April 30, '07 update...

This week Wednesday night Doug Paggit will be in town, and he is willing to hang out with us, share some thoughts on the latest with emergent village, and just share good conversation.

Check your e-mail on Tuesday as we finalize the time and place early this week.
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Conversation Wednesday - may 9, 10:30 a.m.

Next Wednesday ... Sara Cook, ONE Campaign Faith Outreach Organizer

The ONE Campaign is a coalition of more than two million faith-based and anti-poverty groups, churches, celebrities, and individuals who have partnered to tackle the emergency of global AIDS, widespread hunger, and extreme poverty. The ONE Campaign has grown by leaps and bounds since its launch in 2004 and has provided people in the United States with an unprecedented opportunity to use our collective influence to advocate for those who are poor and hungry in other parts of the world.

ONE has particularly resonated with Christians, providing people from diverse church backgrounds with a practical opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ on an international scale. I serve as the ONE Campaign Faith Outreach Organizer for Bread for the World, a faith-based voice against hunger and a founding member of the ONE Campaign. My job is to spread the word of the ONE campaign to churches and colleges, as well as to help ONE members educate and empower their faith communities around ONE Campaign issues. To learn more about the ONE Campaign and related faith-based resources, go to: www.bread.org/one.

Because the Emerging Church (and the Emergent Cohorts!) seem to be tackling some of the big issues that have traditionally gone untouched by the wider church, I thought that a conversation about global poverty and the Church ' s role in addressing it might be an interesting one for the Cohort. I am based in Datyon, but will be doing some work in Michigan this spring.

place:
the bite
151 Ottawa Ave NW
Grand Rapids, MI
(616) 451-8000
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Hello West Michigan Emergent,

I thought you may be interested in this upcoming discussion on May 6 and 13.
God After Darwin, Dawkins, and Dennett: "Evolution makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." So goes the most famous quotation of Richard Dawkins. Is evolution really a problem for religious believers? Is God a delusion? Steve Matheson, Professor of Biology and Kelly James Clark, Professor of Philosophy from Calvin College will address these questions and more at Church of the Servant CRC in Grand Rapids on the Sunday nights of May 6 and 13 at 7:00 p.m.

If this free event is of particular interest to you, or any of your friends who may be atheist or skeptical toward the faith, then please join us for this generous and important discussion. For more information contact Joshua Baron @ 956-7611.
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Hey Midwestern Emergent Cohort Leaders! A few months ago I emailed you to ask your help promoting the first-ever Midwest Emergent Gathering. Well, we've finally got the online registration up and running and we're ready for people to start signing up.

The idea for this really began as a cohorts round-up here in the Midwest, so I hope you will all encourage your group to attend. I mean, finally we have an emerging church conference coming right here to our neck of the woods! :)

Here's what we said about the Gathering on the website:
A church of 10,000 people that meets in a mall... A small urban community that meets in an art gallery...An African-American church on the south-side of Chicago...Web communities that connect tens of thousands of people...What do all of these have in common? They are all emerging faith communities discovering what it means to be missional in their own unique context.

AND they will all be represented at the first annual Midwest Emergent Gathering, July 20-21 in the suburbs of Chicago, IL. Come learn from Tony Jones (Emergent Village), Denise Van Eck ( Mars Hill Bible Church), Spencer Burke (theOoze.com), Nanette Sawyer ( Wicker Park Grace), Doug Pagitt (Solomon's Porch), and Alise Barrymore & James King (The Emmaus Community ) and many other missional practitioners from a wide diversity of backgrounds as we learn together about "Creating Missional Communities".Contribute to the conversation as we discuss, network, and learn in community together via fast-paced mainstage sessions, interactive workshops, and unstructured times for dialogue with old or new friends. Whether mainline or evangelical, emerging or traditional, high church or de-churched, you will find inspiration and ideas to help you and your faith community become more effective agents for the mission of God in this hurting world.

If you and others from your cohort would like to attend, the cost is only $40/person before June 1st and $60 after that.Also, if any of you would like to be involved with helping us make this conference happen, please let me know, as we'll need plenty of volunteers during the event and before.And please help us spread the word. Email other pastors and friends who might be interested, tell people at your church or school, and post an announcement and banner ad at your own blog/website. (You can get the code for our banner ads by clicking here.)

We also have a poster/flyer available that you can put up at your church or school or pass out to folks in your cohort. Just email me if you'd like me to send you a .pdf of the flyer to print out. Click Here to Register for the Midwest Emergent Gathering!