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February, 2004 Blogs
Have You Seen the Muffin Man?
I had a real cup of coffee this morning, while sitting down with two brothers at JAVA EXPRESS. I've been moving at warp nine ever since. People really drink this stuff every day?
Muffins.. my wife got this recipe from a friend two years ago.. banana bran. These are one of the best muffins God ever created. No, sorry, I'm not gonna share any with you (munch, munch)..
Stan brought along a book he picked up in Toronto via a divine appointment. The title is "Finally Comes the Poet," a title taken from a poem by Walt Whitman. Since I had my PPC with me I was able to record a WAV file of the opening lines and a small section from the introduction to share with you. Walter B has a way with words.. this guy ALWAYS fires my imagination. I am beginning to think that we should all be reading everything he writes.
After all the seas are cross'd (and they seem already cross'd)
Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"
In his introduction to Finally Comes the Poet, Brueggemann writes,
For more of this via audio, click HERE
"If you're wondering when Mayhem is going to start, it already did about three hours ago," said Chris Marshall one of the event coordinators. It started the moment you walked in the door. You experienced this event the moment you started your first conversation. It gained momentum while we ate a common meal together. From the beginning it wasn't about an event, conference, or seminar. It was about relationships. Relationships that would invoke feelings as well as affirmations declaring that "You are not alone."
You're Not Alone at Next Wave.
"Injustices are done any time a Christian is more concerned with the number of people it can influence (power) then with an individual person. As Christianity becomes institutionalized it sees the collective, it sees the masses, and so as Jacques Ellul describes this process, it has no solutions or answers to such huge problems and huge numbers. So Christians seek political answers to these political problems. And in doing so the individual gets swallowed up in the Great Sea of the Masses."
Christi-Anarchy: Discovering a Radical Spirituality of Compassion by David Andrews
"The question that I want to sketch in this work is one that troubles me most deeply. As I now see it, it seems to be insoluble and assumes a serious character of historical oddness. It may be put very simply: How has it come about that the development of Christianity and the church has given birth to a society, a civilization, a culture that are completely opposite to what we read in the Bible, to what is indisputably the text of the law, the prophets, Jesus, and Paul? I say advisedly "completely opposite." There is not just contradiction on one point but on all points. On the one hand, Christianity has been accused of a whole list of faults, crimes, and deceptions that are nowhere to be found in the original text and inspiration. On the other hand, revelation has been progressively modeled and reinterpreted according to the practice of Christianity and the church. Critics have been unwilling to consider anything but this practice, this concrete reality, absolutely refusing to refer to the truth of what is said. There is not just deviation but radical and essential contradiction, or real subversion."
The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Ellul.
"Lohfink demonstrates that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is intimately intertwined with the resurrection of the community he gathered. At Jesus’ death the disciples scattered, went back to where they were from and denied Jesus. Then suddenly they gathered again, in the most dangerous of places, claiming that God had raised this Jesus from the dead so that the gathering of the believers is in itself a de facto witness to the resurrection of Christ...the eschatological kingdom of God witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. "
Does God Need the Church? Gerhard Lohfink
In the spirit of one-up-manship, I scribbled a note on a PPC this morning. Sure, it's not exactly blogging... but it does prove that I have a more up-scale scribble pad than some "ah-hem" others out there. This in turn proves that I am a more valuable person, since I am able to combine making notes with virtual reality simply ANYWHERE and ANYTIME I want.. riding the bus, in the back seat of a car, sitting by the beach... and then with a click of my stylus convert that scribble into standard text and later upload it to my PC.
Man.. am I impressive or what? (I hope so because this is really becoming a time commitment.. and it is all John's fault).
Working on a new article over the weekend taking off from Mark Bishop's "Beyond Sunday Centered Communities." On reflection, perhaps the direction needs to be "event centered" communities. Let's face it, with the missional dimension of God's people almost lost to us, what other center could we find but a "gathered" one? And since leaders have a special investment in those gatherings (being indispensable as teachers and preachers), it has been hard for them to call that center into question.
But the issue is more than Sunday, since modern church life was centered around gatherings in general.. Sunday, and wednesday home group or bible study. When community is dependent on meetings, relationship is inevitably task focused and we are not about "life" but about vision and agenda. Thankfully, there are many winds of change.
"The way many evangelicals worship contributes to a secular world view or at least fails to challenge it. By worship I mean: gathering of people, singing hymns, praying, reading Scripture and hearing a sermon. By secularism I mean a world view wherein God is relegated to the edges of life. So defined, evangelical worship fosters secularism in at least five ways:
Evangelical Worship fosters Secularism Mark McKim
Late on Sunday I received an encouraging email from the UK. There has been some movement in the legal battle that was holding up our family income and it appears that the software I completed in November will be published later this week. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for us. This also provides the green light for me to begin a second project.
I borrowed a piece of hardware that allowed me to connect our VHS to the computer for the purpose of digitizing family movies. Our earliest movies are from 1987 when we had our first child. They stretch to 1999 when that same daughter was baptized in Okanagan lake.
Digitizing a 10 minute segment produces about 600 MB of raw data. Running that through Windows Movie Maker results in a 45 MB file. I did some minor editing in the process, and had to watch about two and a half hours of family history passing by.
It really becomes an emotional process. So much life is gone forever.. and our eldest daughter will graduate from high school in the spring of 2005. I already feel the loss and sadness, mingled with joy that she knows herself well and loves her Lord so dearly.
We had other good news on the weekend. One of our single moms has been given a car. Since she was nearly three months behind in payments on the car she bought during the summer, this is a GOOD thing. We've been able to contribute to smaller needs, but that one was beyond us. Her new car is a four cylinder instead of the six, and has a working gas gauge, which will mean there will be fewer mornings where we get an emergency phone call that she has no way to get her kids to school.
This community thing is often a stretch. Inviting those into our lives whose own lives are out of control inevitably spins some of the chaos into our own lives. We literally bear the burdens of others, and often feel the weight of it. We are drawn into their struggles. We need to learn together what it is to care, and also not to care. We need to set and enforce appropriate boundaries. Failing to do so is bad for the whole community and eventually kills compassion.
John Janzen and Rob McAlpine are moving to blogging on paper. In order to keep up with the Janzen's, we are all going to be forced to this new method of conveying our thoughts.
Questions Raised in response to Missional Church
1. What kind of accountability do particular communities have to a holistic understanding of the gospel? If we begin recognizing that some special mission churches or movements might be legitimate expressions for our time of God's sent people (a Christian college led by and for the deaf, for example), how do we rule some expressions out (an Aryan White People's Church of Jesus Christ, for example)? I believe if we start asking those kinds of questions, we might further elaborate what One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic mean for the expanded set of movements of people and spirit we would now like to assign the name "church." Moving out beyond the shadow definition of church by the Reformers (the place where the word of God is preached and the sacraments rightly administered) calls for a thick description of what acceptable and deponent particular faith expressions might look like.
2. The second question is this: if sunset laws and other organizational fixes will not save us when it comes to real missional connectedness, then what are the further marks of intercommunity faithfulness? Missional Church lays bare the limitations of both a purely functional understanding of larger church structures (where congregations are the only real church) and top down understandings that elevate episcope above the missio Dei. More organic expressions of the larger church require discussion about the sources of faithful oversight and Christian mutuality among diverse groups of stronger and weaker disciples. Some of these sources may be biblical and traditional church recoveries. Some may also be borrowings from the larger culture that are defensible in light of our prior theological commitments. And that leads me to plead for a full cultural awareness concerning the church. Even in theologizing about the form of the church and its structures, we must ask the cultural question, "Will people living in 21st century North America be able to understand this?"
