Matt Smith and Brandon Reynolds left this morning for Chicago. They’re up there for a series of meetings related to the Antioch Summer Internship Ministry.
Below is a video the staff shot at our staff meeting to send them and another video they shot back.
Fun times!!
Saw this video on Donald Miller’s blog. I love Francis Chan…
Check out this super huge proof of a Redux postcard mailer that’ll be going out soon.
Nate and JC cooked up the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in a print piece – the picture is actually a metallic ink that makes the Redux picture look different from different angles (can’t tell from this picture).
Anyway, I’m really stoked about the Redux service and how it’s going. There’s something super raw and real about the organic flow of questions and answers.
Click on the picture below or go to reduxantioch.org to check out the finished Redux website. Nate found a cool little Vimeo plug-in so make sure you click on “older” in the video player on the VIDEO page.
World Relief just received their text-in fundraising information.
Text “Donate” to 50555 if you would like to contribute $10 to World Relief’s ongoing efforts in Haiti.
(It’s actually pretty fun if you’ve never done it… I just gave it a shot. You have to follow up with a “yes” when you get pinged back. Seriously, it’s so fun that it is going to kill you with curiosity if you don’t try texting in that number right now!!!)
Below is a draft mockup of a project we’re working on through World Relief NEXT.
It is a campaign around the stages of Disaster Response that will include a DVD, Web updates, print pieces and more. The intention is to help people understand what is involved in disaster response, how long it can take and how they can continue to be involved.
Many people are beginning to wonder where all the money for Haiti went, what happens next and what they can do to stay involved. The Haiti(5) Campaign should be a powerful resource for churches, organizations and individuals to continue to pray for and stay engaged with the people of Haiti.
Hoping to roll this one out toward the end of February!!
(Thanks also to Studio Absolute for the artwork below…)
Here’s Sunday’s message from John 14 on The Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit from Antioch Church on Vimeo.
Here’s the special music from Sunday at Antioch.
It’s a song that Justin wrote for the Antioch album, Called You By Name. Click here to see the album online.
Here’s a little blurb from an e-mail I received earlier today.
I asked permission to share it as I think it is a really cool testimony to what is happening at Kilns College.
There are so many cool things going on these days – but the coolest thing is when you see it show up in a note…
Just wanted to touch base for a second and let you know what’s up. After taking the Critical Thinking class with Rick last semester, my eyes have been opened to a lot of things. My head about exploded there for a while but after a few weeks I was eating it up. That class CHANGED my life and my way of thinking about a lot of the beliefs I had. It showed me that my faith was defendable, logical and reasonable in a way that I had never heard before. I have since had a much better idea of how to accurately and truthfully talk about my faith to others. It gave me tools to handle even the most skeptical people and their questions. It was awesome! The Holy Spirit has been working on me big time the last few years and that class put me over the edge. (In a good way)
I spoke at Antioch yesterday on The Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is one of the most confusing and often neglected aspects of the Christian life and Christian doctrine.
As a book recommendation or “all church read”, I’d like to commend the recent book by Francis Chan called The Forgotten God. I had the opportunity to read the book in manuscript form and believe that God just might use it mightily to encourage believers as well as challenge the church in America. It is well worth the investment of time!!
Pick up a copy at the Antioch book cart on Sundays or at The Kilns Bookstore during the week.
Here’s a little snapshot of the Year End Report Kip put together this week and sent out with the 2009 tax receipts.
If you’re at Antioch tomorrow, feel free to pick up a copy at the Information Table.
My next blog post will be the 1,000 th post since I started blogging.
To leave a post about that being my 1,000 th post would seem expected and cliche – so I figured I’d simply post this on my 999 th.
Here’s a short video of Matt Smith the day or so before he left for Haiti.
(He’ll be sharing a report of his trip next Sunday at Antioch.)
Haiti from World Relief NEXT on Vimeo.
Chris Stollar, who was Dean of Faculty at Kilns College until recently moving to Ohio, sent me this article on trafficking he just had published by Relevant Magazine.
