Recently in Church Category

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.

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.

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)

AKMA’s Random Thoughts

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 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.
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.

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.

Written earlier today in the absence of a strong Wifi Signa, and pulled off of the SD memory card from the PDA:

The wireless signal coming from the hotel next to my car place (where I'm getting new tires put on) is flaky...I got on just long enough to send an email to work.

The tires were needed since the existing ones were getting worn on the inside, and we're about to embark on a trip to the DC area. I have a time set with Kayla McClung, who works with Gordon Cosby as a minister at the Church of the Saviour. I spoke with her on the phone yesterday. Looks like I'll be meeting with her and Gordon Cosby on Monday next week.

on P.136 of In Good Company, there's a good quote about "market forces", and it brought home to me what I am noticing about the tendencies of the "Bush camp" Christians to jump to the defense of a social policy that affirms the "consumer mentality" that the economic powers have affirmed as right and good. The defense of an "anti-regulatory" movement (most arrogantly being carried out by the Bush administration). This defense seems to be as energetic as any overtly theological issues they may deem important.

Liberal societies train us to believe that our own self-interest is legitimate, that our greed through market mechanisms serves the common good. (a thought from ME, not Haerwas :I recall the Gordon Gecko character telling the stockholders, "Greed is good". Greed WORKS".) That 'good' turns out to be little more than an aggregate of our self-interests. For those if us produced by such socities to speak about love and economics surely sounds like madness.

In Good Company p.136

violence always needs to justify itself through deceit, and to appear, however falsely, to be defending a right or responding to a threat posed by others.

Pope, IGC, p.138

Sounds familiar, eh?

"John Paul II, through his narrative of Eastern Europe, invites us to become part of God's people by refusing to submit to violent narratives that capture our souls by asking us to submit to false economic and political orders through seemingly meaningless and insignificant acts-- likeputting yellow ribbons on church doors"

P.139

There's a growth under Bush of the "Publishing and PR" houses asking us to do just that. (Add to that the Fox News's and such)

"When people think they posses the secret of a perfect social organization, which makes evil impossible, they also think they can use any means, including violence and deceit, in order to bring that organization into being"

Pope, p. 140 IGC

All in the name of some "theoretical" which they assure us is our fate if we fail to follow them into the abyss. It's all for our "safety and freedom". Disheartening. Disturbing.

A revisiting of some of the dialogue about the sometimes racous dialogue on Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank about the .....a one liner is kind of hard to pose.......the argument about whether Radical Orthodoxy in general, and Hauerwas specifically, are "dismissive" of activity around "justice seeking", or whether or not there is an "obligation" for Christians to "work with" political structures in the context of being faithful.

(Did I get the "gist"?)

Generous Orthodoxy ThinkTank: Eric Lee's Response to Steve Bush on Hauerwas

JKA posted:

Given that Steve Bush's earlier post "Between Hauerwas and Augustine" generated such lively and vigorous discussion, some might be interested to revist the discussion by considering Eric Lee's recent "Reply to Steve Bush." (Eric is a faithful commenter at Think Tank.) Just FYI.

Some of what I replied to Eric with:

I still don’t know quite where I am on those questions……I don’t mean to be “relativisitic” when I say I like the reasons you both give….I understand Hauerwas a lot better now than last summer, and I like JKA a lot better than I did last summer, but I see where SB is coming from when he asks:

Cannot Christians join with others who are actively attempting to rearrange the social, political, and cultural structures of global capitalism, even as the Christians participate in, and indeed as an extension of such participation, the realization of eschatological justice and peace in the Eucharist? The theological commitments of Radical Orthodoxy suggest as much, but their rhetoric refuses this possibility.

I also like:

I find Radical Orthodoxy’s increasing emphasis on the expansive generosity of God’s grace welcome, since this implies that non-Christians invested in worldly political and economic practices have ethical potentialities heretofore unacknowledged by Radical Orthodoxy.

I also recognize the sections from Hauerwas that you rightfully posed as evidence to the contrary that he TOTALLY frowns upon working with others on “justice” issues (even though I realize Hauerwas has an aversion to that term , mostly because of the tendency of so many to fail to see the way in which so much of that simply props up the system against which they are aimed).