James Hudnut-Beumler
The implications of these two questions are very broad. In times of transition we lose our rootedness and even our sense of self, making it difficult in turn to name those things around us. Is this church? Is that church? Is this a faithful expression of community and mission.. the sent people of God? And it is even harder to answer that question if those traditional, well defined, larger, highly organized (and automatically therefore culturally valid) communities around us do not agree with our assessment.
"It is a mistake to assume that the gospel of John is only concerned with persuading the reader to believe in Jesus. My reason is this: in John, to believe that Jesus is the Messiah is also to believe something about God. Do you catch it, three times over toward the end of this chapter (17:21, 23, 25)? What is most central for the world to believe about God (not about Jesus) is that God sent Jesus.
"This needs to be understood against the programmatic backdrop of 1:18: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” God is both the hidden one whom no one has seen, and the self-revealing one who longs to be known, and who therefore sends the only Son.
"The sending of the Son expresses something basic about God: that God wants to be known. God’s mission is to know and be known. Eternal life consists in knowing God, and Jesus Christ whom God sent (17:3). It is in Christ preeminently that we discover this–that God wants to be known, and it is central to Christ’s mission that the world know this about God–that God is the one who sent Jesus.
"But this passage tells us more than merely that God wants to be known, and therefore sends Jesus. It also speaks powerfully of the unity between the Father and the Son. Because God is preeminently the sending God who wants to be known, the way in which Jesus is united with God is by virtue of his having been sent by God. Because Jesus fully embraces the self-revealing mission that this sending God gives to him, Jesus is fully united to the God whose self-revealing mission reflects his deepest being.
"To be fully united to God’s mission is to be fully united to God. And it is this unity in mission to which the disciples are also invited.
"Jesus’ union with God flows from his fulfilling the mission which God gives to him (17:4)–when Jesus is united to God’s mission, he is united to God; in the same way, the union of the disciples with Jesus and with God flows from their completing the work which he gives them to do. (17:18 “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” And 20:21 “As the Father sent me, so I send you.”) And that work which the disciples are to fulfill is centrally to be the new community – to love each other as Jesus loved them(13:34-35).
"Simply by being the new community, the world comes to believe that God sent Jesus–that is, the world comes to believe that God has a mission to this world, and wants to sweep us up into it."
James V Brownson, Western Theological Seminary. www.gocn.org
"Being wrong" is not yet something we have learned to face with equanimity and understanding. We either condemn it with godlike disdain or forgive it with godlike condescension. We do not manage to accept it with human compassion, humility and identification. Thus we never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy."
Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Theological Foundations for the Emerging Church
I've been reading "The Church in Emerging Culture." It has annoyed me, frustrated me, and encouraged me.
As I began the book, I found myself wondering if I had made a good investment. It could be the last book I buy before summer, and it was purchased with funds intended as a late Christmas gift.
I found myself chafing with Andy Crouch. Who is this guy? How can he argue that postmodernity is an illusion?
As I moved on, I found myself identifying with Brian McLaren's frustrations, but I also found myself learning. By the time I got to Frederica Mathewes-Green writing, I was more open to the dialogue.
The Still Point..
In the early 80s I was profoundly impacted by classical spiritual authors, and I found myself seeing my faith through a series of lenses. One of those new lenses was the incarnation. "The only thing that every really happened" (GK Chesterton) and "the still point of the turning world" (TS Eliot). I began to realize that the secular/sacred dichotomies that have been with us since the Greeks, and perhaps even more after Thomas Aquinas and Abelard, were a faulty lens for viewing revelation and creation.
Frederica writes from the Orthodox tradition.. a tradition that is comfortable with images, attuned to paradox and mystery, and profoundly incarnational. I found an expected kinship with her thought, and I began to understand why I have often found Reformed theology unsatisfying.
But more than this, I saw anew how systematic approaches to theology, and in particular formulaic approaches, have done violence to the seamless garment of revelation and God's ongoing work in the world.
All this gave me renewed hope that we can speak in meaningful ways to the rising culture. We have so many rich traditions to draw from, and some, like Orthodoxy, rooted in pre-modern understanding, are more readily adapted to the postmodern world.
Not that we have to become Orthodox to hold these perspectives. We need to become biblical people, to rediscover mission and community, to be attuned to what the Lord is doing all around us. And in order to stay the same, we must change.
Incarnation and Crucifixion
The theological center in Reformed thinking is the Cross. Justification, a legal exchange, is the heart of the matter. Moreover, it is "point action" rather than process.
The theological center in Orthodox thinking is the Incarnation. It is the life and death of Jesus that is God's redemptive agenda. "What Christ has not borne, Christ has not redeemed." In sacramental theology, all creation is the focus, and both process and relationship are in view.
While most of us are well informed on justification and the "great exchange," we have paid less attention to the Incarnation itself. Yet "God became man," was one of us, lived among us. The Incarnation is God's ultimate YES to matter and to ordinary life in the world. If this is not true, then Jesus spent thirty wasted years as a carpenter. The very idea is absurd.
What a wonderful point of contact with postmodern theology. Evangelism is not what we do .. it is who we are. Neither is evangelism a set of propositions we recite.. it must grow out of authentic communities that incarnate the message. The word must be seen to be believed.. dwelling among them in grace and truth. "That which we have seen, that which we have touched with out hands.."
And what a wonderful slant on mission, pointing to both message and method. Message: Our cause of redemption is not merely the souls of humanity.. it is their very lives. We live transformed lives so that the world around us may be transformed.. even the creation itself is presently enslaved, but God continues to care for and to love this physical world and His love must be our love.
Method: Jesus emptied Himself and became fully human. And then He was truly among us. He didn't remain safe in a fortress preaching from a pulpit, but was found in the pubs and parties, out among the poor and needy. He risked reputation among the religious crowd by being profoundly "among," enjoying the hospitality of his hosts. And His emptiness was a true invitation. He was not interested in neatly wrapping up tidy sermons, but asked hard questions, confronting the idolatry of the age.
Jesus seemed less interested in "point action" decisions than in coming alongside people in process. We never see the "Roman road" or hear Paul recite the four spiritual laws. Jesus even bestowed his time and attention on those outside the community of faith. This carries through to the book of Acts as we see Peter arriving at a Greek household, and even before he has presented the Gospel the Holy Spirit has fallen on the unbelievers!
To embrace this truth is to begin a journey back to the garden, where Adam was the first steward in God's house. All the earth is the Lord's, and our tidy Greek categories of sacred and secular no not describe reality. The great commission, the new creation mandate is really meant to restore the first, the creation mandate. Jesus really is Lord of all, and the boxes that held our idea of Gospel turn out to be thimble sized where God's idea was for them to house the Universe. That God will bother about a physical resurrection and a new heaven and new earth ought to clue us to understand that the plan of redemption is far, far beyond just ridding the world of sin. (For more thoughts on all this see The Gospel of Sin Management)
Implications
What are the implications of this discussion for our methods of doing church? Does it make sense to center our efforts around a sunday gathering?
When we do gather, what should it look like? What are the implications of a real priesthood over all creation for leadership? participation? an "order of service?"
What is worship? Is the sermon (lecture) a useful thing? Should we discard it, or reshape it?
What about the sacraments?
Do we need a new theology of Presence?
