by Michael Novelli | October 01 2008 07:24 PM
I came across a great website called
Nerdbots.
Description from the website:
“Oddly obsessed with all things robot, married couple Nicholas and Angela from Kansas City, Missouri, decided on a whim one day to do nothing other than to build one themselves.
After piecing together parts found at their favorite antique and thrift stores, they created their first robot friend. Since that first day, Nicholas and Angela have added many fabulously geeky robots to their beloved robotic collection.”
What a concept… taking something considered to be junk, mixing it together, and restoring into something creative, fun and valuable. This is what we should be doing in our communities… and in our lives.
by Michael Novelli | September 30 2008 06:13 AM
My book is finally available for purchase! Wohoo! It was a long and rewarding process to bring it to completion. You can pick up a copy online in many locations, but I would prefer you buy it from MY Amazon store 'cause I get a small cut!
Click here: http://astore.amazon.com/echothestory-20/detail/0310273668/102-5802111-6312922
by Michael Novelli | September 26 2008 12:06 PM
I was recently interviewed about my book,
Shaped by the Story, on a Duluth Radio Station, WWJC AM 850. I was on the program
Northland Notebook with Ted Elm. I did not have any hunting or hockey tips for Jim, so I just talked about my book. My interview was right after William Young, author of
The Shack. Big shoes to follow! I start slow, by eventually seem fairly coherent in the interview, even though I kind of hate the sound of my own voice.
If you have 25 minutes to kill, you can download a MP3 of the interview by clicking
HERE.
http://www.echothestory.com/media/NorthlandNotebook.mp3
by Michael Novelli | September 26 2008 11:03 AM
In an effort to
feel better and loose weight, my wife and I began to drastically change our eating habits about 6 years ago. Our efforts increased 3 years ago before our son was born. We strongly desired for him to begin with a a pattern of healthy eating. It worked! He loves his fruit and veggies.
Over the last few years we have invested ourselves in being more educated about what we take into our bodies and how that food was prepared. My wife has read countless books and websites, and has done an amazing job helping change the way we live and eat.
We desire to live holistic, healthy lives... we've grown to care deeply about how the environment and animals are treated in the preparation of our food.
It has been encouraging to see a growing movement throughout North America for people to eat locally produced organic food. When we began this journey 5 or 6 years ago it was hard to find organic food outside of a limited (and expensive) selection at small health food stores. Now, virtually every supermarket provides a selection, helping make organic food more accessible and affordable.
Click here to read an article on the befits of organic food.
This has not been easy. We still have "bad days" where we eat things outside of the norm. Often when I do eat something greasy or filled with preservatives, my body expresses it's disdain in not-so-pleasant ways!
We have made a commitment to spend less in other areas in order to eat better. We eat out way less, pack lunches, and purchase more than 80% organic. We have also started trying to buy and support locally grown food. Recently we visited an amazing farm near our home called the
Heritage Prairie Market, that educates children and adults how to eat better and grow their own food. Very cool.
We want to start a garden in our neighborhood this spring, as a place to connect and encourage each other toward better living.
This is something we have no experience with, but are excited to experiment and learn!
Tell me about your journey to get healthy and eat better... wherever you are at!
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by Michael Novelli | September 22 2008 07:57 PM
This past week I had the opportunity to be a part of the 7th Annual
International Orality Network (ION) Conference . It was a unique gathering of missions-minded leaders from all over the globe who desire to communicate God's story through auditory and visual means. I had the chance to interact with people from 5 different continents about Bible Storying, including professional storytellers, missionaries, and professors. It was humbling, encouraging and intimidating all at the same time! I found that people were hungry to know how Storying is connecting with emerging generations who are considered to be "post-literates". In my next post I will share some of my discussion points from the workshops I led at ION and hopefully get some feedback from you! I feel very fortunate to be a part of this movement and get to see what's happening all over the globe.
by Michael Novelli | September 11 2008 12:30 AM
I am so thrilled to launch the new Echo website! We are still tweaking, testing and adding features, but I couldn't wait to post it.
Imago Media did a terrific job with the design work, and
Floodlight Web Design did the coding. Great job guys!
It is not just a great looking site, but has many added features and videos. The most notable are the
IDEAS section, containing a growing list of exercises to help your group experience storying in new and creative ways, and the
RESOURCES section, filled with helpful articles and recommendations to help you with storying.
