Unite Southampton

Just heard that the Future Church conference are doing student discounts. £8 instead of £15. Well done for waiting.

Some friends of mine at the church we are part of are thinking of going to Kenya. The idea came from Ben who has always had an ethusiasm for using his business skills to help people in developing countries. That might be starting a business that trades with African countries to generate export wealth. Or it might be running a business in Africa employing local people. Or it might be teching/assisting Africans to run good businesses so that they can trade their way up the prosperity ladder. Or something else.Read more

If you are into thinking about church and what it could/should look like, then you might want to read this article. It's a summary of a longer article by Alan Hirsch, which I recommend reading if you have a little longer.Read more

SAFE are a great bunch of people based in Southampton that work out their faith in Jesus by helping people with self esteem issues to transform their lives. Self esteem can be crippling for people. It can cause long term unemployment, depression and relationship breakdowns. SAFE have developed a course called Choices which works. Not only that, but their way of working is to train churches to use the course in their locality to bring transformation and relationships.Read more

How do you measure the success of your church? I read this list at the Backyard Missionary. He asked us to ponder and not react which is always good advice. I found them helpful to reflect on what it would mean we would have been doing if these became useful measures.

1. The number of cigarette butts in the church parking lot.

2. The number of adoptions people in the church have made from local foster care.Read more

I was really encouraged by my friend Tom today. He is a good friend who lives and works in the Shirley Warren estate. He used to be in the youth group I helped run but now I think he teaches me more than I teach him. I'm happy to be able to say that. That's what I call church. Read more

I'm pretty interested right now in the question "are we doing it right?". The it would be the church, the we would range from me to the West (I know I can't be church on my own, but I am part of it).

That has sparked off lots of other questions in me: what is it, who is it? That kind of thing.Read more

I heard some talks by a bloke called Mike Frost on the recommendation of some friends and talked about it here. Well, he is coming to Southampton in October 2008 to do some sessions to help us think more about church and what it's all about really.

Find out more by going here. Do it soon, as you need to book and its cheaper to do it sooner rather than later.

If you want more samples, try these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ndCFSv47gRead more

When Jesus said "follow me" he meant it. Lots of us Christians don't really get that. We are pretty happy to declare that he is the boss on Sunday morning services, but I think we have stopped short of really following him.Read more

What is it that allowed the Apache Indians to fend off the all conquering Spanish for 200 years? The same thing that meant that Jimmy Wales could launch a free encyclopaedia which created 8.29 million articles in 253 languages in under 7 years - an average rate of 2.3 articles per minute. If it was the same thing that has lead to Osama bin Laden's organisation to continue terrorist attacks 6 years after the worlds leading super power declared "War on Terror" and put a $25 million bounty on his head then it would be worth finding out.Read more