Brendt suggests an alternative to "friends of emergent" or "friends of discernment." :)
I loved this. Earlier I posted on the terms emergent and emerging. Someone else brought in the missional moniker. I'm not abandoning that discussion but sometimes it does feel like "I am of Paul; I am of Jesus, etc"
ht: adam omelianchuk
As I returned home from Turkey last night I became more convinced then ever that the most effective Christian bloggers are those who are engaged in much more than reading, reviewing, and commenting on books and other blogs or just posting their ideas and theologies over and over again, rather, they are those who are first and foremost active in the daily labor of ministry and mission from which they gain an experiential Kingdom perspective for blogging.
- link
- on transpropositionality
"Hilda Shlick thought she lost nearly all her family in the Holocaust — until her Internet-savvy grandsons located her 81-year-old brother in Canada.
'After 65 years, I have found the sister who I love," Simon Glasberg said Monday in heavily accented English, his eyes filling with tears. "I can't stop kissing her.'"
- link
ht: jesus outside the box
is anyone aware of a blogger hack out there that will allow me to add comment notification to blogger comments? I'm looking for a way that folks can opt into receiving emails whenever someone replys to a comment they've left on a particular post. (I realize Wordpress and others offer this and I may switch one day. )
"28-Sep-06 08:32 PM - Linda : UNBELIEVABLE!!!!! Bob was taken off the ventilator at 1 this am (yes, that is now 17 hours ago, about 8 hours after the surgery finished! He is awake and SOOOOO happy!!
We kept telling the nurses to tell him what day it was last night, so he knew he woke up on the same day, and not a month later! He is in quite a bit of pain, more from the drainage tube in his ribs than from the incision site, but he's so glad to be awake that he's just smiling!
The surgeon put in a 30cm graft...yes, that is 11.8 inches. Not what he planned to do, but apparently felt this would best protect the entire aorta from future aneurysms. He is the only Dr. there that has a different procedure that allows the time on circ arrest--when the body is cooled so dangerously low and many complications occur--to be very short. Often they are on it for 45 min to an hour, and Bob was only on for 5 minutes!!! Thank God in a million ways for how He has taken care of Bob!
He will be in the ICU Fri for sure, maybe moving out Fri pm or Sat...they are watching him more closely because of his wonderful history!
Please call me (or Bob's cell) if you want to visit to find out the best times and where he will be.
"Be still once more, oh my soul, for the Lord has been good to me" Ps 116:7 "
- bob's blog
entire seminary courses online from gordon-conwell including material from david wells.
Earlier, I had posted Is the Distinction between "Emerging Church" and "Emergent" Obscurantist?
In summary, my concern there was that while emergent village is a subset of the larger emerging church conversation, increasingly the terms seem to be used synonymously. I wondered aloud if we should just give up and and use the terms that way.
In the comments on that post, Steve Taylor from New Zealand correctly (imo) called my hand on such a proposal because to use "emergent" and "emerging church" as denoting the same group thereby runs the danger of collapsing the entire global conversation down to the issues that emergent village is discussing. Or it might imply that emergent village considers itself the primary international organization for the emerging church conversation which I don't believe that it does.
I agree with Steve that my comment was United States-centric and could be seen as dishonoring the international conversation.
Steve, thank you for pointing this out; I apologize.
All that being said, we still have confusion over the terms in the American context! Still not sure what to do about that. Not sure that saying over and over again that they aren't the same is the answer but maybe that's the best and only course we have.
"The doctrine of ‘penal substitutionary atonement’ remains a major bone of contention between the yapping, excitable Jack Russell of the emerging church and the snarling pit bull of reformed theology. "
...
"The general argument that I want to put forward is that a doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is certainly biblical but that it has to be framed narratively."
- entire article
jamie arpin-ricci posts regarding the ongoing blogospheric conversation regarding the terms
she's been diagnosed with breast cancer for the 2nd time.
