Brother Nick Harris stepped in and filled in for Brian this week at encounter. Bro. Nick is Brian’s father-in-law and pastors Ovilla Road Baptist Church, which encounter is a mission church of.
He gave a great message on God reaching towards us, us reaching back in faith and in turn reaching out to others.
Be sure and check out the podcast online – if for nothing else, his story about his sleeping pills at the beginning.
Category: misc
church in a thrift store
Thomas is always a great source of finds and info on the web, especially for relevant/emergent church news.
In his latest he gives a brief look at Andrew Jones’ latest post about an alternative worship service at his local Salvation Army thrift store (Thomas and Andrew are both Salvationists):
But it got me thinking what i would do if i hosted an emerging church alt. worship event at a thrift shop. It could be a blast! I would totally use FOUND OBJECTS from the store itself. Teaching would be from the Bibles already on the shelf and any illustrations would be taken from books on the shelf. Costuming would be encouraged and perhaps an award (voucher) given to those with the thriftiest and yet funkiest outfit. Drinks would be poured out of found jars and jugs into found cups and mugs from the shelves. Children might want to play some found games. Everything is found in the shop. Nothing is imported in. An offering could be taken {in an old hat, of course) for Salvation Army and a blog post with all the details of the service uploaded to a blog so that others might catch the vision to start one up in their local Salvation Army charity store. Maybe its a really lame idea. But it might be trying.
I think that’s a great idea. I don’t know that we could get our church to fit inside a local thrift store, but the more I think about it, I don’t even know if we have a local thrift store that’s open regularly. I think Daniel’s Den is only open a few hours a week. Could be an interesting ministry/outreach to the community in Waxahachie for encounter. Hmmmm.
And in addition, Thomas shares this great image…
Looks like even more of the Sermon on the Mount is popping up in other places.
There are seven different posters in the series. There’s a link to download PDF’s of them all on the Electric Angel website but it doesn’t appear to be working right now. Doh.
But they also have pics showing more of their design work on Flickr.
Huckabee on immigration bill
Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee had this to say about the recent immigration bill that Congress failed to pass this week:
“I was pleased to see Congress recognize the will of the American people against this amnesty bill. Illegal immigration is a serious problem. Unfortunately, now we’re hearing the excuse that politics will make immigration a dead issue until after the ’08 election. Instead of shirking their responsibility, I urge the Administration and Congress to roll up their sleeves and spend the next year-and-a-half productively doing what the American people expect them to do – seal the border. It’s not a political issue – it’s a national security issue. If our government could just show competence on this threshold issue, the American people would feel more confident about moving forward on a national immigration policy.â€
This meals on us…
From All Things Considered:
Surge in Iraq brings more U.S. casulties
Hmmm… more soldiers = more casualties?
That wasn’t supposed to happen was it?
Commanders point to some early successes. They’ve captured or killed dozens of insurgent leaders and more.
Commanders are pointing to moderate successes.” 50% of Baghdad is now in the control of U.S. or Iraqi forces.
330 soldiers however have been killed since April.
NPR has the story.
Thomas meets Rob Bell
Thomas was able to meet Rob Bell this weekend during Bell’s Peacemaker tour of the UK.
Rob Bell was amazing. To get up in front of 500 people and speak for 90mins… and keep there attention… without digging out powerpoint or even some music… tremendous!
Audience participation was welcomed when Rob talked on non-violence – he focussed on the action Jesus spoke of in the beatitudes (Matthew). He spoke of the subversive, counter-revolutionary ideas Jesus had to help the downtrodden and humiliated.
It’s interesting that Bell spoke on non-violence and the B-attitudes. After reading about Gandhi’s fascination with the Sermon on the Mount we started talking about the B-attitudes in Matthew 5 and I think we’ll continue looking at the Sermon on the Mount during our Wednesday morning What-a-Breakfast at What-a-Burger in Red Oak.
We had some great discussion this last week just on the B-attitudes.
According to Thomas, Bell spoke of a two ways we tend to respond to violence – either retaliation or as a total pacifist.
But Jesus spoke of a third response:
The Third Way has two guiding principles that are founded in tremendous courage and creativity:
1) Do not cooperate with anything humiliating
2) Hold out any possibility that the aggressor may wish to change his/her mind.