Quick hide there's scary people outside...

It always saddens me when I see Christians in a docile, defensive position; just trying to hold on to what they've got, while they ride out the storm. I think this is especially true of Halloween tonight. Probably more than any other night, Christians across North America are turning their lights out and hunkering down inside. All the while, darkness literally covers our cities.

There's an awesome quote from Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is that good men do nothing"

Evil people do not wait around and ask for permission. Evil can be compelling and magnetic, and it moves forward with every inclination.

And the truth is that hunkered down, inward-focused, well-meaning, passive neutrality, will never overcome evil.

Workaholic?

Excellent insight from InsideGoogle, definitely helps justify any bit of workaholism I have...

Googler Niniane Wang is vacationing in Egypt, but she had enough time to blog this exchange, which resulted when a traveling companion was typing away on his Sidekick, instead of enjoying the vacation.

Me: [after some silence] Do you think Google does this to people? Where we work so much?

Dan: No. We do it to ourselves, at Google.

Me: Surely it’s not normal to work like this.

Dan: It’s also not normal to do amazing things.

Mosaic Movement Resources

This is a collection of resources that tie to the Mosaic movement out of L.A. While I don't necessarily resonate with everything that has come out of it, it has been a tremendous impact on my life and my visions for church planting.

I've got a bunch of other resources (CD's, DVD's, etc.) that I've bought over the years, that I'm tempted to put up, but I don't want to infringe on any copyright issues. If you're in the area, you're more than welcome to borrow them off of me. All the resources here are just what's readily available on the web.

I won't be updating this mosaic resource page - the latest updates will be available at my primary site on One Life.

Here's a snap of my wife and I as we visit Mosaic LA (at the previous night club) and connect for a moment with Erwin McManus



ARTICLES

Interview with Erwin McManus on Infuze 2006
Article on whether Mosaic and Bethel are part of the 'emerging church' by Alex McManus 2006
Article on the history and culture of mosaic through an Asian American lens
Article and another article on Erwin McManus at Catalyst 2005
Article about Erwin McManus and Creativity 2005
Interview with Erwin McManus on thinking differently
Q&A with Erwin by La Bodega 2004
Response article to me from Mosaic insider Soundchick 2004 part 1 and 2
Article on wholeness by Erwin McManus
Article on friendship by Erwin McManus
Article on a cause-driven church by Erwin McManus
Article and video by fresh ministry on postmodern ministry
Article in Relevant Magazine on Erwin McManus' Barbarian Way
Interview with Alex McManus on pray247
Article on Origins 2004, Recap on Origins 2005, Origins 2006 notes
Outline of Emerging Leaders program offered at Bethel
Article on An Unstoppable Force
Article on Mosaic and a vision for the world
Article on Ethos
Blogs of interns at Mosaic, here, here, and here.
Mosaic Navigator Eric Bryant's blog

AUDIO RESOURCES


Weekly podcasts
Alex McManus on a hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy @ Kensington 2006
Catalyst Interview with Erwin McManus 2006
Erwin McManus Chapel @ California Baptist University 2005
Mosaic Leadership Advance Message 2005
Erwin McManus - Prepare for Impact 2005
Erwin McManus The future has arrived @ Richland Hills Church 2004
C&MA 2004 Council Session 1 and Session 2 by Erwin McManus (both messages are on the second half of the mp3)
Parable of the Talents by Erwin McManus @ Rock Harbour 2002
The Great Commission and Discipleship by Erwin McManus @ Woodland Hills 2002
Erwin on The Fingerprint of God @ The Veritas Forum 2001
Erwin on Character Matrix @ The Veritas Forum 1999
Odeo - Seems to keep the last 10 or so messages archived from the podcast in case you missed any.

VIDEO RESOURCES


5 Messages by Erwin McManus in Korea on CGNTV 2006
Mosaic on CNN 2006
Television Evangelist Mosaic Rap video 2006
Chasing Daylight trailer from BlueFishTV
Alex McManus at APU Chapel 2005
100 Huntley Street interview of Erwin McManus2005
Awesome clips from UrbanPoets 1, 2, 3, 4
Excellent Mosaic 2004 Recap Video
Erwin McManus Chapel 4 @ APU 2004
Erwin McManus Chapel 3 @ APU 2004
Clips 1, 2, 3, 4 from Barbarian Way @ WillowCreek 2003
100 Huntely Street interview on Creativity and Spirituality 2003
Erwin McManus Chapel 2 @ APU 2003
Montage of Erwin McManus on Heroes 2003
Erwin McManus Chapel @ APU 2001
Erwin on The Fingerprint of God @ The Veritas Forum 2001
Erwin on Character Matrix @ The Veritas Forum 1999

