Help

I need your help.  The worship.freehouse needs a plethora of magazines for the next couple of worship events we are having.  If you have any that are cluttering up your homes and you want to get rid of them, can you drop me a line at jordoncooper AT gmail.com.  We need magazines of all sorts and would really appreciate the help.

Technorati Tags : worship.freehouse, Saskatoon

Easy Like a Sunday Morning

Recently Jordon wrote a post about Christianity being a Sunday religion. The crux of the article being that for many Christians their faith has little bearing on their day to day life. They behave how they please during the week and then go through the requisite ceremonies on Sunday to salve their guilty conscience. Sadly, there may be much truth to this idea. However, for me, my faith has gone in the opposite direction.

I haven't attended church regularly in months. The reasons for this are too numerous to list here, and frankly, I don't want to mud sling or critique the church that I used to attend. Instead I want the focus of this post to be on my experience away from weekly corporate worship.

You would think that not attending church weekly would cause someone to fall away from their faith. Ironically though, my walk with God has flourished during this time. I feel as though I walk closer with God on a daily basis. He is working in my heart, showing me what's important, and making me more Christ-like all the time.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not that I am totally against church, or that I will never go back again. I pray that we will one day find a church that challenges us with the truths of scripture, while allowing us to be the individuals that God created us to be. However, for me, and my personal walk with God, this time away has been a fruitful exercise.

Now, I imagine that many of you are thinking of commenting on this post. Ready to point out the warnings in scripture about not falling away from meeting together. I am familiar with those passages and I am convicted when I read them. That's why I am sure that one day I will return to active involvement in some form of church. In the meantime, I plan to continue praying, studying, and growing everyday.

Even if my Sunday mornings are better themed by Easy Like a Sunday Morning by the Commodores than Come Now is the Time to Worship by Brian Doerksen.

technorati tags: Christianity, Church

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

No it's not Sidney Poitier.

Last Saturday night we had a knock at our door. It was two friendly Mormon missionaries. Since we were on our way out we didn't have much time to chat so we invited them to come for dinner on Wednesday.

For those of you who are thinking I've lost my mind, I haven't. Ever since I moved to Saskatoon, when Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door I have invited them in. I find the conversations are always fascinating. After they share their faith with me I share mine with them.

Over dinner on Wednesday they shared the basic tenets of Mormonism. How they believe in a restored gospel and priesthood. They also consider a baptism from a proper priest essential for salvation. As they talked I asked them questions and compared where I feel their faith contradicts what the Bible teaches.

And then it hit me.

When God gave the law to Moses it was incredibly complex and impossible to follow completely. This was done to teach us that it is impossible for man to reconcile himself to God. This law was completed by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

When people attempt to be holy by their own design, they mimic the complexity of the law. Making their religion incredibly complex and hard to follow. Somehow feeling that the more hoops they have to jump through, the closer they get to God. The truth is, the only thing that is required on our part is simple faith in Jesus Christ.

This really is kind of a mad idea. To not have to pay the penalty for our crimes or jump through hoops to get to God.

That's why I am convinced it's the truth.

"For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength" (1 Corinthians 1:25 NIV).

I think our Mormon friends went home frustrated. They left so many of our questions unanswered.

Their theology makes it impossible for them to answer them.

technorati tags: Mormonism, Christianity

International Development Week in Saskatoon

This comes from Becky

 

Oxfam Canada is pleased to co-sponsor the following events for International Development Week with the College of Arts and Science and the Arts and Science Students Union:

Monday February 6, 2006
Co-sponsored by the Sudanese Community Association in Saskatoon

2:30 - 4:00 pm Panel on Understanding Conflict in Sudan

University of Saskatchewan, Arts building Room 217

• Gatdeet Wakou and Khalid A. Mannan – Sudan ABCs: Background to the Conflict
• Robert Fox, Executive Director, Oxfam – Ending the Terror in Darfur
• Chuei Deng Mareng, Education student – Prospects for Peace in Southern Sudan

7:30-9:30 pm Reflections on Gender & Development in Africa
University of Saskatchewan, Arts building Room 241

• Robert Fox, Executive Director, Oxfam Canada – Empowering Women – Are we Making a Difference?
• Cindy Hanson, Sociology, and Gender Consultant – Feminist Reflections on ‘Doing Development’: Stories from South Africa
• Amira Wasfy, Artist and art educator, Introduction to film, “Amira.” This is an episode out of Landing, a SCN documentary series profiling the new face of Canada’s multiculturalism. The story is about Amira Wasfy’s immigration - how she was unable to travel back to Egypt because of an antiquated law and decided to fight it through art.

