This evening I asked the youth what church would look like if they designed it from start.  With no knowledge or pre-conceptions of what church is or isn’t now.

Here’s three videos with their answers.  Interesting and thought provoking.

If you’re looking at this via rss feedreader or email subscription and you can’t see these videos click here to see them.

AutoHotKey is my second favorite software (second to eProductivity for Lotus Notes).

Here’s a short video showing just a few of the reasons I love it so much.  Enjoy.

If you’re reading this through a feedreader or email subscription and you can’t see the video, please go here.

I’m pleased to see Jason Somerville has pleaded guilty to the murder of his wife Rebecca Somerville and Tisha Lowry.  (via Stuff)

This will allow people to get on with their grieving process much sooner.

If you’re in ministry you’ll know it can really dominate your life.

How do you go about making sure it doesn’t?

I’ve had a Palm Pro smartphone for a while now but I’ve never had a satisfactory twitter client for it.

But, at last I’ve found something useful.

Having got excited about the ability to “dislike” on Facebook if you run Firefox I thought I should you, my loyal readers, a chance to have the same say on my posts.

It’s not so much the chance to say like or dislike as it is to indicate whether you found the post useful or not.  This way, I’ll be able to make sure I give you more of what you really want.

So next time you read a post, please take the time to click either the thumbs up or thumbs down icons near the post title. Thanks

At Last Emerging Church in a Language I Can Understand!

It was a great pleasure to have Steve Taylor (of Emergent Kiwi and Opawa Baptist fame) talk to us recently at an Officer’s Fellowship in Masterton.

He said a lot and I took truck loads of to put up here.  BUT… what I’ll actually do is just take snippets and discuss them in (hopefully) greater depth as the mood takes me and as people’s responses dictate.

Steve highlighted a couple of issues about the “Emerging Church“.

• Concepts about the emergent church are stylised heavily in an American context simply because so much of the literature comes out of the USA, and

• Too many people are more worried about “emerging from” and not “emerging to“.

It’s this second point that I’d like to discuss further.

First, the story of The Salvation Army Johnsonville.

At the time SAJ started there was a clear need to look afresh at just how The Salvation Army “did church” in New Zealand.  Numbers were declining and the older traditional style and content just wasn’t cutting it.  So SAJ began with a mandate to try being different.

To a large degree it’s been successful.  SAJ has grown quickly and the style of worship service has such that people will actually ask their friends to come to church with them (in the past, many felt they couldn’t really invite to a service they knew would either bore their friends or, worse still, alienate them with strange language and clothing!)

Some issues have arisen of course and when Raewyn and I came to take over leadership about 5 years ago there was a definite faction who were in the “emerge from The Salvation Army” camp.  This meant that anything that had a hint of being Salvation Army was rejected simply because it was Salvation Army.  Happily this is no longer the case and we have been “emerging to” a contemporary, attractional style of worship that has both depth in biblical teaching and relevance to the congregation.

The Salvation Army Johnsonville as an Emerging Church?

To the extent that we are emerging to something relevant I’m quite happy.  I’m especially happy that we’re not throwing the baby out with the bath water and that we are valuing more and more our Salvation Army heritage.

However…

Steve has thrown down a gauntlet I can’t ignore.  Should we merely be emerging to an attractional style of church only.  If we continue to do this are we ignoring most of the people in our community who simply won’t come into any church.  Should we be emerging to a church that not only meet people at their need (and the Salvation Army does) but also at their time, place, and in their style?

These are questions that demand discussion.

What is “Doing Church”?

Steve put forward a very interesting idea on what three aspects we need to have to call something “church”.  I’ll discuss these in a later post.

Photo credit: jam343

Firefox users only now have the opportunity to “dislike’ items in the news feed through an experimental dislike add-on.

Very useful for letting your friends know you don’t like lewd, distateful stuff without hiding the friend entirely.

But even more useful…

if you have a friend idiot enough to like the Yankees!

Now you can let him know…

Photo credit: fuyoh

With the latest update of eProductivity you can now keep your “Today” view visible at all times.

This is a great boon so I thought I’d try a quick video tutorial to show you how to get it working.

eProductivity for Lotus Notes by Eric Mack is an implementation of GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen.  GTD is one of the most widely accepted methodologies for both productivity and life balance.

This is my first video tutorial. Please let me know if it’s useful to you and, if it is, what other aspects of eProductivity you’d like me to do future tutorials on.

Photo credit: torley

I came back from honeymoon to a new job (OK, I admit it, this is a story from many… too vague?… 28 years ago but trust me, it’s still relevant) and a new boss.  Not just a new boss, but as the company who hired me had been merged with (taken over by) another company, the new boss wasn’t even the same guy who had interviewed me and offered me the job in the first place.

So, as you can imagine, I went to my first day with some trepidation.

As it happened, Alastair became the leader I would judge all others against.  Alastair was a boss I would do pretty much anything for.  Alastair was the leader I always hoped to become.  Alastair was a loved leader.

What made me feel like this?

He did Back Me Up

I specifically recall a time when the big bosses were in town and they complained about something that hadn’t worked quite right.  They did it in such a way that meant they thought it was my fault.  Alastair couldn’t have known whether I had got things right or wrong but he backed me to the hilt without blinking an eyelid when I was asked about what I had done.

He Did Hold me Accountable

After that incident and when the brass was gone, he came to me and asked for information about the situation.  He left me in no doubt that if I got it wrong I would be in trouble.  Not necessarily for making a mistake but if I had given wrong information to him to try to keep myself out of trouble…  (Fortunately I hadn’t!)

He Did Care about Raewyn and Me

As a newly married couple Alastair seemed to know that decisions I made would impact my marriage more than I would understand.  He often discussed this with me and the fact that he really did care about how we were going made a heck of a difference to me.

Are you a leader that people want to work for?

If you aren’t, it may be worth trying to find out why that is.