All you massive throngs who subscribe to or read here,
I have begun posting exclusively to my wordpress blog at wp.theoblogical.org. I will eventually point my default theoblogical.org to the home page of wp.theoblogical.org. As a kind of place holder, here is a javascript renditio of the feedroll listing for what I am posting right now.
I have begun the process of getting all of my features over to Wordpress. The comments in MT have died....(or, the Type Key Authentication is not working. The service itself seems OK...I tried a couple of other blogs with TypeKey driven comment authentication, and they seem to work. Their links seem to be the same links , and my profile in Type Key seems to be accessible. Something is broken with MT (again). It may be time.
The Wordpress version is at this link
RSS is : feed:http://wp.theoblogical.org/?feed=rss2 (I still don't get how Wordpress 's feed: attached to the URL is any kind of standard. It doesn't work when I plug this URL into any Reader I've tried. I have to lop off the feed: prefix) anyway , here's the RSS url WITH ther feed: attached
If you wanna comment on something here, try over on the wordpress version. I'll trackback to this link from there so if you want to comment on this post, the link to the WP version will be here
The Type Key authentication for comments here at my blog seems to be having difficulty. I received a couple of emails from people saying they were unable to comment , even after creating a TypeKey account. I cannot even comment myself after clearing my cookies. Something has blown up, it seems , on either my blog's installation , or at TypeKey, or my host did something to permissions or something.
Anybody else with MT 3.2 blogs having problems, or commenting on a 3.2 system?
This is causing me to renew my thoughts about moving it all to Wordpress. MT also needs to provide a set of instructions on how to do the "dynamic template" thing , which uses some PHP files to pull archive files. My MT installation has been taking an inordinate amount of time to save a new post (since it is writing and re-writing all the sidebars, etc.)
Anyway, any hints or suggestions about this woulld be greatly appreciated. If any of you who have commented before might try it to see if you have problems, that would help too. I'm still trying to pinpoint the source of this problem.
This was a funny, nostalgic thing :
I found this post TallSkinnyKiwi: Kimball on "Emerging" and "Emergent" where Andrew Jones blogs that Dan Kimball is posting about the origins of "Emergent Church". Andrew includes a picture of a couple of books, and one of the authors of a book "The Emerging Church" from 1970 looks like it says "Bruce Larson". Since in the late 70's I was buying everything I would find by either Keith Miller or Bruce Larson, I thought I might have that book. I do. Published by Word Books, this little paper back was a buck twenty-five cover price.
I have often commented to people how today's "Emergent Church" movement reminds me of the "Lay Renewal Movement" of the 70's. I read "The Edge of Adventure" by Bruce Larson and Keith Miller, and from there I went on to read anything I could get my hands on by either of these guys, and along the way picked up Robert Raines, Elton Trueblood, Lloyd Ogilvie, and I took a course at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from Findley Edge (an early Lay Renewal writer/advocate, as was Elton Trueblood) on "Church Renewal" in 1979. MIller , Larson, Raines, and company really opened up theological vistas for me. I went on from there , along with the exposure I got to Clarence Jordan by my youth minister (he took a group of us to Koinonia Farm in 1974) to delve into the writings of Elizabeth O'Connor, who wrote about The Church of the Saviour. MIller and Larson and Raines took stories from the Church of the Saviour fairly often to point out how important it is for the laity to be in ministry, and not simply depend upon "preachers" to "do stuff". Seems like such a simple concept, but so often "the ministry" is asumed to be referring to the ranks of "profesional clergy".
From Andrew:
Kimball on "Emerging" and "Emergent"Dan Kimball is blogging out a brief history "> of how "Emerging Church" and "Emergent" came into USA's ecclesiastical vocabulary.
Emergent Church Cover
1970 (I bought a hard copy) and in 1984
from Dan:
Vintage Faith: Origin of the terms "Emerging" and "Emergent" church - Part 1
Now, the irony is that about 2 years ago someone bought me a copy of a book called "The Emerging Church" that was published in 1970 written by Bruce Larson and Ralph Osbourn. It actually is a great book and I have been in contact with one of the authors who now is in his 80's. So in 1970 the church was "emerging" and someone even wrote a book about what was emerging then. They actually have a great quote in this book which says:
Kayla has a great post over on this new site,inward /outward, and the following is but a clip.....do read the post. I am just on my way out for some errands, but wanted to call your attention to it. (Kayla is with Church of the Saviour, and co-author of Becoming the Authentic Church, which I posted from in this section of this blog). More on this post later.
