The presale commenced less than 30 minutes ago for U2’s next Toronto concert on July 3 next year. I just got 4 floor tickets, again, for this. Cameron, who is 8, is excited, because after the concert last month I promised I would take him to the next U2 concert in Toronto. I didn’t expect it to be so soon again, but that’s okay. However, it’s going to be a long 8 months wait now, but at least it’ll make the winter more bearable!

I’m coming to the conclusion that denominations are so yesterday. Is the current state of church as institution really what God had in mind? I don’t think so. All the schisms, splits, theological battles, etc just make me sick and really show none of the love that is commanded by Jesus himself. Is it any wonder that most church buildings have lots of space and empty pews/chairs?

Here’s some of what I read this morning (written in 1993) from Frederick Buechner in ‘Whistling in the Dark’ (p.37-38 ‘Denominations’):

“All the duplication of effort and waste of human resources. All the confusion about what the Church is, within the ranks and without. All the counterproductive competition. All the unnecessarily empty pews and unnecessary expense. Then add to that the picture of the Roman Catholic Church, still more divided from the Protestant denominations than they are from each other, and by the time you’re through, you don’t know whether to burst into laughter or into tears.

“When Jesus took the bread and said, “This is my body which is broken for you” (1 Corinthians 11:24), it’s hard to believe that even in his wildest dreams he foresaw the tragic and ludicrous brokenness of the Church as his body. There’s no reason why everyone should be Christian in the same way and every reason to leave room for differences, but if all the competing factions of Christendom were to give as much of themselves to the high calling and holy hope that unites them as they do now to the relative inconsequentialities that divide them, the Church would look more like the Kingdom of God for a change and less like an ungodly mess.”

This opens today. It’s going to be great, I hope. Won’t see it for another week, though.

The night I’d been looking forward to for a long time came and went on Wednesday when I got to go to the first Toronto show of the U2 360 tour. I wasn’t disappointed and came away fairly happy and quite hoarse!

I travelled down with three friends from Elliot Lake, two of whom were attending their first U2 show. We had floor tickets, so we made sure that we got there fairly early and found a decent place to stand. The crowd was 58,000 so we were glad to be as close as we were and kind of felt sorry for those in the nosebleeds.

Snow Patrol opened up for U2 and they put on a good show, with a little humour thrown in.

Reading about the tour and the ’spaceship’ stage don’t fully prepare you for the experience of being there and seeing it all from a close distance. I’ve wondered how U2 would be able to top some of the previous tours I’ve seen them on, but I’m glad to say that they managed it again.

My personal highlights were:

• hearing ‘Your Blue Room’ being performed live for only the second time ever. It made sense in the context of the show;
• hearing my favourite song, ‘Unknown Caller’, live was what I most looked forward to and I wasn’t disappointed – Edge’s guitar solo in this one is one of his best ever (YouTube video here);
• ‘Walk On’ was quite moving, especially with the parade of Aung San Suu Kyi masks;
• the synchronized lighting on the CN Tower was pretty awesome (check out the video here);
• Bono letting the crowd take the first verse of ‘I still haven’t found…’ (YouTube video here);
• the live remix version of ‘I’ll go crazy’ was crazy, in a good sense (this YouTube video has it here).

There was good mix of old and new stuff and it was great to hear seven songs from the new album. I posted some pics and short videos on my flickr. They’re not the best of quality, but they might give you some idea of how awesome the night was, although they really can’t do it full justice. You just had to be there! Here’s the set list for the show (courtesy of U2gigs.com):

1. Breathe
2. No Line On The Horizon
3. Get On Your Boots
4. Magnificent
5. Beautiful Day / Alison (snippet)
6. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
7. Elevation
8. Your Blue Room
9. Unknown Caller
10. Until The End Of The World
11. Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
12. The Unforgettable Fire
13. City Of Blinding Lights
14. Vertigo / Pump It Up (snippet)
15. I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
16. Sunday Bloody Sunday / Oliver’s Army (snippet)
17. MLK
18. Walk On
19. One / Amazing Grace (snippet)
20. Where The Streets Have No Name
21. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
22. With Or Without You
23. Moment of Surrender

I wish I had tickets for some more of the shows on this tour, but I’m not that rich, I’m afraid. At least I was fortunate to get to this one.

Summer is almost over and it seems that, weather-wise anyway, it has only just begun. The nights are getting longer and the kids go back to school in a week’s time, so I guess that fall is just around the corner.

I realise I haven’t blogged that much this past while, but there just doesn’t seem to be much that I’ve had to write about. I’ve got my passion for reading back again and that’s probably what I’ve done most of this past while. The new building, watching lots of movies, and holiday time have accounted for a lot of my other time.

The best movies (not all new ones) I’ve seen lately have included: ‘Inkheart’, ‘Stone of Destiny’, ‘The Mission’ (lost count of how many times I’ve seen this one), ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ and ‘Bottle Shock’.

Some of the books I’ve read recently, or am still reading, are: ‘Mudhouse Sabbath’ (Lauren Winner), ‘Pagan Christianity?’ and ‘Re-Imagining Church’ (both Frank Viola), ‘Five By Endo (short stories)’ (Shusaku Endo), ‘Bioethics – A Primer for Christians’ (Gilbert Meilaender), and ‘Wishful Thinking – a Seeker’s ABC’ (Frederick Buechner). I’m also hoping to re-read ‘The Hobbit’ (Tolkien) and ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ (Solzhenitsyn) before the year is out. If you are content with the way of the Christian Church in the west then don’t read the Viola books. If you yearn for something else or are upset with the status quo in the church then drop everything else and start reading them, but beware – they will mess with your mind and bring discomfort. I’m still working my way through what they have done to me as I have read them and they have really got me thinking about what the future holds as far as what I’m involved in presently in my day to day living and working.

