"my place is of the light
this place is of the dark
I do not feel the romance
I do not catch the spark"

- Emily Saliers

Recently I met Anne Hefley online after noticing her blog on crablogs (where I'm also listed as a Baltimore blogger). Anne's ok now, but recently she was assaulted. A few weeks ago, Anne was contacted by a man who told her about how his son had also been assaulted but did not survive the attack. Anne then writes:

I then watched a documentary television show about New York City police, profiling a murder in New York City. I saw the victim, a handsome sandy-haired young man, and thought, "He looks like the type of guy that I would date." His face smiled up from his driver's license. The smile of someone who would never be able to do so again. A life cut short by complete losers who accosted him and a friend on the street and demanded what they didn't want to work for.One shot was fired, killing one Burke O'Brien. It's a senseless crime that is still unsolved almost a year later. The man had pointed me to the website of the show after it aired, and I mentioned in a return email how sad it was watching the parents come into the city to identify their son. Their world completely shattered into a devastating reality. In his return email, he said, "yes, that was me."I was at work when I got that response, and it shocked me. I had no idea I had been exchanging emails with the very person that I'd just watched on television and felt such empathy for. I wondered, why he had reached out to me? What could I possibly offer someone who had suffered such a loss? And then it became clear. I can spread the word. I can be one link closer to the police finding the killers. A chainlink of me and other bloggers who can shake the rafters and call attention to this crime and the subhumans who did it and are still walking the streets. Perhaps you brushed by them in the subway, or helped them at your retail job. Perhaps you are only a degree or two of separation from the people who did this or someone who knows something. Eventually, the net will close in if enough people are made aware.

Then, tragically, Anne just found out that Brien's dad, Mark O'Brien - who had contacted her - was just killed recently in a traffic accident.

And so I join Anne's quest to publicize this incident and perhaps in some way make it more likely that the police can catch Burke's killers. For more info see Seven Inches of Sense or Burke O'Brien.org.

But I also wanted to post this because it was just another reminder of how very tenuous and brief life is. The older I become, the more I realize this. It was also a reminder of evil in the world.

I do not understand God; I do not get God.

In the town where I grew up some time ago, a child died after being left in a hot car for hours. God could have arranged for someone to have found that baby but He did not. Why did he not? I do not understand. Someone once said that God must view death very differently than we do and I think that may be the case. We can hold nothing in this place tightly to our chest; it will be taken away.

Now I am not shocked that I don't get God. The finite cannot be shocked that she does not understand the infinite. I haven't yet read a theodicy that made me go, "Ok, now I get it! That makes perfect sense!" But if it were one of my dear ones that died in some similarly tragic way, well....

I think the late Malcolm Muggeridge did have a bead on things when he wrote:

How can I ever explain to those who insist that we must believe in the world to love it that it is because I disbelieve in the world that I love every breath I take, look forward with ever-greater delight to the coming of each spring, rejoice ever more in the companionship of my fellow-humans, to no single one of whom – searching my heart – do I wish ill, and from no single one of whom do I wish to separate myself, in word or thought or deed, or in the prospect of some other existence beyond the ticking of the clocks, the vista of the hills, the bounds and dimensions of our earthly hopes and desires? To accept this world as a destination rather than a staging-post, and the experience of living in it as expressing life’s full significance, would seem to me to reduce life to something too banal and trivial to be taken seriously or held in esteem.

…

In other words, the Christian proposition that he that loves his life in this world shall lose it, and he that hates his life in this world shall see it projected and glorified into eternity, is for living, not for dying. After all, it was a St Francis who truly loved the world he so gaily abjured, as his enchanting prayers and canticles convey; not a Pere Goriot who so cherished its commodities. It is misers and Don Juans who moan; spendthrifts and saints are always laughing.

….

All I can claim to have learnt from the years I have spent in this world is that the only happiness is love, which is attained by giving, not receiving; and that the world itself only becomes the dear and habitable dwelling place it is when we who inhabit it know we are migrants, due when the time comes to fly away to other more commodious skies.

Chronicles of Wasted Time

(Malcolm Muggeridge led an interesting life. He was the British journalist who popularized Mother Teresa in his Something Beautiful for God. He was a journalist in England for the Manchester Guardian. He was with the British intelligence unit serving as an operative during WWII with the MI5. He went on to become an editor of the famous British satirical journal Punch. I believe he became a Catholic while in his 70’s. )

If we are paying attention, I believe that there are reminders every day that we must be forever people.

But I frankly confess that I don't understand all of them. If and when you talk to God, please mention the O'Brien family.

blogger navbar

you might have noticed that instead of ads now at the top of this blog, there is what blogger is calling a navbar. One neat feature is that you can now search on the blog you're viewing using the navbar. And if you're into random blog surfing, "Next Blog" will help.

popdex

ranks the most popular links on the 'net.

looking for a pithy quote

try wikiquote.com

the emerging church: closing down options?

...let's explore alternative models of understanding the atonement. But when you write a book that ends by slamming a widely-held view with "I used to preach that but I don't any more" and the unnecessarily shocking "that view boils down to child abuse" you have to expect that people will remember that as the issue. You're not opening up our horizons, you're telling us "don't believe what you and I used to believe, believe this instead."

...


All I really want to ask here is this:

Why is emergent putting itself in the position of saying "believe this, reject that"? Wasn't this supposed to be a postmodern "both and" movement rather than a modernist "either or"?
I like the church so much better when we're able to experiment playfully, saying "By all means, hold on to that, but, whoa, look at this".

conrad gempf has posted what, from my seat, is a helpfully provocative post .

It's not unprecedented for movements (or conversations, if you prefer) to overreact to imbalance. Conrad calls the emerging church to take care not to throw baby out with bathwater.

si johnson met da carson @ 35,000 feet...

