Categories
Life(style)

Toilet-Twinning

Check out “ToiletTwinning.org

For just £60 you can twin your toilet at home, work or school with a latrine in Burundi. Your smallest room will be twinned exclusively with your own individual latrine in the remote Giharo Commune of Rutana Province. Only your toilet will be twinned with that particular latrine.You can even locate your twin deep in the African bush via Google Earth!
A suggestion: From We Are What We Do. Put a money pot on top of your toilet, and spend a penny every time you spend a penny!
For fun: check out the “toilet-shaped house
Idea picked up from talk from Greenbelt 2009 by Euginie Harvey.
Categories
Life(style)

Greenbelt 2009

I had a great time at Greenbelt, and it was nice to get away and do something different! I spend quite a lot of time at academic conferences, so I didn’t go to a huge number of talks, as I knew I could get most of them (well, I thought all, but the above is awaiting Rob Bell producing his own similar video, so not included) online afterwards, so I wanted to do some practical stuff!
Video Footage
I decided to try out taking some video footage with my camera (Panasonic Lumix 10 x zoom, was great for travelling, but I never used the video footage much!)… apologies if it wobbles, is the wrong way up, etc… it was all a bit experimental!

Art SessionsNext year I plan to return and do a whole load more of this!

This year, I was one of around 300+ people to download the Greenbelt Festival iPhone app. This was great whilst my phone was charged, but every time it went down I didn’t know what was going on. Greenbelt do have a charging station (charged for!), and occasionally I found plug points, and generally found it pretty helpful, but next year I’d like to have a wind up charger – suggestions?!
Order your tickets by 30th November to get 20% discount!

Other Blogs:
Feel free to add more to the comment feed – Facebook groups, blogs, any which way the community is growing!
Categories
Reviewer

[Book Review] Mark Greene ‘Thank God It’s Monday’

greeneI first heard of LICC (the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity) at Greenbelt in 2005. I’d been doing a lot of thinking about whether I should be doing ’more Christian’ work. I was particularly struggling as I was finding my job job in Manchester deeply unfulfilling. I picked up a few pamphlets, then when I was at a friend’s I saw this book, and have since read the whole thing through., been to a few LICC events, including sessions for practical re-thinking of a career, and a week-long ‘Toolbox’ course, designed to ‘equip’ us in line with the LICC vision:

The UK will be transformed when the Church envisions and equips ‘ordinary’ men and women to make a difference where we are, where we spend most of our time, where we have most of our relationships, where others can see the difference Christ makes in our lives at work, university, with our neighbours, etc.

The LICC believes in the concept of ‘FTCW (Full-Time-Christian-Worker), and therefore focuses on keeping whole-life discipleship central to UK church life (where 24/7 offers a context for worship, mission, ministry, and active Christian engagement).

P132: God is our real boss: Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24

Greene has a great writing/speaking style – very self-deprecating – engaging, serious and humorous all at once. Many amusing stories – and when we think that this guy is essentially a famous evangelist now, it’s encouraging to hear of his issues (p53):

Clumsy for Christ

Five of us were on a two-day trip out of town. Surely, with all that time, God would give me the opportunity to share something with someone. No opportunity came, or at least none that I could see. The time came to fly home.

The client and I decided to work together on the place. So, briefcase in hand, I negotiated my way into the window seat. As I lifted my case over the seat-rest, the lid came open and out tumbled about 20 small orange booklets … ‘Oh no’, I thought.

Twenty copies of a tract called ‘The Four Spiritual Laws’ scattered all over the floor and on the seats in front of me and my client. I felt like a teenager caught with some improper publication. I bent to pick them up.

Then the worst thing that could have happened did happen.

The client said ‘What are those?’

‘Er… they’re booklets that explain the main points about Christianity’

I waited for a look of embarrassment. Or perhaps pity. Or discomfort.

‘Oh, that’s interesting’, she said, with a genuinely interested and open expression on her face. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently. Could I have a look?’

Prepared for use as an Oak Hall Leader.