Leith Anderson Chosen as Interim President of NEA

After the resignation of Ted Haggard, Dr Leith Anderson has been chosen to be Interim President of the National Association of Evangelicals. [Press Release – PDF] I respect Leith Anderson a great deal. His books have been been an inspiration for a long time and I once heard him give a hugely memorable talk on…

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A Look Back at Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses

Wolfgang Simson is releasing a new book on November 10 that I think will shake up the church in many areas. I have read the manuscript and I think it is the most substantial, remarkable, prophetic, stirring, upsetting, revolutionary book I have read all year, or, in fact, for a long time. I am looking…

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Reformation Day: A little Scottish Oats With Your Bratwurst?

Today is Reformation Day – Oct 31 – the day we think of Martin Luther fastening his 95 Theses on the gate in Wittenburg. And we think of Protestant Reformers around the world, before and after Luther, including ourselves, those of us who are still involved in the ongoing process to refine the church into…

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Massive is the New Big

If you have just read “Tiny is the New Small” then read this. Its the other half. The other side to being tiny is being part of something that is massive. This takes some getting used to. The scale is huge and out of proportion. But when Jesus described the Kingdom, he told parables of…

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Tiny is the New Small

Church for some of us happens in TINY increments, TINY spaces and sometimes with TINY amounts of people. It happens many times a week and many times a day when the various aggregations of God’s people come together around coffee or taking care of business or helping someone and especially at mealtimes. It happens more…

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Must we be seated for this movement?

pews . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . . . .. pulpits. . . . . preachers must we be seated for this movement? Dan Kimball says it wasn’t meant to be this way and back in the day, it wasn’t. “Most of our church architecture today was…

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A World Without Walls

“The walls of a classroom become redundant because students are able to access real-time, any-time learning.” Greg Whitby on SMH comments on a new 24-hour Catholic school proposed for Australia. I was thinking this morning about churches without walls and this article grabbed my attention. I would say much of what we are doing now…

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Penal Substitution: 2 Years Later and We Still Cant Get No Satisfaction

It was October 7th, 2004 and we were sitting on highly-elevated pews in a London church, waiting to hear Steve Chalke explain and defend his issues with the theory of penal substitution that he outlined in his book “The Lost Message of Jesus” [co-written with Alan Mann]- a book that actually never mentions the term…

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John Piper and the Desiring God Conference

John Piper addresses “Emergent Christians” at last weekends Desiring God conference, which I blogged about back in February. Sounds like the conference was a big success and a boon to reformed folk – especially in light of their current trendiness. Piper has a warm tone and fatherly heart for the “emergents” in the audience and…

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EC Conversation Pieces

– Scot McKnight (who has retaken first place on technorati EC blogs for the second time) discusses Spencer Burkes new book. – Out of Ur has a good article on Monasteries for Spiritual Formation – Paco Rosic from Sarajevo is painting the Sistine Chapel in Iowa and he is choosing the grafitti aesthetic. HT: Chad…

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How Your Emerging Church Can Stay in Calvary Chapel, Inc

You LOVE being in the Calvary Chapel fellowship of churches but are scared that your emerging church style worship will get you kicked out. I feel your pain and understand the tension. CC a great fellowship with an incredible history. In fact, my wife grew up in SoCal and was a regular at the Costa…

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Have WiFi, Will Travel

Well I dont have one, yet. But since many conference centers don’t have a Wifi connection, like the one i have just come from last week, I could always bring my own along. The Kyocera KR1 Mobile Router might be just the ticket. Laughing Squid has roadtested it and BoingBoing approves but it looks like…

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Yemi Challenges the Western Church (Phone blog)

Yemi Adedji challenged our group [and the Western church] today about power. The western church has form, but not power. Missionaries from the West did a disservice to the Africans when they refused to teach them how to deal with the supernatural elements of their world [maybe they didn’t know] and the vacuum created by…

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my experience with the charismatic catholics

i just had a really amazing experience. A few days ago i preached at a charismatic catholic church in bari, italy. it was only for 10 minutes and i was not the only person behind the pulpit . . . but this experience was huge for me and i want to process it a little…

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Pentecost Sunday

Its Pentecost Sunday – time for God’s breath to enliven new things. Here is my poem from last years Pentecost Grid Blog. Technorati Tags: christianity, pentecost

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Squirming into the Mission of God

“. . . And so I am praying healing for John Wimber, surrounded by charasmaniacs and Korean Power Rangers and space cadets of all kinds, and TV cameras are pointed at me and all i could think about were my fundamentalist friends and churches where i preached who were going to write me off forever…

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Dr Walter Martin and a New Kind of Preaching.

FLASHBACK: It was 1983. I think. 1984.The late Dr Walter Martin was in Perth, Western Australia where I was studying at Bible College. And I went to hear him preach at Thornlie Church of Christ where John Bond was pastoring at the time. Walter Martin was preaching on the foolishness of God and he used…

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Hacking Alpha: What Have You Done With It?

Just curious: What are you favourite Alpha hacks? What have you done with the Alpha Course to adapt it to your context? I see that there is already Catholic Alpha and Youth Alpha and Armed Forces Alpha as well as Alpha for the workplace, and prison. And I am sure each one of these has…

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40

I have to preach this morning at Stromness Baptist Church – they have been doing a series on Elijah and left off with his 40 day walk. I thought the 40 day fast of Jesus would add another dimension to the story. Yesterday I put together the images of “40” by Simon Smith. I know…

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Why You Should Plant a Church

“What will it look like?” I grew to love answering “I have no earthly idea.” All I could say was that if a bunch of cloggers and bluegrass musicians showed up, well… we’d be the clogging church. Bob Hyatt tells all in Why YOU should plant a church. Technorati Tags: church

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