....and they had an interesting conversation. i personally appreciated some of the outer boundaries that carson delineated in the gagging of god, but i haven't felt that he's mined the pomoChristian thoughtspace for all its potential depths.

effusing again about bloglines

this thing is really revolutionizing the way I surf blogs. A few days ago I was speaking with Rex Miller about blogging, theology, and leadership formation and I was telling him that because of bloglines I could check I could check the over 80 blogs I blogroll in abou 5 minutes. This is because bloglines lets me know of only those blogs that have been updated. Moreover, if I read something interesting that I wish to blog on myself or read more carefully later, all I need to do is to clip it and it's saved for my future reflection. If there's a blog that doesn't syndicate itself? All I need to do is to surf over to blogstreet and in about 3 minutes I can create a syndicated feed to use when adding the site to bloglines. It's the bomb.

the danger of merely propositionalizing the transpropositional:
a great barth quote!

The Word became flesh -- and then through theologians it became words again. -- Karl Barth

thanks to jordon

scott stapp, formerly of creed, a christian

see the 9 August ChristianMusicToday.com interview.

thanks to welcometotheplanet for the link.

blogging and mission

si johnson had some comments somewhat related to the recent conversation between dan hughes, maggi dawn, steve taylor and myself.

spencer burke (theooze.com) in la times

jordon alerts us to the fact that the Los Angeles Times today had an article on spencer burke and his "emerging church" (free registration required).

I read somewhere once that when a newspaper article is written on something you really know a lot about, it's amazing how many inaccuracies you see. I'd love to hear Spencer's take on this article but here's a couple of observations.

The article says,

"The 1-year-old church in Orange County has no name, no building and no set time to meet"

and then later comments

"They're part of a new phenomenon — "emerging churches" — growing out of evangelical Christianity."

The implication that Spencer's church is a typical "emerging church".

No slam at all on Spencer or his new spiritual community, but I'm sure it's not a typical "emerging church". Most "emerging churches" do have names and do have set times to meet. Some have buildings. Moreover, the article goes on to quote Dan Kimball, author of The Emerging Church, whose Vintage Faith Church definitely has a name, set times to meet and meets in its mother church's Worship Center.

That being said, that's not to say at all that the typical emerging church - and readers of this blog - don't have something to learn from Spencer and his friends' ecclesial adventures.

the portal

found an interesting site called The Portal, which was founded by Sarah Raymond Cunningham. Still exploring....

becoming privately successful

thanks to maggi for turning me onto gapingvoid. An exerpt from "How to Be Creative":

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, "I’d like my crayons back, please."

some mature content

millennium matrix

watch this space.

stay on the bleeding edge

BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs and a portal into the blogosphere.

USA TODAY

Someone asked me to show some pictures of where I work. We moved into our new corporate headquarters in 2001. It's an award winning Kohn Pederson Fox design. Though I've been with USA TODAY since 1989, I only started working here in January of 2002. It was a difficult time in my life and one of the Godthreads in my life at that time was the beauty of our campus. I see it as reflecting Man's creativity, which - of course - , reflects God's creativity. My favorite feature of the building is the hanging staircase in our lobby.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to work for this company and have learned much here. I remember that when I worked at Cedar Ridge with small groups and adult education, I wasn't sure if I had learned more from seminary or from working for Gannett/USA TODAY!

the gospel in post-modern culture

the billy graham center sponsored a roundtable on this topic and papers presented are now available online. among others see papers here by Brian McLaren, Brad Kallenburg, and George Hunter.

thanks to steve knight for the link.

how does the online medium help us develop a new praxis of theology (was "do blogs democratise knowledge"?)

I'm renaming this meme 'cause I'm concerned it's too easy to be distracted by the very sexy phenomenon of blogging.

First to recap:

Dan Hughes got the ball rolling with his post that opened with:

the next generation of theologians will start as bloggers.

Steve Taylor expressed some skepticism.

Maggi Dawn made some important comments.

I underlined some of their concerns and suggested an additional nuance that I feared was being missed.

Dan followed up.

and Steve followed up.

and Maggi added a bit more.

Further, in response to my earlier post , in comments, maggi wrote:

some good points, stephen. But my worry with the inflated claims for blogging remains. I don't dispute that blogging is a useful form for theological discussion - theology can take place in any format at all. But the suggestion that blogging and other internet forms can or should (or have already) replaced conventional forms doesn't democratise anything - on the contrary, it narrows the field. The best theological blogs are ones that offer some reflection on what is being read and written and discussed elsewhere, the blog thus being one thread in a much bigger fabric. If we use the blog as a useful addition to other forms, it will be fruitful indeed. But if we neglect other forms in favour of the blog, we risk going down a very shallow stream indeed.

maggi, i like very much your comment about blogging being "one thread in a much bigger fabric".

i recently read ed cray's wonderful general of the army about george c marshall, US army chief of staff during WWII. after WWI the technology of airplanes advanced and by WWII there were those who felt that practically all US resources should be expended on building as many as possible. marshall, however, knew that while the airplane would change military tactics significantly, it would not be the one thing that would defeat the nazis.

similarly, with the blog specifically and our new and developing online world more generally, we most avoid the triumphalism of thinking "this will change everything" while at the same time taking full advantage of how this - to modify slightly your metaphor - new kind of fabric adds more strength and flexibility to the cloth. We must also be chary of collapsing new modalities of discussion down to the current level of depth achieved in blogging. We mustn't let the current cultural phenomenon of blogging dim our vision of what the online world offers. I respectfully suggest it's a hint of what can occur. The church has not yet optimized its full capacity.

What theologians have generally done well through generations has been to systematize knowledge (to the degree the Divine is subject to such) and to parse out theological formulations. What both the theological and eccesial community have not done nearly as well (from my admittedly Western seat) has been to formulate an effective praxis of theological disagreement. It is in this very area that I am most hopeful that our new online forums can help us: To enable the church's theologians to be exposed to a wide diversity of confessing thought without the abstraction that can occur through de-relationalized interaction. The online world provides both a wideness of information and the opportunity for such discussions to occur in the context of spiritual friendship. Humility can result; genuine listening may follow, and wisdom could prevail as a hosts of minds consider each topic from various angles.

This is what could happen; it's a mistake to think that blogging is the full flower of what's possible.

May God help us to disagree more Christianly - in all contexts - and so come closer to Christ's mind.

more on blogged theological discourse

I didn't mention Herbert Marshall McLuhan, but - happily - Dan Hughes did in a followup to his original post upon which Maggie, Steve, and I commented.

do blogs democratise knowledge?

