Stomach flu is done with the girls. We’ll see if D or I get it. A low key game night here with the girls, we’ll see if they make it to midnight or not.
Tomorrow morning is the first day of church in our new building. Pretty wild stuff.
2005 was a […]
There are girls everywhere in my life. At home, I’m surrounded by three of them - except for Calvin the dog. At work, its not quite as bad.
As for SPACE, which I always wanted to think of as this cool, edgy, manly adventure, there are girls everywhere as well. My attempts to […]
Here are my notes from Organic Church. Really good book, making me think about a lot of things, as you will see in the post. This is one of those posts that is mostly just for me to put some of my thoughts down on paper. For those of you involved with […]
Greetings readers. My blog fast is almost over, but it was good for me. In the meantime, you can pick up a Firefox search engine pull down for the Bible Gateway here. (It’s that thing in the upper right that allows you to search from different search engines right from the […]
This post is inspired by Jeremy’s virtual introductions post. Great idea. So… if are a repeat reader of this blog, or if you are new, or if you just feel like commenting and I already know you, please introduce yourself:
Name.Town/state/country.Why you visit this site. The best movie you saw in 2005.
Thanks in advance […]
We had a great Christmas - thanks to all the well wishes from all of you readers about both K’s birthday and Christmas wishes. The rest and time away from work was great for me. Our time with our GA and CT families is still going on thru this week and has been […]
So last night, KN, one of the 03 guys, stopped over for a visit. You longtime readers will probably remember him. He and I meet every once in a while whenever he is home from school and talk about life, mission and impact. (In the summer of 04 he went to Kstan […]
Today is K’s 8 year old birthday. Happy birthday! For those of you that don’t know K, she is:- really outgoing (most of the time)- loves to sing and dance, whether it sounds good or not- is in love with most animals - when the cicadas were here, she loved catching them, while […]
I gave some feedback to the SPACEintern the other day. Her blog is great, she details the stuff we are doing which is cool. It’s also neat to see her perspective from a logistical, tactical, what-things-we-did point of view. But I implored her to add a more personal dimension - what moved […]
Since a lot of other people are doing it (and you should too because readers will like it and it will give you a good opportunity for some remberance and reflection), here is my list of favorite posts from this year.
A few things about these posts. First, none of them are summaries of any […]
I just sent out invites for our first ever SPACE winter expedition. What’s going through my head now:- want them to rub elbows with B and J Grap- see what it takes to do homeless/urban ministry - - see what it takes to do homeless/urban ministry - for the long haul- spend time together […]
You long time readers know that I collect as much material as I can about debriefing. Bible studies, images, charts, messages, activities, etc. Looks like a bunch of mission organizations got together and put some serious investment into this thing called The Next Mile - a collection of practical tools for post-mission trip […]
One more from #5 from talks from Mike Frost.
My earlier notes:#2 notes#5 notes
One other thing, you really have to listen to Frost recite this poem. Powerful.
When I Became a Christian, by Adrian Plass
When I became a Christian I said, Lord, now fill me in,Tell me what I’ll suffer in this world […]
#1 - NYC ethnicity concentrations throughout the area based on 2000 census data here. HT - BoingBoing.
#2 - NYC interactive transit map using Google Maps - here.
A vital part of missions mobilisation involves speaking at meetings in which we declare the biblical principles, present the facts and call for action.
All of us should be trying to increase our communication skills, but we also need to take the initiative in getting the invitations to speak. If you have this gift to share […]
Now it gets good…
We get out of servie about 11:10 like normal. We are hanging around and tearing down and suddenly I notice there are a buttload of people in the theatre waiting for the movie that I think starts at 1. I start talking with one of the people and they mention that the […]
When I get old enough to drink, it will be Guinness. Read the connection between Guinness and one of the first missionaries to China, Hudson Taylor, here. HT - Missional Business.
An email I sent out tonight - but to all our SPACE friends in the blogosphere too –
I hope this email finds you well and ready to celebrate Christmas with family and friends. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for SPACE and our preparation of students to share about their lives with the […]
Typepad, one of the big blog engines was down on Friday. If you really went crazy because your blog, or one that you must read, was down, maybe you should get out more. Anyway, I backed up my blog again. I used to do this way nutty re-configure your blogspot mess. […]
I have ZERO responsibility for the next few weeks. Ha yeah awesome.
I have no day-job work where I have to work weekends, all nighters or weekend all nighters (at least until January.) I have no insane SPACE launches where I have to be responsible for kids, their money or their permission forms. […]
Our 2nd annual Orbit was last night. For those of you that might be new, Orbit is an experience we put together specifically so small groups within the student ministry can come and serve together on a variety of fun and unconventional mini-service projects in one evening.
The theme last night, sort of, was on […]
A post at Creating Passionate Users asks, “What kinds of career advice would you give to young people?”
The advice I would give (with the disclaimer that Skyler will not be nominating me for any parent-of-the-year awards) is that the most important preparation skills/orientations today are:CreativityFlexibilityResourcefulnessSynthesisMetacognition (thinking about thinking)
I haven’t had a lot of time to […]
The view from the International SPACE office tonight….
