Archives for March, 2005

Contextless Links

03/30/2005 | Contextless Links, sports, technology | No Comments

Why I love NCAA basketball and don’t like the NBA

From USA Today

The Final Four is a coaching cabaret. Rick Pitino breathing life back into Louisville. Williams gluing North Carolina back together. Bruce Weber keeping the heads at Illinois straight enough to stay No. 1 for 15 weeks, at a place that had never been ranked No. 1 for longer than one week in its history.

And Tom Izzo. Not always mentioned among the elite, but has anyone noticed Michigan State has been to four Final Fours in seven years?

The coaches have become the focal point in college basketball. It’s Mike Krzyzewski and Duke. Bob Knight and Texas Tech. Roy Williams and North Carolina. And while that is not always good, this cannot be denied:

Despite losing so many stars, these guys have certainly produced a tournament that is fun to watch.

“I always said it is a player’s game. I really do believe that,” Izzo said. “A coach can make a difference. It is still in those years where you are trying to mold humans. (But) it is still the players that play the game. There are no coaches that shoot free throws or get a rebound.

“Maybe it should be (guard) Alan Anderson and the Michigan State Spartans … I know there are times this year I wish it would have been.”

Not that way in the NBA, of course. The players are on the marquee. The coach is anonymous.

“I disagree,” Izzo said. “They fire them so fast, they must know their names.”

03/29/2005 | sports | No Comments

Worship Reborn

Article about the emerging church in St. Louis.

But Ammerman and others who watch religious trends say that while emerging churches might look new on the surface, they are the latest in a centuries-old tradition of reshaping the church to try to fit the lives of those who have left it.

No one formally tracks how many of these churches have emerged since the trend began in the late 1990s, but there are at least four examples in St. Louis, and ginkworld.net, which follows the movement, lists a handful more in Missouri and Southern Illinois, and more than 300 throughout the country.

“This is very much part of the bedrock of the American evangelical tradition,” said Eileen Lindner, a deputy general secretary at the National Council of Churches and editor of the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. The emerging church movement, she said, is “one of the greenest edges right now.”

Emerging churches offer something different to young people who have trouble relating to traditional church settings.

“We purposely made church comfortable for our demographic, for people who aren’t happy going to the stuffy churches we all grew up in,” said Mike Greiner, 27, an accountant from south St. Louis who is one of Rooftop’s leaders. “It sounds (like a) rebellious teenager, but we do church the way we want to do it, and no one tells us what to do or how to do it. This is what we think church should be.”

After the first of Rooftop’s two services on a recent Sunday, church members in jeans and flip-flops moved to the back of the room for coffee and doughnuts. The scene was the same as any urban setting where young people get together - a guy in a Marshall Faulk jersey talking to a young woman with her ponytail pulled through the back of her baseball hat, a small group talking about NCAA basketball, a young couple trying to keep up with their 2-year-old.

Many emerging churches stress a sense of connectedness outside their Sunday services. Frequently, they organize Bible studies for smaller groups of eight to 10 people that meet in apartments or homes during the week.

Dan Kimball, author of “The Emerging Church,” said bonding outside of Sunday services is essential to the movement’s philosophy. Kimball said emerging church leaders stress the message, “Instead of going to church, be the church.”

03/28/2005 | sports | No Comments

Interview with Pernell Goodyear

Another interview here at jordoncooper.com and this time it is Pernell Goodyear. Pernell is the pastor of the Freeway, an emerging community in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. As they put it on their website…

The Freeway is part of an international movement known as The Salvation Army. That’s right, now the folks who bring you quality vintage clothing at a reasonable price, also bring you church–done differently.

We began in 2002 with the simple desire to be a healthy, innovative church community that reaches a new culture of people searching for truth in their lives with THE truth, Jesus Christ.

In addition to bringing church done differently, Pernell is a part of Resonate and the publisher of what I think is the best designed blog on the web right now. I speak highly of his blog to compensate for the fact that I never linked to it for many months and am feeling convicted by either Pernell or the Holy Spirit for not linking to it.

Enough about me and some more about Pernell.

1) The Freeway is a non-traditional church in a denomination (The Salvation Army) that is rightly or wrongly known for being a church that asks for conformity. Does that create tension and how do you deal with that?

