Gardens as Community

In a recent post on her blog, Christine Sine asks Is this a Move of God? What she's discussing is the idea of community gardens, the way in which they help with sustainability, with learning how to feed yourself by the work of your own hands, the way in which many people feel more at home in the garden than in church, and the way in which non-church people get involved - even ask for community gardens to be set up so they can be involved. But most of all the word that stands out is community.

Read the full post for the details, but one particular detail attracted my attention and will be intriguing to older New Zealand readers of this blog. I quote:

Even our good friend Graham Kerr, once known as The Galloping Gourmet, has become involved planting his own garden and working with his church at Mt Vernon on a huge garden project. Graham tells us that he has never before cooked anything he has grown or grown anything he has cooked and it is delightful to watch him enthusiastically discover the delights of this.

If you'd ever wondered what happened to him after he vanished from our TV screens, this tells you. Six degrees - or less - of separation?

Jones' Top Five

Back at the beginning of June, ex-pat Kiwi, Andrew Jones, who hosts the Tall Skinny Kiwi blog, wrote a list of five books that he regards as the top five for reporters, writers and researchers investigating ,or interested in, the Emerging Church movement. For his comments on these, check out the relevant post.

1. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs.
2. The New Conspirators, Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, by Tom Sine.
3. The Emerging Church, by Dan Kimball.
4. The Church on the Other Side, by Brian McLaren,
and several contenders for 5th place:
The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, by Tony Jones
Revolution, by George Barna
The Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claibourne
The Great Emergence, by Phyllis Tickle
The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community: by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.

An interesting bunch. They won't all appeal, and you'll have varying views on some of the approaches, but at least one or two of the top four are worth a look if you haven't already come across them.

Tom Sine on planning

Every denomination and religious organization I work with does long range planning. Ironically, they do long range planning as thought the future will simply be an extension of the present. As a result, we are chronically surprised by change. Tom Sine in Wild Hope.