Emerging from the rubble once again, the next live solar crash event will be on April 10th, 2010 at the El Mocambo Night club.
Join the Facebook page and see http://event.solarcrash.com with more details to follow.
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Posts tagged as:
Community
I grabbed a late night bite with Mr. Broken-but-usable JD yesterday. The jerk called me a lone ranger.
About fifteen years ago when I first entered the doors of a church I was called a lone ranger as well.
Trying to not look stupid, I rarely talked to anybody about my spiritual journey. On my own I read through the Bible, the Koran, Buddhist texts, and other philosophical books. I was desperately trying to figure it out on my own. Yes, cue in Celine Dion’s All by myself.
Fast forward to today, and I’m all about community development.
Whether it’s within the church, or in neighborhoods, or even virtually, everything I think and do ties back to connecting people and cultivating community. Problem is, I still lack it on some level.
I meet with lots of folks and I’m involved in many groups, but community still seems elusive to me.
It could be because I have an over-idealized image of what it looks like.
It could be my social tick that causes me to either only lead in group settings or be completely disengaged (which I’ve read is common if you’re an only-child – a term which I thought was ‘lonely-child’ growing up, but that’s another story). Now that I think about it, I’ve seen this in quite a number of ‘ministers’. Passionate when we’re leading, just screwing around in the back when we’re not (my past ten small groups can attest to this on my behalf)
It could be that I just flat out haven’t made the effort.
What do you think?
Is there some neurotic place within me that thinks everyone deserves community but me?
Do I secretly despise people?
Is it because I wear the same jeans multiple times before washing them?
JD fears with all that I do I’m going to crash and burn. Somebody save me.
Photo Credit: Rantes
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I talk to people endlessly about community and the need for interdependence.
The problem is though that just about everything I do in life, financially, emotionally, and even spiritually, is built towards becoming further independent.
Independence and self-reliance is a highly regarding value in our culture, but I think it runs counter to humanity at its very best.
I want community, but I don’t actually want to need community. How about you?
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SolarCrash.com now runs on the thesis framework. I bought into it because I wanted to refresh this site and am planning on doing some site development for others. I’m also really banking on the search engine optimization hype all over it. Finding a promotional discount also helped.
I was exploring Thematic, and some other frameworks at first, but felt that a lot of them were still glitchy and in beta stages. Thesis seems to have reached the tipping point where the kinks have been ironed out and there’s a large support community around it.
It’s definitely powerful, but having said that, I wouldn’t get it if I was completely code-illiterate, unless you’re willing for your site to look like an increasing number of other Thesis-driven sites out there.
This site still needs some work, but I’ll have to let it slide till I have more time to tinker around.
Some changes so far
- cutting the load time by half
- added a social profile icon bar at the top
- creating a ‘brighter’ look with the background
- rounded corners – using some new css features – that won’t work in IE though.
- shifted the nav bar down below the header
- removed redundant links like home / subscribe
- added a intro section hook above the sidebars
- removed some dividing lines for a cleaner feel
- edited the threaded commenting system so it’s a bit more engaging
I still hope to eventually make a new logo/banner, layout the navigation pages better, and probably remove those google ads once I hit the next payment clip. I’m getting a bit tired of ‘Sexy Christian Singles” ads. Hopefully I’ll get some sponsors at some point (can you believe I made 10% of my income last year, through this blog?)
If you plan on purchasing Thesis, you can click my affiliate link so I can get some cash back.
Let me know if you’ve got ideas on making a better site, specifically this one!
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I’ve got lots of questions, here’s a series of questions I’ve been pondering lately on church gatherings – and by that I mean that thing folks do in the New Testament when they get together.
What do you call yours? I was going to say Sunday gathering, but lots of folks don’t meet on Sundays. Worship service came to mind, but ain’t all life worship? and are we really being serviced?
Last sunday I did a collaborative message in silence (You can read about when I did it last before here). If you brought me into your church to ‘preach’ and all I did was help Christ be formed in them one of the best ways I know how, would you be disappointed?
With the centrality of Scripture, and it being text, content, information (and yes, Story for you emergent folks, and the Living Word of God for you fundies), I wonder if we’ve overemphasized it’s generally unidirectional mode of communication in our own practices?
