Updates...

These are some of the iMosaic peeps. Thanks for putting me in Steve!

Three more weeks of intensive Greek and my life should resume to some level of normalcy again. That and i'll have finally moved into my new shack.

I woke up this morning from a dream with my pastor telling me that I need ritalin. I didn't even know what it was until i looked it up in the morning. God's been speaking to me from several angles that i need to reclaim some order in my life.

Mike and Craig of x3church have a blog now. I love the ministry that they do. They've been visiting porn conventions (with their wives), connecting with people and sharing the hope of Christ with anyone willing to listen. I think Jesus would be right there with them reaching out to every crevice of society.

One comment of a person they had met at one of these shows just shook me.

James, a paraplegic said, "If you want to help me don’t pray for me, give me money so I can buy a prostitute to touch me… no one will touch me.

That's the reality in which we live...

iTunes 4.9 just got released with podcasting support. Mars Hill and many others are listed on the itunes directory.

I just discovered some Rob Bell videos via Yu-Ling
The Nazarite Vow
Between the Trees
We're over here
Jesus and Domitian
A Day of Atonement
Covered in the Dust of the Rabbi

May the love of God continually interrupt your day...

Mystic Nation...

My brain's been cramped the last while. I've been taking several professional development classes at work on the 'voice of leadership' as well as 'emotional intelligence'. More profiling still to be done. Greek's been happening two nights a week, and I think i just bought a home.

This will be a substition post via Alex McManus and the iMosaic discussion.

Mystic Nation is a code word for the decentralized yet connected community of Mystic Warriors that make up ONE expression of iMosaic's missional potential. Rumor is that this Mystic Nation is real but you must know a Mystic Warrior to become one.

Imagine this a house church leader in the south whose group meets at the local coffee shop twice a week, a Christ following musician in Brasil whose band practices three times per week and whose members gather with their friends and family for a cookout once per month.
Both keep their immediate communities and a larger following in touch via blogs, chat rooms, email lists, email newsletters, etc.

Both have communities filled with pre believers, both don't sense the need or benefit of integrating these groups into a local church, but they don t want to be lone rangers. They want to identify with a global Christ following movement that has moved beyond established and traditional forms. They are mystic warriors in search of a nation.

What are the possibilities for a new kind of church that is smaller and more decentralized than a house church and yet larger with more mobilization power and more connectivity than a mega church? Might the era of the house church and the era of the mega church be past and the time ripe for something that integrates the best of both?

technorati tag
imosaic via Steve Watson

Moby and Relevant...

A couple quotes from Relevant's interview with Moby (Thanks to Existential Punk for the tip)

As a Christian, I feel very shut out from a lot of contemporary Christianity. My understanding in what it means to be a Christian is to, in our own subjective way, recognize Christ as being God, and recognize our shortcomings and our failings, and try and live according ot the teachings of Christ as best we can. And what I find so strange is I look at the behavior of so many Christians, and I don't see any aspect of the teachings of Christ represented there. But [I remember] the quote about taking the log our of your own eye before you can see the speck in someone else's eye, so I don't want to get in the position of judging other Christians. I fully admit that a lot of my actions and a lot of things that are still in my life are inconsistent with my beliefs as a Christian. I'm very secular."

"So maybe it's time for a new Martin Luther, who's gonna come along and say, 'Live how you want to live, do what you want to do. But if you're going to call yourself a Christian, at least know the teachings of Christ. And at least understand the character of Christ."

" 'One of my other favorite quotes is, "Those who are sick are in need of a doctor." And the sad thing is we're all sick. It's part and parcel of the human condition, and it's especially part and parcel of living in the United States in the 21st century. We're all sick. We're all deeply unhappy, disconnected, unwell people. We need each other, and we need God. And if God made the universe and if God made us and if God made the world, it just makes sense to invite God into our lives and ask Him, "You made me - what should I be doing?" ' ~ Moby

Other Random Links

Thunderstruck.org - I love this site, i'm surprised i didn't discover it earlier.
Sex and the Supremacy of Christ - Videos now also available from some of the talks. The John Piper ones seem to be missing though.
Wrong about porn - Article on feminism's failure to change the way men view women
HousingMaps -Another GoogleMap Hack - Hopefully we'll find ourselves a place soon.
IBM just got into the Tablet market - Thinkpad x41 Tablet
Acts29 - Bootcamp 2005 Audios
Donald Miller of Blue Like Jazz - message on Rethinking Relationships via Veritas Forums.

Visionaries...

CNN has a special feature currently engaging 'leading thinkers' on visions for the future. Ranging from sustainability, nuclear energy, extending life spans, global pandemics, and even one on humanity's identity crisis. Definitely worth the glance.

I just rediscovered one of my all-time favorite monkey video clips. A classic I never get tired of.

Fingerprints...

"We live. . . in a world drenched in God.
And some people seriously ask you: 'Where is God?'
Maybe a better question would be, 'Where isn't God?'
I mean, his fingerprints are all over our world.
Or maybe it's his world and they're our fingerprints."
~ Rob Bell

Detroit Press just wrote an article on Rob's Church, Mars Hill.
Sounds like he's doing the book thing as well, Velvet Elvis is pre-orderable at amazon.

Just glancing at the church site, book cover, and the Nooma series I've got on my shelf, it seems he's got the clean, sleek, Apple interface going on everything... Something about it calls out to me, almost subversively suggesting that I should switch systems.

Or maybe it's just me, secretly longing for the 'fingerprints' of mac on my pc world. I don't want a mac. I don't want a mac...

The Meatrix...

This looks old, but it's a new to me. Discover the lies we tell ourselves about the meat we eat at the Meatrix.

More on the House Church...

I'm half way through Wolfgang Simson's "Houses that change the world" and I still don't think I fully grasp what he's suggesting, but I love his writing. Some exerpts,

The church I dream of is like a spiritual extended family - organic, not organized, relational, not formal. It has a persecution-proof structure. It matures under tears, multiples under pressure, breathes under water, grows under the carpet; it flourishes in the desert, sees in the dark and thrives in the midst of chaos.

Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcome by greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money, and power. Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and polite to be worth persecuting.

In the New Testament times... Every Christian was, by definition, a candidate for death. If one wanted a soft life, or wanted to get ahead in respectable circles, one simply did not become a Christian. when people became Christians they were 'converted to marginality'. Rather than being a part of the main social establishment they were part of a counter-culture, an anti-society, secret and mysterious to many, loyal to 'another king', a distinctively different spiritual tribe.

Simson also includes a statement from Art Katz, a Messianic Jew on how true community starts, where individualism ends:

Community life pulverizes your old ego in the power of the Spirit of God, and rescues you from just living a miserable private life, where after loving each other during a one-hour worship service a week we rush home to water our flowers, sit on our porch, eat our individual meals and wash our car. We need to start to function as part of the fellowship of the redeemed. As the redeemed, we do not go home after a service, we are at home with each other.

Amazing.

JC Vampire Hunter

In the trailer a low voice states...

In the New Millennium, Vampires no longer fear the Sun...
but they are about to learn it's time to fear.... the Son... of GOD!"

Nothing Biblical, but looks Hilarious...