Maggi Dawn recently asserted that blogging does not democratise knowledge.

She was responding to a post by Dan Hughes that's worth quoting

the next generation of theologians will start as bloggers. they will be schooled in global-reach pontification, in flame wars and public reconciliation. they will know how it feels to be wrong in a very open way and will be well versed in admitting to it. this admission will bring with it both a more scrupulous fact checking and a more fast and loose approach to publishing. comments, conversations, deep links and trackbacks will be the circuitous route that many thoughts will gestate along.

Maggie also mentions the skeptical comments of Steve Taylor who writes,

But if the statement is to input some magical status to theoblogians, I will need more convincing. As an inhabiter of both clasroom and blogoshere [sic], the debate in the blogosphere is no deeper or more incisive than the debate in a theological classroom. In fact, often the debate in the blogosophere is less incisive. At least in the classroom there are things called assignments that encourage reading.

and Steve elsewhere asserts,

Blogs democratise knowledge. I am not convinced that democratisation will enhance theology, not because their [sic] is anything elite in theology, but because blogging can be a surface, skimming occupation that leaves less time to think and reflect.

Maggie demurs:

I do not subscribe to the idea that blogs do - or should - democratise knowledge.

...

Blogs are often like marginalia - they are the spill-over comments, the little points where your main work touches on the news of the day, or where specialist information suddenly becomes highly relevant. For in-depth thought you need full length essays, book-length developments (whether in print or on-screen).

While making valid and necessary points, I respectfully suggest that Maggie and Steve are missing something very important.

They are both entirely correct in asserting that blogging doesn't suddenly make you a brilliant and knowledgeable theologian. Dan would have done well to mention this. - but maybe not. Maybe he was writing iconoclastically - painting with broad stroke without mentioning all the nuances.

What Dan is onto that, I fear, is being missed is the effect the medium of blogging can one day have on the quality of theological discourse.

Several years ago, not too long after email began, while on a business flight I read an article in Fortune about how the phenomenon of email was having a de-hierarchicalizing effect on a large consulting firm. This company was using Lotus Notes and when one consultant had a question, he would send out a message to all others on the network and, quite often, someone could provide some expert help. It was revolutionary in that business and this phenomenon had the effect of democratising the individuals in the company because they were now being evaluated on the quality of their knowledge instead of how high up they were in the company's food chain. Francis Bacon was right: Knowledge *is* power. The immediacy and ubiquity of online technology is putting knowledge into the hands of more individuals than ever and giving them new mediums of discussion.

Four years ago, Francis McInerney and Sean White's investing book FutureWealth claimed that society changes as the cost of information falls. When handwritten books and the time to learn how to read and write them is very precious, then temples and specialized priests must create, read, interpret, cherish and transmit them from generation to generation. When the printing press is invented, the cost of information lowers and a sea change in society can occur. Some consider that the Gutenberg Press empowered the Protestant Reformation. Yet even with this, discrete intuitions of higher learning are still necessary because there must be some place where the books can be accumulated and studied, and young minds can be exposed to older, more informed, and wiser minds.

But today, information can be acquired and minds can meet online. In technological development, hardware is always first, then software, and then folks' optimized use of the software. Many, for example, have attributed the carnage of the Civil War at least partially to the fact that old military tactics were deployed with newer military technologies. And so we have yet to see the exponentially transformative effect that the ubiquity of information combined with the immediacy and availability of online relationship can have on the praxis of theological disagreement.

Dan well stresses the requisite character of theological discussion. Our new forum of theological discussion provides the theologian with increased humility opportunities. This is all to the good.

"Blogging" - in its current popular form - may be as ephemeral to online communication as the citizen band radio was to wireless communication. Maggie and Steve are to be forgiven for not being impressed that blogging itself is going to transform theological discourse as we know it. And they both are quite right to insist that merely the ability to expatiate atop the online soapbox doesn't instantly validate what's being said. Fruitful theological discourse requires in tandem both the hard work of information acquisition and spiritual transformation (combining what the 'mappers call propositional and transpropositional elements). But it's a mistake to collapse the potential of online interaction to its blogged vernacular form. Because of the way the online world rapidly disperses information and empowers relationships, it easily has the potential to be a very fruitful modality for theological discourse (though online discourse is not to be considered the omnicompetent modality). The widespread use of the internet lowers the cost of information and thereby makes it more readily accessible. The interactive nature of all things online makes this more widely dispersed information more readily discussable. And the interconnections of individuals accessing and discussing this information allows the development of more and more relationships strengthening Christian community.

This very blogged conversation is illustrative. Steve, Dan, Maggie, perhaps myself, and others whom I've not yet read all contribute valid points to this discussion and we all have something to learn from our fellows. Further, how likely is it that the four of us - and now you - would have ever gotten together to interact around this topic? It's the wise reader who pulls the best from all to form his own conclusion. And we have yet to see how these new community threads will strengthen Christ's church's capacity to love God and others more perfectly through better theology.

evangelicals take step out of the same ol', same ol'

Thirty-five evangelical Christian leaders have signed a letter urging President Bush to provide massive humanitarian aid and consider sending U.S. troops to stop what they called the "genocide" taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan.
The Aug. 1 letter marks a shift in focus for the evangelical movement, which previously was interested primarily in halting violence against Christians in southern Sudan. The victims in Darfur, a western province, are mostly Muslim.

more from the Washington Post.

Sam Carrasco

Originally uploaded by sshields.

Sam is in remission!

new site on the basics of blogging

thanks to dj for the reference.

someone just used a cool phrase or word

and you have no clue what's being said.

berkley comes to the rescue

jordon incites resonate buzz

i'm only posting this 'cause jordon posted it, so it must be interesting.

grand haven, mi goes wi-fi

dan hughes lets us know that the entire city now is wi-fi.

i wanna blog! i wanna blog!

you're reading this and you really want to blog but feel intimidated by the technology 'cause you're neither an ubergeek nor a geek.

not to worry - scott johnson comes to the rescue.

idiot's guide to blogging

jonny baker tells us how. thanks to steve knight for the link.

blogstats

"Blog Authoring: 2% - 7%

3.7 - 13.0 bloggers in the US
20 - 70 million bloggers worldwide

Blog Readers: 11%

20.4 million blog readers in the US
110 million readers worldwide"

darren rouse turns us on to Blog Count

another great example of transpropositionality

from the Washington Post's Science Notebook:

Babies Grasp Concepts

Why were you born?

