Yep, that's right. We're looking to purchase a building in Three Rivers, Michigan, where we could do a number of things--including local community development (in partnership with existing organizations and groups already working in Three Rivers), an off-campus program for college students, seminars and workshops for church groups, and kinds of other things we're just beginning to dream about.

In fact, we already have an accepted offer in on Huss School, an historic school building on four acres of land that would be an ideal location for all kinds of unique and service-oriented programming. The (initial) tricky part of the offer is that we have until May 27 to raise the $20,000 down payment. Should we be able to manage that, we'll move forward with other challenges posed by the Huss building.

Regardless of whether the current offer is completed, we're looking to move forward on finding a physical space for *cino to do its work. For more, take a look at our Imagining Space web site, where we offer a vision for what we hope to do with a building like Huss, introduce the property itself, tell the story of how we've gotten to this point in *cino's development, and intend to keep folks updated on our efforts.

We're hoping we'll be able to complete the purchase of Huss and move forward, but we'll need your support to do so. If you've enjoyed *cino's work and are interested in this new opportunity for its incarnation, please consider donating for our campaign. We would very much appreciate your contribution!

Today, Kirstin and I had the opportunity to speak to a group of Cornerstone University humanities students in their capstone seminar. It seems they've had quite an adventure this semester, exploring cultural and textual hermeneutics. They had just finished reading Andy Crouch's excellent Culture Making; we were invited to tell the story of *culture is not optional and our own haltingly clumsy attempts at making culture faithfully.

The students were very passionate and sharp, making the conversation was thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you, especially, to Michael Stevens for the invitation!

*cino had a display table at this year's excellent Festival of Faith & Music 2009 (FFM) at Calvin College, organized by the Student Activities Office (SAO). Kirstin and I share a position in the SAO--in addition to our *cino work--and have the distinct pleasure of working with Ken Heffner, the director of Student Activities, who has been doing amazing Kingdom work in the area of popular culture for a long time. The work Ken's been doing at Calvin was on our radar long before we worked there; in fact, the SAO and FFM were some of the examples *cino has always pointed to as signposts of Kingdom life. So it's quite wonderful, now, to be a part of something like the Festival in a more intimate way than simply exhibiting.

We'd encourage you to visit the Festival web site for audio resources, photos and information about participants. I'd specifically recommend the incredible conversation between Lupe Fiasco and Cornel West, the Cornel West lecture, and two excellent articles by Marty Garner about headliners The Hold Steady and Lupe Fiasco. Actually, all of the workshops are pretty fantastic, so you should just subscribe to the FFM podcast and download everything. :)

From February 13-15, *culture is not optional will once again have a table in the exhibit area at CCO's annual Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. If you will be in attendance, please stop by and introduce yourself. We'd love to have a chance to chat!

We will also be presenting a workshop called "Eat Well," in which we'll be exploring broken food systems and how we might participate in a more holistic approach to eating faithfully.

We just noticed that Do Justice: A Social Justice Road Map was #39 on the Top 40 sellers at Calvin College's Bookstore. How cool is that?

Kirstin wrote a great piece called "Discernment vs. Discretion" for the most recent issue of The Banner, the Christian Reformed Church's denomination magazine. As the title might suggest, the article discusses how discretion often gets confused as discernment, which often derails necessary conversations about discernment. Check it out and let us know what you think ...

Update (12.3.08): Relevant Magazine picked up a slightly different version of Kirstin's piece and published it as "Discerning Difference" on their web site.

If you're a regular reader of catapult magazine, you probably noticed that the catapult site changed drastically with our last issue. We're proud to introduce a complete redesign of the site that we hope will help foster more regular discussion on the site. We're still in the process of adding a few more features and we'll let you know when those are available. Also, you'll soon be able to support catapult and *cino by subscribing to the magazine for additional features. Stay tuned!