Updated version
Sidenote: I should have said “my” farmers don’t use internet, they told me so…
This week I spent some time with 400 of my closest friends at the NEXTChurch Gathering in Minneapolis. It was a wonderful time to see colleagues, catch up with old classmates, and be in a space where people were talking about what’s next for the PCUSA.
It was two and a half days of amazing preaching, transformative worship, creative ideas, informative workshops, and great conversation. In one of those conversations with my good friend John Vest something struck me like a thunderbolt.
The disciples didn’t recognize Jesus after the resurrection.
In the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John the resurrected Christ appears to his disciples and in each case they don’t recognize him, until he shows them his scars (John 20:24-29), breaks bread with them (Luke 24:13-35), speaks a word of peace (Luke 24:36-49 and John 20:19-23), calls them by name (
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#nextchurch2014 amen to caring for the neighborhood
Recently there was an article concerning the …..lets say staidness of overly churched culture….
How do you get a church to event plan beyond the church culture? Here are some guidelines to consider
Rule number One: Don’t do anything for free….it creates a debt mentality that is unhealthy for the congregation and the attendee
Church: Let’s throw this free event, then people will love us and come to church….
Potential Attendee: Free? Really, I bet that church just wants my soul, no way I’m going to that…
Church: We had a free event…why didn’t anyone come (or) People came to our free event, why aren’t they coming to church
Rule Number Two: If you throw an event, have a reason behind it (other than attracting people to the church…ideally have at least TWO solid reasons
ex: Let’s have a farmer’s market 1. it will support…
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Faith it till you make it.
Nigel Paul via twitter
Sex, Sin, Rape, Homosexuality this covers some deep issues, translation is the primary motivator (yay)
When English interpretations of the New Testament talk about ‘sexual immorality’ they 
are really translating the Greek word porneia (πορνεία), it’s used almost every time the topic of sex comes up and often when talking about the worst sins in general. If you can really grok what Paul was talking about as he uses the root for the word over and over again (it appears 32 times in the New Testament) then the rest falls into place. Now porneia has always been translated into Latin as fornication, while being understood by many conservatives to just be a 1:1 stand in for ‘any sexual expression not between husband and wife’. However, Porneia in post-classical Corinthian Greek did not mean generic sexual sin, or even sex outside of marriage, at all exactly and neither did fornication in actual Latin. The truth, like in many things, is a little bit more complicated and…
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All organizing is science fiction. What does a world without poverty look like? What does a world without prisons look like? What does a world with everyone having enough food and clothing look like? We don’t know. It’s science fiction, and it is as foreign to us as the Klingon homeworld (which is called Q’onos in case you were wondering). But being able to envision it and imagine it means we can begin seeing the steps it would take to move us there.
– Walidah Imarisha, Growing Octavia’s Brood: The Science Fiction Social Justice Created (via nomadmanifesto)
Yay Tumblr…this is definitely why/how I read Sci-Fi/Fantasy as a hopeful act
YES!
World Vision is trying to send us all to hell.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, you haven’t been on the internet in the last 24 hours.
World Vision announced that they are going to start forcing African kids to marry into same-sex relationships, if not they will take away all their food. Seriously! Well… that is what these guys at the Gospel Coalition seemed to be saying…
Anyways, well all know that this is a huge problem. World Vision plans to employ only gay people so that they can transmit ‘gayness’ to as many Third World children as possible.
Now, I have long been suspicious of World Vision. All their commercials and print ads have pictures of kids on them that I can only assume are not ‘Christian’. Most of those kids come from the Kenyan bush right? Isn’t that where Obama came from? We…
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Sermon by our Exec (Transitional) Presbyter.
Exodus
By, Lesley Anne Cornish
This sermon was offered for Albany Presbytery on March 25, 2014 at the Mayfield Central Presbyterian Church. The scripture readings were Exodus 17 and I Corinthians 15: 51-58. The Mayfield Church was burned to the ground in 2011 and through some Calvin Institute of Christian Worship grants has engaged in deep theological exploration of loss and grief and created amazing art that is woven throughout their new building that we worshipped in as a Presbytery for the first time today. This includes their beautiful communion table that has a mosaic of shards of glass from the broken pieces of their felled stained glass windows that was created in worship by the community. We heard a beautiful anthem in worship that the local community choir sang tonight that was commissioned for the rededication of their space.
Blessings overflow. New life and growth rising from the ashes.
Imagine…
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Yay! Follow the link!
katyandtheword 