East Heights Nooma

Betty Butterfields quest to find the right church

Betty Butterfield is on a quest to find a church...here is a little explanation of her visit to a methodist church...

More on Betty here and here and here plus lots on you tube...

Nooma Update...

A few things to wrap up Sunday and for the coming weeks...

Sunday, in our gathering time, we talked about Intentional Faith Development, or Intentional Spiritual Formation. I hope that each of you will pick a resource from the "Spiritual Discipline Books" section or the "Prayer Books" section and commit yourself to one or more of the practices over the coming months. I highly recommend Tony Jones' book (The Sacred Way), the Body Prayer book, and Phyllis Tickles night offices book. It might be best to start with Tony's book, then pick up the others... I also hope that each of you have identified a few people to invest in, from our discussion a couple of weeks ago.

It's a Theology Pub week, so come join us on Thursday at 7pm at the River City Brewery in Old Town...

I posted a few video links on the Town Hall Meeting on Homelessness, so have a look...

Ruth Kit Update: We have 14 kits that are nearly ready to go... they are only lacking McDonald's and Quik Trip cards ($10 each) If you are near a QT or McDonald's I hope you will consider picking up a card or two. The next, planned distribution date is October 6th, we'll meet at the church at noon and then head downtown.

Video Share

This Video Share comes highly recommended form our very own from Josh Oeding... This is a pretty interesting video that represents how easy it is for people and things to come between us and our desire to love God and follow Jesus. I guess as I watched this the first time I thought a bit about current distractions in my life, but I mostly thought about High School and College.. I had all of these things coming at me, but no one was bold enough to point me toward the dude with the white robe and the red sash... I had lots of friends that went to church and claimed to be Christians, but no offer of a new direction... that is until I met my wife, and after we had been married for a bit she said... "Hey, lets check out this Jesus dude... you will like his hair..." the rest is history (and includes Seminary) :-) .

Mark

Town Hall Meeting

Here is a link to an article about this week's Town Hall meeting on the homeless situation in Wichita....

Update on the meeting here... and here ... and here

... to make a friend?

That's what I have been thinking about for the last hour... What does it take to make a friend? Perhaps it starts something like this, "hi, my name is mark, what's yours?" At least that was my experience this morning. Our small group has been working diligently, since July, on a mission project that was focused on assembling Ruth Kits for the Homeless. Today marked the first day of distribution. Though we only had ten kits full prepared (toward our goal of a thousand) it was indeed a holy moment. It took just under 30 minutes to distribute the kits before the well ran dry. I am guessing that I came across at least 40 or 50 more people, during my travels, that could have benefited from the kits. During my time on the street I made several new friends... Becky, who asked for a kit for her sons...Gary... Mike...William...Daniel and Sunday Dalton...Sue...AJ and his friend John Reeves who blessed me greatly by telling me that he would share the stuff with his friends. The first words out his mouth were, "wow, this is like a survival kit." I think on some levels that has been my hope, that these 'first response kits,' as I have sometimes referred to them, would function as survival kits providing just a few necessities that might help make life a little easier for a day or two. I was surprised that on two occasions folks said no thank-you... and in one instance, Gary was very appreciative and then asked if there was any work he could do for me.

As I was driving back to the Church, in the midst of sort of a surreal meditative moment, I was distracted in my thoughts of those I had just met by a half a dozen construction workers carrying a brand new hot tub into the back yard of one of the houses on our street... WOW!!! what a contrast...

I hope that you will join me in praying for the fruitful future of this mission project, and by praying by name for those I came in contact with today.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with this project...

Quick Survey

OK gang... here's the dealio... If I have to go back to seminary, you all have to go back with me. I am taking three great classes this semester...

People of the Book: This course examines historical and theological relations among the three major religions known as “people of the book”: Judaism: Christianity, and Islam. Course topics include understandings of scripture, scriptural authority, and scriptural interpretation as well as comparative work on particular figures and themes of the respective scriptures.

