this SUNDAY...

Tired of cafeteria food (or the not-so-amazing things you normally eat as a student)?

You're invited to our monthy STUDENT LUNCH:

SUNDAY, MARCH 4TH @ 12:15PM

[100 North Oval - in the lower auditorium]

F.Y.I.

ASH WEDNESDAY is this week...February 21ST...marking the beginning of Lent.

THE VILLAGE returns MARCH 4TH

SKATING @ THE VILLAGE

This Sunday night @ 8:00PM, we'll be meeting at the church (100 North Oval) to go skating for our monthly social event. If conditions are good, we'll likely be going to Cootes Paradise...SO, bring your skates, a hockey stick, and if you have a shovel, we might need it to clear away some of the snow!

info about the student lunch...

Reading week at MAC starts this weekend, and a number people may not be back by next Sunday (the last Sunday of the month)...SO, this is just a reminder that the next STUDENT LUNCH is going to take place on SUNDAY, MARCH 4TH @ 12:15PM.

THE VILLAGE in Egypt

Sunday, February 11th @ 8:00PM we continue our journey through the book of Exodus. [96 North Oval]

another quote to consider...

Finished the book...worth the read...a lot of great insights, such as the following:

"How much energy do we modern Christians put into condemning sexual sins compared to avoiding the judgmental, Pharisaical attitude of those with rocks in their hands? Who killed Jesus, adulterers or Pharisees? I'm not trying to minimize adultery - believe me, I know how terrible it is. I'm just saying that our modern preoccupations don't seem very informed by the gospel"(p. 99).

MP

Moses @ THE VILLAGE

This Sunday (February 4th) @ 8:00PM, we'll be continuing our new study on the life of Moses. If you have a chance, please read the following passages before we meet: Exodus 4:27-31, 5:1-23, 6:1-13.

96 North Oval (near the corner of Sterling & King Street)

Peace,
Mike & Heather

VISION/DIRECTION/CHANGE

Just wanted to get your feedback about your own experience of church...you can be as honest as you like, and can even answer anonymously. If you have a moment and would like to share your thoughts, please leave your comments below as they relate to these interrelated questions:

What would your ideal church look like? How is that similar/different from your experience at Mission Baptist Church? In your opinion, what things draw you (and others) to church and what things keep you (and others) away. What would you change - add, take away, modify?

Thanks,
MP

THE VILLAGE (this Sunday)

Movie Night & Discussion

96 North Oval @ 8:00PM

Student Lunch (THIS WEEK)

Sunday, January 28TH

Free lunch for young adults (university-age/20s/30s) immediately following our morning service. Service starts @ 11:00AM - lunch begins around 12:15PM.

The Life of Moses

New series starting this Sunday (January 21st) @ THE VILLAGE. Same time (8:00PM), same place (96 North Oval). If possible, please try to read the first three (3) chapters of Exodus.

Sunday, January 14TH

See you at THE VILLAGE...8PM...96 North Oval.

A New Kind of Christian

At the moment, I'm reading a book called A NEW KIND OF CHRISTIAN by Brian McLaren, and thought I'd share an excerpt from the third chapter (pages 22-24). As for context, this is written as a journal entry directed to God:

