Dreams Unlocked

This morning me and my mom headed down to an "open house" at Regent - this was to celebrate the additions to the college. There is a huge new library, and several more classrooms and offices. Previously, there was basically only 2 classrooms and the chapel. We heard Eugene Peterson and Darrel Johnson speak - I also caught up w. quite a few other profs and friends. I had one class w. Eugene and I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember me. I got him to sign my first copy of the Message New Testament and Under the Unpredictable Plant - which is probably my favourite book by him. It was a typical Regent event - very warm and thoughtful. It's a cold and rainy day today - WINTER!!! I have decided that I am definitely a fall/winter person. Although I love summer in Vancouver - biking, running, tennis, etc. I also just love curling up on the couch on a cold, rainy day w. a good book and a cup of tea - there is something so comforting and cozy about that. The good thing about g...

(Brazillian kidnapper discussing his tactics). VIFF started with a bang with the Brazilian documentary: Manda Bala (Send a Bullet). This film focuses on corruption, poverty and crime in Sao Paulo - what a powerful film! It is multi-layered and a bit hard to describe. It won the grand jury prize at Sundance, and the director was at the screening - which was the Canadian premier of the film. Check out the trailer here . Hung out w. the folks most of the day - was nice.

This is my favourite time of the year - Vancouver international Film Festival! This festival is definitely not on par w. Cannes, Toronto, Sundance or Tribeca - but it pulls in movies that appear at those more prestigious festivals. Just like last year, I am volunteering at the festival, which means I get a free pass to all the films! Sweet! I've already started choosing the films I'm going to go to. Oh yeah - I got laid off from Eurocenters, which is a mixed blessing. I really miss the students (and the extra $$$ - actually more like $). But, it does mean I am freed up to do the work I really love: pastoring, prepping sermons and other ministry type stuff. The folks are in town which is cool - played w. their grand-kids today, and then headed out for some tasty Chinese food. Will see them tomorrow as well - Dosas in East Van, followed by shopping for Indian spices in the Punjabi Market on Main. It's a good life.

Am in Edmonton for some church planting meetings with my denomination. The plane cruelly had no coffee! - no running water at all, for some odd reason. Flew with my friend Mark - he was coming for car business and I for church business. Had an awesome service last night - I spoke on Justice, and how justice belongs to the church - the closer we grow to God and His heart, the more our hearts will be in sync with his. Some of my students came last night, which was cool. 2:26 - we are negotiating how to get on wireless in this church. We have now spent half an hour going off and back on-line. Tuesday evening - back in Vancouver. Was away for a total of 36 hours. Got a lot done - our committee is going through some massive changes - I will unlikely be on it, as it continues to morph into something new. Some great talk around the movement ot become missional, and away from being attractional. Just chilling now - a new Iron and Wine album came out - i bought 3 songs off of itunes - sounds go...

I have started 2 books that I could not finish: Preaching Interrupted by Doug Padgitt, and Spotting the Sacred by Bruce Main. Padgitt posits a radical shift in preaching, which he renames "speaching. He proposes something called "progressional dialogue". Padgitt has gone down the extreme paths of postmodernity, calling preaching "an act of violence" upon the congregation. He posits that we talk a lot, and learn from the others in the congregation, which I agree with, but he sort of denigrates the role of the preacher. Anyways, I felt the Padgitt book could have been published as a pamphlet, - the main point can be summed up within a few short pages. Spotting the Sacred, is by Bruce Main, who is a friend of mine - he runs "Urban Promise" out of Camden New Jersey - a stellar ministry that works among poor urban youth. They were featured on 20/20 recently. Bruce's book has tons of awesome stories, that will make great sermon illustrations someday, ...

My Review: My favorite film genre is the spy thriller. From Bourne Identity to Breach, I can’t get enough of them. Lives of Others is a spy thriller with a twist. Tension builds, but there are no car chases or brutal fights. It is set in 1984 East Germany, five years before the wall will fall and change everything. It centers on the investigation of a playwright by a state policeman. The secret police (the stasi) often held writers and artists in suspicion, thinking their art had the danger of being subversive. So, we get our story. A captain of the stasi is suspicious of a playwright, Georg Dreyman. So Gerd Weisler (the captain) has Dreyman’s apartment wired and starts listening to every whisper. Now, what sets this film apart is that we begin to see Wesler unravel. In a marvelous work of self reflection, Weisler transforms before our eyes. He discovers that he is the bad guy, not this playwright. He is commiting the injustice, not Dreyman. And here we get out dilemma – Weiser knows h...

