Moving to wordpress....

Hey Readers

I will be moving my blogpage to www.nathanaelbaker.wordpress.com

As such this blog will not be updated from now on.

Newtown Art Collective

My mate Chris Sylvester has set up the Newtown Art Collective. A space where budding Newtown artists can exhibit thier latest works. Check it out.

Matariki

Yesterday night at work we had a celebration of Matariki. It was a great time of feasting and celebration. We got to enjoy a whole lot a great Kai, including some great creamed Paua and Paua Fritters as a result of some hard work from some of the men of the organisation. There was a great performance by a Wellington Kapa Haka group.

Matariki is the the Maori name for the Pleiades star cluster, which consists of seven stars. This star cluster is used by the Maori people in tradition to work out when it is the best time to grow crops. Matariki in New Zealand appeared on the 13 may 2008 and the best time to have seen it was on the 31st of May.

Its rising and falling are used to declare when the New Year begins. Prior to Matariki's falling is a period of mourning and loss. This year New Zealand lost one of its great symbols of National Identity and leadership with the passing of Sir Edmund Hillary, and in Maori leadership there has also been the passing of some great Maori Kaimatua.

The time we are in now is a time for celebration and for eating and for telling the stories of the past year and looking forward to the coming year. It is a joyous seasion that we are in looking forward to the coming harvest but also the celebration of successes both in our own personal lives and in the lives of others.

So what do I need to be thankful for, what can I look forward too?

- I am thankful for successfully graduating from University last month with Honours in politics.
- I am thankful for getting a great job in a great organisation.
- I am thankful for the headway that Mosaic is making as a community and that God has lead me into this community.

So my prayer for these coming months is:

Dear God, thank you for this time of remembrance. Thank you for all that I'm learning, and thank you for the challenges that are around the corner. I pray that I will follow your heart in the way that I live. That I will passionately follow your call and mission. That I will love others and put thier concerns above my own. God I thank you that you rescued me so I could be on mission to let your kingdom come on earth and I pray that I would follow you. Lord I thank you for placing me in Wellington, I pray that I would learn to serve my city and love this city in a way that transforms it and makes it a light in the dark. I thank you for the creative vision that you have placed in this city, I thank you for the political influence you have placed in this city. Let it be used to honour your name. Let me see it honour your name.

The Top 10 Worst Movies about Jesus (not including "The Passion")

As Brought to you by the Wittenburg door. Might provide you with some entertainment over the long Queens Birthday weekend.

Ht. Mike Zook

THE ROBE

This film may have been nominated for an Oscar, but so was Norbit.
Richard Burton, Shakespeare’s worst nightmare, plays Marcellus, a Roman soldier who crucifies Jesus and then wins his robe in a drunken game of dice. Since he can't put the thing up for sale on eBay, he decides to hang on to it. But instead of being the historical keepsake, bathroom rug or future dorm curtain he hoped it would be, the robe tortures him to no end. The very touch of it burns his skin and after he gets rid of it, disturbing dreams of Jesus' death and having to marry Elizabeth Taylor haunt him. The film attempts to portray the power of Jesus Christ by showing how even his outfit can kick your ass.

Widescreen Cinemascope Technicolor made the robe of Jesus look like a fuzzy-wuzzy blankie.
This was the first movie filmed in wide-screen Cinemascope, the format that was supposed to save Hollywood from the threat of television, but all it did was establish the principle that a dirty tube sock magnified a thousand times on a Technicolor screen will still look like a dirty tube sock. Everyone turns the overacting up to 11, which for Burton goes to the level of a drunken Renaissance Faire actor padding his resume.

For the role of Jesus himself, director Henry Koster decided to save money and just use his second unit director, which means the poor guy had to perform just about all of his normal duties in full costume. The studio wouldn't even let him eat in the cafeteria because they felt it was inappropriate for Jesus to be seen eating there in public. Come on, he may be the Son of Man, but that doesn't mean he never needed a Hungry Man meal.

