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Here are some audio links to the panel discussions at the latest Cultivate.  

Listening - Cultivate November 2008

The need for more effective listening in church life.  Stories, anecdotes, and sharing on the need for more openness and listening.

Forming - Cultivate November 2008

A conversation on the role of Spiritual Formation in the local church.  Some interesting thoughts on the different ways denominations handle (or don’t handle) Spiritual Formation. 

Innovation - Cultivate November 2008

The final conversation of the day.  Includes predictions about the next 5 years, the balance of old a new, who the church actually belongs to, and who innovators need to include in their ideas.

Lucas Huang from next church created an art project in response to Stephen Harper’s comments about the arts community being a rich, elite, class whose activities do not resonate with ordinary Canadians.  The Project is called ordinary artist. Lucas took pictures of ordinary artists from around the next church community and Kingston neighbourhood.  Here are a few of my favourite pics.

Tonight’s conversation went really well. More people showed up than I dared dream. There was probably 18-20 of us. There was a good cross-section of the church represented - not just parents with kids in Giggles. We began by going over the process of how we arrived at this conversation. Then we went over the contents of the document (pasted in this post.) Then we went straight into brainstorming. Here are some ideas that immediately jumped out at me.

• Community Communion Nights - monthly communion held at home with your family. Single folks would be encouraged to be at these tables or create their own.
• Year Theme Planning - The Sunday morning planners have the year planned out already. So we need…
  • Family questions or activities included in the plan.
  • The plan to be more detailed to allow families to contribute during the service.
    • the Thanksgiving service was the perfect picture of what this might look like.  Each family brought objects that represented what they were thankful for.  There was some real creativity in how people expressed themselves.
  • The Giggles volunteers to regularly interact with the theme.  
    • They also need the chance to meet with parents to talk about each others needs.  Some things Gig parents do really negatively effect our volunteers.  Parents also need the chance to share what they need from the volunteers.
• Kids taking a more active role and helping
  • helping make kid’s activities happen - for example they would be in charge of an aspect of the Giggles event like a table or activity centre
  • kids preaching or creating devotionals for the adults
• A regularly scheduled parenting seminar/discussion.  Most of the parents admitted to not really knowing where to start when it came to passing on our faith to our kids. 
• A kid’s play - Breeze volunteered her services to help kids write and create a play.  She works with kids for a living.  Check out her webpage Jadetree.ca  (It appears to be down at the moment)

I found it difficult to fight the desire to get down to brass tacks and just start planning things out in detail.  The goal for tonight was to get the ideas out there on the table - to give everyone a sense of the exciting possibilities NOT to plan in great detail.  It was also hard to fight the temptation to think we were about to fix everything after the meeting.  The goal was to make discernable progress toward the community’s stated goals.  I think if we are able to keep the conversation going (not meet to often or too little) we can really see some significant things happen.  

All in all I think it we accomplished what we set out to do.  One woman said that she volunteered out of a sense of duty but that after tonight she is really excited about being a part of Giggles.  That is amazing!

