blogfast: emergesque goes dark

Hi everyone. As a spiritual discipline, I am going to let emergesque go dark for at least a month. Talking and communication and reading and writing are all necessary. But I am in a blessed season of doing. I will come back - but now it's time to be transpo.

rob schlapfer exits...

with a quote:

I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians.
Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi

• no antithesis
• no christian counterculture
• no discerning reader update: tim challies has bought this domain
  

for a time, schlapfer was a 'mapper. i had the chance to get to know him a bit online in that context and in some direct emails. And a blarticle I wrote mentioning him prominently gets a lot of page views.

I, for one, will miss him.

God bless you, Rob.

ht to steve mccoy

Emergesque Ramps Down...

as Stephen Goes Transpo!

I'm not saying I'm taking a break entirely but I do see myself giving emergesque less attention in days to come; I may post from time to time. No idea how long this season will last. The KatrinaGrace effort is taking more time and attention and passion. My dear wife has been to the KatrinaZone and I hope to go myself in the next few weeks, after a business trip next week to the West Coast and the Catalyst Conference.

Richard John Neuhaus on the Emerging Church

Seeing through the preening self-importance of “seeker,” “emergent,” “pomo,” and whatever is next month’s hot spiritual pretension, they might even find the courage to call themselves Christians.

ouch

Wow!

ht to Steve Bush



image from acton.org

NBC's Brian Williams is now Blogging

Jordon lets us know that Brian is now blogging on MSNBC.

Dallas Willard and Richard Foster on the Renovare Study Bible

Christianity Today interviews these two writers on this new Study Bible.

ht to Brad Boydston

NexChurch Notes: Len Sweet

Fred Peatross has posted notes -

• Day 1
• Day 2

from the recent NexChurch Conference with Len Sweet on his blog.

Beth's Sister Bonnie & Phil in the KatrinaZone

The Charlotte Observer runs an article on Beth's sister, Bonnie Jones, and her husband Phil (free registration required) who were down in the affected areas at the same time as KatrinaZone Team I.

Grace in the Storm

My wife's account of her trip to the New Orleans Area to assist with Katrina Relief last weekend.

KatrinaZone Team II

KatrinaGrace sent out a second team to Louisiana last night and pics from the the first Team that went out last weekend have been posted.

Anna Billedet

I spent some time with one the most amazing women I have ever met, whilst in Denmark, Anna Billedet. Anna is not only beautiful, but is profoundly captivating, and graceful.

Anna has been paralyzed from the neck down since birth, and creates pictures working with brush, pencil, and crayon, which are held in the mouth. Her work is regularly exhibited and you can see some here.

We were talking after we had both just taught seminars. I asked her what she had been speaking about, and she replied 'oh that God loves you, and you are precious to him, and how your identity can be in Him.

Now when most people say that it might sound trite, but her words literally hit me like a physical force, a gentle breeze, she was speaking our of her inner being, the truth of having hidden herself in Christ. I felt blessed and healed and comforted with her words.

Jason Clark comments on a beautiful woman with a wonderful gift.

Katrina Grace - A Local Church Goes Transpo

This is really cool. The Katrina Grace blog that I set up for our church is so far pretty much as busy or busier every day than emergesque is on its busiest day. Our church has been so responsive to the Katrina situation. KatrinaZone Team I (lead by my incredible wife) drove over 1000 miles last weekend to deliver supplies and another team of 9 folks (so far it's 9) are driving down this weekend with three full-size trucks and trailers. God seems to be in the efforts and Beth and I are humbled to be a part of it.

Please pray for the folks affected in MS, AL, FL and LA (the damage area is 90,000 square miles) and the safety and effectiveness of all the people trying to help them.

Dangerous Blessing

One of the 'mappers, Carmen DiCello, has written a book called Dangerous Blessing that I thought provided a balanced treatment of our pomoChristian movement. Worth checking out.

Little Help from Greater HTMLheads than mine?

In my Katrina Grace blog links, etc aren't showing up when you click on the urls of specific posts like this one.

Andy Stanley on North Point and Optimal Church Size

I think this is cool. Adam Cleaveland complained just a bit ab the size of Andy Stanley's church. Stanley himself then posted a somewhat sarcastic remark. He was responded to by other commenters. And then a genuine interchange ensued. i.e. be sure to read the comments.

ht to Darryl Dash.