"From that we found out the cancer in her lungs (originating from breast cancer) is spreading very rapidly. "
- link
On 2 Feb 2006, Bob Robinson went thru 13 hours of surgery after his aorta tore and blew up into a football shape. Bob went into a coma but woke up after 27 days and was eventually able to go home. But in April the aortic root started bulging again and there was great concern that it might burst. The doctors were able to get Bob's blood pressure under control, but the decision was made to do another surgery this month.
Tomorrow morning - Wed 27 Sept - Bob is having his aortic valve replaced and his aortic root replaced with a synthetic graft.
You can keep up with how Bob is doing here and you can get a username and password for that site on Bob's blog.
Please pray. If things go well, Bob will recover in about 2 months.
My amazing wife is trying to cure cancer! Well sort of. On Sat 7 October 2006 Beth is biking 100 miles in the Seagull Century Ride to raise money for Cancer Research.
This is from a letter Beth wrote to her supporters earlier this month:
I think I’ve lost my mind. I’ve signed up for a 100-mile bike ride called the “Seagull Century Ride” Oct 7th in Salisbury, Maryland, to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to give to local researchers in the fight against blood cancers. So far, Maryland’s Team In Training has raised enough money to support three local researchers for a year! I’ve personally raised a little over $500 but still need $1,500 to reach my goal of $2,000 ....
As many of you know, my Dad and my Step-Dad both died of cancer well before their time (my Dad was 44). This is the first time since their deaths that I really feel I have a chance to contribute to the search for a cure. When I’m feeling worn out, I remember their suffering and their struggle, and it helps me press on when I feel like stopping.
I’ve been in training for 10 weeks now with Team in Training, and I am . . . SORE. The last Sunday 40-mile ride through the hills (and I mean hills!) of Howard County kicked my butt! I am very committed to completing this journey and am writing to ask you to help me. I’ve enclosed an envelope for those of you who choose to support me. For a $50 donation, I’ll wear the name of a loved one who was affected by cancer (does not have to be blood cancer) – white for memorial, purple for survivor. I already have eight names that I’ll be wearing. Thanks so much, and here’s hoping we can help them find a cure.
If you'd like to talk to Beth about what she's doing, email her here.If you'd like to participate in this effort, you can donate here!
I have a question and I'd like to precipitate some discussion in comments:
Mark Driscoll writes in Confessions of a Reformission Rev:
"The emergent church is part of the Emerging Church Movement but does not embrace the dominant theology of the movement" (emphasis mine).
In contrast, in the lively discussion section of the ever evolving emerging church definition on wikipedia, one of the participants commented:
"While I agree that there is a portion of the emerging church does not idenify with emergentvillage and those they label as "Emergent", the size and distinction of that group is small enough that it does not warrant its own article. Their definition and distinction of the terms emergent and emerging are not shared with many others and should not dominate their use in this article" [sic] (emphasis mine).
My experience has been that most of those that embrace the emerging church but don't associate as much with emergent village make that choice because they are not theological revisionists (to use Ed Stetzer's term without endorsing everything he said in his recent article - which I commented on here). (And - to be fair and just to make matters even more complicated - not all those who do associate themselves with emergent village would consider themselves revisionists, as Tony Jones recently pointed out).
But what I don't have a good handle on is the size of this group. Now, the majority doesn't rule on this question, but of the two quotes above, I don't feel that I know enough of the space to definitively state who's more correct - and I've been swimming around in the ec space for about as long as anyone.
So here's my question: are non-revisionist emerging church conversation participants so rare and so far away from the emerging church mainstream, that they just confuse people by claiming to be emerging church at all?
In other words, is the distinction of "emerging church" and "emergent" being made by so few of those in the emerging church conversation that those who maintain the distinction just need to face up to the fact that the dictionary definition has already been written by means of prevailing use and just give up on making a distinction?
(fwiw, I heartily embrace emerging church reconstructionism, but my own journey into emerging church revisionism has been far more nuanced, which I detail here.)
