Updates from August, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Mark 9:33 am on August 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    New Godgrown Website! 

    Today is my birthday!  As a flip – we have a gift for you! After a solid 5 years as a simple blog, we are completely redesigning Godgrown.net to become a fully functional website – complete with a brand new design! Check it out!

    The new website is PACKED full of new features to help provide “resources in spiritual formation for the missional life.”

    Online Courses

    Right on the main page – you’ll see a bar going across the screen – “Mono, Micro, Meso, Macro, Mondo…” this is our fresh series on the Christian life – looking at the layers of Christian community!  We are most excited right now about the Meso – or small group/house church – Layer.  It is at the cross-hairs of Christian community – the place where your sense of belonging, love, and purpose collide – and where identity and intimacy are formed.  You can register for the Meso Course, starting Sept 1 here!

    New Pages

    New thoughts on our Focus/mission, a straightforward list of ways to subscribe to Godgrown, and a simple way to support our work.

    Connections

    We wanted the new Godgrown to be a place to easily discover networks of faith – both in Chicago and around the country.  So we’ve developed a healthy Connect page, that puts faith communities we’re connected to front and center.  Our local church network we’re a part of is the Underground Church Network, so we’ve connected Godgrown’s site to that prominently.  All this, as well as our Twitter site and Facebook page, and the Pray4Chicago Project, as a way to jump into the mission of God…

    Resources

    Finally – we’re fleshing out what resources we have to offer!  I’ve mentioned the Online Courses, but you can also request us for a seminar or workshop for your church or group.  You can also sign up for spiritual direction and/or missional coaching from yours truly!

    —–

    I am very excited about what will be possible through the website – and the new “blog collaborative” we’re developing!  Please feel free to leave a comment about the new design on this post – and help me thank Katrina for all her work to make this possible!

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  • Mark 7:31 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: chinese, corporations, iraq, , life purpose, mustard seed associates, stimulus   

    Lent 2009: To Live in Heaven, right here on Earth 

    lent_ash_cross

    Today we enter into the Lenten season.  While I admittedly don’t dive deep into parts of the traditional Christian calendar, I find Lent to be a perfect time to “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  If ever there was a time to consider my own mortality through God’s eyes, its now.

    We live in a world where we can simply ask for close to a trillion dollars from the Chinese and they will give it to us, (though they say they “hate us for it, but are forced to comply.”)  We live in a place where at the stroke of a pen, tens of thousands of lives are put to death, others sent to war, still others put to work without pay.  Mega-Corporations are the bullies of the whole earth, on panels with national leaders, deciding our fate on issues they seem interested in so far as it affects their bottom line.  This is the world where we live – where we dominate nature and forget the poor.  Where we play god until we die.  Where greed and security are penultimate values.

    This is not the season of Lent.  Lent brings sanity, it brings reflection, finiteness, humility.  This is why I love and need Lent – because in me is the same vices plaguing the entire earth.

    —

    SO!  This year I’m focusing in on how my life affects the whole world.  A “footprint” in the dust I suppose.  Each Wednesday, I look forward to fasting and living into different aspects of my life -

    • my marriage
    • politics
    • finances
    • environment
    • “the others”:  enemies/immigrants/nations at war
    • my witness

    Each of these reflections will be done under the lens of what I’m recently calling “my purpose in life”: 

    “To live in Heaven, right here on Earth.”

    How might experiencing the Kingdom affect my finances?  What might it have to do with the environment?  I look forward to reflecting on these issues on this blog.  I welcome any feedback – and I’d love to know what others are doing for Lent!

    BTW – Our house church is using a simple worship guide this Lent – you can find it here.

    BTW2.0 – Here’s posts on previous Lents:

    Lent 2007 – Oil Fast; Reflections

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    • josh 1:45 pm on February 25, 2009 Permalink

      i’ve never really seen Lent as something for me. growing up in the Christian church, especially in the midwest, it was never a discipline. i didn’t even think Catholic churches existed, i thought they were the religion of tv. i guess that’s what you get growing up in the bible-belt.
      i’m going to try and discipline myself to go through a Journey into Wholeness. and maybe drag some others with me. thanks for the spark.

    • Mark 2:58 pm on February 25, 2009 Permalink

      Josh,

      Thanks for the note! If you feel comfortable – head out to an ash wednesday service. Its an important “kick-off” for the Lenten season. I’m with you on growing up without an awareness of the Christian calendar. I realize the abuses that caused it to be wiped clean, but I’m also very interested in how God uses special events in our lives to shape us. Keep on kickin!

  • Mark 8:03 am on February 13, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: bailout, banks, congress, , executives, finances, hot seat   

    The CEO that Bails ME Out 

    11bank-600

    Take a good long look.  This is what “bad news” looks like.  These are the top bank executives that have in recent years loaned to just about anyone with less and less bank capital to technically loan out with hopes that everyone that borrowed from them could pay all their upside-down monster-sized mortgages on their McMansions.  Surprise, surprise, it didn’t work.

    Now we’ve handed these guys hundreds of billions of dollars in troubled asset relief, hoping to see banks get back into the business of banking again, but so far, it seems Americans were only paying for the banks’ top exec year-end bonuses!  Yech!

    The term “bailout” has been on my mind a lot lately.  I guess because its the hot topic on all the news sites and at watering holes throughout the nation.  Bailout.  What a term.  As you begin to really ponder the meaning of the word, spiritual overtones begin to emerge.

    I’ve been asking myself how a Christian – a missionary – might respond to the mess we’re watching unfold in this nation and around the world.  Big Bank and Big Business corruption, Washington’s fits and starts, a nation-wide credit card debt crisis, a slow fading of international trade and trust…and bailouts.

    Think for a moment about your own financial story.  “Where is MY Bailout???” a friend on Facebook noted on his status.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  Wouldn’t that be grace?  What is the CEO’s of Big Business and these top level bank executives bailed you out?

    God’s overarching story is about a CEO – THE CEO of the Universe (props) – giving up his wealth and glory, and bailing us out.  He refused greed, ambition, and honor, and instead took on the disgrace and shame meant for us.  While American CEO’s are refusing to accept responsibility and act to repair their damages, God sacrifices everything he’s got to try to mend the problem he didn’t start.  God not only went bankrupt, he died to cover our debts, to balance our budget, and to hand to us a heavenly inheritance.

    …and for what?  For love.

    Share this message with others.  Frame the gospel in terms that sound like “Good News” for a cynical world.  God as the CEO that bails me out.  Is it too good to be true?

    —

    I heard last night that a state representative in Flordia is bailing out Henrietta Hughes after her plea to Barack Obama to help her and her family out of homelessness – by letting her live in one of his homes.  Read the amazing story of grace here.


    —

    Part 1: Church Planting in the Economic Downturn

    Part 2: The CEO that bails ME out

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    • Chaner-Sac 9 7:01 pm on February 19, 2009 Permalink

      Heyya Willises,

      While you’re thinking about the word bailout, here’s a bit of pointless minutiae that’s been bothering me. The word for some reason is combined as a noun (bailout) but must be separated as a verb (bail out). Why? =)

    • Mark 7:05 pm on February 19, 2009 Permalink

      That’s sorta like March 4th is both a day and a vocative. Totally cool. :)

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