Tag: Andrew Jones

Help the Joneses

tallskinnykiwi singing

A friend of our podcast, Andrew Jones, has put out a call for help and I hope you’ll take a couple minutes to read and respond.

Just a little bit of background in case you haven’t listened to his chat on our podcast yet…

The Jones family is traveling the world in their truck, exploring the world that God loves and seeking to bring real transformation and change. They have just visited 12 countries, hosting leadership training events, encouraging social enterprises, and supporting missional entrepreneurs in a sustainable and effective way.

Its been an incredible time but the financial crunch has caused a number of funders to drop out and now the funds are depleted, just as they head south and east towards the next 25 countries.

The Joneses need to raise $30,000 by the end of the year but the urgent need is $5000 for visas, diesel, ferry and plane tickets that are needed immediately. Can you help them by supporting them financially or by spreading the word?
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What is emergent? Missional

what is emergent?

Read Part 2 :: What is emergent? Centered set

While there seem to be countless folks in the Church who are more than happy to avoid being labeled emergent, the exact opposite seems to be true for the term missional. More and more folks are rushing to use the term to define their ministries. Some have even suggested it may soon take the place of evangelical in the near future.

And while emergents can be included in the ranks of those using the term it shouldn’t be assumed that those claiming to be missional should also be labeled as emergent. But from my experience it tends to be a strong piece within emerging Christianity — and something I’m working to understand and practice more fully in my daily life.

attractional vs missional

Like I originally noted about sharing my thoughts on emerging, this is not in the least an exhaustive explanation of the term missional. There are far better places to find that information than here. My hope is that this will serve as a basic primer and how it relates to the emerging conversation.

The term missional springs from Missio Dei, or the Mission of God. While historically many have seen only certain “called” members as those active in the Mission of God (either on the foreign mission field or as full time pastors and ministers to their locale), emerging Christianity sees the role of all Christians to be about the Missio Dei each and every day — regardless of their occupation or locale.
Continue reading What is emergent? Missional

What is emergent? A generous orthodoxy

what is emergent?

Read the introduction: What is emergent?

“I offer this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke.” – G.K. Chesterson (Orthodoxy (Moody Classics))

I came into the emergent conversation probably a little bit later in the game than many. I didn’t even start hearing the name emergent until after college (circa 2003-2004).

As I started tracking blogs and other online conversations I began seeing the term more and more. And once I launched my own blog in 2005 and began making connections with folks in the UK, I started hearing from people who were actually taking part in the conversation.

In March of 2006 Thomas introduced me to the blogs of Jonny Baker and Andrew Jones, referring to them as the “grandfather’s of the emerging church” (and even then I didn’t get their names right).
Continue reading What is emergent? A generous orthodoxy

Tall Skinny Kiwi visits something beautiful

jones-224x300

Awesome guest this week on our podcast – in fact one of the first folks on our “Wish List” when we started the podcast – Tall Skinny Kiwi aka Andrew Jones.

I had a great chat with Andrew right before the New Year and we shared it this week for our listeners.

Andrew has been recognized by many as one of the top Christian/Church bloggers, but he describes himself as ::

I
Me
Dad
Man
Pilgrim
Blogger
Husband
Crepe Chef
Video Jockey
Jesus Follower
Badminton Player
Director of Boaz Project
Medium Format Photographer
Missional Cell Developer for CMS

And Andrew had this to say about the podcast ::

…the podcast, which is hosted and commented on by some really wonderful people with interesting accents, I talk about my training, early mission experience, fundamentalist background as a street evangelist, the side-benefits of Bible smuggling, tinkering around with the early emerging church in the 80’s and 90’s, and I fess up to my particular heresies.

He had some great stories and great ideas that I’ve been chewing on since we chatted.

Like, “want to start a church — keep the Christians out” and “the biblical example of church is the church moving out and initiating from their house and not our house” and “follow us as we follow Christ.”

I don’t want to steal his thunder but its GOOOOD. So take an hour or so and get to know Andrew a bit better and then let us know what you think.

Hitler does emergent


(embedded video)

Some of you might have no clue what they’re talking about here. So as a brief background, Tony Jones recently stepped down as the National Coordinator for Emergent Village. After he stepped down, Josh Case (now part of the Nick and Josh Podcast) posted a video suggesting that as part of the idea and concepts behind Emergent Village and “crowd-sourcing” (my words, not his) anyone who takes part in Emergent Village should now be a National Coordinator (I would add that it’s very similar in idea to the fact that because of Christ, we’re all now part of the priesthood).

