When this week's devastating earthquake in Christchurch struck, many of New Zealand's top Christian leaders were gathering near Wellington. A few internationals were there. I was there also. Among the words that were spoken, two speeches seemed to strike a cord with me. The most profoundly simple and yet stirring was from Sam Chapman, leading…
Read MorePraying for Christchurch
Like many families and groups around New Zealand today, we are thinking and praying for our friends in Christchurch after the earthquake. At dinner time we all went down to the beach. Jenny Duckworth's idea was to collect 75 shells and make the word "Christchurch" on the sand. The 75 represented the death toll so…
Read MoreEarthquake in Christchurch
Thanks everyone for all your messages. Our gathering yesterday was in Waikanae, near Wellington, a long way from Christchurch by NZ standards. News of the earthquake was shattering. I was sitting next to the Bishop of Nelson when they announced it and he left almost immediately, along with many others from Christchurch (Murray Robertson, etc)…
Read Moredocstoc : boring documents can be fun.
I just took another look at docstoc.com after a few months away – its become HUGE and still growing. Amazing PDF resource. Even my Facebook is suggesting I sync with docstoc. The documents on docstoc are not always sexy like books in a bookstore but sometimes they can be a great way of accessing niche…
Read MorePraxis: Training for an Emerging Postmodern Paradigm of Mission
We came to Ngatiawa Contemplative Monastery, here near Waikanae, New Zealand, for PassionFest and liked the people so much that we stayed. Its been a week now and we are having a great time. Justin and Jenny Duckworth are the main conspirators. They let me putter around in the kitchen and hassle the heaps of…
Read MoreFacebook and the Church
Some discussion on the blogs about whether Facebook is killing the church. Richard Beck started the conversation last year and recently added some clarification, as well as pointing to others adding their thoughts, in particular, Jesus Creed, First Things, and The Lookout. My tiny contribution is a paragraph from Cyberchurch, by Pierre Lévy, (published 2001)…
Read MoreThe 6th Christian Leaders Vision Conference
Next week I will be at the NZ Christian Leaders Vision Conference in Waikanae. This is hosted by the people behind the (previously known as) Vision Network. I met some of them last year in Cape Town at Lausanne, including the famous Glyn Carpenter. Special blurb from website: "The 6th New Zealand Leaders’ Congress is…
Read More3 Top Albums on our Playlist
Good to see Mumford and Sons win the Best Brit album of the year with Sigh No More. We have been playing it for months on our playlist, along with other favourtie albums. The Top 3 albums on our family's playlist right now are: Sigh No More, by Mumford and Sons The Fray by The…
Read MoreAt a monastery near Waikanae
We are staying for a few days at Ngatiawa which is a monastery in the new-emerging fashion. This used to be a Presbyterian camp in a previous life but has been bought out and changed over and broadened in its use to become a monastic center for protestant youth, with a connection to the Anglicans.…
Read MoreMy ‘BLOGGING FOR ACTIVISTS’ workshop at PassionFest 2011
We are about to head south to be a part of New Zealand's PassionFest which runs from Feb 11 to 13 in Waikanae. I actually had never heard of it which is strange because it appears to be NZ's most exciting Christian Festival based around art, justice, food and fun – which makes it very…
Read MoreAmazon Kindle Single Release
Amazon have finally opened their Kindle Singles store. I have been talking about this for some time at conferences and this is the sweet spot I have mentioned. Books are too long and too expensive to switch over to digital format without any changes. The size of book for a mobile platform like an i-Pad…
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