Gillett and Barbour are sparring on whether or not churches should desire to own buildings here.

Barbour also brought up again the question of giving away resources for free, which garnered an intersting take from debut commenter Rev Simon Nicholls - here.

Elsewhere, Skye Jethani, who I would consider fairly near the centre of the evanglical publishing world, has recently offered a fairly scathing critique of that world here.

Perhaps this money and ministry thing is a fairly key issue?

Jesus said to those who were selling in the temple, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” John 2:16

Wendell Berry, seen here.

Credited to Craig Groeschel – here.

In fact, even if you’ve stopped breathing… there was this guy called Lazarus…

Simply click on the blue writing below, wait a few seconds, and there you have it. If you then want to save it on to your computer – do a right click on the book and save as, and it really is all yours…

Take some time and be stirred!

CLICK HERE – Unintended Consequences

Would like to particularly thank Nat Gillet for the entire design and chapter 9.

Also thanks to James Barbour, Andrew Belcher, Katie Corteen, Natasha Chapman, James Trevett, Charlotte Wallace, and Chris Wilson for various helps along the way – but ofcourse any errors and all opinions can only be blamed on me!

Please do pass it on to anyone you think would find it helpful!

Very keen to interact about the content of the book – so if you’ve got something you’d like to feedback please do so – either publicly in the comments section below, or by email – andrewbrims@hotmail.com

Happy Pancake Day!

“Billy Graham was asked the question, “If you had to start over your ministry would you do it the same way again?” He answered, “No! I would do it like Jesus. I would look for 12 men and spend time with them, hoping that each one will become who I am and that each one will then find 12 men and do the same”

Quoted in Salt & Light International Leaders magazine page 6

In the mean time, a couple of articles that I’ve found inspiring in the last few weeks to keep you thinking:

If you like stories – Mike Breen’s Why I chose movement over Mega is fantastic.

If you enjoy theory – Alan Hirsch’s The Exiling of the APEs is well worth chewing over (facebook sign in required).

In a revolutionary era… you need to learn to think and act like a revolutionary. People in revolutions who don’t act that way have a particular name: victims. − Joshua Ramo Cooper

Az had communicated with people before that if they had an abundance of any food at the moment please bring it to the meeting, then those who are struggling financially at the moment could help themselves to what others had given.

That’s exactly what happened. In the corner of the gym where we meet altogether (as an incredible hulk mural stares down at us) people left a few shopping bags worth of stuff – oil, biscuits, milk etc, and at the end of the meeting those in need took what they wanted and by the end it had all gone.

To me it was a beautiful sign of what church can look like.

It also a nice summary of what’s going on here:

Tucked away in a corner of Spain there are some needs that are being met in the name of Jesus by a community trying to seek the Kingdom of God.  It’s small, there’s no fuss surrounding it, no announcements or hoopla, easily missable, but real.

We’d love more, and I believe we’ll see it – but what’s here is genuine, and we thank God for it.

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

In a country where official figures put total unemployment at around 25% and youth unemployment approaching 50% – is it possible to bring a message of revolutionary hope without in some way playing a part in creating jobs?

Do we really think that if our prayers are answered, and the Kingdom of God breaks out in this great country, that the economic realities will remain untouched?

Can we say to somebody, “God has a wonderful plan for your life, but we’re not sure it includes being able to pay your bills?”

Add in a cultural expectation that the official church exists to be given to, rather than received from, and perhaps finding ways to be contributors and collaborators starts to make a lot of sense for our plans to spread the message of Jesus.

Consider the alternatives:

- receive full funding from abroad. Which will always run the risk of being given the response, “It’s OK for you, you’re sorted.”
- receive a salary from the spanish church. Which will primarily be made up of tithes and offerings of people who are probably in a much worse financial situation than you are.
- And even, the alternative of simply supporting yourself and your family as we’re currently doing. Which offers a great model, but isn’t really replicable for people without our skill set (in our case native english).

These alternatives aren’t wrong, and certainly not unbiblical.  It’s better to have a funded missionary out here than none.  It’s just, as I’m asking the question, ‘how can we see the Kingdom come here?’ I keep coming back to the entrepreneurial ingredient.

If it was easy though, we’d be doing it already…