Tall Skinny Kiwi

The Story of the Sorting Room

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

On the road again

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

Reaching the Online Generation

'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

The Emerging Church is Like a Box of Chocolates

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

Blogging for $$$$$$ (can you count to 6 figures?)

Today 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 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

London: Some Photos

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.

Technorati Tags: london

Ramayana at British Library

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.

Technorati Tags: ramayana

GAFCON: Not a Schism but . . .

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.

Technorati Tags: gafcon

Jeff Fountain at the Cell Church Euro Symposium

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

Amsterdam: Meeting Phil Graf, Carl Raschke and Hugh Halter

Here are some more details on my strategic meeting with some fellow conspirators in Amsterdam a few days ago. Let me introduce them to you.

Phil Graf (left) is the missional training for a really stiff-upper-lip mission organization (just kidding) called Christian Associates. He also knows his beers pretty well and enjoys the Trappist ales from Belguim like I do. I stayed with Phil and his family during my time in Amsterdam and the emerging church gathering earlier in the year was also in their house.

Carle Raschke is a guy I have wanted to meet for many years. He is an intellectual from Texas who has published more books than he can remember and they all seem to have controversial titles like The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity. His latest book was sent to me a few months ago by the publisher for comment but I didnt get my thoughts to him on time. The book is GloboChrist:The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn and its an excellent walk through postmodern thinking that reminded me that we really cant afford to move ahead without a serious consideration of this movement. And Carle tackles things that you have heard from me such as the rhizomic nature of the internet and church 2.0. And Carl appreciates Belgium Trappist ales although I think he would be just as happy with a Shiner Bock from Texas. Heres a PDF sample of his new book.

Hugh Halter I met ages ago in Portland, Oregon where we both used to live. He is in Denver now with Church Resource Ministries and has published an excellent book called The Tangible Kingdom. Great guy. Likes beer, but he really doesnt know what the heck he is drinking.

Missional Synchroblog: The Skinny on Missional

Missional. I lost my job because of "missional". I will tell you how in a second but, first thing, before i start whining over losing my job at the Baptist Convention of Texas, welcome to the missional synchroblog, organized by Rick at Blind Beggar. My entry is one of the latest (stuck in Aberdeen due to airport strike, stayed in youth hostel and said no to their £5 an hour internet rate) so I am adding my thoughts to what others have said and then am giving a medley on what i have said about this word over the past 5 years.

Like Alan Hirsch, I have preferred the term "emerging-missional church" and I agree the name "missional" is not foolproof

In fact, I lost my job because of a so called 'missional' transition. BGCT, who I still love and remember fondly my 8 years of mission service, and have no hard feelings against whatsover (they gave me plenty of warning and treated me respectfully throughout the process), decided to annex their entire church multiplication department, including myself, in the name of becoming "missional" and attempting to put the impetus for mission back in the megachurches. To be honest, I didn't think that decision was the most strategic. If the megachurches are the ones who now carry the torch for mission, where are the apostles who scout out the needs and help the church send out its people beyond its borders, over cultural barriers, and outside their comfort zone? Who will fight for the mission projects that will not immediately pay back into the system or will prove to offer a better alternative to the megachurches? Does being missional really mean firing the missionaries and adding their budget to the biggest churches?

I love the word missional but it still has some problems:
1. It is often dumbed down by people who confuse it with "evangelistic" or "mission-minded"
2. It has often been purged by some evangelicals of its connections to the global mission movement (read 'Ecumenical') and given a newer and more acceptable face.
3. It has sometimes been co-opted by aggressive and competitive white males to drive resources to the programs that beef up their own churches.
4. It suffers from a compulsive activism, as if God was a workaholic who constantly drives on his team and never rests from his labours.
5. It lacks an immediate connection with worship which might be the flip side and a necessary balance.

Having said that, its also true that missional is the word of the moment and has recieved great acceptance. I am proud to use it and have done so for a long time. Here is a little medley of my posts on this word over the last 5 years:

The word "missional", until I am proven wrong [again], was coined by the Brits in 1883 and lay quite dormant until revived by missiologist Francis DuBois in the early 80's. Francis and I worked together in San Francisco in the mid 90's, when i ran the Page Street Baptist Center that he had started many years ago. Interesting story - a missional story that is - the feeding program we took over and grew ended up becoming a community, organized by its own people and led by Eric Bergquist who took over from me and is doing a fantastic job. Sorry - didnt mean to namedrop or start telling stories.

