business in cross cultural contexts, and one…

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Bono at Davos

“If anybody sees my band, please don’t tell them that I’ve been up this early,” Bono, this morning at Davos. You can read what Bono and Al Gore were saying about carbon emissions. Technorati Tags: davos

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Dallas Theological Seminary on emerging church (again)

I told you about the first time Dallas Theological Seminary tackled the subject of the emerging church. I thought they did a really good job. The next installment is now available. Its called Key Topics in the Emerging Church by 4 teachers. Part 1, 2 and 3 Again, I like their tone and approach. But…

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Heath Ledger

Terribly upset to hear about the tragic death of Heath Ledger. Our family loved him in A Knights Tale and we used to watch for him in other movies. I always felt a special connection to him because he was born in Perth, Western Australia, the city that was my home for 7 years and…

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Heathrow crash miracle- on a wing and a prayer

The leading headline on the Sun paper today is “Plane on wing and a prayer”, accompanied with a picture of the Boeing 777 that crashed smoothly and without loss of life in Heathrow two days ago. The pilot , Senior First Officer John Coward, said he was “only doing his job”. I flew into London…

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Missional: I was wrong

Hey. I screwed up. The earliest date for the word “missional” is not 1814, as I blogged last week. That was a bad OCR scan [BAD GOOGLE, NO COOKIE!!] and the word that gets cut off is actually “missionary” and NOT “missional”. Thanks to Robinson Mitchell who had a library check the paper version. The…

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5 Models of Emerging Church from 1999

DJ Chuang is collecting various models of emerging churches that are often quoted and referred to. That includes models given by Ed Stetzer, Scot McKnight, Justin Taylor, Mark Driscoll, and more recently from C. Wess Daniels and Darren Patrick and others. No one has ever quoted mine because no one has ever read it, at…

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Emerging Church Amsterdam

Heres are the highlights of my one day in Amsterdam. I had a fantastic dinner at the home of Phil and Laina Graf in their classic Amsterdam home. Their house even has a cellar in the basement which was used for hiding Jews during the war. Which might be quite normal for the Dutch but…

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A Theology of Profanity, by Adam Mellem

Fuller student Adam Mellem just told me I can upload his paper on A Theology of Profanity [PDF], a paper drawing on many sources including my little blog post called Offensive language: I think my mother taught me. Related: Al Mohler’s Stand on Emergent Profanity by Mark Van Steenvyk, currently circling the blogosphere, is SATIRE.…

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Next-Wave Starts its Tenth Year

Next-Wave starts its tenth year this month. Its weird because way back in 1999, Rogier Bos, or “Ro” (as he likes to be called) interviewed Doug Pagitt and I for a Next Wave article when we were in Southern California. And here I am, in Amsterdam, asking Ro about Next Wave. Next-Wave is older than…

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Pagan Christianity? (book)

Its a great read and my copy has already been STOLEN by my neighbor who is probably just as fascinated in its contents as I was. Its called Pagan Christianity? by house church guru Frank Viola (not the baseball player) and researcher/author George Barna who have teamed up to give us the most thorough treatment…

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Macworld Expectation 2008

Earlier today, Jim Barker and I were dressed up in our Steve Jobs Keynote apparel in anticipation of tonight’s event. No prizes for guessing. Technorati Tags: apple, macworld

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Hannah’s birthday

Our little Hannah the Banana turns 10 today. She had a special birthday crepe breakfast and is really excited about entering the double digits. We will have a party next week, when we all get back from our travels. Off to London now.

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Debbie and Abi off to Prague

I am at the Orkney airport, dropping off Debbie (my multi-colored wife) and daughter Abigail. They fly to Prague for the week to help shoot a commercial. Abigail’s face will be coming to a TV near you . . . if you live in the USA. They will be hanging out with Uncle Eric Cosper,…

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‘Missional’ : First occurrence of the word

Sorry about all the edits below – we had a false call on the earliest date. Details below. The Skinny: The earliest known usage of the word “missional” occurs in 1883 on page 191 of the book published in the UK called ‘The Heros of African Discovery and Adventure, from the death of Livingstone to…

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Emergent Church Difficulties and Differences

The phrase "emergent church difficulties and differences", although it sounds like a new book title, is actually found in a document from 1662 known as the Propositions of the Synod of the churches of New England, which convened in Boston that year. This document was part of the affirmation of the Halfway Covenant of 1662.…

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