Will we face the reality of . . .* 30-some thousand children dying each day from preventable causes
* two-thirds of the world earning less than $3 a day
* my own nation using violence to install ‘democracy and freedom’ in other countries, all the while growing the largest deficit we have ever had
* the 45 poorest countries in the world having a combined GNP equal to the 3 wealthiest individuals in the world
* and so much more…Will I dig down into the well of pain that these realities bring me? Will I face my own complicity in the mess that we’ve made of God’s garden? Will I begin to see the suffering as part of the divine Abyss where God dwells?
All I know is that I’ll never see it on my own. And neither will you. We need others who take seriously the dangerous adventure of following Jesus into the depths, who will encourage us to lay down the ways we’ve fooled ourselves, numbed ourselves, confused ourselves into thinking we have to mimic a “reasonably successful life” until we’re better prepared to start following Jesus seriously.
Maybe together we can begin to lighten our load enough so that we can take off together on hiking expeditions down, down, down as deep as we have the courage to go, toward our real life together. As Kelly calls it, “a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity”—all our many selves dwelling together in peace.
And maybe we’ll start living that life now.
The story of the Potter's House holds the key to why the Web and Blogging are important.
Gordon was telling a vistor from Kansas about the roots of the Potter's House, and how it was designed to take the conversations and the lives of the people of the Church to the people in the neighborhood and the city.
Yes, the Internet is full of what's wrong in the world, because it is a part of it. Becuase it is a channel to carry communications, it is used to push products, serve the commercial interests, and manufacture false needs.
It is also a way to create a place to tell stories, and by virtue of it being online, searchable and indexable and "taggable". It becomes a way to link together related stories, related resources, and compare notes on what we have received from those resorces.
Just as Elizabeth O'Connor's books were a way of telling the story of the Church of the Saviour, it was also a part of that story that God used a bunch of ordinary people in the nations' capital, but this is meant to say that God is at work and calling for participation all across the world. People who "came to see" or came in search of signs that such things were possible sometimes come to stay, but more often they are seeking new and faithful forms for God's People to take to where they live. This would be my hope for a Web-based narrative and resource aggregation in the tradition of the Servant Leadership School; a Seminary for the Church.
I found that I had a couple of comments that I had not seen....they were stuck in the moderation que, and I had not seen the notification email to alert me that they were there.
This one on this post last week was encouraging. They had problems with TypeKey, so they emailed me. This one had made some comments and also this one . They
I found these Thursday night, and emailed the people involved, thanking them for their encouragement. I also had a guy comment on spell checking, and so I emailed him and we had a discussion about that. I told him that this may well be a major reason to move to Wordpress, since it has a built in spell check, and MOvable type requires a plugin, which I tried and could not get to work (required too much dependence on the host to install or tweak several things)
Anyway, this discovery of unseen comments came at a time when I had begun to also feel a bit better about my "engagement" with work and friends and life in general. I had been feeling pretty low over the past month or two, and everything seems to have picked up, and seeing that there WERE at least a few reactions in the blogosphere was additionally encouraging. Feeling better and more involved and feeling that people value my input contributes to my sense of having something worthwhile to say, which gives me the energy and the confidence to keep plugging away at making my blog more of an accurate reflection of what I am feeling, doing, and thinking, and what interest and inspire my friends in the blogosphere.
This post on Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs blog puts me in one of those ranting moods, where I want to bemoan the top-down habits of church denominations and thus neglect the real theological power of the people of God: the network; a network which is essential to "tuning in" into God. This is not because there is magic in some myterious Sociology, but becuase this is the way God has "gathered" his people, and the corporate form to which he constantly calls us.
Smart Mobs: How Kerry campaign ditched Dean campaign p2p tactics
How Kerry campaign ditched Dean campaign p2p tactics:Kerry imposed a traditional, asymmetrical, industrial era Master/Slave broadcast communications organizing principal on his campaign. Kerry did not trust the voters to generally do the right thing most of the time. Thus he was basically unable to leverage cooperative gain created by the collective actions of his supporters at the edges of his campaign.
While this is also a key issue with maximizing democracy (the "participation" thing), it is very much at the heart of what I feel strongly about how peer-to-peer is an important theological piece of the ecclesial pie (not neccessarily the technology-enhanced variety of p2p, but the concept of an interdependent, collaboaration with God andf one another as we seek together to resist the culture and be a particular people.