I was in Los Angeles recently, having lunch with a friend. I learned that one of the hostesses at the restaurant had just moved to la from Connecticut. So I got a copy of my book and gave it to her. Another hostess was on the phone, and when she saw the book in my hand, she said, "I love that book, I love that book! Why are you giving her that book?" I said, "I'm the author." She hung up the phone, and with great excitement she told me that the book was part of her family's history. Her grandfather had read the book. He then gave it to her father on her parents' wedding day. And her father has now given it to each of his children, including her. Every age can use it, it seems.

Richard Bolles in What Happened to Your Parachute?, a FAST COMPANY interview with the author of What Color is Your Parachute?

I started going through this book maybe a year ago and found it transformational. It speaks to much more than merely how to find a job. It really does help the reader find his calling. Will Samson and I had breakfast yesterday and when I mentioned this book, he similarly raved.

NT Wright - Christian Origins and the People of God

On 14 thru 16 July in hothorpe hall, leicestershire, england, Jason Clark, Chris Erskine, Simon Hall, Mike Love, Andrew Perriman, Matt Scrimgeour sponsored a two and a half day discussion with NT Wright, who is Bishop of Durham, called The Future of the People of God.

Andrew posted some preliminary reading material for the conference on his open theology site. Just at this writing am I discovering that included in this is a helpful synopsis of Wright's in-process multi-volume series, Christian Origins and the People of God. He provides a synopsis of

The New Testament and the People of God

Jesus and the Victory of God

and

The Resurrection of the Son of God

These are big tomes and Andrew truly renders those who have not taken time yet to read all published books of this series so far.

More to come.

a guide to every christian site

what would your site look like if you wished to catalog every christian site in the internet including emerging church categories?

maybe something like this.

NT Wright - The Future of the People of God Conference

Andrew Perriman has listed some/all of the blogs that are posting responses to the July 14-16 conversations with NT Wright.

breakfast with will sampson

This morning Will Samson and I met for the first time in Ellicott City, MD at the Einsteins on Rt 40 and and talked about...

... the emerging church, Len Sweet, Word of Life, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the fact that the Protestant Reformation didn't effectively reform ecclesiology (with suitable props to the Roman Catholic Church for what we Protestants can still learn from them), database relational modeling, Waterbrook Press, Lisa Samson, Bethany Shields, vocation, What Color is My Parachute, Jason Clark, Independent Baptists, Robert Caro and Lyndon Johnson, the difference between geeks and ubergeeks, Cedar Ridge Community Church, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, DJ Chuang, George Washington University, warehouse242, Jen Lemen, the faithmaps discussion group, Grace Theological Seminary, faithmaps, Maggi Dawn, Duke, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA TODAY, faithstories, Biblical Seminary, the late dr jonathan gold, online and facetime relationships, John Franke, Stanley Grenz, SmartMinistry, Levi Fuson, Jerry Falwell, Liberty University, ColdFusion, Microsoft, Todd Hunter, Alpha, Charlotte, NC, the Presbyterian Church (USA), Steve Knight, Tennessee Temple University, Creed, transpropositionality, Dan Brennan, and the Willow Creek Model.

Then we ordered breakfast.

;)

Thanks Will; always great to segue those online relationships to facetime!

e-vangelism.com

andrew careaga has re-launched his site as a blog.

in case there was any question
 
sam carrasco refers to the NY Times Ombudsman who recently claimed his paper is liberal.

culture is not optional and catapult
 
catapult offers information and discussion on all relevant topics, fosters collaborative thought on practically living out faith in all areas of life, and inspires hopefulness and action through the experience of community and the acknowledgement of the living Christ working through his servants here and now
 
Discovered these two interesting sites while reading Steve Knight.

what i truly love ab john o'keefe...
 
,who i call jok, is that he's constitutionally incapable of sticking to a website redesign.

:)


you go, jok.  we all love you.

wwjdwti
 
USA TODAY's Kevin Maney asks the question.  Though Kevin sits like less than 10 yards from my office, it took my reading justin baeder to find it out!

and speaking of technoligization:  another site that lets you create syndicated feeds for free

for any site that doesn't have one: 

myrss.com

I needed it cause blogstreet was down and i was looking for a feed from todd hunter's new site. 

gelassenheit
 
the truth is that we never entirely get away from gelassenheit, irrespective of the degree of our technologization..

looks like there are less protestants nowadays

thanks to jay for the link. ted olsen lists a number of articles covering this.

another realtime emerging church pilgrim
 
The enterprising Steve Knight has unearthed another soul visiting emerging churches and blogging about it.  Matt Deames has joined Rodger Sellers as a fellow-chronicler of emerging churches after actual space and time visits.

todd hunter's new blog address
 
todd's moved his blog.  it's taken what looks to be like permanent residence @

http://www.toddhunter.org/

resources for voters
 
reed mueller provides us a number of good informative resources from the right and the left.

making decisions
 
jen lemen offers us a wonderful acrostic tool to aid in making decisions.

creating syndicated feeds for sites without feeds
 
I didn't even know that was possible until just a few moments ago I stumbled upon blogstreet while googling for a blogger's full name.  When I began linking to blogs in my blogroll that provided syndicated feeds the only one that didn't have a feed was Len Hjalmarson.  I used blogstreet's tool and - walla - 5 seconds later I had http://feeds.blogstreet.com/50902.rss and could add him to my bloglines account.  (Bbloglines is a syndicated aggregator that also lets you blogroll the folks you aggregate.  I should also mention that it totally rocks.)