"A holistic vision and practice of worship cannot actually occur until God's people seriously embrace their vocation as the incarnation of God's fullness and life on earth. When they view all of life as opportunity to engage with Christ, then all of life can become worship. This is where I find Dallas Willard's works so helpful. The reformation must take place primarily within the human heart." Jason Zahariades
The Holy Breath of Fire
"These winter days, I ponder upon the idea of fire often. There's a reason for that -- I am an urbanite living in a redwood forest with a wood burning stove as our primary source of heat. Having lived in our cabin for over three years, the idea of NOT being dependent on a propane-fueled furnace (the only other energy available) with a fan that requires electricity dawned on me only when we lost a week of power in 2002 due to storms. Our family separated; the kids went one way to stay with friends and I went another because our cabin was too blustery cold for comfort.
"Now that I tend a fire day and night, a metaphor has taken form for me to contemplate what fire means ... for my vocation and my inner life. Spiritually -- what is its symbolism? My first thoughts are that the fire of the spirit, or should I say the fiery spirit, imparts energy for my calling, calls forth impossibilities that turn into prophetic possibilities, and quickens my senses to the brokenness at the margins of society. The Holy Fire breathes into me strength and gives dynamics to my courage for living the vision.
I found the Fisher stove, complete with double piping and even the screen (which stove enthusiasts are searching for online!) out of the newspaper and got a great deal. Then the challenge: getting it up the seventy steps to the door of the cabin! The day that my neighbor "installed" it, there was a surge of self-reliance that welled up in me. I felt liberated!
"But the Holy Breath of fire is not some esoteric or theological notion forming the metaphor. Instead, what started out as a mundane and tedious, time-consuming task has evolved into a new awareness, for me, for the "casting of fire" for the world:
"Carrying wood up seventy steps in the middle of a dark-wooded night to sustain the fire teaches me that the flames of tenacity, perseverance and "dogged" determination guide my passion for serving.
"The embers of my hope have become a sacred reminder that the breath of the fiery spirit will forever rekindle the gift of hope, ablazing.
"The discipline required for tending the fire compels me to approach the flames with great respect and awe -- this I don't forget; for in a careless moment, I burned my hair.
"And focusing my sight onto the fire, mesmerized, teaches me that the fire of the divine is naught proprietary, but gives our family and visiting friends comfort and warmth on a dark, rainy, windy night.
"In this powerful metaphor, I continually rediscover that the casting of fire is to respond to the Holy Breath of the fiery spirit, by being called back to my own brokenness, in order to walk in a broken world with ever-new passion for soul-full work. by Marcie Giarrizzo. Found at SignallHill
"Gordon Cosby gave a talk to a group of megachurch pastors once entitled, "Vision, the Destroyer of Essence". Ouch. These guys were so caught up in their great visions and plans that they were losing the essence of church. Vision is what we do - we have great plans for God. Essence is far more related to being instead of doing. Which brings up Cosby's next point (actually his only real point) which is to talk about discipline."
From Mark Bishop's Weblog Rediscovering Essence
"I lost a friend this week... He didn’t die or anything, it’s not like that. I just found out they are leaving the church for greener pastures. We’re too loud, too opinionated, too uncultured. My topics are too confrontational and my language is not appropriate.
"To begin with, isn’t it more important to be vision driven than people driven? While people are our priority, God’s vision for our church must be our purpose. There are so few churches that are able to stay focussed over an extended period of time. New people bring new opinions and values. Board members often have an alternate agenda. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. So does the whiny wheel. Most of us are pretty flaky by nature anyway. God help us to maintain a relentless pursuit of passionate vision no matter what the cost."
From Scott Williams blog.
Vision, essence, people driven, purpose driven.. what do you think?
Some of you are aware that in December UBISOFT lawyers initiated an action against GMX Media to prevent publication of my expansion for Forgotten Battles. The expansion I completed in October is titled "Combat Over Europe."
The publication date was set for January 10th.
On February 13th the competition released their title, also an expansion for Forgotten Battles.
In two weeks UBISOFT will release their own expansion title: ACES Over Europe.
I estimate I have lost 30% of potential revenue by not being first on the shelf. If the delay continues I will probably lose another 30%.
But the more immediate issue is that our bills are now piling up, and we can't afford any more delays. If my expansion is released today it will be 90 days before I receive any royalties. My kids and I need dental work. Mastercard would like their money. The car payment... You know how this goes...
We are asking our friends to pray with us for the resolution of this situation. To STOP the delay tactics of the UBISOFT lawyers and to say GO to the publication of Combat Over Europe. If the Lord gives you any insight, don't hesitate to contact us.
Len and Betty Hjalmarson
"The most difficult and the most necessary of renunciations: to give up resentment...
"If resentment is a device which enables man to survive, it does not enable him, necessarily, to survive healthily. It is not a real exercise of freedom...
"The problem is to learn how to renounce resentment without selling out to the organization people who want everyone to accept absurdity in a spirit of uplift and willing complicity. Few men are strong enough to find the solution. A monastery is not the right answer; there is resentment in monasteries also...
"If you want to renounce resentment you have to renounce the shadown self that feels itself menaced by the confusion without which it cannot subsist. This is the problem: having to ive in complete dependence on a system, an organization, a society, or a person that one despises or hates. To ilve in such dependence and yet be compelled, by one's own attachment to what appears to be an "identity," to seemingly approve and accept what one hates. To have an "I" that is essentially servile and dependent..
"It is not that someone is preventing you from living happily; you yourself do not know what you want. Rather than admit this, you pretend that someone is keeping you from freedom. Who is this? It is you yourself..
"As long as you pretend to live in pure autonomy, as your own master, without even a god to rule you, you will inevitably live as the servant of another... God did not INVITE the children of Israel to leave Egypt: He COMMANDED them to do so. The poet enters into himself in order to create. The contemplative enters into God in order to be created."
Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Mark Bishop writes that, "Our story has become a story of accelerating technology, hyper-efficiency, and stifling homogeneity." In response, Owen Abrey posted a link to a story analyzing the vulnerability of computer systems worldwide because of the MS Windows "monoculture." Has the church in NA become a monoculture?
"In biology, species with little genetic variation -- or "monocultures" -- are the most vulnerable to catastrophic epidemics. Species that share a single fatal flaw could be wiped out by a virus that can exploit that flaw. Genetic diversity increases the chances that at least some of the species will survive every attack. "
"I heard Todd Hunter reference a statistic that 80% of the time, energy, and money spent by many churches goes towards making weekend services happen. I’m an industrial engineer by training and the idea of spending 80% of my resources on one thing offends my sensibilities. In my experience “Sunday-Centric” churches are always fighting to keep up with the Joneses. In the name of relevancy, enormous sums of money are spent aimed at keeping the attention of a congregation immersed in a market-driven world. Americans (Christians included) are, what Gordon Cosby suggests, “Addicted to culture.” It is naïve to suppose that presenting the Gospel, the way of Jesus, in a mass-marketing style will do anything else than feed into consumer tendencies. In this article, T and I want to suggest a polemic for combating a consumer-driven orientation and hopefully become the kind of communities who consistently demonstrate the reality of the kingdom to a desperate culture."
Word, Work, Worship ---
Moving Beyond Sunday-Centric Communities
"We find something we like; we overdose on it until the law of diminishing returns rears its ugly head. In the midst of our search for the next high, we become incapable of being confronted with anything inconvenient or painful. We forget that once there was no such thing as Panera Bread or Starbucks or Pottery Barn. Our story has become a story of accelerating technology, hyper-efficiency, and stifling homogeneity. These and other values have usurped every rivaling story in the suburban context, including the Christian story. Many churches have attempted to walk the tightrope - making every effort to present the way of Christ without offending those values too deeply, even in some cases using those values as a means to discipleship. But I believe there must be another path, one that prophetically challenges those values head-on."
