Resonate Greenhouse :: Saskatchewan

Next Saskatchewan Greenhouse

2007-02-16T17:45:00.000-06:00

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

2007-02-03T22:34:00.000-06:00

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

2007-01-09T18:02:00.000-06:00

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

2006-08-21T14:39:00.000-06:00

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

2006-08-15T14:52:00.000-06:00

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

2006-08-03T09:15:00.000-06:00

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

Follow along via e-mail or carrier pigeon

2006-07-06T13:49:00.000-06:00

We love RSS around here but if you are still addicted to e-mail, you can enter your e-mail below.

Resonate Greenhouse :: Toronto

2006-07-05T14:21:00.000-06:00

A Resonate Greenhouse has been started in downtown Toronto. If you are a church planter or thinking about planting in the centre of the known universe, check out the weblog, subscribe to the RSS feed, and have your name added to the e-mail list.

Technorati Tags : Toronto, Resonate, Resonate+Greenhouse, emerging+church, church+planting

Being a Christian in the City

2006-06-21T17:08:00.000-06:00

Tim Keller has an excellent article in Christianity Today about what it means to be a Christian living in the city. Here is a part of it. Head on over the the site to read the rest.

It will not be enough for Christians to form a culture that runs counter to the values of the broader culture. Christians should be a community radically committed to the good of the city as a whole. We must move out to sacrificially serve the good of the whole human community, especially the poor. Revelation 21-22 makes it clear that the ultimate purpose of redemption is not to escape the material world, but to renew it. God's purpose is not only saving individuals, but also inaugurating a new world based on justice, peace, and love, not power, strife, and selfishness.

So Christians work for the peace, security, justice, and prosperity of their city and their neighbors, loving them in word and in deed, whether they believe what we do or not. In Jeremiah 29:7, Israel's exiles were called not just to live in the city, but also to love it and work for its shalom—its economic, social, and spiritual flourishing. The citizens of God's city are the best possible citizens of their earthly cities.

This is the only kind of cultural engagement that will not corrupt us and conform us to the world's pattern of life. If Christians go to urban centers simply to acquire power, they will never achieve cultural influence and change that is deep, lasting, and embraced by the broader society. We must live in the city to serve all the peoples in it, not just our own tribe. We must lose our power to find our (true) power. Christianity will not be attractive enough to win influence except through sacrificial service to all people, regardless of their beliefs.

This strategy (if we must call it that) will work. In every culture, some Christian conduct will be offensive and attacked, but some will be moving and attractive to outsiders. "Though they accuse you … they may see your good deeds and glorify God" (1 Peter 2:12, see also Matt. 5:16). In the Middle East, a Christian sexual ethic makes sense, but not "turn the other cheek." In secular New York City, the Christian teaching on forgiveness and reconciliation is welcome, but our sexual ethics seem horribly regressive. Every non-Christian culture has enough common grace to recognize some of the work of God in the world and to be attracted to it, even while Christianity in other ways will offend the prevailing culture.

So we must neither just denounce the culture nor adopt it. We must sacrificially serve the common good, expecting to be constantly misunderstood and sometimes attacked. We must walk in the steps of the one who laid down his life for his opponents.

Technorati Tags : Tim+Keller, praxis, theology, urban, city, Christianity

Thinker Labs

2006-06-18T13:17:00.000-06:00

Thinker Labs is an open source experiment in resource sharing for the church. There is a bunch of media online and you are more then welcome in submitting your own. It's all free. You heard me right, free.

Technorati Tags : Thinker+Labs, free, open+source, media

Cultivate: A Learning Party

2006-06-17T19:51:00.000-06:00

Cultivate is a learning party happening on Saturday, August 19, 2006 in Hamilton, ON. It's presented by Resonate (with a lot of work done by Nathan Colquhoun and Pernell Goodyear and the rest of the FRWY.ca community) and is intended to inspire church planting and new forms of church all across Canada. If you are in the north east part of the United States you are more than welcome to join us as well.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 $25 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. (nothing against Americans but we do grow tired of hearing from American speakers tell us Canadians how to do church when our contexts are very different)
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 is taking place at a local coffee house: www.frwy.ca

Cultivate is happening because of numerous conversations between different people, organizations, networks and churches in Canada that long to see new forms of church thrive and relational networking happen. We are tired of the same old, same old conferences and just simply want to be friends, inspire each other, and swap stories, ideas, and encouragement.For more details or to register (there are a limited number of spots left): www.cultivategathering.comIf you can't attend but are feeling sympathetic to our cause, we would love a link to www.cultivategathering.com to help spread the word. Thanks!

Technorati Tags : Resonate, Cultivate+Gathering, Hamilton, FRWY.ca, emerging+church

Resonate Photo Pool

2006-05-30T18:51:00.000-06:00

As of today, there are 1,130 photos in the Resonate Photo Pool. The photo-sharing community for Resonate. A place for images and media suitable for worship media and graphics. It is a place where flickr members can share, download, enjoy, and modify photos for almost any use (just remember to respect the artist's copyright or Creative Commons license).

