jonnybaker

touch

touch, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

this is a photo (with an edit) of the stussy door in covent garden. it opens when you touch the hand.

research on women in emerging church/alt worship

sonia and clare are researching the involvement of women in the emerging church/alt worship in the uk. this is the e-mail they sent me. get in touch if you can help...

All over the UK, new expressions of church and community are being explored and exciting new forms of worship and mission are developing. A great deal has been written about this phenomenon, mostly by men.

Seven years ago, we were part of the group which founded Sanctuary, an alternative worship community which meets in Bath. Sonia works for the Children' s Society as an early years specialist and Clare is a freelance writer and designer. Together, we are conducting some research into the role of women in the emerging church/alternative worship movement*, and we are seeking to interview a wide cross section of women as part of this study.

Respondents need to meet the following criteria:

1. Female (!)

2. Currently or recently involved with, or attending, an emerging church/alternative worship group

3. Able to regularly access email

Initial research will take the form of several short questionnaires which will be sent and can be returned via email.

We would be grateful if you would forward this email to anyone in your group or network who meets the above criteria to offer them the opportunity to participate. We are interested in the experiences and opinions of all women in this sphere - not just those who have 'official' roles.

If you are interested in participating please reply to this email by 10th October, giving us:

1. your name

2. the name of the group with which you are affiliated

3. the email address you would like us to use to contact you.

Those who register interest at this stage will receive further details of the research schedule before being asked to confirm their involvement.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email.

Sonia Mainstone-Cotton and Clare Birch

high on hope - worship trick 80

lauraHD wrote this piece for a sanctus1 service high on hope...

So here’s hoping and praying for a place…
Where the grass is always greener
Where there’s light at the end of the tunnel
Where we give peace a chance
Where hope springs eternal
Where love conquers all
We wait in hope for the LORD
He is our help and our shield.

So here’s hoping and praying for a place…
Where we’ve got all the time in the world
Where every cloud does have a silver lining
Where we always look on the bright side of life
Where good things come to those that wait
Where we do to each other as we would be done by
We wait in hope for the LORD
He is our help and our shield.

So here’s hoping and praying for a place…
Where the road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions
Where good hearts aren’t hard to find
Where hope is not abandoned by those who enter there
Where nothing’s too good to be true
Where we don’t have to be cruel to be kind
We wait in hope for the LORD
He is our help and our shield.

So here’s hoping and praying for a place…
Where we don’t have to take the rough with the smooth
Where it’s not a jungle out there
Where we don’t see through rose tinted glasses
Where no-one has to put a good face on it
Where we don’t worry and are happy
We wait in hope for the LORD
He is our help and our shield.

So here’s hoping and praying for…
Sight for the blind and healing for the sick
Freedom for the prisoners and good news for the poor
Release for the oppressed and love for each other
And the coming of God’s upside-down, inside-out, topsy-turvy kingdom.

parkour in brighton

parkour10.JPG
Originally uploaded by markbarkaway.

mark barkaway has a nice set of pics of parkour in brighton...

runner up

i was a runner up in a myculturallife photography competition...

ReSource - creating church in the emerging culture - planning for the next course

it was weekend number 4 of this year's ReSource course (church planting in the emerging culture) this last weekend which seemed to go pretty well... it was down in chichester and i stayed on for a cms team meeting.

a highlight for me was meeting bob, a converted addict doing amazing things on an estate in southampton. i hope to get a story/interview at some stage for emergingchurch.info so will leave it until then to say more. it is also encouraging to hear how people on the course are developing either new projects/plants/communities or dreams so hopefully the course is helping

we are now planning next year's course. we are shifting to running it from sept to july so the next one will start autumn 07. this is to tie in with the academic year so students on other courses can do ReSource as part of their learning and we're also going for optional accreditiation so people can get credits for doing the course. there's a brochure you can download (pdf). and there is info on a taster day you can attend at the next weekend in manchester on 25 november if you want to get a feel for the course. please pass on the brochure to anyone you think might be interested - we have printed copies as well so if you'd like one of those get in touch.

moo cards

i have just ordered a sample of 10 business cards from moo.com - dean gave me a tip off about it. if you have a  pro flickr account you can get a sample of 10 free. and you can buy cards in a box of 100. the way it works is that you choose photos from your flickr account to go on one side and then can write 6 lines on the reverse. i'll let you know how they turn out. i found the site very easy to use, a very intuitive interface/process. there is a flickr moo group with a few pictures if you want to see what they look like.