The above images are from a video shot by Jason Vanderhill, of me "entering" a 20 foot bonfire. We were trying to see how close we could get to the fire w. out melting - I think maybe 5 feet and then it was unbearable - I think this series of pics looks really cool. (Click image for larger, and better image). I subscribe to about 15 different podcasts - everything from church stuff to Comedy Central and CBC. One of the ones I subscribe to is run by a church planter in NYC, who moved to Manhattan from Saddle Back church. His church grew quite quickly and is now in 3 services with several hundred people - after only about 5 years. The podcast I listened to disturbed me. It was called "Summer Reads 2007". These were books they were recommending pastors read. Every single book was a secular book on leadership, marketting and communication. What concerned me was the complete imbalance in their recommendations. Of course pastors need to be aware of trends in culture, we n...

So I have been off the blog for quite awhile now - I am finding it pretty difficult to try to teach ESL, and then transition into "church" work. It might be better if I taught 2-3 days all day, and then had 2-3 full days to work on Urban Sanctuary. Anyways, I think my days at Eurocenters are numbered, due to the lowered enrollments over the coming months. I think I'll be gone by the end of the month. There are lots of other ESL jobs still available. I think I'll work or tutor for October, and then take November and December off - this is due to the fact that I will be out of town quite a bit during those months. Had a great night last night - went for some pints with a couple of teachers from England - Mark and Krissy - they are a super nice couple who have taught English all over the world at different schools. It was great just unwinding and laughing about the various idiosyncrasies about our school. Starting a new sermon series: Rumours of Glory: Reflections of God...

Above - Adam "sings". Monday night - listening to Athlete - Brit Pop. Feeling sleepy. I got moved up - I am now teaching Intermediate students, before I was teaching Elementary students - some who barely had any grasp of English, which made teaching them very difficult. Now, I have a bunch of really smart Japanese students, who are very polite and hard working. Last night we had a good meeting/service at church. I went over a time-line of our church plant, and laid out some tangible goals over the next 8 months, if this thing is going to be sustainable or viable. Two clear things that stand out from the meeting is our need for intercessory prayer, and for us to have our own meeting place. I have no clue how I am going to find some place for us to meet in Yaletown that is both available and affordable - but God created the heavens and earth, so I am sure he can find us a couple of thousand of square feet in Yaletown to worship Him in. Pray about this! I haven't been to a m...

NINANS IN THE WOODS Yesterday Felicia and I went to the Monet/Dali exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It was pretty amazing - a lot of Monet's, Renoirs and a few Dali's. I was starting to feel congested, so I went to get some antihistamines. At the drug store, I asked the pharmacist what the difference between Tylenol Allergy, and Reactine was. He said the Tylenol had sedatives in it. I then got to quote the title of a Ramones song, when I said, "I don't want to be sedated." Cool. After the art and the drugs, we went for dinner at a nice restaurant nearby called Bacchus. Then we came home and watched Hot Fuzz, which is one of the best moives I've seen this year. Today some friends from Saskatoon dropped by for a visit - I've known Cory and Laura for a long long time. They are now married and have 2 cool kids, who provided good entertainment for Adam. I hadn't seen much of Adam this week, so I took him to the Regent Library and then the beach. It was...

Apple unveiled their new ipods - ipod touch. They look sweet, bigger screen and you can surf the net on it. Big drawback - only available in 8g and 16 g. The ipod classic (the present model ipods hold 30, 80 and 160 (!) gigs of memory). I have 4100 songs on itunes, which means even if I got the 16g ipod, I still wouldn't be able to load them all on. Although I would love to get one, I think I'll hold out until they come out with ones with more memory. Sigh.

I have been going hard for the past 2 weeks and it finally caught up with me. I have been fighting a growing sense of illness this past week. I still dutifully showed up for work everyday. And then last night I woke up at 3 AM, and was unable to get back to sleep. I called the school at like 7 AM and left a message, explaining my predicament. I still went in in the morning, to teach my first two classes and finish up some paper work that NEEDED to be done. At the end of my class, I went to see some students that were leaving the next day. It was pretty sad, w. two Japanese student bursting into tears and hugging me - which was weird because I didn't feel particularly close to these 2 girls. Some pics up top of me in a tie! So, I took most of today off, and will take tomorrow off - a forced sabbath. This is the concequence of not obeying the natural rythym of keeping the Sabbath - your body rebels and forces you to slow down. But... here's the thing, I still keep working. Did so...