Let me know what you think!!
by Michael Novelli | September 09 2008 11:07 PM
We are in the process of planning a MERGE Student Event for 2009 in the Midwest. More details will be coming early this fall. This event will be hosted in partnership between Echo, Imago Media and some other great youth ministry organizations we’ll announce soon.
Email us if you are interested in attending or helping out!
by Michael Novelli | August 18 2008 11:15 PM
It’d be nice if the Bible read like a novel from cover to cover. But it’s not a novel. It’s a series of books that have been grouped together—and many of them are out of chronological order.
In technological terminology, a mashup is a Web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. The Bible is like this—a mashup of different writings from different authors inspired to tell the unified Story of God and his love for people.
In a recent talk, author Scot McKnight suggested we look at the Bible as a “Wikistory,” in which there is “ongoing reworking of the biblical story by new authors who each tell the story in their own way.” McKnight continued, “None [of the books of the Bible] is exhaustive, comprehensive or absolute...they are different stories of THE Story. We don’t have to harmonize them or try to reconcile them. They’re just doing their own versions of the Story, and each has a place in the larger picture.”
Let’s face it—the Bible is often difficult to read and to teach. We’ve got our work cut out for us if we wish to give our students a sense of its overarching story. That’s why storying is the best way I’ve found to give people, young and old alike, a Bible overview with context to all future Bible learning.
(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, Shaped by the Story)
by Floodlight | August 06 2008 02:43 PM
Next week (Aug. 16th) I will be leading a storying workshop for Southbrook Church. This will be my first workshop that is primarily with children’s ministry leaders. Since I am not an expert in ministry to children, I invited one – my friend Amy Dolan from LemonLime Kids! I am really excited to be co-leading with Amy. Youth ministry workers and pastors from the area will also be a part of the day-long event. If you are interested in joining us, let me know!
by Michael Novelli | July 16 2008 11:21 PM
“Art is love creating the new world and justice is love rolling up its sleeves to heal the old one”
– N.T. Wright
by Michael Novelli | June 18 2008 11:51 PM
One of the defining words for this digital era is
interactive. We’re becoming accustomed to being able to access and create our own media at a moment’s notice. We desire to contribute to our own learning and entertainment like we would any conversation. We now yearn to be a part of shared experience.
This shift in values has significant implications for the way we approach education. Places where we’ve traditionally accessed information—schools, libraries, and museums—have identified this shift and moved to making their learning opportunities more interactive. There is a new set of standards for how we teach others. We are moving away from one-dimensional education with the teachers being the experts who hold the key to information.
Students already have instant access to most information. They’re becoming accustomed to being able to change, interact, and create while they learn.
We teachers and leaders then become guides to help students explore information and use it in the right context. This requires a new vision for our roles as educators. We become “experience architects,” creating environments that help participants dive deeper and explore further into the things of God. This new role requires a significant investment of energy into creativity.
Bible Storying helps us to explore our new roles as experience architects. The storying process encourages us to experiment with all kinds of creative exercises that will foster learning and formation in our students.
(Excepted from my forthcoming book, Shaped by the Story)
by Michael Novelli | May 06 2008 11:30 PM
Excerpt from the book Searching for God Knows What:
“It strikes me, even as I type this, how distant and far our formulaic methodology is from the artful, narrative sort of methodology used to explain God in Scripture. It makes you wonder whether we can even get to the truth of our theology unless it is presented in the sort of methodology Scripture uses.
It makes you wonder if all our time spent making lists would be better spent painting or writing or singing or learning to speak stories. Sometimes I feel as though the church has a kind of pity for Scripture, always having to come behind it and explain everything, put everything into actionable steps, acronyms and hidden secrets, as though the original writers, and for that matter the Holy Spirit who worked in the lives of the original writers, were a bunch of illiterate hillbillies. I don’t think they were illiterate hillbillies, and I think the methodology God used to explain His truth is quite superior.
What I mean by this is I feel my life is a story, more than a list; I feel this blood slipping through my veins and these chemicals in my brain telling me I am hungry or lonely, sad or angry, in love or despondent. And I don’t feel that a list could ever explain the complexity of all this beauty, all this sun and moon, this smell of coming rain, the beautiful mysteries of women, or the truck-like complexity of men.
It seems nearly heresy to explain the gospel of Jesus, this message an infinitely complex God has delivered to an infinitely complex humanity, in bullet points. How amazing it is that Christ would explain that to be His followers we must eat His flesh and drink His blood, and that He is the Bridegroom and we are the bride, and that we will be unified with Him in His death, and that we will live forever with Him in glory.”
