I just checked out the blog of Steve, who I met in Ljubljana back in August. He's from Oz, but has been working in London - computing - for a while before embarking on a pretty crazy trip through Europe and now the Middle East. I was interested to see he's visited Beirut, Lebanon.

click here to watch Jack Johnson's 'Taylor' vid.

Don't forget, tomorrow is...

I've finally just finished A New Kind of Christian - an interesting book that lays out all the ideas that we've been grappling with over the last few years. It's interesting how there's so much quoting of CS Lewis.

Been loving The Mars Volta - real interesting dose of post hardcore. Also in the cd player are Athlete and The Clash...good stuff.

Lads Lebanese Night

Doing the Stuff 2003 (a report)
This weekend eight of us went to Doing the Stuff, a conference hosted by Trent Vineyard, Nottingham at their new Warehouse. The format of the conference ran like this: in the mornings and evenings there was singing, teaching and ministry, while in the afternoons everyone went out to ‘do the stuff’ on the streets of Nottingham. The projects involved everything from healing people on the streets, to gardening, to painting and giving out toiletries to homeless people. I was on a team building a patio for the young people of a small youth club. >>click here to read more

Solitude
Our leaders group have been discussing a Henri Nouwen article on Solitude. He talks of solitude being the starting point, before community and before ministry. In solitude we learn that we are beloved and therefore don't spend our time in community seeking that affirmation from those around us. We don't try to meet legitimate needs by illegitimate means.

This got me thinking about how much of my time I spend concerned about what others think of me. How much of my interaction with others is focussed on manipulating the image they have of me. Why do I worry so much about this image they have of me?

This is something I'm going to have to continue pondering and praying through.

Thanks to Jon Franklin I've made some progress on the 'drinks distribution backpacks.' These Jetpacks would be a great tool for servant evangelism.

Alternatively, I've just found a link via servantevangelism.com that is cheaper [click here]

Lust Actually
Jon and Cathy had free tickets to see Love Actually and since Cathy was away visiting her sis, Jon and I went. I wasn't impressed. It relied on the pretence that what you define as love is just physical attraction. Character development was minimal. A shallow film whose only redeeming feature was Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister dancing around no. 10 (says it all really).

We're off to Doing the Stuff on Thursday afternoon. Ele Mumford, Carl M and John Wright are doing the teaching. In the afternoons we're hitting Nottingham for some practical expressions of Jesus' love to the community. Should be ace.

I'm staying with Chris, who I've been friends with since school. It'll be great to catch up.

Sunday night we had a visit from Baby Jacob and his mum Jill. It was funny because everyone became broody at the sight of this little 8 week old baby.

The Faculty of Jon (/John)
About 5 months ago I said to some of those around me "isn't it bizarre how in our community we haven't got any doubles of names yet?" Since then 3 other Jons have come to be part of us!

So Friday night saw our first gathering of Johns. We got pizza and watched the first of the Die Hard trilogy. It was great when we arrived at Dominoes, ordered our food and they said 'what's the name?' and we kind of simultaneously went "Johns." There was a couple there with the (sur) name Jones and it got kind of confusing when the guy called out "pizza for Jones" (in an eastern accent).

We christened ourselves the 'Faculty of Jon' because Jon Matthias noticed that we each had different areas of expertise, from Politics to Theology. One of the rules is that there has to be a Jon or John link in any film we watch.

I just returned from watching Matrix Revolutions. I wasn't really all that satisfied with the conclusion. As with the last one, too much emphasis on effects. Oh, and if you want fighting - go see Kill Bill vol 1!

Does anyone who reads this know where I could get hold of some portable coffee dispenser backpacks? Preferably in the UK? (the image I have in my mind is of a tank that you wear on your back that has a water gun attached, so that you can dispense coffee to people easily)

[photo removed - too scary!] Norman Doe is my tutor for Comparative Law of Religion. He has an interesting story of how the course came to be. Back in the 1500s, Henry VIII banned the teaching of Canon law, which at the time was Roman Catholic law.

It wasn't until 1991 that Norman looked around the educational establishments in the UK only to discover that there was no one teaching in this field. So he started an LLM, which allowed all the people who work with English Canon law to learn about their field.

(updated on 13.01.04 thanks to Noel Cox)

Yesterday something happened to me that I had heard of, but never experienced. I was walking along the street, on my way to the train station, when these two Londoners in a white van called me over and offered me some of their 'spare speakers' from a delivery they had just made. I declined their invitation.

I've been listening to Beth Orton's Daybreaker and all I can say is that I'm deeply disappointed. She does get an awful lot of attention in these parts and she does have a great voice, but I can't stand her pet-shop-boys-esque backing music. Sorry Beth.

"84 percent of women believe in God, compared with 73 percent of men..." (linked from tsk)

Check out Andrew Jones' new blog...click here

Last week was a bit crazy. I discovered that my plans for next year were not likely to teach me the things I thought they might and that I'd better get back to the drawing board. I guess this is a good thing because it means God has something else up his sleeve.

The weekend was pretty Busy, with Jonny Danger and I preparing a talk on the Spiritual Disciplines for Sunday night. It was a pretty good opportunity to play with the group interaction, rather than the trad. Didactic teach.

+ Lord thank you that you know what I'm to do when my course finishes, thank you that you know what I'll be doing for the rest of my life. Give me peace in that.

Best of Googlisms for 'Jonathan Morgan':

jonathan morgan is more than glad to help her out
jonathan morgan is a snot
jonathan morgan is among the worlds top 6% brightest children in mathematics and problem solving
jonathan morgan is on the loose
jonathan morgan is probably the most versatile guy
jonathan morgan is puffy
jonathan morgan is secretively huge
jonathan morgan is obviously having more fun
jonathan morgan is witty and insightful about the making of the film
jonathan morgan is one of the least "watchable" men in porn today
jonathan morgan is an expert at "fung goo
jonathan morgan is the funniest guy in the industry