I’ve been following with interest Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, where he’s recently begun working through the rather contentious book: The Evangelical Universalist. Since it’s such a controversial theological issue, but also one which often sparks huge interest, I thought I’d draw your attention to Scot’s discussion of the book’s main arguments.
Last Wednesday was an awesome Snow Day – schools were closed and there were loads of young people out and about to play and hang out with. Here’s some photos and reflections on spending time in the snow – and pictures of our Igloo!
It’s that time of the year to look back over another year of blogging, and begin to form plans and ideas for the next year.
The most viewed blog post in 2009 was actually written in December 2008. Missional engagement and reflective learning was an explanation of some quick observations I made about the link between engaging in mission and the reflective learning cycle.
Here’s a quick quote from the original post (after the jump):
Dear Fresh Expressions and leaders of Fresh Expressions of church,
Thank you so much for the space you have created within the established church for mission, and growing new forms of church which are new and fresh and cater to a whole wealth of different people. However, I have a problem, and the more I read about other Fresh Expressions (my own community is a registered Fresh Expression) the more I am becoming worried about this movement as a whole, and the intrinsic problem which seems to be built into it.
I hope you’ll humour me a moment to explain my very real problem.
The story about a teenage intern at Morgan Stanley who wrote some notes of teenagers’ technology usage is quickly becoming a bit of a legend. This is really interesting – I wonder whether companies had actually considered using teenagers to gather research before?
If you haven’t seen this yet, you can catch up with this story from the Guardian.
Here’s a full copy of the research notes which have caused the stir. From my own experience of young people, it certainly seems to ring true.
Over the last couple of weeks, with some help from Cat, I’ve been in the process of redesigning The Lab’s website and updating it with new information for the new academic year, in particular about the Alway project – our work on the estate on the edge of Newport we live in.
My housemate Cat has done a great job of designing the new St Paul’s website which she’s been putting together over the last couple of weeks. St Paul’s is the church I’m part of in Newport city centre, and is closely connected to The Lab.
Go check it out.
Here’s my notes and audio from my sermonizing at St Paul’s last Sunday. Found the topic pretty difficult, especially coming from a place of becoming more and more suspicious of the “worship” word – especially when it isn’t together with other words like life and mission. So I definitely took the more tame route of appealing to spirituality (essentially the Rob Bell route). Bit of a shaky start to this one as well just warn you.
Feel free to listen (hope you find some of it interesting at least) and comment.
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With the new year well under way I thought it was about time I threw out a bit of a life update. As I’m writing its a beautiful sunny, Spring-esque day outside the Lab house – an awesome day for my housemate Dan’s birthday. We had a party on Wednesday and are having a bit of a dinner party tonight to celebrate.
As always there’s so much going on at the moment – so many experiments and little projects, as well as developing ones – and that’s what I love about pioneering and working for The Lab: everything’s changing and growing and developing all the time.
So I thought I’d try and through out some quick bullet points of the different things that are going on for me.
This week I wrote up some of my reasons for blogging and talked a little about what this blog is about for me. Here’s my five reasons for blogging. Read the whole page.
- To help me express and develop some of my own ideas. Part of the purpose of my degree course is to teach me to become a reflective practioner - so in blogging I’m able to reflect on and develop ideas for myself from my own experience.
- To connect with similar thinkers around the UK, and from further afield. In blogging, I love to connect with other people who have more experience than me or are interesting in / are thinking about the same things. I love to connect with others on Twitter or other networks – and to get into discussions through the comments on the blog.
- To provide updates for old friends and supporters from home. Blogging here allows me an easy way to provide updates for old friends from my home church and family friends – and to share some of my thinking with them.
- To share ideas with friends, Lab friends and coursemates. Over the last couple of years, especially through Facebook, I’ve found that this blog is a good way to share more developed ideas with friends who I chat to and reflect with day-to-day.
- To encounter God. Blogging is great way of reflecting on God and growing my own relationship with him – and hopefully glorifying him through it.
- From my “Why I blog” page.
Welcome to the blog of James Henley. I'm a young church leader / youth worker and student based in Newport, South Wales.
Read more about me.