It’s our third year of SPACE. Reality is its been a pretty good fall. Two large scale experiences where we exposed about 75 students to an idea of living on mission. One more relatively large scale experience (we think…) Friday night. But I have this nagging sense of a lack of […]
Geez, there has been an incredible amount of conversation about this topic. Andy Stanley writes:
“When I made the decision to shut things down on Christmas day I was wearing my employer hat. To open on Christmas morning would require a hundred or so people to come to work on Christmas morning. I would never […]
Sometimes I don’t know where my wife came from. Check out her Christmas poem here.
Notes from a series of talks by Mike Frost that Jordon had. (I think his podcast site is down right now though.) #5 out of 6 talks. Absolutely nuts.
forging missional churches - attributes:#1 - witness and mission must emerge from local worship communitiesit doesn’t work in our culture right now because of […]
This is my youth pastor from high school, RJones. For those you keeping track, I have served under four youth pastors and 50% of them have had the last name Jones. Hmm.
Anyway, RJones was a fantastic youth pastor. When I first met him, I had just become a Christian and the environment […]
K and I saw it yesterday. Fabulous. A few things off the top of my head:- The story transformed from a good story that was read to an epic story that was seen. I enjoyed it much more as a movie. My breath was taken away more than once.- There is […]
A map of the Earth with countries sized according to population. Note how small Canada and Australia are and how big China and Brazil are. Click for full size. HT - BoingBoing.
Found a set of talks that Jordon had online from Mike Frost. Here are my notes from #2. Oh man.
The church is only one of the options on the buffet of spiritual experiences and searchingyou have invited these people to church a million timesthey came once to keep you happyall our eggs are […]
K’s first slumber party - six 8 year old girls. When this is over, I might read Wild at Heart again and spend a night in a tree.
Dennis has a clip on this week’s Youthministrytv.com video with the David Crowder band doing Christmas with handbells. Pretty funny. Don’t you love people that look like they are having so much fun?
I think I’ve fixed the comments along with this new template. One thing I’ve learned - the “MainOrArchivePage” tag in templates can make things a bit tricky…
Fate has chosen him.A Fellowship will protect him.Evil will hunt him.
All the men from our couples study (and I emphasize ‘men’) went out tonight to celebrate one of ours turning 40. They are all 40 except for me. I’m a teenager stuck in a middle aged man. Anyway, we had a […]
Playing around with a new template. Comments not quite working like I want though. Thats what happens when you work all night I guess… A new template and I got to watch Revenge of the Sith one more time…
Light posting lately because we are gearing up for Orbit. Orbit was an experiment we tried last year to stimulate and catalyze an environment for existing student ministry small groups to serve together. The overall picture is that we create mini projects for these small groups to come and serve, effectively sending them […]
** Disney and church planting… Just so everyone knows, the Sheng’s LOVE Orlando…
Al Weiss, a top-ranking Disney executive, is planting churches—doctrinally sound ones, and lots of them.As chairman of the board for newly formed Vision USA, Mr. Weiss aims to raise $300 million over the next 10 years for aggressive church planting in 50 of […]
** Eric Swanson posts about his research from Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity.
Stark notes that there were at least two great plagues in the first three centuries (160 and 250 AD) that actually were instrumental in the nascent church’s incredible growth rate, which he estimates at 40% per decade. When the plagues came, those […]
Justin Long, editor for Momentum Magazine, is now blogging. Good stuff on missions, technology and culture.
I just noticed in doing some research that Sonlife’s week long high school evangelism training movement that used to be called SEMP (Students Equipped to Minister to their Peers) has now been renamed to Merge.
Merge is a week ?long experience challenging high school students to…Merge with God’s StoryWe are a part of the greatest story […]
Well, today marks the end of an era. You long time readers know that GCC has a separate facility just for the students - the Warehouse. And because of the impending move to a brand new building, today was the last time middle school and high school will meet in the Warehouse. […]
“Go quick and see for yourselves!” the boys urged.Their curiosity aroused, the elders of Kamur thronged immediately to the Tuan’s [the word for white people] front porch. Looking up, we saw just the whites of their eyes gleaming out of the blackness. We greeted them, but they did not respond. Their eyes […]
You know your elders because they eld. - John Wimber
A few days ago, I got the latest issue of Cutting Edge in the mail. Cutting Edge is the Vineyard Church Planter magazine and this was my first issue. I was definitely impressed, seems like a great magazine not just about church planting, but […]
I got an email from our Missions Task Force asking for some ideas to spend some extra money. How often does that happen?
Here were some quick thoughts I jotted down. Maybe some of you that have some extra missions budget could think about these too. Not at all a comprehensive list, of […]
Africa has been hit harder by the HIV/AIDS virus than any other region of the world. More than 17 million Africans have died from AIDS and another 25 million are infected with the HIV virus, approximately 1.9 million of whom are children.Every day in Africa:- HIV/AIDS kills 6,600 people- 8,800 people are infected with the […]
