Movie Presentation this Sunday at 4 PM: Marjoe

David, our pastor, sent out the following email to Everyone mailing list CLICK HERE TO JOIN

I wanted to let you know that this Sunday at 4 PM, Nameless Church will be showing the 1972 Academy Award Winning Movie "Marjoe" at the Soda Shop located at the corner of 20th and Main Streets, in Downtown Vancouver, WA.

Marjoe Gortner is a former revivalist who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four, and then outright notoriety in the 1970s when he starred in this Oscar-winning, behind-the-scenes documentary about the lucrative business of Pentecostal preaching.

Here is a link to a interesting article I came across about Marjoe and
Evangelism as Entertainment:

http://www.sarahkernochan.com/documentaries/christiancentury.html

I remember very well when this movie came out as I was 12 years old at the time. I was forbidden from watching it. It was not until my mid 20's when I finally first watched it and it became one of my favorite movies. Right up there with Lord of Rings and Star Wars. At least to me.

The Soda Shop, Pop Culture, is offering a special box lunch/dinner for $5 for this event which includes a sandwich, chips and your choice of a bottled gourmet soda pop. When it comes to Soda Pop you name it and they have it. I think they have over 300 sodas. At least that is what some sign says there. You don't have to buy a thing to come for the movie. It is totally and completely free.

For our regular Nameless Ones reading this email, please remember that we meet for Coffee and open discussion at 10:30 AM and our Teaching time begins promptly at 11 AM each Sunday. In our new format, one may stay only for the time of Teaching or one may come only for the Music, or one may come for both. if you have not made it to a service in a while you are missed and you are welcome.

Creative Expression (which may or may not always include Music---Lord please give us Poets and Painters and Dancers and everything else in your Heart for us to have) follows our time of teaching each week. It is really like 2 "mini" services then rolled into one. I just can't always say for sure when the time of Creative Expression will start each week. Probably around 11:45 but not later than 12 Noon, plus or minus.

I will see you then on Sunday and if you are involved in your own Faith Community on Sunday Mornings, I encourage you to be our guest this week for the Movie at 4 PM.

A final reminder. There is one faith, one family and one hope in Christ alone. We are all in this together. The Church is never us and them. It is just us and us.



David Knudtson
Nameless Church

For more information, please see our website's Contact Us page.

Updates!

Starting tomorrow we are meeting in the mornings. We started in the morning, tried evenings, and now we're back! We will finish our setup and sound checks by 10:30 AM so that we can enjoy free coffee, time with friends, or time to relax from 10:30 - 11 AM.

Synaxis, our worship service, will start promptly at 11 AM. Monday movie nights are off the calendar for now.

Please join us!

-Jeffrey

Community Anywhere

I just spent a week in a psych ward. Not exactly what I was expecting at this moment in my life. Actually, it wasn't exactly anticipated ever. I mean I'm part of two churches, I have a full time job, I go to school. I guess that doesn't matter when it comes to mental health. I'm reminded of watching David do a silly interpretive dance to "I faked it well, I faked it often... you're never fooled, you get through to me..." Well the getting through was tough, but eventually enough friends recommended I check myself in and I eventually gave in. Many thanks to all who bore with me through a week of mania. I don't think I really lost a single friend, even though I was more than obnoxious. I am sure that I really did scare some of you, for which I sincerely apologize. But none of you seemed to take it personally and you loved me right into the hospital, of my own free will.

What I experienced was amazing. The staff was friendlier, the food better, and the activities more fun than expected. But it was still an adult inpatient program, and for the most part all those things sucked. What blew my hair back in a good way were the other patients. I expected crazies, wackos, nuts, people completely too far gone. And maybe a normal person or two, like me of course. But what I got to be a part of was a special community. Orphans and aliens, wanderers and fools, and we were all in it together. I bonded with several people in particular, and we would look out for the newcomers and make sure no one was lacking a friend. I tried to follow the lead of a couple amazing people who had already been there a little while before me. It reminded me a lot of my attempts to copy Ken every Sunday at HomePDX, encouraging community and relationship in spite of certain social abnormalities.

I saw the patients being Jesus to each other every day. And I tried my hardest to follow suit. I even tried to show off one day and play the piano for everyone, but it was more fun relaxing and playing old hymns and hearing everyone sing along than it was trying to play anything that I had written. There were a couple people interested in visiting Nameless, and a couple more interested in checking out HomePDX. And I hope I see these friends again, but if I don't, I'm sure they will keep doing what they do wherever they go. I feel like I lost a lot of my cynicism this week. And I feel a lot more hopeful about the kingdom of God in the here and now on this earth, and I feel more confident in those around me to be hands and feet of a body that doesn't need a building or a schedule or an agenda or even a pastor.

I don't really know how to end this. I'm not trying to motivate anyone to do anything different. I just wanted to share my experience. And I just want to keep trying to follow in Jesus' footsteps, as trite as that may sound. And the only law I want to live by is the law of love, no matter where I am or how many crazies are around me. Because I'm probably the craziest and most delusional person that I know, and still I get to experience love. It blows my mind.

Crisis Services - Clark County

If you're in Clark County and are concerned about someone's well-being (yours or someone you know), please call Crisis Services at (800) 626-8137 or (360) 696-9560. If you are having an emergency, call 911.

