Would you like to make a difference in an amazing city? We are looking for people who would like to be part of beginning a missional community in the Clontarf area of Dublin. Our hope is to start missional communities throughout the city of Dublin, and across Ireland. Sound interesting? So, what does it look…
Tag: clontarf
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday
Over the next few weeks I’m planning a series of posts on some of the things we are thinking about as we move ahead with planting a church on Dublin’s Northside. It won’t be so much “here is what we are going to do,” as much as “here’s what we are wrestling with.” Most people have…
What We Are Dreaming
As we have spent time over the past 2 years dreaming about this new community and what it will look like, some key themes have risen to the top. This section seeks to outline some of these core ideas:
We will focus on discipleship above church planting.
We believe that when you focus on making disciples, a church will be a natural outflow.
Sundays
I’m still in need of some serious deprogramming. I was out for pints with a new friend last week and during the conversation, he asked, “What type of church do you work with?” That’s when my brain started spinning. While it should be a topic I love talking about, the question is challenging for a…
Looking Back…September
It seems the month of September has been filled in on our calendar since May. Lots of important stuff going on. Wanted to take a few minutes to share some of the highlights from the past month before we move too far into October. My 9 Favourite Pictures From September: (and yes, the pictures are a…
SEEK in a Pub
Okay…we are pretty excited!
After months of planning, meeting people in Belfast and Dublin, and scouting out pubs around Clontarf, we have our first event planned and in place.
Elizabeth’s First Blog Post
Although my efforts to have her write something here in this space have yet to pay off, Elizabeth has written her first blog post over at GotIreland.com.
I encourage you to stop over and give it a read.
5 Ways to More Quickly Adjust to a New City
In 2012 our family moved from Ithaca, NY (a college town of about 33,000 people) where we’d lived for 18 years to Dublin, Ireland.
While Dublin is a very different place from Ithaca, it was a relatively smooth transition. In fact Liz and I have both commented several times how quickly Dublin felt like home for us. And although the transition was not quite as smooth for a couple of the kids, when we were back in the States for 4 weeks last summer, each of our 3 teen-agers commented that they were looking forward to getting home to Dublin.
Now I’m sure that there were other factors that went into helping us transition so quickly to feeling at home in a city that is not only in a different country, but different in so many ways from where we spent the past 2 decades, but I wanted to share 5 that stood out to us.
New Year’s Day Flooding
This morning I was getting ready to make breakfast for everyone, but needed to go out & buy some eggs (since last night’s egg nog used the last of them.)
While driving along the coast, I noticed that the water looked higher than normal. I drove down a bit further and saw that we had a bit of flooding over night. Thought I’d share a couple pictures with you.
Your Last Chance for 1000 Years
I mentioned it in this month’s newsletter, but wanted to add it here for those of you who are not subscribed yet.
This Easter (April 20th) is a huge anniversary in Ireland…specifically in Clontarf.
No Parking
We like our new neighbourhood. We have already met more of our neighbours here than we did in a year up in Raheny (more of a statement about the layout of our previous estate, and that our house was a bit tucked away, than about Raheny).
Every encounter we’d had in our new place has been great. People have been really friendly.
Resurfacing
Summer is officially over. It seems like we just got off the plane from our time in NY, but that was almost 2 months ago.
And with the start of autumn, we are enjoying a chance to catch our breath and get our heads back above water for a bit.
We’re in Clontarf
It took us awhile but we’ve finally moved in to our new place in Clontarf. We currently have about half of our stuff moved in, and should have everything over within the next several days.
Our Journey (Part 9) –
(This is part 9 in a 10 part series of posts detailing the events leading up to our move from Ithaca to Dublin. You can read the whole series here. Next week we’ll wrap things up talking about sharing the news with our church in Ithaca.) After Méabh came home from the hospital and was…
Day #4 in Dublin…Out and about in Clontarf
Today we had nothing “official” to do around in Dublin. However, for the past few months I’ve been planning on showing up at Bull Island on our first week in town to meet up with the Bull Island Action Group. They meet on the beach on the 3rd Saturday of each month to clean up garbage. Seemed like a great way to meet some people, and maybe even bump into someone who’d say, “oh I know someone who has a great 4 bedroom apartment right in your price range…
Why Clontarf?
As Liz and I were wrestling with our decision about whether or not we were supposed to pack up our family and move to Dublin, we decided an important step in the process would be to make a return trip to Dublin so that we could meet some people, as well as have an opportunity…