Gathering In Light

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Putting Ads on Blogs: And Why I Can’t Do It Anymore

I’ve debated over the topic of whether I should have advertisements on ol’ gathering in light since I starting using wordpress back in February.   Some of you have noticed the on and off frequency of this site having ads, this was because I was trying to see if I

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NT Wright – Retelling Stories: Alternate Histories and the Lord’s Prayer

Mike Work, writing on his class blog recently, wrote a great short post about Jesus’ way of being a storyteller.  He writes, In his [NT Wright] words, “Jesus made a regular practice of retelling the story of Israel in such a way as to subvert other tellings, and to invite

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World Hunger and Sustainable Eating

It’s important for me to point out a fellow Fuller PhD student, Russ Kirby, who has written a stellar argument for having a sustainable Diet. Russ, a practical theologian, says, If there is enough food to fully feed the world, then why are 840 million people still literally starving

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Reflecting On Your Influences

Every now and then it is a good idea to consider the influences you have in your life, maybe a “lull in grace??? as Patrick has called it, is a perfect time.   I  first thought I would make a top three list of four different categories; books, music, movies, and

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Sometimes We All Blackout

Lovedrug, a band some friends of mine are in, are coming into town on Saturday to play at the Knitting Factory; a line to one of their songs is the title of this post and the current state of my life. Sometimes I get lost in everything.  It’s not

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Qaddish and The Lord’s Prayer: Jesus’ Subversive Tactics

In this continuing series on the Lord’s Prayer I am looking at the Jewish prayer known as the Qaddish, and comparing it to the Lord’s Prayer.  When we compare these two prayers we see themes arise that are particularly interesting when we consider that Christ’s prayer is

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Bike to Work Day: Communities and Sustainable Life

[Updated] Thursday, May 18th was Bike to Work Day.  The city of LA and its surrounding suburbs participated in various activities and sponsored prizes in hopes of encouraging people to ride their bikes to work more often.  I participated in Pasadena’s Bike to Work Day and their sponsored events.

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Chris and Amy over at Shooting The Kids wrote on Photos For Your Child’s Safety.  I wanted to give props to them for pointing out Brian’s great flickr site that seeks to help find missing children. They have a great short interview with him that let’s you

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Blog Party With Friends

Our third ever  “blog party” to happen at our house saw a radical boost in attendance!  For the first two gatherings, JR and I were the only ones to come. However, this time we had 5 bloggers present.  My wife, Emily, decided to join us this time around and although

Biking

Bike to Work Week

This coming week, May 15-19, is bike to work week.  I have already expressed my disappointment in not being able to participate because of my accident, but I thought I could pass along some links and what-not about biking.  There are some great resources on the web about getting started

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The Paternoster – A Formative Christian Practice for All Followers

I’d like to frame the next group of “featured” posts that will be showing up here on gathering in light.  I will be continuing to post my thoughts on the Lord’s Prayer, and how it can and should be used as a missional discipleship tool in churches from

Biking

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Since I normally love to write about my adventures in biking here in the city, I figured this post fits into that category. [Those of you with weak stomaches may wish to tune out at this time]  Thorn and I paid the price yesterday afternoon for a lady’s indecision;

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Earth Day Footprint Quiz

I don’t often dedicate posts to links, but Holly showed us this link at small group and I think its something worth checking out Earth Day Footprint Quiz.  I am interesting in hearing how people do on this and what they think of the test. Are there important questions

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Blog Party #3

This Monday Night, May 15th, from 7:30-9pm I am inviting those of you who are free to join us in blog party #3.  There are a few things you need to bring, a writing prompt to work on, any questions you may have about the technical aspects of blogging

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Left Behind Eternal Forces – Violence for Christians

Today in the Los Angeles Times, there is an article about a new “Christian” video game: Left Behind: Eternal Forces. The game aims to make a broadly appealing video game, similar to Grand Theft Auto; it is a “real-time” strategy game that “features plenty of biblical smiting, albeit with high-tech

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A Short Prayer Service with The Lord’s Prayer

Getting back on track of doing some work on the Lord’s Prayer I thought I would offer a simple prayer service we used for small group a while back.   This could work as a personal time for reflection or for small groups, and can be changed and modified to

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How to Get Started Blogging

This is a second post on blogging, one that is more directed toward beginners (and is much shorter). I’ve decided to write this as a resource for friends and the students I TA for who are interested in starting out as bloggers.  I’ve written a very lengthy post

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A Plug for Fuller’s Newspaper – The Semi

Mike Work and I both got our start in the world of publishing today (he may have written before though I don't remember), both of us have articles on technology and the church.  See Fuller's Newspaper for a Download of the article.

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Humility and The Lord’s Prayer: April Ping Homily

This is my ping homily for April, there are still two weeks left for all of you to participate.  If you are interested jump over to Shawn’s explanation of the project. Since I am in the process of thinking and writing about the Lord’s Prayer as a paradigm

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Moving Yet Again!

Emily and I just signed a new lease today and so for our fourth summer in a row we will be moving…sigh.  It’s odd how much we dislike moving because we seem to do it so much!  We are pretty excited about this move for many reasons: one

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Lecture Today and Intro to The Lord’s Prayer

Today is my first chance to lecture in a classroom setting.  As I have been preparing over the last couple weeks, I have found that I will never get it the way I want it.  I have been writing and rewriting parts of it for the last three days and

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The Wits End

Today, Emily got to her conference a little late due to my slightly handicap when it comes to reading directions.  Going north, when you’re supposed to be headed south never gets you where you’re going very fast.  After I dropped her off I returned to the hotel, and

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San Diego

I am looking forward to this upcoming weekend because Emily and I are traveling down to San Diego this evening and we are going to stay until Saturday afternoon.  I think it will be a lot of fun, not only is San Diego cool, but I have some work I

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Hey Man Slow Down: The Art of Friendship Behind The Screen IV

I need to finish this series of four articles on Technology and how its affecting our lives in positive and negative ways before it gets away from me.  When I first sat down to write about all of this it was because of a couple of prompts; my reading the

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Why Quaker 2.0?

I’ve written my first post as a contributing member of the Quaker 2.0 team today, if you’re interested in what’s going on over there here is the link.  The main point of what I write there is that we as the Friends’ movement are in a