Reserve your spot at the party today

Wednesday, October 13, 7.00pm
Chaplain’s Office, Wycliffe College | Click for Event Poster

On Feb 1st, 1960 four African American college students sat down in a Woolworth’s Department store and ordered lunch in the “whites only” section–and a floundering national Civil Rights movement was resurrected.

Today people around the world are abandoning the mass produced food of corporate agribusiness and going to farmers markets, joining food coops and community gardens and growing their own food.  Is there a connection between that lunch counter fifty years ago and the local, organic and urban agriculture movement of today?

What does Jesus have to do with any of this?

Ched Myers is a peacemaker, gardener, biblical scholar, activist, singer, educator, and a whole lot of other things. His teachings on radical discipleship, jubilee economics, ministry of reconciliation and food sustainability have been transformative in people’s lives for thirty years.

Suggested donation: $5.00

It will be a great opportunity to catch Shane on his first visit to Ottawa, and to dream kingdom dreams in that city.

The doors to Dominion-Chalmers United Church open at 7pm, with the event to start at 7.30pm. The cost is $10 at the door.

The Ottawa event is being organised by The Open Table – an ecumenical Christian community by and for young adults, and supported by the Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian and United Churches in that area.

You can find more info on the event here, or invite friends through the facebook event page.

A number of months ago, we reported here at Empire Remixed, the greatest Christian bookseller in the world thought that maybe Beyond Homelessness by Steve Bouma-Prediger and Brian Walsh was probably the “book of the year” in 2009.

Well, Christianity Today didn’t see things that way and gave the nod to a book called Culture Making by some young upstart named Andy Crouch. We are sure that the fact that Mr. Crouch is a senior editor with that same magazine had nothing to do with their choice. So to show that we aren’t sore about this, we’re hosting an event with the guy to see if he’s all that he’s cracked up to be.

Okay, the tone of that whole paragraph was decidedly tongue in cheek. Here’s what the same Byron Borger said about Culture Making. This book “is spectacularly important and truly wonderful; wonderful for the cogent ideas and the lovely writing, the insight and the charm.” We agree. And that’s why we are hosting a salon-style conversation with Andy on November 2 in Toronto.

The evening will kick off with Andy talking for fifteen minutes or so about his book and the kinds of things that animate him as he reflects on Christian culture making. And then, over some appropriate liquid refreshments, we will have a wide-ranging, open-ended conversation with the lad about whatever we want to talk about.

Brian Walsh will host and facilitate the conversation.

The event is free, but a donation for refreshments will be gratefully received.

Strangely enough over here at ER, we talk about Empire from time to time, and we think it important to work our way through the questions of our own implication in the evil and oppression we see in the world. In that same vein, we’re excited to be participating in the upcoming Evolving Church Conference in Oakville, Ontario.

Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat will both be presenting workshops, and the entire Empire Remixed crew has something cooking to close out the conference with a bang.

It’s not often that you get to hear from Marva Dawn, Stanley Hauerwas and Walter Wink all at the same place, and it will be great to see what fires are ignited here in Canada as a result of this gathering. We’re pretty stoked about the conference, and hope that you’ll be able to join us on March 21, 2009, to challenge and to be challenged by speakers, workshops, and (perhaps most importantly), engaging in conversations that matter with one another.

You can register for the conference through their website, and let others know you’re attending through their facebook group. See you in March!

I first encountered the music of Martyn Joseph two years ago when some friends invited me out to a concert at Hugh’s Room in west end Toronto. While I wasn’t able to attend the concert, I was able to pick up his latest album, “Deep Blue.” That album became my lifeblood for the intervening year between the missed concert, and finally being able to catch him live in January 2008 at the same venue.

Joseph’s music took me to a ragged depth and a raw profundity that I had not encountered for some time. Martyn Joseph’s narrative flare and his incredible guitar work had me captivated.

Martyn Joseph is a Welsh singer-songwriter who has been recording for over 25 years. Although he didn’t start out this way, Joseph’s more recent releases wrestle with deep issues of pain and injustice encountered throughout the world. Encountering such things, and becoming aware of their importance, it became increasingly difficult for Joseph to continue writing the same pop music with which his career had begun. And so, he turned to the poetry of prophetic lament.

Martyn’s particular strength is in the lyrical narrative of his songs, whether contemporary protests against injustice and inhumanity, a musical psalm to the fulfilment and fragilities of love, or a piercing précis of social history.

On Deep Blue, Joseph lashes out against the powers of imperialism in “How Did We End Up Here?” but later returns to us in humility, on the final cut, “Turn Me Tender.” Joseph’s penitential prayer cries, “Turn me tender again, fold me into you / Turn me tender again and mould me to new / Faith lost its promise and bruised me deep blue / Turn me tender again through union with you.”

A mainstay of the Greenbelt music festival in the UK, he has been in demand on both sides of the Atlantic for over two decades, giving what thousands have described as one of the best live music experiences of their lives.

I suppose I’d have to concur with that assessment. That Wednesday night in Toronto was an intimate and moving experience, as Martyn bared his musical soul, calling us to respond to his stories with pathos and compassion for our broken-yet-beautiful world.

Successive albums, including “Vegas,” and the newly released “Evolved” trigger new emotions and continue to take us on the road of redemption. All this to say, I’m absolutely excited about hosting Martyn in Ottawa in a few short weeks.

Even though Rasputin’s is no more, I’m glad we still have a venue to host these events.

This year, Martyn is making one stop in Ottawa on Thursday February 5, 2009 at Ecclesiax Church (2 Monk Street near Bank & Fifth Ave). Tickets are available in advance for $15 through www.yourticketzone.com, or by calling the church at 613.565.4343. Remaining tickets will be available for $20 at the door.

See you tonight!

Friday November 14th, 7pm at the Bloor Cinema, we have Jamie Moffett on hand to screen “The Ordinary Radicals.” The film follows Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw across North America on their Jesus for President tour.

All of this is an invitation to join a peculiar people – those with no king but God, who practice jubilee economics and make the world new. This is not the old-time religion of going to heaven; this is about bringing heaven to the world.

Click here to get your tickets.

Martyn has been a friend to many of us over at Empire Remixed, and so we’re happy that he’ll be visiting and sharing his music with us at 8pm on Thursday February 5, 2009 at Ecclesiax (2 Monk St, Ottawa).

Tickets are available online for $15. If you wait til the last minute, tickets will be $20 at the door.

Director Jamie Moffett will be with us in the audience, and ready to answer your questions after the film.

Jamie compiled much of the footage from this film while touring with Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw on their Jesus for President tour, including their stop in Toronto at the end of June.

The film features interviews with: Becky Garrison, Shane Claiborne, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Rob Bell, John Perkins, Brooke Sexton, Michael Heneise, St. Margret Mckenna, Logan Laituri, Zack Exley, Aaron Weiss and our very own activist theologian, Brian Walsh.

You can purchase tickets for this event here.