TCSpeak

There are not so many senior Salvation Army leaders around the world who are blogging.

I guess the two that spring to my mind are Commissioner Jim Knaggs, the Territorial Commander(i.e. Big Boss) of the Australia Southern Territory, at his TCSpeak blog, and Retired Commissoner Joe Noland at Slightly Irregular.

Commissioner Knaggs' recent post really nails it for me:

Our Army is loaded will all kinds of people. We need every one of them. We need you. There is a place for all who love the Lord and desire to serve Him and there is a place for those who don't. The Kingdom of God is open. Hallelujah!

Now we need to be open as well. We need to be open to all people, whether they like us or not. They can even say some pretty rough things or treat us poorly. We still need to be open.

We need to be open to God...open to His love and to His forgiveness...open to his commands and open to His discipline...open to His people.

The sign on the door of our heart needs to be "open."

One for the road

Just once in a while you discover a new blog that really grabs your attention, and you just know you’ve discovered one that you will keep going back to again & again.

Today is one of those days.

As is usually the case, a happy accident led me to Paul Mayers’ One for the road, which is jam-packed with good stuff related to Emerging Church etc. Paul’s writing is good, and the pics he uses are often really good. I guess sometime I’m going to have to trawl through his old stuff as well as the new, because there really is a mine of interesting posts here.

Glad to have found your blog, Paul.

As an added bonus, one of One for the road’s links hooked me up with The Q Café in Seattle. This place has a lot of common ground with The Freeway, who I’ve regularly referenced on johnnylaird.blogspot.com Judging by their smooth looking blog, it’s definitely worth dropping by if you’re ever in Seattle. At the very least, check out .

Salvation Army ... Fading Brand?

I can't claim to be a regular visitor to The Agitator website. In fact, it's a totally new one on me, but I was struck by this new post, Salvation Army ... Fading Brand? (Go ahead...read it, otherwise the rest of my scribblings won't make much sense.)

I guess many, if not most Salvationists would baulk at the "Army" being described as a brand in the 1st place, and also would perhaps take issue with commentor, Tom Belford's assessment of the movement.

Much of what Belford says about our website(s) may ring true, but he seems to have quite a one-dimensional view of TSA. Clearly, he's coming from a particular perspective, so you have to take that into consideration. Also, it appears to be a very US-centric view. The guy can't be blamed for only seeing TSA through his own personal pair of glasses, but even as Salvationists, we are also sometimes guilty of only seeing the Army from where we stand. We are an incredibly diverse family!

Having said that, one phrase that does resonate with me was the following:

Certainly the needs addressed by the Salvation Army are not fading away. Let's hope the organization can successfully renew itself and re-confirm its relevance for meeting those needs.

However, if that means we simply become a hugely efficient, highly visible non-profit organisation at all costs, what have we really achieved?

Now, I know this is an old chestnut that's been rolled around in SA circles for years, but I'd be really interested to see what anyone else thinks about this particular post.

Peace & Blessings

J


(Hat tip to SAYTUNES for the pic)

Rob Bell at church.co.uk

...mananaged to secure a couple of tickets for the Rob Bell Calling All Peacemakers tour at London venue, church.co.uk. on June 19th. Should be interesting to see & hear Rob.

What a building!

It's almost worth taking a trip to Madrid solely to visit the amazing Barajas Airport. I haven't seen it in the flesh so far, but the pictures I've seen have been staggering.

Hat tip to psfk for drawing my attention to it, and to Headphonaught for alerting me to psfk

As far as I understand. Uber-architects Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners are behind Barajas. If you are into architecture, check their site out too.

Croydon Expo

As my Church family grapples with how we can more effectively engage with, and serve the community around us, it would do us no harm to check out this month's Croydon Expo exhibition at the Croydon Clocktower.

There's a lot of activity happening right now and I believe it's right to keep our ears close to the ground.

Randy's Back

Having had to report the sudden demise of Randy Bohlender's excellent blog in this post here, I'm really pleased to be able to say he's back!

I recommend you check him out regulary. His postings are thought provoking, funny & creative. Always worth passing through.

He's going back on my blogroll.

Rob Bell in The Times

It's a shame I didn’t manage to pick up a hard copy, as I was in Milan….but serious UK broadsheet, The Times, ran a piece on Rob Bell over the weekend, which is definitely worth a read.

Read the article here.

I finally picked up a copy of Rob’s Sex God at Roots, but won’t start reading it until I finish God On Mute.

Milan

Got back late Sunday evening from a great weekend in Milan with the family on the back of a work trip to this cracking city.

We had the greatest time, taking in the sights, walking, walking & walking! It's a beautiful place, and the people were very gracious, coping with my fumbling almost non-existant Italian. It's amazing how far you can get with a "Grazie" a smile & a pointed finger!

Post-Roots 07 mini round up V2

Firstly, Roots was - as ever - an incredible weekend of powerful teaching, worship, seminars, hooking up with friends old and new, and good good times. I, and a number of other Sally Bloggers realised we may have missed a trick by not being more pro-active in the days before Roots to make sure we hooked up. Thankfully a lot of us did, at least in passing manage to have some face to face meets, having only previously known each other as cyber-buddies:

One of these meetings was a good hours chin wag over a White Chocolate Mocha with top fellah, Chris Hinton of Council of War.More of that, and the story of master networker Headphonaught later!

Blogging's going to be scant for a few days as I head of to Milan for work/pleasure on Wednesday...hopefully shoud be able to fill in the gaps, and update my blogroll to include those I bumped into at Roots.

Off to Roots 07

We head north this evening to the typical English seaside resort of Southport for the UK Sally Army’s Roots conference.

Should be a goodie!

Sorry we won’t be hooking up with the Headphonaught & Littlelaughalot, but I’m sure we’re in for a cracking weekend all the same.

About Roots 07:

Having decided to send a motivational telegram to his officers, so the story goes, William Booth discovered that his budget would only run to one word. The word he chose was, 'OTHERS'. ROOTS 2007 is resending this message to the movement.


Returning to our roots, we will consider what it means for our lives and our churches to be defined by others. Through worship, prayer and teaching we hope to experience the sheer otherness of the creator God. In seminars and discussions we will become better equipped to serve the last, the least and the lost.


Looking forward to hearing some great teaching from Chick Yuill as ever, hearing what Steve Chalke has to say, and hooking up with all my buddies from around the SA world.

God on Mute

Having finally hacked my way slowly through Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy, I picked up Pete Greig's latest book, God On Mute.

I'm looking forward to possibly getting some reading time during the breaks at this year's Roots Conference.