Sean is now blogging at http://seantuck.wordpress.com/ - so drop by there!

Last week, President Obama spoke at the graduation ceremony of Notre Dame university. This was made controversial by the 24 hour media, as they pointed out that Obama is "pro choice" and Notre Dame is Catholic, opposing abortion. I don't want to deal with that particular issue in this blog. But I do want to say that I think the President hit exactly the right note in HOW he dealt with the issue. He did not sweep it under the carpet. He did not step down from his own position. But he did show how we can still talk, even when we don't agree. He showed that there is a way to engage in which we honour all viewpoints, and work towards outcomes that make sense for everyone. You can read a transcript here. And you can watch it on YouTube, starting here. In Part 1 on YouTube, notice how he deals with the hecklers (and notice how none of the students heckled!!). The best bit about faith and love is in Part 3. Read more

It's been a while since I have blogged here at FutureChurch. I have continued to do my business blogging at my Connection Economy website, and continue to Twitter short updates and links to important trends. I hope you follow those thoughts and insights. Last August, I moved my family from Johannesburg to London, UK. This was for work purposes. The problem has been that work I moved disappeared with the credit crunch that started with the 15 September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. Many of my clients are in the financial services sector, and have been hugely affected by the recession. They stopped using consultants, stopped having conferences and stopped traveling. I think they're wrong - see an article I wrote about that here. It's been a tough few months. Lots of pounding London's streets, knocking on doors and sending emails. And praying, too. Times are tough here in London, but it seems as if the worst is over for my family. I am most grateful for that! The upside is that in tough times you learn things about yourself, about the world, and about God that can't be learnt any other way. The downside of the last few months is that I have been stripped of time and creative energy. And so this blog has been dormant. It isn't going to spring back to life now either, but hopefully a few drips will start to flow again... Thanks for your patience. And for some of you, thanks for your support, too.

A person I recently connected with quite serendipitously on Facebook sent me this excellent poem. He wrote it in one sitting after a deep conviction about his role as a keynote presenter. But his words have meaning for any preacher, teacher or public speaker. They certainly gave me reason for pause. See the poem at his website here, or read them below: Read more

Yes, the commenting system on this blog is messed up. It's the silly verification system for stopping spam - it doesn't seem to work. But if I take that off, I get something like 100 spam comments a day.

Rest assured, your comments are saved in a temporary table in the database, which with a lot of manual work I can make them "live". It's just tedious and time-consuming I only get around to it every few months.

Man, I wish I'd chosen a different platform back in 2004 when I started this site. Wordpress would've been good...BLOG:CMS is just horrible.

So the solution is to upgrade. The only problem is that I haven't found a clean upgrade path (i.e. making sure posts AND comments are preserved in all the right places) yet. So it's either waiting until one is available, coding one myself, or somehow importing the comments later.

In the meantime, you can email your comments to me - roger [at] futurechurch dot co dot za - along with the url of the post you're commenting on - and I'll put them up.

And if anyone wants to sponsor a site upgrade...

Neil Cole, church planter & coach in the Simple Church movement is the guest of David Broodryk (from the church planting network, Kingdom People) and Floyd McClung (from the church planting network, All Nations).

Neil is the author of Organic Church and co-author of Beyond Church Planting: Pathways for Emerging Churches with Dr. Robert Logan.

This one day seminar is Neil's only event in Gauteng. It is scheduled for Saturday 21 March at the Coventant Life Church in Midrand from 9:00 - 16:00.

Contact person: David Broodryk
Tel: 083 - 289 3495 or 011 - 318 2499
Email: david at kingdompeople dot co dot za
Get more detail on this event here:
Kingdom People Special events
Facebook event

Background info about Kingdom People and All Nations:
Kingdom People
All Nations

I just signed ONE's petition calling on the African Union to keep its promise to the new unity government of Zimbabwe and I hope you will too: http://www.one.org/zimbabweandtheau The consequences of years of poor governance in Zimbabwe are poverty and disease on a tragic scale demanding a global response. Public hospitals have been without running water for months, creating a petri dish for easily preventable killers such as cholera. More than 3,000 people have died in Africa's worst cholera epidemic in 19 years. Schools have been shut down because teachers can't be paid. The agricultural sector has collapsed, half the population requires emergency food aid, and humanitarian aid groups are struggling to keep up. Now Zimbabwe has a new unity government, but in order for it to have any chance to tackle these problems, it is going to need the African Union to do everything in its power as guarantor of the new government. Add your name to the petition and show the African Union that the world is watching what it does in Zimbabwe: http://www.one.org/zimbabweandtheau

