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BlogHere are the thoughts and news of the people in our community. Leave a comment as you wish. If you want to join the blogging ask Mark.
Monday, February 27, 2006I like lists... I just stumbled upon this: a few lists of "essential culture for theologians". Obviously I was particularly interested ont he movie ones, but the others are pretty interesting!!
Hey, I am back!!Happy Monday everyone. This weekend I have thoroughly enjoyed our Salt and Light European Leaders conference. There were about 650 people there enjoying a great selection of speakers and some great interaction! I got to chat with loads of old and new friends about loads of interesting things. In particular we had a real laff taxi-ing Ceri, Alison and Sharize to and from the hotel - some great refelctions ont he speakers, and Sharize's latest embarressing moments! I really enjoyed some proper interaction with a few guys who are right on the verge of planting new churches. It made me think I need ot resurrect the Salt and Light Church Planters Forum. There is loads ot learn from each other. It is clear there is nothing like a simple "how to" for church planting when one lot are moving to a village to plant a church, and another dreaming of a House church network in London, and yet another [Kenyan] dreaming of a multi-cultural church in a multi-cultural city, starting with a multi-cultural team! It is just so exciting when people start stretching the envelope and taking risks for the Kingdom of God. Highlights of the conference speakers-wise were: Martin Goldsmith - an elder statesman of the kingdom of God, with loads of experience, loads of knowledge and the dryest sense of humour!! He spoke on "Christ or Krishna: the uniqueness of Christ". A fascinating talk, with the added spice of the fact that he is a Jew. Nicky S. - ex-missionary from East Africa, with one of those talks that you wish you had had an excuse to miss, cos it way too challenging!! She had a great sub-point about 'being a foreigner in your own country' out of her own experience of being a foreigner in anonther country. and of course... Bishop Tom Wright - 2 fantastic talks: the first on the Kingdom of God, where he laid out Jesus kingdom announcement in the enormous big pisture of the Biblical Story; and the second on the cross as the power of God, taling about how we must not use the means of the powers of this world to acheive Kingdom of God ends, but rather be modelled on the cross. I had a little extra bonus of a lunch with Bishop Tom [along with 20 others!] and opportunity to ask some pertinent questions. Believe me that man has a brain the size of a planet!! His latest book Simply Christian some real life stressful circumstances after which just had to get away with his wife so he wrote 14 hours day for 3 days and taa-daa book! Those four talks I have the CD's of. I was gonna be a bit naughty and put them up here for peple to download. Trouble was when i ripped them the mp3's were 45meg each! Anyone know how I can reduce that? *** All talks are now uploaded anyway on the Salt and light website *** Posted by: Mark | 1:14 pm |
Wednesday, February 22, 2006Season of Prayer Quotes: We can read all the books that have ever been written about prayer, but until we actually choose ... to pray, we will never learn.
Posted by: Mark | 8:50 am
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Hope MacDonald The soul which has come into intimate contact with God in the silence of the prayer chamber is never out of conscious touch with the Father; the heart is always going out to Him in loving communion, and the moment the mind is released from the task upon which it is engaged, it returns as naturally to God as the bird does to its nest. What a beautiful conception of prayer we get if we regard it in this light. E.M. Bounds "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." Abraham Lincoln
Thursday, February 16, 2006Season of Prayer Quotes: The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Romans 8:26 Pray about everything. Worry about nothing. Philippians 4:6 Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself. St. John Vianney Most men pray for power, the strength to do things. Few people pray for love, the quality to be someone. Robert D. Foster P.S. the third quote I am not sure I understand... P.P.S the fourth quote is one of my favs ;o) Posted by: Mark | 11:04 pm |
Tuesday, February 14, 2006Season of Prayer Quotes: "Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God's gift of Himself." Mother Teresa "A person without prayer is like a tree without roots." Pope Pius XII
Posted by: Mark | 11:59 am
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Saturday, February 11, 2006Another Tozer quote which I made me think!! "[Divine Presence] is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognised and cultivated as any other gift ... Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chaopter, have our short devotrions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar." This really got me: We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. Particularly it is easy to treat prayer mechanically - put the prayer in the top, get the answer out the bottom. If the answer doesn't come then the 'input' must have been 'wrong' and needs to be adjusted [or the God-machine is broken!]. This is the problem with talk about 'how prayers get answered' - it misses the fact that prayer is about relationship with the person that is God. Are there other ways we think of God as a machine? Posted by: Mark | 10:48 am |
Season of Prayer Quote: Posted by: Mark | 10:35 am |
Thursday, February 09, 2006Season of Prayer Quote:
"Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee"
Wednesday, February 08, 2006Season of Prayer Quote:
Posted by: Mark | 2:39 pm |
Tuesday, February 07, 2006Season of Prayer Quote: "Seek the lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near" Is 55:6Posted by: Mark | 2:55 pm |
Monday, February 06, 2006Season of Prayer
 Well it starts today [monday]. Here we start an extended season of prayer. here is my quote for today: "To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart" A W TozerPosted by: Mark | 10:43 pm |
Bono Speaks
 You should listen to this if you are interested in Bono. Bono addresses the american national prayer breakfast on Feb 2nd 2006. you gotta love that guy! This is not about charity it is about justice, and Africa makes a mockery of our concepts of justice. and Stop asking God to bless what you are doing, get involved with what God is doing because it is already blessed. Plus an interview here. ***Update: The link to the video version above has now expired. The text of the speech can be found here. [You may also like: why i would follow bono into hell ... ;o)] Posted by: Mark | 10:34 pm |
Thursday, February 02, 2006Cyber Prayer
 After some discussions with Simon and some playing around with our web hosting package, we now have a chat room facility!! [-Adrina-] Adrian suggested it and here it is... You will see the link on the left. So give it ago! Register yourself as a user is the best way and, well, away you go! I have already setup a "PrayerRoom" under public chatrooms. Why not visit? All posts remain for 96 hours. If you can't see them all try typing "/show 100" into the entry field at the bottom. Posted by: Mark | 5:05 pm |
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