Synergy evening on film and human relationships!

The next Synergy Evening is scheduled for this coming Friday, 16 May with an emphasis on film.

Lars Johansson, teacher in Philosophy and Religion at Örebro Theological Seminary, will speak about films that help us understand human relationships. You and your friends are invited for discussion and mingling!

Lars also serves as the Director of “Forum for Faith, Culture, and Society,” which publishes the cultural magazine Nod and also facilitates the Nod Academy, which specializes in distance-learning dealing with contemporary issues and Christian faith. Lars teaches on films in lectures and courses and has also assisted in publishing the book, Film and Religion (Cordia, 2005).

Entrance is free, and fika is for sale in our café.

Note: The seminar will be held in Swedish!

The café opens at 7 pm with the seminar starting at 7.30. Time will be allotted for questions, discussion, and mingling afterwards.

//The Synergy Team – Organized by New Life Church and Powerplay

The next Synergy conference will take place 14 -16 November 2008, watch the Synergy “teaser” for the coming conference here!

A view from the pew (1) – a collection of digital post-its

1. Again another Jesus film, this time from the Muslim camp. Nader Talebzadeh, an Iranian movie director, has been 10 years in the making of a new film “based on the Islamic version of the life of Jesus, depicting the man Christians believe to be the messiah and son of God as a tormented Judean prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim faith. See the film clips: check it out! Read more about the actor on BABYLON & BEYOND BLOG: A Muslim actor as Jesus Christ
2. Next week, May 8, 60 years of Israel’s independence. There is little cheer among its Arab citizens
3. Where is our world on its way? A closer look to the TIME magazine top 100 people (shows that the entertainment industry has taken over completely! TIME asked who you thought should be on the list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Over 200 candidates were given a rating of 1 to 100. And people’s #1 choice? Shigeru Miyamoto! The video game designer had almost 2 million votes, over 300,000 more than runner-up, Rain. After a tight race at the top, Stephen Colbert came in third place with close to 900,000 votes.
4. TIME also invited graphic artists to create a top 100 front page for their magazine, here are their 5 top picks: check it out!
5. Religion a figment of human imagination. “‘Humans alone practice religion because they’re the only creatures to have evolved imagination.’ That’s the argument of anthropologist Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists.”
6. Sweden: Finally; refugees in hiding get subsidized healthcare!
7. What’s on in Sweden misses one of the greatest events of this month in the capitol city: the Jesus manifestation starting tomorrow…. I will be there will you?

Just some short digital post-its!

See you soon (tomorrow?)

John

The church as we know it today will not survive the next decade and… the Synergy network continues to develop…

The Christian Daily called Dagen addressed the development of the Synergy concept and network in their paper. Yesterday night the time had come to start a series of seminars organized by the Synergy workgroup. Approximately 60 people came to listen to Andrew Redman who addressed Powers of Invention.

Unfortunately I was not able to stick around to get an idea how the seminar was received by the participants since I had to leave to catch up with some sleep to be able to get up at 4.00 am to catch my flight at the Arlanda airport to Kopenhagen where pastors Ulf and Jörgen picked me up by car to bring me back to Sweden to preach in their church in Kristiansstad and to meet with their leadership team and board. (What a way to get to church: with our car to the airport, to Danmark, to Sweden to…. And back) During the 1,5 hour trip we talked about the development of the Church in Sweden and soe of the challenges they faced.

I was warmly welcomed by many members of the church and found the very interesting phenomenon of an older, changing local church in a town with 70,000 people. The changes which are taking place in their church are the kind that are close to my heart; from a rather homogeneous more typical Swedish Free Church, they find themselves challenged and enriched by the growing presence of many immigrants and “New Swedes”. The congregation is slowly moving into becoming a multi-cultural church.

Praise God! My deep inner conviction is that most of our churches today should be multi-cultural churches to reflect the reality of the society in which we live. If we only reflect the “like children play best scenario” how can we ever be regarded a trust worthy and relevant church in our nation? I was so happy to find out about this church and it was a privilege to be with them and to encourage them to continue the way they were going. Hopefully wil they become a source of life to other new church plants in the near future?

My prayer and hope is that more churches will be able to allow themselves to face this kind of challenges and dare to wrestle wit the consequences of being Church today in 2008. Because let’s be honest: the church as we know of today (like-minded, middle class Svensson church) will not survive the next decade unless it quickly adjusts to the reality of society and the Mission of Jesus in our days!

That’s the Way I see it!

John

A foretaste of the coming Synergy conference in New Life!

A conference on the Arts in Stockholm Sweden, November 14-16, 2008

Check the website: synergy