Foosballers Unite!

Hey all,

I've talked with several of you already about this, but I wanted to make it official, and post some pictures.

Some people (by this I mean many women) can meet new people, and make friends over nothing more than a cup of coffee. Other people (by this I mean most men) only begin to open up over some sort of shared activity, or even through competition. That's why I think it's a great idea to have some sort of opportunity for games or competition at the Front Porch. Here were my options:

Video Games - Even when video games help people relate to each other (i.e. when they're multi-player) it still amounts to two or more people staring at a screen. It's indirect relationship, and I think that's something we'll want to steer clear of.

Billiards - Takes up too much space, and comes with too much equipment to keep track of.

Ping-Pong - Might be good, but also takes up a lot of space, and the balls fly everywhere, and people might collide with each other. But still an option.

Curling - Difficult to accomplish indoors, plus only 3 Americans know how to play it, and they're all Canadian ex-patriates.

Foosball - Aha! It takes up very little space, requires very little equipment, and everyone knows how to play it. Plus I just found a beautiful one with electronic scoring and everything for only 200 bucks. So I bought it. Here are the pictures:

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To Affiliate or Not To Affiliate

Hey everybody,

Please note that I am publishing this post simultaneously with the post below, called "A Name for the Founders' Home Church." It's shorter than this one, so please read them both.

As most of you know, I have really been re-thinking the idea of affiliating with the Southern Baptist Convention. Or any denomination for that matter.

And most of you have heard my take on denominations. They are not inherently bad, but they often hinder the real work of God, which is building a unified Kingdom. They can be helpful to that work when they send and support missionaries, found and run seminaries, colleges and other schools, and provide resources for local fellowships who all share a particular vision or characteristic. But they can be extremely harmful when they are self-promoting, divisive, political, controlling, professionalistic, institutional, stubborn, inflexible, sectarian, or obsessed with finances or attendance. This is not an indictment on any particular denomination, simply an observation of pitfalls that threaten every leadership structure or Christian organization. Most have fallen into a few of them, and a few have fallen into most of them.

It has been widely accepted amongst our group that we will continue to operate in a non-denominational fashion. We will have no sectarian creed, and will maintain unity regarding secondary doctrinal issues. And even if we do affiliate, we will not promote that denomination in the community, or include them in our name or identifying literature.

So I had to ask myself, why affiliate at all? If we're going to act non-denominational, why not just BE non-denominational?

If it's about money... we are already sunk.
If it's about assistance... I know quite a few people that will assist us whether we affiliate or not. Anyone who will not assist us if we don't affiliate would not be much help anyway.
If it's about tax-exempt status... we can get that anyway, it will just take some extra time and money.
If it's about accountability... much like "assistance" above, I know there are people who will agree to hold us accountable to correct teaching and practice. They can comprise a "board of advisors" for The Core.

So as you can see, I'm leaning very heavily toward remaining independent. That way we can be who we really are, and not have to worry about who will write us off if they find out that we are "part of the establishment." I really need you all to comment on this one, because I'd like to have a conversation about this on the record.

Thanks in advance!

A Name for the Founders' Home Church

OK, we keep talking about naming our Home Church (that is, the Wiksell/Wilmoth, etc Home Church.) One idea was to name it "Acts 2 Home Church." But my favorite idea so far is "Re:Group Home Fellowship." I like this because it's simple, unassuming and describes us well (that is, that we are founded on the belief in returning to the group method of doing church. In other words, we're "returning" to "groups." Re:group.) Here are two ideas for a logo (of course, I always have to do a logo.) Let me know what you think.