"I was thinking about the statement 'God is in control.' I know that the question of what that statement means has been under hot debate in recent years, with the 'openness of God' camp suggesting new interpretations and traditionalists crying 'heresy' in response. Now I realize that this debate really reflects some thinking people questioning their own modernity, not your ultimate power. At any rate, what does 'God is in control' really mean to people today? I am almost certain that we cannot consider the word control without thinking of it mechanistically. In other words, for you to be in control means to make something happen your way, the way an operator operates a machine, flipping switches, turning gears, pressing buttons, causing effects that cause other effects. I think it is almost impossible for us to consider control meaning anything else. But then I consider this: before the modern world, there were no complex machines. There were no switches to flip, buttons to push, or gears to grind. If I recall correctly, some of the first complex machines, clocks, were beginning to be developed in the 1300s, but it wasn't until the harnessing of the pendulum for clock technology in the early 1600s that modern machines really became commonplace. So God, whatever a person in ancient biblical times would have meant by saying 'God is in control' (if he would have said such a thing at all) it is almost certainly very different from what we mean today. For him, your control was associated with farmers controlling animals or parents controlling children or perhaps a king controlling subjects - all very different from an operator controlling a machine 'like clockwork.' So if we say the Bible speaks of you being in control (a word that doesn't even appear in the old King James Version, according to my concordance), we run the risk of importing and imposing all our modern conceptions of clockwork, operation, mechanism onto you. We end up thinking of you in a way that may really distort both your nature and our situation in relation to you. In one way, Lord, this makes me want to praise you, because many of our intellectual problems with faith, like the whole issue of how evil can exist in your universe, seems to disappear or shrink when we step outside the mechanistic model. In other words, if a company designs a plane and it crashes due to design failure, we hold the designer liable. Or if a person drives a car drunk and kills a pedestrian, we hold the driver responsible. In both cases, the machine designer or operator is the only sentient being capable of being held responsible. But if a parent raises a child with all appropriate guidance and the child grows up and rejects his parents' teaching and commits a crime, we don't hold the parent responsible in the same way. So I can see how limiting ourselves as moderns to a mechanistic view of the universe - and of you - really creates problems for us. Forgive us, Lord, for judging you according to our own incomplete paradigms."

MP

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Just a reminder that THE VILLAGE will be returning on Sunday, January 14th @ 8:00PM. Hope to see you then!

Mike & Heather

TWINS!!!

One goat is good. Two goats are great. And through our World Vision fundraising campaign, we've raised enough money for two goats! So, Methuselah will be joined by a little friend.

The World Vision Gift Catalogue reads: "One hearty goat can provide up to 350 litres of nutritious milk to a needy family each year. Two goats can breed and produce several kids a year - the beginning of a whole herd. And these robust animals practically raise themselves. They survive well in the harshest climates, eat grass and leaves, and produce plenty of manure for fertilizing a family's vegetable garden. The gift of a goat can change a child's life - no kidding!"

Anyone have any ideas for what we should name the second goat?

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas from THE VILLAGE! We're done for 2006, but will be starting up again in early January 2007. Have a great time with family and friends, and we look forward to seeing you again in the new year!

Hope, Joy, Peace & Love,
Mike & Heather

DECEMBER 17TH @ THE VILLAGE

This Sunday (the 17th) @ 8:00PM (96 North Oval) we'll be having a Christmas Party (with Egg Nog & Hot Chocolate). Please bring along some kind of Christmas dessert and games.

See you there,
Mike & Heather

SUNDAY the TENTH

Join us @ 8:00PM (96 North Oval) as we continue to celebrate the season of ADVENT together.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

If you're planning on renting a movie anytime soon and haven't seen AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH...pick it up and watch it. It is an excellent piece of moral entrepreneurship that is so convincing it's scary. Below, I've also listed a number of practical things we can be doing to reduce global warming...more information can be found here: www.climatecrisis.net. As it's stated in the film, this is a moral issue. And as God's people - who the Lord has entrusted with the responsibility to care for His creation - we ought to seriously examine our habits that are contributing to the problem.

SOME IDEAS:

(1) Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

(2) Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer. Almost half of the energy we use in our homes goes to heating and cooling. You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment.

(3) Use less hot water. It takes a lot of energy to heat water. You can use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of carbon dioxide saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year) instead of hot.

(4) Turn off electronic devices you’re not using. Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo, and computer when you’re not using them will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

(5) Unplug electronics from the wall when you’re not using them. Even when turned off, things like hairdryers, cell phone chargers and televisions use energy. In fact, the energy used to keep display clocks lit and memory chips working accounts for 5 percent of total domestic energy consumption and spews 18 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year!

(6) Be sure you’re recycling at home. You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide a year by recycling half of the waste your household generates.

(7) Plant a tree. A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15%.

(8) Avoid heavily packaged products. You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%.

(9) Eat less meat. Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters. Their grassy diet and multiple stomachs cause them to produce methane, which they exhale with every breath.

(10) Reduce the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible. Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year!

"When you pray, move your feet"(African proverb).