JESUS CHRIST VAMPIRE HUNTER

There are a ton of B-movie horror flicks centered around Jesus Christ as a bad-ass spiritual hunter sent back to Earth to rid the world of demons and prevent the Second Coming, but this is definitely the best and that's not really a complement.

This cult favorite is so crammed to the brim with mixed genres that its mere stench lifts the lid off the jar and overflows with oozing mediocrity. It's a kung-fu movie. It's a splatterfilm. It's a Mexican wrestling film. It's a musical! It's a Jesus film with multiple personality disorder. And all of them are batshit insane.

JESUS, THE MINI-SERIES

It's May 1999 and it's sweeps week. All the other networks have big boffo blockbusters lined up to trick people into watching as much television as possible, but CBS executives find themselves standing out in the cold with nothing but old Murder, She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder reruns on your schedule, guaranteed to attract the oldest demographic since the Weather Channel went on the air. What do you do? Simple. You play on people's fears about the coming Year 2000 apocalypse and produce a made-for-TV Jesus biopic that’s bloodier and more over-the-top than all three of the Evil Dead films combined.

This scene of the final crucifixion features actor Jeremy Sisto being brutally nailed to the cross as he tries to convey agony by screaming the loudest of any torture victim in history. When Jesus tells his father to forgive them for they know not what they do, a grinning Livio--played by G.W. Bailey, better known as Rizzo on *M*A*S*H* and Captain Harris on Police Academy-says in his best Bond villain voice, "We know what we're doing. We're killing you." Oh snap, Jesus! You just got served.

Then in the end he comes back to life in the modern day and beams down Star Trek-style into a short-haired early-thirties guy who greets a group of schoolchildren with a warm hug and walks them out of frame, making you think Jesus suffered for two days and rose from the dead on the third so he could come back to life and babysit for us.

ZOMBIE JESUS!

If Night of the Living Dead director George Romero became a born-again Christian, got a ton of funding from a religious film studio and decided to resurrect (no pun intended) his famed zombie movie franchise for a Christian audience, this wouldn't be the movie he would make.
This little film festival puddle jumper conjectures that the reason Jesus returns from the dead is so he can feast on the brain of the living, which we're sure isn't kosher even if you kill thehuman

a certain way.

It's hard to tell from the trailer if the film is an allegorical tale of literal Biblical translation run amok or just another zombie comedy that tries to ride on the coattails of Shaun of the Dead. If it's the second, you can rest assured there won't be any "Take this and eat it, for this is my body" jokes since the film follows Return of the Living Dead zombie rules, which require zombies to eat brains only, and not Night of the Living Dead zombie rules, which allow the undead to consume the entire body.

IN SEARCH OF HISTORIC JESUS

If faux-science shows like Unsolved Mysteries and In Search Of . . . attempted to tackle the Messiah story, of course they'd have to release their merry band of over-actors to reenact the story of Jesus in ways that made you giggle as a kid in places you weren't supposed to until the pressure from your sinus would blow your brains clean out of the back of your skull.

This schlock docudrama attempted to tackle that very subject. The movie features a stuffy, glass-eyed "historian" who uses the Shroud of Turin as an excuse to research the history of Jesus Christ, complete with so much hammy acting, the film will make you want to go kosher.
Since it ran in drive-ins across the country for years, it was allowed to feature the full crucifixion experience in all of its fake gory glory. So let's do those drive-in totals. We've got two nailed wrists, one stabbed chest, spear fu, Roman fu, Jew fu, Wrath of God fu and no aardvarking. We give it zero stars.

THE PRINCE OF PEACE, a/k/a THE LAWTON STORY

Six-year-old Ginger Prince failed to become the next Shirley Temple.
Have any of you parents out there ever sat at one of your children's Sunday School Nativity pageant and thought you'd like to see your own kids acting out the birth of Jesus on the big screen? Hell no.

