09.03.10
Posted in books, hermeneutics, learning at 5:00 am by len
If you are speaking/teaching/preaching with any regularity, what have you found to be the best NT commentaries, and if you enough knowledge to venture an opinion, the best commentary series available today? And why?
I note, for example, just these three volumes from different series:
IVPNT, Galatians by G. Walter Hansen.
The Baker Exegetical series looks interesting.. and expensive! Anyone know who Thomas Schreiner is?
And then Eerdmans puts out their New International series: Romans by Douglas Moo, Philippians by Gordon Fee, and Galatians by Ronald Fung. I note the set (18 volumes) can be had for about $500.
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09.02.10
Posted in audio, ecology, gospel, poetry/prose, semiotics, the arts at 10:45 am by len
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
. . .
The name that no human research can discover–
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
TS Eliot
* * *
I find myself, particularly around a hungry lunchtime in an empty house, talking to my cat. (If you are the caregiver to a friendly animal, you know this condition. If not, you are likely, like some of my relatives, to think me insane).
It’s a curious experience, to be eyeballing an intelligent animal. One frequently has the sense that they understand much more than they do. It’s a projective phenomenon — but some days I wonder if the thoughts in our heads are placed there by these animals. “I really am cute. Scratch me behind the ears”). We’ve had Kiara – or she has had us – for seven years now. A beautiful sealpoint Siamese with startling blue eyes, we will find her a new home before our next move. No — we haven’t told her yet.
* * *
Earlier this year Ellen Davis was interview on Speaking of Faith. This one comes recommended. Ellen is the author of Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. I am only downloading the interview today, but I believe it also includes Wendell Berry. The subject, “Land, Life and the Poetry of Creatures.”
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09.01.10
Posted in life happens at 1:34 pm by len
I was on my way back from the mall this morning when I spotted a young man with straggly hair standing on the median with a cardboard sign. It read simply, “Travelling, hungry, broke.”
I drove a few more blocks but felt like the Lord was whispering to me, “This is your day to provide.” I thought about it for another block, the traffic was fairly heavy and I didn’t really feel like eating fast food for lunch. My next thought was this, “This is someone’s son or daughter. If it were your daughter, wouldn’t you be praying that someone would stop and help?” I turned around at the next light.
I parked and crossed to the median. I caught his attention and he walked toward me. I offered, “how about lunch at Burger King?” He flashed a smile. “Sounds good, thanks.” We chatted as we walked back to the car. Dave is from Victoria and had been in town only a few days. More recently he had been on the east coast of Canada, but it was getting cold and wet. As we got into the car he told me his girlfriend was somewhere around, and sure enough as we approached the next light there she was with her own cardboard sign. I stopped and she saw Dave in the car. I rolled down my window and asked if she wanted to join us for lunch. She got in and away we went. Chantelle is a vegetarian, but Burger King happens to offer the best veggie burger in town.
We sat and ate and drank orange juice, talked about BC towns and BC weather and BC food. Chantelle had spent nearly half her years in Winnipeg, so we talked also about Winnipeg winters and the Forks. They were a pleasant (and hungry) couple hoping to stay in Kelowna for a while, and maybe pick apples or grapes. I told them that METRO offers a free breakfast at 9 AM on Sunday. That sounded good to them – maybe we’ll meet again.
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Posted in gospel, pilgrimage, poetry/prose, theology at 5:00 am by len
I am tracking the intersection of two threads of conversation over the past month or so. The first thread was with regard to the increasing absence of the Old Testament in the teaching and discipling ministries of the church. The second thread was the difficulty of publishing “Christian” fiction. By “Christian” fiction I don’t mean fiction about the OT or NT stories, or fiction which is always obviously religious. That would be to reduce fiction to propaganda. A good story has internal integrity and may address ultimate concerns through a variety of lenses. Some might not appreciate the work of Flannery O’Connor, for example, but it is densely religious.
