Ballad of a Thin Man

I did it. I migrated to Typepad and will now blog daily at Tall Skinny Kiwi. This blog is over and will be sucked up into my new one. Thanks for coming here and especially all of you who prayed for us over the house issue and Abigail, my daughter.
Please change your link and come over to my new blog home. Its not finished yet - i was supposed to let people in Dec 1 - but what the heck - come on over! See you there!.

I was looking at TypePad as a blogging tool after seeing that Bob Carlton is using it on his most excellent looking blog. It looks like a brand new service for those who dont want to learn html. It also allows blogging from the phone (moblogging) which is cool for those of us with mms.
Pricey though!! Any comments?

While we were sleeping, someone took the radio from my van. At least they didnt smash any windows which is always a real pain.
The alarm went off the night before and i went out to find the back door open on the van. I didnt think they would come back to try again.
10 marks for persistance!
Another 10 marks for not damaging my van.
Only 3 marks for the radio - A Kenwood, yes, but 10 years old (like the van) the search function was broken.

Lots of hype (still) about blogging right now, especially among the Christian community. But also some good thinking about why we blog, like "Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds". I need to get some more thoughts down on this subject. But first I need to get my tallskinnykiwi.com web site going.
What am i waiting for?
OS 10.3 - so i can use iBlog software with my Mac and .mac account, and the RSS software.

In the meantime, i remain silent, non-blogging, but feel good that i am not clogging up the internet with unnecessary words.

Something i would like to see - is that blogs become less self-referential. Blogging about blogging is boring and blogs that link to blogs and bloggers talking about bloggers. LAME! And yet i am probably guilty also of this.

Al and Jody Smith just announced that they are closing down their great resource website called Ncubator. Too bad! Any way we can salvage it and keep it up there???? Thanks you guys for your years of effort - dont waste it!!!.
You can read one of my lame articles on their site called My Gripes About the House Church Movement

Good to see Derek and Amy's voice on next-wave > church & culture. QUOTE:
"To the “gen x” generation—“Friend, move up higher.” This is the Lord’s cry for us right now. “Friend, move up higher. I am killing the stronghold of ‘relevancy’ over you. This is a curse over your generation that has kept many of you from flying in your true selves. Break free in Me. I am ready to give you a new level of sitting at the feast—you are no longer the cynical generation sitting at the edges of the supper table. I love you and I call you Exquisite Namers; I love your subtlety and cleverness. I made you as one of the mighty generations that would express Me in ways the earth had never heard before. You will be remembered! "

The wedding of Jen and Fran, who were married by the Right Drew Rice (leather jacket wearing, harley driving pastor from Austin, Texas, who used to come out on the streets with me and hang out with street kids). Derek and Amy were there also so it was a kind of reunion for our team.
Great wedding. Congrats you guys - all God's best for your lives together. Here's my best photo:

Bruce and I are attending Fran and Jen's wedding in Sheffield today. Jen has come to our events in Austin and Prague so often that we hardly even say hello to her when we see her - more like . . "oh, you again". She ran the Odd Shaped House blog for a while but has been busy with wedding preperations and life in general. Her groom, Fran, is a good guy and we all like him, as do the Christian blogging community here in Sheffield.


We are staying with Neil and Lorna.
Interesting fact Number 1: Neill is from Akron Ohio. The night before we stayed at the Manna House (Operation Mobilisation's hospitality house) in London which is hosted from a couple from . . . Akron Ohio.
Interesting fact Number 2: The guy we met with in London was from Chattanooga, Tennessee. The couple who visited us in Prague on Friday were IMB house church starters from Chattanooga.

i just arrived in london with
bruce stuart and will be here for 2 days before heading up to sheffield for a wedding. i am seeing people on thursday in the london area. but right now, its off for curry! Great to be in England again - its been about 5 weeks since I was here last! Long time to go without a sausage roll.

My good friends at Emergingchurch.info have finally released the site,and I dont need to keep it a secret anymore. Well done guys! Pretty good for England. And for a group of missionaries - yes - these guys are CMS, old-skool-missionaries but that doesnt make them uncool in the slightest. In fact, they make a big splash at Greenbelt Festival each year and are really figuring out some of the postmodern questions as they relate to missions.
Go ahead and join the site and the discussions. I promised to write them an article a while ago but havent made good on that yet - but it will come soon. I promise.

