The Gospel is like a seed, and you have to sow it. When you sow the seed of the Gospel in Israel, a plant that can be called Jewish Christianity grows. When you sow it in Rome, a plant of Roman Christianity grows. You sow the Gospel in Great Britain and you get British Christianity. The seed of the Gospel is later brought to America, and a plant grows of American Christianity. Now, when missionaries come to our lands they brought not only the seed of the Gospel, but their own plant of Christianity, flower pot included! So, what we have to do is to break the flowerpot, take out the seed of the Gospel, sow it in our own cultural soil, and let our own version of Christianity grow.
–Dr. D.T. Niles of Sri Lanka

(ht: Alan Hirsch)

Today is a day not unlike any other; there is nothing about the 29th of October that really truly makes it stand out above any other. The weather is nice, the city is alive, but above all else it just feels like any other day… normal. However, today is far from any other normal day because today is the official launch of a new church.

Our church plant won’t launch with the typical pomp and circumstance that surrounds the new birth of so many other new churches–mainly because we’re just a small group at the moment and because it’s not a worship service–but today is the day. Today a new church forms and comes into existence within the city of San Francisco that wasn’t there before as our first house church meets tonight for the very first time. Today is a big day and immediately I can see more and more just how frail new beginnings and new birth can be… so pray for us tonight if you would. A new church is coming to life!

I intercepted a transmission earlier, and it seems the CIA is going to need Dwight down in their headquarters in Langley for training. And an ice cream social with the other agents.
~ Jim

remember the tired old Budweiser ad that got overplayed and overdone: waaaasup? well, they’re at it again but this time with a different type of endorsement:

Over the centuries the Church has done enough to make any critical person want to leave it. Its history of violent crusades, pogroms, power struggles, oppression, excommunications, executions, manipulation of people and ideas, and constantly recurring divisions is there for everyone to see and be appalled by.

Can we believe that this is the same Church that carries in its center the Word of God and the sacraments of God’s healing love? Can we trust that in the midst of all its human brokenness the Church presents the broken body of Christ to the world as food for eternal life? Can we acknowledge that where sin is abundant grace is superabundant, and that where promises are broken over and again God’s promise stands unshaken? To believe is to answer yes to these questions.

~ Henri Nouwen

You can cure sinus infections by making tea from green leaf stems, and pouring it directly into your nose.
~ Dwight