But regardless, while this is a slam against Emergent Village I’m going to say this is greatness. Very funny. The “Scrawny Kiwi” writes that Matt, who posted the video, said it was made by Randy Brandt.

If you don’t quite understand the above video, maybe you’ll get a kick out of an earlier version that came out after my beloved Cowboys lost to the New York Giants in the playoffs last year.

Andrew Jones chats with Brian McLaren

Andrew Jones shared a recent e-mail conversation with pastor, author and speaker Brian McLaren on his blog about his latest book, Everything Must Change.
Great questions from Jones I thought (several occurred to me and several that didn’t – I think I just remained optimistic when something wasn’t directly addressed, it wasn’t because it was purposely left out because McLaren didn’t agree, but more because he wasn’t the focus of the book) and great answers from McLaren I thought.
You can read the whole conversation on Jones’ blog, but of course I’ll share a few highlights:

McLaren: One of the things that I hope the book does (by understatement, perhaps?) is help people think of “church” in broader ways. For example, I don’t think that the church per se is going to intentionally solve economic problems in Africa. But churches will inspire entrepreneurs and activists and politicians and health care workers and community organizers and film-makers, etc., to work together in ways that will bring more and more healing. In this way, “church work” is building up the church, but “the work of the church” is doing kingdom work in our daily lives and jobs, from business to art to government to education to agriculture to whatever.

Jones: 2. The apparent absence of HOPE in your view of future things. Maybe i missed it but you don’t seem to acknowledge hope in the afterlife, resurrection of the dead, etc in your book and i had to guess whether you had walked away from these foundational orthodox doctrines or you were focusing exclusively on the immanence of the gospel in today’s world for effect.
McLaren: Again, I set a pretty specific goal for myself in this book: to explore global crises and what the message of Jesus says to those crises. I did address life after death in Secret Message of Jesus, chapter 20. So I haven’t walked away from hope in the afterlife, etc. If anything, I see more than ever how hope in the afterlife is necessary to keep us going when progress in this life seems slow or nonexistent.

Jones: Brian, your view on the last things has a few of us guessing. How does your eschatological position compare with . . say . . an evangelical post-millenial view? And do you believe in life after death?
McLaren: Just to be super clear … YES! I believe in life after death! I find it hard to line up my views with conventional pre, post, or amillenial views because I think they are all based on an assumption I don’t share, i.e. that the book of Revelation is intended to tell us how the world will end. This view presupposes a deterministic view of history, which I don’t share. I suppose I’m more Wesleyan and Anabaptist in this regard than Calvinist. Anyway, I talk about this in detail in SMJ, and refer to it briefly in EMC – I believe the Book of Revelation is an example of Jewish Apocalyptic which, although it may be concerned with the end of the age, is not really talking about the end of the world at all. In this, I follow NT Wright’s general line of thought, so if I’m off the ranch, so is he. I see Biblical prophecy in terms of warnings and promises, which are different from prognostications. If I had to put a name on my eschatology, I suppose I would call it “Participatory” – meaning that God invites us to participate in God’s ongoing work in the world, leading to the ultimate victory of all that is good and the ultimate defeat of evil. Beyond that, there are a lot of eschatological details I was much surer about twenty years ago when I read the Bible less and popular end-times books more!

Jones: You seem to be calling the American church to a new level of repentance, one that is deeper and more connected with structures. How has the response been?
McLaren: My loyal critics are by and large ignoring this book (so far), or if they pay attention to it – this is very sad to me – they generally ignore everything about poverty, war, and environmental destruction, and focus on doctrinal issues they disagree with me about. Sheesh. I can only hope that someone they agree with theologically will get them thinking more seriously about global crises. Apart from these loyal critics, though, response is really encouraging. People are telling me they are coming to faith or back to faith through the book … and they are feeling more confident to call themselves followers of Jesus when Jesus is presented not just as a fire escape and savior from the world, but as a liberating king and savior of the world. I am also hearing privately from some “big names” who can’t afford to associate with me publicly because of all the nastiness in the American religious world, but who are thankful for the book and affirming of its message.