I’ve come across a couple of good blogs the last few days, and I felt like passing them along.

The first is from C. Wess Daniels, Gathering in Light entitled: Marquee: Emerging Approaches to Church Leadership (And The Fading Ones Too)

I felt that it was particularly relevant to the Epinoia community — I read it to Cat and Anthony on the drive home from the Seattle conference.

An excerpt:

But in these alternative communities things are much more fuzzy than all that. There is no name on the sign, in fact there’s no sign at all. We don’t need a sign to let you know we’re a church, hopefully you know that when you meet us. And you can find out what time we meet by asking one of the people who invited you, or by visiting a blog, website, or our myspace. In this perspective a couple things are at work. We’ve learned that people typically don’t see a sign and decide to come into that church building - people join faith communities because they know someone, they’ve been invited, and they already feel welcome before the go.

The second blog entry is from IAmJoshBrown entitled: Janis, Hope, Church, & Cedar Creek Winery

It is an absolutely wonderful testimony to a pastor who sees people for who they are, God’s children — and who seeks a relationship with people, not from a condemning pedestal, but from loving and serving them.

An excerpt:

We then pulled up a couple of chairs in the middle of the church and just talked for a few minutes. He just started asking questions about us. Genuinely interested. He told us about his community. He didn’t give numbers. Didn’t quote witty sermon illustrations. Didn’t share the style of music. He got out pictures and told us stories about some of his members. A family who was exiled from their former church when their daughter “came out of the closet” with her sexuality. The story of a man who wanted to be married in a church but didn’t want the name of God mentioned, didn’t believe in God, nor wanted to even hear his name (although after meeting Janis changed his mind).

The whole time we were sitting and visiting in the course of an hour . . . 3 different people came in. A lady from down the street who worked at the Cedar Creek Winery. She brought Janis his bill for the wine he had purchased to give away as gifts in his little “trivia” contests. She gave Janis a hug and they chatted for a few minutes. Janis then told her that we were finished visiting him we were to walk down to the winery on the creek and pick us a couple of bottles of wine on him (as we got down their later we found out that the lady didn’t go to the church at all but she didn’t quit bragging about what a gracious and loving man he was and how every church should be so lucky as to have a pastor like Janis).

In the car ride back from Seattle, both Anthony and Cat took an interest in what blogs I read on a regular basis — here are some that you may be interested in.

• …and (Dwight Friesen, who moderated the conference)
• Beauty and Depravity (Eugene Cho, who spoke at the conference)
• Letters from Leavers
• Pomomusings
• IAmJoshBrown
• ysmarko
• Gathering | inlight
• The Fight Spot

Then there’s my personal blog: devilishduck

Are there any good sites that you read regularly that would be of interest to Epinoians?