Update on our lives. All of it GOOD:
Abigail is out of hospital. We have our little girl back.
The hospital bill is lower than quoted.
Life is moving on.
Thanks for prayers and encouragement.

Japan has been on my mind, obviously because of the 8.0 earthquake yesterday, but also because of the Japanese connections all coming together this week.
I received an email from Mika (pictured) who is involved in starting parties that turn into churches (I went to one - extremely cool and great to see so many young Japanese starting their own simple/organic churches) and Shigeru from the Japan Youth Church Network (JYCN) which just had a big planning meeting last weekend. They ask for your prayers.

Third day of being a family with diabetes. Abigail is dealing with it really well. She almost enjoys giving herself the injections. She wants to be a doctor when she grows up and has just started her training - on herself.
We are doing research on diet, lifestyle, support groups, financial help, etc. Thanks to all of you for your emails and links and stories. And for all your comforting comments on the blog 2 days ago. I will show my wife in a minute.
When we were pregnant with Abigail, our whole life changed direction. At the time, I was studying leadership development at Fuller Seminary, since I was asked by Operation Mobilization to come to the M.V.Doulos and rethink the training program. When Abigail came along, we were a family of 5 and there was no room for us on the ship. Instead, we changed plans and moved to San Francisco to work with street kids in the Haight Ashbury district. This was 1994, and our journey into postmodern subcultures and their movements would shape our ministry for years to come.
It was a joy to change plans, not an inconvenience. So when she was born we named her "Abigail", which means "Fathers joy".
God has used her to change the direction of our lives for something really good. We wont be surprised if He does it again.

Aww shucks! Modesty forbids me to even mention this. But my ego is stronger than my modesty so here we go. DJ Kenny Mitchell recorded me teaching in Japan last year and created the lead track on his new album entitled Brooklyn and Beyond. People have been saying to me "Are you the Andrew Jones on the album?" and I have been saying "Yes, but I have not heard it yet"
Until yesterday, when someone turned up with the CD and I got to play it for the first time.

REVIEW:
I REALLY LIKE THE ALBUM AND WOULD BUY IT EVEN IF MY VOICE WAS NOT ON IT!!!
IN FACT, IT MIGHT BE EVEN BETTERWITHOUT MY VOICE ON IT.
POINTS OFF FOR MY HORRIBLE VOICE WHICH HAS NOT SOUNDED GOOD EVER SINCE I RETIRED FROM USING MY OFFICIAL 'PREACHER VOICE' 10 YEARS AGO.
OTHERWISE, THE CD RULES.

Kenny was in Japan with us last year. He is a great person and musician. He even did something with Moby a few years back. I just like the guy. His church in New York is called Tribe- they are young artists mostly - and Kenny started the church a few years ago.
I used to think Kenny's music was a little too loud and brashy, a NY style drum'n'bass that was hard on my ears. But this new album is far more chilled and loungy, making it perfect for background wallpaper for parties, worship events, or digital storytelling.
If I end up teaching my "Tree By The River" movement again in the future, then i might use Kenny's track as the audio loop.
In case your interested in the actual movement, here's what I taught in Japan

We have a Scribe in our basement and his name is Sasa, or Alexander Flek. One of the problems we were having with our Landlords was over whether Sasa and his family lives with us or not. He doesn't. But he does have his office set up in our basement.
Everyday, Sasa turns up to translate the Bible into Czech. The Czechs havent had a decent translation of the Bible for a few hundred years (more actually), except for the Ecumenical version which is not satisfactory for many Czech believers. Pictured is Sasa's Song of Solomon, which they published with Chagall's excellent and passionate paintings and is now available in secular book shops around Czech Republic, along with the New Testament and the Books of Moses.
Anyway, when our Landlords and their husbands left our house a few days ago, rather than retaliating, i gave them one of Sasa's New Testaments. The oldest Landlord, and father, returned the next day to talk with Sasa.
Did you study theology?
Yes.
Do you translate from the Hebrew and Greek?
Yes
Well, he said, I started to study theology and I planned on becoming a Roman Catholic priest.

And then they had a great conversation on spiritual things
Who would have thought? Those of you who were praying that God would use the bad situation for good . . . . well. . . there ya go!