If you've done any reading on the emerging church, you'll probably know the name Mark Driscoll. He has distanced himself from "Emergent", the voice of emerging church in the USA. But he nevertheless still considers himself as "emerging", although he prefers the label "Reformed Missional" or "Emerging Reformers".

The video can be found at YouTube (click here). Or see below.

I think he is overly critical of the "fourth lane", which he labels the "Emerging Liberals". He is incorrect about Rob Bell, for example, who does NOT say that we can get rid of the virgin birth. It's interesting. Driscoll says in this video below that "they are asking questions that no pastors should be asking". Maybe that's the big difference here. Reformed guys think that some issues should not be discussed, and that all Truth (with a capital T) has already been discovered (i.e. we are not wrong on any major issues right now in the history of the church). Anyone who is open to having conversations about this is labelled a liberal, and is seen as dangerous.

You decide.

But, here, at least is Driscoll's video. I don't buy into his analysis of the "emerging liberals", but it probably fairly represents the concern most people have with the "emerging church". Read more

My first church service in 2009 was special: attending Vespers at St Nicholas Orthodox Church in Brixton, Johannesburg, as a result of an invite from Steve Hayes to those involved in the emerging church conversation to see what we can learn from each other.

The service was beautiful, full of imagery and ritual. I was particularly struck by the use of gold in the paintings and icons - unexpected beauty in one of the less beautiful neighbourhoods in Joburg.

Some of the liturgy was in Afrikaans and there was much use of the space in the church - not just the front but the whole building, as the priests processed through it at various times. The choir singing was beautiful and reminded me of the chanting of the Benedictine Monks at uMaria weThemba in Grahamstown.

To help prepare the non-Orthodox visitors for what goes on at Vespers, Steve posted Notes from underground: Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee with links to resources on Orthodox Vespers.

The Greek Orthodox church is one of the three main streams in Christianity (the other two being Catholic and Protestant) and is the stream I know least about. It was tempting to bring a critical eye to bear on my lone Orthodox experience and to then apply that to all Orthodoxy everywhere, but that's not fair! And so during the service I kept reminding myself to come back to the present, to be present to what was happening although it was different, and search for G-d within it.

It was great to see Cobus and Maryke (now married - congratulations!), as well as Reggie Nel, Andries Louw and Arthur Stewart there...and of course, the Nieu Communities apprentices for 2009.

After the service we had a conversation with everyone who attended about what the service was about and I enjoyed the format of being able to ask any question we wanted to. More churches can learn from this way of welcoming strangers.

Although most of the service was Greek to me (*sigh* that's really weak, I know, but I couldn't resist) there was something beautiful and haunting about it. The knowledge that this way of worshipping G-d has been largely unchanged for almost 2000 years - and that in that experience I shared that much history with all of those who have done that before - that was profound.

Others have blogged about the experience:
Andries Louw - Negotiating identity between orthodoxy and emergence.
Cobus van Wyngaard - Orthodox-Emerging dialogue.
Reggie Nel - Vespers worship, strange but intriguing.
Steve Hayes - Orthodox emerging missional dialogue.

Lent starts on Wednesday, a season of self-examination, repentance, and turning towards G-d, as we prepare for Easter, a celebration of the infinite G-d breaking into our world in love and revelation. As regular readers of this blog know, I was an apprentice with Nieu Communities last year. Their parent organisation is called Church Resource Ministries who are releasing their second Lent devotional this year.

CRM staff from around the world have contributed their reflections to our second Lent Devotional. This edition is woven around the themes of “Thirst”, “Seize”, “Relinquish” and “Prevail” and brings together the power of Scripture and the rich and varied experiences of our staff.

Join me and follow it every day on email by signing up at http://www.crmleaders.org/lent/