It hit me sometime after the first conversation about the apparent irrelevance of the Old Testament, that these two concerns are connected. The OT stopped mattering when two other things happened: place became an abstraction (and at the same time, history), and salvation became either an internal and personal concern, or something primarily future and other-worldly. Both these movements away from the groundedness of reality in history, away from the real implications of the Incarnation, push us away from the concreteness and messiness of the story. The story doesn’t matter if salvation is merely personal or a future destiny. Context then no longer has meaning, since ultimate meaning resides outside history. Then why worry about what God did yesterday? Only the intersection of my story and God’s story matter when salvation is a spiritual and personal matter.
But if this is less than true, then the story is everything. Context is everything. Place is everything. The actual visible community is the only true apologetic for the gospel. We need a sacramental lens – God is at work in and behind everything we see: grace is ubiquitous. As Carrie Newcomer sings,
Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile
Showerheads and good dry towels
And frying eggs sound like psalms
With a bit of salt measured in my palm
It’s all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent..
See also Wiens on abstraction, Holt on place, de Certeau on modernity and its effects.
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08.30.10
Posted in books, gospel, hermeneutics, poetry/prose, theology at 8:43 am by len
Part VI of Kenneth Bailey’s “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes” is an introduction to the parables. It’s a powerful and packed four pages, especially the first two. Here they are for the enlightenment of all..
“Very early in the life of the church outsiders saw Christians drawing their faith from parables. One of these witnesses was Galen, the most famous medical doctor of the second century. He was also the first pagan to say positive things about Christians. Around AD 140 he wrote:
“Most people are unable to follow a demonstrative argument consecutively: hence they need parables, and benefit from them . . . just as now we see the people called Christians drawing their faith from parables [and miracles] and yet sometimes acting [as those who philosophize] . . . and in their keen pursuit of justice, have attained a pitch not inferior to that of genuine philosophers.”
“In later centuries parables became a source for Christian life (ethics) but not Christian faith (theology). it is instructive to note that in the second century Galen saw Christians building their faith on parables.. How did parables lose their status as a source of the Christian faith? Read the rest of this entry »
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08.28.10
Posted in complexity/systems, ekklesia, mission at 11:14 am by len
A helpful insight from the sustainable kiwi, Steve Taylor:
“Here in South Australia we recently enjoyed the visit by Dave Male. One of the big helps for me was when Dave talked about the size of the core team in planting fresh expressions. He was making the point that the smaller the team, the slower the progress, but the more likely it would be radical re-expression of missional life. In contrast, the larger the core team, the more quickly the plant might grow, yet the more likely the new plant can end up look like it’s planting parent.”
Read more: HERE
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Posted in life happens at 11:13 am by len
Last year after years of sticking with a single recipe for oatmeal/whole wheat bread, I tried a new recipe. At the same time, I tried some new flour – an organic, stone-ground whole grain flour with no additives. The result was a whole wheat cracked grain bread loaf that is probably the best home baked bread I have ever had. If, like me, you love a great slice of fresh bread with real butter.. well, it doesn’t get a lot better than that.
Shortly after I tried another recipe.. a 100% whole wheat loaf with molasses and honey. Ever since we got our first bread making machine in 1995 I have been crazy about fresh bread. The smell – the flavor – the great toast it makes along with eggs in the morning – or fresh sliced with some homemade soup: yeh, you can smell it now right?
Last night we were giving away hotdogs and mingling with the chilled street dwellers downtown. We’ve had a rapid shift in the weather from a high of 35, and now two days later the high is 19. That means our night temperatures are below 10 C. We should have thought of fresh coffee – would have gone over big last night.
Anyway, we stopped at the gospel mission to pick up hot-dog buns. They get the day old buns from Safeway and sometimes from Buns Master, and always have more than they can use. They foisted about eight bags of bananas on us also. We used most of them but brought the excess home with us – very ripe. So this morning we baked our favorite muffins – bran and banana with no added sugar. These muffins are best fresh and with a bit of jam or honey.
Muffins and bread are my most common baking project. I have been known on occasion to bake a lemon meringue pie, using a store bought crust of course. And in the winter, every few months, I make cinnamon buns. The bread machine makes this so easy.
I find that baking clears some space for my mind and spirit. I usually listen to some great music while waiting for things to cook, except in the case of bread which is mix then forget for four hours. It’s been a while since I shared a recipe here — if I have time I’ll put the muffin recipe online one day soon.
