As you can see this version has ‘emergent guy’ with his goatee, glasses and headphones.

It has been interesting to see the reactions to the cartoon in the various places where it has been mentioned, including:

• Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog: The evolution of a worshipper
• Adveniat regnum tuum: The Evolution of a Worshipper
• Seven whole days » Evolution of a worshiper
• The evolution of a worshipper. « Jesus Loves The Children
• BLDAVIS.ORG » Evolution of the modern evangelical worshipper

As an aside, it pleased me that the minister’s name is ‘Cid Latty’. Latty… Latte… Never mind.

An organisation has been formed to administer this network of Cafe Churches and the associated website. This weekend there is a training day. Once you have set up an organisation it is always important to have a training day. If I ever set up an organisation running a training day will be one of my priorities. You can sign up now if you like, though I must warn you that I haven’t decided what the organisation will be yet.

Of course a lot of other people have been running Cafe Churches over the last few years. The Australians in particular do a lot of this sort of thing – see this group and this group for example. Andrew the Tall Skinny Kiwi was running Cafe Churches back in 1989 when you and I were still in short trousers. There are many examples of Cafe Churches in Britain that can be discovered by using a search engine on the internet.

The Messy Church people have a website. It has a video you can watch if your computer is up to such things.

Messy Church is a ‘Fresh Expression’ – like the ones we were talking about the other week. It is, if I understand it correctly, a sort of a church service for all ages, but involving lots of arty crafty goings-on. In one sense it is no different to the holiday clubs that I went to as a child, or the kids and youth clubs I ran as a youthworker, but perhaps with more emphasis on the fact that the event is ‘church’ rather than ‘something you do in addition to church’. Also they’ve done a good job of branding it and making a ‘package’ that can be used elsewhere. Good stuff – I wish them all the best.

Found via David Keen. David has an interesting blog – worth adding to your feed reader.

As Anthea continues to improve and her progress now is very much in the hands of the physios, we have taken the decision to reshape the blog as an opportunity for me to offer some thoughts on a variety of subjects.

Am I right in saying this is the first blog from a Church of England bishop? I’m not sure. I know the Episcopal church in Scotland has several bishops blogging. If so this is good news, given that the more centralised institutions of the* Church of England have generally been fairly anti-blogging up until now.

A blog to watch I think.

*Section in italics is an update.

This is not a church… this is by Steve Collins.

I always like looking around Steve’s site. I generally find something new and interesting on every visit.

Meanwhile, in unrelated news: It is not too late to join 4000 others next week for Winning Women 2006.

Let me explain.

I was surprised and pleased to find that the Cartoon Blog is listed in a list of blogs being researched as part of a dissertation on the Emerging Church.

In case any readers are wondering what ‘the Emerging Church’ is my definition is: “People who are going about being ‘the church’ in a bit of a different way to the way that most people are going about it”. All straightforward enough, I’m sure you’ll agree. In the UK at least the Emerging Church mainly came from the ranks of those who were doing ‘alternative worship’ (ie worship, but a bit alternative) services. They then decided that, good as alternative worship was (and is), there was more to life than sitting in a darkened room listening (but not dancing) to dance music and so they joined forces with various people in the USA and also Australia who were either doing some similar things in darkened rooms or who had written some books on not-unrelated subjects, and together they became the Emerging Church. Again, nothing too complicated there.

Now, I have had some involvement with such goings-on in the past. Imagine my horror then, when I read on the same dissertation research weblog that my Emerging Church credentials were being doubted. By my friend Mark Berry, no less, who comments:

…some of the Blogs are most definitley not influential EC Blogs (Cartoon Blog for example is a wonderful Blog but not a leading voice in the EC in the way you seem to mean… perhaps because Dave posts occasionally on EC he gets a Tag but his links come from his cartooning/humour – Worship matters… seems to bare no resemblance to the EC at all as far as I can see)

Not a leading voice in the Emerging Church??? No resemblance?? Good heavens. I am flabbergasted.

I need somehow to establish my Emerging Church credentials before I get disqualified from this dissertation, with all the shame that that entails.

OK, Mark, I raise you one defunct slide projector previously used to project deeply meaningful words onto sown-together sheets, and a box containing upwards of 50 half-used tealights. Do better if you can.

You can add this cartoon to your blog, subject to one or two very basic conditions. To do so, either save the cartoon and upload it to your own webspace, or simply copy and past the code below:

<img src="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cb/emerging-church-1.gif" alt="cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com" />
<p>Cartoon by <a href="http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/">Dave Walker</a>. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at <a href="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/">We Blog Cartoons</a>.</p>