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The audio book of The Porpoise Diving Life is available here. Endorsements for the book are here. If you don't want to buy it on-line, just send us a check or money order. Allow 7 days for receipt.

4 CD set. Recorded in a stste of the art recording studio by a gifted, professional narrator. Includes footnotes used in the written version of the book. A GREAT GIFT! WORLDWIDE shipping. Listen to The Porpoise Diving Life as you drive to work, on your stereo, or pc. Create an mp3 and download to iTunes or your mp3 player. Enjoy The Porpoise Diving Life. A special gift for yourself, or someone God has placed on your heart.

Some stories are meant to to told...audibly.
 

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Recent Publications: 

 

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February 2007 -  The Porpoise Diving Life - U.S. Catholic Magazine -

 

February 5, 2007 -  Counting Character - The Terry Miller Story, Central Oregon Senior Times. February 2007 Issue Print Publication.

 

January 2007 -  Tim Donahue - Artist - Central Oregon Senior Times - January  2007 Issue. Print Publication.

 

 

December 2006 - T'was The Weeks Before Christmas - Hispanic Vista - Los Angeles, CA - www.HispanicVista.com

 

 

December 2006 -  Immigrace-un - Hispanic Vista - Los Angeles, CA - www.HispanicVista.com

 

 

December 2006 - Prayer For the Emerging Church 2007 - http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/a-prayer-for-the-emerging-church-in-2007

 

 

 

 

Bill and Jacki Dahl make their home in central Oregon. They have 4 children and three grandchildren. They have four adopted Greyhounds, Dollar, Folsom, Riker and Boonie (who would be terribly disappointed if they weren't mentioned here). They are typically involved in serving and advocating for the disadvantaged, oppressed and marginalized.

 

Jacki is an interior designer. Bill is a freelance writer and social justice advocate. He has extensive public speaking experience and has led seminars throughout the United States.  He is published in numerous professional publications, journals, magazines, e-zines, websites, newspapers and newsletters.   Jacki has an Associates degree. Bill has a Bachelor's and Master's Degree.  Jacki is composed gentle, caring, creative, fun-loving and contemplative. Bill loves people, life, learning, joy, istening, encouraging, visioning and mediating controversy and conflict. Bill and Jacki have lived in Seattle and Los Angeles, prior to making their home in central Oregon

 

Our beliefs about God, Jesus, Christianity and Scripture

Let’s face it. There’s stuff in life that hurts, is frightening, incredibly joyous, unpredictable, humorous, tedious, boring, hazy and confounds our ability to understand it all. There’s even more about daily living on this planet that escapes trite, formulaic explanations. Let’s be honest. Life gets confusing and overwhelming. When my life gets this way, I go for a long walk on the beach. It’s what happened to me during one of these walks that prompted me to write this book and create this website. It’s about the reality for the rest of us, picking up where the purpose-driven perspective  peters out. It’s The Porpoise Diving Life.

We believe that God is alive and has more to reveal to us, His children. To do so, God is empowering people to breakdown the walls of the boxes man has attempted to confine Him in. God cannot be contained.

We know that there is a group of people who are actively engaged in this Revolution. As George Barna has recently written: "One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from studying the words of Jesus is that He loved fruit. Not the kind you pick off trees or vines, but the kind that’s evident in the life of a person whom He has changed. He made it very clear that the proof of people’s faith is not in the information they know or the religious gatherings they attend, but in the way they integrate what they know and believe into their everyday practices."    We worship, serve and have our hope in The God of More - Jesus Christ.

As one author wrote in 2002, "It is quite astounding that although Protestant and Catholic churches have raised  - and spent - close to one trillion dollars on domestic ministry during the past two decades, there has been no measurable increase in one of the expressed purposes of the church: to lead people to Christ and have them commit their lives to Him."

In 2005, it was suggested that, "Nothing is more numbing to the Church than the fact that it is mired in a rut of unfathomable depths. The various creative approaches attempted over the course of this decade have drawn much attention but produced little, if any, transformational impact."

The bottom line is that the spirituality served up in the name of Christ in the U.S. and the developed western world is distinctly unproductive and unprofitable. Some churches have remained largely unchanged while others have changed the ambiance, the music, the lighting, added video screens, pastors, elders, and websites. Others have embraced bigger buildings with different architectural features. Some have turned to new delivery systems, serving up their products via seminars, books cd’s, dvd’s, live television and training by subscription satellite broadcasts. No matter what the Christian retail outlets have done to attract customers and change them by virtue of how or what they consume, there appears to be no measurable transformational effect on their behavior, after dining in these establishments over a period of time. It’s time for a change.

Our numbers are dwindling. The resistance to becoming a Christian in the developed, western world is militant and permeates cultures across continents. The willingness of non-Christians to engage in an open-minded discussion of Christianity with evangelicals can be characterized by two hormonally imbalanced adolescents brawling in a schoolyard. The point is, everybody’s losing. The Christian species is under siege.  The decline of mainstream denominationalism within the species is well documented. Predictions of extinction in the next fifty years are at hand. Species don’t become extinct overnight. It’s a gradual process. They peter out.

The question becomes, why do species peter out? Answer, they fail to adapt to environmental changes around them. The species continues to resist the reality that we must change how we interact with our world.

We yearn to be become God’s healing hands and feet: "It is time that we demand more of ourselves as Christians.  We are the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, and if the world is going to see, feel, and touch him, it will have to be through us." 

We believe that God is empowering us to embrace those the world rejects, demeans and belittles. He is encouraging us to move and live outside the camp: "If our theology is to be an authentic reflection and witness to God who is revealed in Jesus Christ as the God of the excluded, then we need to embark on the often painful journey to meet with  Jesus the Christ outside the camp, among the excluded. Such a journey will leave us uncomfortable and displaced in the "carnivalesque" postmodem world." 

We are people who are being led by God to jump the curve where ""Jumping the Curve" means leaving one stage of development for another....it involves leaving the comfort and familiarity of the old world of conventional wisdom, processes, traditions, leadership styles and products.....If that were not intimidating enough, those who do jump will find that the next curve does not even exist yet. In fact, it is being created by the leaders who are in the very process of guiding their organizations through "midair" gap between today's fading epoch and the demands of the new era that is still unsettled and in evolution"

Bibliography

1  Barna, George Revolution, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL Copyright ? 2005 by George Barna, p. 25.

2  Barna, George The State of the Church: 2002, Published by Issachar Resources, a division of Barna Research Group, Ltd., 5528 Everglades Street Ventura, CA 93003 Copyright © 2002 by George Barna p. 63.

3  Barna, George and The Barna Group The State of the Church: 2005, Copyright © 2005 by George Barna and The Barna Group, 1957 Eastman Avenue, Ventura, CA 93003 p. 51.

4  Perkins, John M.  Restoring At-Risk Communities - Doing It Together & Doing It Right, Baker Books Grand Rapids, Michigan © Copyright 1995 by John M. Perkins, p. 12

5  Rieger, Joerg Opting For The Margins - Postmodernity and Liberation in Christian Theology, Oxford University Press, NY, NY © 2003 by The American Academy of Religion, p. 59.

6  Imparato, Nicholas and Harari, Oren Jumping The Curve: Innovation and Stratgic Choice in an Age of Transition. Jossey-Bass Publishers, Copyright (c) 1996 by Nicholas Imparato and Oren Harari. P. 74.