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Posted in complexity/systems, semiotics at 5:00 am by len
“The interdependence between global problems is intensifying, but also that their interdependence creates extraordinarily high degrees of uncertainty about what the best solutions might be.
“All the signs of our time .. suggest that the era of standard solutions is coming to an end. The usual measures are becoming less and less effective, even as today’s global problems balloon to sky-high levels, further eluding our grasp. Consider two recent developments.
“The first is an emerging sense among many thinkers that one era is ending and a new one is about to begin. The new era, however, is scarcely known and not yet visible…
“The second development .. is that a high number of largely unexpected world crises—notice the plural here—have emerged, and the way in which public authorities have been handling them is clearly inadequate. A serious economic crisis is not new; we have had such crises before. But what has made the recent economic crisis different is that it has come in the context of a package of other crises that are very different in nature. These crises are respectively the food crisis, the energy crisis, the poverty crisis, the environmental crisis, and the safety (or security) crisis. Remarkably, all of these crises are more or less interdependent. They are interconnected, which implies that they mutually reinforce and further entrench each other. And that reality has created a new kind of political and economic insecurity.”
More..
See also “catagenesis”
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08.27.10
Posted in leadership, learning, semiotics, theology at 5:00 am by len
“Theological education is comparable to what in the computer business is known as network engineering. A network engineer needs to understand how the guts of a computer work, but even more importantly, she or he is required to design and implement novel, creative architectures for sharing and processing complex configurations of information with different spatial distributions and topographies. Similarly, someone with a seminary degree needs to know how to read and interpret the Bible (even in its original languages), to be familiar with the history of Christianity, and to have facility in the kind of faith-based intellectual reflection we know as theology. But more importantly, they should understand how to begin to deploy those base competencies in a multitude of interpenetrable contexts. As Dr. James Muilenberg, a famous Old Testament professor of a now bygone era, used to put it: “There are basically two things you have to read every morning if you’re going to minister—the Bible and the newspaper.” We have to learn how to read the Bible, but we also have to figure out how to read the “newspaper,” or in this day and age the online news and blogs.
“It has been said too often that we are now in a post-Christian world. A better phrasing would be a post-churched world. Ironically, that may be what Christ really had in mind when he enunciated what has come to be called The Great Commission. Jesus said “go and make disciples of all nations,” not “go find a good location to start churches.” The difference is not all that subtle. As disciple-making disciples we need to be gearing our theological studies toward becoming makeover artists in redesigning our Father’s house, not plodding toward one day becoming junior partners in the management of his firm.”
Carl Raschke, “From Church to ‘Rhizone‘: Reconfiguring Theological Education for the Postmodern Era”
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08.26.10
Posted in books, complexity/systems, leadership, transition at 8:52 am by len
Paul at Prodigal Kiwis notes that Steve Taylor is blogging through an important book published in New Zealand. Paul Aitken calls the following ten points the ‘dynamic capabilities’ needed by change leaders.
1. Dealing with ambivalence: having the capacities to ‘wait and see,’ keep an open mind and be comfortable with contradiction;
2. Accessing the diverse range of capabilities across the leadership team;
3. Creating a learning environment;
4. Future sense-making combined with strategic thinking which requires a strong external focus;
5. “Total” or authentic leadership i.e., an ability to continually walk the talk;
6. Trans-cultural competence “an awareness that one size doesn’t fit all;
7. Develop relational 1-1 skills: the ability to coach;
8. Develop dialogue 1-many skills: or process consulting;
9. Emotional intelligence including self-awareness, emotional resilience, intuition, etc.
10. The ability to manage the high quality performance challenge, culture and dialogue.
It wasn’t so long ago that I was in conversation with a leadership consultant who was aware of the most recent research on leaders who are leading change. The most effective and enduring leaders scored very high in three characteristics:
1. team leadership
2. pattern recognition
3. emotional intelligence
I can’t be sure, but I don’t think I see #2 in the list of ten above unless it is covered by #4 and #6. Interesting. I checked and this paperback book is priced over $40 in Canada. Elsewhere, Francis Duffy writes a series on change and emotional intelligence.
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