I was reminded also of Bonhoeffer and his work with the resistance and the plot to kill Hitler. Earlier, there were plans for a coup, and Bonhoeffer placed much hope in the possibility of working to effect a “hostile takeover” employing some key military leaders who were on the fence who might help effect the coup. Of course Hitler was an especially heinous case, but I wonder how “heinous” something needs to be before some amount of “collaboration” on some common ground of some appeal to some “don’t do harm” principles that many non-Chriistians could agree on is not “preferable”; and just as Bonhoeffer eventually decided that it might be better to involve himself in an assassination plot when the coup failed to materialize. Again, my point here being that there are numerous instances where Bush and Co, are not simply ineffective, greedy rich guys seeking to close all available avenues toward “leveling the playing field” (even though its never the aim, as Zinn points out in his history, to really achieve a lasting justice/equality; they just talk the talk, do what they want and plan to do, and deny it and twist it and progagandize it into a rally cry ; and to some extent all of the US political administrations have done so; but I do have to say that these guys are the worst of the lot, and we could all do with some light being shed on them, and take our chances with prevention of further plundering of every arena they get their grubby paws on. Still , this would not be “beloved community”, or reach the end of reconciliation, but it would certainly be a lesser evil, and worth stopping, and a better place from which to be able to peer back and say “that was awful”, then set sights ahead, and perhaps the churches that do live the Jesus story will be seen to have been right.

Today, I have more to add on this:

My sensibility on this centers on the question of AT WHAT POINT do the actions of government, in the name, of course, of "freedom" and "democracy" and "the will of the people", require resistance, and when is it deemed "neccessary" or "obligatory" to "unveil" the degree of deception that is happening to obscure the real damage being done? When is it desirable/obligatory to "participate with a coup". I also don't think we can posit a "POINT" at which we spring into action, or "Wait" if such a POINT is not considered "REACHED". I think there are numerous modes of "Trends" that are causes of rightful concern, and that WAITING for a POINT is not "faithful".

What I'm saying here is that there are more than a handful of instances where the Bush administration is attacking and dismantling numerous "safety nets" that , n the past, conscientiousand knowledgable people , in those areas, have worked to protect from abuse by "capitalism" (like environment, Food and Safety, education, healthcare, elderly care, and on and on). INcreasingly, I am seeing the Norquistian activity of "dragging these to the bathtub" in the name of throwing these areas to the dogs of "the market", not to mention the ongoing dragging of the world into violence and war. I don't see that "waiting" for the death toll to reach that of Hitler's actions is any kind of "comparison game" to be played. If it was considered "rational" for Bonhoefer to participate in a coup plan, and finally an assasination plan (that's not what I'm suggesting here----I am instead desirous of any and all "coverups" and instance of corruption and scandal to be uncovered ad infinitum. Not that this country will in any way take a rightful next step beyond that point, but it will at least STOP THE OPPRESSION AND KILLING.

I feel that there are vastly more areas of common ground between "Radical Orthodoxy" and "Progressive Christianity" than many of the most vocaL critics of the latter from within the former are indicating by some of their more public writings or statements. The pieces from Hauerwas that Eric has lifted up seem to me to give testimony to that. James KA Smith talked about in his interview on "Evangelicals Out of the Box" that many Progressives seem to expend much energy in avoiding "sounding like" the Religious Right. I think that perhaps there is an element of this in Hauerwas when he complains about Christians talking about "peace and justice". Yes, the terms have come to be polluted with liberal democratic notions. But they are clearly Biblical TERMS, and the property of no ideology.

It seems we need to try to look more at how these theologies are constituted in living breathing communities seeking to be a people set apart and living apart from the dictates of culture, and a people called to aid one another in being formed as a "recovery group" to help us overomce our addictions to culture by faithful practices.

From Stanley Hauerwas:

I am a theologian with a theological position that makes no sense unless a church actually exists that is capable of embodying the practices of perfection. In effect, since my own Methodist church is seldom capable of being such a community, though individual Methodist churches manage to be quite impressive, I live off communities that for varieties of reasons find themselves stuck with strong practices and convictions that they cannot leave behind and remain who they claim to be.

In Good Company: The Church as Polis, p. 67

This is where I find myself floating these days. It seems the only church structure that really makes sense to me is a 12 hour drive away from here (The Church of the Saviour). This is not to impune the practices and communities that no doubt exist in places much closer ---(hopefully, a lot closer than I imagine), but it nevertheless adds to my restlessness, and the lack of rootedness in A community that I am convinced is vital, and also convinced that my wanderlust in this area has turned out to be a disservice to my wife and kids that I find hard to bear in these past few months.

We're taking a spring break trip in a few weeks (all of us this time) during the school's weeklong break, and we're heading back to DC (I was there in November). My wife's parents have a time-share arrangement in which they can trade for "other locations" for a small fee, a nd they were not going to be using up their time for this year, so they found a place in middle Virgina just west of the Shanendoah National Park, and about 100 miles from DC, 100 miles from Williamsburg/Jamestown, and 100 miles from my friend Bob's place near Harper's Ferry (Rolling Ridge Retreat) where we will stay one night in the Retreat House they have there for various groups that come in to do retreat-like programs. Of course, we'll be taking in some of the sights of DC for the sake of my by-then 8 year old daughter Kelli, and just the second time for my by-then 17-year old son (who was there ten years ago , just as wide-eyed as his sister is now).