Of course, I have much to say on the topic of the technology-enhanced version, and how this EXTENDS the reach both in geography and time of the ftf (face-to-face) kind of p2p. The "connectability" of blogs is growing by leaps and bounds via things such as comments, RS, trackbacks, tagging, and the list goes on. Demonations and church bodies of all kinds and sizes has a huge task before them in "equipping" the saints in the skills of communicating and turning to one another for encouragement, sharing of stories, helping all of us to find one another so that the callings God is "transmitting" can be received in the context of those whose gifts and talents bring them together for a particular task, at a particular time.
We confess to offering little in the way of juridicial steps for resolving the problem of the relationship between church and state in America. Indeed, we are not concerned with positing any theories of "the state" at all, for we have found that when " the state" is given abstract theoretical status, too often the way os paved for underwriting very concrete forms of violence. we do not seek to provide Christians with a better theory about states but rather to help Christians discover the habits of resistance we need in order to resist that state called the United States, whose power remains virtually unchecked precisely becuase it alleges to be a "limited" state.
From Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company, p. 214
Such is why I appreciate so much the theological writings of Stanley Hauerwas. The church is the "public" to which Christians are to view anything posing as "state"; purporting to represent or to protect ultimate values (ie. "our way of life", usually unmistakingly associated with "freedom" and "prosperity" and "uninpeded progress" to determine our own "buying patterns"). From inside the church, such claims are recognized as false claims.
The start of a "Web presence" for The Church of the Saviour has gone live. A new friend, Gentry Underwood, has been talking to CoS people in Washington for some time, and we actually met via my contacting Cos prior to my last trip there in March. Kayla McLung told me that had been getting some help in envisioning what they could do to utilize the Web to help enable scattered pilgrims to seek out Authentic Church wherever they are. So, in the tradtion of their Wellspring efforts, which have been helping people across the world explore the process of becoming church and what structures nurture faithfulness on that journey, this website is hoped to be a tool in that regard; to encourage many conversations and invite scattered pilgrims on the journey to seek out what God is doing where they liove, and where God may be calling them to embody authentic church.
What is inward/outward? at inward /outward
What is inward/outward?inward/outward is a space set apart to wonder, dream, explore…
what it means…
why it matters…
how it works…
…when ordinary people come together in pursuit of community, justice, forgiveness—set free for the sake of Love.
inward/outward grows out of The Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., where at the heart of being church is the desire to discover how to be on an authentic journey with others - inward toward our true selves rooted in Love - outward toward whatever blocks Love’s entry.
Even though we are scattered around the world, our hope is that we will use inward/outward to find each other and emerge from our aloneness, sharing our insights and questions, our ideas and doubts, lighting fires of hope and loving action.
I will be involved in any way I can in helping and participating in this Web vision. While I have had thoughts and hopes for such a thing over the past 10 years, I am perfectly happy to be a "plugEE" into these happenings, as opposed to a "plugER" in this effort. It takesd a special, unique set of planing skills and project directi on skills to do this in a way thatis faithful to the community that is behind such a project, and no more is this relevant than in the case of The Church of the Saviour. It is importaant to keep in mind what this ministry/calling is for this expression of the Church's ministry. Gentry seems to have arrived and fit this bill, and has done so with the same hunger to help tell the story of this unique expression of church, and to communicate it faitfullly in the Web medium. I find this to be an exciting and fascinating and hopeful effort, as you mihgt surmise from all my personal testimony and theologizing over the past 3 years as I share about how the Church of the Saviours vision has captured me; and given me a hunger to be in such a formative and faitful community of God's people.
Check this out from Pastor John Wright, on the continued rolling of deception to build up support for the empire's never-ending buildup toward war to achive their goals.
It is Holy Week, but I have to alert readers to continued distortion of news material in the US press -- or at least inform you of contradictory reports. Given the distortions of material that led to selling the Iraq War, similar material is now being sown. I don't know all the data, but poll today suggests that 64% of Americans support an air attack on Iran to prevent their "development of nuclear weapons." Previous comments from the week before suggest that the Bush regime is strongly considering using nuclear weapons in the attack. God forgive us all.But today a report is making it out to the news through the State Department. If one reads closely, one sees how the state department spins in an alarmist manner -- and how the press mindlessly repeats the State Department line -- by extracting in a distorting way what the Iranian press conference actually said.
from Juan Cole: (also via Pastor John in the same post)
Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran "going nuclear," the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5 percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they "cascade."The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will ever have a bomb.
