Friday, January 05, 2007

emerging church postcards 2006: Aotearoa New Zealand 2

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a helpful Scripture in the formation and life of your church community: Luke 10:1-12 invites us to look for God among the tables and everyday lives of people. We go to people rather than invite them to come to us. Refresh started as a dream of providing spiritual resourcing in our local cafes. If lots of shops sell spiritual journals, then what does Christianity have to contribute to the disciplines of Spiritual Journalling?

Ideally this would be in a public space, and so Steve Taylor spent time building relationships with a local café owner. The initial plan was to offer a block course on Spiritual Journalling.

The first course attracted such interest that it has birthed the possibility in 2007 of this becoming regular, weekly, and church by offering once-a-month sharing of what people are learning and weekly teaching on spiritual practises.

learning about spiritual formation: That people are longing for spiritual resourcing and that providing time and space for people to work on their spirituality is gift. Further, that the more this space is located in the cafes where people spend their everyday lives, the more likely it is to connect with people on the fringes of the church.

movie (or scene) that sums up your year: Everyday People and that sense of God’s future being revealed among the lives and coffee cups of everday people.

best mission moment in 06: First, sitting with the café staff to negotiate the use of the café and suddenly realising that in the grace of God and the circumstances of life, I was actually becoming the café pastor. Luke 10 was real, and I was speaking the peace of God amid the really hard places of people’s lives. Secondly, having someone on the first night of the journaling course voice their disillusionment with prayer unanswered and realising that this was going to be a very honest space, and thus a much more exciting place to be than any pious religious setting.

For more emerging church postcards 2006, go here.
For emerging church postcards 2005, go here.
For information on how your emerging church can send a postcard, go here.

Posted by steve at 02:21 PM

Monday, January 01, 2007

emerging church postcards: aotearoa new zealand

OK, here’s the first emerging church postcard 06. If you want to submit one details here.

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This church has no name. It meets in Porirua (Wellington, New Zealand) on Monday nights for meals followed by adult times later in the evening.

a helpful Scripture in the formation and life of your church community: The Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount. Great stuff.

learning about spiritual formation: Thinking through the three aspects of believe, belong and behave and the dynamic they create in our corporate life. Thinking through the issues of spiritual formation for our children (age ranges 17 down to babies numbering round 30) and attempting to mentor each others kids finding significant others in our kids lives. Trying to find safe places which will also be able to challenge us in relation to the men and women respectively. Realising the importance of providing space for people to grow though stages of faith.

movie that might sum up your year: Worlds Fastest Indian – esp scenes traveling thought the States, stranger in a strange land, full of confidence and humour and not much else but kiwi ingenuity, having moments of near disaster and tragedy, coupled with much laughter and flying by the seat of our pants.

best mission moment in 06: Sponsoring and settling a Burmese family and all the subsequent followup and complications therein, incl encouraging us to work in with 1-2 other local (organized) churches. Also supporting a regular to go to Sri Lanka to help in rebuilding after tsunami.

Posted by steve at 10:28 AM

Saturday, December 23, 2006

reminder: emerging church postcards 06

Emerging church postcards 06 are starting to roll in, so just a reminder:

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that come the new year I am publishing on-line a series of emerging church postcards . All contributions welcome; simply send me at steve at emergentkiwi dot org dot nz;
a) 1 photo of your emerging community this (06) year;
plus a few sentences in response to these 4 questions;
b) what has been a helpful Scripture in the formation and life of your church community?;
c) what has your emerging community been learning about spiritual formation?;
d) what movie (or scene) might sum up your year?;
e) what has been your best mission moment in 06?.

Posted by steve at 02:04 PM

Sunday, December 10, 2006

emerging church postcards 06

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Again, this Christmas I am compiling a series of emerging church postcards . I want to publish on-line a visual snapshot and digital diary of the emerging church in 2006. I welcome contributions from any emerging churches. Just send me at steve at emergentkiwi dot org dot nz;
a) 1 photo of your emerging community this (06) year;
plus a few sentences in response to these 4 questions;
b) what has been a helpful Scripture in the formation and life of your church community?;
c) what has your emerging community been learning about spiritual formation?;
d) what movie (or scene) might sum up your year?;
e) what has been your best mission moment in 06?.

During January I will be post your image and responses as a series of postcards06 on my blog. (Feel free to use the emerging church postcards 06 image above and to spread the word.)

Now last year I was very United States-allergic. I was tired of the way that the emerging church was so often reduced to emergentUS. I thus refused to accept any American postcards. It was a blog-stake in the ground, because I wanted to provide a visual reminder that the emerging church is global, not American.

This year I repent! I am accepting US postcards. However, I will only post them in proportion to their percentage of world population. That’s 5% (according to here). So, for every 20 postcards I get, I will post one from the United States (in the order they come from the US).

Why emerging church postcards 06?

(more…)

Posted by steve at 09:55 PM