Emerging Church update (3)

I'm catching up with developments and blogs on the emerging church. Here's a third selection of what I liked (click on the headings for the full report):

Apostles Church: A new faith community on a spiritual journey. "Our cause and deepest passion is to attend to the kingdom within community, as friends of God and followers of Jesus Christ."

The shape of Future Church: An interesting article by Pete Phillips in which he questions the role of church buildings. The future shape of church then has to be fundamentally community, or even better - family.

Motivation or manipulation?: A passionate post from Mark Barkaway on how engaging in community transformation can become manipulative if it's just the clothes hiding an agenda to convert people... Some folks act as 'Vampire Christians' (a Dallas Willard phrase - Christians who are only interested in the blood of Jesus). They are involved in their communities in order to see their churches increase. Good quote: "Our faith is our motivation, not our hidden agenda."

The Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project: Mark Yaconelli and his team have experimented in introducing spiritual practices to youth ministers and groups in North America, and the results unsurprisingly have been transformative. A great resource site.

Network Logic: A collection of essays by leading thinkers on networks.