The evil in this administration, leading us ever closer to the prospect of nuclear confrontation, or further motivating those who would devise such in secret, has been allowed to grow relatively unchecked. The hubris of these guys is simply horrifying.
I have been much less vocal and less often in terms of blogging over the past couple of months. Blogging has been much less "communal" feeling for me as well. I noticed today that I haven't received any comments in almost a month. I was a little disappointed in how little feedback there was in all the postings I made back in late November and all of December on the ideas in "Becoming the Authentic Church", a booklet published by The Church of the Saviour that seeks to articulate how they are trying to live into some new structures, which still contain much of their "traditional" disciplines and accountability and notions of call, but are always seekiing and discerning new "structures" that might enable growth and provide new avenues for fellowship that tap into our need for living and struggling with a diversity of humanity; acknowledging our interdependence, and our need for reconciliation.
As I have become frustrated with a seeming lack of openness or interest to these ideas, and the difficulty of getting a hearing, and the disappointment I felt at the failure of at least my blog to encourage dialogue on these things, I have been asking myself what I might have done, or allowed to happen on my blog to make it less readable, less helpful, less energetic, less enjoyable, less inviting. The same sort of questions have been plaguing my sense of who I am in face-to-face social life, casuing me to ask if I might be emitting some sort of "dark cloud" of unapproachability; that this sort of "depression" constitutes itself as a WALL that keeps me in out of fear of some perceived sense of further rejection, or others out becuase of some sign I might be emitting , unbenownst to me, that I don't wish to emerge from behind this wall. I suspect that this whole thing has come up out of the recognition that I have that I have to find some way, some people, with whom I feel I am on an adventure and with whom there is a sense of mutual accountability for this journey, and that we come together with the expectation that there will be discernment and the evoking of gifts and the sense of call that arises.
I believe we are made for such relatedness and total abandon to God, and that God has given us the church in which to accomplish this. When it is missing, and where churches fail to be the formative structure in which we incubate such a life together, we tend to grow sick and seek first our own protection and seek escape in "luxuries" or in "distractions" that do not satisfy us, which only exacerabtes our sense of isolation and need of reconciliation. When I don't have this, such insecurities reign. It's like our immune system: when our immune systems are down, we are more susceptible to various invading viruses. The church is the immune system for God's people (or it should be). It enables us to withstand the culture; to resist the fiery darts of the evil one. Our desire is to find that place of gift and call and to throw that into the "pot" we share and around which we gather before God.
Here's something from AKMA last week that I had saved for comment later, and so here's my comments. First, the stuff on which I will comment. (the bolded parts are my emphasis)
The matter of justice must not be minimized in dogmatic or doxological theology. When we address “justice,” however, the reflexive recitation of the apotropaic formula “justice” neither absolves a theologian of the obligation to work out the meaning of that topic in conjunction with Scripture and the church’s inherited wisdom — not solely in terms of a liberal progressive nostalgia for “the good causes.” One certainly can articulate a theology about justice that reaches many of the ends that left-leaning, or liberal, or progressive Christians espouse, by way of taking pains to enlist a strong array of testimonies from the biblical and dogmatic tradition. That might mean placing a stronger emphasis on righteousness, charity, and impartiality (terms that cover much terrain in common with “justice”), and would certainly mean construing “justice” in terms less dominated by late-twentieth-century/early-twenty-first-century cultural contexts.