WEBSITES

AwakenHumanity.org

TheOriginsProject.org

ErwinMcManus.com

Yelo.AwakenHumanity.org

Mosaic.org

Mosaic.org/podcast

Int’l Mentoring Network

www.fight4humanity.com

www.alexmcmanus.org

www.urbanpoets.org

www.mosaicalliance.com

http://www.shecommunity.org/

http://mosaic.org/terranova/

BOOKS

Soul Cravings
Barbarian Way
Chasing Daylight
Stand Against the Wind
Uprising
An Unstoppable Force

MISCELLANEOUS
Here's an image to just sit and think about..


Google co-op site searching Mosaic-related content

Latest entries and comments on One Life.

Busy and Beautiful...

Life's been busy and beautiful. I've been trying to stay at least 3-4 weeks ahead of school in anticipation of our baby, and I think I'm actually on track.

Our doctor charges $10 to print out an ultrasound picture, so Yvonne and I decided to just bring our camera in and take our own pictures! Here's our first baby's first video! It's not the greatest footage, I'll do better at our next visit in another week.

If you haven't seen it already, Steve McCoy's got an excellent post linking a smack of Tim Keller resource post. Keller's probably one of the most level-headed biblical and missional church planting catalysts out there. Over the years I've tucked away my own set of resources from movements that I've been following. So in the spirit of sharing and inspired by Steve, I'm going to consolidate and post up some resources on the Mosaic Movement, Acts29, and maybe some Rob Bell stuff...

Here's a pic of a flower by the side of the road we saw in Maui


Latest comments and entries at One Life.

Short-term Missions...

...is the Crack-Cocaine of this generation of Christians.

(posted around my seminary currently)

Comments and latest entries at One Life.

What's catching my eye...

I'm still in shock that this girl I met six years ago, is pregnant with my first child.

This is us at Urbana 2000. It's on again this year in St. Louis!











I'm linked as a "Maker of Fire" on the Fight4humanity.com site, way cool. Join Erwin and Alex McManus at Humana 2.0



The Canadian National Church Planting Congress 2007 details are up. I'll definitely be there, book your calendars! (Let me know if you're interested in a 50% discount)



I'm not a gamer, and I have absolutely no time for this, but I can't say I haven't had my eye on the new Nintendo Wii.



On that note, you can play your favorite classic nintendo games in your browser here.

Some free videos from the Innovative Church Conference are available

I finally joined facebook. Seems like an interesting network...

And my vox of the week is Dave, a fellow seminary student at Fuller blogging about his experiences there.

Latest entries and comments for this post at One Life.

Unconditional love...

Rick Tobias, CEO of Yonge Street Mission in downtown Toronto, teaches my Youth at Risk class.

Rick stated that "We abandon our kids when they abandon our values. Whether they are gay or chemically dependent, they are still our children and worthy of our love."

How easy is it for us to withdraw our love when people disagree with our values? When those we pour our lives into don't adopt the things we treasure most, why is it that our love for them as human beings is often the first thing that goes?

Many youth on the streets today likely have a physical home in which to return, but the one thing they need most, unconditional love, is nowhere to be found there. The reality is we go where we are most loved, and as bad as it may be on the streets, children are finding more love and acceptance there, than in the warmth of their own homes.

My first child is on her way in eight weeks. I have no idea what she will be like, but I know that I would already give my life for her. I love her right now, not because of her values or capabilities, or even her character, but simply because God blessed me with her. I suspect that I will need to continually remind myself of this for the journey ahead.

My Mohawk...

latest entries at http://onelife.voxtropolis.com

Reclaiming youth at risk...

I just finished reading Reclaiming Youth at Risk. I had my doubts at first. It uses Native American child-raising philosophy in helping create redeeming environments for our youth today. It has caused me to have a much deeper respect for the natie american people as well.

A quote from poet Edwin Markham:

He drew a circle to shut me out.
Heretic, rebel a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took him in.

Latest entries at http://onelife.voxtropolis.com

The movie "Kids"...