If after reading this you're going, "huh?" 'cause you haven't yet gotten into syndication; It's not rocket science and I was in that camp like only a month ago.  See feedburner's nice orientation page to get up to speed and then rush to bloglines.

introducing others to the emerging church conversation
 
The emerging church doesn't talk a ton anymore (at least from my seat) about postmodernism.  It used to be the big deal but I think as a group we've moved on.  Nevertheless, for those just entering the movement or wishing to understand it better, gaining an understanding of it is  helpful.  Yesterday I was talking with Levi about a friend of his who's wanting to wrap her brain around the emerging church and I recommended a few books.  I think my introduction to the movement was when Brian gave me a rough draft of New Kind of Christian and asked for comments (I think it was sometime in 1999 though he may have spoken to me before then about his interest in postmodernism).  One of the first books I read that was extremely helpful was A Primer on Postmodernism by Stanley Grenz.  Another helpful book was Postmodernism for Beginners, a wonderful comic book-style book from the United Kingdom by Jim Powell.  (I really enjoy these Writers and Readers books and have purchased a few of them.  They have a number of books providing informative introductions to a number of philosophers, including some of the postmodern thought leaders).  For pastor types or for those wishing to bridge postmodern thought with the church, I highly recommend The End of the World as We Know It by Chuck Smith.  For balance I think it's also helpful to read one or two of the books very critical of uncritically mixing postmodernism and matters Christian.  Though I do not believe he's explored very deeply what postmodernism offers that's positive for the church, DA Carson's substantial The Gagging of God will outline for the committed reader some of the concerns an unthoughtful application of postmodernism to the church might precipitate.

I perhaps should also mention that many have followed Brian McLaren's distinction between "postmodernism" and "postmodernity" which can be confusing to those who lump the two terms together.  Brian suggests a nomenclature where "postmodernism" refers to the philosophical school of thought with such thinkers as Derrida, Rorty, Lyotard, and Foucault and "postmodernity" refers more to its current cultural manifestation. 

visiting emergent churches
 
doug pagitt reminds us to visit rodger sellers' log of his summer time quest to visit as many emerging churches as he can.   i hope the man writes a book; great opportunity here.

and, with the wonder and magic of bloglines, I find myself locked into a world of feeds where if it isn't syndicated, i don't know about until someone who is syndicated mentions it (rodger isn't syndicated)!      :)
 
 

concerns for the emerging church:  a new theology
 
After participating in an emerging church conversation so focused on ecclesiology, chris monroe calls the emerging church back to theology.  He hits a number of critical balancing notes.  A couple are:

- The error of emphasizing image over substance

While we've also talked about evangelicalism's addiction to the proposition, there is simply no question that one can go imbalanced in the opposite direction.   But there's more than simply a balance question here.  I'd like to suggest that we need not only to pay attention again to theology but we also need to approach theology differently than many have in the past. 

Example:  Sometime last year after 12 years of being married my beautiful wife expressed to me a degree of dissatisfaction with the quality of our marriage.  In a nutshell, I simply wasn't choosing enough to be with her as opposed to working, or ministry, or writing, or blogging or emailing - you get the point.  So last year I started seriously working on this.  The most important decision I made was that if she was available, I was with her.  In short, I feel that I basically started looking at her more with all my focus, mind and heart.  A wonderful thing happened and is happening.  Simply because I began looking at Beth more, the quality of our marriage improved and, to my surprise, I fell more deeply in love with her than I ever had been.  It reminds me of Scott Peck's observation somewhere in The Road Less Traveled that romantic love is nature's way of tricking us into getting married so that after the flower of infatuation has faded, we then have the opportunity to earn love and romance returns. 

I think that loving God may be like that.  In fact, I've told my friends that my rebooted romance with Bethany is the leading edge of some change that God is working in my heart.  Quite simply, I need to look at God more, to be with Him more, to focus my heart and mind on Him more.  This, I believe, is a ground of theology.  Without these, theology is only empty propositionalism. 

- an addiction to the nouveau

This, actually, is a characteristic of modernity that's somehow survived in postmodernity:  It's new so it must be better!  Under this section Chris also talks about the ec antipathy to any degree of institutionalization.  Institutionalization is a word that simply represents efficient procedure established over time in missional community (I'm not using "mission" here in the lately popular "Christian" sense).  That form of intentional community can be empty or vibrant with life; the institutionalization per se doesn't make it one or the other.  max depree writes stunningly on this.

Though many aren't ready yet to call the Emerging Church a movement, it's not uncommon for movements to be imbalanced as they over-respond to perceived imbalances.  Chris calls us to a more centered place. 

todd hunter blogs again
 
eric keck and jason clark let us know that he's back.

rex miller's the millennium matrix
 
i sd have mentioned that rex's book has now been released. 

if you're not familiar with the millennium matrix concept, see this chart jordon posted four years ago and an interview rex gave to NEXT (free acrobat reader required). 

Toward an Emergent Church Values Set VI: Authenticity:  A Community of Truth

Paul Soupiset posts his sixth value set in his continuing series

intro

first

second

third

fourth

fifth

sometimes you just have to cut your losses
 
When I asked him why his coworkers felt he did not respect them, he grunted, "Because they are all fools!" This comment should have been a hint.
 
Buddhist and consultant Marshall Goldsmith writes in Fast Company an article recommending that those of us who are leaders focus our efforts on the people who respond and not on the people who don't. 

I really believe this.  Just finished reading First Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham where he basically advocates the same thing.  I also believe it's biblical.  Through the gospels we see Jesus giving people open doors to respond to Himself.  But if they walked away, they walked away.  He seems to have done this with the rich young ruler.  In those instances we are, as it were, a fragrance of death unto death, but we are still a fragrance.

All we can do is to give people open doors.  We cannot make them walk through them and we shouldn't try.

overview of NT Wright
 
"Consider the assessment of Alister McGrath, himself somewhat akin to an evangelical fire marshal. McGrath contends that Wright, his fellow Anglican churchman and former Oxford colleague, has “lobbed a hand grenade into the world of traditional evangelical theology”
 
Travis Tamerius offers us a summary of NT Wright's thought and its relation to Evangelical Theology.   Thanks to Jordon for the link.

faithmaps.org seems to be back up now.

faithmaps.org is down

the domain host of faithmaps.org and shieldsplace.org is undergoing a DOS attack.

toward a praxis of theological disagreement: machen's warrior children

It would be a mistake to miss Frame's larger point just because one is uninterested in Reformed Theology. There are lessons here for the church emerging.