Technorati Tags : Resonate, Flickr, photography

David Fitch speaking at Resonate Echo

2006-05-23T21:32:00.000-06:00

The video of author/blogger/theologian/church planter David Fitch speaking at The FRWY.ca for a Resonate Echo. Thanks to Amy Panton and Jared Siebert for putting this all together.

Technorati Tags : David+Fitch, Resonate+Echo, emerging+church, video

Faith Maps has been redesigned

2006-05-21T18:59:00.000-06:00

Stephen Shields has redesigned and relaunched Faith Maps. He blogs about it here.

Technorati Tags : Faith+Maps, emerging+church

Saturday is Free Comic Book Day

2006-05-05T22:55:00.000-06:00

No excuse for you not to get one.

Resonate ECHO with David Fitch

2006-05-03T17:43:00.000-06:00

Author, church planter, and theologian David Fitch will be at FRWY.ca (a Resonate Echo - free admission) on Tuesday, May 16th to talk about the challenges of being a church planter and pastor in the cultures of post-modernity. In his book The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, And Other Modern Maladies, David uses the current critique of modernity to uncover the ways traditional evangelicalism has been captured by the forces of modernity. The modern maladies of individualism, business like efficiency, me-centered gospel, and farmed-out justice are just a few symptoms of the "giveaway." Fitch believes this captivity has not only made the church ineffectual amidst the breakdown of modernity but also allowed for its mission in Christ to be compromised in society.

How might the church "reclaim her mission in Christ" amidst these challenges? And what challenges does such a task pose for pastors and church planters? Fitch will present just a few insights from his book along with examples out of his own encounters in church planting and ministry.

He will address:

The need to recapture community.
The need for embodied witness.
The need to make justice something we are.

David Fitch is the founding church planter of Life on the Vine Christian Community - an emerging church in the NW Suburbs of Chicago IL. He is affiliate professor of ministry, theology and ethics at Northern Seminary. And above all, even though by a freak of nature he was born in the US, he is a Canadian at heart having grown up in Hamilton ON. He has a terrific blog and is also a co-founder of up/rooted - a collaborative friendship of pastors engaging postmodernity in Chicago.

Resonate Echo w/ David Fitch
Tuesday, May 16 at 7:00PM
FRWY.ca (333 King Street East, Hamilton) - Get map
Free admission but bring money for some amazing fair trade coffee and snacks.

I am pretty excited about this (which is saying something as all Free Methodists have taken a vow of "somberness") as I will be there drinking some coffee and having some of the famous FRWY.ca nacho dip that night. Even if the emerging church doesn't interest you, Fitch will. He is a brilliant thinker not only theologically but also about culture. I am looking forward to it.

Technorati Tags : David+Fitch, The+Great+Giveaway, FRWY.ca, theology, emerging+church

Keep Kim in Canada :: Update

2006-05-02T17:08:00.000-06:00

Jamie has been cool enough to post an update to the Keep Kim in Canada campaign. They are half-way to their goal (actually it is more the Government of Canada's goal) of $2000 for the price of Kim applying for permenant resident of Canada. Thanks to everyone who has given already and if you haven't given anything yet and want to, head to Jamie and Kim's weblog for more information on how to give.

Technorati Tags : immigration, Canada

Disposable Worship

2006-04-06T21:22:00.000-06:00

David Fitch has a good post about using too much technology in worship...

Borgmann says technology can make certain wonderful “goods” in our lives disappear without us even knowing it. Example: the central fireplace is replaced by the invisible central air furnace. In the process the family that once gathered around the fireplace to get warm before heading off to bed no longer engages in the community-building routine. The family no longer talks about the day, tells stories, or prays together. Through technology we lose what Borgman calls a “focal practice.” We lose a concrete, formative, and simple activity, and our lives are changed without ever noticing.

The question is obvious. Have we lost worship as a focal practice? By turning it into an “experience” saturated with convenient technology, have we made worship a disposable reality when in it is supposed to be a commanding reality?

Last night at a worship meeting we talked at length about the use of technology and graphic arts in our worship service this past Sunday. We want to retain the concrete nature and the formative practice of art in our church, but any art that shocks or produces a disposable experience we try to avoid. Art is really important in our church, but we must not produce disposable experiences. We must retain the focal practice of worship.

Technorati Tags : worship, technology

Resonate ECHO with Brian McLaren

2006-03-27T16:56:00.000-06:00

Hosts: emergent Canada & Resonate
Guests: Brian McLaren, you

Date: Sat Apr 8th
Time: 7:30pm 'til we get tired
Where: Richview Baptist Church (1548 Kipling Avenue, Etobicoke, ON)
Added draw: fair trade refreshments
Cost: your time, energy, and you may have to fight a winged monkey

This relaxed, informal evening follows a full day of The Evolving Church Conference at Tyndale University. Brian, among others, is speaking at this event but we have enticed him to Richview with the promise of an armchair, good company and even better conversation. Although the format is still ... er ... liquid, we envision far more relational participation than hardcore lecture.

RSVP to Darryl Dash.