One of the 8 papers I wrote in the past 2 weeks was a reflection exercise for my "Youth at Risk" course on the movie "Kids". If you haven't seen this, it's as close to child pornography as it gets.

People actually wrote letters to our seminary president to not allow our prof. to show it in class. It was shown anyways. It's shocking to me that they people could act this out for a movie, what's more shocking is it's a vivid picture of reality.

Below's my write up. OR, I just attempted to do my first ever podcast on it. It's not quite like speaking to a crowd, felt a bit lame speaking to myself. Not sure how other podcasters do it. Anyhow check it out here if you'd like to listen. It's a bit confessional.

The movie “Kids” exposed me to the wonder and the horror of my own humanity. The youth captured in the film were foul, offensive, jaded, destructive, and all too much like me underneath it all. While their outward practices, language, and behavior I must admit are mostly foreign to me today, there is something within their culture that is more like me than I care to admit.

thoughts of the week...

Been totally drained, finally settling back into some level of functional normalcy today.

- monday I had classes from 8:30am-9:30pm. Arrived in Ottawa near 2am.
- Woke up at 6am to make it to Montreal for the IMN regional 9am-5pm.
Drove back to Ottawa by 8pm. Crashed after hanging with Andrew & Lisa at midnight.
- Wednesday. Woke up at 6am to make the drive back to Toronto for a 1pm class to do a presentation for preaching class and ended class at 9:30pm last night.



The makers of fire event was great. Shout outs to Niza, Alex, Dean, Patrick, Norm, Jerome, Jim, Joel, Nick, Morine, and Lorenzo. Always great meeting like-hearted people. Great connecting.

Some thoughts from Makers of Fire...
- opaque vs. transparent strategies - not having methods block the message
- Jesus calls us to the primal essence of humanity
- There is no territory excempt from kingdom influence
- Missional reasons for de-planting churches
- The bulk of the work in reclaiming humanity will not be done by paid staff, pastors, or theologians, but by every day people who's hearts are following Jesus into the culture.
- When you are doing things that are new and innovative, don't ever be surprised when no one shows up.

A few other thoughts picked up through this week...

- I need to spend some serious time backtracking and reflecting more on what brought me on to the journey of where I am. I think it'll go a long way in articulating and seeding thoughts on church planting with others.
- We talk about grace quite a bit, but rarely present ourselves as people in need of grace.
- Our culture values youth, without valuing youths themselves
- The price of our families having good things, is often no family at all.
- Young people often ask why, not out of rebellion, but to try to figure out our value systems behind our demands and 'traditions'
- Treating the discipline of Sabbath as a day off, is a 'bastard sabbath' (Eugene Peterson).
- There are traces of beauty everywhere if you stop long enough to look.

latest entries at http://onelife.voxtropolis.com

Makers of Fire...

I'm heading to Montreal monday night after class for a regional meeting with the IMN team. Last call if anyone from Toronto wants to head down there with me. You can register to here and shave $20 bucks off the at-the-door tuition costs.

Finished 3 papers this week. Plenty more ahead. The weekend's been just grand. Too bad it's already over. Peace.

Latest entries at http://onelife.voxtropolis.com

Failure... when your best just isn't good enough

So things didn't work out this week.

Last week I was reading a book, and it was talking about how "success in God's eyes is defined by faithfulness".

I shared this with my wife, and half-jokingly said, only 'losers' say this.

The truth is, I do take some solace in this. God looks to the heart and knows our best of intentions. He doesn't expect us to be able to be able to control every outcome.

Still. I can't help but feel like this is the motto of those who give up before the battle's really started.

I've got to work on somethings in terms of clarity and execution. And one thing I've learned from following Jesus, is that even the things that aren't your fault, you take ownership of. That's what He did. That's what I plan on doing as I continue to stumble forward.

I'm too young right now, to not be failing like crazy.

Grace & Peace to all my fellow leaders who live in the fringes of failure.

latest entries at http://onelife.voxtropolis.com

First week of seminary...

After four years of taking part-time classes, I've finally taken a much anticipated step of entering full-time studies. It was difficult integrating with the community as strictly a night student because those classes by nature were always over-sized with predominantly other students who worked full-time like I did and were in and out with our other obligations.