Discipling the Comfortably Numb
Interesting article at CT on Casting Crowns and their sudden hit "If We Are the Body." I'd like to hear it if someone is inclined to send me a small MP3 file.
Does anyone out there use a Pocket PC and would like to have articles here available in a downloadable PPC format? I'm thinking of running the conversion on more of them to eBooks. Eventually I'll make it a standard feature so that they can be downloaded and read when you are on the bus or at the park or... ?
More from Merton: On Integrity
"One of the first signs of a saint may well be the fact that other people do not know what to make of him. In fact, they are not sure whether he is crazy or only proud; but it must at least be pride to be haunted by some individual ideal which nobody but God really comprehends. And he has inescapable difficulties in applying all the abstrat norms of "perfection" to his ownlife. He cannot seem to make his life fit in with the books."
On Faith
"You cannot be a person of faith unless you know how to doubt. You cannot believe in God unless you are capable of questioning the authority of prejudice, even though that prejudice may seem to be religious. Faith is not blind conformity to a prejudice-- a "pre-judgment." It is a decision, a judgment that is fully and deliberately taken in the light of a truth that cannot be "proven." It is not merely the acceptance of a decision that has been made by someone else."
"That which is oldest is most young and most new. There is nothing so ancient and so dead as human novelty. The 'latest' is always stillborn. What is really NEW is what was there all the time. I say, not what has repeated itself all the time; the really "new" is that which, at every moment, springs freshly into new existence. This newness never repeats itself. Yet it is so old it goes back to the earliest beginning. It is the very beginning itself, which speaks to us."
From New Seeds of Contemplation
The February Edition of Next Wave is live. The lead article is God Bloggers..
"Getting secular people through the front doors of churches is pretty near impossible these days - unless they are attending a mid-week gym or a café. But it's not God's fault - perhaps it is the fault of his followers who run the services. Purpose driven, pulpit driven seeker services in strange venues with strange people do not "work" in a post-Christian society. They are history. Goodbye."
Emotional Intelligence
"While experts continue to debate the value and accuracy of tests designed to measure a person's intelligence, new theories that seek to explain our capacity to use the intelligence we're given are beginning to gain credibility. But how accurate are these new theories? Should emotional intelligence—the ability to control our emotional responses by becoming aware of all the factors that contribute to a given reaction—be considered a legitimate indication of our general well-being? And is emotional intelligence necessary for personal and professional success?"
Measuring Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence at Parenting Central
Jacques Derrida
"To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, French philosopher Jacques Derrida is smart the way other people think they're smart. And the great pleasure of "Derrida," an absolutely first-rate documentary about his life and thought that is the cinematic equivalent of a mind-expanding drug, is how invigorating and refreshing it is to be in the presence of such a powerful, agile intellect.
"Now in his early 70s, Derrida is considered the father of deconstruction, a key philosophical movement that questions the assumptions both everyday language and rarefied theoretical discourse are based on. As one French interviewer put it, he is "a thinker of lightning thoughts, like those miners who work by exploding the beams supporting their shafts."
Derrida, The Movie
"Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious persons are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives.
"They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are obliged to become somebody else who lived in circumstances utterly different than their own.
"There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular -- and too lazy to think of anything better.
"Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is on them they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.
"In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide. The two turn out to be practically the same thing. Saints are unlike everybody else precisely because they are humble.... humility consists in being precisely the person you are before God, and since God is infinitely creative, no two people are alike. If you have the humility to be yourself you will not be like anyone else in the universe.
"This individuality will not necessarily assert itself on the surface of everyday life. It will not be a matter of mere appearances, or opinions, or tastes, or ways of doing things. It is something deep in the soul.
"To the truly humble the ordinary ways and habits of people are not a matter for conflict. The saints do not get excited about the things people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or noncomformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise. Ignoring all this as indifferent, the humble take whatever there is in the world that help toward God and leave the rest aside."
Thomas Merton in "New Seeds of Contemplation"
His divine power has granted to us all things pertaining to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature…
postmodern worship...
1) Worship is planned and led by a team. Various kinds of expertise are represented, including such areas as music, the arts, theology, philosophy literature, poetry, graphic design, and audio and video technology. Ordained persons may or may not be in the team.
2) Continuous feedback critiques and informs planning for each experience. Elements may be used repeatedly, but each worship experience to some degree is unique.
3) The arts, including painting, sculpture, graphics, poetry, drama, dance and movement are used extensively to provide non-discursive, nonlinear expressions of thoughts and feelings.
4) Language is a key issue. Emphasis is given to "real" experiences and words; rote , "churchy" language is meaningless.
5) Worship is not over defined or prescribed. Spontaneity is important. Multiple interpretations are expected. Meanings are found not anticipated by the planners.
6) Although most experiments so far use a rock idiom, other styles of music, such as "Gregorian," Celtic, or Taize chant and other modes are also used. There are some experiments to create new musical stylse that serve new texts.
7) The worship space and time are usually not traditional. Part of the worship experience includes creating a sacred time and space, sometimes in an intentionally profane setting.
8) Humor is expected and natural.
9) Use of pop culture, including allusions to television commercials and shows from the past and present, is extensive.
10) Suffering-- personal, social, and environmental-- is acknowledged as a critical part of reality.
11) There is a self-conscious awareness that new forms of worship are needed during epochal change. Christians talk of a "second reformation." Jews seek an expression that is more than survival.
12) A mission statement or statement of faith is usually prominent.
13) There is a sincere appreciation of diversity of age, gender, race, economic status, religious background or lack, ethnicity. All human experience is valid.
14) "Liberal" and "conservative" categories are regarded as useless and perhaps even destructive.
15) Worship grows out of and creates community.
16) God is experienced as radical transcendence and radical immanence. All three members of the Trinity are given equal importance.
17) Preaching and teaching and texts of songs, hymns and rituals may be classically "orthodox." An "ancient-future" connection between postmodern and premodern traditions may be felt and explored.
18)Worship includes an opportunity to connect personally with the "spiritual" through silent and directed meditation, silence, music, the arts, etc.
19) Real, actual experience -- of the individual and of the group-- is always paramount. Conceptual or theoretical descriptions are suspect.
20) "Postmodern" worship may grow out of "boomer" experiments, but it is a new experience. Gen X and even Gen Y sensibilities emerge.
Source unknown..
"[The old guard] are the ones walking around with their finger in the air. They are often wet fingers, because they are licking them and putting them in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. We think that by replacing one wet-finger leader with another, we are going to change the world. It's NEVER been that way. The real practitioners of change know that to change the nation, you've got to change the wind. When you change the wind, oh my, the leaders rise up and support a new direction." (paraphrase of Jim Wallis talking about politicians)
* * * * *
"The church is a people who covenant together to belong to God – that is, to be holy, to be set apart from the world for God’s special use. As this holy people, we are to proclaim in word and action the principles of the kingdom, showing others what it means to live under the divine reign. But more importantly, as Christ’s people we are to show forth the divine reality – to be the image of God. To be the people in covenant with God who serve as the sign of the kingdom means to reflect the very nature of God. The church reflects God’s character in that it lives as a genuine community – lives in love – for as the community of love the church shows the nature of the triune God. En route to the consummation of his purpose, therefore, God calls the church to mirror as far as possible in the midst of the brokenness of the present that eschatological ideal community of love which derives its meaning from the divine essence." (p. 483). Stanley Grenz' Theology for the Community of God.
