Common Thread

We went and visited Sam's church (www.voxveniae.com) down in Austin this Sunday. It was wonderful. They meet in another church's building (www.mosaicaustin.org), so the experience was an amalgamation of Mosaic's space and Vox's service. I found it almost funny how much ties together the "emergent | emerging" church.

• Interactive stations of the cross (Lent)
• A hymn from the 1800's + A David Crowder cover + Original music
• Time for everyone to draw in response to the message
• Communion by intinction up front
• No bulletin
• Racially diverse* hipster 20-something crowd

Like the Pentecostal church's unwritten liturgy, the creative, experimental Emergent | Emerging church certainly has familiar, common threads.

* The Emergent | Emerging church is often characterized as very white, I've even quoted such notions on my blog, but in reality I've experienced a lot of racially diversity...

He is Risen Indeed

He is Risen

ELISABETH WIERZBICKA
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/welart/act_en.html

"Good" Friday

"They tell me H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace.

...

"'Because she is in God's hands.' But if so, she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body?... If God's goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine."

CS Lewis, A Grief Observed

St. Patrick's Prayer

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

...

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

...

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.

-St. Patrick

St. Patrick

WIKIPEDIA SAYS:

"Patrick was born [in England]. When he was about sixteen, he was captured and carried off as a slave to Ireland. Patrick worked as a herdsman, remaining a captive for six years. He writes that his faith grew in captivity, and that he prayed daily. After six years he heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home, and then that his ship was ready. Fleeing his master, he traveled to a port, two hundred miles away he says, where he found a ship and, after various adventures, returned home to his family.

When in his early twenties."

"Patrick recounts that he had a vision a few years after returning home: I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: "The Voice of the Irish". As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea—and they cried out, as with one voice: "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us."

___________________________________

The Celtic Way of Evangelism, by George Hunter III tells us that:

"Within Patrick’s lifetime historians estimate that he founded around 700 churches and ordained 1000 priests. Thirty to forty of the estimated 150 tribes in Ireland became substantially Christian within Patrick’s lifetime. Patrick’s influence pretty much put an end to the slave trade in Ireland, and greatly lessened the intertribal warfare that had been their way of life for centuries. In Ireland alone there are 6000 place names that contain an element of the work Cill, the Gaelic word for church."

Soon Scroobius Pip will be Unstoppable

Soon I Will be Unstoppable

Here's my first two attempts at my own, homemade, "stupid sock creatures" (stupidcreatures.com). For Katelynn and friends...

The background isn't nearly as nasty as it looks in these pics...

A logo I'm working on

Some comps for a new logo for another church that I'm working on right now...