No May Cohort Meeting

Due to the Subversion/TruthVoice 2009 convention there will be no May meeting - please join us on May 14, 15 and 16 for three days of conversation and fun. More details at http://truthvoice.com

Saturday, April 4 Meeting - NEW VENUE!

Greetings Christ followers, the time is here for the April cohort meeting.

Since some of the folks from Cincinnati were driving a bit far to make it to the meetings, we decided to start meeting in the Miamisburg/Dayton Mall area, which is south of town, cutting the drive from Cincinnati by 15 or 20 minutes. Therefore, our next meeting will take place on April 4 at 1:30 PM at TGI Friday's at 2022 Miamisburg Centerville Rd. Here is a Google Maps link with the location: http://tinyurl.com/c7jaa7

I hope everyone can make it as the discussion last month was interesting.

As you may already know, the Emerging Church Conference took place two weeks ago; you can read a recap of what happened on http://emergentvillage.com

There is also a critical (and fear mongering) analysis of the Emergent Church done by a fundamentalist Baptist pastor; his take and perspective on the Emergent faith is interesting and fearful. Is he worried for good reasons or is the future for fundamentalist, Dispensational Christianity inevitably dark? His writeup can provide a lot of discussion: http://www.wayoflife.org.

Saturday, March 7 2009 Dayton Cohort Meeting

Greetings again folks, time is here again for the March Cohort meeting, which will take place on Saturday, March 7 at 1:30 P.M. at Panera Bread located next to the Fairfield Mall in Beavercreek (see Google Maps directions here: http://tinyurl.com/c57cty)

There are three things to bring to your attention:

1. My friend Kevin Beck has made his book "This Book Will Change Your World, How All Things Become New" available for free in PDF format. You can also visit Kevin's website here to download the book: http://thisbookwillchangeyourworld.com/

2. There is an interview with Phyllis Tickle which has been floating among emergent folks for several weeks now. I played it yesterday for our congregation. Phyllis is bringing in some fascinating insight into the changes and emergence of the Church into "something" (we may not yet know what it is). Her insight will also provide us with some conversation material for the meeting, so please watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/3156181

3. The Subversion '09 / TruthVoice conference is almost here. We've picked the dates of May 14-16. I am really excited about this year's conference for several reasons. We are bringing together a number of people from very different backgrounds, and that in itself is encouraging. We are also focusing a lot on local speakers in order to build up a community of believers and create local relationships that last. Also, the first day will be a day solely focused on the topic of Creation, provided by the folks at Beyond Creation Science (http://beyondcreationscience.com). The Creation story is much more important than we may realize; focusing on a "young earth" alone or on a literal interpretation of the Creation narrative may lead us away from the true meaning of the story, so this is a very exciting event to host here in the Dayton area; we even got the attention of the folks from Answers in Genesis, which is a lot to be said about :)

Go to http://truthvoice.com/ to read more and register.

As usual, any other topic is up for grabs so feel free to bring your thoughts and ideas with you to share. I hope to see you Saturday!

December 6, 2008 Dayton Cohort Meeting

The next Dayton Cohort meeting will take place on December 6 at 1;30 PM aat Panera Bread in Beavercreek; I hope you can join us for a good time and interesting conversation.

One issue that would make for great conversation is Tony Jones' latest blog entry titled How I Went From There to Here: The Same Sex Marriage Blogalogue.

Now I understand that this could make for some heated conversation, but it would also make for interesting conversation and it may motivate us to put our faith into a historical but also contemporary framework.

Also please feel free to bring other topics with you as we usually cover a number of issues when we meet.

I hope to see you there...if this is your first time, coffee is on me.

Directions & info below:

Panera Bread at Fairfield Commons (map)
2751 Fairfield Commons
Beavercreek, OH 45431
(937) 426-3900 | phone

October 4, 2008 Dayton Cohort Meeting

Greetings again! Our next cohort meeting will take place on Saturday Oct. 4 at 1:30 at Panera Bread in Beavercreek. I found two very interesting articles that may stir up some conversation for this upcoming meeting. The first is one on the private reading of Paul and it's from Mike Gordon. You can read it at http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/de-privatization

The second article is on the topic of the Economy of the Kingdom, by Jay Voorhees: http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/the-economy-of-the-kingdom

I hope to see you all Saturday for some great conversation!

June 7, 2008 Dayton Cohort Meeting

The June cohort meeting will take place on Saturday, June 7 at 1:30 PM at Panera by the Fairfield Mall in Beavercreek. As I (Virgil) have less time to dedicate to those meetings, I am hoping that other folks will step in and participate. One person offering to help was Fr. Gregory Theopistos, a local minister which will share some of the meeting with us.

Please come Saturday to meet Greg and other folks in the area. We rarely stick to a topic, but two books which have electrified me for the past couple of weeks were Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna, and Doug Pagitt's new book A Christianity Worth Believing. If you have copies of the books please bring them with you; I will do the same and perhaps we will be able to discuss some key points which I believe are relevant especially from an Emergent perspective.

I hope to see you all on Saturday at 1:30 PM.


Directions & info below:

Panera Bread at Fairfield Commons (map) 2751 Fairfield Commons Beavercreek, OH 45431 (937) 426-3900 | phone (937) 426-3980 | fax

No April Meeting

Due to the Back to the Future conference in Dayton, there will be no April cohort meeting. Sorry for the inconvenience; we'll see you in March!