Laundry

For anyone interested in the Laundry project.

Yesterday I talked to Matt who is the owner of Laundromat on Main St in downtown Mesa.

http://www.arizonacla.org/arizonacla/index.cfm/locations/laundry-on-main/

He was very open to us helping out the community and paying for laundry once a month and even offered to provide discount on some of the wash machines as well to help out. I mentioned some possible days and times, he just said to give him a heads up a few days in advance so he can make sure he can be there as well in case we need anything.

I'm thinking like the first Thursday in the month 7-9PM (normal close is 10PM - Matt said he could stay open an hour later if we needed). Since this Thur is too soon to start, I'm thinking August 6th. That will give us some time to create a few bi-lingual posters for neighborhood businesses and some fliers to handout to appartments, etc in the area (he was okay with this as well).

Any thoughts?

Healing

Just a quick note to thank you all for praying for Sydney. She is out of the ICU, onto the regular floor, and should be going home tomorrow. I saw her this afternoon, and I must say she is a different little girl than the one I visited on Sunday. She is doing so much better and is back to her normal sweet little girl self. Love you guys!

Let's Vote on Our Next Book!

Alright! Building on Sarah's post from a few weeks ago, let's go ahead and vote on what our next discussion book will be. We've got four books to select from here (and if anybody would really like to add another, let me know).

PLEASE CAST YOUR VOTE IN THE POLL ON THE SIDEBAR TO THE RIGHT: --->

In no particular order...

Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr

A Deadly Misunderstanding by Mark D. Siljander

So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore by Jacobsen & Coleman

Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell & Don Golden

Apparently... We're still alive. And the emergent video contest.

Wonderful conversation on Sunday on why we're still alive. Everyone's passionate responses revealed too much to write. But what really came out was the beauty of a group of people that desires to follow Jesus and not let anything stop that. It's great to have met such a group!

I am announcing the first ever Emergent Video Contest. What is that you ask?

I am going to ask any group that considers itself emergent or emerging to submit a two minute video showing what their gatherings are like. This is meant to show that we're not cohesive at all. We're a ragtag group of Jesus people who have many different expressions. Someone said on Sunday that essentially the tag emergent is nothing but a group of people engaging in a conversation, and this is true. I think a good way to show what this means is to show the differences in groups that consider themselves emerging/emergent.

Every contest has rules, so here's mine: It must be substantive. We need to get an idea of how your group works when we see your video. Also, include some sort of contact info at the end (your website, address, twitter, whatever). Anyone have any more criteria? Let me know.

Interested in participating? Ask me how! If everyone is comfortable with it, we'll do some sort of video of our group. But mainly I need help getting the word out and setting up a easy way to collect videos (any techie people out there?).

Oh, and the contest part. Well, contests require incentive. Can anyone think of someplace that would be willing to donate something that would be of value of a group of people as a prize? I'm thinking that there would be a random drawing for a winner.

Lastly, if you think this is a terrible idea to begin with, let me know and it might get 86ed.

Are We Dead Yet?

There's been a LOT of hubbub around the death of emergent. Is it real?

Everyone probably knows this started with Nick Feidler talking about the great disappointment. As someone who has been in the conversation for a while (although in the closet), but new to being involved, I can't say I see what everyone's talking about.

But there are points. How do we grow? How do we go beyond a conversation and into action?

Maybe this is the next point to what we were talking about as our introductions a few weeks ago, why are you here. Maybe a better question is, where is it going?

I think what Nick's counterpart, Josh, said is really key. The emergent church is dead because the church is dead. Or, at least some forms of it. But it's the deep communities, the fellowship, the groups of people living Christ out in the world and working together to understand more and more what that means. That is thriving, and I think the emergent conversation has done a lot to facilitate that.

Any thoughts? Let's hash it out in the comments!

Recap 6.02.09

One of the greatest parts of our ongoing conversation is when we get to hear about each others' journeys. We briefly did this by commenting on what keeps us coming back to EmDes, or what drew us in the first place. The only part I remember about this is that Adam said it was a little like crack. Yeah I wrote that down, soooo....I had to type it.

On wrapping up Shane's book (though I have no business even writing that phrase: a bit behind I am), we got on to the subject of excommunication. Oh is this a fun topic. We quickly found out that semantics play a big part in how each of us understands this term, and then of course the ideas that flow from that understanding. Neither of the two extremes are desirable: a community that is destroyed by a person or a person's influence, nor a person that is essentially destroyed by their own community by being "cast out". I'll stop here because I speak in great ignorance: I'd like us to research this further bringing Shane's voice into better light via some other voices and theologies. ...to be continued...?

Another subject/question came up (from our beloved Ron G-ski) while wrapping up our second Shane Claiborne book - "Can a Christian become a politician in good conscience?" It seems Shane's answer would be no, but I don't believe as a group we unanimously agree. I'm not sure if we were able to answer this for ourselves with any further clarity, but it is an interesting question in light of some of Shane's perspectives regarding the context of Jesus' time, and what Jesus seemed to stand for and against.

It seems as a community we are trying to wrestle to that next level of vulnerability. We're at least seeing vulnerability as the primary obstacle to what we would want in church/community: Adam redeemed his crack comment by asking a fantastic question...one that I think starts to chip away at these vulnerability problems. (paraphrasing) "Is there a way to achieve vulnerability across gender lines?"

Oooooh, good one. We're so used to the fact that if you want to go "deep", go to the "next level", that you must break into male and female groups. And though there are good reasons for this that most of us could recite, shouldn't we wonder if we're not crippling community growth right out of the cocoon? It just so happens that a good friend of ours recently touched on this. I would highly recommend giving that link a go.

At this point we're going to take a little break from the book work and let it free flow for a while. I think some Nooma's, some Laundry Love brainstorming, and a dash of "let's just be who we are, which happens to be church" would go great this summer with Jim's beer. What do you think?

(G-ski's - that was me winking at you, asking you to bring a Nooma if you're comin'. If not, we'll all talk about you behind your backs)