I'm just starting to scratch the surface of the community here. I know I'm forgetting people, but shout outs to Sharon, Grace, Troy, Adam, Carolyn, Bernard, Amy, Yuling, Morgan, Peter, Jake, Jeremy, Joel, Brian, Natalie, James, Ivan, Anita, Leo, Selwyn, and Jason. I'm glad we were able to connect, if even for a moment.

On a more disappointing note. My first attempt at starting a church planting and kingdom advancing student network completely flopped.

I'm going to need to process this some more, learn from it, and try again.

On the brighter side, my classes have been phenomenal so far. I'm taking five this term (some thing that's ridiculous, but with the baby on the way, I'd like to get as much as I can done to lighten the load later). My classes are:

Practice & Theology of Ministry

Youth at Risk

Old Testament Theology & History

Preaching

Leadership Development

I've been hammering away at the more academic core and language classes all these years so I can finally take some of these more practical sessions that I've been waiting for. Content for all of them look fantastic and the profs are excellent as well.

Leaving my job this summer I have to admit I teared up a bit. It was a life I loved, that I know I will never be returning to. At the same time, I felt that God had poured something new, something extra, into my spirit as I made the transition. Walking through the halls of school now, I still shudder at the tremendous blessing and privilege of having the hand of God guiding my life.

Who is this King of Glory, that pursues me with His love...

latest entries at htpp://onelife.voxtropolis.com

An excellent question...

A while back, I was corresponding with Jack Popjes (With Wycliffe Canada, who spent a bulk of his life as a missionary in Brazil), and discussing my future. He asked me a fantastic question that I ask myself every year.

Where would you honestly put yourself right now on a scale from 1 to 10. With one being the lowest risk and the most comfort, and ten being maximum risk, pain and possible reward. And why?

latest posts at http://onelife.voxtropolis.com

For the geeks...

If you've been using skype for free long distance this year, check out Hullo. It's much like the Avaya, which I use to use at work. You type the number via the client, it calls you locally, then calls your other party locally, and the conferences you together, phone to phone, for free!

For those of you who followed me into the land of zooomr, a bulk uploading tool just got released for it. Check out juploadr here.

Calgoo lets you take your google calendar offline.

For those of you who are wondering how to keep site stats on voxtropolis. You can paste html code from different stat providers into the 'text' sidebar widget when you hit 'look and feel'. I just started using statcounter.

And to top it all of, it looks like Jesus is back and living in Miami.

*Update. I just made my first 'portal' on Zooomr. It's a neat little new feature that allows you in a sense to place a picture within a picture. Click below to see one of me getting slapped and a portal into the split second reaction afterwards.

See the latest entries at http://onelife.voxtropolis.com

Rampant reading...

With the time off and in an attempt to get ahead of school before the baby comes, i've devoured several books the past few weeks.

Working the Angles - Eugene Peterson

Confessions of a Reformission Rev. - Mark Driscoll

Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher

The Story we find ourselves in - Brian McLaren

From Paradise to the Promised Land - T. Desmond Alexander

Being Leaders - Aubrey Malphurs

Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson

Preaching to a postmodern world by Graham Macpherson Johnston

Anyone else read these before? I often feel quite affirmed in my own thoughts after reading books, but wrapping up this latest set, I feel like I know less than when I started and more challenged than ever.

See http://onelife.voxtropolis.com for the latest entries

More videos of me...

Here's two more short lightsaber videos.

One is a practice duel, which is pretty funny right at the end if you know chinese.

The second is another lame one of Yvz defending herself against my saber as she lays on the couch.

Finally here's a large video you can download if you wish that I just stumbled on. Some university kids ambushed and nerfed me at our church's Summer Sojourn gathering. (My portion's around the middle of the clip).

Update: two of the videos that include Yvz have been made private (she's a bit embarassed... yet i'm so proud of her!). I can add you to my youtube friends list if you want to check'em out!

See http://onelife.voxtropolis.com for the latest entries.

My lightsaber...

I just got back today from visiting Ottawa for the past week. I was beginning to develop migraines from having zero internet access. Anyhow, it was a fabulous time of family and friends.

One of the highlights was fiddling around with my brother in-law's lightsabers. They are so very cool. Here's my first ever youtube video. A short video of me rescuing my pregnant wife, it's so very very lame.

I can't figure out how to embed it, but check it out here.

We're back...

We're back. Refreshed, and ready to take on the world.

Lots to catch up on, and more updates to come.

Latest entries at http://onelife.voxtropolis.com. Best viewed in anything but IE.