"Only in our Spirit-produced corporateness do we truly reflect to all creation the grand dynamic that lies at the heart of the triune God. As we share together in the Holy Spirit, therefore, we participate in relationship with the living God and become the community of Christ our Lord." (p. 484).
"The fellowship of Jesus’ followers is not merely a loose coalition of individuals who acknowledge Jesus, however. Rather, it is a community of disciples who seek to walk together in accordance with the principles of the kingdom. As Christ’s church, we desire to live out in the present the final reality that will come at the end of history, namely, the reconciled community. This forms the ultimate reason why the goal of evangelism is disciple making. The Spirit directs his great creative work toward establishing the eschatological community, a people who are bonded together by their mutual obedience to the God revealed in Jesus. It is their commitment to living as Jesus’ disciples which facilitates the mutuality that characterizes the community they form." (p. 504)
"There are three reasons why many people don't go to church: The sermons are often dull, the music's usually antique, and you can't drink beer there. But Church at the Bar atones for all these sins.
"For the past six months, Church at the Bar -- presented by the local renegade Christian group Connected Life (www.connectedlife.us) -- has been meeting at an Arvada nightclub, the D Note, on the last Tuesday of the month, when it offers up libations and salvation. "We wanted a place where people would feel more comfortable," says Matt Honeycutt, a founder of Church at the Bar, who greets worshipers with a pint of beer in his left hand.
"On a table just inside the entrance to the D Note, there's more proof that this is an unusual night of worship. Keychain bottle openers are emblazoned with the words "Come Join the Party," and a Church at the Bar handbill features a 1794 William Blake poem that crystallizes the group's philosophy. "The church is cold, but the ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm," Blake's "The Little Vagabond" reads. "But if at the church they would give us some ale...we'd sing and we'd pray all the live-long day, nor ever once wish from the church to stray."
"As Honeycutt greets visitors, the church band, Phantom Handshake, takes the stage. The young musicians look like members of an MTV-ready rock band, all baggy pants, T-shirts and crooked baseball caps. They warm up the fifty or so folks gathered here with some amplified Christian rock, while the God-loving lyrics of the band's songs flash on a pair of giant screens flanking the stage.
"Mike Shepherd, leader of the group, then takes the stage and welcomes everyone to Church at the Bar. His mention of the church's title elicits a collective hoot from the largely twenty- and thirty-something audience, which includes a number of stylishly dressed, attractive women (a good draw for both bar crowds and church congregations, apparently). About half the parishioners are enjoying beers or cocktails, while others sip soft drinks. A few children sit with their parents.
"Shepherd's a handsome fellow who sports a Western-style plaid shirt, a beard and a close-cropped '50s-style haircut. His gaze is captivating, and so are the opening points of his address: "If you farted for six years straight," he says, "you'd release the energy of an atomic bomb." That gets the congregation's attention, as does a tidbit about a pig's orgasm lasting thirty minutes. "These are things you'll only learn here at Church at the Bar," he notes.
The Little Vagabond
Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But if at the Church they would give us some Ale,
Then the Parson might preach, & drink, & sing,
And God, like a Father rejoicing to see
We had our bi-monthly gathering yesterday. I thought it would be fun to run it through the grid of a typical evangelical Sunday gathering.
More images from our Sunday meeting..IMAGE1 IMAGE2 IMAGE3
It's amazing how much energy an informal meeting can require. I woke up this morning dead tired but thankful that God is among us.
Another Dream...
A friend of mine is the head of the board of a non-profit society that was founded to help single moms and their children. Oddly.. the society is languishing for lack of resources while we increasingly find ourselves involved with needy families.
I've often pondered how much the quality of life for these families would increase if they could find a way to get into a permanent location. Naturally, none of them has money to make a down payment on a house.. and they lack the credit to even make such an application.
But if the funds could be found to purchase a duplex, and if some organization could guarantee the mortgage... and if the ownership was given to the families who would reside there, it would instantly reduce their personal stress, add a great deal of stability, and give hope for a future by the investment they would be making over the years. The tragedy of these families renting old and run down properties is that they live in squalor and the money they earn, often at minimum wage, is lost forever in the rental market.
Currently the single moms we know move every 6 to 12 months, are always living on the edge, and often run into terrible tenancy situations (oppressive landlords, shared tenancy beyond their control with unpredictable or dangerous individuals, etc).
With a non-profit society behind this vision, it would be possible to offer tax receipts for large donations. If there were greater resources available, or if a few wealthy believers were to support such a vision, it would be possible to purchase such properties and then "gift" them to single parent families for their sweat equity in making improvements (painting and fixing the holes in the walls, for example). They would have hope for the future by making an investment in the home they live in.
There is only one form of pure and undefiled religion, according to James, caring "for widows and orphans in their affliction" (James 1).
Blessed is he who considers the poor,
WL: Ron, I’m intrigued with how much you use stories when you preach. Why stories? Why not just good old fashioned exegesis, three points, and a bullseye on the left brain?
Ron: I believe God is passionate more than propositional. Sure, we as humans use propositions in order for our limited minds to understand God. But ultimately, the God of the Bible is not a God you can systematize and put in a box. More than anything, God is our wild lover, our romancer. And one of the best ways to communicate romance and passion is through stories, even poetry. Which is more effective? Writing out three didactic reasons on why you love your wife or writing her a poem? The poem’s got passion. It’s narrative.
Chris: In the last two hundred years, the church has taken the great story that God gave us, and has decided to break it down into what God really meant - condense God’s history with His people into four easy points. That is so arrogant. And what’s worse is, we take it so far in our churches, that we make people really believe there are the “four steps to holiness”.. we’ve taken out all the beauty and reduced it to an outline.
WL: As baby boomers age and churches are looking for what’s “next”, we see an increase in seminars, conferences, books, and resources dealing with Gen X ministry. What advice would you give a church that sincerely wants to reach out to Gen X’ers, or rather, postmoderns?
Clark: Do not dare come up with a program, a song and a dance, even a hot video, and stand if front of them if you aren’t legitimately, authentically walking in the Spirit. If you’re faking any of it, they’ll know.
Chris: Organic models. Invest what resources you have and let those models emerge. I think you can learn from other things that are going on, from what God is doing elsewhere. But, mainly, you’re going to need to plant the thing and then leave it alone. If a ministry to these folks isn’t allowed to take its own course and be indigenous, it won’t be effective and you’re wasting the money, you’re wasting the resources. You might as well throw it away.
WL: It used to be that we’d “incubate” services for baby boomers, we’d practice with our bands, set a start-up date, and then “launch” ourselves onto people. Is that going to work with postmoderns?
Ron: A lot of boomer churches want to start Gen X ministries because it’s the next generation - they want something for their kids, and plus, it’s the cool thing to do. But, they’re missing the boat, because they don’t understand postmodern issues and the values that are coming out of it. So, they’re starting Gen X ministries the same way they started boomer ministries. The problem is, boomer ministries worked well under a linear, control-oriented, modern paradigm: let’s understand the demographics, let’s understand what the felt needs are, and let’s program this thing to the limit and make sure that it happens. And they poured tons of money in to make it work. But, you’re not going to reach postmoderns with a modern strategy. If you try to do it that way, the only ones who are going to come are the ones who are already part of the church. You’re not going to reach the unchurched culture.