This is a hard lesson to take to heart for a long-time Sojourners supporter. I have stated many times in the past year to year and a half of Hauerwas-RO reading that I owe much of my ability/awareness/sensibility that allows me to reject popular theological rationales to the likes of Sojourners (and along with them, Church of the Saviour and Clarence Jordan). They have taught me much about the tendencies of "America" toward "empire". Tendencies? Maybe "immersion" is a better term in our "Bush" era. The latest headlines about Iran and the BushCo. spin (and their continued manipulations of the public to "prepare them" for what the neocons have in mind. I heard Seymour Hersch earlier this week on NPR, and its absolutely scary. I flipped through a book called "Overthrow" earlier last week, after hearing Terri Gross (NPR's Fresh Air" program) interview the author about the subject of the book, the various "overthrow" tactics used by the US over the past century, "From Hawaii(1898) to Iraq", and how such behaviour and tactics are turning the world against the US and further cementing the reality that violence begets violence, and that we reap what we sow (my words , not his)
I am particularly incensed by Condaleeza Rice's statement that we cannot recognize a Hamas government unless they "renounce violence". Of course, what we do is somehow "not" violence. Of COUSE NOT. We're the U.S. of A. None of that applies to us, cuz we're the good guys. Such absoilute swallowing and digestion of the "Koolaid" of this particularly hubristic version of wordly "wisdom". And the U.S. also somehow sees no contradiction in opposing the idea of a nuclear Iran. Because THEY are the world's largest sponsor of terrorism. Becuase THEY cannot be trusted with the bomb. And yet it somehow escapes our logic that WE are the only country to have actually used it. Of course...that was all in the "cause" of stopping some "greater evil" (like how many more deaths would have occurred on the fields of battle. (I seem to remember how everyone was sure that US forces would face heavy casualties if forced into a ground war in the first Gulf War) I have rejected the premise that "theoretical" if we did THAT, THAT would happen, therefore we can justify MEANS A to the serving of GOOD B. But the option of serving up certain death for thousands of innocents (as in a nuclear detonation on cities, as N WW2 Japan) to prevent a "theoretical undesirable" is not a legitimate moral choice. It ultimately comes to the matter of whether "ends justifies the means" is a choice for the Christian. It seems to place the ultimate value on "safety" and "continuation of 'our way of life'" above all calls to be faithful.
The idea that dying is preferrable to assimilation of evil is seeminjgly foreign. The idea that "safety" and "defense" is not the highest value seems "out of step" with "democracy" as so expressed in nation-states. The "public square" seems to detour us away from recognziing the way of Jesus, and so I see and nod in agreement with what AKMA says here. Our churches have become willing to water down and , in effect, subvert the means and meaning of the "Body of Christ" that is the church. Sacrafice, discipline, and reformation are out, and Protection, individualism, and 'therapy for the soul' is in. The people of God as a formative, alternative, counter-cultural force is itself a largely unknown phenomena.
My previous post on the theme of "alternative concepts" to the "Kingdom of God" warrants a few more considerations. It occurred to me this morning as I re-read the post that there is a MAJOR qualifier in "The Kingfom" that Jesus proclaimed. That is: "of God". That seems to be sufficiently indicative of how DIFFERENT this KINGDOM is as it stands in direct contrast to "the kingdoms of this world".
It is painfully obvious that what some would consider "of God" is anything but. There is plenty of theological rationale going around for thouroughly Godless/Jesus-free ideas and perspectives. It is certainly implied in this "Kingdom of God" that we are posed with the quesiton of how a Kingdom that is 'of God" differs from the kingdoms with which we normally asssociate with the idea.
I still have a postive affection and sense for "The Kingdom of God" nonetheless. The distortions are not to be ignored, however. This is part of the holding in contrast. The process of noticing and challenging the sociological and economic assumptions at work in the various "KIngdoms" put forth as what such a thing embodied looks like is an important theological exercise, and one that has political impact , by virtue of the challenge posed by an alternative.
The embodiment of this is to be centered in the church- the body of Christ is that re-oredering and the living out of those "social" structures that constitute "Kingdom." And here we are back to the argument about how this alternative polis is to relate to the "world".
I may have to go get the McLaren book to delve into the way he treats this, and give me some well articulated ideas to analyze and explore. I have a feeling that I will have quite a different set of reflections on such matters than I would have just a year ago, after having immersed myself in Hauerwas, Bonhoefer, Radical Orthodoxy, etc.
I resonate with a couple of these "alternatives"offered by Brian McLaren to the terminologies Jesus used to speak about what God was up to in his proclamation that "the Kingdom of God is at hand". Although I can still derive the postive sense of the "Kingdom" language, I can also recognize how "Kingdoms" can communicate the wrong sense about God when viewed through the lens of modern history and the legacy of kingdoms that beome infamous for their imperialist conquests and capitalistic motivations that terrorized whole nations of native people who stood in the way of "progress" as perceived by Western European colonialists.
Found in Translation, Sojourners Magazine/March 2006
The revolution cannot use the corrupt tactics of the current regime; otherwise, it will only replace one corrupt regime with another. For example, if it uses violence to overcome violence, deceit to overcome deceit, coercion to overcome coercion, fear to overcome fear, then the revolution isn’t really revolutionary; it’s just a matter of lateral conversion or regime change. The very success of such a revolution would reinforce confidence in its tactics.So perhaps we need a modifier in front of revolution to show how the goals and tactics of this regime are radically different: the peace revolution of God, the spiritual revolution of God, the love revolution of God, the reconciling revolution of God, the justice revolution of God. In these ways, we get much closer to the dynamic hidden in Jesus’ original language of kingdom of God.
