Resources for emerging church

small fire

small fire aims to capture something of the essence of alternative worship by logging photos of various acts of worship 'to give a wider audience some idea of what is going on'

as church has become fragmented, decentralized, experimental, liquid, alternative, subversive, wired, hip, post-evangelical, pre-reformational, and above all self-consciously postmodern, there is obviously some new thinking going on behind the scenes. OpenSourceTheology tracks much of that thinking... really good stuff

emergingchurch.info

emergingchurch.info is updated every month with articles from some of the guys leading the emerging church way. it also has a great list of links and blogs...

Jesus Pics

Jesus painter has some great paintings on his sight, but if you're looking for a more varied collection the old bill has put together this great collection. Generously bill let me borrow some of the images and turn it into this slideshow(it's in powerpoint- sorry mac peeps!)

Free photos

If you're searching for that perfect photo then sxc and corbis are well worth checking out. they're massive photo stores where thousands of people share their (high-resolution) photos, largely royalty free.

Brick Testament

For all age worship, the brick testament is great. It provides slides (jpegs) containing the verses of scripture and pictures that relate to a particular bible story.

Graphics for worship

Emergent minister has pulled together some great images, videos and MP3s for use in worship. If you're planning an alternative worship event he also has some great ideas

BBC Motion Gallery

If you've ever watched BBC footage and thought 'hmm... i wish i recorded that' or found yourself eagerly searching the internet for some video to inspire worship or provoke discussion check out BBC Motion Gallery. It stocks ' thousands of shots from the vast and diverse archives of the BBC and CBS News'. 'Spanning over 70 years, BBC content encompasses more than 300,000 hours of footage, including a wealth of material covering natural history, wildlife, news, locations, art, music, celebrities, culture, performing arts and more.' Most stuff you need to apply for and that costs (and probably costs lots), but there are some samples that are useable...

Saved (Movie!)

I tend to enjoy anything which is an attack on the american right so this made me smile a lot... a must for all people who struggle with the label evangelical and people who don't know why people struggle.

On the Saved website there are some study notes and you can view the trailer here.

Custom and Command (e-book)

I have no idea who Stan Firth is, if you do please let me know, but irrespective he's wrote this great paper on what it essentially means to be church. Firth looks at a whole range of church practices and asks whether they are commands from God or simply customs created by Christians over the last two millenia. His deconstruction of singing, teaching, leadership and authority as well as his biblical exegesis make this one of those papers it is difficult to ignore- or at least it should be!