Anyway, excuse the diversion. A century ago, people began to talk about missions at home and not just overseas. This thinking was later informed by the trinitarian emphasis of Karl Barth and emerged quite strongly at the 1952 International Missionary Convention in Willingen, a German town so small that even my German friend Andreas Wolf asked me yesterday, over breakfast in Norway, where the heck Willingen was or if it really existed. [Sorry]. Karl Hartenstein nailed it in 1954 with the Latin term Missio Dei (the mission of God) which drew meaning from the German term 'Mission Gottes' and stressed the idea that mission is God's initiative and the church is a participant in this mission rather than the originator. Lesslie Newbigin was also a participant at Willingen and would later be a major figure in bringing attention to the idea of missions in our own post-Christian cultures. His writings inspired some North Americans to explore the same themes under the Gospel in Our Culture Network. One of the books published was called The Missional Church and the name gained currency in USA. Further study was done by Milfred Minnatrea, who also lost his job in the missional shift at BGCT, in his book called Shaped by God's Heart. Milfred showed the word "missional" had reappeared in the writings of Charles Van Engen in 1991. Van Engen actually taught my wife at Fuller School of World Mission. Sorry - there I go again.

One day I will show you a missions book from Lesslie Newbigin's library that is now in mine. And yes, he had signed it and underlined key passages!

But I diverge from shameless name-dropping to finish this post. During these last two decades, the word emerged in UK as "mission-shaped" thanks to my ex-DAWN buddy Bob Hopkins and Bishop Graham Cray and some others. But the meaning was essentially the same, except the UK focus on "mission shaped" carried that incarnational idea that the new or emerging church is shaped by the context it enters. Read about it here.

I have blogged my thoughts many times so I wont repeat myself. But I will say that the most exciting thing I have read recently has been from Chris Wright who, in his excellent book "The Mission of God", calls for a missional hermeneutic .

In his book, Chris's draws from the gains of contextual hermeneutics "as against the rather blinkered view of theology that developed in the West since the Enlightenment, which liked to claim it was scientific, objective, rational and free from either confessional presuppostions or theological interests, theologies that declare such disinterested objectivity to be a myth - and a dangerous one in that it concealed hegemonic claims." (The Mission of God, page 42) . . to become an "interested" missiology that goes beyond contextual [and liberationist] hermeneutics by offering to subsume both readings into itself. Chris puts forward a missional hermeneutic as a contextual, holistic, coherent framework that finds its center in Christ himself who opened the minds of his disciples so they could understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:45) "In other words, Jesus himself provided the hermeneutical coherence within which all disciples must read these texts, that is, in the light of the story that leads up to Christ (messianic reading) and the story that leads on from Christ (missional reading). That is the story that flows from the mind and purpose of God in all the Scriptures for all the nations. That is a missional hermeneutic of the whole Bible." (The Mission of God, page 41)

From here, you can view what others said about the word "missional".

The Missional Synchroblog team:
Alan Hirsch Alan Knox Andrew Jones Barb Peters Bill Kinnon Brad Brisco Brad Grinnen Brad Sargent Brother Maynard Bryan Riley Chad Brooks Chris Wignall Cobus Van Wyngaard Dave DeVries David Best David Fitch David Wierzbicki DoSi Doug Jones Duncan McFadzean Erika Haub Grace Jamie Arpin-Ricci Jeff McQuilkin John Smulo Jonathan Brink JR Rozko Kathy Escobar Len Hjalmarson Makeesha Fisher Malcolm Lanham Mark Berry Mark Petersen Mark Priddy Michael Crane Michael Stewart Nick Loyd Patrick Oden Peggy Brown Phil Wyman Richard Pool Rick Meigs Rob Robinson Ron Cole Scott Marshall Sonja Andrews Stephen Shields Steve Hayes Tim Thompson Thom Turner

Technorati Tags: missional, missional synchroblog

Norway: The best place to be for the summer solstice

We are in Kristiansand, Norway and it didnt get dark until after 11am on the longest day of the year. This photo of me [damn i'm good looking!!!] was taken after 10pm outside a great place for pizza. Nice place to be for the summer solstice.