This immediatly brings to my memory the sermons of Clarence Jordan about Jesus' s "Parables of the Revolution" and his translation of "The Kingdom of God" as "The God Movement".
The network of God. A promising new metaphor works with the idea of a network or system. God is inviting people into a life-giving network. First, God wants people to be connected, plugged in, in communication with God, so God can transfer to them what they need—not just information but also virus-debugging software, along with love, hope, empowerment, purpose, and wisdom. As well, each person who is connected to God must become integrally connected to all others in the network. In this way, the network of God breaks down the walls of smaller, exclusive networks (like networks of racism, nationalism, and the like) and invites them into the only truly worldwide web of love. The network becomes a resource for people outside the network as well, and of course, people are always invited to enter the connectivity themselves.
I like this a lot. I want to reflect on this over the next several days. (Alsoi appropriate for me, a computer-geek kiind of guy, who also has had a Christian community history saturated with emphasis on community and relationships.
I didn't do any posts last night, but if I had, I would have said that 38 years ago last night, MLK was shot.
Larry has written a piece about organizational momentum/resistance to change re: technology
An email came a few weeks ago that criticized the slowness of mainline denominations in using new technologies, such as podcasts and other forms of new media, for communicating. The writer said our counterparts in evangelical organizations are not only quick to do so, they get a leg up when it comes to public awareness because they are first.This was followed by a note from a former employee of our agency who said the communications agency where I work analyzes, then develops a plan, antes up financial resources and, hopefully, years later does something. He was kind enough to say it would probably be good. But, he noted, in the interim individual pioneers plunge forward and innovate. He cited, for example, the development of inexpensive, do-it-yourself podcasts by individuals, a technology which is already well-established.
There is truth in both critiques, but the truth has as much to do with organizational life than theology or willingness of individuals to confront change.
Innovation does not come to established organizations until they face a crisis that threatens their future and forces them to change. IBM, Ford, and most recently, General Motors, are but a few recent examples. But, I'd speculate that turning these big organizations around is a lot like being at the helm of an oceanliner trying to make a sharp turn. The vessel wants to continue straight ahead, driven by its own momentum.
This was the warning sounded by The Cluetrain Manifesto 6 or 7 years ago regarding "joining the conversation".
I read this book during thst time, and soon after started my own blog, and became an outspoken advocate that trumpeted similar "change or die" themes in regards to the church and its "sinking ship". I worked for an agency that passed around the "95 theses" from the Cluetrain Manifesto, but this brief bit of attention seemed to be "something cool and bold" but was not taken at all seriously in terms of the orgainization's actual operations. The idea of online conversation was not only not recognized or valued, but openly scoffed at.
Where I am now , it is not scoffed at. There is recoignition., But as Larry recognizes, there are powerful forces lurching us ahead in the same familiar directions, and not really knowing how or what to implement to "turn the tide". I am certainly happy to be in my present position rather than the previous one. Recognition is a crucial step.
Recently I heard how one organization is having a tough time finanically, continuing to experience dropping sales and profits. The specch that was given declaring that "we must move in to the future" sounded like something from the 1970's. There remains no recoginiton of the conversation that is so vital. The business world has been mioving to join, but the church and its orgainzations lag far behind. And here is where I am frustrated, since presumably, the church claims to value the "conversation". It lies at the heart of an ecclisology that places untold value on the "fellowship". but "fellowship" involves much more than numbers; mor ethan "events" to which we want "bodies" to attend. There is an omission of the theological importance of the "ecclesia" that SHOULS implicitly assume that it is important to REALLY know what people are concerned about. But our usual way of "affirming" this is to do studies based on assumptions from the world of marketing rather than that of theological assumptions about the nature of the church.
These are some of those things I sense that Larry is referring to when he says:
Innovation, risky or not, is required. And we must figure out what we must stop doing in order to do new, appropriate things.
There are certainly things we need to "stop doing" so that we can devote actual time, energy, and money to the serious consideration of what an actual online community looks like, and how to enable that. Moving along with "business as usual" only further entrenches us iin old patterns that will eventually render us irrelevant.