Good question. It has created some tension within our tribe, which has, for the most part, become pretty cookie-cutter in a lot of ways for the past number of decades. Although, perhaps surprisingly for us, for the most part our leaders are pretty excited about what we’re doing. Besides, The Salvation Army has a long history of reaching those who may be unreached by many other churches. The Freeway has had some “success” reaching a demographic of people that are generally missing from many other churches. And when push comes to shove, accomplishing mission and bringing the Kingdom is what we’re all about.

What makes The Freeway different from the bazillion other “contemporary” churches in North America?

I don’t really know, I have never been to most of those churches… and I don’t think we’re “contemporary”. But from what I have seen, we tend to be fairly organic, creativity-focused, eclectic, relational, missional and less hierarchical and structured than the average church. But I would also say we’re less sure about what we know and who we really are, we’re more chaotic, and harder to explain or put on a flow chart than many churches… actually, we’re kind of a mess most of the time.

3) If you could go back and change any decision being made while planting The Freeway, is there any that you wish you could change and “do-over”? What would you change?
I would have hired Jordon Cooper to give me back massages after the long, tough days. Just kidding. We have made so many mistakes, I would have a hard time picking just one. I guess I would say that we started out with many constructs of the modern, church growth focused model, even though that didn’t fit us at all… because that was the only way we knew, and had to fumble into what really resonated for us… explore and experiment and “try it on”. If it’s possible to paint broad, judgemental strokes, we started out as a hyper-modern church wanting desperately to reach people in the emerging culture. We have had to shed much of our comfy terminology, structure, focus, etc. in order to become the community that we are (and we will likely need to shed much more to become the community God wants us to be in this new, emerging culture).

4) Does having a permanent building change community life for FRWY? If it has changed, how?

We don’t know yet. We just got possession of our space at the beginning of February and are currently renovating it into a cafe / music / art / worship space. We likely won’t be in there until May. I hope it does change things for us though. In that, I hope it allows us to meet up with people we wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to meet and journey with and do some stuff we wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to do.

5) What’s the biggest obstacle (or opportunity) for FRWY as a community in the near future?

The biggest obstacle and the biggest opportunity could be the same thing… getting a funky, innovative non-profit cafe off the ground. We want to love our community - no strings attached. We want to live with them. We want to follow God. We want to change the world by bringing the message and experience of Christ in a way that people can understand and embrace. That’s a lofty enough goal, I would say.

6) So much of the Canadian discussion about church growth through the 1970’s until now has been dominated by the American church. How does the context in Canada differ?

Radically. We live in a very different culture.You (and likely many of your readers) have read Fire & Ice by Michael Adams. I think that he’s dead on as far as the differences between the two countries goes. “Emerging” here and “emerging” there can look very different. This would also be true to some extent from one community to another within Canada. I think the major difference is the fact that we are in a post-Christian culture and I’m not sure that the US is yet. Also, mega church mentality doesn’t sit well here, generally. Although there are certainly enough American (you know who) ripoff, wanna-be’s in churches in Canada too.

7) What’s been the impact of FRWY.ca on your community. Is the web making a difference in the life of your church? What about that blog you publish?

For one thing, the web is really our only form of “advertising” to people outside our community (well, except the lives of community members themselves… and the billboard pictures of me naked plastered all over Hamilton). People around here work, study, volunteer and play on crazy conflicting schedules… busy, busy, busy… so getting together is tough alot of times. We have found that blogging (a bunch of Freewayers blog), our discussion forum, and e-mail has really increased the amount of community we can do. We keep up on each other this way and dialogue about tons of stuff. We have even recently started an e-Living Room - an online community group. Actually, all the “keeping up on each other” is kind of creepy when I really think about it… that’s it, I’m shutting down the web.

8) Who have been some of the most influential thinkers along your spiritual journey?

My six year old daughter, Samantha. My friend, Mark Jefferson. My mom. My community at FRWY. Douglas Coupland. Leonard Sweet. Brian McLaren. Henri Nouwen. C.S. Lewis. Homer Simpson.

9) When our kids look back at the start of the postmodern world and our efforts to lead churches in it, what do you think they are going to see that we got right? What do think they will say we got wrong?

Right: Finally choosing me as Lord Sultan of the Canadian Emerging Church movement. Joking… sort of. I hope they’ll see that we at least were courageous enough to question and wrestle with the status quo. I hope they’ll see that we really loved Jesus and his truth, enough to try and look past our cultural view of him and to live for him at all cost. I hope they’ll see that we made an effort to really love our neighbours.