Well, we have had an influx of Japanese students, and a reduction of our Saudi students, which is interesting. Feeling a lot more clarity about the future of Urban Sanctuary which is a good thing - with this independence from FBC, our future growth truly rests in God's hands. Feeling like I have less and less to say on the ol blog. Might see less posts in the coming days.....

Not since "Boom goes the dynamite" have I been so addicted to a video clip. I still cannot follow her train of thought. She goes from people not having maps, to the educational systems in South Africa and "the" Iraq. And then she advocates that America go and help the schools in those other countries!!! Man. Yesterday (Saturday) I had to do 2 things I didn't want to do. Both involved people and travel. I realized these are things I have to do as a Christian - so I had to shove personal wants behind me - is this what dying to self means? Doing stuff you don't want to do, so that you can do what God wants? I realize that in life sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do. But, we shouldn't have lives that are completely made up of things we don't want to do - that is misery. It comes back to vocation, calling and passion. God's will for most of us involves doing things we love to do. If you are presently not doing something you love t...

Lives up to the stereotype of beauty pageant contestants.

CNN has had an excellent series the last 3 nights called "God's Warriors". Christiana Amanpour has done an amazing job researching the roots of fundamentalism in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. I found the Islamic and Jewish programs, especially interesting. The roots of contemporary Islamic terrorism can be traced back to a Muslim who came to America in the 1950's. He found America to be a moral wasteland, and left disgusted. He did a lot of writing which became formative for Bin Laden, and other similar terrorists. The Christian segment was well done - but I am quite familiar w. the religious right in the states, but it did have a segment with one of my heroes: Greg Boyd. I need to do a separate post on Boyd (actually I might have already, awhile back). I have added a couple of links to the right: James Wheeler and I went to Bible School together. Greg Boyd is the pastor of a church in Minneapolis and outspoke critic of the fusion of American nationalism and Chris...

In Seattle - Adam has conveniently blocked Sophia w. his balloon sword. I wrote a review for the fantastic movie "Lives of Others" which came out on DVD yesterday. I have a couple other writing assignments I'm working on - one even pays! Daryl and Valencie P. are in town, so we got to hang out w. them tonight which was really nice. Today is the hardest day of the month - I give a grammar test and a speaking test - and then have to spend a couple of hours marking and transcribing the marks - ugh. Finished now though.

Yesterday was a bit hairy. Preached at a church in Port Moody. I preached on Psalm 40:1-3, which U2 recorded as a song. The church was doing a summer series on the Psalms, so I chose that one. It went well. The couple that invited me are John and Andrea Rose - they used to go to First Baptist, and knew me from there. They are hands down the nicest couple that I know - so genuine and kind. Came back - had a nap, and then prepped for our service. Cam Roxburgh was speaking - he spoke very well - very encouraging of what we are trying to do. Also - Alpha may be popping up in my future, through what seems to be a divine turn of events. Will keep you posted. Rained again today - typical for the Summer of 2007. DO NOT SEE THE MOVIE DISTURBIA - it is horrible!!! It starts off as a bad teen romantic comedy and then morphs into an even worse horror thriller - it well may be one of the worst films I have ever seen. Other bad movies I have seen: Beloved Da Vinci Code

My uncle is a neurologist who is involved in pioneering church planting efforts in Northern India. They have encountered opposition in the past. That opposition escalated into physical persecution this past week. Here are the details: Dr. Raju Abraham is the chief surgeon of Kachhwa hospital; this Friday (Aug 17), during a school program for Dalit children and their parents, he was attacked by RSS and Bajrang Dal activists on the Kachhwa hospital grounds. Dr. Raju has a deep cut on his forehead that needed stitches. Other hospital workers were allegedly attacked as well. They seem to be out of danger, but there are damages to the hospital property and equipment. More details here http://christianpersecutionindia.blogspot.com/ Please pray for Dr. Abraham, his wife Catherine, the other staff that were injured, and for the attackers. Pray for protection of this hospital and its ministry. thanks, sn

The last 3 days have been really difficult. On Wednesday and Thursday I left the house really late - On Thursday I was actually late for work, which made me feel terrible. I had a Saudi a Saudi student that had been here for 2 months - both his attendance and attitude were terrible - so today I had to tell him that he would not be getting a certificate because he did not satisfactorily complete the course work. That really sucked. I have tomorrow to relax a bit, but I have to finish up my sermon too!