WL: Ministry to postmoderns looks and feels so different from what many of us are used to, it would be easy to misunderstand what churches like yours are trying to do.
Chris: People think our focus is totally on culture, that we’re synonymous with pop culture. It’s the opposite. The churches for postmoderns that we’re affiliated with are theological communities, first and foremost. They’re asking, “What is God saying to us, and what does it mean to flesh out Scripture, to know God authentically during this time?” We’re looking back at the modern movement and understanding that a lot of it wasn’t very God-oriented, that science had, in effect, become God. Psychology, self-esteem, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs superseded or edged out God. The exciting thing is, ministries to postmodern communities are seeking to avoid similar pitfalls.
From Out of the Box: Authentic Worship in Postmodern Culture
Over the past few weeks I've been thinking of items I would include in a short bibliography of the emerging church. Here is version 1.0. If there are "must have" items that are missing, feel free to drop me a note or add the title or URL to the "comments."
The Discipline of Receiving
Over the years I have heard much about the discipline of giving, very little about the discipline of receiving. But I can say from experience that there is intentionality and obedience required on both ends. Allowing others to give to us is a way of affirming the significance of the relationship, and it is way of affirming that others are significant. Somewhere Jean Vanier commented that participation is the heart of communal life:
"We have to create structures which encourage everyone to participate, and especially the shy people. Those who have the most light to shed often dare not show it; they are afraid of appearing stupid. They do not recognize their own gift.. perhaps because others haven't recognized it either."
Receiving a gift from someone requires that I admit my need. If it is a monetary gift, it may be even more challenging to admit our need and to receive. In our culture, money is so closely tied to identity and success. To receive a gift of support can feel like admitting that I am a failure in providing for my family. When I lack financial resources, I can feel I am inferior to those who have them. And when I have them, I am always tempted to feel superior to those who lack.
All this is good evidence that I am less rooted in the identity of Jesus than I would like to be. And so receiving a gift becomes a discipline toward revealing the image of Christ.. it becomes an opportunity to grow beyond cultural mores and cultural perspectives. The discipline of receiving is a way of dying to the false self so that the true self, rooted in the transformed life, can be born in me.
Q. "What examples have you seen which you think deserve the phrase "emerging?"
"TALLSKINNYKIWI: - Parties. In Japan, I attended a party that was one of many now being started in that country. The parties happen in a home, with lots of food, a DJ, and discussion on spiritual things. As people decide to follow Jesus, the group gradually becomes a church, but it keeps its party format. This is more than just an example of something different, it is a choice to model church around a party with a purpose, instead of a formal meeting that is interesting or lively. I see this idea of church as a party behind much of emerging church thinking around the world.
"The internet is adding a significant slice of church life to the layers. It is not replacing church, just as the phone or TV did not replace church. But it is providing a place for greater visibility, storytelling, self-publishing, accountability, witness, and networking. I believe the Christian bloggers are the people currently closest to the action and in the best position to explore future possibilities. There is a renaissance of writing at the moment, the end of post-literacy, linked closely to the value of co-authorship. And most of the church is missing out.
"..the change goes deeper than just new models and certainly deeper than defining church by a building. The real difference lies in a new way of understanding church. When emerging people zoom out to see the whole church, the invisible church, they see church in modular form, as discrete but connected elements working together in a harmonious system. Church life then has more to do with the combination of many activities and projects and events than participation with any single event or commitment that tries to define the church experience.
"You could say that the same change has happened to banking. We hardly ever “go to our bank” and no longer have a single banker, but instead utilize a vast range of financial services to manage our assets. As the emerging church becomes more modular, attention moves away from the single event (the worship service in many of our denominations) and relies more on festivals, projects, relational events and spontaneous happenings. The church in its invisible form (source code, to use new media language) is privileged over its visible expression which is seen as temporary and changeable. This may explain why some emerging churches decide not to have a worship service at all but rather a series of interrelated happenings that meet that need. They see church as what they are, rather than what they do."
"Ted Nelson's entire reasoning behind Xanadu appears to be predicated on the underlying assumption that no single perspective or understanding of anything - scientific or otherwise - will ever be as [clear as] a multiplicity of perspectives.... It may as well be called the holographic principle, for the way that each piece of holographic plate contains a blurry image of one perspective of the subject of the picture. Putting them all together yields a more resolved perspective of the whole."
Emergent Church 2.0
I find this discussion riveting, though I have only quoted a small segment of it here. I too am increasingly struck by the contrast between emergent churches and the ones we grew up in and still see around us.
More, I am struck by a growing groundswell that calls out for change. It also seems natural to me that prior to substantial change we see a growing exodus.. people voting with their feet. Rather than stay in the old system, believers leave. They don't want to be whiners and complainers.. yet they often feel confused about what they are thinking and feeling. They try to ask questions but are not heard or understood, and sometimes they find their questions create fear and suspicion. So.. no longer fitting in.. they leave.
Little do they know what that leaving generates.. tremendous insecurity.. sometimes self-accusation.. sometimes, sadly, accuation of rebellion or disloyalty from those who were their friends. But all this only sends them to Jesus.. the only One who can answer their questions and their heart cry.
But more, I think we are seeing a sovereign work of the Lord in His church. He calls us out.. to call us in.. we leave the church to find the Church. We leave to begin a process of emptying so that the Lord can fill. We leave because only through the pain of loss and grief are we prompted to ask the questions that can lead us forward.
What are we (collectively) searching for? For simplicity, clarity, understanding.. for the heart of the Gospel, for relationship, for community. We know and sense that we have lost much, but we often lack insight as to how it can be recovered. And we KNOW it is a collective journey, yet we are often so alone..
The Gathering
If you are reading these words, you are invited to a potluck dinner Sunday around 1 PM. The address is 320 Stetson St., Kelowna. This is the second of our renewed gatherings..
Our format is simple. Everyone brings something to contribute to the meal, and then we eat together. We sit around in small groups and chat and share.
After the meal we continue to share, and then we expect the Lord to move among us. We listen and watch for what He is doing in our lives, and in conversations among us. We may continue to visit and to share. We may stop to pray for someone.. we may open the Word together. Someone may pick up a guitar and lead out in song. We may take a spontaneous collection for a need.
Any or all of these can happen, and sometimes we simply enjoy being together without any of these concrete expressions of our life in Christ. But usually something has happened in our hearts anyway.. we feel cared for, refreshed, encouraged or enlightened. Or perhaps someone has made a plan we hear about later.. to drop in on someone with a gift, to help a single mom with a car problem... to make a phone call on another's behalf and advocate with an agency or individual to obtain some service or benefit. Connections happen when we gather and we share what we have.
A Dream.. a new kind of tent...
A growing house church had some people who were in relationship with the Vineyard and Pentecostals. They decided to go to these kingdom expressions for approval and accountability, but they presented a unique plan..
"We do not plan to own or rent a building, except for special events. We plan to meet in homes.
"We do plan to seek approval and relationship and maybe ordination with four distinct groups.
"We are in relationship with some Pentecostal leaders. They amaze us with their passion for life and their warm hearts for people. One among us wants to be ordained with them.
"We have among us an ex Vineyard pastor. He walks in a beautiful tapestry of natural and supernatural threads. He wants to keep his ordination with the Vineyard.
"We have among us a brother who has a degree from an MB seminary. His perspective on community and covenant is invaluable to us, and he wants to seek ordination from the MBs.
"We have a sister who was raised Anglican. At one time she thought that was old history, but now she knows this is part of the gift she offers. She lives in a sacramental world. We don't know if this is possible.. But she wants to seek Anglican ordination.
