Based on a True Story » Links

Some Posts For Bridging the Gap

Nathan Colquhoun — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:58:22 +0000

I spent some time over the last week reading all the 60 or so posts for the Synchro blog. All these bloggers came together to share their thoughts on how to bridge the gap between people of all sexual orientations and the church. You can check out the other blogs by clicking below. My Post | Blog List | Twitter Feed

Here were a few posts that stood out to me from the pack that I really enjoyed.

Deeper Moments
Sharing the Gospel in the Gay Village
Grace Unfolding
What I Learned from Kim and Luane
Confessing Assumptions About Sexual Identity :: Moving Away From Drawing Lines to Starting Dialogue
Befriending our Gay Neighbours
Sexuality Issues
Christianity and Homophobia
Paradoxy
Some Stats That are Interesting

A Few Videos

Nathan Colquhoun — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:26:17 +0000

I’ve stopped doing links on my site and moved over to Google Reader, Delicious and Twitter as a better way to share things I’m doing, reading and watching online. It’s much less time-consuming and less in your face if you aren’t interested. I’ve shared these videos via Google Reader, but I just think they are all great interviews that need to be more watched. So watch them.

Peter Rollins is obviously a gifted storyteller with great analogies and examples to help grasp what the church is called to do. This is an amazing interview.

Explaining Emergent Churches – Inner Compass from Calvin College on Vimeo.

A helpful interview to understand the difference between me and my parents, and me and most people I interact with in Sarnia all day long.
A movie that I hope to watch soon

And a movie I watched at the Justice Film Festival here in Sarnia last weekend. It was called We Feed the World, it’s mostly done in subtitles, so you don’t know what they are saying in the trailer but it is brilliant.

Links for Feb 18, 2009

Nathan Colquhoun — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:12:02 +0000

Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not “being who you are”. Great little post by Seth.

When we were in South Africa and Swaziland I was amazed at how many children and people had cell phones. One child would have no family, barely a home, but he would have a cell phone. It came across as weird at first. Some orphans were given cell phones because it was always free to receive calls without a plan or anything else, so they could send a “please call” to someone for free and then receive a call in case of emergencies. So this new direction that Bill Gates is heading in is super interesting and I think will work great. Even in the mountains of Swaziland we had cell phone access.

This looks like a hardcore app.

Oh dear. A helicopter landing pad at a church? (ht)

Tonight six of us came to the space and put up a wall that will separate the office area from the gathering area at theStory’s space. I am hoping to be able to rent out desks in the office to people downtown over time. Eventually hopefully it will also work to start to supplement some of the income for being in a place like this.

Pernell’s blog is back, I have made a rule (that only applies to him and Darryl, and possibly Joe) that their blog has to be back and working and live (without wimping out saying they aren’t into blogging) for at least one year before I put them back on my blogroll. Cause I know that’s the only reason they have a blog anyway.

Ron and I have decided that we want to go to a tech conference sometime soon. We have been to enough Christian, Bible and theology conferences and I think it’s about time that we treated ourselves with the second half of our lives. Any ideas which one we should go to?

Links for February 09, 2009

Nathan Colquhoun — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:38:12 +0000

A Tale of Two Realities by Zaya Kuyena. This was posted by my friend Zaya who has been a great supporter of our conference but shares some struggles with conferences like ours; struggles that I have but aren’t nearly as central to my heart. So this was a good post and needed.

Suggestions from the Consumer Driven Church

A biography on the Google boys (ht)

Kindle 2 was announced.

That’s all I got for today. I’ve been thinking quite a bit, but not posting at all, not sure why. I’ve been working on a few posts that I haven’t posted, and one open letter that I’ve been told on numerous occasions that I should post and also not post, still haven’t decided. We’ll see. The conference has been taking up quite a bit of time lately.

Links for February 3, 2009

Nathan Colquhoun — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:11:21 +0000

The price of experience. Really interesting observation.

New church downtown Toronto

If you are in Toronto on Feb 15, make sure you go to Love Comes Down. Click for more info. Lon is a cool guy that is really doing some great things in the Toronto area.

