Tallskinnykiwi on Something Beautiful Podcast

I’m looking forward to hearing Andrew Jones on my buddies’ podcast, Something Beautiful

Andrew AKA Tallskinnykiwi always has interesting things to say about Jesus, Church, culture and community so no doubt the Something Beautiful 2.5 will be well worth a listen.

Something Beautiful’s Jonathon, Thomas and newish co-host Stewart have been doing an excellent job since starting this great little podcast a little while back, so if you don’t listen to it…you should!

If anyone’s interested, here are the other podcasts that I regularly listen to:

Catalyst
Home Brewed Christianity
Imago Dei
Mars Hill
Mosaic
Slipstream
Vox Venaie

…you may want to explore them as well…

Our Gaz

One of my best mates in all the world has started a blog

Go and visit him, say "hi", and offer some encouragement.

Tell him Johnny sent ya!

Rabbie!

Aly Bain plays a beautiful version of Robert Burns' classic poem, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

June 25th 2009 Scotland will celebrate Burns' 250th birthday

If you're feeling the strong pull to go home, check this out

24/7 Prayer

...good to see that the incredible 24/7 Prayer Movement Leader, Pete Greig is featured on the most recent cover of RELEVANT Magazine.

24/7 is one of those movements that search for what God is blessing and rides the wave!

In the beginning there was chaos, naivity and passion...but they followed the Spirit and have blossomed in ways they would never have imagined.

Check out these short movies for a flavo(u)r

Whatcha lookin' at?

Salvation Army Corps sites – what’s the Point(ful)?

I’ve been meaning for some time to make a little time & space to say how much I like this little site, which I stumbled upon searching to find reasonable examples of Salvation Army Corps (Church) websites.

To be honest, I’ve found very few good ones indeed - which is a shame because I know that many of the actual ministries with such a poor presence are alive, active and engaged with their community. It’s just that their online profile belies that. Really very few are aesthetically pleasing, sufficiently functional and/or using current web standards.

I guess it begs the question. Is it important to have a great site?

Pointful.ca is one of better local Sally Army ones.

Check it out!

If you know any others, or I’m talking out of turn, please let me know

"Standard" gets religion...or not

London's evening rag, The Evening Standard, published two faith stories side by side this evening.

The first concerned the removal of a supposedly "unsuitable" and "horrifying..." crucifix from a Church in Horsham, West Sussex.

Check the whole article here

Now, I'm going to take the piece itself with a pinch of salt, because journos almost always allow any story to spin uncontrolably away from reality. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

I did like the unsubstantiated quote, allegedly made by a congregation member:

"Next they'll be ripping out the pews and putting sofas in their place, or throwing out all the Bibles and replacing them with laptops"

Sounds like they just might be.......EMERGING! :-))

The second story has been rumbling around for a while, namely the "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" poster campaign on the side of buses and in tube stations.

I for one am quite grateful to Ariane Sherine and the British Humanist Association for shelving out a reported 140 grand to stimulate the dialog about God and faith.

Visit their site to see a rare picture of Richard Dawkins smiling!

Ed Dobson’s Year

Looks like the story of Ed Dobson’s year long quest to live like Jesus has gone stratospheric in the blogosphere, following an interview on ABC News

I’d first become aware of Ed’s year during a recent visit to Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, MI.

Sadly, the clip on the site has led to a slew of pretty ungracious attacks in the Comments section of the ABC site …together with some more supportive responses to Ed’s efforts. Most of the vitriol is related to Ed’s admission that he’d voted for Barack Obama.

As an aside, you might want to check some excellent pics of Ed at Brian Kelly Photography

Book Haul

I’ve had a major book haul over the holidays.
New purchases to get my teeth into in the coming weeks:

ReJesus – by Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch
The New Conspirators : Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time – by Tom Sine
Pattern Recognition - by William Gibson (HT to the Headphonaught for re-igniting my interest in Gibson)
Crazy Love – by Francis Chan
In Defense of Food – by Michael Pollan
The Peoples Bible: NRSV …“Relying on the best insights of historical-critical, liberationist, postmodern, and postcolonial interpretation”

Also, I finally got the chance to replace my copy of Mike Frost’s EXILES: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture, which by way of highest recommendation I had given away to a friend.

Plus copies of Trailrunner and Ministry Today thrown in for good measure.

Hope all this reading material for the daily train ride to the office doesn’t get in the way of me listening to the Something Beautiful podcast! ;-)