A good piece from the New Yorker , hat tip to TPM Josh
The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town
Bush and Cheney—even with their approval ratings at historic lows and with Iraq veering toward open civil war—and their staffs still apparently find it impossible to admit error. In the week marking the third anniversary of the invasion, the Bush Administration delivered a portfolio of speeches and op-ed essays that seem even more arid and isolated than usual. (The President kept repeating his claim that he had a “strategy for victory,” but he sounded as if he were reading texts from 2004 that his staff had forgotten to clear from his desk.) At the same time, the White House reissued a national-security strategy doctrine that blandly reaffirmed Bush’s intent to “act pre-emptively,” should he see the need, as if there were not a reason in the world to reconsider his assumptions.
Josh's closing comment after linking to the article:
Even though public opinion has turned fairly decisively against the war, our whole public life today -- not just related to this war, but centered on it -- is awash in a sea of disinformation, official lies and denial. Indeed, lies and bad-faith obfuscation still set the terms of the public debate. We've barely scraped the surface in understanding how we got into this war -- largely because there's been no serious or independent investigation. And the dominant voices in the media are still willing to indulge the voices of liars on a par with those who are at least trying to grapple with what's happening.
Truly a struggling, deceptive crew seeing their house of cards crumbling, but they keep cranking out the propaganda to the ones who lap it up, blinded by their hopes of who knows what. But whatever it is, it bears little resemblance in either means or ends to the reality of the Kingdom of God. There's far too much looking to politics and church as usual that keep us from recognizing the alternate life which God wants us to know in community with the People of God
I forgot about the time change (I thought about it briefly late last night, and was going to check to see if it was this weekend, then I forgot). When I checked email this morning, I saw the notice that my clock had been changed for Daylight Savings Time. I thought it was 8:30 am, when It was really 9:30.
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I bought this at the Potter's House bookstore on Monday this past week, and I wish I had taken more time to read further into it , since there we were, in the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the panhandle of West Virginia at Rolling Ridge. Beautiful geography. On the way home Thursday, we took the Blue Ridge Parkway for about 60 miles instead of I-81. The picture below is from that little jaunt. |
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| This is along the Blue Ridge Parkway from Waynesboro to Buena Vista VA (about 44 miles). I have long intended to get into some Wendell Berry writing. I've read so many interviews and quotations from him, and so many testimonials from people (for several, he is their favorite writer) So much reading out there. So little time. | |
During the last year, I've done virtually NO sports posts, which is very unrepresentative of me and my daily life, where I watch games, expecially college BB during March. I just saw this "Experts" pick page, and they all missed the final four. Exactly ONE person on this list picked ONE team correctly: the editor, Andy Glockner, who wasn't even pictured. They ALL picked Duke, which I had thought was quite predictable, and thry lost to the one teamto which they all SHOULD have been paying attention, LSU, because of their ferocious defense and rebounding, and they did a number on Duke on both counts. Their other favorite, UConn, barely escaped Kentucky (and perhaps a THIRD SEC team, given thast the way to the final four AFTER the 1 vs 8 second round battle between Ky and UConn was relatively easy (if you count George Mason as "easy"; but still, I gotta belive that a Ky-George Mason game was "winnable" for Ky, although it most likely would have been a barn burner as well. GM seems to have caught something.
Anyway, 2 SEC teams in is pretty cool for someone who follows Ky. I'm REALLY rooting for an LSU-Florida matchup in the final. The last "conference game" in NCAA final history? I'll have to look it up.
ESPN.com - NCB/NCAATOURNEY06 - ESPN.com expert Final Four predictions
ESPN.com experts: UConn's the heavy favorite
In my previous post, I was talking about the topic of conversation. But of course, "conversation" is not all there is. There is "life together" that is mission, discipline, accountability, and responding to call, which involves us in the world at the point of our gifts. This journey together is about enabling those gifts, and working together to break our addictions to culture, a culture which tells us that we as individuals have within us all it takes to "succeeed" and be a worthwhile person in this world. As we sever our bonds of depending upon the ideologies of this culture and the "promises of comfort" from this culture, we are doing this in community, depending upon one another to discern God's activity, and where our calling emerges from this.
There is a "tradition" for all this in the life of The Church of the Saviour in their relatively short history (since 1947). But it is a tradition that reaches further back into a variety of sources. Their work in carrying on a "People's Seminary" such as in their early "School of Christian Living" and in the present day "Servant Leadership School", they have been an "aggregator" of great resources for the lifestyle of church and its people. They have always grappled seriously with the issues of money (and so there is a "Ministry of Money" which offers these insights around the country, to the many who realize the captivity to "capitalism" and all its ideological consequences and enslavements.)