I hope there will be opportunities for some "wide-eyed" obeservance of some of the life and practice of some of the various Church of the Saviour church communities while we are hanging around the area.

I am contemplating how I might, on this blog, review and/or revisit and re-contemplate the issues raised in the "Becoming the Authentic Church" series I posted here when I returned from DC this past November.

There apparently is a CD-set of Gordon Cosby sermons that I want to acquire to play in the car on the way there in about 3 weeks.

Bart Campolo, on his blog, posted this past week about a Thrift Store idea he has begun kicking around:

Just think…a place of connection…affordable clothes and furniture for poor people…some decent jobs…a hub for our community…a place to hold meetings…the metaphor of redemption…saving landfill space…a ‘Cheers’-like environment, where everybody knows your name…vouchers for those who need them…a fund-raiser for other ministry stuff…a place to hold birthday parties for people who need them…a point of entry for folks moving here to join us…a safe zone between rich and poor…summer jobs for the kids who want to grow…an approachable spot to for folks who need ‘in-the-mix’ counseling and emotional support…something that takes advantage of Marty’s and my gifts and experience…no ongoing fund-raising…

from this post: Bart Campolo: Have you considered retail?---the permalink seems to have gotten deleted, so this is the comment pagethe line about "a safe zone between rich and poor" brought a couple of comments from people who, in my estimation, misunderstood. The commenters reacted with the complaint that "staying safe" is precisely the problem with rich folks, or with the "non-poor" when it comes to the kind of contact they prefer with the poor (which is "as little as possible"). The commenters may have thought Bart was talking about a "safety" that comes with avoiding danger; or "comfort". I didn't read it that way at all.A few days ago, I posted a quote from Schools for Conversion (Brokering.) It's worth reposting again, in this context:

When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. Brokerage turns the church into an organization rather than a new family of rebirth. She ceases to be something we are, the living Bride of Christ. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get fed) but no one leaves transformed -- no new community is formed. People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for disrupting the status quo, for calling forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them.

from Schools For Conversion, p. 29--Bart replied to these comments with clarification of the sense of "safety" he had meant:Bart Campolo: A Safe Zone Indeed

To achieve its goals, an enterprise like this would need not only to attract both rich and poor, but also to connect and humanize them to one another. That, I feel certain, requires the safe zone Jesus was taking about when he told his disciple to fear not, because he - God himself - was with them.

The "safety" is not equivalent to the "comfort" the well-off in our society feel in being separated by distance and class and the "usual comforts" we have come to take for granted. This "safety", as Bart points out, is in the "fear not" zone; where the gift of difference is brought home; and the eventual discovery (revelation) that these walls that separate are artificial; a product of separation that is obliterated by reconciliation. I am reminded of a line from the book The lion , The Witch, and the Wardrobe, where one of the children asks the Beavers about Aslan, upon learning that Aslan is a lion "Is he safe?" : The reply: "Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he's not safe. But he's good" The safe-zone is a reconciliation zone. It's not a "safety" as the world expects it. It's a safety that comes in discovering that gift awaits us.

I fear that apart of the problem is the very presumption that theology constitutes "thought" which then must seek embodiment. Once theology becomes "thought", the church has laready accepted modernity's disembodiment of the Gospel.

Stanley Hauerwas, from In Good Company, p. 21

Here's an excellent post by Will Sampson (I quote the two closing paragraphs)

willzhead: Coretta and Sam

And so, the death of Coretta Scott King, a beautiful person and a valiant fighter for people's rights, seems to ring in the change that has happened in our culture. Samuel Alito, while "pro-life", does not believe that life should include equal voting rights for minorities or privacy from intrusion by government interests. It seems to me, unfortunately, that this is the lesson of power. It is a futile pursuit, bound to disappoint. If you try to change culture through force you will always lose; there will always be someone more powerful who has different ideas about how people should act.

This is the strength of the Christian message. Rather than following someone who commanded great armies or was a captain of industry, many of us follow one who said, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." It is my hope that continued legislative losses will help the Church abandon her pursuit of power and bring her back to the radical message of Jesus. If we do that, then maybe we can start making some real change.

Amen , Will!

