On Saturday 6th September  Jesus House and Tearfund are hosting a joint conference with speakers Archbishop Desmond Tutu & Willow Creek Community Church co-founder, Lynne Hybels. 

As.....'poverty continues to mark out the great divisions across the world'

 The question.......

 'Who is my neighbour?'.....

 is an important one for Christians and for the church.....

The aim of the 6th September conference is to equip churches to respond to this question and to respond to local and global poverty.  There will be a special focus on HIV and the event will 'equip church leaders with the tools they need to help their churches engage and respond.....' to poverty and need in the communities around them and in the wider world.....

The local Residents' Association (NSMRA) hold their "Grand Annual Street Sale" on Saturday 6th September in the afternoon.

It's a great chance to open up the church and get chatting to other local residents.

Can you be part of it?

More details here...

If so - or, in fact, if you have any of a host of modern phones with a camera - the latest thing is, apparently, 2d barcode reading...

Mashable has a video of it working on an iphone:

Here's our 2d barcode with the website address of All Souls embedded in it - you should be able to take a photo of the screen with the ScanLife software and it'll take you to the website direct... Nifty!

Do try putting the Scanlife software on your phone  and let me know if it works... mine isn't up to the job!

Presumably someone, somewhere already has it pegged down as the mark of the beast..?

A friend told me the other day, in fact, that the latest rumour is that becuase Oyster cards that have a photo place the photo in such a way that the 'chip' is in line with the photo's forehead, then that is, in fact, the real mark...

It joins probably 1000's of other attempts to drag the powerful imagery and poetry of the book of Revelation down into something concrete and boycottable.

Nice campaign from Scripture Union - they've got "the public" (whoever they might be?) to vote on the ten stories from the Bible everyone ought to know. Then they've taken those ten and packaged them in books for a range of different agegroups and backgrounds.

Here's what they came up with:

• Adam and Eve
• Noah's ark
• The Ten Commandments
• David and Goliath
• Daniel in the lions' den
• The birth of Jesus
• The feeding of the 5,000
• The return of the prodigal son
• The good Samaritan
• The death and resurrection of Jesus

If you could pick just ten, what would you have left out/included? If this was all you had ever read of the Bible, what would your picture of God look like?

I really like what I've read of actor/writer Rob Harrison's "adult" version - a pdf download of a few pages from his book is here - and here's Harrison explaining the idea on YouTube...

One of the most astonishing statistics about All Souls is that the team which Emma leads to run our Sunday groups for children and teenagers has more than fifty volunteers : not far off half of our regular adult members..!

Then again, with more than 100 children and young people 'on the books', the need for those numbers is far from surprising - five different groups (from creche through to the Underground) each needing four teams (one for each Sunday of the month) with between 2 and 5 people in.

Between them they do an amazing and vital task: working alongside children and young people to give them the very best possible time at church, building their sense of belonging and walking with them as they get to know Jesus for themselves.

Ever thought you could be part of the team?

Here's some things you might not know:

• Most team members don't have to prepare anything in advance. They come a little earlier on a Sunday morning, help set up, pray for the group and then welcome the children to their group.
• No-one has to do anything 'up front' unless they want to - it's about being with the children, chatting with small groups, doing craft and playing games and keeping them safe.
• At the end, team members help make sure children and parents are reunited and the rooms tidied.
• Team members are part of a monthly team, or come as helpers every-other month - and they only commit for a year at a time.
• Most of all, members of the teams get a unique opportunity to get to know fellow members of All Souls and to make a real difference to the life and faith of children in the church.

It doesn't take teachers, extraverts, comedians or preachers (though any of those are welcome!), just people who like being with the young and aren't worried about being themselves and having fun.

Here are some groups that would particularly welcome some extra help...

• Explorers (pre-schoolers)
• Ignite - our new monthly 'service' in the main hall for all school-age children.
• Underground (teens)

Took Stephen to see the new Pixar film last week and we were both entranced by it. You can catch a quick summary of the film here.

I loved the fact that they didn't feel the need to pepper it with celebrity voices (in fact, there's no voices at all for the first 45 minutes!), nor wtih clever-clever cross-film-genre references, nor even with a whole bunch of jokes that only the adults will get.

It was, in fact, a rather unusual animated 'kids film'. For a start, it actually feels like a film - it takes itself seriously (not that it's not funny, but it doesn't get shy and start self-parodying). And it's a film that paints a pretty dismal view of humanity and the future for the planet. The opening scene is quite bleak - what you'd expect from a big "disaster earth" movie like "The Day After Tomorrow".

I liked Seth Godin's take on the seeming impossibility of such a film succeeding:

At every turn, Pixar messed up the marketing of their new movie. It has a hard to spell name, no furry characters, not nearly enough dialogue (the first 45 minutes is almost silent), no nasty (but ultimately ridiculous) bad guy, hardly any violence and very little slapstick. Wall-e didn't get a huge Hollywood PR campaign or even a lot of promotion, it doesn't feature any hot stars and as far as I can tell, the merchandising options are quite limited.

Can you imagine the meetings?

Can you imagine the yelling?

 ...but as he points out, they've ended up making a real "film, not 90 minutes of commerce.".

Mark's blog has a great unpacking of some of the key themes, calling it a "great dystopoia for all the family"!

The jarring note for me was its sugar-coated ending - it roughly went: "everyone sees the error of their ways and works together, so a trashed world is mended", but I guess that had to be the pay-off...

Most of all, though, the film is a very sweet and touching love story - and manages to be that even though the 'happy couple' don't speak (beyond a few indistinct sounds) and are not particular humanoid in appearance.

Magical and funny (laugh-out-loud at times) thought-provokingstuff.

And the only film - as far as I know - to make a cockroach seem a rather cute pet.

The scholar, writer and pastor, Eugene Peterson is a very remarkable man - responsible, amongst many other things, for The Message version of the Bible. The interesting thing is that - a little like Jeremy Begbie from my post the other day - his voice is familiar from his writing even if you've never had the privelege of listening to him in person.

Anyway, if you're a reader of novels, the Bible or listen to Bono (or all of the above), this is worth thirty minutes of your time - it starts a little slow, but it's absolutely mesmerising stuff - and very funny in places too...

Thanks to Mark's blog for the steer a few months' back.