Chris is a journalist who has a tremendous heart for justice and non-profit organizations.
Click here or on the picture below to read Chris’ article (and make sure to click on Chris’ name to encourage him and leave feedback.)
We don’t do a ton of marketing at Antioch, but someone called us with some free ad space for a Northwest Crossing magazine here in Bend.
Turns out they go to print today and a paid advertisement backed out leaving a nice spot they were willing to give to a non-profit.
Here’s a little Redux square that Nate worked up in record time.
Here are a few pictures that Matt posted today from Haiti.
Click here to go to the WR NEXT blog and read about the 60 tons of food delivered today among other things.
Texas. Oklahoma. Southern California. Oregon. Illinois.
These are states where we already have college interns lined up for this summer! We’re getting contacts from every direction and are amazed at how the word is spreading about the Antioch Summer Intern Program. We’ve only made one recruiting trip so far this year, but the word is out there in a crazy way!!
Speaking of intern recruiting trip… here are some pics from Justin, Grace and Brandon who were in So. Cal over the weekend.
(Also, you can now follow the intern ministry on Facebook)
Matt Smith, Antioch’s College and Justice Pastor, is in the Bahamas and will be flying to Haiti tomorrow with World Relief.
Matt has signed World Relief NEXT up with a Twitter account and will be posting regular updates. If you’re on Twitter make sure to follow Matt – http://twitter.com/worldreliefnext
My good friend, Rick Gerhardt, sat in on Redux this Sunday at Antioch.
Rick is a first rate scientist and thinker and shook things up in a good way. He is also an excellent writer and keeps a blog that everyone should check out: www.myperegrinations.com
Rick said that he’d be responding on his blog this week to some of the text-in questions from the service.
Here’s a clip of one of the answers posted on the Redux site:
This is a little early to be letting the cat out of the bag, but I’m pretty excited about it.
We’ve been slowly working on a conference for February of 2011 that will be a bigger version of the conferences we’ve done in the past.
It will be called The Justice Conference and will be co-sponsored by Kilns College and World Relief NEXT.
Today we received confirmation from our second main speaker – Adam Hochschild. Dr. Hochschild is the author of King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free and Empires’s Slaves.
In addition to Dr. Hochschild, we have received confirmation from authors Mike & Danae Yankoski. Mike took a break from college to live on the streets with America’s homeless and wrote the book Under the Overpass to share what he learned. Mike & Danae jointly released Zealous Love: A Practical Guide to Social Justice this past month.
There are several more invites still open – so you’ll have to wait to see what the full list of speakers looks like. We’re only 1/3rd of the way there!!
Mark your calendars now and plan to pre-register at the upcoming Apologetics Conference in February for a special discount price.
The History and Philosophy of Atheism class that I’m teaching at Kilns College starts Tuesday night.
I’m really kind of looking forward to it. The subject is essentially Philosophy of Religion, which is what my first Masters degree was in. It’ll be fun getting back into it. There’s a crazy cool reading list for the class and some fun topics we’ll be covering – like Church History, The Inquisition, Debate, the Media and Culture in religious thought and much more.
There are two spots left for regular students and a wait list for students looking to audit.
Fun times!!
Here’s a video that World Relief NEXT put together from footage Rob Bell sent us to use on behalf of Haiti and World Relief. Make sure to check in with www.worldrelief.org and do what you can.
Rob Bell speaks up for Haiti from World Relief NEXT on Vimeo.
Connie Gabbert is teaching this Spring’s Art Practicum class at Kilns College.
Connie is an accomplished artist (and new mother) and will be teaching basic drawing.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to sketch, draw or illustrate – now is your chance!!
Just go to www.kilnscollege.org and click on “register now.”
Spring classes start next week!!
The Antioch Internship is kicking back off!!
This Thursday, Brandon Reynolds, Justin Lavik and Grace Laxson head to So. Cal to visit Biola University, Azusa Pacific University, Cal Baptist, Vanguard and a couple other schools as part of our internship recruiting process.
