When I was at the Everything Must Change Tour, I got the chance to speak with Samir Selmanovic. I’ve run across Samir’s writings before, as he has a chapter in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope entitled “The Sweet Problem of Inclusiveness: Finding Our God in the Other.” He’s also currently working on a book for Baker Books entitled Losing My Religion and Finding the Kingdom of God.” Samir is beginning a faith community in Manhattan called Faith House Manhattan. I got a chance to speak with Samir about the community a little bit, and found his hopes for the community incredibly inspiring and hopeful myself. The mission of Faith House Manhattan is below:
OUR MISSION: We want to start a new kind of community in which we can discover The Other (individuals or groups other than those we belong to), deepen our personal and corporate journeys, and together participate in repairing the world. In this endeavor we will honor and learn from teachings, practices, and suffering of people from religions, philosophies, and worldviews, different from our own. Instead of isolating ourselves into like-minded groups or melting together into a single-minded organization, we will learn to live together with our differences and in a way that contributes to the wellbeing, peace, joy, and justice in the world. In this endeavor we will always be a courageous, hospitable and learning community.
I think this is a beautiful portrait of the kingdom of God and I only wish I lived in Manhattan and could take part in such an experiment. Certainly it will not be without its own challenges and difficulties, but what a wonderful possibility for community, hope and working together for the kingdom. Of course, Samir and this faith project will obviously (and unfortunately) be criticized by folks like those at Apprising Ministries, but I hope they are able to find encouragement within their community and from those who aren’t able to be a part of the community but support their goals of learning from the other, deepening their lives and healing the world.
A friend of mine is walking in the AIDS Walk NY with a team called Supersnack. Last year, Supersnack raised $33,091 and this year they’re hoping to raise $50,000. One of the ways that they’re raising money is by hosting a benefit show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple on May 16th. Their show has quite the line-up, including The Mountain Goats, John Oliver (The Daily Show), Rock Plaza Central, Dave Hill (Comedy Central, UCB) and more special guests as well. 100% of the proceeds will go to benefit AIDS Walk NY. More details on the show can be found at Supersnack.org.
If you’re not able to go to the show, but you’d like to contribute to walk, you can do so by supporting my friend here or you can support the team generally here.
I think I’m supposed to be looking on Craigslist right now for apartments, but I’m experiencing a bit of information overload. I know we’re not the first people to have to find an apartment from across the country, but it sure is a difficult process. We are hoping to try and find a place in the Berkeley area (which also includes Emeryville, Oakland, Alameda, etc.) this weekend when we’re out there for my job interview. But it seems to be a very daunting task.
As I mentioned in a previous post, we don’t want to find a place that’s where all the other white, middle-class folk live. I’m not interested in finding a gated, apartment complex, or living in a homogeneous neighborhood. I want to be able to live with and learn from people of other backgrounds and life-experiences. But, we also know that we want to live somewhere that’s safe. Safe. What exactly does “safe” mean? I guess, at first, I think I want to be in a place that seems “safe” enough to walk Sadie around the block late at night. “Safe” enough that we can feel fine about coming home late at night and walking from the car (wherever we have to park it) to our home. But, my friend Charlietwittered a good question to me re: the idea of a neighborhood as “safe.” He wrote (or tweeted): “Depends on your definition of ’safe.’ After all the suburbs can be dangerous to our souls, right?”
So, all good things to think about. So far we have four appointments at apartments/duplexes for this weekend, assuming they are still available. Right now, I have a favorite but don’t want to get my hopes up too high. If anyone has done this before - gotten an apartment through Craigslist - any advice would be very much appreciated. If we could find a place this weekend - that would be ideal - but we also don’t want to be pressured into any place.
As some of you know, Sarah and I met at a conference put on by the Fund for Theological Education (FTE) because we were both Ministry Fellows. I follow what’s happening at FTE for a variety of reasons, including the fact that my face is somewhat plastered all over their website and because I’m always interested in free money from Lilly. I recently had a conversation with the Director of Communications, Kerry Traubert. They are opening up a new position at FTE (which is based in Atlanta) and are currently looking for an Editor for Web, Print and New Media Communication. If you are possibly interested in this position, you can view and download the job description here.
I’ve been hearing about the Envision Conference through quite a few friends recently. You can find out information about the event here, but it is going to be at Princeton University June 8-10 and it has an amazing lineup of speakers who will be there, including Shane Claiborne, Brian McLaren, Kay Warren, Miroslav Volf, Jay Bakker, Bart Campolo, Rich Cizik, John Perkins, Jim Wallis and many more. What is unique about this conference is the desire of the planning team to seek out speakers and practitioners from an incredible diversity of denominations, political persuasions, ethnicities - folks from the far right, far left and everywhere in between. It looks like they are offering an early-bird price of $49 (I think there are only 10 spots left at this price - then it jumps to $249). This would be an incredible deal - something that you wouldn’t want to miss if you are in the area.