Wrong: My fear is that they may see that we took too long making the necessary changes, taking the necessary risks, adjusting the way we live missionally to really have the kind of Kingdom impact we could have. And I think that they’ll see that we took ourselves far too seriously too much of the time.

03/28/2005 | art, interviews | 2 Comments

Stations of the Cross

Stations of the Cross
Originally uploaded by lakelandchurch.

From Friday in Spiritwood.

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03/26/2005 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Easter Sunday at Lakeland Church

Wendy is working tonight, Mark is in bed, and Lee is playing a game in my old office (okay, I am a little bitter about losing “my space”). I am spending the evening going through about 10 gigs of photos on my hard drive and just thinking about the memories of what was behind them. A lot of the pictures are of Lakeland Church and it is hard to believe that this will be Easter #9 that we will be spending together. It’s amazing to think of what God has done in the lives of the church as individuals and as a collective. Of course with church, we are never done yet we often feel the hand of the Holy Spirit ever so often that lets us know that we are not alone and we are on the right track, even if the track is a difficult one.

Looking back at a couple years of our journey, I decided to upgrade the church’s Flickr account to a Flickr Pro account. There was a lot more then ten megabytes of things God was doing at the church and in our community and I decided to get some more space and not keep losing our old pictures as we ran out of space. I am now in the process of uploading and categorizing three years of church life. I won’t be done tonight but I will post some links when it starts to come together. Like the rest of our church, we are a work in progress.

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03/26/2005 | photography | 1 Comment

Contextless Links :: Weekend Edition

03/26/2005 | Contextless Links | No Comments

Yahoo! Search

So why is this blogable? Because it is a search of content licensed.under Creative Commons. While most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions. Very, very cool.

03/25/2005 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Good Friday

Wendy is at work. Lee is still in bed. Mark is at the babysitters and I am just getting ready to head out the door to go to Spiritwood for the Stations of the Cross service that is held every year on Good Friday with our friends at the Roman Catholic, United, and Anglican congregations. It’s a cold morning, probably the coldest Good Friday morning that we have ever done this for but I think it will be good regardless. It has always been an excellent spiritual exercise for me and I think this will be no different.

I haven’t decided yet but I think I am going to take Mark to Draggin’s Rod and Custom Car Show tonight. It is every Easter Weekend at Credit Union Centre. Sounds like a good father and son activity. Will post some pictures over at Flickr when I get a chance of both events.

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03/25/2005 | photography | No Comments

The Toronto Globe and Mail

Dave Winer speaks more truth than he knows.

03/24/2005 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Grace

The Left mocks the Right. The Right knows it’s right. Two ugly traits. How far should we go to understand each other’s point of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross is a clue.
-Bono, lead singer of U2

03/24/2005 | Uncategorized | No Comments

FIFA Vows to End Racism at Soccer Stadiums

There has been an upsurge in racist conduct by Spanish fans this season.

Last month, a referee stopped a game between Malaga and Espanyol because fans were taunting Espanyol’s Cameroon goalkeeper Carlos Kameni. Also, Spain coach Luis Aragones was fined this month for a comment about Arsenal star Thierry Henry and an outburst regarding Britain’s colonial past.

FIFA this month formed a group of leading players and coaches to raise the profile of its fight against racism across Europe. Blatter said racist actions are prohibited by FIFA and punishable by suspension or expulsion.

Not sure how you can stop the fans (as FIFA I mean) but the comments by players, coaches or managers need to be punished severely.

03/24/2005 | sports | No Comments

John Maxwell Leadership Bible

I was noticing this tonight while at McNally Robinson tonight. It was in the discount section and probably overpriced at that. I understand the role of study Bibles for many people but at what time do Bible like this betray some of the first values of hermeneutics and start to read heavily into the text and instead of letting the Holy Spirit lead you into the text, we have allowed Jonny Maxwell do it for us. It isn’t just Jonny Maxwell either. Sooner or later someone will come out with the Emerging Church ™ Study Bible as well.

03/23/2005 | Uncategorized | 5 Comments

In Larger Freedom

Kofi Annan’s recommendations for reforming the United Nations.

03/23/2005 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Emergent No

It had to happen sooner or later.

03/23/2005 | Uncategorized | No Comments

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