a pastor in Austin
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Chris Marlow is a friend here in Austin. (In fact, he’s about seven feet away from me right now.) I think I will even continue to call him friend after he moves to Raleigh at the end this month.
A few days ago, he posted the interview below with author/activist Tom Davis. You can read more [...]
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A few events have me reflecting on where we are at right now:
This month is the fifth anniversary of this blog. I haven’t been as consistent in sharing my thoughts here as I was in the early days, but the thoughts I’ve shared and comments of others have made this a significant part of [...]
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About this time last year, I found out that Q would be held in Austin in 2009. I was excited by that…and even more excited a few months ago when a few generous people made it possible for me to attend!
I have grown weary, and leary, of large conferences that are impersonal and driven by [...]
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This is part of a series of reflections on the meaning and importance of doing local theology…
I wrote a letter to friends and family least year to tell them about our approaching move to Austin. In that letter, I described how we looked forward to entering into the life of the city. That phrase, created [...]
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I thought our church community website (Austin Mustard Seed) had pretty clear content on it about who we are. After all, the first text you see is a welcome paragraph which reads:
Welcome to Austin Mustard Seed! We are a new church community forming in Northwest Austin with a heart to live alongside one another in [...]
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I hold an ever growing conviction that to follow the Way of Jesus is to participate in bringing about the Kingdom of God wherever you see it is at work. Of course that happens through intentional church ministries, but the kingdom of God is not limited to that.
One example of this would be Twestival:
On 12 [...]
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It’s been about five months since we moved into our house in Austin, and about three months since we first started gathering people together to form Austin Mustard Seed. I’m often asked how things are going via email, iChat and phone calls, so I thought it would be good just wrap together some reflections on [...]
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From the How I Spent My Thanksgiving Break department comes a new blog design. The new look went live yesterday, though I still have a few tweaks to make here and there.
I’ve used the Thesis theme for a few different sites, but this is the most extensive reworking of it that I have done. I [...]
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As we’ve been getting settled in Austin, I’m trying to learn about the city through its history. While I’ve yet to find a thorough book with the history of the city, I’ve been able to pick up bits and pieces here and there.
Inherent to the culture of Austin is a long rivalry with Houston. It [...]
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We’re in the process of getting our 501c3 status with the IRS, and one of my tasks at hand it write my job description. With that in mind, I read the quote below from Richard Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament. If you replace Paul with John and Mediterranean with Austin, I think [...]
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The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion. It is, in fact, an abandonment of the gospel, for the gospel is about the word made flesh. Every statement of the gospel in words is conditioned [...]
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For Blog Action Day, my friend Bob Carlton (let’s be honest…he’s everybody’s friend) invited me to join a parade of Austinites to blog about the issues of poverty here in Austin.
I have to admit I have regretted it a bit. Like Julie, we’ve only been here for a few months. And what I’m really aware [...]
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(This post is part of a series reflecting on David Bosch’s six distinctives for a missiology of Western culture. See the introductory post for a little background.)
We have, at long last, come to the conviction that mission in the Third World must be contextual. We do not have an equally clear conviction about the need [...]
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(This post is part of a series reflecting on David Bosch’s six distinctives for a missiology of Western culture. See the introductory post for a little background.)
A mission to the West will have to be ecumenical.
Yesterday, I sat in a room full of Austin pastors, most of them in recently planted churches. I have come [...]
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