Matybigfro

The wife has a new blog http://freeinourloveblog.blogspot.com/
how exciting, I hope she will hold at this better than me, as she is a much better writer than I am.
On a side not how long has it been since my last post - too long
Emily is now the drummer in my band Diego, we both very rarely go to church and are trying to work out where fit with the whole religion question.

Anyway Emily's blog is really about her journey of belief or disbelief, kinda like a anti testimony. How does this relate to me, allot I guess - although we're increasingly different in my opinion. For me doubt has always been an integral part of my faith/relationship with God/Christianity but up until recently my belief was my action, my convictions my behaviours, careers and life orientation in general. For Emily and allot of others I've meet, belief was/is propositional knowledge, God is real, homosexuality is wrong, Noah had a ark and Adam and eve were primitive naturists. That Kinda stuff you didn't question, doubt it reconfigure it, it was a given - fact. So it's weird in many way's we're both not really Christians anymore, whats funny about this it means something completely different to both of us. Emily isn't a different person to who she was when I meet her, her opinions, instincts, judgements values and behaviour are much the same but she can't hold a fundamental belief in God as true with conviction any more, She can't try and argue that the bible is literal and factual, that heaven and hell exist, that God is real. For me on the whole my Beliefs are the same I kinda believe in the same God I have for many years, I have more words to describe what I believe better but it's not changed much - maybe got a bit more robust - I still doubt lots but that's nothing new, I'm still very cynical but again no change there - I also accept God, trust in God and live with a daily dependance and expectancy of God as the ground of my being as much as ever. Whats changed for me is I do feel like I act different, I don't go to church, pray as much, don't sing worship songs, I no longer work for others and now work a job because I want the money and things it affords me, i no longer work for a better world, i don't tithe or give to charity and don't consider myself generous or sacrificial. Because of this I no longer consider myself a christian I don't see myself living out of the Love of God I believe in and don't see myself living the expectations I have of someone following Jesus.

Strange us humans eh!

really enjoyed reading dave fitch on our biggest fears about planting missional communities.
'Instead I plead with the community planters/leaders/participants to see community seeding as a way of life. We are simply moving into an “under-churched” place, in close proximity to one another, living simply and missionally, tending to the surrounding community relationally out of the vision of the Gospel'

And it lead me to think that one of the most important things to think about in this process are what are the things I cant live without. It strikes me this was possibly a natural part of the old school oversea's missionary process you left everything and could only take the essentials
this skin shedding was part and parcell of the gospel taking process but often not so easy to do in our post christian context because the homeland is to hand the instantly available for us.
But in the context of the church plant/seeding of the missional community it is a very helpfull way to plan our strategy.

For me when I think what can I not live without i think of Food (partucularly sharing food with others), celebration, space and quiet (particulaly to give space for God) and personanlly making music(although I've found i can pretty happily live without worship music, sunday morning meetings and bible studies)

Great article about the first few hurdles for spotify.com since it's launch. I media whore freind of mine for london tipped me off about this a few months ago and I ignored him (mainly i just didn't read the link), then jonny baker posted it on his blog and i actually read what it was and jumped right in (does this mean i'm a baker groupie). So yea it's great, probably better than last.fm that I'd just started getting into (part of why ignored it at first) but the great thing is you can keep you last stats going by linking the account (its all about the synergy baby). It makes me really want to get a Ipod touch to run it on wirelessy (which I think could really take off if we start to get some decent wireless coverage nation wide, especially if its free, man itunes would totally go bust). Obviously this is just waiting for some form of of specificat hardware wireless device (which also would be awesome).

Unsuprisingly it seems the people holding up the change are the record labels and entertainment buisiness, it's not gonna be instant but everyone new the napstar spelled death for the way the music industry worked, but what no one worked out is that people want free music (or very good value) and don't mind if it's legal or illegal, but provide them with a better alternative to breaking the law and they will. it's kinda sad this has come from outside the industry but not surprissing, really these guy's should have been on the inside doing this, but much like the church big organisations tend to operate in maintenance mode not change and evolve mode. For some reason we'd rather keep something that doesn't work going than change to something new that does work or might work better (much like the UK/global ecconomy maybe more ranting on that later).

With this whole reshaping of society (thats really what i think it is, and it probably will hit economics soon too) things are gonna change, spotify is actually giving labels a life line really, ubnlike radio as a music medium who i think it really could spell death for or at least like labels spell death fir the status quo. I wonder with the evolution and growth of spotify if we'll see spotify
icon's, personality's and leaders, folks who hot tip new artist to be found on spotify or creators of great playlists and party mix's. The possiblility rock i think, its seems exciting to watch these really cool things unfolding onour desk's and literally changing the world we swim in.