"My assignment was to write on Reformed theology. But I should note that the remedy for the divisions above is not merely better theo­logical formulations. The almost exclusive focus on doctrinal issues in many Reformed circles is itself part of the problem" (emphasis mine).

So Dr. John Frame writes in a wonderful piece detailing Reformed controversies in the 20th and 21st centuries - mainly since Machen left Princeton and founded Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 and founded the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936.

I was amazed to find this fine article on the same day I wrote about the need for a new praxis of theological disagreement in the church.

If you haven't followed Reformed history in the 20th and 21st century in the United States or are uninterested in it, then this article is a lot to take in. But it is a fine exposition of how adept we are at dividing into groups and subgroups over what many see as nonessential theological distinctives. I think it also may illustrate my suggestion that some evangelicals generally and some of the Reformed flavor specifically (and I consider myself Reformed (modified)) have made information transfer the omnicompetent modality of spiritual transformation.

I suggest that Dr. Frame speaks with prophetic wisdom.

(I've posted this before but just realized that I hadn't included the link to the article!)

boundless

found an interesting zine that seems to deal a good bit with philosophy, christian faith, culture, etc.

The Station Agent

Winning an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay, Writer and Director Thomas McCarthy offers us a wonderful film that builds to a rich tapestry of relationship between an unlikely cast of characters. There's not a wasted scene, an insignificant line of dialog, or even a non-critical facial expression in this vehicle for lead actor Peter Dinkage as he plays a dwarf named Finbar. Finbar, despite his best efforts to keep others at arms length, succumbs to the tentative moves of a grieving mother - Olivia (movingly played by Patricia Clarkson) and the blatant overtures of a van food stand owner named Joe (played by Bobby Cannavale) as they seek to pull him out of his comfortable shell.   Joe and Olivia begin the movie with no pretense. Fin constantly evokes stares and comments but just after Olivia tells him that she lost her little boy, he learns that everyone receives unwelcome attention when she asks him to stop looking at her just then. Fin has the effect of pulling truth out of others and thereby is drawn into unwanted connection with them.  The movie is a wonderful meditation of human connection and community

The Station Agent Originally uploaded by sshields.

comparing the presidential candidates
 
liz rios lets us know about a nice site comparing kerry and bush.

sam carrasco

rudy has posted a picture of his beautiful son sam, who has just been diagnosed with leukemia.  see the special sam carrasco blogsite that rudy setup for updates.

sam carrasco Originally uploaded by sshields.

i think i get 3-5 of these a week
 
see the BBC's Turning the Tables on Nigeria's e-mail conmen
 
thanks to World Magazine for the link.

developing leaders 
  
I had a wonderful experience today watching leadership development. 
 
I have been diagnosed as Type II Diabetic since October of 1996.  Recently i decided to change endocrinologists because i just wasn't happy with my level of blood sugar control.  So I consulted Baltimore Magazine for the best doctors of that stripe in my area.  One of the doctors I found was Christopher Saudek at Johns Hopkins Diabetes Center.  So today I had my first appointment and went there and was greeted by another doctor - Dr. Rachel Durr, which I thought was a bit odd since I had signed up for Dr. Saudek.  But I took it in stride; she proceeded to examine me.  But then Dr. Durr let me know that she would be bringing in Dr. Saudek and reporting the results of our examination and then he would also examine me. 
 
After Dr. Saudek came in, I realized that he was mentoring Dr. Durr.  He listened to her report, asked other questions, and did his own examination.   One common complication of diabetes is blindness brought on by diabetic retinopathy.   I visit an opthamologist once yearly to check out my eyes and just had a thorough exam about a month ago.  Even so, Drs. Durr and Saudek did what no other endocrinologist had ever done for me:  they dilated one of my eyes and examined the back of my retina.  It was here that Dr. Durr was instructed as to the proper way to examine the retina for this disease (my eyes are fine, btw).  We thoroughly discussed my case and they spent a ton of time with me - I bet I was with them over 30 minutes.  
 
I was impressed by two things: 
 
1) This was the best diabetic exam I had received by several different doctors in 8 years.  Later, I discovered why; Dr Saudek literally wrote the book on diabetes!  He's one of the authors of the Johns Hopkins Guide to Diabetes.  After the appt, I googled him and read "Dr. Christopher Saudek, a Johns Hopkins University diabetes expert and a past president of the American Diabetes Association" in an healthfinder.gov article on diabetes!!  There I also discovered that Dr. Saudek was professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.  He also won my undying affection when he gave me a turbo-cool brand new Freestyle Flash Blood Glucose Monitoring System with a free Data Cable and software!  Now I can geek out while being a good diabetic patient!
 
2) But what also impressed me was that the experience was a reiteration to me that the church needs an entirely new model of leadership formation that embraces both the propositional and the transpropositional (also blogged on this before) . I had no doubt that Dr. Durr had a medical degree and had mastered all the information of endicrinology.  But when she was scanning the back of my retina, Dr. Saudek was giving her advice on how to best position her body in relation to mine to gain the best insight into the back of my eye.  She saw how he interacted with me and he modeled for her the way a doctor needs to let the patient instruct him.  Though he knows 1000x more about diabetes than I do, when I suggested that we drop one of my medications that hinders weight loss for 3 months  so that I could try to drop the 5 lbs or so I need to drop before I reach my desired Body Mass Index, he readily agreed.  (Higher body fat inhibits insulin receptivity). 
 