"We have another sister who has never been a part of any defined church, but she has been reading Brian McLaren, Mark Priddy and others, and has been encouraged by something new that we call the emerging church. She wants to connect more intentionally to the ALLELON network.
"We want to be a new kind of church with a new set of boundaries.. Classical in theology, but postmodern in expression. We want to experiment with chaordic life. We want to embrace charismatics and non charismatics in a kingdom that is both now and not yet. We plan to be liturgical in some ways, and non-liturgical in others. We want an expression of the body of Christ that is an authentic and faithful community and a real mission.
"While we believe in ordination, we intend to be non-hierarchical and work to erase the lines between clergy and laity by raising up and setting apart new ministers whenever we find a heart for the kingdom of God. We plan to release others among us to cultivate new expressions of the body of Christ locally and non-locally.
"We want to be apostolic by remembering the poor, and finding ways to make our community accessible to the oppressed people of our society.
"We believe in the call to discipleship and to covenant. We believe that the Spirit directs his creative work toward establishing the eschatological community, a people who are bonded together by their mutual obedience to the God revealed in Jesus. Our commitment to living as Jesus’ disciples will facilitate the mutuality that must characterize the community we form.
"We believe in the Incarnation and in the sacramental nature of reality. We believe that God walks among us and is seen and heard wherever we go. We are His people and this is His world.
"We believe church is who we are before it is what we do.. And so we want a holistic expression of spirituality that is rooted in both creation and redemption, multi-denominational and multi-cultural. We are crazy enough to believe in this dream."
"I've been looking at a number of blogs recently (other than just the ones I list here that I check almost daily), and I'm noticing some trends among ecclesiastical anarchist bloggers, what have caused me to wonder, "has pomo/emergent blogging hit the wall"?
I don't think it has hit the wall, but certainly individuals do hit the wall. We can't build with negative energy. Anger only allows us to deconstruct, and not very carefully. We can only build.. move forward, with positive energy, energy that comes from vision and love and a willingness to sacrifice.
One of the tendencies Rob notes is "for bloggers to simply cut and paste other bloggers' work into their sites, instead of creating original content." I do this quite a bit, and here is why:
1) to share thoughtful and provocative material that is not my own
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An Idea whose time has come..
After two years of blogging, I am noticing a change in the local atmosphere. First, I am running into more and more people outside the walls. Many have energy for something positive and their faith is alive and well.
I am also noticing a growing interest in things emergent from local leaders. While working and living in traditional settings, some are secure, outside-the-box thinkers and are not modern in their orientation. Others are thoughtful and reflective observers and are catching snippets of the conversation here and there and are beginning to ask their own questions about the changing culture.
A friend in Washington is planning to host a gathering this month, and I believe the time has come to host a gathering here in Kelowna.
I'm thinking late April or mid May would be a good time for travelling. I have a few people I would love to invite to contribute: Ray Levesque from Vancouver (a native Anglican bishop) Mark Priddy of ALLELON (Colorado?) and Dave Bodine from Washington. It would be our first gathering for the emergent church here.
Lawyers are using stall tactics to delay the release of my Forgotten Battles expansion pack while their company releases its own add-on. My expansion is already three months behind schedule, and if it does not release this month our family finances are going to be in serious difficulty by May... It could even mean the end of my company..
Pray for us that this legal hassle will be quickly resolved..
There are times when I can relate to David..
Get up, God! Are you going to sleep all day?
MR: What is postmodernism? How do you define that?
ODEN: All that I mean by "postmodernity" is the survival of the devastations of modern consciousness. Many of us are still trying to discover our identity; we're trying to survive. I do not have in mind, primarily, a literary theory. If you ask people in the university what postmodernism is really about, they would either say it's a political theory, or a literary theory, or a hermeneutical theory, that is, a theory of interpretation. I'm really concerned about the person who is struggling with the suffering that modernity has caused. I believe that modernity has been the source of enormous human suffering.
MR: What would be the specific sources of modern suffering?
ODEN: The premises of self-assertiveness, of absolute relativism, reducing sex to orgasm, and reducing political life to the exertion of power. Naturalistic reductionism is what I call it, but it's the tendency to try to reduce any description to a scientific empirical description. We've had enough of that. We've got a belly-full of that. Now we're looking for ways of connecting with wisdoms that emerge, not simply out of modernity, but out of the past--the premodern situation.
From an interview with Thomas Oden in Premise in 1995.
A short bibliography of the emerging church.
"Dever's Reformed perspective offers a helpful way to define the project that I and others in the same boat are pursuing. John Calvin's lifework, as I understand it, involved a creative attempt to construct a bold new framework for theological thinking and faithful living for those who (on biblical and experiential grounds) were dissatisfied with and moving beyond existing late-medieval Roman Catholic frameworks.
"There are two ways to honor the work of Calvin and the Reformers more generally, I suppose: 1) to faithfully defend and promote their post-medieval formulations through all time, or 2) to follow their example in seeking to construct formulations of faith that are as fitting to our postmodern times as theirs were to their post-medieval times. Dever and I apparently agree on honoring the Reformers, but perhaps not on which is the best way of doing so. Here is my hope: that Christians wiser and better than I am will successfully undertake a creative project as suitable to our day as the Reformers' was to theirs."
From Brian McLaren's response to Mark Dever's review of "A New Kind of Christian"
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"We shall not know the truth until we have learned how the various truths are related, each to every other, omitting none. It is a task that the intellect alone cannot perform, because the truths of heart and spirit cannot be stated as philosophical propositions or mathematical formulae…. We shall never be complete in our living, or our theology or science or history, until we have brought into the dance those realm of our selves that are accessible only by means of images, and until our intellects and imaginations and bodies and spirits are integrated."
Philosophies and Fairy Tales in Theology Today, April, 1973
We have come through another bout of "empty pockets." I don't think we have been that broke in three or four years.
Having empty pockets means:
Having been in this place every three or four years for the last ten or twelve, it is not unfamiliar territory. It is a a great way.. maybe the only way.. to have any personal sense of the meaning of economic hardship in a western context.
One single mom told us recently when asked if she ever felt suicidal:
"No, I don't think about killing myself.. but some days I don't know how I can continue living."
"TALLSKINNYKIWI: Steve, I have tried to define it and have failed miserably. My apologies. It may be of some console for you to know that no one else has succeeded in defining it, and some of us have been at it a long time.
Maybe that is OK. People in the emerging culture do not really want or need such a definition. And some of us are hesitant to give one, because behind the practices and models of emerging church, lies a radically different mindset, value system and worldview. "
And then...
"What examples have you seen which you think deserve the phrase "emerging?"
"TALLSKINNYKIWI: - Parties. In Japan, I attended a party that was one of many now being started in that country. The parties happen in a home, with lots of food, a DJ, and discussion on spiritual things. As people decide to follow Jesus, the group gradually becomes a church, but it keeps its party format. This is more than just an example of something different, it is a choice to model church around a party with a purpose, instead of a formal meeting that is interesting or lively. I see this idea of church as a party behind much of emerging church thinking around the world."
My grandfather was a pioneer. In a chapter of Canadian history that remains relatively unknown, Icelandic settlers came to Canada in the late 1800s, with promises of good farm land and relatively easy conditions. What they encountered was the deep cold of Canadian winters, and clapboard shelters that were woefully inadequate. Many died in the first few winters from a combination of malnutrition and cold temperatures.
