How to Prevent the Emergence of Cranky Organic Church Leaders

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Mark Galli wrote a piece in Christianity Today musing about the future of the organic church movement. Although he's on the outside looking in (would have been better coming from someone who's actually participated in the movement), he does raise some interesting questions about the viability of the movement. I noticed in particular his thoughts on the current leaders of the various organic churches (whom cover a wide spectrum of 'church'), and echo his sentiments on the potential of losing many unhappy people in the future.

Organic church. The term is fluid, but it contains at least three ingredients: Frustration with the-church-as-we-know-it, a focus on people (vs. programs) and mission (vs. institutional maintenance), and a vision to transform the world.

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Missional Church Videos with Cam Roxburgh

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As promised, here is the entire series of videos with Cam Roxburgh from the Renov8 Congress in Calgary (Nov 09). Cam is the national directory of Forge Canada and Church Planting Canada. Topics include missional church worship, differences between missional and conventional church, and some additional thoughts you'll appreciate after the jump (assuming of course you have any interest in the missional church dialogue). Continue reading →

The Justice Project is a Must Have in Social Justice Reading

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The Justice Project, Edited by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, & Ashley Bunting Seeber, is a must have in the conversation of social justice for today's Christian audience. Thus far, this has been by far the most engaging and relevant book in theOoze viral blogger library, and certainly the one worth glowing reviews.

Enter the Justice League. The book is a collection of essays from a wide spectrum of writers and thinkers in the contemporary Christian ‘justice conversation,’ including voices from evangelical, mainline, and emerging contexts:

* Rene Padilla
* Peggy Campolo
* Will and Lisa Samson
* Sylvia Keesmaat
* Bart Campolo
* Lynne Hybels
* Tony Jones
* Richard Twiss
* many others
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Missional Church Video Conversations with Mike Frost

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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 :P. 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. Continue reading →

Renov8 Congress Continues to Impress: Day 3

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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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Renov8 Conference in Full Swing – Day 2

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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. Continue reading →

Follow Updates on Renov8 Congress in Calgary

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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. Continue reading →

A reflection of Christ?

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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.." Continue reading →