Offset your emissions. It sucks that once again money is the answer to everything. But if you insist on releasing that much emissions into the air on a yearly difference than you can AT LEAST try to offset it. With my car (well close enough, it didn’t have my old car listed) I could offset my emissions for driving for $186 a year. It’s a cool system and at least helps you evaluate and understand the costs of doing things we don’t really think about.

1981, before the internet….check this video out.

Cheap photobooks of your facebook photos

How Dan understands the Bible. Sounds about right where I am, but way more intense and a much better explanation. I did a long series on the Bible a few years back when I was at Tyndale and wrestling through what it was supposed to mean.

Looks like some folks will be at Cultivate this year on May 16, 2009 like Jordon from Saskatchewan and Steve from New Zealand. I usually make it to these gatherings, or at least I try to.

This month we have a party challenge for those of us at theStory. Basically its working in conjunction with the parables of the Lost Coin, Lost Sheep and the Two Lost Sons that we are studying this month.

A cool stop motion

Watched the movie called For the Bible Tells Me So. It was great.

Google’s task list in Gmail Labs is now on the G1 (and the Iphone)

The XXX Church guys are planting a church in Las Vegas. Nice work boys. I love their unique and always needed approach to the gospel.

Links for January 27, 2009

Nathan Colquhoun — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:53:22 +0000

I don’t really follow Twitter accounts. I find them annoying and usually uninformative. There are very few people in this world that I want to have minute by minute updates on their lives and none of those people use Twitter. With that being said, if people used Twitter like Leonard Sweet does, as Michelle points out, I’d be a lot more inclined to follow the feeds. Jumping into someone’s brain occasionally to see some of their questions or thoughts on situations is quite interesting. However, then it gets really annoying again when it becomes like a Facebook wall where you start posting messages to people. Jordon is now moving his Tweets to his sidebar now too, which is good, I think it’s where they belong.

I have been waiting for this for a really long time. Brilliant move and now there is seriously no reason ever for anyone ever to use Outlook. Gmail is now offline!

Sweet new website that gives you recommendations of what movies to watch by what movies you like.

Going to a show on Friday called the Where’s the Band tour. It’s all the frontmen from a few of my favourite bands and most importantly Thrice. (Dustin Kensrue of Thrice, Matt Pryor of the Get Up Kids, Chris Conley of Saves The Day and Anthony Raneri of Bayside). It’s sold out though, so you can’t go, hopefully I’ll get some nice pics.

We have finished filming our first ever commercial for this year’s Evolving Church conference, and I’m pretty pumped to get it online. Mind you we shot it ourselves with our cheap equipment, but I think its great. It should be up before the end of the week.

Gran Torino was a great movie, really enjoyed the character development. Seven pounds was also pretty good, a little predicatble but still good. Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler are the next two on my list. I’ve also just started getting into the season called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It is absolutely hilarious, a little racey, so if you are sensitive pretend I didn’t write that.

This e-mail reminds me of a lot of people. Some of those t-shirts are really hilarious though. Some….a little over the top.

Oh Mark Driscoll. Seriously, what a douche.

This weekend I was able to get OSX (or as Joe calls it, OS TEN) onto my PC using Kallyway. This is a giant step in my ultimate goal in life to prove to everyone how horrible of an investment purchasing a Mac is. If OSX will run perfectly on any laptop, it will be official that Mac users buy Macs and spend twice the money for the same speed strictly because of style and brand loyalty. I knew this was true long ago, but finally it is becoming more realistic. Plus, I’ll be able to run Final Cut on my PC now too, because none of my friends refuse to believe me that Premiere is just as good as a program, if not better in my opinion.

I’m now officially using Google Reader. Don’t know why I wasn’t before, I should have known that having it all online was a good move. Plus, now I can read it on my phone too with my Google Reader app.

We have an amazing new soup/wrap place across the street from theStory called Spoon Lickens. There is going to be 150 different soups to choose from on the take-out menu and 9 different ones each day to order. 3 of the 4 soups I’ve had were out of this world. It’s a bit pricey, but I’m pretty pumped we have another great restaurant downtown Sarnia.

I now realize that almost all my links are somehow tech related. Guess that’s just how it swings this week.