Despite that fact of life, that's pretty much what William “One-Shot” Beaudine did with a passion play from Lawton, Oklahoma. Beaudine got his nickname because he reputedly directed more than 350 films without ever asking for a second take. For this project, he was working for the legendary showman Kroger Babb, who specialized in traveling roadshows that would pack the local theater for three days of “educational” or “inspirational” screenings, followed by a quick exit to the next town. Beaudine and Babb took a local production and interspersed it with a film about a young girl who convinces his greedy rich uncle to see the passion play so it will open his eyes to the value of serving, not taking from, his fellow man. The acting in this thing is not only bad, but the Sooner accents were so thick that the entire film had to be redubbed because the angry mob in Jerusalem never sentenced Jesus to die by announcing "Git-r-Done!"

Babb took the film on the road and then tried to sell the audience Bibles after the screening, which wasn't very successful because the movie ran four hours. It's hard to sell Bibles to a bunch of people whose faces had melted off from boredom.

The film became an even bigger failure when it tried to launch the career of Ginger Prince, the actress who plays the little girl in the film, as an attempt to step on the pituitary gland of an aging Shirley Temple. Again, films that melt faces off of their audiences won't help your career, not even in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW
Some of the world's most astute film critics and historians have lauded Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini's retelling of the Gospel of Matthew with glowing words that will never be used to describe directors like Ed Wood, Uwe Boll and the guy who made the Rollerball remake. But anyone who’s ever had to sit through it in film class, struggling with the idea of a Marxist Jesus with a homosexual subtext, will realize why Pasolini boasted about his lack of research. He basically turns the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ into a kung-fu flick starring George Takei as Judas. Oh my.

Pasolini–an atheist who was expelled from the Communist Party and had a movie based on the Marquis de Sade banned by the Italian government before being knifed to death by a gay hustler in 1975–films the Christ story with a shaky-cam documentary style that even gives blind people headaches. Some of the Jewish leaders have hats so ridiculous that even the Pope wouldn't wear them.

ULTRACHRIST!
Look, up in the sky! It's a skydiving hippie! It's that guy from Three Dog Night in a jetpack! No, it's Ultrachrist

In this low low low low low budget film that looks like it was filmed in every high-rent/low-maintenance apartment in the Big Apple, director Kerry Douglas Dye poses the scenario that if Jesus returned to Earth he'd have to reinvent his image by taking on the persona of a superhero in divine Spandex. Well, at least he's got the body for it. That's right, Affleck, I'm looking at you, flabby.

Christ runs around New York City in his street-bought sandals and clip-on utility belt that doesn't seem to be holding any utilities in his never-ending quest to fight crime. Eventually the big man upstairs decides he doesn't like his favorite son's new public persona and the Antichrist is on the rise and Christ finds himself stuck between appeasing his father or ridding the Earth of unholy evil, much in the same way the audience finds themselves struggling to either return the video to the store for a full refund or throw the thing in an incinerator to spare anyone else from watching it.

THE MIRACLE MAKER
Get ready to see Jesus like you've never him before--in crappy, old-fashioned stop-motion animation that even kids don't use when they're making Star Trek fan films in their basement.
If you thought that Sunday school film of the death and resurrection had more wooden and hollow actors than a Renaissance faire, wait until you see these actors who are actually made out of hollow wood. It's a stop-motion "3-D" film of the Jesus story that looks like the makers of Robot Chicken phoned in their last episode so they could clear the animation studio space for Assy McGee in time.

It also features an all-star cast of celebrity voices including Alfred Molina, Miranda Richardson and Ralph Fiennes as the voice of Jesus, because, after all, the Son of Man spoke with a stuffy British accent though he was born and raised in abject Bethlehemic poverty.

THE DAVINCI CODE
The book that everyone in your office cubicle said you have to read is now a big-budget overblown movie without any big words or scary facts about religion to give you a headache. The book and movie dares to uncover the greatest cover-up in the history of the Catholic Church, unless you don't count the church's refusal to stand against the Holocaust and the string of priest molestations and the selling of indulgences as a form of penance and the fact that eating meat on Friday between Ash Wednesday and Good Friday is no longer a damnable sin.