Whole day in a really intensive missions meeting with DAWN Europe team. Meeting was draining but enjoyable and I have a lot of hope for DAWN as they transition into the future. Great guys on the team - all very different and in many cases, extreme opposites, but that is part of the beauty of the team. Ahhhh . . . this crazy world where everything is changing.

Pete Greig on prayer

"So let’s recognize these ‘signs of the times’ – from Lakeland, Florida to South West China – and let’s respond with an explosion of new prayer rooms, prayer vigils, nights of prayer and special prayer meetings. Let’s get ready for the supernatural answers to prayer which surely await us ‘if’ (and only ‘if’) we will humble ourselves and seek God’s face for the healing of the land and the forgiveness of sin. I solemnly believe that we are being called to partner with the Lord Jesus Christ in the awesome responsibility of shaping world events through this time of travail."

Pete Grieg gives his thoughts on current events, signs of the times and the need for prayer.

Technorati Tags: prayer

London - Museum, Library, Borough Market and of course the Tate Modern

I am giving myself the morning off. I am in London, in between my Netherlands and Norway meetings and I am off to educate my mind and sharpen my artistic appreciation. Ashlee House, my favourite hostel, is kicking me out because they are full up so I will stay at the Clink hostel around the corner - its a 200 year old building that been a prison, a place of work for Charles Dickens and the site were The Clash were on trial. But heck . . . why am I telling you this when I can be checking out the colorful Egyptian Bibles and Greek manuscripts at the library? Huh????? So I will make like a tree and get out of here.

1024 Window

I am working on a small presentation for tonight for a project I am calling the 1024 window. A billion people are online and they are viewing the world and finding answers through a screen that is most likely 1024 pixels across and 768 pixels high. The most popular display resolution in the world is 1024 x 768. Fact is, when those one billion people need some information, they use a search engine and aggregate the results that show themselves on the window, or the 1024 window to be exact. I will present some ideas tonight on the challenge and opportunities of "screenagers", Generation Text and bloggers as a new kind of scribe. Its not a big meeting tonight, not big at all, actually, and I just hope both of these guys will really like the idea.

Missionaries have talked a lot about the 10/40 window as the place of greatest need and by employing the term 1024 (10/24) window, I am certainly not trying to take away any attention from the two thirds of the world's population that live in the 10/40 geographical area of the world. God knows we need to keep our resources flowing to those countries. But I am suggesting that a new grid has arisen that deserves our attention - the one billion people who access information through screens, a number which will no doubt continue to grow as more of the world gets connected.

Technorati Tags: blog

Amsterdam: First Strategic Meeting

My first meeting in Amsterdam was very strategic. I met with Phil Graf, missional coach with CA, and we rode some wobbly old bikes down to a cool pub to watch Amsterdam beat Romania 2-0. We drank Grolsh out the front and yelled at the large screen with the Dutch. When we scored, everyone stood up at once and the bench tipped up. I was sitting on the end of the bench and nearly lost it. Anyway, a good start to my meetings. As for Phil and Christian Associates who are starting missional churches all over Europe, well, I guess i will hear more about them next time I come through Amsterdam.

This week: Amsterdam, London, Norway

This week my travels take me to Amsterdam, London (Cell UK European Symposium) and Norway (Dawn Europe meeting in Kristiansund). I am not doing any big public meetings but you can read what happened when i went to Amsterdam earlier this year and the emerging church folk came out of their holes. I see that WiMax congress on mobile internet is on and I might see if there is a way i can sneak in without paying the 2000+ Euros. Gatecrashing conferences is not a habit of mine, although its true i did sneak into the Amsterdam 2000 Billy Graham gathering for evangelists nearly 8 years ago . . . in the exact same building . . . now if i can just remember how I did it.

DoYouDiggIt Dug My Diggins and I can Dig that

"Naturally not all of us are as religiously inclined as Andrew is, but even those who waiver in faith, or stand strong yet are in need of a higher level of understanding, have something of value to learn from Andrew. Andrew presents emerging religion and related issues, but is not preachy or overbearing in any way. His blog is as a blog should be—a platform for conversation and education." What A Tall Skinny Kiwi Can Tell You About Faith And Life In These Modern Times, DoYouDiggit.com

If a way to a man's heart is through his stomach then the way to a blogger's heart is through his ego. Really, giving us a mention is like throwing a peanut to a monkey, or a hundred dollar bill to a televangelist [ . . . ahh . . no similarity intended . . ] Do You Diggit have a profile on my blog today and I am VERY HONORED indeed to get a mention. Thanks!

