Great news from the American "war on Wal-Mart" late last month. Apparently, the world's fastest growing corporation is growing weary of the attention that they are getting due to the harm the company inflicts on small communities and businesses, low wages, poor health coverage, support of sweat shops in China, etc., etc., etc. (EthicalShopping.com has a small article HERE and the NY Times HERE.) It's a hope-filled story of what can happen in a democratic society when people hold large, powerful corporations accountable for their business practices.
Unfortunately, the bigger issue in Western societies remains - namely, moral hypocrisy. For some reason that I cannot put my finger on, countries such as the U.S. are content to enforce labour laws on their own soil, but have no interest in keeping corporations accountable for their pronounced human rights violations in developing countries. (Have a quick look at this Wiki article on Export Processing Zones.)
Continue reading "Wal-Mart Finally Responds to Pressure (and Other Musings on the Evils of Unbridled Capitalism)" »
It was a huge privilege to be a part of Urban Soul last week. As I rode the LUAS on my way in to town on Wednesday morning, my eye caught the headline of a little blip in the Metro newspaper: "Teenagers join together for clean-up."
"Huh," I thought to myself. "That kinda sounds like something we're doing this week with Urban Soul."
Sure enough, the article was about Urban Soul. Here's what it said:
Continue reading "Teenagers with Soul" »
I've been hoping for a Germany v. Spain Euro Cup final and that's exactly what it's gonna be. It's been a thrilling tournament with admirable performances from the would-be "underdogs" like Turkey and Russia. I have a hard time seeing Germany get past Spain, so I think I'll be supporting Germany.
Continue reading "Germany Face Spain in Euro Cup 2008" »
Following up from last week's post, Alan Hirsch has a rather aggressive (not to mention a bit defensive) post on why "missional" is better than "emerging." Interestingly enough, he gives some credit to the "emerging church" movement, but only seems to value that particular stream where it intersects with his beloved "missional" stream of discussion. (For those of you who may not be familiar with Alan and his Australian colleagues, Mike Frost, the two of them are usually credited with doing the most to champion and flesh out the ideas behind "missional church," despite the fact that they came along a bit late in the "missional" discussion.) It's clear that he's very intent on distinguishing "missional" from "emerging," but doesn't want to alienate his "missional" friends who are also engaged in the "emerging" dialogue.
Continue reading "More Missional Emerging Discussion" »
Over the last seven years, I've really benefited from listening in on and participating in the various conversations about the way forward for followers of Jesus in a changing world. Terms to describe the different parties involved in the conversation always seemed to be helpful at first, but were usually altered or skewed as they gained a wider audience and drew the attention of pop Evangelicalism. (To this day, I still meet people who use the word "missional" as a fancy way of saying "evangelistic.")
Continue reading "Emerging Missional Monastic Convergence (not to mention mosaic, fresh expressions, organic, alternative worship, incarnational, ad nauseam)" »
The Organic Church conference/seminar over the weekend was good. And though it didn't necessarily present anything new to my thinking about church, it certainly helped confirm some things and put some handles on how to move forward with being about the in-breaking Kingdom and allowing church to spring from there.
(PREFACE for agnostic or atheist friends: this post is another contribution to a conversation amongst those of us in the Christian tribe, and particularly the "evangelical protestant" sub-category. You're welcome to continue reading, if even only for your own amusement.)
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Continue reading "Lowering the Church Bar" »
