Showing posts with label Karen Ward. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karen Ward. Show all posts

Monday, August 20, 2007

Ken Silva Calls Me Out - The Gathering as Clueless, Blind Guides

Thank You to our buddy Zaque for calling our attention to this post by anti-emergent church fellow Ken Silva. Ken is living in New Hampshire, so I will need to visit him someday soon - well, after returning from France, and the UK.

He noticed that we held our "God: For People Who Hate Church Conference" back in May and decided to respond to it, and even to link to one of the dialogues.

Now he responded to the dialogue, which can be downloaded here, with these words:

"Although these people are currently spiritually clueless they do know the repainted social gospel and theology, such as it is, of the emerging church quite well. But the tragic truth is we are not dealing with the orthodox Christian faith here. No; rather this is a mish-mash of things roughly related to Christianity which they simply pick and choose by their own existential and highly subjective feelings about what they think God might be doing.

After listening to this the discerning Christian will hear the Voice of the Great Shepherd say – “Leave them; they are blind guides.”"

You can find Ken Sliva's daitribes against anything even remotely Emergent (which tag I am not sure I fully fit) at this website. He is sure that I am part of a neo-liberal cult, and with my friends moving toward the "religious bondage of Roman Catholicism."

What do you think?

I tend to think that he has replaced Roman Catholic Bondage (whatever that is) with his own brand of theological, and practical do and don'ts which look even more like the bondage of the law than anything he berates.

I guess this post came out a couple days ago, while our missions team was returning from London, and I was bunking up at Mike and Jules' place.

Friday, May 04, 2007

So it Begins - God for People Who Hate Church


Hi Friends,

Our conference begins tonight. People are beginning to show up now. Karen Ward is in Town, Jim Henderson is here, Jay Bakker will be here in a couple hours. The Christian Science Monitor will be here today and tomorrow to talk to Jim henderson and I. Of course, Tony Jones is too emergent to get here when everyone else does, he'll arrive at 11pm.

So, we are off and running. For those who will be here, see you soon. If you haven't registered and want to come, you can just come as you are, and register or any of the events tonight through Sunday morning.

View our flyer for the event here.

You can also follow live blogging of the event for those who can not make it at The Gathering Blogsite.

Gwyn eich byd, White your world!
Phil

CONFERENCE TIME! God for People Who Hate Church is Here

Today, I met Agent B who flew out here form Abilene, TX. I took him around Salem, and he met real live Witches - at least five of the locals. He got a feel for our beautiful New England city, and felt the cool breezes and the warm sun of late spring. Then Don Rylander from Jackson, MS - my old buddy who was there on the first day I began pastoring a church I Carlsbad, CA 22 years ago arrived in town, and we spent some time together this evening.

Tomorrow at 7pm the event officially begins. There will be people blogging live from the conference, and you can follow their writings. The live-bloggers will be linked in the right-hand column of the church blog site. There will also be a variety of people guest blogging from the church blog.

Our guest speakers include Jay Bakker, Jim Henderson, and Tony Jones.

Guest panelists include Karen Ward, John Smulo, Ken Nelson, and Beth Maynard.

We will also hear from Lou, Jonas, and Michael on our Humanist/Christian discussion panel, and from Teri Kalgren, Suzy Wade, and Krista Grillo during our Pagan/Christian discussion.

So for the next three days you will find us at The Gathering's Blog Site.

This conference is charting some new territory for us, and we hope to discover how we might become better servants to the variety of people around us.

Gwyn eich byd!
Pastor Phil

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Live Blogging from God For People Who Hate Church

May 4-6th - yep that only 3 days away! - we will provide some live blogging from our conference. Topics and themes of teachings and panel discussions will be provided by various observers. Carly Menasco, Kevin Menasco, Josh Rivera (see His blog rivera's Blog), and others will take a hand at some live commentary. If you follow the blogging at the blog site for The Gathering, you can send some questions from distant places and get involved.

If you want to find the schedule for the conference, and follow along, go to our church website and follow the link to the conference flyer. Of course, you will need to add or subtract hours to adapt to Eastern Standard Time US.