Abigail, our 8 year old daughter, was admitted to hospital today. She has been sick and has been losing weight. The doctors have said she has has diabetes.
So our family is now on a new journey together and talking about all the changes in our family routine and diet. We have much to learn.
Abigail is taking it well. She wants to be a doctor when she gets older and out of all our kids, she is probably more geared up to administer medicine to herself and take this bad news than the others.
We are scanning the internet for information on living with Diabetes. Abagail gets out of hospital in a week and we need to be ready to start a different lifestyle with her.
Insurance? Diabetes is not covered for foreigners here anyway. The doctors are looking for us but are not hopeful.
We bought Abigail some nice slippers for her hospital stay, and a robe/dressing gown.
Poor Abigail.

Thanks for all your prayers. Especially Anita Roach. One of the Landlords came back today and apologized. We couldnt believe it!! He shook our hands, told us that we were right - the heaters really do fall off the wall because of the faulty construction of the house and not the children. And they agreed that Sasa, the Scribe in our basement, really doesnt live here with all his kids and wife.
Great.
They also offered to fix the broken heaters in time for winter and to fix the electricity which had just cut off the first level of the house, leaving us with no power to run our conputers. AND, they even offered to pay for the repairs with their own money- which will be the first time i havent had to pay myself. A miracle indeed.
What does this mean?
It means we could probably stay longer in the house, but we still do not have much security. Or in other words, I probably cant plan any training events for the house next year and we are still looking to buy a big house to house the ministry and community. We have seen huge houses for only $30, 000 outside the city.
Anyway, thanks all for your prayers - yes - it was a spiritual attack, and yes, God has turned it to good.

Our meeting with the Landlords went terrible. They want their house back. They dont like the idea of us having so many people in the house. We were told that we should be looking for another house. Not easy for us right now. We are a community of 14 people and are quite settled here, even though people have been telling us we will be moving soon (the prophetic types were telling us this for a while so we were already prepared).
The families here are upset. The Landlords were mean, cruel and insulting. They verbally abused our wives and were nasty to our children. They said that they dont like Americans. They dont like colors on the wall (we warned them we would paint colors) and they dont like kids.
Most Czechs are not like this - in fact, our Landlords have also been abusive to our Czech friends, which has been embarrassing and degrading to us.
I suppose God will use this to get us into the next place and the next stage in our lives, but for the moment we are all a little bruised, vulnerable, beaten up, and "frazzled" as Bruce put it. Its a low point in our lives- and we could use some prayer for encouragement and to see with God's eyes, and to feel good about what God has called us into.
And I think if we want to continue hosting missionaries and being a monastic community and resourcing God's work from a house environment, then we probably need to own a house rather than rent.
Sorry to bum you all out. But thats whats going on here right now.

My poor old 1984 Volvo got taken away today. Some junk dealers offered to tow it for nothing so it is gone for good. The mighty blue Volvo costs me 200 pounds a few years ago in England and it served us well.

Our Landlords are visiting us today for a “meeting”. I hope we dont get kicked out! One of the problems may be that we currently have a hippie living in a tent in our back yard. Eric often stops in here on his way to the Rainbow Festivals or back to his base in Israel. We met him when we were living in San Francisco and he lived in Santa Cruz, working with The Prodigal Project. We were both doing ministry with subcultures and our paths crossed. That was about 6 years ago, and our paths are still crossing. At the moment, he is mowing our back yard where his tent it.

Eric was the star cook at our Gospel Brunch last Sunday, which we held in our house. He brought some sage back from Mt Carmel (where Elijah had his run-in with the false prophets) and made us all an incredible biscuits and gravy – a magical/mystical brunch that may never be repeated.
I was tempted to ask him to move his tent away and stay somewhere else for a few nights, for the sake of our Landlords. But my wife encouraged us to stay integral, to be who we are, and to let our lives be visible in all their chaotic complexity.
The fact is, we have a lot of people staying with us and some of them look pretty alternative. Like Eric with his funny clothes and the dreadlocks tied up in a ponytail. He prefers his tent to a room. He is really different. But he also holds the same value system as thousands of young Phish fans/Rainbow kids/Dreadies/Deadheads/Hippies/Whatever you want to call them. And when he tells them about Jesus, they listen.
Eric is 42 years old and has nothing of material value. He spends what he makes from selling his hats on getting to where God wants him to be. Most 42 year olds I know are too busy making a buck and getting ready for a retirement of golf and RV’ing to drop whatever they have and fly off with God. True, he doesn’t have a family and that makes him more flexible.
But I do admire the guy. He has earned his stripes. He can pop up his tent in our backyard anytime.