The World According to Google Alert

I've changed my Google alerts which notify me of interesting posts/articles/blogs around the world. One new alert is "Christian community" which throws up a remarkable variety of things. What is fascinating is what comes up and what doesn't.

Here's a sampling of this morning's find

1. Radio Free China cover the under-reported underbelly of the upcoming Chinese Olympics: continued harassment of Chinese Christians.

This report comes via Open Doors which has served persecuted Christians of all kinds for over 40 years. "Brother Andrew", a Dutch Christian, founded Open Doors in the 60's when he began smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union. Today, he continues his remarkable outside-the-box ministry by doing things such as preaching to Hamas members. His organization is currently conducting Christian Marriage seminars in China where the divorce rate has skyrocketed.

2. Then there is a review of the book: School(s)of Converstion: 12 Marks of the New Monasticism.

The "New Monasticism" is a mostly Protestant, post-modern, wetsern exploration of intentional Christian community with eclectic roots: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's underground seminary in 1930's Germany, the Taize community, Jesus Abbey (an evangelical Episcopalian missionary community founded in Korea in the 60's) and others. "Neo-monasticism is ecumenical, prophetic, rooted in tradition but radically open to the new ways in which the Holy Spirit is calling Christians to create countercultural expressions of communal life in Christ."

3. An art auction in New Zealand to support a family's mission trip to India

4.A interesting essay for Episcoplian parents about what baptizing their children really means. The answer is challenging:

Parents who have their children baptized are making serious counter-cultural promises on their behalf:

• putting Christ at the center of their lives and household
• renouncing evil – which means evil is real and sometimes near at hand
• upholding the dignity of every human being – which means actively resisting the easy polemic, demonization, and protectionism of our society
• embracing a life of true obedience – which means so much more than the one-dimensional complicity that gives us cause to dismiss it in the name of freedom
• proclaiming the Gospel – which implies we need to know at least a little bit about it, and better yet endeavor to live into it!

5: Christians for Huckabee Mobilize

Now while often fascinating, none of these results (except perhaps the New Monasticism) was what I was looking for when I created the Google alert. I was hoping to find examples of Christian community among Catholics. But you seldom turn up Catholic endeavors if you search using the word "Christian".

While I am not willing to surrender the word "Christian", I can see the hand-writing on the wall with this one.

So new alerts: "small Christian communities"? "Catholic community"? what?

Google: window on the world and revealer of our deep cultural assumptions.