Technorati Tags : Resonate, emergent, Toronto, Richview+Baptist, Brian+McLaren, emerging+church, theology

Emergent is podcasting...

2006-03-15T21:21:00.000-06:00

Emergent Village is now podcasting. You can find the RSS feed here.

Technorati Tags : podcast, Emergent, emerging+church

Free wifi in Saskatoon

2006-03-14T21:12:00.000-06:00

Saskatoon has a growing numbers of wireless hotspots. Explore Saskatoon was one of the first lists of the locations and has just updated it. Enjoy

Technorati Tags : wireless, wifi, internet, Saskatoon, Explore+Saskatoon

Church

2006-03-06T12:14:00.000-06:00

Last night we read from Hans Kung's On Being a Christian:

The church of Jesus Christ is a home not only for the morally upright but for the moral failures and for those who for a variety of reasons have not been able to honor denominational teaching. The church is a healing community proclaiming the Father's indiscriminate love and unconditional grace, offering pardon, reconciliation and salvation to the down-trodden and leaving the judgment to God.
A church that will not accept the fact that it consists of sinful men, and exists for sinful men becomes heardhearted, self-righteous, inhuman. It deserves neither God's mercy nor men's trust. But if a church with a history of fidelity and infidelity, of knowledge and error, takes seriously the fact that it is only in God's Kingdom that the wheat is separated from the tares, good fish from bad, sheep from goats, a holiness will be acknowledged in it by grace which it cannot create for itself.
Such a church is then aware that it had no need to present a spectacle of higher morality to society, as if everything in it were ordered to be the best. It is aware that it's faith is weak, it's knowledge dim, it's profession of faith halting, that there is not a single sin or failing which it had not in some way or another been guilty of. And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping sinners at a distance. If the church self-righteously remains aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of it's guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

Technorati Tags : Christianity, house church

We have to meet eventually...

2006-03-01T00:07:00.000-06:00

On of the things that kind of inspired the Resonate Greenhouse idea was something that Spencer Burke, Charlie Wear and I cooked up a couple of years ago and that was our Indie Allies Meetups that happened all over the western world. It was in the days of Howard Dean's presidential bid and thousands of Deaniacs were meeting all over the place to get Howard Dean to be President. One of us heard of the Meetups and we started one and mercilessly pimped it out on TheOOZE, Next-Wave, and a bunch of other sites helped out. In Saskatoon they were just fun social gatherings where theologians, mystics, pastors, and anyone got together. We talked about books, Family Guy, movies, The Simpsons, faith, Family Guy, spirituality, The Simpsons...

How's this for a date in Saskatoon. March 25th at Alexander's Restaurant. Upstairs. 8:30 p.m .

Technorati Tags : Resonate, Saskatoon, Greenhouse, Alexander's+Restaurant

Emerging Experience

2006-02-20T07:18:00.000-06:00

Last night I had my first real bonified emerging church worship experience. It's interesting because up to this point the emerging church has been a theory for me. What I have gained from following this conversation hasn't really affected the way I practice, except I suppose, for the fact that I haven't been practicing corporate worship regularly for quite some time.

Tiffany, the girls, and I attended the Worship Freehouse at The Refinery. My first impression that I had once we got there was that this was not like any church service I had ever been to. Instead of pews there were couches. There was a big canvas on the floor, which I later learned is called a mandala, and a projector was displaying cool images onto an improvised screen.

Everybody was really friendly and one of the highlights for me was being able to meet some of the bloggers whose work I have enjoyed. Jordon and Wendy Cooper, and Rebekah Bennetch were all in attendance and it was great to be able to put a face to the names.

Almost without warning the worship began. It was very casual, much like the rest of the evening without any real call to order or ceremony. I found it interesting that even though I am very interested in exploring alternative worship styles, in new surroundings were I felt uncomfortable part of me longed for the familiar, if only for a moment. I could tell Tiffany was feeling the same way as she shot me a "what have you gotten me into" look.

This got me thinking a bit about theology (shocking I know). How people cling to the familiar in their walk with God because doing so means they can avoid discomfort. I don't think God is really interested in helping us avoid discomfort. While Jesus isn't a sadist interested in watching us suffer, He understands that the growth that comes from periods of discomfort is worth it.

But I digress.

After we began to worship God through singing I suddenly became very comfortable. There were readings and meditations which I enjoyed listening to and reflecting on. Tiffany and the girls became involved in some of the visual art stations that were set up. We all were blessed by the experience.

The chief concerns I've heard raised by critics of the emerging church are based on orthodoxy (or the lack thereof) in this segment of Christianity. What I can tell you is that the message I heard last night was very orthodox in it's tone, even if the presentation of it wasn't.

This morning I find myself wishing that the Freehouse happened more than once a month. I could really get into worshipping this way.

technorati tags: Christianity, emerging church

A reminder

2006-02-18T09:43:00.000-06:00

The Freehouse is this Sunday night. Worship, mandala, coffee, discussion, and a lot of creating together.

Technorati Tags : Saskatoon, worship, worship.freehouse, Christianity