Location information for June 13 & 20

Due to reconstruction of our newly leased space, we will be meeting at the home of Jerry & Ruth Vanden Bosch this coming Sunday as well as June 20. Our gathering time will be the standard 5:30 p.m. for food and 6 p.m. for worship/shared conversation. Their address is 4372 Shady Oak Ct., Hudsonville. (It’s the same location where we’ve been most of the past three years.)

Also, we have been invited to worship with Southside Vineyard of Grand Rapids this coming Sunday morning. They have a guest pastor/professor who will be speaking on the kind of kingdom stuff that we have been talking about over the past year. Their summer worship time begins at 10 a.m., and childcare is provided. If you are interested in going with us or meeting us, our family will likely be attending.

Gathering of Friends...

Two days ago I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with a few West Michigan friends: Joel McClure, Paul Worster, and Denise VanEck. It was good to sometimes slow life to a pace that kept the noise of distractions away from the conversation. We were able to simply talk about what God is doing in our lives, our families, and our faith communities.

Over the past month, I've had the opportunity to have several significant conversations with Denise beginning at the Emergent convention in Nashville (as well as running across a busy street to flag down her airport shuttle). During our conversation on Wednesday we talked about the Emerging Women Leaders Initiative which is loosely connected with Emergent. Denise participated in a recent gathering of this group... down in Georgia. I will guess that this 'emerging women' conversation will become really exciting stuff for the church over the next decade(s). I encourage you to check out the link above.

One final thought for the night: Denise has brought another quality of goodness into my life. I have grown to appreciate and love her as a sister in Christ! I have little doubt that she is not only a women passionate for Christ's church but for her children and husband as well. Continue to run the race well Denise!

Night ya all!

Some of our friends are putting this together:





Theology for the sake of the world. Tom Wright wrote (in NTPG) that theology in the early church had to do with mission and suffering--not abstract hypothesizing. It's good to see we're starting to see that come back into play.

Check out the Theology Studio site and think about making time to get back to Cincy.

The following comes from a friend of ours...

As you well know by now that I am reading children's literature. C.S. Lewis is the man but anyway since I have been thinking about children's stories and rhymes and the such. I thought it would be neat to write an emerging church version of our deeply held reformed children's rhyme, complete with motions.

(Kid speaking as he puts his fingers together with his 'pointers' facing up like a Charlie's Angel's impression) "Here are the doors and here is the steeple, open the door and see all the people"

(Emerging guy) "Why are the doors always closed? and if you opened them the why are they hanging from the ceiling like sleeping bats?"

(The little kid a little confused as he had been taught to repeat this rhyme at church in a sunday school class... he went on anyway) "Here are the doors and here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people" (of course as you know the kid moved his fingers in a way that when he opened his hands all of the 'bats' were gone)

(Emerging guy always with a chided remark followed by somewhat deep questions) "Must have been a night service kid, sorry. Where did all of the people go?"

(The little kid did not hesitate because he didn't know the crack about the night service was a crack at all) "Well... my Dad is watching the NASCAR race and my Mom is doing Mom things." (This was a good answer thought the little kid as most kids do after talking about Mom and Dad)

(Emerging guy still seeking the inner meaning asks) "Why then do they still have a night service?"

(The little kid getting quite frustrated because usually she is the one asking all of the questions blurts out in a loud voice) "I don't care!"

(Emerging guy finally after receiving a sad but satisfactory answer replies) "How true" (as he shakes his head)

You can read more of the thoughts of Chad Postmus here!

The Archives Are Working!
Hey! I just realized that our archives are working. Huzzah, hooray, and so forth...
They were non-functional for...well, since the beginning I think. Anyway, they work now, so you can go check them out if you feel like it.

Oh, and let's have some more comments. Yes, I'm talking to you.

Represent, Cooperate, Invite

Several ideas started coming together for me after the Newform Conference. Some of this started in the little piece I wrote last week (see the On a Mission post below). Well, I was thinking more about this phrase George Hunsberger used (a phrase that we're going to get familiar with this month), "a body of people sent." I was reflecting on the question, 'What are we sent to do?' What is the nature of our sent-ness? I came up with this set of ideas:

Kingdom Metaphor / Action / Quality / Other Description

1. Kingdom Colony / Represent / Faithfulness / life shown
2. Kingdom Agents / Cooperate / Blessing / life shared/given
3. Kingdom Heralds / Invite / Welcome / life extended/offered

Kingdom Colony: A body of people who demonstrate what life together with God as king looks like. Colonization is not isolation, but dynamic engagement with surrounding culture in order to subvert the present order. It is what Rome did with Philippi (among others), and what Paul used to describe the task of the believing communities there.

Kingdom Agents: A body of people who see their activity as subversive action. Our good deeds have a larger agenda than benign social action. We want to see God's rule and reign become a reality where we are. This includes everywhere from home to work to nation to planet. It is social justice grounded in and springing from kingdom theology.

Kingdom Heralds: (There must be a better word than 'herald') Here, I think of the servant/messenger in Jesus' parable of the king who threw a great banquet. We invite people to the party--into the life that is truly life. This is not conversionism, but evangelism in its original sense of 'heralding' good news about a new King. Today, in the ruins of Christendom, this invitation only has weight insofar as it is demonstrated by the Colony and its Agents.

I'm sure that this is not original, but it seems to shed a bit more clarity (for me at least) on our identity as 'a body of people sent.'

Dad is going to marry...
Those words instantly moved Anna, my 4 1/2 year old, into a frenzy last night. Then I asked her if she wanted to come along to the wedding. Her crying, screaming, and physical reaction only intensified. She quickly ran up to her room.

After giving her several minutes to calm down, I went up and sprawled out next to her on the bottom bunk of her bunk beds. She buried her head in her pillow and wanted nothing to do with me. It all seemed odd - extremely odd. She's level headed, thoughtful, and rarely acts with emotions that can't be explained.

Finally I asked, "What's wrong Anna?" And after fighting back tears, her response was simple. "I don't want you to marry someone else. (pause) You are already married to mom."

SIGH from dad. Sigh that things would be o.k. with Anna. Sigh that she had terribly misunderstood her dad. Sigh that she didn't understand that a pastor-dad can 'marry' someone without tipping the world of the family into the garbage can. Sigh that I was just plain dumb for thinking she would understand what I meant when I said, "I'm going to marry."

I hate the English language. Idiots must have created it. BUT - perhaps we are just as stupid with the way that we pretend to be 'church.' We go to 'church' to worship. We spend zillions of dollars on 'church' buildings. We proclaim the name of Christ using our language and definitions, and yet we wonder why the world outside of the 'church' doesn't get our language.

Back to Anna. I crushed her spirit, temporarily destroyed her trust in me, our family, and even mom. I think it's restored. Still, a part of me hurts that I created, although not intentional, that pain in her life. ... And I wonder what pain I am creating somewhere as a result of a word that has not been understood correctly or a poor choice of words on my behalf?

To be a sent people... We better be aware of our words, and we better get beyond preaching in the 'church' and learn to live our words with our lives.

I've been sick with a baaaaaaaaad sinus infection for the past four days. I'm on the mend thanks to some antibiotics.

I'm still stewing on some thoughts from the NewForm conference. I'll share a few of them here tomorrow. They mainly flow out of one thing that Todd said (that we need to start by thinking clearly about the kingdom) and one thing that George talked about (being "a body of people sent").