Does ‘the gospel’ need to be proclaimed with every gathering?
Could the full weight of the gospel ever be transmitted this side of life?
Could we compress the gospel to a 140-character tweet and spend the rest of our time living it out?
How much literal reading of the Scripture do you do? Things vary for us, but typically we collectively read a mix of passages following a lectionary, and I tend to expound on a short text. Some folks want full exposure to the breadth of the Bible, others don’t want to gloss over it and hone in.
Does the Pareto principle of 20% of the people doing 80% of the ‘work’ apply to your gathering?
Do we really need to gather weekly? versus daily or monthly?
What does God desire for us collectively as we gather? And are there elements in our worship gathering that don’t contribute towards that?
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Linking arms How can urban-Suburban Partnerships transform Communities?
Is it even possible?
Linking Arms, Linking Lives is by several community development heavy weights like Ron Sider, John Perkins, and Wayne Gordon. I’d say the book is more than a good start on this rapidly emerging issue.
Too often I read books that seem to speak to completely different audiences in the suburbs and in the urban core, but these folks are really well acquainted with how the two fields are crossing over with the suburbanization of poverty.
It’s a fairly practical book if you’re looking to just get going or move forward with partnering with ‘the other side’. One great tip is there warnings of not jumping the gun and trying to partner through brand new contacts. Start small and begin with existing relationships.
Also for us to not allow inequality to define the relationship. On both ends, whether urban or suburban we need to be able to answer the profound question of “I need you because…”
They also warn deeply entrenched urban folks to humbly listen to suburban insights, and to not allow “the oppressed in you, become the oppressor”.
One practical innovation was their example of Lawndale Community Church’s Christmas project. Rather than handing out a bunch of gifts and toys to families, they created a store where everything was on sale at 10% of the price. This allowed parents to choose and purchase their own gifts for their kids and to be able to say with dignity, ‘I got this for you’, it wasn’t simply a handout.
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Collaborative art project responding to “What must love be” by Claudia Hung
What can I say? I think it was another phenomenal night! Of the many projects I’m on, the Solar Crash events are definitely one of my favorites. I’ve written a few thoughts on creating these spaces before here and here.
Some additional reflections…
I intentionally halved the number of performers and artists from the last event and it created a tighter more focused evening that was just as enjoyable
I loved when random people came up to me wondering how on earth something like this comes together
There’s nothing like people from all sorts of backgrounds, cultures, and faiths coming together to creating something beautiful, even if momentary
People keep asking me if I’m an artist, I love writing, but I’d say my craft is more in helping unleash the creative potential of others
I did a once-in-a-lifetime spoken word piece for my wife that night (totally out of my comfort zone)
It was awesome being able to meet in person many people that I had been networked through facebook
Hearing the rumor… “I think he’s a pastor…”
Toronto is brimming with undiscovered creativity
Additional photos and videos to come at http://event.solarcrash.com
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Our faith community has rebranded our no-church-sundays to Be-the-Church-Sunday, which is closer to the heart of our intentions.
The Scriptures describe the church with living images – a body, a bride, a family, a living temple of living stones. The church is not a building, nor is it simply a gathering within a building. We can be the church wherever we are.
I was sharing with my wife about how the only fear of releasing and scattering our community like this, was how people might reduce it to do-nothing-sunday, and the possibility of zero relationships being forged. Her response was – it’s not like meaningful relationships are developed during a ‘church gathering’ either.
Sometimes I feel deeply saddened that we’ve structured the life out of our church communities. It’s astounding that in a group of people gathering to celebrate the Wounded Healer, people might leave without ever sharing their struggles, or their joys, or their dreams with another person.
The traditional worship service, at times, can be a complete disservice to Jesus and his followers.
What did I do yesterday?
- Played with my daughter and took her to Ikea for breakfast
- Had an early lunch with relatives as they wondered why we weren’t ‘at church’ today
- Headed downtown and shared life and stories with Alan and Liz
- Supported a friend who is launching an intercultural intergenerational church plant – talked to people who were not like myself
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