More information can be found at their website:

http://www.co.clark.wa.us/mental-health/services/crisis.html

Giving

As we enter the season of mass consumerism, I'm finding myself drawn to Matthew 25. I wonder why it's so difficult to find peace in tithing, giving change to the homeless, and generally showing love to those who could use a kind word. I can often open up, either financially or with words, but sometimes I keep myself shut up.

I hope that this short post might start a dialog. Interested? Post a comment.

Matthew 25:45

And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

-Jeffrey

Dan Wyatt, reader of blogs, metablogger

Many write a blog these days.  Lo, even the very housewives and stay at home moms who many assume (wrongly) wouldn't spare such time for something considered so cultured or intellectual or "with it."  As a stay at home dad I am remiss for not having a blog of my own.  It's all the rage (to use a passe colloquialism only worthy of a blog, parenthetically speaking { I do that a lot [ it's a problem really ( I'm seeking help ) ] } ) these days.  For they say (more on they in a moment) real writers don't reach out and spew the mundane, such as a blog entry about blogging such as this.  Well at least the invitation over there to the right of this entry said I could be mundane so I feel validated. Would you perhaps allow me the opportunity to dumb it down a bit more and betray my Texas roots and call it bloggin'?  I gave up fishin' and never was into huntin' so here I go a bloggin', a meta-bloggin' if you will. 

They say "... who the hell are "they" anyways?  You know they that say "the eyes are the window to the soul?" (Shouldn't it be windows?) That factoid is always attributed to they. Like they has so much credibility. I say to heck with they.  Bloggers know the shit, and their blogs are the window(s) to the soul.  Here's another one they say.  The average readership of any given blog is one. One! Does that include proof reading?  Is is really more like zero?  

Well Sir (or Ma'am) I am in support of the stay at home whatever they are, the unemployed, the struggling artist/writer with no other financially remunerated venue (I support me!), the bored, the almost literate/web literate with some time to kill, the pundit, the mused, the amused and the amusing, the jackkerouacwannabestreamofconsciousness writer with no continuous roll of paper, but continuous amount of drivespace - how po-mo, oh and the ranter. Let's not forget them.  Notice I left out the overly political ranter? If I were a hip blogger I would have called them politicos, but I am not. Anyhoo, I do not favor them for politics are a bore and useless to me as a problem solver.  Well sometimes it's ludicrous and funny and therefore a satire of itself, meta-politics. Some exceptions apply*. I guess I would support the apolitical ranter too (I support me some more!). 

Are blogs for solving problems anyway? Preaching/teaching? Or just for dialoguing with that one other reader or for the really cynical, your own self.  Really? That seems as crazy as talking to one's self out loud.  Don't you think? Yes I do. No, I don't. Shutup you, no one cares what you think, go write a blog or something!

In any event from this season forward I will attempt to commit myself to only occasionally bloggin' a meta-blog or two.  For I want to be a reader of blogs because like stay-at-home-dads, there ain't enough of us.  I want to attempt to raise awareness and average readership of blogs to at least two! Why not? Dream big. Join me won't you? Hello, anyone there?

Here are some I recommend:

- this one (namelesschurch.blogspot.com)

            but your reading it already - the metablogger strikes again! zuh-ha!

- lifegoesonintehran.com* 

            i have only met the guy once, but dang if he doesn't write a blog that is a diamond in the 

            rough.  Great formating, short and sweet, and photos with every thought to boot.

- dglee.blogspot.com 

            one of my best good friends, who I often vehemently disagree with, but find him 

            insightful non the less. Good show ole boy!

- http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.Confirm&friendID=1267546 

            yes it's via his myspace page (Scott will always kick it sorta old skool as well as new) 

    so you may have to add him as a friend, but he's a good one to have. One of the 

    funniest dudes I know.  If David Cross hadn't got the part of Tobias Funke on 

    Arrested Developement (RIP) Scott could have shouldered the responsibility.

- http://www.bobanddavid.com/david.html 

            he hasn't been faithful to it lately, but this is David Cross' blog thingy

the housewife (husband) collection - 

- http://www.parents.com/dgroups/persona.jsp?plckPersonaPage=PersonaBlog&plckUserId=a628e41865b5c3c340ae2e98f70ccc4f&userId=a628e41865b5c3c340ae2e98f70ccc4f&ordersrc=rdparents0072&

the writer's writer, the stay at home's stay at home and the blogger's blogger. 

                       He is ALTERNADAD!

- http://www.lovedrunk.net/

the person with two first names combined as a singular first name, good 

                       qualification for a blogger in my opinion.  I know her from church, found out 

          indirectly that she is a part of a community of stay-at-home-mom-bloggers, 

so really the inspiration for this MB

- http://www.themillerspage.blogspot.com/

another stay at home blogger - my sister's sister in law.  The best blogs are

the one's you are indirectly connected to. Again, how meta.

- http://wordwaltz.blogspot.com/

my writin' mate at church. we rarely talk, but two chest thumps and an

outstretched fist go out to Sharla who goads me to write even with out

realizing (probably). Thanks sister.

PS (can you ps in a blog?)-Apparently you aren't anyblogy unless you blogspot.  Like having a myspace page (or a facebook page if you are in the church culture or are Canadian), it's what all the kool webkidz do.  Will any provide us with relief from homogeny? The answer is no, but there are other shopping malls to graffiti on.  Never used 'em, can't vouch for 'em, but here are a few:

blogger.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com, livejournal.com, voxtropolis.com 

Now go find yourself a blog to read. I mean another one besides this one. 

read 'em. love 'em, live 'em.

Dan Wyatt, reader of blogs, metablogger