Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Wednesday Potpourri

** Mark writes about the concept of sustainability
...told me about a church in Germany that applies the biblical concepts of sabbath and jubilee. Every 7th year they have a sabbatical, during which the community refrains from starting new projects. In the 50th year or their existence they shut down the whole church, sell everthing they have (building, music equipment), and release these resources into new start-ups. Cool. Dissolving your own structures is one way to guarantee sustainability and prevent traditionalism.

** Speaking of Europe [from this previous post about our personal investments], from Nigel:
- 98% of Italians claim Roman Catholicism as their faith/religion (though far fewer attend mass), but perhaps the true religion of Italy is the Occult.
- Italy is steeped in the Occult and Satanism. There are over 100,000 full-time consulting magicians (Occult) in Italy. That is three times the number of Catholic priests and 600 times the number of trained pastors in this nation.
- Evangelicals make up less than 1% of the population; there is only one trained pastor for every 350,000 people. The Italian church is weak and divided.

** Alan Hirsch from The Shaping of Things to Come has a new book coming out called The Forgotten Ways. Speaking of Shaping, I'm reading Exiles by Michael Frost [the other co-author of Shaping]. More on Exiles later. More via Steve McCoy
Related - some of my notes on Shaping

** "There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great." - G. K. Chesterton

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