The movie suggests that the Son of Man was also quite the Ladies' Man because of an alteration in Leonardo DaVinci's famed "Last Supper" painting. Of course, it doesn't get to that juicy little tidbit until after two-thirds of the most excruciatingly bad acting and dialogue is done. But it doesn't end there. There's this big M. Night Shyamalan ending that reveals Jesus had a family tree, and after you calculate what you’ve had to sit through to get to that one scene, you realize that Christ may have died on the cross for our sins, but now we’ve paid him back by remaining faithful all the way to the excruciatingly painful end.

Capital Mosaic Website blog

Just to let you all know, Mosaic has now got a blog, the first post is by Jessica Falconer, asking the questions "are we people of the way or of the book" and "How do I follow Jesus in my job?

Thoughts welcome.

N.B, I will be writing for this hopefully some time close in the future.

Confused

I was pleased to find that AJ Chesswass had put a link to my blog on his blog. I was confused to find that he had put my blog under Anglican Blogs. I'm confused because I have spent very little time in Anglican churches myself so I don't know how I can be considered Anglican. So AJ Chesswass or anyone else, can you help me understand how I can be considered Anglican. Feel free to enlighten me on the topic of how I am anglican, or any other topic you feel interested in.

Writers Block - Part 2 - The Frustration

Hello again my patient readers. As you all know, I have been suffering from a very bad case of writers block over the last couple of weeks. This has been very very frustrating for me. I have all these ideas stuck in my little head. The good news is that I'm over the writers block. The bad news is that I have no time to write at the moment as I've been busy with work and life. I will try to get a post written this weekend - if - if I have time. I have a few quotes that have got me thinking over the last week or two that I'm going to hopefully get posted. Anyways, see you later. Hopefully by then I will have some substantial ideas written up!

Posts of Note # 3

I have been busy this week as I have started a new job (yeah at last!) so I have had less time to write blogs and surf the net (though contrary to popular opinion I do more than that all day when I am not working!).

My Brother has a long postive and humour post on his time at Parachute 2008. It gives a in-depth look at the in and outs. On another note my brother has joined the dark side again (he has XP on his Mac!)

Anyway you can find this information on his blog. I'm going to see if I can write anything of further consequence this evening, hopefully on Acts, as I've had some indepth thoughts that developed out of a awesome meeting of Mosaic people on Monday night.

Interesting Trademe Message Board

Capital Mosaics connections at Mount Mosaic have set up a fascinating message board that asks the question
What puts you off church the most?

Check it out here

here are some of the thoughts that caught my attention.


"don't go to Church because I don't believe in God - simple really."


"Coz I don't need to go to church to believe there might be a God, and I certainly don't need to be preached to or saved."


"boredom and the failure of most churches to keep up with the times. If a church is not progressive enough to keep up with science, evolution, music etc and either ignores them or worse, tries to tell you it is evil then they just push you away."


and the one that really got me


"in answer to # 1 question the people that go there"

and

"I don't need to go to church to have a relationship with God. Plus there are too many 'actors' in there who as soon as they leave spark up their smokes and zoom off to the liquor store before heading to a party where they'll have fights and throw bottles on the roads....all on a Sunday."


For more on the this subject read
They like Jesus but not the Church" by Dan Kimbal or "Unchristian" by Gabe Lyons

Last FM

My Freinds have just introduced me to Last FM. This is a social networking site for music addicts. One of the useful things it does is it uploads the information of your music library onto the web and then you can also browse other artists of similar type that you may be interested in. I think it might be a new addiction for me for the next while, as Facebook has definitely lost its buzz with me. If your into music and you need to find new artists. This is definitely a good way to do so. But I also like recieving information from word of mouth. Definitely need to also spend more time going to concerts!