19th Century Protestant Theology: This is a study of “modern” Protestant theology from Schleiermacher to the Dialectical Theology of the early 20^th Century. This course attends to the issues posed to theology in the “modern” period, including the rise of historical consciousness, the challenge of the scientific world view, and the call for just social and economic structures, and examines important and representative responses to these issues.

Preaching the Literary Forms of the New Testament: An intensive study of the diverse literary forms of the New Testament and the role of such forms in sermon preparation, both hermeneutically and homiletically.  The course also considers the ways in which rhetorical critical approaches to New Testament interpretation intersect with the interpretation of the local church context, and thereby influence the preacher’s own repertoire of sermon forms.

Sooo... from time to time I will try to post some stuff from my classes. Here is my first installment, a few questions from my, "People of the Book Course." There are only 12 questions on the survey, but they are separated into three pages, so make sure that you click on the "next" button at the bottom of each page in order to hit all three pages.

Click Here to take survey

Check back here to see the developing results.

Theology Pub no. 1

Well, tonight was the inaugural night of our Theology Pub. Actually, I think it accomplished everything I had hoped it would. Following the guidance of my good friend Jon, we set out to create a space where we could gather as friends to discuss life in the context of theology. Although there were only a few of us, it was great to gather together for theological conversation. Tonight we were outside on the upper deck of the River City Brewery (Loft 150) and had the privilege of watching the sun set over a few of the nearby Old Town buildings. Topics for tonight were fairly intense, but extremely enjoyable... Images of God, Special and General Revelation, the "Church," thin theology, and the direction our theology goes when we experience extreme hardship...Oh... and we also dialoged a bit about worship and whether or not worship should be directed toward God, or whether or not it should be used as a means to fill "us" up when we are feeling drained by the weekly realities of our lives.

Theology Pub

Toby and I have been talking about starting a Theology Pub...what's a theology pub I here you asking? Well, the short answer is that we would gather at a pub in old town and talk about theology, that is... the intersection of theology and the reality of our lives... There won't be a planned topic we'll just gather and talk about whatever theological topics arise from the group. The plan for now is to gather on the second and fourth thursdays of each month at 7pm. We'll meet at the River City Brewery or upstairs at Loft 150. This thing is open to everyone, so bring a friend.... and bring a question or a theological thought.

Ruth Kit Update

If you missed worship today.... we took time to bless the 24 Ruth Kits that are nearly ready for distribution. The donations that we rec'd allowed me to buy the remaining supplies. We were able to purchase 12 hand towels, 24 poncho's, 12 sets of wet wipes, 6 hairbrushes, 10 QT cards and 10 McDonalds cards. I will pick up some bus passes on Thursday. At this point we are only short 14 QT cards and 14 McDonalds cards... if you have an opportunity this week I encourage you to pick up either 1 McDonalds Card($10) or 1 Quik Trip Card ($10) and drop it by the church prior to Wednesday.

If you are able to meet at 6:30pm on Wed. to help complete the kits please post a comment... all of the supplies are downstairs in our room and I will get the gift cards that i have down there prior to 6:30.

Also, please post a comment, or email me, if you are able to help distribute the kits this Friday or Saturday. As of now I am thinking Friday night after 8, or sometime Saturday morning...

Radical Hospitality - 5 Practices Sermon Series

Post your thoughts from the sermon or from our group time here.

The sermon, and sermon notes can be found here

Today during nooma, we reflected on today's sermon on Radical Hospitality. We shared examples of when we had experienced Radical Hospitality and touched on a few areas of the first chapter of the Bishops Book. At the end of our time I encoraged folks to identify three persons in their life in which they could invest their time and energy in over the next few months. If you weren't with us today, I hope that you will commit yourself to the same investment... pick three folks that you would like to invest in and work to be the extension of radical hospitality in their life... maybe its lunch once a month, or a movie, or just taking time to chat...