Worn out…

It’s this time of the year. And not. But still. I feel pretty stretched and worn out. Yet, this has been a good day. I mean that I actually got pretty much done. In addition to spending most of the day with my loved ones <3.

Today I’ve finally managed to write something about unity. In a more or less coherent form. Pretty good, considering that I’ve tried to do that for a couple of weeks not. I tried to go on into obedience, but had to give up.

Anyway, here’s a sample. It still need lot of CLAP, but I thought I’d better get something out in the first place…

Unity – Creating a critical density of mature Christians in Europe.

The aim of Project Diktuon is to create a critical density of mature Christians in Europe. This is different from a critical mass: even in nuclear bomb the question is about density – enough high quality substance in small enough space. Likewise, we want to bring many high-quality Christians into a web of connections with each other and tighten that network.

The purpose of God is to have children. He wants people to be part of His family. And if we are of one family with Him, we are of one family with each other. Christ did not leave us here alone. He left us here together. And it is His will that we live here together, loving one another.

As we are immersed in the death and resurrection of Christ, we are of one being with Him. We literally have a connection. In Christ we are children of God, His younger brothers and sisters. This applies to all Christians, so we are one in Christ, even with people we have never met.

The unity in Christ is reality to all people in the Kingdom so we need to act accordingly. We need to embrace everyone, who is in Christ, with brotherly love, and welcome them to our communion. As we are of one body, we must accept unity in holy communion with each other. To reject a person, in whom Christ lives from the the holy communion, is to reject Christ.

Our unity with each other is founded on the fact that we are in Christ and Christ is in us. When we want to conquer our differences and work on our unity, we do it by seeking Christ, not by seeking each other. We will find each other at His cross. We wont find agreement by you starting to think like I, or I starting to think like you, but by each of us surrendering our minds to Christ, so that He would teach us how He thinks.

We need to seek the truth and not assume we have found it. When we seek the truth, we seek Christ, who is Truth. Therefore there is never harm is seeking the truth. To seek the truth is to be ready to relinquish what we believe to be true for what we learn. Therefore to seek the truth is to be aware of our own fallibility and to be humble. If we cease to seek the truth, we cease to seek Christ.

To seek Christ is to focus in what we have in common in Him, and not to side issues that separate us. To respect Christ is to respect all those, who are in Christ, even when we think or act differently. If Christ wants either of us to change, it is His task to demand and cause it, not ours.

This means that we need to consent to unity of Christians. Not in our own terms, or the terms of the other Christians, but in the terms of Christ. Our unity is not just a good idea, it’s a fact. To renounce that fact in words or deeds is to renounce Christ. The path to unity and unanimity is obedience and submission to Christ.

Path to this consenting is a path of prayer. As we pray, we surrender more of our lives to Christ. We need to pray together and for each other. As we do that, we surrender more of our relationships to Christ and consenting to unity becomes our desire and we start to work together for common goals. We need to encounter each other and everyone else praying, so that people would see Christ in us. As we submit to the teaching of Holy Spirit, we learn to pray like this as naturally as we breath.

No Christian is an island. We belong to God’s family, and we have to take care of one another. We are both those who need to be taken care for and those who need to look after others. But no-one of us is alone, no-one can leave their siblings alone, or do anything in the kingdom alone. Even Jesus sent His disciples two by two, never alone.

Our actions as individuals have to grow from real, living human-sized communities. These communities have to emerge organically from the people, and they cannot be established by an outside authority. Similarly, Project Diktuon is about supporting people in these communities, helping people to bear fruit in their current contexts, and not establishing new ones.

Our most important community is our own family, and the most important place to build the Kingdom is at our own home. Our homes are the places where we can be real ourselves and let others see us and our lives as we are.

These communities, such as families and micro-churches are natural building blocks in the kingdom. They are places to share care, love, attention and prayer. These small communities are where we live our authentic everyday life. There we can be the representatives of God’s grace to each other and to those following our lives and serve our communities and surroundings with the gifts God has trusted us.