Websites that you should check out!

Church Rater : This site was originally started to take the micky out of the consumer nature of christians today. It rates some of the most influential christian churches today - This also led to the now popular book by the Barna Group (a christian research company run by the controversial figure George Barna). This page leads to interesting thoughts on how the church should posture, our consumer nature and where the heck we are going.

Swinging from the Vine: Makeesha is a member of an emerging community of faith, her thoughts are creative, fun, engaging and gracious. I enjoyed her recent series on the misrepresentations of postmoderns, christians engaging with postmodern culture and those of us engaged in post-modern ideas (even when we resist the conclusions of postmodernism and swim against its tides when we see the dangers, just like we had to swim against the dangers of modernism in the past!)

Emerging Grace: Emerging grace must be my favourite blog at the moment, she lives up to her name, is always thought provoking and engaging, and honest about her struggles with church culture being an authentic christian in the 21st century.

Map of the Internet

I saw this on Joshua's Mac a couple of nights ago when I was laxing out. I had to put it on my blog. I have some issues with it. It doesn't show Bebo on it, which is one of the top 3 social networking sites in New Zealand, and it doesn't show the unseen web (academic journals etc) this should be displaced as a reef underwater somewhere on the screen. Anyway i thought it was quite cool, it will be interesting to see what shape it takes in five years time!

Switchfoot are Coming to Parachute Festival 08!!!

Switchfoot

Oh man this is so great, I'm so excited about this! I am so going to go to parachute next year (Thats if I can afford it!) Switchfoot played in Auckland Last Night and said that they were coming to parachute 08 which will be from the 25-28th of January next year. I have not read any reviews of these guys concerts or sets, but they should be really really astounding. I have been wanting to see them for a number of years and do not want to miss this concert.

My Personality

Though I'm not one for boxes, this describes some of my personality and who I am as a person. Its funny on the other Myers Brigs test I came out as a judging, but on this one I came out as perceiving (explains the fact that when I go supermarket shopping I don't take a list and I go don't do shopping in an orderly fashion!)

Heroes of Faith

Matt Mansell has talked about those who have left spiritual legacies for us in his blog just recently. I have a real desire when I have some time to write a series on Heroes of Faith. I think theres a biblical precedent for this. In hebrews this is set out very nicely in hebrews 11 and 12. The writer of hebrews tells to story of past heroes, echoing what they did and how they were compelled for action, then he goes on to say that we have the same challenge in our lives, to be heroes of faith to those around us. To disciple and bring people onto the journey of life.

Anyway I was wondering if anyone has some good sources on a number of individuals

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther
Dietrich Bonnhoffer
Moses
Joshua
Paul
Peter
Jesus (I have many sources here but anything else is always a pleasure)
St Francis of Assissi
St Augustine of Hippo
John Calvin
Mother Terressa

If anyone else can think of any others they think would be good that would be awesome. And if you have any good sources that you know of please tell me.

I got 21/25 the average is 18/25. See How well you can do

Hat Tip: David Farrar

Resurgence Remodified

If you don't know Resurgence you shoud check it out. It is a theological website run by Mars Hill Church Seattle. It runs many articles on many controversal theological issues remaining quite conservative theologically in its arguments. I went to check in out today anyway and it has had a full makeover, making it alot easier to use. Anyway, you should check it out, especially if you have an interest in theology and issues facing theology today.

Clustermaps

Just to let you know that I've cluttered my side menu further with a "Clustermap", this tells you where in the world people are accessing my blog from.

MyLibraryThing

I finally figured out how to put up a widget for MyLibrarything. This is a cool website which allows you to catalog your books online and display them proudly for the rest of the world to see. Its really quite fun.

Discover What Josh is Discovering

My very talented younger brother Joshua has set up his own blog, http://supremeedible.blogspot.com after a bit of pressure had been put on him from me and others to set it up. Go, read it, and discover a little bit more about the world around you and the universe around you.