Category: Uncategorized

I feel asleep and woke thinking about these two ideas:

What does real community look like? and What does real prayer look like?

(I did a Google image search for “community” and the first picture was two ladies laying on a medical bed getting IV’s. It was for community health care. That might be a great image — and I’d post the picture here if it wasn’t too revealing. Instead, you get Google’s second choice.)

Does community just happen? Can you force community? If community does occur will everyone want to be a part of it, or only those interested in that particular community or community in general?
I don’t know that I have any answers, but maybe a lot of questions.
I would love to see a community of believers that come together for fellowship and prayer. A fellowship that blesses together and suffers together. A group that rejoices the joys of each other and mourns the hurts and sufferings. How do you obtain that?

I feel like I all my life I’ve been taught prayer. You hear the key formulas. ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. You hear the Lord’s prayer. But we talked last night about how so often congressional or community prayer becomes a thing of formula rather than heart felt — and then that bleeds into our personal prayers. Is the formula bad? Or is it that we lose the heart and desperate seeking of God when we try to make our prayers an equal amount of thee’s and thou’s?
Is prayer really two way communication with God when we’re trying to formulate our prayers in our mind before we’re willing to speak them out? And what does it really mean to “groan” in the Spirit?

I remembered you, O God, and I groaned; I mused, and my spirit grew faint.
Selah
Psalm 77:3
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
Romans 8:26

I hope this opens up some discussion here. That this blog actually has a micro-community. I don’t just ask these questions rhetorically. I’d like your thoughts and opinions. I’m sure others have asked and maybe found answers. Let us know.
Shalom

I spent time with some friends from college tonight.
We had a good time of discussion and prayer about church, the church and what it all means.
God has laid the idea of a house church on their hearts. A place where people can come and gather, feel like family, feel accepted and experience God. I felt in agreeance with their thoughts and ideas. But either way, it was just good to get to spend time with other Christians talking about God.
I wish I could highlight everything we talked about, but we touched on so much that it would be hard to remember it all.
But it reminds me how much we really need the fellowship of other believers. I’ve really been missing that lately since I left Immanuel last year.
Other than the CWF I haven’t really found a group of believers I feel welcomed into or with.
I don’t know where God will lead this small group of believers. I don’t know where God will lead me, but it’s always amazing to see God bringing people together on their different journeys. We may walk together for a short while, or for many years to come, but either way we continue to serve the same God and pray that we follow His will.

Eric comments on an article on the DMN about a father and son disagreeing on political ideas.

The father is a strong supporter of the Republican Party. His son is seventeen, and has recently become interested in the Democratic Party. In protest, the father decided he would cut off his son’s college tuition unless the boy switches affiliation. In counter-protest, the son created a Web site called www.onemillionreasonswhy.com, where — similar to others — people can buy ads at the rate of one dollar per pixel. He will use that money to pay for school.

Eric notes that in doing what they’re doing – they’re both going against their claimed ideologies.

On a microcosm, the father essentially created a small welfare state. And the son, faced with an empty bank account and the desire to go to college, is turning a Web page gimmick into a business, thus harnessing the free-market to “pull himself up.”

The Times online reports that red wine could help protect your teeth.

Red wine could help to protect teeth by staving off gum disease, according to Canadian scientists.

The article says that similar results can be found in cranberry juice as well.
Other issues studies show about wine:

Moderate drinkers have consistently been shown to have lower death rates than non-drinkers
It appears that moderate drinking protects against heart disease
How it works is still in dispute. The chemicals in wine have antioxidant properties, and alcohol dilates small blood vessels and inhibits clotting
A 2003 study suggested that wine also decreased the risk of peptic ulcers
A study of nurses at Harvard School of Public Health concluded that moderate drinking by women cut the risk of diabetes by 58 per cent

Trying to make your product, organization or religion stick?
Communication Nation has three pointers on how to get people to understand and believe in your story.
I think this is very useful for anyone who tells stories. Whether or not its the church, those in ministry, us in the media, bloggers or anyone.

Your story must be:
1. Relevant: People care about things that are relevant to them and their situation. To make a story relevant you need to get inside your audience’s heads. The more you understand how they see the world and what they care about, the more relevant your story will become.
2. Unique: The benefits you describe need to be unique to you and available nowhere else. If your benefits aren’t unique, you will become commoditized, and people won’t why they should come to you. You might have a great story that gets great results for someone else!
3. Memorable: The story must not only hold people’s attention, it’s got to be easy to remember. You can’t always control the timing, so you need to be sure people can recall the essentials at a later date. You also want a story that’s interesting enough to pass on to others, and easy enough to tell that people tell it consistently.

Thomas sent me a correction to my post about his mates over the pond.

Hey Jonathan… big thanks for the post… can I ask you to correct it slightly please? (my fault for not being clear)
Jonny Baker’s blog is : http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/
Andrew Jones’ blog is : http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/
They are the grandfathers of the whole “emerging church” thing and well worth reading regularly
Thanks for this, bro… Gonna post about Christian Wrestling shortly… I find it funny/ cool and will write it up accordingly.

Thanks for the correction and thanks for the CWF plug.
Maybe we’ll get some love and hop the pond to England someday.