Last night I read some more in Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, and I got to the place where , during the bus boycott , King's house was bombed on the evening of January 30, 1956 ----50 years ago ------and then this morning on the way in to work, I heard the news that Coretta had died. Coretta, since MLK's death, has had to constantly remind us that what MLK was called to do and the legacy he wanted went further than the notion of "racial justice", but that reconciliation was the end, and that involved confronting the problem of the poor, and the problem of war, and how the latter further burdened the former.

Jay has some good thoughts on church culture and technology usage. The email was to a group that had been discussing some ideas for doing a Methodist Blogger Event, and Cole had expressed frustration about the Southern Baptists getting an article in the Tennessean about one of their execs that has a blog and was talking about the use of new technologies.

Only Wonder Understands: It Ain't About Technology!

What I was trying to express in the e-mail that I sent was a concern regarding a culture in the United Methodist Church that isn’t able to respond quickly to change. Now there is some value to this — the church probably should be a voice of caution, considering the ethical implications of new trends or technologies. Yet, given the speed of cultural change, those considerations must come more quickly, or else the church finds itself left behind, always playing catch-up, and never being on the cutting edge of any cultural movement.

The issue for me is not about who has the coolest stuff, but rather who has the willingness to create a culture that can be missionally focused. It’s not surprising that the Southern Baptists are “ahead” of the curve technologically for their ethos includes a willingness to take on new forms in order to carry out their mission in the world. Methodists, on the other hand, plod along, creating a committee to study everything so that by the time they’ve finally gotten around to adopting a new thing, the next trend has come along.

Thing about our structures. Our budgets nationally are determined on a quadrennial basis (four years). These days, four years is a long time. The first I-Pods were released four years ago, but they are transforming the music business, radio distribution, etc. How can an institution that only meets every four years respond to the speed of cultural change today?

Go read the whole "It Ain't About Technology!" post in the above link on Jay's blog

Gavin was blogging on this same conversation here

This from Schools For Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasiticism:

It is absolutely vital that the New Monasticism recognizes and properly names the fragmentation that inhibits and distorts the formation of community and the healing of persons in community.

Intro, p.4

I've been in a sort of fog for the past couple of months, wondering where this breath of new life is happening. It's like the "inhibitions" alluded to above are in effect, creating a gulf between us. It seems that this "healing of persons" is expected and assumed to take place OUTSIDE of community as a kind of expression of individualism; an act of the will to overcome negativity and set aside the idea that there is going to be a place where we are truly accepted for who we are. No local church I have come into contact with in years has exhibited this corporate sense of accountability to a radical notion of discipleship and the Inward Journey.

This sermon by Pastor John Wright speaks to me (as have many of his) :

Pastor John Wright

Even when we talk of God in the church, we talk of God only within what is already known, what is supposedly already given. In response to radical closure of the world, we open up a little place within our selves, psychological impulses from within, maybe a spot buried deep in the brain, and we can call that God. God does not really reveal God’s own self as Other to us. No, we have to discover god, and therefore god becomes the same as ourselves. We don’t need revelation, a gift that stands outside ourselves which calls us to God. We instead speak of spirituality, self-discovery, community, the assurance of our own subjective meaning as we struggle through the blandness that is the repetition of sameness that we experience. Nothing lies outside the system. God chased from the world finds residence in deepest self. Revelation is not allowed; we live in a world that denies revelation by definition. Our talk of God has succumbed to the loss – often without even realizing it and we end up with an idol, a big projection of our own selves, our own culture.

This affirms and echoes something that has been going on within me for some time now, and in the last year or so, all the more as I have read those such as Bonhoeffer, Hauerwas, Cavanaugh, and Bell, to add to my previous years of having my concept (and the hope that it's more than such) of church brought back time and time again by the vision of The Authentic Church (and the history of such a journey that has been taking place over the past 59 years at the Church of the Saviour). The awareness that God intends to do wholly different things that lie far beyond what is "the givens" that keep us enslaved in a history told by someone other than God. Gordon Cosby constantly talks and writes of an "alternate reality" ("alternate" in the sense of "other" rather than "just another option". It is alternate in the sense of the only true reality).

Faith is the beginning of rationality, of thought, of desire that ends in love that is true knowledge. Faith is not wholly other than thought, than rationality.