I left his office determined to redouble my efforts to attack this disease and further convinced that the church must quit relying on information transfer as the omnicompetent modality of leadership formation. 

kim sun-il reportedly killed because of his christian faith
 
"We have killed an infidel who tried to propagate Christianity in Iraq," the message read. "This infidel studied theology and was preparing to become a missionary in the Islamic world."
 
this according to the Korean Times.  thanks to ted olsen for the link.

sam carrasco
 
rudy carrasco has begun a new site just providing updates on his 4 year old son, who was just diagnosed with leukemia. 

data on christian groups in the united states

just discovered a great website for reports and maps on christian groups in the us that supplements what barna provides: the american religion data archive

the megachurch

world magazine reports that it's estimated that there are now 850 churches in the US that fit the "megachurch" description. in 1970 there were 10.

getting transpropositional

some time ago, i complained that my life was too much about concepts and words and not enough about action (or not "transpo" enough). and so i sought for volunteer opportunities where i could do what i've been wanting to do for a couple of years now: train single moms how to become employable through learning simple computer skills. my search for a forum within which to do this has so far been fruitless. i used volunteer match and found one organization in baltimore. i emailed the guy and he actually called me back. we talked; he had the ball and then .... nothing. never heard from him again.

i was reviewing Time's 50 Best Websites and found idealist.org. maybe i'll try again....

believe in

dan thompson posts a nice meditation on denotations and connotations of the word "believe".

my answer to his concluding question is "both"!

more on sam carrasco (4)

jen's going transpo ab helping out the carraso's. see more here. thank you, jen.

emerging spirituality

jason clark posts:

Well I'm off to the NT Wright event we are part of as Emergent. I have been asked to do a seminar titled, "An emerging spirituality: What sort of spirituality is appropriate for followers of Jesus in a postmodern, post-Christendom, pluralistic, pagan culture? What habits, practices, etc., would best embody the reality of the living God in our community?" in response to N T Wright's teaching.

see the entire post and download his notes from that seminar here.

exploring the nexus of church and business

the corporation looks like a must-see. thanks to i am paradox for the link.

"The easy way is a death magnet."

loved this quote from Guy Kawasaki the author of Rules for Revolutionaries

thanks to Fast Company for the reference.

what does being a christian have to do with being political?

jay voorhees offers a nice piece on the responsibility of the christian to be political.

new "Disrupted Church" group

jordon cooper lets us know about dr a.k.m adam's new Disrupted Church group.

dr adam (aka AKMA) is Professor of New Testament @ Seabury.

drowning in your inbox

"The 10 Commandments of Email According to Intel
1 - Don't use your inbox as a catchall folder for everything you need to work on. Read items once, and answer them immediately if necessary, delete them if possible, or move them to project-specific folders.

2 - Set up a "Five Weeks Folder" that deletes its content automatically after five weeks. Use it as a repository for messages you're unsure about, such as that email you want to delete, but you're not sure if the guy's going to call you tomorrow and ask about it.

3 - Assist colleagues' inbox-filtering efforts by agreeing on acronyms to use in subject lines that quickly identify action items and other important messages. Sample acronyms: < AR> , Action Required; < MSR> , Monthly Status Report.

4 - Send group mail only when it is useful to all recipients. Use "reply-to-all" and "CC:" buttons sparingly.

5 - Ask to be removed from distribution lists that you don't need to be on.

6 - To cut down on pileup, use the "out-of-office" feature of your email, in addition to your voice mail, to notify people when you are traveling.

7 - When possible, send a message that is only a subject line, so recipients don't have to open the email to read a single line. End the subject line with < EOM> , the acronym for End of Message.

8 - Graphics and attachments are fun, but they slow down your ability to download messages when you're on the road. Use them sparingly.

9 - If you're sending an attachment larger than 5 MB to a large group of recipients, consider putting it on the company's Web site or intranet instead.

10 - Be specific. If you send a 20-page attachment, tell the recipient that the important information is on pages 2 and 17."

Read the rest of Fast Company's Intel's Got (Too Much) Mail

it is leukemia

pls continue to pray for sam

please pray for Sam Carrasco

please pray for Rudy (of Urban Onramps)and Kafi Carrasco's Sam (4) who may have leukemia. Kafi is also six-months pregnant.

religious news links

just was made aware of this helpful page on zondervan's site.

so how emerging are we?

"I started to wonder if we have even started to emerge from anything or are we just the natural evolution of the seeker church movement with a new lingo. Has candles, icons and acoustic guitars and blogging replaced color coordinated shirts, keyboards, and sermons on dealing with stress and marriage. A couple months ago I sat in on a conference call with some church leaders and the idea was floated that since the reformation, all that has really changed in churches is about 10%. The organ rolls out and the praise band rolls in. The cross comes down and some screen go up.

...

As much as we talk of revolutionary change, we are still taking to the field 52 times a year and putting on a programmed weekly event and programs during the week. As Alan Roxburgh has said, 'We need a movement of God's people into neighborhoods, to live out and be the new future of Christ.'"



jordon cooper provides us with some helpfully provocative thoughts.

bloglines

late to the party again, but i've just discovered bloglines, one of Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites, and i'm in the process of doing setup now. this means i'll be no longer using pluck. i liked pluck quite a bit, but sometimes at lunch @ work i like to check my feeds and pluck is client-based so i couldn't sync what i checked @ work and what i checked @ home. bloglines is web-based so i'll no longer be having that problem.

this also, however, means that i'm joining that growing list of blogrollers that won't link (in my case, now, can't link) to other bloggers that don't syndicate. but this doesn't appear to be a big problem; of the 50 or so folks i link to at the moment, only 1 of them doesn't provide syndication.

mclaren on church: the real - the ideal

"Like Bishop, I have been deeply impressed and instructed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. Bonhoeffer wisely warns Christians about the dangers of “wish-dreams” about community, ideals and dreams of community that become idolatrous, tempting one to love the ideal or dream more than one loves the actual people in one’s community. Having switched our focus of affection from the people themselves (with all their faults, annoyances, and idiosyncracies), and having bonded instead to our ideal or wish-dream, we are tempted to hate the people who fail to cooperate in seeing our ideal fulfilled as we might wish. Thus we blame them for sabotaging our vision of ideal (or authentic, or Biblical, or whatever other adjective identifies we might insert) community, blinding ourselves to the self-sabotaging hatred or resentment that lies within our own heart, all the while waving the banner of our ideal in “righteous” indignation."

Jason Clark posts a Brian McLaren article that explores church from the points of view of what Brian sees as alternatively contradictory and complimentarian: the ideal and real.

