naming

it was 1971 and everyone was a freak. drug culture made you a pot freak or speed freak, music made you a beatle freak, grateful dead freak...you get the picture. it was natural, upon becoming a christian, to be a jesus freak. did you hear the classic, "I Just want to be a Jesus Freak for the rest of my life." tough for vetern christians. It was watered down to jesus people. easier for the veterns.
music was important, but what to call this new music with christian lyrics but rock & roll rhythms? randy matthews called his gospel rock, others used jesus rock. along came chris christian producing an album for an unknown teenager named amy. he called the music "contemporary christian." not as easy to say, not as fun to say, but easier for veterns, alas another watered down name. gospel rock can be said with guts, contemporary christian is a wimpy term, even when the music is good.
little fish uses the name "indie" for everything. she drinks coffee at the indie starbucks, listens to indie music, reads indie books. i like "indie.' i want to start the indie church. little fish will. this fall she and screaming jon will start the indie church in a house on the edge of the continent next to the atlantic ocean.
george mcdonald had curdie name things because it gave them reality.

and every good indie kid has an emo picture...or 5

the small pond

there are certain advantages to being in a small pond... you know the other fish, it's easier to make waves, swimming in the same direction is sometimes the only option. you stick together. at the core of the jesus people movement of the 1970s was a tight, outsider community. people who just didn't belong.
counterculture, they didn't understand the old hymns or formal dress styles of christian culture. counterculture, they didn't champion (at least not wholesale) the free love and experimental drug culture of youth culture.
like the new believers in Acts, they were neither gentile nor Jew. and so began a small movement.
a very small pond.

little fish

Danger Group.
It's not dangerous because we jump off bridges, dance at gay bars, or talk to homeless people, although we do all of those things.
It's dangerous because every week we pour ourselves out on the table and say "Think what you want, but here I am." We share confession, communion, laugher, tears and life-altering challenges. And every week we to choose love each other. Like Jesus loves us.

We are about community. As Christians, we don't convert, we love. Our highest goal is to have someone see Jesus in us and through us.

And small group is no longer about bible study.
It's about figuring out Jesus together. Taking the text beyond talk and into every day life.

Peace Out

It was 1970. Peace signs bloomed everywhere that spring and there was a coffee house and war protest on every corner. Acoustic prophets, Baez and Dylan, sang war protests. Collegians dropped out, tuned in and headed to San Francisco -- with flowers in their hair. The times, they were changing.
Amid the foment, The Jesus People emerged. They came to Jesus in droves -- with long hair, beards, bare feet and tattered jeans. And they didn't give it up.
As new believers, they were uncomfortable, and frankly unwelcome, in middle class evangelical circles.
And organically, a new brand of faith community emerged: house churches, servant communities, communes.
Decentralized, deeply relational and counter-culture.
As our children, a new generation of idealists, face a world as deeply embattled as we did the time has come again.
Jesus People: The Next Generation.