Any thoughts?
just downloaded this new version of itunes tonight. wonderfully, it now supports the ability to select multiple songs/talks/etc and select "Remember Position" and "Skip While Shuffling" en masse.
I had just discovered these options and was changing them one by one as I moved files to my nano. Now I can mark all my Spoken Word files and be done with it!
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes life
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
ee cummings
"love is a place"
No Thanks (1935)
------------------------
4Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me--practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
The very helpful English Standard Version Blog points us to a great resource for seminary-level audio files: biblicaltraining.org.
Speakers include:
Resonate offers a number of church leaders' recommendations for books to read for church planters.
Some of those making recommendations are
tim challies criticizes the premium that the emerging church puts on doubt, uncertainty, and mystery.
i do believe balance is necessary. i tried to address this in a brief article I wrote several years ago - "What is a faithmap?" - text below:
-----------------
A faithmap highlights known reference points on the terrain, but it does not detail every particular. And - most importantly - a faithmap is designed to be used while going somewhere.
One of the critiques of a modernized evangelicalism is that it has collapsed theology to mere information. Our use of the metaphor "faithmap" reflects our desire to make three statements about Christian theology and praxis.
1 - "A faithmap...does not detail every particular."
It is the glory of God to conceal things,
but the glory of kings is to search things out.
Proverbs 25:2 (all references are in English Standard Version)
The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 29:29
The modern program is that man can discern everything and is the arbiter of truth. We are suggesting that perhaps this has influenced evangelicals by moving us to desire to answer every question about God and to believe that our theological formulations are exhaustive. Postmodern thinkers help us to understand that we frame reality in paradigm and that language symbolically represents reality. Similarly, a map cannot possibly detail every aspect of the land to which it refers. A faithmap does not pretend to completely plumb the depths of the knowledge of God. It leaves room for mystery and exploration.
2 - "A faithmap highlights known reference points on the terrain"
Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.
2 Timothy 1:13, 14
So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.
2 Thessalonians 2:15
Nevertheless, just because the boundaries of paradigm and language limit what we know, the inability to know exhaustively should not be confused with the inability to know reliably. God has given us language and has revealed information about Himself. This information is reliable and certain. It is certain not because of the omnicompetence of our minds but because of God's ability and character. To understate: He is a reliable source of information. Similarly on a map there are known reference points that help the traveler make her way. A faithmap marks for us known reference points - markers we can know.
3 - "a faithmap is designed to be used while going somewhere."
8For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Eph. 2:8-10
When someone asked Jesus, "which is the greatest commandment in the Law" He replied
"`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.'
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)
Note Jesus' last comment.
"The Law and the Prophets" was a technical term Jesus used to represent the Bible as it existed in His day, the Old Testament. Jesus affirms that the very foundation of the Scriptures was to love God with everything within and to love one's neighbor as oneself. All the information we can garner about God from the Scriptures is for the purpose of loving God and others. And if our accumulation of knowledge does not result in these activities then we are wasting our time and not using the Scriptures as they were designed to be used. A map is used for going somewhere. A faithmap is used to guide us as we travel from one instantiation of love to another.
So a faithmap marks certain things we know, leaves much for future exploration, and is used for traveling.
One does not study a map just to have a better understanding of a map. In the same way a faithmap is useless if it's not teleological.
---------------------------------------------------
The need for humble confidence was also addressed by the great Reformed exegete John Murray in a quote I mentioned in Are there Emerging Church Shibboleths?
Here's the quote:
"However epochal have been the advances made at certain periods and however great the contributions of particular men we may not suppose that theological construction ever reaches definitive finality. There is the danger of a stagnant traditionalism and we must be alert to this danger, on the one hand, as to that of discarding our historical moorings, on the other."