Patrick Lencioni

lots of folks into organizational development are lately reading patrick lencioni books. this morning i received a kind note from sam decker of decker marketing letting me know that his dad - bert decker - recently had the chance to lunch with patrick. sam writes,

"My father knew I was a fan of Patrick’s books and principles, so before he left for lunch he asked if I had any questions for Patrick. I quickly came up with a few. Unexpectedly, Patrick honored me by emailing me his answers. These are too good not to share with you..."

sam's entire post

a trek to visit as many emerging churches as possible

"Rodger Sellers will be traveling to many emerging, post-modern churches all around the U.S. during the months of May, June, and July, 2004. Living out of his camper while "on the road," his research will lead to the formal proposal to Charlotte Presbytery for an Emerging New Church Development Project that we hope to have in the formative stages by early fall. "

See the log of his journeys at here and read about Rodger's visits to such emerging churches as ecclesia houston, journey dallas, jacob's well church, pathways church, scum of the earth church, and more. check out his log for the rest.

Many thanks to Steve Knight for the heads up.

misguided renewal efforts

brian mclaren has posted a new article to allelon about what we've called emergent stage one.

aligning your leadership with others and your organization's mission

When a book really captures my imagination, I like to outline it and possibly even write up a summary of it - sometimes pulling in material from other sources as well. The main reason I do this is as a heuristic exercise to help me wrap my brain more fully around the book. But a serendipity of this is that I then have something that I can give to someone who can benefit from the info without necessarily having to read the book entire. So, for example, a few years ago after I read Collins and Porras Built to Last, I put together just such a summary. Later, I so enjoyed having the chance to hear Peter Senge and to read his wonderful Fifth Discipline that I put together a piece called The Thinking of Peter Senge pulling these two experiences together. A few years later, Kouzes and Posner's marvelous book The Leadership Challenge so struck me that I put together an extensive outline that became the basis for my first article with Next-Wave. Reading Eric Verzuh's very practical The Fast Forward MBA on Project Management led to two outlines, one brief and one more expansive. Finally, after reading Francis McInerney and Sean White's FutureWealth, a very insightful investment book about the way the declining cost of information affects society, I put together a brief piece on how this impacts the newspaper industry for some of my fellow managers at USA TODAY.

The latest book to have this kind of effect on me was The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins.

Here's a teaser:

"A friend of mine, having just been promoted to a director’s position, recently strongly recommended Harvard’s Associate Professor of Business Administration’s new book that counsels the recently ascended leader in her first 90 days. When I called another friend who recently accepted a VP position with a cable company, she told me that the book had been her guide for the last few months. And some time after I recommended the book to another friend who had just accepted a national role with a fast growing company, he told me that the book had been a gift from God. "

read the whole summary here and the extensive outline for more details here.

regent radio

is now available featuring folks like marva dawn, larry crabb, gordon fee, stanley grenz, and many others. thanks to prodigal kiwi blog for the heads up.

nice orientation to syndication

if you don't know anything ab it.

john edwards' faith

Ted Olsen blogs on the belief's of John Kerry's VP selection.

the ooze blog directory

jordon encourages all bloggers to list themselves on the ooze's blog directory. list yourself and spread the word, ok?

a history of evangelicalism

just discovered that InterVarsity is publishing an anticipated five volume history of evangelicalism. the first volume by Mark Noll, the rise of evangelicalism, treating edwards, whitfield and wesley, has already been published.

an emergent justice event

rudy carrasco asks a great question.

Toward an Emergent Church Values Set V: Culture-engaged, Missional Communities

Paul Soupiset posts his fifth value set in his continuing series

intro

first

second

third

fourth

evangelicals and the environment

Last week in Sandy Cove, Maryland, at the headwaters of Chesapeake Bay, a group of evangelical leaders met to affirm our responsibility to care for God's creation. The gathering—sponsored by Christianity Today, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Evangelical Environmental Network—included scholars, activists, denominational leaders, pastors, journalists, and representatives of relief organizations.

read the entire CT article.

balance

"Each of us is given five balls. One is rubber and four are glass. The rubber ball is work. If you drop it, it will always bounce back. The other four glass balls are family, friends, health and integrity. If you drop them, they are shattered. They won't bounce back."

great advice given to rebecca ryan from her dad's "turbo-cool hospice nurse."

Thanks to bob carlton for the link and for the reference to what seems to be a valuable zine - Worthwhile Magazine. Here's some more info on the zine:

About Worthwhile Magazine
The editorial mission of WORTHWHILE is to put purpose and passion on the same plane as profit. WORTHWHILE offers a roadmap for business success that is more personally fulfilling and socially responsible. We live by the motto that it is impossible to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.

We hope that this site can be a place where you?l come to discuss, to learn, to share your experiences, to find solutions in your worklife.

Founders
WORTHWHILE was created by Anita Sharpe and Kevin Salwen, veterans of The Wall Street Journal, with four decades of financial journalism experience and a Pulitzer Prize between them.

This blog is managed by senior Web tsarina, Halley Suitt, with the incredible assistance of Boris Anthony.

Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence, etc) is also one of the contributors.

heart and culture

will sampson made an important addition to his comments about the Christian Booksellers Association's recent convention.

We can't add these kinds of provisos enough. Thought it's arbitrary to entirely divide matters of heart and motivation from culture, it's nevertheless a critical distinction we must always keep in mind. Any discussion of culture that stays at the level of what sociologists call boundary markers (e.g. clothes, books read, perhaps, in some circles, certain shibboleth beliefs, , etc.) is intrinsically superficial. We must never forget our Lord is much more concerned about the degree to which we love Him and others than that we're pre-modern, modern, postmodern, or post-postmodern.

advocating a proactive split

In a fascinating editorial, Christianity Today advocates something of a preemptive split in mainline denominations torn over sexual ethics. Though some in the United Methodist denomination, for example, are calling for such a split, UM reaction is varied.

scoring the movies

"Opening to a chorus of glowing reviews and sold-out theaters, Spider-Man 2 is accomplishing what few comic book films manage: winning over audiences not typically drawn to superheroes....'It had a real story to it,'' says Redfield, a video store manager. ''Just because it's a comic book movie doesn't mean it has to be shallow. The characters were as good as in any dramatic film.''

We ran a story this morning that said spider-man 2's wednesday's opening so far looks to be the biggest opening day ever. Viewer and critic reviews have been great.

In the story, I also learned for the first time about metacritic, which aggregates movie critics reviews into one overall score (like rotten tomotoes).