Of course, they didn't really know what to expect when they left the safety and familiarity of home. Those who invited them were deceptive, but they assumed that Icelandic settlers could make it through the toughest winter with little preparation.
They were right that Icelanders didn't mind being off the map.. they were a hardy and independent people with tight family structures. And they navigated by the stars. They could use the tiny amount of light from distant suns to show them the way. I think about all this at times when I feel off the map myself.
There is a lot to like about being off the map. Being off the map means that you make your own trails. You don't have to worry so much about what has been done before. In fact, it's dangerous to think that way. You are forced to innovate, forced to experiment, forced to learn that success is never permanent and failure rarely fatal. And you learn a new level of dependence on the Lord.
The tough part is struggling with inner voices that condemn you as a rebel, and facing those around you who don't understand or who accuse you of being arrogant. "Why is your way better? Why do you judge those of us who are happy with the way things are? Why can't you be a part of what God is doing over here?" Of course, judgment isn't the issue.. a critique of old systems is usually necessary, and part of the dissatisfaction that led us to pioneer. It's important to separate people from systems, and avoid judging motives.
I find a "head back to Egypt" dynamic lurking dangerously at the edges. I value the approval of those around me. I value being part of something larger. But I've felt the Lord warn me about this, and clearly call me to remain focused and on the path he has chosen.
"He leads the blind by a way they know not."
Though we are off the map, and only rarely catch glimpses of the trail ahead, when we look back we see a strange glow in our footprints, as though it wasn't us walking at all, but as if we were being carried by a Man of Light. "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." If we keep our eyes on Him and don't concern ourselves with outcomes, don't worry about the criticism of others, remain unconcerned about fitting in, we find a deep sense of peace and we know that we only need be faithful to our calling.
The trails of the world be many,
There are truths in tension here.. that there is a hermeneutical community, but that the interpretive community can stop hearing from the Lord who leads us forward, and then we have leaders criticizing anyone who moves beyond the boundaries of the tribe. But the Lord issues a prophetic call to some to follow Him forward. Those who move ahead of the tribe (scouting for safe routes) have to remember that they remain committed to the entire tribe, even when the tribe doesn't approve or understand.
We scouts and pioneers remain a part of the body of Christ even while outside traditional structures. This mystical union may seem a little less real when we find ourselves pioneering. But the Lord infuses the truth into our spirits. We remain a part of His body, and an essential part. To some we seem to be "weaker members," to others the weaker members are those who stay behind... but Paul reminds us that the weaker members are the more necessary...
Our faithful following is an essential part of what the Lord is doing in our day. We dare not look to the right or to the left. His first call to every disciple is to faithfully follow. He calls us to forget what lies behind, forget the victories of yesterday, leave our comfortable places, shake off the criticism of others, and be bold and "take the land."
The alternative may seem noble.. to stay anchored with the larger mass of believers in our cities and towns.. but it is not noble for those called forward. It is a failure to be bold and courageous and venture out against giants to "take the land."
Not everyone is called to pioneer. Some would want to be with us, but aren't ready yet. Some need the safety and familiarity of the old structures. Many of these people are over fifty years of age and they are like the generation who followed Moses in the desert. They would never reach Canaan, but they won their own victories, and they never did go back to Egypt. Perhaps some of them reached their own Canaan, and it's time for them to rest.
"Leaders are those who have learned to follow." Tim Colborne
"Now to my next reflection. I am enormously uncomfortable with the focus on "up
front" space and those who serve in it. In a perfect world, or better yet
Kingdom Reality, there is no "up front" leader. The ground is completely flat,
no one or no role exalted above others. The fact that we even are conscious of
that space, in my opinion, shows how inculturated we are with top down
structures, preaching focused services and staged worship as our paradigm for
normative church.
"I asked Brian to not use notes, no power point, not use a
stand and not to talk from the stage but from the floor. We intentionally
faced the chairs at one another, not towards the stage or the "up front"
space. We dotted the floor with round tables to foster life on life
conversations. I specifically said in my description of the weekend that "the
answers you're looking for will not come from this microphone but from out
there (the greater community)". I may sound like a purist here, but in Kingdom
economy there is no exalted role/space/gift. Church history has revealed to us
how in certain periods, some roles were exalted over others. In modernity, no
question it was/is the teaching gift or "up front". This is top-down thinking
and I reject it. I think all this has exposed the need for a lot more growth
in this area. Whenever we have a clear separation between teaching and serving
and one is exalted or even noticed above the others, we do not yet understand
the economy of Kingdom values and will not taste its reality here on earth...
"...I spent 10 years climbing the ladder in evangelical ministry, being groomed
to be the next super "up front" leader and what I learned is that it had more
to do with being an American success story than anything to do with Christ
following. I would go as far to say that until I learned to love 2 or 3 and be
content in my giftedness, I really never understood what pastoring was.
"I believe the pastor who will thrive in the future will be one that turns in
their pulpit for a guest bedroom, their preaching for true hospitality,
their "up front" role for a towel and basin. Hospitality, which fosters
powerful organic relationships underground will be the bridges that the Holy
Spirit will use to bring healing to our communities. (by the way, women
generally kick arse in this area). So men, learn how to clean a toilet and
make a bed. Learn how to cut the vegetables and clean the dishes. Learn how to
listen in conversation to people's stories as they share lives over a meal and
be ready to respond with warmth and empathy with nobody to notice what your
doing. The future leader will not be an expositor but a diakanos (table
servant). If this is not enough for you, then let me end with this
question:
"Who told you to be successful?"
From Chris Marshall through Herban Sprawl
Jeans and a Sweater
"The meeting was small at our house last night, only six people came. That was
pretty good though, considering the temperature outside was a chilly -37C
below zero!!
"We had a great time of worship though, with communion following. During the
sharing time afterwards, Ken told us something interesting. As he was getting
ready to pour the grape juice for communion, he checked to see how many people
were present so he could know how many glasses to fill. He counted seven
people, including the guy wearing jeans and a sweater seated on the end of the
sofa near Bonnie. He poured the juice, prayed, and passed around the tray
holding the glasses.
"When the tray made its rounds and returned, he noticed there was one glass
left and thought, Huh? Why didn't the guy with jeans take communion? He looked
up and noticed the guy was no longer there, and in his mind Ken heard. "Didn't
I tell you I wouldn't drink the fruit of the vine until I come?" (see Mark
14:25). Suddenly Ken realized it must have been the Lord he had seen, sitting
among us, and Ken began shaking, waiting for a chance to share with the rest
of us what he had seen. When he told us we didn't know what to say.
"The meeting continued and we had a time of teaching each other whatever the
Holy Spirit gave each of us to share. Then we prayed for each other's needs,
and Emily shared that her foot seems to be completely healed (see this story
from back in September). In fact, a few days ago a friend of hers asked her
about her foot, and Emily realized she had completely forgotten about it
because she had felt no pain for some time now. What's remarkable is that the
colder it gets the worse her foot used to feel, and it's as cold as it ever
gets right now in Winnipeg (-41C at the moment I'm writing this) and her foot
doesn't hurt at all. This was encouraging news, as we haven't seen a
miraculous healing like this for some time and it encourages us to continue
with our plan of developing a healing course based on Ken's book and teaching
it this fall at Winnipeg Centre Vineyard.
"Anyway, after ministry time we made some popcorn and everyone hung around
talking. As I watched everyone I had the weird feeling that our meeting would
never end but would go on into eternity, it was strange. I think we touched
eternal life last night."
From Kingdom Near
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