If you are interested in blogging AND the new media then please come to BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas and hear me speak on Godblogging and the missional church, sponsored by the good people at GodblogCon who are running their micro-conference inside the bigger one. My gosh! Did that blogger just turn an innocent post of gratitude to DoYoudiggit into a flippin' advertisement?What a PIMP! Details on BlogWorldExpo here.

Four Steams: Emerging, Missional, Mosaic, Monastic.

Tom Sine has an excellent article online called Joining the Anabaptist Conspirators which draws from his book. He lists 4 kinds of activists in this movement that is redefining Christianity.: Emerging, Missional, Mosaic and Monastic.
I really like this! Where do we fit? I see all 4 streams in what we are doing. Sorry if that throws a spanner in the works but they are streams, not oceans. HT: My Aussie mate Jarrod who gets a mention in the article and also recommends a radio interview on Anabaptism and its transcript.

Related: On Monday 23rd of June there will be a coordinated syncroblog on the word "missional" by a few dozen bloggers including myself. Rick is calling it a Missional Syncroblog experiment which is the same thing we used to call a Grid-blog about 5 years ago when Ashley stumbled on the idea of synchronized blogging using tags.

Technorati Tags: blog, emergent, emerging church, missio dei, mission, missional, monastic

Refreshed after a blog-free weekend and off again on travels.

Ahhh . . life without blog. We all need it every once in a while. I am pleased to say I didn't blog all weekend and kept away from my computer almost entirely.

I did, on the other hand, catch up on some reading. Books included Intuitive Leadership by Tim Keel (highly recommended, despite a poor title), The Courage to be Protestant by David Wells (not recommended, despite David being a great teacher and writer of the fabulous chapter on 'prayer as rebellion against the status quo' in Perspectives), Why We're Not Emergent by Ted Kluck and Kevin Young (recommended as one of my top 5 emerging-church-critical books but it is more a look at 5 controversial books than the wider emerging church - dang - if the emerging church was what they say it is, i would not be emergent either . . .) And, as my fathers day gift to myself, I stayed in bed on Sunday morning (with breakfast provided by daughter Elizabeth) and got to dip into The Mission of God by Chris Wright which has to be one of the very best books on my shelf and one that is too big to read in a single sitting but perfect for dipping in and out of to re:calibrate my mind around the missional hermeneutic of the Bible and to remind me again why I am arrogant enough to suggest, along with Chris, that it is a far superior framework to understand the Scriptures. I also pulled out my 1835 leather bound version of D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation and was enjoying the parallels between that revolution and the one we are going through today we are calling the emerging church.

We turned the Sorting Room into a micro-threatre on Saturday night and played a Serbian movie. On Sunday afternoon, since the windows were blacked out and the projector set up anyway, we played A Night at the Museum and invited dads and their kids. We ate popcorn and pizza heated up on the Rayburn wood stove and it was a really good experience.

Cleaning attic today because Dan Hughes and his 2 daughters will be here in a week from Dallas (Dan is the vintage blogger behind They Blinked).

I leave tonight for a weeks worth of meetings. I will be in Amsterdam for Wednesday for a missions meeting with some American friends and I hope to stick my head in the WiMAX Forum Global Congress and check out the future of mobile broadband . Then off to London on Thursday for day 2 of the Cell UK European Symposium. Saturday and Sunday in Kristiansund, Norway with the Dawn Europe Network to discuss the future of church planting movements across Europe and our tiny, inconspicuous part in the whole scheme of things.

Appreciate prayers for travel and for wisdom in my meetings and for my family at home, safety and sanity and the comforting knowledge of God as their Father and Portion. I will probably not be blogging much so have a great week everyone and Happy Fathers Day for yesterday to all the Dads.

Gaining weight.

I am trying to gain some weight this year and am drinking pure malt in place of coffee and tea. I stumbled on this 1934 ad for Kelp-a-Malt recently.

Entertainment theology and Post-Christian Spirituality and stuff.

John Morehead interviews Barry Taylor on entertainment theology and pop culture and his new book. Barry is a friend from way back and an amazing guy.

I also noticed that John Morehead will be teaching at the Post-Christiandom Spiritualities at Trinity University. My mate Steve Hollinghurst is one of the moderators. Dr James Beverley will teach on evangelicals and the emergent church. Dr Beverley was RobbyMac's teacher at Tyndale so he should have a good handle on what his students are doing with their emerging church efforts. Should be good. I might even go.

