kenny

Morten Holmqvist is a guy who i've met at freakstock & we got reaquainted this past year. he is the leader of a church in oslow, norway called subchurch. morten tells on his blog about the atheists that are meeting in their church space this weekend:

The Heretic Cellar are having theire gathering at Sub. It will be a seminar about AntiChrist from a academic point of view, what has been the different myths, traditions and so on..An evening with atheist, satanists, agnostics, occultists and christians....this should be interesting!

was thinking about good friends tonight. its so very good to have good friends around & even at a physical distance. i feel like a really blessed guy to have good people around me.

completely unrelated, saturday 1-year ago was when my grandfather died. i didn't realize this until we were at my uncle's house & had some others over. through a tragic accident in may, one of my cousin's cousin died in a freak ATV accident. he was 11 years old when it happened in may. i saw his family. his father looks aweful. i can not imagine that.

wow... i'm a downer today, aren't i? actually feeling pretty good.

been feeling a bit down the past couple days. really looking for focus... asking the hard questions about my life, the church, our church, etc. i get like that sometimes.

i feel like i've gotten some reminder of what i'm/we're to be about from Luke 4:19 & specifically Pittluck's thoughts on it.

16He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day
he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17The
scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the
place where it is written:
18"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

20Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.
The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, 21and he began by
saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

amazed that we do this together with jesus. i have alot of learning to do. alot of yielding to do too.

so i'm up at a web usability conference in boston for the firm. got here last night & i'm staying over tonight too.

its so strange, last night i tried to go out and explore some in cambridge... but EVERYTHING was closed by 8:30pm. The bar/restaurant i ate at was closing at 10. i'm not even being funny when i say that i was shocked. in our hood you can hit 10 bodegas in 5 blocks at 1AM. The bars are open during the week till atleast 1... but more likely 4.

after literally 2 hours of trying to connect to the wireless here, i finally got it to work. good ole windows 2000 wasn't wanting to find it... and i don't know what i did, but i got it working for the moment.

its nice to be away alone for a few days, but i miss E. wish the cambridge vineyard had something happening over these 2 days.. cause i'd go to check it out... but its rainy and windy and nothing seems to be going on.

through a mindblogging turn of events that included craigslist & my personal impatience, my friend jered and i went to go see 4 bars in manhattan & brooklyn that want NYC Vineyard - Submerge to start meeting there.

we have alot of praying & thinking to do, b/c the one place we did see that could be feasible to fit us now w/ potential to grow is the trash bar in williamsburg. its a rock&roll bar. only seats have been ripped out of vans & they have flames with the silohettes of 2 women at the front. it was wicked.

the guy who has been our contact to all of them seems to be really cool. he doesn't go to church and was really careful not to offend jered & I thinking that b/c we're a church things like the ramones playing before we start, having stained glass in a place or the flame/women art in front would put us off. jered made the comment that it was like these religious things were falling off of him as he'd bring these things up & we were like, "relax!". the guy even said that he'd check out our church if we start meeting in his space. wicked! thats not the first time i've heard that in the last few days....

its interesting b/c i remember hearing todd hunter talk about in the jesuspeople movement, beginnings of the vineyard, etc that there was a push to "knock down the stained glass barriers" that keep the world away from jesus. that even having guitars in church was like a big deal and some christians thought they were satan himself.

even now... as we think about the prospect of moving into THE mecca of secular young people in NYC, & meeting in a common space I've had to think about "will this offend", etc, etc.

MikeT was the one who gave me a reality check last night when he reminded me that we exist for the world. and yes, it will be a change (if this is the place... i'm not sure if it is), BUT if we actually are putting our money where our mouth is... and become more OutWard Bound, then this is seriously something to consider.

On the other hand, jered and I left totally psyched about what the lord is doing here and that we get to be apart of a community of people in movement & seeing the kingdom come. how cool it would be in my mind for us to be a church for the unchurched in our area. whenever i hear references to wimber talking like that it lights me up.

today's my dad's bday too. gotta call him soon.

got a new skin from http://b-5.blogspot.com/... still gotta work out some details with it. but i do like it. tell me what you think.