I'm so proud of...

my wife I think I'm gonna bust.

Ugh

I had no idea how horrible this blog looks aesthetically in Internet Explorer. I always use Firefox.
The fonts are all funky. Anyone have any suggestions for me as to the easiest way for me to clean this up? I know a tiny bit of HTML and could use the advice.

a new podcaster

A new rambling podcast went live today. Nothing spectacular but optimized for Yahoo! Media and Apple iTunes. I talked a little bit about health, Audacity, and the Resonate Journal.

jordon cooper is now podcasting.

Brian McLaren Calls for Purple People

You’ve heard the old saying: The hard thing about being a bridge is that you get walked on from both ends. As someone who spends roughly half of my time in the conservative world and half in the liberal (theologically and politically speaking), I suppose I qualify as a kind of bridge person. Unfortunately, my experience confirms the old saying, and I have a few boot marks on my backside to prove it.

McLaren in a recent Sojo article.

thanks to Bob Robinson for pointing this piece out to me.

Katrina: The Disaster that was Foreseen

9/8 Update: it took jordon to let me know that my own employer also published a piece on this in 2000. He also mentions a Times piece that same year. See below.

Five forecasts:

1 - From a June 2002 special report in the Times-Picayune is a chillingly accurate description of the events that have taken place in New Orleans over the past week.

Part One deals with the destruction of the marshes that protect New Orleans and the eventuality of the levee breaches we have just seen as well as some graphic models of the damage that past near-misses might have caused.

Part Two acknowledges that the "Big One" will eventually hit the city and that evacuation will not work as intended, leaving hundreds of thousands of people trapped under water in the city needing to be rescued from attics and roofs.

Part Three talks about the lack of flood insurance in the city, the poor construction methods used, and the reality that rebuilding will take many years.

Part Four describes the enormous risk to people from the "Big One" due to increasing population centers in harm's way and the double-edged sword that is the Army Corps of Engineers, who have both saved the city and ensured its eventual destruction.

Part Five is about the high cost of survival and the reality that many of the solutions that could help New Orleans are too expensive to implement.

So, there you have it - a nearly complete description of what has just happened in SE Louisiana, and it was written three years ago.

Steven Nicholson summarizes a five part June 2002 New Orleans Time-Picayune series that laid out what was going to happen.

2 - A 2004 National Geographic piece that writes in a similar vein.

3 - And so did a 2001 Scientific American piece. (from Wiki's Katrina article)

4 - So did USA TODAY in 2000.

5 - and Time Magazine that same year.

katrinagrace

Our church, Grace Community Church in Columbia MD, asked Beth and I to coordinate the church's response to Katrina. We've set up a blog to support the effort in case any emergesque readers would like to see what one church is doing.

It looks like we're sending a group to Louisiana tomorrow.

blogspam

I recently had to turn on blogger's word verification on my comments 'cause I was getting so much comment spam. a few days ago I was randomly surfing blogger sites and noticed that a ton of what I was looking at was just spamblogs.

turns out i'm not alone in this observation.

ht to brad boyston.

kudos to john piper and bethlehem baptist church

who are considering not refusing membership to christians who have not been baptized by immersion, because they are considered that by doing so thaty are putting a narrower defn. of "church member" than God puts on "Christian"!

this is a step in the right direction, imo (and, fwiw, i'm an immersionist).

ht to steve mccoy.

getting in flow

At Cassil's Coffee the wireless is free as God's grace, the coffee is tasty, especially the blend Kevin call's "The Meaning of Life," a roast that always puts me in a creative mode. Today I read in Fast Company that this mode is now called "flow." It used to be called "the zone." Before that it was called "job satisfaction." Before that it was just "clocking in" I guess.

earl creps on "flow."

Upcoming Tom Brokaw Show on Evangelicals

"While attendance at traditional churches has been declining for decades," Tom Brokaw says, "the evangelical movement is growing, and it is changing the way America worships."

This appears Friday 9 September @ 8 PM EDT.

from the Associated Press article.

in case you ever wondered

lauren winner provides a brief history of Labor Day.