For more information, please contact Oxfam at 242-4097 or michelleb@oxfam.ca.

Technorati Tags : Saskatoon, Oxfam, Sudan, Africa

David Fitch is coming to Hamilton

Church planter, author, theologian, and blogger David Fitch is coming to Hamilton and will be speaking at a Resonate ECHO on May 16th at the FRWY.ca Cafe. 

Technorati Tags : Resonate, Resonate+Echo, David+Fitch, Emerging+Church, Canada, Hamilton

Christianity as a "Sunday Religion"

I'd also like to argue that the mainstream of Christianity throughout the last 1,500 years, and particularly evident in the last 200 years, has been for the majority of practitioners, not a practice-oriented religion, but a Sunday religion, a religion of "do what you want as long as you subscribe to the right things and you show up on Sunday to keep the institution going." It has fostered an extraordinarily limited view of human capacity. It has, in a sense, been co-opted by its own attitude and approach, by materialism. I know this is not necessarily a nice thing to say, and as I said in the beginning, I'm not asking you to agree with it. I'm just asking you to consider it."

Peter Senge, author of the Fifth Discipline

Technorati Tags : Peter+Senge, Christianity

Saskatoon Community Chaplain Installation

My good friend Darren Friesen (and fellow Resonate member) is being installated as Saskatoon Community Chaplain. It's on Sunday, Feb. 5th at 3pm at the Westside Pentecostal Church (3488 Fairlight Dr.).

Technorati Tags : Darren+Friesen, Sasaktoon

Next worship.freehouse

Some good news.  The first worship.freehouse of 2006 is going to be Sunday, February 19th at 7:00 p.m. in the Refinery Arts and Spirit Centre.  Jerry, Becky, Wendy, Jayson and I all toured the facility today and the general consensus was that we were blown away by how comfortable and nice the place was.  I am really looking forward to getting together down there.  I did grab a camera and  I will post some photographs later tonight.

 

Technorati Tags : alt.worship, Saskatoon, emerging+church

Which blog tool should you use?

Online Journalism Review has a comparison chart of most of the major blog engines.  If you are thinking of starting or switching, this should be a big help to you.

 

Technorati Tags : blogging, Blogger, Movable+Type, Typepad, WordPress, Blogware

Resonate

Some new and improved features on the Resonate site.

• The weblog has been streamlined and the Resonate Stories flickr group has been integrated into it.
• The Resonate Echo section of the site has been launched.  We have some pretty exciting guests coming up in 2006 and they will confirmed later.  While Echo will hopefully spread across the country, right now it is finding a home in the GTA.
• Resonate Greenhouses are starting up.  Similar to the Emergent Cohorts, they are local theological/missional communities starting a couple of centres.  Like most things Resonate, they are pretty chaordic.  I have been reading Guy Kawasaki's old book, Selling the Dream and we took an idea of that and put a Greenhouse guidebook online as well.  No gardening links... yet.
• Resonate is using Upcoming.org to feature events that our community would be interested in.  If you have something that you think that Resonaters would care about, join Upcoming.org and send it to our group.

Technorati Tags : Resonate, emerging+church, Canada

Welcome to the Resonate Saskatoon Learning Community

What is this?

Well it's a weblog for a group of people interested in exploring theology and the Christian life in a postmodern culture in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

We are a group of people who are passionate about exploring, discovering, and learning together. Most of us are a part of Resonate, a national conversation about the Gospel in a Canadian culture. The national conversation is an important part of who we are but so are local gatherings as well.

This is just one expression of those local gatherings.

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me.