They are also hosting an online dialog May 12-14 to help create a vision statement, “Envision the Future: The Next Decade.” The following information is from the Envision planning team:
You can register now here to participate! You can help set directions for change with JUST TWO HOURS, of your time - even if you cannot attend the conference June 8-10, Envision: the Gospel, Politics, and the Future.
You can log in from anywhere in the world and discuss the issues we must push for in the next ten years. Don’t delay, register today!
I just signed up for Revolution MoneyExchange (HT: Josh Brown) - which is very similar to PayPal, although it doesn’t charge any fees - which is really nice. I haven’t played around with it a lot yet tonight, but the only thing I notice is that, unlike PayPal, if you want to send or receive money, you need to have a Revolution MoneyExchange account. It’s in the BETA stage right now, but they are offering a free $25 if you start up an account (I just signed up and instantly received my $25). If you sign up by clicking on the image below, it’s true that I will receive $10, but I will be giving some of that to Josh’s Indian Taxi Fund, and some of it will probably be used to help move us across the country in about 3 weeks.
This past weekend, I was able to participate in the Everything Must Change (EMC) Tour, held at the Latino Pastoral Action Center in South Bronx. We had a few folks from the Princeton cohort who went up for the weekend, and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves. It was a great 2-day event, and there were people there from Jersey, Manhattan, some folks from the UK, a guy from Puerto Rico, folks from other areas of the East, and quite a few of the local, indigenous leadership from the South Bronx. The Latino Leadership Circle was the main host for the event, so we had a lot of interaction with the local Latino/a leadership - which was great. The local leaders blessed us with a unique perspective, challenged many of us who were not from the area, and shared their gifts with us. One of the women connected with the Latino Pastoral Action Center is really gifted in a form of spoken word they call “flo-etry” and she shared with us twice. I was able to capture a portion of the first time, and you can listen to it here.
I had some good conversations with folks who I met at the conference, including with Doug Wysockey-Johnson, who heads up the Faith@Work, and Samir Selmanovic, who is the Program Coordinator for a new faith community called Faith House Manhattan (I will share more of what they’re doing in a few days).
So, I’m twittering again. I tried it about six months ago, and it really only lasted for a weekend before I quit. I still don’t know that I totally get why Twitter has become so popular, but there are enough people who I respect and enjoy hearing from who are using it, I thought I’d give it a chance again. So, I’m now using Twitter to update my Facebook status, which also goes onto my blog. I am also using Twitterific 3.1, which I’ve enjoyed playing with. It is interesting to kind of get multiple updates on what people I like and am interested in are doing throughout their day, and it does seem as though it is a way to get random questions answered quickly and hear about news sooner.
So it’s been a week since I’ve started - and so far I’m enjoying it. I think I’ll last a little bit longer than last time. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow me by checking out my Twitter page here or grab my Twitter RSS feed here.
TiVo has been a great thing over the past year since we’ve had it. It’s been great to be able to watch the shows/movies we want on our own schedule without the commercials. While I was skeptical that we were actually saving any time when we first got TiVo (because there was so much more to watch now!), I think it has helped in that regard as well. But I just found out today (thanks to Andrew) that there is a Mac OS X Dashboard Widget you can download that connects TiVo to your Mac and you can even download your TiVo recordings to your Mac. They are pretty big files, but it could still be pretty handy. If you want to try it out, here is what you need to do:
Install the widget and follow the instructions for getting your TiVo’s IP address and MAK (Media Access Key)
Try downloading a show (e.g. a 30min Colbert Report took up about 500mb)
In order to play the downloaded file, you’ll most likely need to download a different media player. I suggest downloading the VLC media player here
Open up your downloaded TiVo show in VLC (one thing you’ll probably have to change is the Video Aspect-ratio; under the Video Menu, select the Aspect-ratio that looks the best)
The National Coordinator of Emergent Village, Tony Jones, will be hanging out with the Princeton Emergent Cohort tonight at T.G.I. Friday’s (in Princeton’s Market Fair Mall) at 8pm. Come spend a few hours with us and hear Tony discuss his new book, The New Christians, as well as hear about the current “state of Emergent/emergence.”
May 8, 2008 
Posted in Emergent, Ministry, Theology | 
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Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 year old 
