At last years NKOC conference, Mark N, Steve G, and Graham met my mate Jim, [who came down with me to the conference]. We all shared my brother's living room floor as a place to rest our heads at night - man that room stank in the morning! Anyway, during our conversation we were chatting with Jim about what he does and what he wants to do... the answer being he hangs around town, dj's and talks to people and he wants to be paid for it. Well..... this week, Jim was offered the job of Pub and Club chaplain, employed by the the Chruch Army/CofE Diocese overseeing Nottingham. Which is great news.
If anyone has any experience in this area then it'd would be great to hear from you.
This is a great blog post discovered by Sivin Kit. Here's a little bit to wet your appetite:
Charles de Foucauld, the missionary/monk who served as a witness to Jesus among the poor and largely Muslim communities on the living edge of the Saharah over 100 years ago, recently put this idea to work in my body. The visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, he says, is a model of evangelization. Mary, that wondrous host of God himself (Luke 1.31ff), enters her cousin's household and Elizabeth and John in her own womb leap for joy (1.41). She evangelized "not by her words but by silently carrying Jesus close to them, to their dwelling." Following her example, could we too "evangelize and sanctify the unfaithful by carrying Jesus to their midst in silence, by carrying him, our evangelical life, in our own lives which should provide an example of his.".Posted by: jonny_norridge | 6/14/2004 10:29:00 am |
Things which are exciting me at the moment:
[1] Barbecue's, food, and neighborhoods
I'm enjoying hearing stories like Eric Keck's street Barbecue, Andrew Jone's pizza parties, and Mark's feeding of the 50.00 Barbecue. We had our monthly smallgroup sunday dinner yesterday, and invited our closest neighbours [1 came!]. Our smallgroup Sunday roasts have been fantastic, a really family experience. Yesterday we did a barbecue and it was brilliant, perfect for inviting people too... we're going to do more... and maybe take it on tour to the houses of various smallgroup members.
[2] Hacking
Check Mr Jone's post on this one. We had an excellent smallgroup two weeks ago were I primed three people [actually one of them was me] to prepare some thing for worship. We had a video-clip linked with a lectio-divina hack, a labyrinth/meditation hack (so it could work with 12 people crammed into a living room and unable to move much) and ending with a slightly less hacked contemporary sung worship. It was amazing how it all tied together.
