Timely words

We live in a society where debt, which used to be regarded as somewhat sordid and shameful, is glitzy and glamorous, with advertisements telling us that when you own a Mastercard ‘You’ve got the whole world in your hands,’ or alternatively that Visa ‘makes the world go round.’  Both of them make claims for Mammon [...]

Church, Money, Future . . . still going

In case you’ve missed the last two posts, there’s a good conversation going, and it’s snowballing.  More voices have been added, and I have it on good authority that there’s more coming.
For now, check out the contributions by:
Lindsay
Daniel So
Kevin Rains
It seems to me that these conversations are both new and old.  They’re new in the [...]

The Conversation Rolls and Grows

Oh my, things have gotten all viral up in here. After my last post on Church, Money, Future in the empire, which links to some others starting conversations about the impending recession and whatevertheheck the church and pastors are supposed to do with all of that, some others have joined the fray.
Man, there are [...]

Church, Money, Future in the empire

Well now, we’ve got us a good conversation going . . .
Chris Marshall connects some of the dots between the financial crisis that seems to be hitting the U.S. and the degree to which that reality will affect pastors and the church. 
How will this impact churches and mortgages and credit lines that can’t be [...]

Idealism and Shame

There have been some quite lively discussions going on in various blogs I track  lately.  Mostly over gender issues in the church.  I have my own set of opinions about the role of women in ministry/church/world, and my own set of opinions about what masculinity and femininity looks like.  Everybody does.  But one of the [...]

The Wacky Emerging Church, Reason #92

This post is part of a continuing series. You may want to read my list of disclaimers and intro remarks here, if you haven’t done so already.
Reason #92: Voting for a Democrat for the first time in your life doesn’t mean you’re subversive
This being a presidential election year, it’s definitely been interesting to watch the [...]

Blogging the New Conspirators, part 7

I’m in a workship session on: “Social Entrepeneurship: Using Business to Advance God’s Kingdom”
- Not tons of new information - a lot of the companies that are out there (i.e. Pura Vida coffee, Ben & Jerry’s, Grameen Bank) are well known. However, it’s been a really good group discussion, dispelling a lot of the [...]

inter::mission rolls on

This week, we got going again for the new year, and last night was our first inter::mission teach-in for the quarter. We were pleased to have Jon Sharpe with us for the evening. Jon is the Executive Director for the Center for Global Urban Leadership, and does consultations in cities all over the [...]

Bikes to Rwanda

This is a very cool deal that the coffee and bicycling communities of Portland, Oregon have put together. One of the ways that Rwanda is being rebuilt after its devastating civil wars is through the coffee industry. Stumptown Coffee asked the coffee farmers what they needed, and they said bikes. So, bikes [...]