I realised today that it is exactly 6 months since I ate meat of any kind. I can honestly say that I now have no yearning to return to eating meat. I am comfortable with the choice I made to become a vegetarian. Oh, and before anyone tries to convince me that I am dishonouring God, don’t bother – I’ve been through it with others on a number of occasions and it gets tedious.

Only three weeks on Wednesday and I’ll be making a pilgrimage to the Rogers Centre in Toronto for the U2 360 Tour. Counting the days!

Anyway, I hope that wherever you are and whatever you are doing that your summer is going well. If you’re on Twitter follow me and I’ll reciprocate. I’m wcs53. Enjoy the rest of your summer and I’ll try to update more often if I find anything worth sharing.

It’s been a month since I wrote something here, but there just seems to have been nothing much to write about. We’ve been away from Elliot Lake for the past week and won’t be back for another week.

For the past week we’ve been in Michigan with my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew, enjoying a change of scenery and catching up with them. They also spent 10 days with us in Elliot before we all set off together. They are in Pembroke for a few days with friends before coming back here to Toronto on Wednesday and flying back home on Thursday.

Michigan was great. We had some relaxing times and some hectic times. Highlights were a day trying out most of the rides at ‘Michigan’s Adventure’ and a visit to Eerdmans Bookstore in Grand Rapids, where I picked up some great books at great prices, including three hard to get books by one of my favourite authors, Shusaku Endo.

We haven’t got much planned for the next week, other than some great family time together. I’ll post some pictures once we get back home to Elliot Lake.

It’s hard to believe that our little girl, Emily, turned 10 yesterday! It hardly seems like yesterday that I was failing to keep up with an ambulance on the road from North Battleford to Saskatoon, where she was born all those years ago. I wasn’t able to keep up with it and I also found myself initially at the wrong hospital, but I did get there eventually with lots of time to spare, missing none of the excitement.

People always say that their kids grow up too fast, but you can’t keep them young and small forever. It seems already that she has a phone attached to her ear. In the morning before she goes to school we often feel that we are just her answering service! I just hope that as she continues to grow up that we will be there to help and support her as she makes the many decisions she will have to make, just as my parents were for me growing up.

She’s having an all-girl pyjama party tonight, so Cameron and I are heading for Sudbury for a guys night out. The last thing she wants is her little brother crashing her party, so we’ll make sure we’re gone for the evening. By the way, last week Cameron decided that he wanted his own blog, so he set up ‘may the force be with you’ which can be found on the links at the right or just click here. Check it out and give him some encouragement. He promises to update it this weekend.

We had a teen worship band, The Remaining,  from Sault Ste Marie at our place today to lead us in our Sunday gathering. We started off with a spaghetti lunch and once it was cleared away we got right into a time of worship. The place was rocking. The band has only been together for 13 weeks and are aged from 14-18, but it seemed like they had been together for longer than that. A couple of young ladies from the group shared some thoughts, along with some of their story, and left us with the challenge to get out of our comfort zone and find ways of connecting our respective generations with Jesus and the Good News of the Gospel. We plan to have them back again for sure.

Some pictures and video here.

So, it’s been almost a week since we had the grand opening of our new location in Elliot Lake. I figured I should share an update, so here it is.

It took just about a year from the date of purchase to the date of occupation and there were times, I have to admit, when I doubted it would happen. Red tape and regulations can wear you down after a while. But all of that is behind us now and we are finally in the place. The above sign greets you as you enter the building and it is our hope that people will stop referring to our space as the church or God’s house. Our old building had a sign that said ‘Welcome to the House of the Lord’ above the door and I hated it, but, for reasons that don’t really matter now, we were not able to remove it. So instead it remains where it is and has not followed us to the new place.

The place was buzzing last Saturday, beyond what we hoped or imagined, and many people from the community of all ages came to check us out. Quite a few came back for our worship celebration on Saturday evening, as well as having a few new faces for our Sunday lunchtime gathering. We decided to make some major changes to our Sunday ‘thing’. We now gather for lunch at 11.30am and get into some worship round about 12.45pm. We are hoping that this will help people get to know each other and lead to a better sense of community. We are also going to use our space during the week as a drop-in centre/cafe/hangout kind of spot and we’ll see how that develops as we encourage people to think beyond ’Sunday-go-to-church-Christianity’. We’re finding that lots of people from other fellowships want to be part of the drop-in/community thing, so we’re stressing that our building is more about community than SA building, so everyone is welcome to come and be part of what is happening without having to give up being a part of their particular fellowship.

Our biggest challenge now is not to fall back on the patterns of the past, but to keep on the path down which we believe God is leading us. We’ve been here almost 8 years, but it seems like it’s all just beginning. Looking forward to the next 8!

P.S. If you are interested in seeing some pictures from the opening click here.

It’s been a long process, but we are almost ready to start using our new building. I just got back from the final inspection and there are just a few minor issues to be dealt with, but none of them will hinder us in the moving in process. We should be ready to go with the grand opening on Saturday 23 May. It’s taken a year, but we always kept in our minds the fact that at some point we would be able to move in and use it. That moment has finally come. The next two weeks will be quite hectic, I imagine, but definitely worthwhile.