Katrina on the Web

The Washington Post's Leslie Walker does a great around the room of Katrina-centric sites (free registration required) on the web and suggests that this Yahoo site might be the best Katrina portal. She also mentions

• 20050905 Update: Helpful Washington Post Interactive Map - ht to flip medley
  

• Official List of Missing Persons - US Coast Guard
  
  
• The National Next of Kin Directory
  
  
• "Thousands of people also turned to Craigslist, a classified-ads site that quickly created special Katrina bulletin boards for missing people, housing assistance and volunteer opportunities"
  
  
• Hurricanehousing.org - where those needing housing and those offering housing can meet.
  
  
• Charitynavigator - where potential donors can check out the legitimacy of online donation sites.
  
  
• Networkforgood - which lists most of the major relief agencies collecting money for Katrina relief.
  
  
• hurricane.meetup.com - "Anyone wanting to organize a volunteer effort locally can use the popular Web meeting service Meetup, which waived all of its regular fees for those providing hurricane relief"
  
  

I'll also list some other sites that have been mentioned in previous emergesque posts:

• Stories of Survival - Michelle Malkin
  
  
• Katrina Survivors Blog - DJ Chuang
  
  
• Church Networks Engage the Katrina Situation
  
  
• Katrina predictions
  

the graphic is from the yahoo site mentioned

two kinds of internet users

I’d been thinking on how there’s really 2 kinds of Internet users. And when those surveys and polls and studies talk about Internet users, they’re too often lumped together, when it’d be more helpful to recognize distinct segments.

There’s the relational segment (for lack of a better term). These Internet users actively use the Web, these people live online, active participant in online communities, sometimes referred to as netizens or cyber culture savvy or whatever. Email, websites, IMs, podcast, vlog, blog, message boards, chat room, moblog, wikis are all common venacular (though not every one of them would use every online tool). Relational Internet users have friends who are merely online, and also those who know them in person.

Then there’s the transactional segment. This is the majority of people who use the Internet, and use it as a tool to get what they want and not much else. These are the people who have made it possible for commercial dot-com success. These are people who use the Internet to loosely connect with people they already know.

The relational segment can go online, and almost see the Internet as a place. Various tools help them to move around in that space, do their business, as well as relate to other people in that place. The transactional segment can go online, use the Internet tools to enhance and serve their everyday tangible & concrete life. And they stop there.

dj chuang makes a good observation about users of the internet.

Request for Feedback from Emergesque Readers: Columnists from the Right and the Left

I was reviewing Blue Eagle Commentary, the best aggregator of Political Newspaper Columnists, and I have three questions for our readers:

• Who are the best columnists from the right?
• Who are the best columnists from the middle (as defined by you)?
• Who are the best columnists from the left?
• Are you aware of a better aggregator with a more comprehensive list than Blue Eagle?

If you have thoughts on any or all of these questions, would you leave them in comments?

Thanks.

Kuwait Pledges Half a Billion Dollars to Katrina Relief

"It's our duty as Kuwaitis to stand by our friends to lighten the humanitarian misery and as a payback for the many situations during which Washington helped us through the significant relations between the two friendly countries," Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed Al Sabah said in a statement carried by Kuwait's official news agency, KUNA.

according to the Associated Press.

Katrina: Some Good Stories in the Midst of Many Bad Ones

Stories of Survival by Michelle Malkin

katrina: more before and after shots from

msnbc.

on absolutizing others

I was talking with a friend the other day about how, we tend to demonize people, and groups to position ourselves and reinforce what we believe, or want others to. We use straw men in arguments and polarisations and misrepresentations.

jason clark writes about how we might sometimes compare our best with others' worst.

Claims that Mississippi Katrina Victims aren't Getting Enough National Attention

the AP story

Katrina Survivors are Blogging

dj chuang lists a number of them today.

Images: New Orleans Before and After Katrina

You can see before and after satellite images at the globalsecurity.org.

HurricaneHousing.Org

The folks at MoveOn.org have created an elegant interface to help Katrina refugees who need housing connect with people who are providing housing.

ht to Rudy Carrasco.

Will Samson lists some other sites for this as well.

