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Welcome Forest Hills Church

I just saw that Forest Hills Church linked to my review and response to other opinions on The Shack. Thanks so much for the link.

Forest Hills Church is doing a Christmas Series called Christmas At The Shack. Here’s where you can find the messages.

On another note, I listened to an interview with William Paul Young, the author of The Shack, and it was really great, it’s from Catalyst so there is a discussion before hand that you gotta get through, but the interview is worth it. You Can download that here.

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Categories church, Readings, Theology

Leading the Team Based Church

29 Oct

Just finished Leading the Team Based Church. It was assigned reading for my Meaning of Christian Community class. This text was a refreshing book, because it was insanely practical. Much of my reading thus far has been really deep and hard to apply right away, but I’m already playing with ideas from this book.

Pastors, leaders, read this book. It’s a win.

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Categories Readings

Tribes in the Mail

7 Oct

Tribes by Seth Godin

I pre-order Tribes by Seth Godin. I’ve read enough from Godin to know that I his books are gold, and a pre-order is not a risk in anyway. I got a pre-release copy yesterday, and I’m also going to get the copy that I actually ordered towards the end of October. I wonder who I shall give the second one too?

Let me give you some Required Godin Reading

Purple Cow

Free Prize Inside

All Marketers Are Liars

The Dip

Meatball Sundae

And hey, here’s a great video from the TED Talks

and here’s one from Google about All Marketers Are Liars

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Categories Readings

Updated Reading

1 Oct

I’ve been reading so much lately that I haven’t been updated my readings as rapidly. if you are interested I just updated my first batch of reading with links here. I’ll try to post reviews that I wrote eventually. One thing at a time.

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Categories Readings

Deitrich Bonhoeffer – Life Together Quote

30 Sep

In my Meaning of Christian Community class we are reading Life Together by Bonhoeffer – This is a book of pure Christian Ninja-ry.

There are loads of great quotes and here are a few

“Only those who give thanks for little things receive the great things well.”

“Pastors should not complain about their congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. Congregations have not been entrusted to them in order that they would become accusers of their congregations before God and their fellow human beings. When pastors lose faith in a Christian community in which they have been place and begin to make accusations against it, they had better examine themselves first to see whether the underlying problem is not their own idealized image, which should be shattered by God.”

“Like Christian sanctification, Christian community is a gift of God to which we have no claim. Only God knows the real condition either our community or our sanctification. What may appear weak and insignificant to us may be great and glorious to God.”

hmm. Things to think about.

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Categories church, Readings, Theology

Am I the lamest blogger ever?

26 Sep

Well maybe not, but I feel like I’ve been dropping the ball on the whole blog-o-sphere-a-verse lately. It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks. Jocelyn was born a little early, I started my masters degree, and I am reading like a maniac. So when I do have free time to blog, I don’t really feel drawn to create more words.

In case you are wondering, school has been going great. I love learning, and I love being force to learn through some sort of program. Our first class talked about the nature of church community, and the spring of our discussion was the trinity, and the community of the trinity. It was incredibly insightful and I posted on my twitter that it was leping me to love Jesus more.

We talked a lot about the inlfuence of Karl Barth and the Trinitarian relational model for salvation. it went above the Calvinist and Arminian debate. That was pretty incredible. I’m still trying to process all of what it means and I am trying to figure out how to apply it to our church community.

tonight and tomorrow I will be in class again. This time Interpretting the Hollywood Narrative, movies, theology, super fun times will be had by me.

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Categories church, Readings, reflections

Free Book

23 Sep

Who wants a free book? I love free stuff, and I bet you do too.

Go here to download a free e-book of essential church by Thom S. Rainer.

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Categories leadership, Readings

Reading YEAH!!! Writing about Reading BOOO!!!

5 Sep

I am totally digging my pre-session reading for the two courses that I am taking this fall. One is the meaning of Christian Community (it’s about the church) and the other is Theology and Contemporary Media (culture). These are two of my favorite subjects to talk about, read about, think about. But I’ve been procrastinating on my writing assignments. The reading is great, the application is hard.

Sounds like life, huh?

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Categories Readings

Book Love

26 Aug

Last Thursday I had lunch with Shawn Peterson. We are planning for Sno-Blast 09 which is going to be awesome. I love sno-blast.

Anyway, we planned, and then we had a really great conversation about ministry, and trying to create rhythm for ministry and all that. As we were getting ready to leave a woman at the next table stuck up a conversation with us. Turns out she and her husband are missionaries, and they go to Christ the King in Anacortes.

I recently listened to a teaching by Dave Browning on their multi-site strategy, and she said I should read his book. And I wrote down the title and I was planning on acquiring it after the bulk of my school reading is done. But then I check the mail yesterday, and she mailed me the book. How great is that. That’s amazing, what a great gift. I look forward to reading deliberate simplicity as soon as I can.

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Categories church, Readings

If you’re wondering, I’ll probably be reading

30 Jul

So I’m going back to school. Yeah I know, my life is crazy enough already, with a wife, a 2 year old, a baby on the way, a puppy and youth ministry. I’m going to add one more thing Grad School. Kathy and I talked and prayed about this, and we figured there really never is a good time to improve yourself. There’s never a good time to go to the gym, there’s never a good time to read that book, there’s never a good time to take a sabbath. So you just need to do it.

With that said I will be taking 2 courses this fall, and I was emailed my reading lists for those two classes. So my new years resolution of reading one book at a time will have to come to an end soon. Here are the books that I will be reading.

For Meaning of Christian Community