Just punting down the river in our little punt. Nothing like a bit of PUNTING in Oxford on a nice summers day, especially when we were stuck inside all day in meetings with the Church Mission Society. I found out that the people in Oxford punt from the back, with the till forward, and Cambridge folk from the front while standing on the till, and one must never get it mixed up while punting in Oxford or it will result in a severe taunting by people in preppy cardigans. However, Wikipedia says that "the Oxford position is closest to the orthodox". Better stop there before I start a war. The first picture is me punting from the back, as one does while in Oxford, and Mark Berry getting splashed while he steers with the paddle.

I am about to tell the story of our social enterprise in Scotland. My slideshow is all pictures and is here on slideshare.

Off tonight. London on Tuesday with Jonny Baker and meetings Wed and Thur in Oxford with Church Mission Society.

'Who is God?' was one of the top three sentences googled in 2007.

says Paul Watson on his new website called Reaching the Online Generation, an initiative of City Team Ministries. My friend Joe Hernandez (formerly NAMB) is with City Team and we will be exploring ways to work together this year. What other good websites like this do you know?

Related: 1024 Window

Greenbelt 2008 Session One: The Emerging Church is Like a Box of Chocolates

"According to this ridiculously subjective narrative, the birth of Andrew Jones launched the global counterculture and his first voluntary visit to a church in 1968 signaled the beginning of the emerging church movement. Like Forrest Gump, Andrew is the accidental witness who tells the story the best he can but remains mostly clueless."



I submitted the titles of my two sessions at Greenbelt Festival this August. They will be hosted by Church Mission Society and there is still time to edit them if you can think of something better. Love some feedback. Is it just a stupid idea or is there some value is telling the story from one person's point of view? What should be included and excluded?

My previous talks at Greenbelt are here, including The Spirituality of Blogging.

Technorati Tags: emerging church, puppy

Tomorrow my Aussie mate Darren Rowse from Problogger spills the beans on how he made six figures a year when he started blogging and how you can make some $$$$$$ or some ££££££ out of your blog. Its a free video interview hosted by Blog Squad. Darren will pimp . . . I mean promote . . his new book Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. I just ordered the book on Amazon. Really, when people ask me how a blog can make money, I just point them to Problogger because I havent made much from blogging at all. Darren asked me to write something this month for Problogger while he was on holiday but i was just too busy with travels. Sorry Darren. Heres hoping this will point a few more people to your interview.

Related: I finally got to have coffee with Darren Rowse in April. Darren says he started his blog after discovering mine in 2002, making me vicariously famous (Problogger is now one of the top blogs in the world) but NOT vicariously wealthy in the slightest. I should read his book.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, problogger

I love London. We used to live there but the rent was too expensive. But I really enjoy visiting. Heres a few shots from last week.

You might like to read what happened when i tried to lose my religion in London.

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I spent a whole morning at the British Library exhibition called Mewar Ramayana: Love and Valor in India's Great Epic. The display included 400 paintings, produced by Hindu and Muslim artists between 1649 and 1653, that tell the story of Rama and Sita, a story that forms the basic mythology behind the Hindu vedas and called "arguably, the most influential secular work of world literature".

The paintings often feature the same characters multiple times, as a way of showing multiple scenes through time, and they often move from bottom left in an anti-clockwise direction. The 5 books of the Ramayana were completed by 500BC, probably by the poet Valmiki, but two additional books that identifed Rama as an avatar of Vishnu were added around 100BC. The Ramayana existed on palm leaves and birch bark until it was finally printed as a book in the Sanskrit language. This work was done, according the library, in 1806 by two Christian missionaries named William Carey and Joshua Marshman on their press at Serampore, India. William Carey has been called the father of modern missions. You can view the paintings on the British Library's website.

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Not a schism but there might be a "structure within a structure"

says Peter Jensen at GAFCON, a meeting going on in Jerusalem with conservative Anglican bishops. Pete Father Jake has the latest and you can find video here. Check out Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali on Muslim relations.

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I popped over to London for the European Cell Church Symposium which was conveniently only 30 minutes from Luton airport. Highlight for me was hearing Jeff Fountain talk about Europe - its past and future connected to Asia. Jeff is a fellow kiwi (yeah . . . salt of the earth!) and currently heads up Youth with a Mission in Europe. He also writes a weekly thought that you can follow. Jeff's message was updated from what he shared in Budapest at Hope 21 (dude like I was SO there) and much of it can be found in his book Living as People of Hope: Faith, Hope & Vision for 21st Century Europe (reviewed here by Richard Tiplady - hi Richard!)

Technorati Tags: jeff fountain, cell church, ywam