Emerging Postcards: An Overview Of The Out Of Bounds Church?
Monday, November 20, 2006
Each of the nine chapters in The Out Of Bounds Church? begins with a postcard from various locations around the globe which raises some questions about different aspects of emerging church. Each chapter then goes on to explore the questions. The layout of the chapters looks like this:
- Postcard 1: Beyond Romeo and Juliet [Auckland, New Zealand]
- Postcard 2: Edges of Culture [Sydney, Australia]
- Postcard 3: Koru Theology [Edinburgh, Scotland]
- Postcard 4: Creativity Downloaded [York, UK]
- Postcard 5: Spiritual Tourism [London, UK]
- Postcard 6: Redemptive Portals [Lexington KY & Norwood OH, USA]
- Postcard 7: Missional Interface [Seattle, USA]
- Postcard 8: Culture Samplers [Auckland, New Zealand]
- Postcard 9: Keep the Homefires Burning [Auckland, new Zealand]
I absolutely love how the book is organized [in fact, I touted it as the best book written on the emerging church to date]. Very creative and inspiring. The postcards were a great way of bringing emerging church ideas down to a grassroots level. It told the stories of real communities. I like that.
My only beef with the book in general - and it's a fairly big one - is that there are no postcards from Canada. That kind of stinks. Although Steve Taylor, the author - and my friend - told me a story about himself in an e-mail that may have something to do with why:
The closest I've ever been to Canada is Seattle. But my wallet made it across the border. It was 1999 and at the kind invitation of Tom Sine, I was part of a Young Leaders Network conference in Seattle. I met Andrew Jones and the Kiwis clicked. That was the first time I heard Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Mark Driscoll. For some reason, amongst all these Americans, I bonded really well with a group of Canadians down from Vancouver. Probably it was the fact that we were outsiders to what was obviously an American party.
On the last night the Canadians and I went out eating and drinking. They dropped me off at Tom Sine's place.
I settled into bed, only to realise I'd lost my wallet. Complete with Visa cards and cash. I went into a panic - phoned the conference centre, then all the restaurants we'd been in. No wallet. I cancelled my Visa cards. I was a mess.
Someone suggested we cell-phone the Canadians, driving back to Vancouver. They pulled over on the motorway. Sure enough, tucked into a seat pocket, was my wallet. It was couriered back the next day. It has been to Canada. I still haven't.
And, to be fair, Steve did invite people from all over the world [but not the USA] to write some new postcards to add to his blog in 2005 [there is even one from The Freeway... and one from Little Joe Manafo]. You can see all the extra postcards here and also here [in Danish].
Hey, I really wanted to come to Canada and collect some postcard stories. (I still really want to come to Canada!:)) I can blame my wallet for not getting any stories! But the truth is my research budget (which was nil!) just wouldn't stretch to Canada. Sorry.
3:36 PMBased on the web (and on TV Pernell!), there is some really creative stuff going on in Canada, so my poor research budget is the books lack.
In the meantime, I am doing another run of the digital postcards this December06/January07, so come December all the aggrieved Canadian emerging communities can bomb my email box with their stories.
peace
steve taylor
www.emergentkiwi.org.nz
www.outofboundschurch.org