Here are some videos shot after the conclusion of the Renov8 Congress in Calgary. Cam Roxburgh took some time out and offered his thoughts on the Congress and some other questions.

Cam Roxburgh on Renov8 2009 from Ro N on Vimeo.

The Renov8 Congress has come to a close for 2009 and I was very surprised with the quality of the event. I'm NOT a conference junkie and raise my two eyebrows at the church people who find the need to go to the same conferences year after year wasting money for ideas they will never implement. I trust Renov8 will be the catalyst to risk new ventures in our communities.

Part of what I wanted to do while at the Congress was do some quick videos of anybody I could nail down. Since I'm not a pro at video production yet please ignore how bumpy the videos will be . Having said that, over the course of the next few weeks I will be releasing snippets of the various conversations I had. To start off, here is the first of a few clips from a brief chat I had with Mike Frost who was one of the awesome plenary speakers at the event. Enjoy. More »

Day 3 of the Renov8 Congress (track the speakers blog here) and for the most part the national gathering has been a wild success, at least in my opinion. Apart from the odd boring sessional or interview, the key themes have been evident: it's time for our churches to take a risk and do basic engagement with their neighborhoods to help usher in the Kingdom of God.
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It's day two at the Renov8 Church Planting congress and so far so good. Haven't hit up any sessionals yet but the two plenary speakers I've heard thus far are BANG ON. That's a bit of a surprise since I didn't know what to expect given it's my first Renov8 Congress.

From the folks I've seen and spoken to the majority are either not thinking about, or just entering, the missional church dialogue. The speakers, on the other hand, reflect probably the motivation of the Church Planting Canada group, are SQUARELY within the missional paradigm which is very welcomed in my opinion. More »

Pomotheo will be posting some routine updates via Twitter relating to the Renov8 congress that kicks off tonight at 7PM. The Renov8 Congress is headed by Church Planting Canada and features speakers like Michael Frost.

He will be speaking for free tonight at 7PM so everyone can come out and see him. Seating won't be a problem since it's in the biggest church in Calgary (a bit ironic).

Nonetheless, you can follow updates on Twitter here. Also, Calgary Church will head an after hours discussion for those not committed to community/denominational meetings after the daily events. They'd like to extend an invitation to join the missional church planting discussion for all participants of the Renov8 Congress. More »

Timothy Kellar writes, "In every case where Jesus meets a religious person and a sexual outcast (luke 7), a religious person and a racial outcast (john 3-4) or a religious person and a political outcast (luke 19), the outcast is the one who connects with Jesus and the religious one does not.... Jesus's teachings consistently attracted the irreligous while offending the bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.." More »

This is more of anecdotal piece rather than one listing off references and stats. But I'd like to point out how Christians can start leading the charge for cheaper and eco-friendly conferences. We all know that the churches who can afford it, love to send their pastors and as many non-essential workers as possible to gaudy conferences around North America. Well maybe not quite, but there are a number of churches who are conference junkies and may indulge in the activity more often than really necessary (do we have to go to Leadership Summit every year to ask the same questions?)

Nonetheless, let me encourage churches and denominational leaders to connect and involve themselves in online networking in lieu of expensive flights, meals, lodging, etc., of conferences abroad. More »

The Renov8 Church Planting Congress is coming to Calgary in a week and a half and we're gearing up for the arrival of some of the countries brightest missional / church planting thinkers and leaders.

I don't know what other churches in Calgary are doing, but Calgary Church would like to engage some of the folks who are from out of town, and close to home, who are interested in extending the missional church dialogue into the evening.

It appears the congress has left evenings free, so if you're schedule is not booked up, we're going to reserve some space in downtown Calgary to continue our discussion. Mind as well make the most of your time here. This is open to anybody and everybody who wants to dialogue, share stories, muse, etc., with like minded missional thinkers.

Location has not yet been determined but will likely be in the Kensington area of town. Would anybody be interested?

Current Denominations Fail at Connecting with Missional Churches?

A New Book from Allelon Publishing, edited by Len Hjalmarson & Brent Toderash, is survey of some of the latest and emerging churches across Canada. The book has been delayed and delayed but I finally snuck a copy out of the hands of one of the contributors.

I'm always a sucker for new Canadian made church surveys, they're rare but invaluable for Canadian context ministry.

Half of the book was devoted to contributors taking a 'fresh' approach to the gospel message and church. The other half were re-freshing their current approach to church. I didn't find the latter to be very interesting, but I do see it's value. More »

Part of my commitment with theOoze is to review the books I sign up for and they send me! They are nice enough to give the option but I choose to generally review the ones I request. Kind of like an all you can eat buffet.... Anyways, I was going to skip the review for this book but it was short enough that when I found time I cracked it open and took a read.

A Prayer to Our Father. Hebrew Origins of the Lord’s Prayer by Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson is a 171 page large print narrative adventure about an African American pastor and Jewish academic combining to investigate the Hebrew origins of the Lord's Prayer.

What I enjoyed about this book was the concept of investigating the 'original' text of Matthew which is purported to be a Hebrew text, not Greek. The con of the book is the fact only 1/2 of the pages were devoted to the investigation of the actual prayer component. The other issue I have is the lack of corroborating evidence for the conclusions they make. It is dangerous to make claims implicitly or explicitly and passing them on to t he masses as fact (or not framing them as mere ideas so that people won't treat them by default as 'fact' because they show up in a printed book). More »