Dwell Conference Audio

Some of the friends that I made when in the States recently attended the Dwell Conference in New York City. There they got to listen to the likes of Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, Ed Stetzer, Darrin Patrick and others on missional church planting and related subjects. All the audio from the conference is now available at the Acts29 website.

On a Journey – Part I

Excuse the terrible pun in the title. Its almost 9am in St Louis on Sunday morning as I write this. I arrived yesterday, late morning after a marathon series of flights (Cape Town to Joburg to Dakar to Atlanta to St Louis). There was no time to rest yesterday as I had lunch with my hosts at Covenant Seminary before heading off to a new Saturday evening service the Journey has started at Tower Grove. So I shrugged off the sleep and went along – and I’m so glad I did.

The service was great it had a really simple, informal and authentic feel to it. As can be expected it was a fairly young congregation. They made really good use of multimedia so that it wasn’t overpowering but it was really well done. The music was simple – one guy playing a guitar and singing, another guy singing and a third guy playing a bongo drum of sorts. Darrin Patrick preached for about 40 minutes on the life of Jacob in Genesis in a really low-key, relaxed but engaging and entertaining manner. It was really refreshing. Today I’m going to two/three more Journey services.

Its easy to see why so many younger people appreciate what the Journey is doing here because the place is completely full of massive churches – baptist, lutheran, mormon, assemblies of God – they’re just everywhere and I can imagine they create something of a very ‘churchy’ culture. But along comes the Journey with its real authentic and relaxed feel to refresh to local church scene.

Other than that I had pizza at one of those Elvis type diners last night – real American!

So here ends part I – stayed tuned for some intermittent blogging…

Almost on My Way…to the Journey

On Friday I’m off to the States for two weeks. This coming Sunday I’m going to fellowshipping at the Journey church in St Louis. The Journey is part of the Acts 29 Network and is pastored by the extremely fresh and dynamic Darrin Patrick, who also happens to be the vice-president of Acts 29. On the following Tuesday I’m going to get the chance to meet up with some of the staff from the Journey as they talk me through how their multi-campus church operates. Go over to their church website and check them out.

Church Planting Audio

The talks from the recent Acts29 Boot Camp are available at their website. They include talks by Mark Dever, Ed Stetzer, Darrin Patrick and Mark Driscoll. Definitely worth checking out!

(HT – Justin Taylor)

Resurgence Conference 2008: I’ll be There!

I’ve been a bit quiet about this on my blog until all the details were sorted out but I thought it was time to come clean: Yes, I’m going to be at the Resurgence Conference: Text and Context, February 2008 at Mars Hill Church, Seattle! An amazingly gracious sponsor has helped me to get over to the States and attend this conference. I’m going to also have the opportunity of meeting with a number of different people involved in church planting – some of them connected to the Acts 29 Network – which is probably my main aim in this trip. I’m quite excited about possibly linking up with A29 for future church plants here in South Africa.

I’m looking forward to also attending two churches in the States that we, here in South Africa, don’t really have anything similar to. I’m spending one Sunday in St. Louis at the Journey Church pastored by Darrin Patrick and then spending the following Sunday at Mars Hill Church in Seattle pastored by Mark Driscoll.

What I’d like from the peeps out there is to make contact with as many people I can who read this blog and will also be attending the Resurgence Conference. I’d love to catch up with you guys – especially those of you who write blogs. I thought that rather than emailing each of you individually I’d just stick this notice up as a post instead. Please let me know if you’ll be there so I can look out for you.

See some of you soon…

Nailing My Colours to the Mast

According to Darrin Patrick’s classifications, along with some commentary by Andrew Jones, I’m probably a combination of the ‘Emerging Attractional’ and ‘Emerging Incarnational’ but of the ‘Neo-Reformed’ variety. Huh?

Patrick on the Emerging Church

Check out Darrin Patrick’s talk, The History and Streams of the Emerging Church, given at Covenant Seminary on the 22nd October 2007. Darrin Patrick is the pastor of the Journey in St. Louis and an important member of the Acts 29 church planting network.

(HT – Steve McCoy)