Technorati Tags: moo

exodus

margate exodus looks interesting (thanks andy) - a contemporary reworking of the book of exodus with artists, filmmakers and musicians exploring its connections with immigration today.

worship trick 79 gloria EP by home

home in oxford have produced an EP of 5 tracks of new music. i really like it when worship is home grown and there hasn't been a lot of new (electronica) worship music coming out of the uk for a while. you can listen to a track on myspace and buy them from home's lulu page. i'm making it worship trick 79

still

still, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

london is a beautiful city...

you say i'm violent so...

i totally agree with kester's sentiments on his blog today. the irony of the current furore surrounding the pope's comments is truly astonishing. as kester bluntly puts it it is like saying

You say I'm violent once more, and I swear I'll smack your head in

south asia youth network

the south asia youth network has launched a web site. the conference i attended in bangalore last year was organised by the sayn.

alles and end

caught the mark wallinger latest at the weekend - two new pieces at the anthony reynolds gallery. alles is a continous music loop of the west-eastern divan orchestra which brings together jewish and arab musicians, sharing a vision of harmony in the middle east. in the centre is this divan, a space for contemplation and peace.

the second piece, end, is a 35mm 12 minute film that is scrolling credits from a cast of characters in the greatest story ever told...

james blunt meets snoop dog

back from birmingham where i took part in the launch of blah... which seemed to go well.

one of the tunes i played was twotone's mashup of james blunt and snoop dog - may sound weird but you did read it correctly. you can listen to it on twotone's myspace page

i'll post my thoughts on improvisation another time...

good seeing people there - hope it becomes a good space for meeting people and having conversation about mission, christianity, postmodernity and all that.

if you were bedazzled...

if you were bedazzled by ikon's service at greenbelt and found it incomprehensible then that was the point... according to pete

this may not be everyone's cup of tea but one of the big postmodern debates is around truth and interpretation. i have mentioned churchandpomo before that is having a series of engagements with jamie smith's whose afraid of postmodernism. the last engagement is by pete rollins and along with the conversation in the comments takes a bit of chewing over but is really getting at some interesting issues... (if you like a bit of philosophy)

emergingchurch.info starts blogging

emergingchurch.info spet issue is up (and has been for a while but i forgot to go and look). the discussion boards have been removed and the site is now running a blog instead so that interaction can happen via the comments on blog entries - go and say hi...

chris taylor's piece on power of the niche is the umpteenth thing i have read mentioning the longtail - seems like it is the meme of the moment.

everything the church uses was stolen from somewhere else

the july-september 2006 journal crucible has a focus on the church and popular culture. there is an interview with tom beaudoin and one of the questions asks him to reflect back on his book virtual faith. i love his reply...

i still think the basic claim of the book is right... people can and do use popular media culture as a way of working on their own spirituality to constitute meaningful symbols for themselves and their communities...the fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith - not to mention how we interpret what that means - suggests that theologians have their work cut out for them... the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously... if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate god's mercy and god's freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they're using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. you can't ask people to believe in something their own experience forbids them to believe; that's just elitist ministry. we still have that going on in some places, where it's believed people need to be converted from one cultural system to the church's cultural system. i believe there's a lot of value in the church's cultural system and i would defend it a great deal. but all the aspects of the church's cultural system itself - its candles, its mass, its worship, its songs - were at one time secular cultural systems. everything the church uses was stolen from somewhere else and turned in an ecclesial direction for the sake of the gospel. so i am not asking the church to do something the church hasn't already done!

retro lamp

retro lamp, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

love this old hair drying thing turned into a lamp at the scooter cafe. i am still amazed at how well photos come out from mobile phone cameras...

jamie oliver teaches monks how to do community better

a friend luke sent me this e-mail which i thought was worth blogging (thanks luke) though i didn't se the programme...

Just thought I would email you because I was watching Jamie Oliver’s ‘Great Escape’ last night. A repeat I think. He was living with some Italian monks for a while and teaching them how to cook. It totally transformed the way they related to each other. They started experimenting with ingredients and laughing together. He even took them out on the street to cook free food for people, who came over and chatted to them. He basically showed them, despite his not believing in God, how to relate to people and do community better. Hilarious! I thought that this was a great illustration of how society is able to teach the church what it should be doing.

spirituality of generation Y

spirituality of generation Y

a day at licc in london on weds 27 sept