Next up, Matt Smith and Brandon head to Moody, Wheaton and Trinity in Chicago.
We’re already up to around 10 applicants and haven’t even begun promotion yet!! If you have a cousin, friend, niece or nephew and want them to be in the intern program, you better have them get their application in soon. We anticipate having to narrow around 50 applicants down to a summer crew of 20.
Antioch Internship: On Facebook, On the Web
World Relief is trying to send some of our World Relief NEXT team down to Haiti for support, but we really need someone who speaks Creole (or really good French).
Anyone have a connection who would be willing to travel with as an interpreter in Haiti?
Email me at ken (at) antiochchurch.org if you do!!
Here’s a short piece written by Matt Smith – Antioch’s Mission’s Pastor.
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[Response to tragedy is always a fascinating thing. People argue and complain and blame, and that’s fine, but one thing that should never happen is indifference. I have seen both positive and negative responses this last week, so this was written to encourage the people of Haiti, the people of the United States and anyone, for that matter, who believes they suffer alone.]
Dear Haiti,
You will hear it said over the coming weeks from many people who know little about you that it is best to keep American money in America. You will hear that we are struggling in the US to keep our heads above water and our capacity to give you ‘aid’ drown long ago. Many of us here have somehow grown accustomed to mistaking inconvenience for injustice, so we will shake our fists at your needs because they challenge our luxuries.
You will hear it said once and echoed a thousand times that you are cursed by supernatural powers. Some time ago, the story goes, you made a pact with the devil and now you walk a cursed ground. Many of us have forgotten that grace has given us what we’ve come to demand so we will answer your suffering with indifference. We will use our sense of entitlement to justify our excuses.
You will hear it said that it is your responsibility to pull yourself up out of this tragedy by your very own bootstraps. We will say this because many of us have come to believe in the self-made man. But, ironically, we will say this failing to notice that you are barefoot on the soil with your boots buried beneath a cityscape of debris.
You will hear it said that there is no hope for Haiti. Logic says you’ve had a good shake at freedom and equality and justice and stability but you’re just not cut from the same fabric as the rest of us. We say things like that because many of us have progressed so far and so fast we have little time for patience. We tend to think of priorities as things that make money and we forget about things like people.
To many of us here, Haiti is not a home and it is not a heartbeat; it is just a place we once learned about long ago on a map in a classroom. So we have kept you far from our thoughts and even farther from our hearts. We have neglected to understand that Haiti is how you came into the world and came to know of the world. We have forgotten that you – Haiti – are part of OUR world.
You will hear many things. Ignorant things. Selfish things. Arrogant things. Painful things. When you do, and you will, know this: as the earth was shaking the ground beneath your feet and the landscape of your life changed forever, God was busy shaking the dust from many hearts long unused for empathy. Images of your homes collapsed and condemned streamed into our homes and many of our hearts broke. Our eyes teared. Our hands fell open and our hope asked out loud, “Is there anything we can do, big or small, to let you know we are with you?”
Many of us want you to know – we are with you, Haiti. We are not you, we are very much different, but we are very much the same. Were it our ground that opened up and swallowed our world whole we would hurt just the same, so we hurt with you. Were it our lungs short with breath and our hearts pained with fear we would tremble just the same, so we tremble with you. Were it our families scattered in the noxious scene we would hold to hope just the same, so we hope with you.
What you hear you will hear. My prayer is that what you see will affirm the better side of humanity – the side that knows indifference, not defeat, is the opposite of victory. We are with you. We are here with all the strength of God’s love and we will give what we can to make you strong.
Hold fast, Haiti, and hold on to hope.
Here’s the first installment of the PowerBar Drive.
30 Gallons of PowerBars and misc. Energy Bars.
Love seeing the Redux service contributing to Neighborhood Impact just from what we gather meeting together on Sundays!!
Convicting stuff. He speaks Just like he writes…… you almost don’t want to read/hear what he is going to say next cause it’s gonna hurt. Bring on the hurt Chan, we all need it, I know I do.