This Sunday I spent some time out in Eastern Ontario talking with two groups of FMers interested in church planting. I really enjoyed these conversations. What is exciting is that each group was deeply connected in the Free Methodist community. These were not outsiders looking for a home. It’s a really encouraging sign that the church planting impulse is starting to come from our own rank and file. I love being around people who want to push out past the current boundaries (mental, spiritual, geographical, etc…) and press into newer, more uncharted territory. The desire can be absolutely terrifying and exhilarating all at once. Opposing emotional forces like that can tempt planters to step back right in the middle of pushing onward and outward. A recipe for a church plant face plant. Here are some common wobbles I often come across. 1. Trying to plant by accident. Most folks at the beginning of the idea stage have a hard time admitting that they want to plant a church. I haven’t quite figured out why. Maybe they’re embarrassed by the grandiose sounding tone of "starting a new church". Maybe they’re afraid of the word "Church". Maybe it’s a thousand other things… but it feels like they’re trying to sneak into becoming a church. Sometimes by simply calling it something else: a small group, or a Saturday night worship service. Indirect. A church is actually born out of intent. Intent to be a spiritual family. Intent to be a foundational community in which people take their first steps in life with God. Intent to take responsibility for the spiritual health of anyone that enters the community. These are big responsibilities. Acting responsibly starts with accepting responsibility. Anyone who has become a parent knows this. Prepare all you want. Take courses. Read books. Talk it over with friends who are parents. Talk it over with YOUR parents. These will all help but nothing eases you into being a parent. As soon as that child emerges and you hold them in your hands… you look into their eyes and realize that you are responsible for them. Unless you accept that responsibility they won’t survive. It feels sudden. It feels huge. It feels overwhelming. It feels like only a fool would say they can do this. There really is no easing into it. You choose in that moment to take responsibility, come what may, or else disaster quickly follows. Church planting cannot be done indirectly. There is no wait and see how it looks. You are either doing it or you aren’t. 2. Getting confirmation of God’s will. This may sound counter-intuitive, but my good friend Kim Reid often says something along the line of "You don’t need confirmation to do the Great Commission". I agree. In my experience the impulse to plant is most often caused by a desire to play a more active part in the Great Commission. The truth is you would actually need confirmation from God NOT to participate. That being said there is such a thing as due diligence. Talk to your friends. Pray. Talk to people you trust. But ultimately if the desire to plant a church does not diminish over time… it’s safe to trust the impulse. Many potential planters I talk to wait for doors to open and situations to align themselves. If you are operating out of a sincere concern to participate in God’s work, if your friends and your spouse can confirm you’ve got your head on straight, then go out there and kick down the locked doors and start bending the situation to make it happen. Rarely does a church plant get handed to you. It’s something you have to fight to make happen.

A creative community called The Glue Society has created a series of works called “God’s Eye View”.  The project is something of a mixture of actual Google Earth images and some very clever “photoshopping”.  As someone pointed out here:

Is seeing believing?  Well the Bible is full of accounts that answer that question with a resounding “Not Necessarily!”  The Israelites saw God work miracles daily and it seemed to have little effect on their faith.  The crowds on the river banks at the time of Jesus’ baptism explained what they saw and heard as being the beginning of a storm…

Here are some shots of the exhibit scooped from here…

A piece entitled “Cross”…

A piece entitled “Moses”…

A piece entitled “Ark”…

A piece entitled “Eden”…

Blogged with Flock

I arrived safe and sound here in sunny Ottawa for the Imagine 2007 church planting conference.  This year the conference is being held at the Chateau Cartier Hotel in Gatineau Quebec. 

Conferences like this tend be really great times to connect with like minded people from all walks of life and from all  over the country. I plan on blogging a little on the goings on here.

Blogged with Flock

This is a song I heard on the radio when I got in my car to come home from the Board of Administration meeting yesterday. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Sook-Yin Lee, the host of “Definitely Not the Opera” on the CBC had a hard time speaking after she played the song. The interview with the artist (Shad K)that followed revealed that the woman’s voice in the song was Shad’s mother. She had survived the Rwandan massacre. I wish the worship songs I hear in most churches had half as much gospel power as this song does.

Well it took me long enough!  But I am finally done my first podcast.  It’s for work so it might be a little boring if you don’t care much about church stuff.  <link> 

This oughta get the kids excited about coming to church again!

Link.

Somehow I just can’t see this becoming a school yard craze.  Besides Ned Flanders already tried this at a town swap meet!

P1030571_1.JPG
Originally uploaded by JaredSiebert.

… was sitting in Starbucks with Soren talking about how the whole Santa thing worked. I don’t where you shake out on the whole Christmas and Santa deal, but I loved sharing that moment with him. He was so giddy on Christmas morning! I love that about Christmas.
I told him that Santa actually works for Jesus, and that on Jesus’ birthday, instead of us giving Him presents, He gets one of His friends, dear old Saint Nick, to give presents to us! Why? Cause that’s just the kinda guy Jesus is.