While it is important to team up, to be remain functional these communities also need to be small enough. Typically the upper limit for the size is about a dozen. Thus the growth of such communities leads organically into their multiplication, as they divide when new people join them.

The communities are the context, where we can experience we belong to something larger than just ourselves. These communities themselves belong to an even bigger context, the Body of Christ. Thus each of us is individually a subject in the Kingdom of God.

We need to work for the good of the Kingdom, even when it does not serve our immediate benefits or those of our community. When the Kingdom prospers, the people of the Kingdom prosper. We need to remember that our goal is is better than an own goal.

We need to appreciate our differences as the richness of God’s creation. God has called us to be His children and reflect His likeness. We must not try to convert others to think or act like we do, but to seek together Christ and His ways and let everyone mature in their own faith. And accept, that they might end up somewhat different than we. To expect others to be like our ideals, is to replace God with our ideals. Our unity is not based on how we see each other, but in us being in Christ.

We want to reach all of the Kingdom and welcome everyone who is in Christ and commits to these values to this the Diktuon Network, irrespective of their religious background or their position within their religious context.

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10 Reasons why I love WPMU

WPMU is short for WordPress MultiUser. Sometime in hopefully not so distant future the WPMU code will be integrated into the WordPress core. I’ve written couple comments on the wpmu.org blog lately, so I guess I could also take part to their competition. So here are 10 reasons why I love WPMU.

10) I use WPMU. In fact, this blog is on WPMU. In fact, I have several sites on this same WPMU installation. And it’s no more difficult than with ordinary WorPress. I’d be fool not to love something to which I have such an intense relationship.

9) It is both Open Source and Free Sofware. All the essential Freedoms – to copy, distribute, study, change and improve the softwarecome – with it.

It has an easy learning curve. Well documented, active community, actively developed. To get into it – from the first dip to the pits of doom – I suggest The WPMU Tutorials site. They grok the WPMU.

7) There is commercial support available. If you really need something to be done, there’s someone you can pay for it to be done. And as it’s popular Free Software, there’s no fear of vendor lock-in. Ask them.

6) Templating system. WPMU is WordPress generalized, and WordPress is really a blogging oriented CMS, whose templating system can be seen as a sophisticated database interface. In case you didn’t understand, you can make coffee with it.

5)  Themes turn all this tech into eyecandy. And as WordPress allows pretty much anything, there are N+1 different themes for it. Farms Big 100 theme pack is a great collection, and there’s an even more cutting edge version of it in the premium side. This theme (Rubric 1.0) is from that pack.

4) Plugins. WPMU is a great core, and with templates and themes you can bend it to astonishing outcomes, but plugins make it possible to extend it into incredible things. Many WordPress themes and plugins can be installed using the WordPress’ own interface.

3) Proven technology. WordPress.com uses WPMU and it hosts hundereds of thousands of blogs. That should say something.

2) WPMUdev Premium. WPMU is a jetplane. They have the afterburner to turn it into a Concorde. At a very reasonable price you tap into a continually developed and maintained pool of Free Software. Among my favourites are the autoblogger, which I use to import public blogs to my private BuddyPress (while not Premium, an excellent WPMU plugin and a product in itself) social networking site, and the awesome domain mapping plugin, that simply makes me forget that the sites in this installation are running under different domains. Their plugins “Just Work” and thus are easy to forget. (Speaking of which, lets not forget the Sitewide Privacy Options -plugin. An ABSOLUTE Must if you intend to build a private community.) They have all kinds of plugins from nifty login/logout redirections to extensive frameworks for making money with your site.

1) The folks. Andrea, James, Andrew, drmike, Andy, Jeff, DJPaul… The list is too long even to think. You don’t know who I am, you don’t know who you are, but I’ve seen you in the forums. Love you folks.

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Travel plans

Sometimes I think I have got to be nuts.

We are planning to travel to France in late November-Early December. Just to see some old friends and places. Maybe staying at some couchsurfing couches. And to visit Germany as well, for Christmas market. The initial plan is to fly to Paris.

Low budget, 8 month old baby.

I have got to be nuts.

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