These things are just more example of the kind of "Resource Aggregation" could be taken to the Web and discussed via blogs, etc. I feel like I'm about to burst for lack of having an outlet to let flow all of this. I've never been able to get over that hump where ideas and passions for this are "implemented". And so many times what start out as beginnings of conversation that I want to lead into a dialogue on this vision of mine are either not communicated very well, or "sidetracked" into the underlying needs I have to be in such a community. That "sidetrack" is not really a "side issue". But where it concerns my sense of call to be an enabler of the "structures" through the provision of "content" via online means (ie. blogs and RSS and Databases and their capacity to "store" conversations, links, data relationships, etc.), it seems that the physical, face to face community may well be waiting to be discovered as all of us "ruined" by CoS can find each other in a given locale and actually seek to try this.
Shane over at Wesley Blog has posted a review of George G. Hunter's Christian, Evangelical, and...Democrat?. Hunter is an Asbury Professor of Evangelism
Wesley Daily: Evangelicals and Politics
Shane listed what for him were the findings in the book that jumped out at him (and I bolded the ones that jumped out at me from Shane's list:
* In 1980, evangelicals essentially left Jimmy Carter (an evangelical) for Ronald Reagan (who professed no born again experience). * 75% of evangelicals label themselves as Republicans. * In 1980, CEO's received 42 times their company's average employee salary. Today they make 476 times the average salary. * Our exclusive fixation on American deaths in the Iraqi war (with less concern for Iraqi deaths) is a symptom of nationalistic idolatry. * One reason less Democrats claim to be Christian is that evangelicals abandoned the party a quarter of a century ago, so there are less of us there having a positive impact. * We need to rediscover the principle of "indigenous Christianity" in Acts 15. * The Christian lifestyle should not be considered synonymous with the American lifestyle. We should be different.
After returning from DC, where I got a few doses of Church of the Saviour thinking on Sunday morning and lunch Monday, the last point, having to do with Christian vs American lifestyle, I am constantly bothered by the lack of such distinctions in practice or in conversation in the church. JUst walking around in most churches, overhearing conversations happening in the "in between times" before and after church, I am struck by how these conversations are almost exclusively dealing with vacations, sports, Television and movies, etc. etc. In other words, actual "church" issues and theological issues are extremely rare. It's as if people actually are preoccupied with a way of life in the world that eschews the "set apart" quality; the "resident alien" aspect of life in the Christian colony; and therefore in effect treat the issues of church , lifestyle, and ultimate allegiance as "distractions" from the "real business" of "life in the real world". And life in the "real world" is dominated by conversations about leisurely pursuits. It even happens in "Progressive Churches" ; very little "spilling over" of the "sermons" and the "content" into actual conversations. Very rarely do the "topical discussions" carry over into the "buzz".
It seems that this is a grave problem; one which suggests that we are extremely addicted to this culture. I recognize it because I feel the effects in feelings of isolation. I am so drawn to visting Church of the Saviour because there I get the "spillover" and the energy of people who know how big a deal this dealing with our addictions to culture really is. People are milling around on Sunday talking church, and on Monday, they're around tables at the Potter's House conversing (I was there on Monday, and talking to Gordon and Kayla about online community.....Gentry Underwood, who presently lives in Nashville , and is moving to the West Coast in about a month, was also there after I had met him for lunch on the previous Thursday. I saw him come in to the morning worship at the Church of the Saviour headquarters on Sunday. Gentry is a "information architect" as described herehttp://www.entrepreneur27.org/misc/standpoint
I emailed Gentry when I got back, since with his online interests and CoS interests, and his inviting me at that lunch the week before to be involved with what he's talking to Kayla McLung at CoS about, I am anxious to know some of the details about his journey to the point where Church of the Saviour spoke to him in their attempts to be faithful followers of Christ. Gentry knows, as I do, that these people have a strong sense of what it is to be church; and that there is a great deal of discipline and structure to be lived into and to allow ourselves to die and new birth happen. Just as Elizabeth O'Connor used the channel of books to express a rich narrative of this particular story of God's people, a 21st Century narrative and channel is needed. I belive that the interactivity and "linkability" afforded by the Web and by RSS and blogs, and some of the "meme" enabling technologies that Gentry and Justin of Standpoint are doing, the possibilities for some exciting stuff is in the works.