Emerging/Emergent vs Radical/Reformed - who will get us out of this mess?

"In contrast to the solution proposed by Wells, the emerging/missional/neo-monastic churches (the pieces that I applaud) seek to recover community, wholistic gospel, embodied incarnational presence in the world, corporate spiritual formation and the sense of cosmic Mission."

David Fitch puts his money on the E's in response to David Well's book 'The Courage to Be Prostestant', which prefers the R's.

Technorati Tags: emerging church

Emerging Church: Top 5 Books for American Reporters

A reporter in USA asked me last week about the emerging church and I have been formulating a response . . . well . . . actually . . I already posted it here as The Skinny on Emerging Church in USA (comments closed for now) but I am still tinkering with my page and editing it for other reporters and writers who need the skinny. I will post my thoughts chunk by chunk on this blog for your response.

My top five American books on the emerging church for reporters, writers and researchers:

1. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs. Top leaders interviewed, well informed conclusions, a few points of disagreement (doctrine REALLY IS important to us) but its by far the best book. See my review and some others

2. The New Conspirators, Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, by Tom Sine. Great book by a well known leader who probably has more perspective on this movement than anyone. Tom's book is crammed with examples and will widen and deepen your understanding of the EC.

3. The Emerging Church, by Dan Kimball. Widely received and appreciated. My comments here with links to Dan's history of the words "emergent" and "emerging"
By the way, dont get hung up on the difference between "emergent" and "emerging" since a lot of people use them interchangeably, despite the different slants of meaning. I have some thoughts  on emerging vs. emergent, as well as what i mean by emerging-missional church and the connection between "emergent theory" and "emergent church". And of course David Dunbar sees the lines clearly and is worth quoting if you wish. But dont worry too much about getting the terms right.

4. The Church on the Other Side, by Brian McLaren, was for many of us, the first book that said what we wanted to say or at least what we were thinking. Brian can be a controversial figure in Church circles and I dont know anyone who would agree with everything he says but he has consistently verbalized emerging church issues for the last decade with astonishingly clarity. Brian also as a newer book called Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope, which deals with social action and the thinking behind it. I had some concerns with it but Brian graciously responded and answered them.
Brian McLaren would be considered the most visible spokesperson for the movement in USA and yet he does not speak for everyone since the movement is broad and diverse. While Larry King was misinformed when he called Brian "THE leader of the emerging Christian movement" [read transcript and watch the video - Brian does great!], Brian is certainly an important leader and figurehead in this movement, having been a part of the Young Leaders Network in the 90's with me and a dozen others, and has probably published more books than any of us. Although I havent published any so that doesnt say much . . . ummm . .

Runners-up for 5th:

Technorati Tags: book, emergent, emerging church

Emerging, Emergent and Missional

Interesting conversation going on about terms, in particular the words "emergent" and "emerging". I know some people use the words interchangeably and others draw clear lines in the sand. I have never liked the lines very much. I see churches inside the Emergent Village world that do not show any characteristics of emergent behavior and are therefore "emergent" in affiliation but not in structure. Thats confusing. Time to go back to the ant (Prov. 6:6) and observe.

The terms "emergent" and "emerging" have both been applied to church and missions for many decades. I find it hard to dismiss all that i have read and know and start over again as if the conversation is only a decade old and these terms are brand new. Is our reading of missions really that shallow?

Scot McKnight is leading a discussion on these terms. But before you go, read Dave Dunbar's article which has stirred up the chat. Emerging, Emergent and Missional: A Travelers Guide, Part B [PDF]. Btw, Part A is here and you can comment on Dave's blog as well.

I have a lot of respect for David. We chatted last year over coffee in a fantastic little breakfast restaurant in Washington State about terms and names and he gave me some excellent advise. I like what David has presented here and look forward to the rest. He mentions me in a kind way at the end and although he has been contrasting the various groupings, he says "there are key people—most already mentioned-- who by virtue of their high visibility and influence can not be limited to any one category. These would include Alan Roxburgh, Scot McKnight, John Franke, Tim Keel, Brian McLaren, and the affable Andrew Jones."

Thanks David!

Related: What I mean when I say "emerging-missional" church

Technorati Tags: emergent, emerging church