Links for January 9, 2008

Nathan Colquhoun — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:46:38 +0000

This is just wild. (ht) It’s like Jesus is saying “hey, look I know it’s supposed to cost you something to go where no one else will go, but here I’ll make it easy for you, I won’t make it cost you anything out of your pocket, just give up your life and go here, you don’t have to pay a dime” and yet, we’ll never go. We like when it costs us lots of money but nothing of our lives cause then we trick ourselves into believing that we are somehow sacrificing something.

New aggregator of sorts for posts about being missional.

I would go here just for the fun of it.

Good post and I totally understand he says, “Apparently, Christian bookstores want you to buy The Shack, but they don’t want you to “buy” The Shack, if you know what I mean. You know, like, please only “buy” it in the give-me-some-money sense.” Like seriously, I can’t stand that shit, I can’t believe a Christian bookstore would sell something they don’t believe in. How lost have we become when we start up a store to separate the good from bad so we can sell the good but then when we realize that the semi-bad makes money we can somehow settle our conscience with a sticker?

New song, good lyrics

Been listening to The Album Leaf, Band of Horses and Jeniferever lately, all new bands for me and they are awesome.

Installed this app on my G1 and it worked….guess I don’t need a blue tooth remote for Powerpoints anymore.

Tickets are on sale for the Evolving Church Conference in Oakville, Ontario, early bird rate ends soon so make sure you get your tickets.

Porn Industry Seeks Federal Bailout (ht joe)

Links for December 27, 2008

Nathan Colquhoun — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 01:12:49 +0000

The kids at theStory put together a quick video for the Christmas Eve service, it was well received and hilarious (probably mostly because they are our kids.)

Joe’s documentary was in the Observer today.

A view of alternative churches
celebrating faith
By TYLER KULA, THE OBSERVER
Joe Manafo spent 18 months travelling the country to learn how people who don’t fit into the mould of traditional Christian worship celebrate their faith.

He spent $6,000 and, with video camera, visited every province except Newfoundland and Labrador, talking with people trying to find alternatives.

“These are churches and groups that, while the message is the same, the way it’s played out is completely different than an everyday church,” he said.

The result is a 45-minute documentary called, “One size fits all?” Manafo is planning a Sarnia showing in early 2009, but the specifics haven’t been determined.

One place Manafo encountered in Kitchener put on punk, metal, country or ska concerts four nights a week to pay the bills. And there are numerous other approaches to connect with people disenchanted with traditional church models, he said.

“That’s not to say that I’m making a movie about churches that are doing things right. There’s just a different flavour, a different style. They’re doing their thing, reaching their crowd, while these other, more established, mainline churches are serving their crowds.”

The alternate churches also tend to cut through what Manafo calls “pop Christianity,” worship that is plastic, all shine and only on the surface.

“Whereas more normal, more established churches are pretty much straight up, stoic perhaps, very much locked into a pattern, these churches are very experimental in nature,” he said.

“These communities very much connect with a crowd of people that wouldn’t necessarily fit in ‘normal churches,’” he said. “And they’re learning to, I guess, express their faith . . . with God in ways that are unconventional.”

Manafo is no stranger to the short film and documentary genre. In fact, he helped organize the popular Sarnia Short Film Festival this past fall.

He is also a “church planter” and is responsible for The Story, an alternative start-up church in Sarnia on Christina Street.

For more information about

the film or travel blog visit onesizefitsall.ca.

A Small Rant for Christmas

Time picked their best 10 video games of 2008, this game called Hunted Forever made it on the top ten and it took a guy 3 weeks to make and he’s making a living from it. Awesome. You can play it for free online on the link above.

Good story to listen to especially for Christians.

Links for December 23, 2008

Nathan Colquhoun — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:23:05 +0000

The Bible & Homosexuality: Enough with the Bible Already

Kinnon on Keller on Fitch on Kimball on Missional Growth?

I really enjoyed this issue of Geez that just came out.

Phil Nellis has a bunch more artwork out. Check it out. Loved this one.

Top 100 Sites of 2008

Good gift ideas (a little to late)

I don’t think I mentioned it yet, but I got an unlocked G1 and am loving it. I moved away from the blackberry completely and got rid of the data plan which was a purposeful move to try and not stay that connected but still connected enough that I could manage the business. So you may see random links in the future about Android.

I think this may be the next lens I purchase.