A Sneak Peak...

Brian Mclaren is sharing a free webcast of the first session of the Everything Must Change: Deep Shift tour. Since some of us are planning on going to Goshen, IN to participate in the conversation, I thought this would be a great way to get a taste of what the tour will be like. I'm excited to tune in, and would love to talk about it on the following Sunday, or even that Friday night (we could get together and hang out?).

Check out the tour site here: www.deepshift.org

The site address for individuals to receive the free Webcast of Brian McLaren and the EMC Tour on Friday night February 8, 2008 is http://media.nnu.edu/live. This address will either work when typed into your address bar in your internet browser or you will need to open up Windows Media Player and place this address in the "open a URL" line in the file menu option.The Live Session will begin on Friday, February 8 at 9:00 EST. Until that time, there will be nothing to see at that site. If you have difficulty that evening, contact wesleyconf@nnu.edu.

Sunday morning plan

Since it seems like no one is overly eager to pick a location for us this Sunday, I suppose I will (we decided, due to the Super Bowl, to not hold our normal discussion but instead got to a church service together and then do lunch afterward). There is a Catholic church in Marble Cliff, right outside of Grandview, that Jane and I have gone to a few times and we like it quite a bit. How about we go there? I know that a couple of you have never been to a Mass before so this should be fun, and then maybe afterwards we can do lunch and discuss if our group would like to do anything for Lent, which is fast approaching. I'll post other info and directions and stuff later, but for now, does anyone have any complaints or other ideas? Mass is Sunday morning at 11:00, and usually runs about an hour. The church is called Our Lady of Victory.

Super Bowl Sunday

Hi all-

I'm not sure if you all have made plans for next Sunday's meeting, but I wanted to extend an invitation to everyone to a Superbowl party at my place at 5pm.

I live out in Gahanna at Christiopher Wren, just off Morse Road past Easton.

Let me know if anyone if interested and then I can post more details later.

Blessings,
John Hickey

McLaren Interview

This was passed along through the EmergentVillage email list. It's a long interview with Brian McLaren. Perhaps we could read it and post here on the blog different things that stand out to us, etc. A little online discussion, perhaps......

http://www.charlotte.com/449/story/463053.html

The Inaugural Super-Fun Night

Bring Your Own Board Game 

7-11pm, Sunday, January 27th

60 E. 4th Avenue

I know about 10-15 of my friends are planning to show up.  If you know of others planning to attend, please comment so that we can plan accordingly.  Any ideas for food/drinks?  Also, does anyone have access to a few card tables?  I made the executive decision to extend the event for a couple more hours; obviously, feel free to stay or leave when you need.  And finally, see the comments on the previous blog for further discussion of some ideas for Sunday. 

Discussion Wrap-Up

We held a discussion last night at the Cup O' Joe and had a great conversation. Jesse, thanks for leading and asking stimulating questions. We discussed, among other thing, being authentic people and authentic Christians in an inauthentic world. Honesty seems to be at the crux of it, and we are all going to try to be brutally honest with each other and with people we come across in our daily lives. Also, we discussed trying to find some service organizations to become involved with in the Columbus area. If anyone has some ideas, or other things they would like to add about last night, please post a comment.

Another online resource

Good site with simple but informative movie. I think I got here from some other emergent blog....so you may have seen this already:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Into Great Silence

Julie mentioned this movie last week, and I found some online info about it. I would be very interested in watching this film and discussing it with others. I have been reading a lot of Thomas Merton since this summer, and the monastic life is richly fascinating to me. The documentary is 3 hours long, so we may need to set aside a night different from the regular cohort meeting, but we can talk about that later. Anyone else interested?

Anyway - here are some links:

Production Company Website

Official Film Website (english)

Trailer




By the way - we now have a copy of the DVD, so if anyone would like to borrow it, just let me (Jesse) know!

Great Online Resource

I discovered christianaudio.com this weekend. It's a great site with many books available for download (for a price), and also lots of free interviews with amazing authors like Dallas Willard and Brian McLaren. If you are in love with your iPod like I am, you may enjoy some of these.

I also got a promotion code for a free download of Thomas A Kempis' Imitation of Christ. Just choose to download that book, and then type in FREEIMITATION for the promotion code.

Let's plan some super-fun

Okay, so next Sunday is our first "Super-Fun" night, when we will do some sort of fun activity together to just enjoy each other's company and get to know people better. This is also a great time to invite people that might be interested but want a more comfortable first experience. So, let's brainstorm some ideas and then decide Sunday night. (By the way, I bet Brutus knows how to have a good time.)

I'll throw a couple out:
board game night
video scavanger hunt (Andrew's idea)
bowling
clean Nick and Jane's car
poker

Questions for Frost Reading

Sorry these were a while in coming, but here are some questions to accompany chapters 4 and 5 of Frost's Exiles. Of course, if anyone is particularly struck with something else, feel free to bring it up either at the discussion Sunday night, or here on the blog.

Also feel free to comment on these questions on the blog to generate more discussion. (the questions are posted in the "comments" to keep this post "shorter")

Nick's random post of the week

So this might not be relevant, but it kind of freaked me out, so I thought I would post it. Read this article on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/14/microsoft.shoppingcart.ap/index.html

It's about puting video ads on shopping carts so that they can sell add space while we are shopping and track where we go in the store. It kind of freaked me out, but it also made me think that the church in the 21st century needs to be a place where people can escape the rampant commercialism and materialism that will one day destroy our country...maybe I'm still freaked out.

Our First Celebration of the Faithful

Thanks Nick for your planning and leading of worship. It was a very blessed time!

Planning our meal

Hey everyone, so we're having our first "Celebration of the Faithful" this Sunday night at 7:00 at our place (1270 Courtland Ave.). We will have a meal together, share communion, probably do a bit of worship, and have some scripture readings. I hope it will be a very rich, fulfilling evening.

Jane and I are going to be making some lasagna and we'll have some wine. If you plan on coming (anyone is welcome) please comment and say what you plan on bringing just so people don't all bring brownies.

Thanks!

The Recapitulation

Well thanks for the great discussion on Sunday.  It was good to see everyone again.  Because we ran out of time, Jesse suggested reposting the last five questions, which we were unable to discuss:

1. What does it look like to be an emergent cohort in Columbus, Ohio?
2. By what method(s) will we work toward becoming incarnational, missional, Christ-honoring, evolving, and welcoming?
3. What will our Celebration of the Faithful be known for?
4. Where should we put our money?
5. How do we integrate the explorations of our Cohort with those of our individual churches?

Feel free to add other questions as well.

Additionally, some of us have considered attending Brian McLaren's tour in Goshen, Indiana on May 9-10.  By registering early and by virtue of being a part of an emergent cohort, we are all subject to a significant discount off the registration price.  You can read about the tour here.

And finally, for those unable to attend the last meeting, Jesse made us aware of twoshirts.org, which encourages mutual giving of everyday items.

Next Discussion Topic

Today was my first day back at school in the new year, and with the Buckeyes playing tonight, I don't have much time. But I did want to at least put the title and author of the book we will be discussing in two weeks up on the blog:

Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

You can find it at Amazon here