Cali and I had breakfast today in the cafe Tarantino’s classic film, “Pulp Fiction,” was shot.

In our local neighborhood is one of the cafe’s they shot Tarantino’s classic movie “Pulp Fiction” in. It’s obviously not the larger cafe in the beginning or end of the film but they have a number of pictures on their wall of when they were in shooting the film. Maybe this location didn’t make the cut or something. I decided to take Cali their for breakfast today. The place is called Ted’s Luncheonette. If you’re local google it and check it out.

Rumor is that the larger cafe in the film has now actually been torn down, it was in L.A..

Listening to “MONO”

How would you illustrate community?

Here’s a video short intro for a four-week small group study I’m developing called, “What is Community?”

Here’s the next video short I’ve created for my resume website. This one is called, “What is Community?”

I plan on creating a four week small group study for this video short like I did with the “What is the Missional Church?” video. Part of why I haven’t completed the study for the “What is the Gospel?” video and this one is because most of my library is in storage right now so I don’t have my resources on hand. I’m starting to realize my dependence on my library.

I had a great conversation with a recording artist friend of mine in Ybor at a lunch last week about creating a much larger project for developing artistic, up to date, deep small group studies that would be accompanied with artistic video shorts and music created just for them. So far I’m thinking it would fill out the “Vintage Faith” idea I released on this blog awhile back. I’d like to get a lot of different pastors developing the resources and make it very affordable and accessible for churches. We’ll see where the idea goes from here…

Here’s what the front and back of the study will look like once its done. Some of the people I plan on using to help me fill it other than the ones mentioned in the video are Randy Frazee, Jack Miller, Tim Keller, Andy Crouch, Eugene Peterson, Henri Nouwen, Miroslav Volf, NT Wright, and many more.

Shot and edited a video today for a friend trying to get a commercial gig for the NBA Slam 2010.

All the best to you Dox. Hope it works out my friend!

Weezer Snuggie Informercial is hilarious!

In this six minute clip I answer “What is the Gospel?”

This is the second of four small group discipleship studies I’m working on right now. The first was “What is the Missional Church?” I plan on breaking this study also down into a four week study: 1) The gospel & the biblical story; 2) the gospel as public truth; 3) the gospel & the cruciform life; and 4) the gospel & the new creation. I’ve posted the cover and the last page of the study.

Now I just have to think about how to lay out the actual week’s readings and questions. There are a lot of great small group studies out there on this topic. Two of the ones I’ve found the most helpful are Tim Keller’s & Redeemer NYC’s study called “The Gospel & the Heart”; and World Harvest Mission’s new study called “The Gospel-Centered Life.” Since both of those studies are much longer than the one I’ll be composing and had the benefit of being the process of several hands working on them I still plan on using them again and again in the right settings. But this study will be something that because of its brevity will I hope but appealing for substantive yet brief small group discussions on the gospel.

I plan on listing some of the resources for each week that I have found helpful as I create them. I anticipate using Keller and the World Harvest Mission’s resources, as well as Lesslie Newbigin, NT Wright, Michael Gorman, Michael Bird, T. Desmond Alexander, Christopher Wright, Miroslav Volf, and more. Now onto the actual labor of creating it.

(If any of you as readers have any ideas or helpful charts or illustrations or authors you’d suggest just comment below.)

How David J. Bosch defines “Evangelism.”

“. . . evangelism may be defined as that dimension and activity of the church’s mission which seeks to offer every person, everywhere, a valid opportunity to be directly challenged by the gospel of explicit faith in Jesus Christ, with a view to embracing him as Savior, becoming a living member of his community, and being enlisted in his service of reconciliation, peace, and justice on earth.”

- David J. Bosch, Evangelism: Theological currents and cross-currents today

(Photographic art by Thomas Hawk, piece entitled “Tracks“)

Scot McKnight at the “Jesus Creed” blog will be hosting a discussion on my paper “What is the Missional Church?” this coming Monday at noon.

Greetings feeders and readers. For those of you who’ve read the recent four week small group study I posted on “What is the Missional Church?” and have wanted to talk more about the paper or the topic in general you’ll have a great chance to do that at the Jesus Creed on Monday around noon. Scot McKnight is going to post the paper in four parts over a four week period on Monday of each week.

Scot McKnight is the Karl A. Olsson Professor of Religious Studies at North Park in Chicago and a visiting Professor at Biblical Theological Seminary. Scot is also an international conference speaker and a published author several times over. Scot is well known as an authority on the Emerging Churches and is a world class historical Jesus scholar. I first met Scot at a conference I created and lead on the Emerging Churches at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (see the pic above). I have had the pleasure of following Scot on his blog and in personal conversations as well as a few blog interviews with him since that conference. He is a great blog mediator for hot topics and draws a very wide and engaging blog reading audience so the discussion should be very helpful for everyone involved. Please make sure and head over there and contribute.

Ibarra Quartet and Makoto Fujimura at Le Poisson Rouge