Next Saskatchewan Greenhouse

The Grand Imperial Poobah  of Resonate Greenhouses, Jared Siebert is coming out to Saskatchewan around April 14th.  We are looking at getting together for some beverages, scheming, and some food.  If you are a church planter, thinking about it, and am from Saskatchewan, let us know at coop AT resonate.ca.  More details will be posted on the weblog.

 

Technorati Tags : Resonate, church+planting, Saskatchewan

Coffee for People Who Like To Think

Coming this Saturday is the Church of the Exiles first Coffee for people who like to think at Broadway Roastery.

 

Who: Anyone who wants to discuss with us, Philip Yancey's book, Soul Survivor .

When: Every second Saturday at 8:00 p.m.  Starting February 10th. 

Where: Broadway Roastery at 5 corners on Broadway

 

Cost: Just your coffee and the cost of the book.  If you don't have the book, we will post a link to some background information on the blog of who we are talking about.

Publisher's Weekly said this about the book.

Fans of Yancey's bestseller What's So Amazing About Grace? may not know what to do with this book. In some ways, it is his darkest work ever, chronicling his own lover's quarrel with the institutional church specifically, the church of his childhood that promulgated racism and practiced a pharisaic legalism. In other ways, this book is one of his most hopeful, for in it he charts a spiritual path through all of the muck made by organized religion. As guides, he looks to "a baker's dozen" of thinkers, writers, doctors and activists who have taught him about Christianity. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life shamed Yancey into confronting his own racism and then helped his heart be transformed by Christ's love. Leo Tolstoy taught him self-forgiveness, while Fyodor Dostoyevsky modeled grace as a lived reality. John Donne taught him to wrestle with the ultimate enemy, death; Annie Dillard demonstrated ways to appreciate God in creation; Mahatma Gandhi showed him the power of one individual to change the course of history. The most moving chapter is perhaps the tribute to Paul Brand, an orthopedic surgeon whose work on leprosy helped Yancey to understand how pain can become a gift from God. It's not a perfect book; the chapter on G.K. Chesterton is too short, and the essay on former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop seems superficial in a book with such theological depth. Despite these minor flaws, this multibiography is a much-needed signpost, stubbornly pointing to the life of faith.

The book can be purchased at Amazon.ca, Blessings, McNally Robinson, or Scott Parables.

Technorati Tags : Church+of+the+Exiles, Saskatoon, theology, discussion, books, Soul+Survivor

Cultivate Gathering 2007

It's that time of year again, the Cultivate Gathering is coming to a Hamilton near you.

Cultivate Gathering is a learning party. What does that mean? Well, basically it's designed to be everything good about a conference without all the rigamarole... and much more fun and interactive.

Instead of charging in the hundreds of dollars for one ticket, it's only $50 and that includes a terrific lunch.

Instead of maxing out our capacity we are limiting our numbers to give everyone there the best possible environment for networking.

Instead of bringing in a mainline, American speaker to tell us what they already wrote in their latest book we are looking to local church planters and leaders to tell their stories.

Instead of you listening to message after message and being filled with information we want you to be part of a dialogue with people in similar shoes and learn and grow within that relationship.

Instead of some fancy shmancy hotel, convention centre or big church building, Cultivate Gathering is taking place at a local coffee house: www.frwy.ca

Cultivate Gathering
Saturday, April 21, 2007
8:00 am - 9:00 pm
Hamilton, Ontario.

Technorati tags: Cultivate Gathering, Resonate, emerging church, conference, Hamilton, Freeway

Cultivate

I had planned to be at Cultivate but a combination of work and more work kept me home.  Pernell Goodyear has a good post here.  Jared Siebert (who I have started to allow him to do my thinking for me) has some posts here.  Mike Todd has his thoughts here.  Jared posted all of the photos in Resonate's Flickr photo pool so check them out.

Technorati Tags : Cultivate, emerging+church, Frwy.ca, Canada, Resonate

Small is beautiful

Kester Brewin pushes back on Andrew Jones'  ideas for getting money from foundations.

Vaux was a very small project. I remember going to see the Bishop of London at the House of Lords and him sitting down saying 'So what do you want to see me for? Do you need some money?' His jaw almost hit the floor when we said we didn't. We accepted gifts, sure. But we never went out fundraising. Why? Because it seemed right to live within our means.

I love Schumacher's principle of Small is Beautiful and sometimes wonder if much of the industrial mission machine has moved away from this. The subtitle of his work is 'A Study of Economics As If People Mattered', and it is of course the relational that is central to all we do. How much funding should we need for that?

If these donors want to 'get in' on the global emerging culture, why not just give freely? Oh - because they want to make sure their money is being used wisely. How can they do that? As Andrew hints, they need to get relational. But much more so than they might already be doing. Forget the funding forms and spin culture.

I recently went to speak at a large, modern, beautiful church and was speaking to one of the congregation about the building. 'It's horrendous!' they moaned. 'It's costing us so much to keep up'. So sell it. Live within your means. Accept gifts. And if that means scaling back some big projects, fine. The Church™ will survive.

Technorati Tags : funding, emerging+church, consumption, mission, Affluenza, Vaux

The new Emergent Village

The new Emergent Village website is now online.  It looks good and has moved from a bunch of pieces into one integrated site.  The bad news is inevitable and that is some broken RSS feeds that need to be changed but that isn't much of a problem (although I have heard that you always permenantly lose people when you switch).  In case you missed it, there are a couple of pretty good interviews that Tony Jones did with Karen Ward and also Tim Keel.

 

Technorati Tags : Emergent, Karen+Ward, Tim+Keel, podcast, website, emerging+church

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