Murray continues, "When any generation is content to rely upon its theological heritage and refuses to explore for itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be the lot of the succeeding generation.... A theology that does not build on the past ignores our debt to history and naively overlooks the fact that the present is conditioned by history. A theology that relies on the past evades the demands of the present"
(emphasis mine, from his article "Systematic Theology" - see Looking Beyond the Facade of Modernity, Part 2).
...and how that transforms society.
Keith Drury explores how the internet is changing denominations.
we've commented on the declining cost of info and leadership formation here.
ht: brad boyston
resonate has completed the posting of all 6 mike frost talks with sessions 5 and 6.
frost rocks.
ht: rick meigs
It's been justly affirmed that following Jesus is more than just making sure that we and those around us go to heaven when we die. This seems obvious just by reading the four gospels and observing our Lord's behavior. Jesus was forever responding to the physical needs of those around Him, in addition to directing folks to throw off their addiction to the temporal.
It is, however, an imbalance to suggest that we should "get over" the fact that Jesus died for our sins - or for those of our neighbors. We are creatures; He is the Creator and we ever need Him.
Luke records in cp 10 of his history:
1After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. 2And he said to them,
Luke 10:1,2 (ESV)
Luke continues
17The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" 18And he said to them,
vss 17-20
In Luke 10, the 72 are excited about the effectiveness of their personal ministries. Jesus redirects the vision of his listeners away from the spiritual power that's around them and toward their own personal relationship with the God who built a home for them where He is.
In other words, it is God's love manifested through the Gospel that is to drive the 72 in all they do.
Paul speaks in similar fashion in his 2nd letter to the church at Corinth:
4For the love of the Christ constrains us, having judged this: that one died for all, then all have died;
15and he died for all, that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them and has been raised
2 Corinthians 5:14,15 (Darby Translation, emphasis mine)I had heard about the article that John Piper wrote on the eve of his Prostate Surgery called Don't Waste Your Cancer. I read it tonight and found it helpful to consider for any type of threatening trial.
I found Piper's emphasis on God's sovereignty very helpful.
darrell bock is going to begin blogging on the emerging church and invites emerger response.
“Everyone must try to make friendship his own utopian country in which no inequalities exist,
where the coin of the realm is imaginative sympathy,
all competition and rivalrous feelings are strictly outlawed,
the oxygen is considerate talk,
and the blood circulates best when stimulated by the constant exercise of thoughtfulness, generous impulse, and kindness. The earnest practice of friendship, in short, requires us to be rather better than most of the time we really are.”
- Joseph Epstein in Friendship: An Expose.
Scot McKnight offers a wonderful post on friendships
I'm mostly done withTulane professor Douglas Brinkley's massive treatment of Katrina - The Great Deluge. His menu of stories is well-worth reading, if a bit all over the place.
Tim Challies also brings our attention to a new Marvin Olasky work called The Politics of Disaster and provides a fine summary.
I just saw this:
"Here is what I think God is saying to each of us, 'Abandon your plans of escape. And Be where you are. '"
Kyle Lake (1972 - 2005).
Kyle was electrocuted while conducting a baptism last year.
...or, rather, on the fact that there is an upcoming tim challies book. andrew's brief comments illustrate the declining cost of information.
we've discussed elsewhere that as the cost of information declines, society changes.
We'll probably buy a bunch of these for KatrinaGrace.
I really love this translation.
"The archbishop of Canterbury has told homosexuals that they need to change their behaviour if they are to be welcomed into the church, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
Rowan Williams has distanced himself from his one-time liberal support of gay relationships and stressed that the tradition and teaching of the Church has in no way been altered by the Anglican Communion's consecration of its first openly homosexual bishop.
The declaration by the archbishop - rebutting the idea that homosexuals should be included in the church unconditionally - marks a significant development in the church's crisis over homosexuals. According to liberal and homosexual campaigners, it confirmed their fears that the archbishop has become increasingly conservative - and sparked accusations that he has performed an "astonishing" U-turn over the homosexual issue."
- the telegraph (uk)
