The Kingdom of God, what is it? For me, this is a question of utmost importance. I believe the meaning of the kingdom of God has been neglected throughout the history of the church. Try asking your christian friends what is it, and you'll be amazed with the answers (or lack of). That is the question this book tries to answer. And I have to say that it answers the question very well.

This is a great book. Very well written, it is easy to read and yet deep enough in meaning. I like books like that. Books that talk about profound stuff in a simple and easy to understand way. There's a lot to learn from it, a lot to be practised, a lot to be debated.

I even recommend it to unbelievers. It's a great introduction to Christianity. And in a sense, the answer to life, the universe, and everything (which, by the way, it's not 42).

The Lift Conference will happen in 7-8-9 February, in Geneva, Switzerland, and I'll be there. I'm really looking forward for it, for several reasons.

For starts, it's a grassroots conference. And I totally support grassroots conferences for several ideological reasons. It's also all about new stuff, vision, and innovation. The kind of things that makes us think outside the box. And it's also an excellent opportunity to meet other people, and actually engage in conversations with them.

It will also be the first time I'll be in Switzerland, so it will be an excellent opportunity to do some tourism (I'll stay there for the following weekend). I also expect to do some (very light) birding, I'll probably see some swans and goose. It would be nice to get in touch with the emerging church in Geneva, but I don't know where to start.

All in all, I think I'll have a great time there.

I'm searching for a christian book about ecology. Any recommendations?

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, This is not a church... this is.

I would like to recommend you all the book Houses that change the world, by Wolfgang Simson. I haven't read it all yet, but I can already greatly recommend it. You can download it, or you can buy it.

Recently I went to a church "service" for the first time in months. While I couldn't connect with much of what was happening there, I felt really touched by the message that was taught. But at the end of the service, I had a feeling of incompleteness. I wanted to talk about it with the others, tell them how it spoke to me and hear what it meant to them. Discuss how that could become part of our life. But there was no room for that.

In the end, I felt cheated. I used to think of church services as restaurants, but now I see most of them as cooking shows.

A restaurant is a place where you go with some friends to eat something special. You may know some other people in the restaurant, but you only share the experience with the people that are in the same table. At least you get fed.

In a cooking show, on the other hand, you see someone cook, and you can even see the result, which looks tasty and beautiful. But that's it. You can't eat it, savour it, ingest it. You can only look at it.

I prefer a restaurant rather than a cooking show. But what I really love is a community. In a community everyone cooks, shares recipes, tastes each other food. On a community you not only get fed, you are part of it.

What kind of church are you part of?

The human being is the only one that can contemplate beauty in nature. We can look at a sunset, and feel awed by its beauty. We look at a butterfly, and we smile. We don't see other animals doing that. Only humans.

All this beauty was created for us. It was a special gift from God that renews each day. When we neglect nature, this precious gift he made, we are neglecting God himself. We are saying his gift is not important to us. And I bet that saddens God.