Samaritan's Purse Katrina Recovery Efforts

Perhaps your church or group would like to send a work crew. We need groups of at least five individuals. The minimum age is 18. Construction skills are helpful but not necessary. If you are interested, call the Samaritan’s Purse Disaster Relief staff at (828) 262-1980 or email disasterresponse@samaritan.org.

link

Night in New Orleans

Scot McKnight posts an essay on the disaster and response.

leaderu

The Christian Post article, Dotcoms Bust but Christian Websites Boom, describes the growing impact and readership at LeaderU.com, whose website Web site traffic grew from three to eight million from 1998 to 2001. From January to May 2005, LeaderU.com generated 9.2 million hits, 4.7 million pageviews and 2.3 million visits. Each visitor spends an average of 18 minutes, unusually long for a Web site.

More info about the LeaderU.com's 10th anniversary is featured at LeaderU's 10th: A Decade of Growth & Impact.

dj chuang reminds us of leaderu and the fact that it's now been around for a decade! I have found it to be a very helpful resources.

New Emerging Church Zine:
Precipice Magazine

Darren King, Willy Phillips, Phil Jordahl announce the re-launch of their online pub.

Terrible Conditions at New Orleans' Airport

The airport, meantime, has been converted into a triage center. There are so many bodies that medical staff are using the baggage conveyor to carry the stretchers.

There are just so many patients and so few people to help. I would estimate that there are at least 1,000 patients who have been brought in here.

The patients range from babies who are 2 months old to a 91-year-old man. There is no discrimination. If you were a patient at a hospital or you were injured by the hurricane in New Orleans, you could be in this crowd.

NBC's Kerry Sanders spends the night at a New Orleans' Airport. ht to Paul Soupiset.

Church Networks' Efforts to Assist Katrina Survivors

• the Purpose Driven Churches Network is starting to engage the disaster.
  
  
• The Leadership Network has set up a page to help churches near the area pull on wider resources.
  
  
• The Willow Creek Association has dedicated a spot on their site to the Katrina aftermath.
  
  
• The Southern Baptist's North American Mission Board is very active in Katrina recovery.
  

If there are other networks of churches that you are aware of that are getting involved in direct service to Katrina victims and survivors, would you leave a note in comments? I'll keep updating this blogpost.

CT in Katrina Relief

Rob Moll offers a helpful around the room on what's being done to help Katrina survivors.

Interview with Brian McLaren

McLAREN: It’s a shame that anyone would accuse me of relativism, especially in reading A Generous Orthodoxy where I devote a chapter to relativism.

HOMILETICS: Al Mohler for example. He’s not stupid. Why would he say that?

McLAREN: It’s really perplexing to me. I agree with you. He’s not stupid. But yet he just makes this statement. In the book I make the analogy that absolutism is like cancer, and chemotherapy is like relativism. And chemotherapy, if you take too much of it, will kill you. So I certainly don’t hold up relativism as a great thing. It’s a dangerous thing. I think absolutism is a dangerous thing. We need something beyond both. So I don’t know why he would say that.

Adam Omelianchuk points us to a wide-ranging interview with Brian.

Morgan Freeman on Katrina

"Charity begins at home," the Oscar-winning actor said. "We call on anybody who has even the thought (of giving) to get beyond the thought and help these people."

Morgan Freeman

Katrina Felt Across Entertainment World - AP Story.

a prescient 2004 National Geographic article...

...on katrina - ht to jordon via doc searles.

everything katrina

instapundit is using his platform.

ht to GetReligion.

Survival of New Orleans Blog

Andrew Jones found this blog of a survivor in New Orleans and gave us a heads up.

Hurricane Relief Day

It was thru Steve Knight that it hit my radar screen that today is Hurricane Relief Day.

As you are called, pls

• pray,
  
• give, or
  
• go, or
  
• some combination.

Links gathered from Fox News and MSNBC:

• The American Red Cross
  
  
• Catholic Charities
  
  
• National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster
  
  
• Episcopal Relief & Development
  
  
• United Methodist Committee on Relief
  
  
• Salvation Army
  
  
• Also see who FEMA lists.
  

Pls spread the word.

Let's blow the world away with what the church can do.

Let's give God a huge smile.

New Emerging Church Journal

September 1st is a big day for us because not only is Resonate is turning one but the Resonate Journal has finally launched at http://www.resonate.ca/journal/ It is a publication of theology, faith, and culture in a postmodern Canadian culture. We hope you check it out and help spread the word!

jordon cooper announces the new Resonate Journal.