This from some of my reading this morning, stuck out as a significant reflection for me:

Forgiveness is an embodiment of God's judgment of sin, however, as a judgment of grace. God does indeed judge sin, but not according to the traditional canons of justice. Such justice, as we have seen, does not accomplish reconciliation; rather it leaves us locked in struggle. For this reason, as the liberationists acknowledge, justice so conceived cannot be the final word about God. God judges sin not in order to uphold the canons of "what is due," but in order to heal all desire (of both victim and perpetrator) that it might participate in the joyous sociality of love. Forgiveness is a judgment that abandons none and seeks to reconcile all. As such it is a judgment of grace

Daniel Bell, Liberation Theology at the End of History p. 172

it is as a whole that we begin to perceive how the assemblage of knowledges, instruments, persons, systems of judgment, spaces and buildings that constitutes forgiveness as a therapy of desire avoids degenerating into a pious veneer spread over the impunity of the powerful. Taken together they reveal forgiveness to be a form of judgment. Confession, repentance, and penance are the path that the divine gift of forgiveness clears beyond sin.

Bell p.171

The highlighted phrase also addresses the issue of how the typical conception of forgiveness for all is in constant misuse as " pious veneer"; it is not meant to be "absolution" without "healing". The oppressor has just as much at stake as the oppressor, for they too must accept and participate in the healing. I recall a little debate between Steve Bush and Jamie Smith on this one. Steve seemed to be missing this aspect; this warning of Bell's about the "pious veneer" that seems implied if the many facets of "the refusal to cease suffering" are not taken together.

It seems to me that the problem that churches have in America (and elsewhere, too) is that an acceptance of the premise of justice as "what is due" visa vi the typical progressive Christian advocacy, is so often also missing the "technology" ingredients (ie. " the assemblage of knowledges, instruments, persons, systems of judgment, spaces and buildings" of which Bell speaks). The "funds" are insufficient to mount resistance. It looks like Gordon Cosby's vision of "Being Authentic Church" is even more of a requirement; the idea that we must have inclusion of these folks who are the poor for whom we advocate; that the "programs" for which Progressives rally and advocate are not "given over" to government (and this is not to exclude neccessarily the good that can come from "getting a story told" that seeks to hold government accountable to "practice what they preach"; and to show where this is not being lived out in actual practice and being stifled by political "expediency"). The Church of the Saviour has initiated a host of programs that have existed for years that simply set up the networks and staff the programs that actually do the work, unattached to the success of whatever "supplemental" political efforts may be ongoing to bring these needs to the attention and priority of government programs.

Absent also is the process of determining mission, via the evoking and discovery of gifts within the body of Christ. Without these "birthing structures"; "formation" technologies and a society that lives in and around these, the way is opened to letting desire be corrupted. The way is opened to build "buffers" between us and the least of these.

Immediately after the previous post, I encountered this as I read on:

Healing desire of the wounds inflicted by capitalist discipline, the gift of forgiveness renews the possibility of a true mutuality and reciprocity of desire through nonpossessive participation in the other. In this way, the gift of forgiveness is the true form of absolute deterritorialization whereby desire is released from every captivity (including the bondage of anarchic self assertion) in order to flow freely as it was created to do, in the sociality of love that is the Trinity. Thus, by refusing the logic and not only by refusing violence as a means of enactment, forgiveness interrupts the cycle of violence in which justice as the guarantor of rights remains trapped.

emphasis mine, from Bell, p.151

This "nonpossessive participation in the other" is a key concept in what I believe I am talking about and experiencing in this "warping" or "distortion" of desire in regards to the effects of capitalism and its accompanying liberal democracy features: the "funding" neccessary for the resistance of Chriastians to this skewing of God-given desire is tucked away in this idea of "nonpossessive participation in the other". When we treat each other as strangers (this is what we effectively do in negelecting even that intial "discovery of the other" in the persons of those to whom we have supposedly agreed to "bind ourselves"). Of course, this "binding" is severely "loose" in our modernistic church; in our "individualistic" , "therapy-emphasizing" theological reflections. But when we are deficient in even this task, what is to become of the more challenging and confronting mission of reaching out to the "radically other" in our culture (and in OTHER cultures)? What are we to make of our refusal to encounter each other, even those of us withy whom we well may find numerous instances of similar experiences and closely related struggles with our social standing and its accompnmying responsibilities as to what we are to then offer up as our role in the body of Christ? The intentional seeking out of "the least of these" appears as "far off" ; BEYOND the space of separation from those very much like us, in which we complicitly persist. But I do not accept the premise that seeing this inability to "take care of our own", we should then postpone until "we are ready" the encounter with the radically other; the "least of these". I've heard that rationalization before. We are never ready, or finsihed, or have things sufficiently "resolved". I suspect that much of what remains to be discovered about church and God's calling is waiting for us in encounters with the unknown.

As I head in to Bell's final chapter in Liberation Theology After the End of History, which is entitled "The Refusal to Cease Suffering", I read this:

Forgiveness entails not just a renunciation (of the "right" to insist, often by violence, on what is one's "due") ; there is a substitution or replacement as well. Specifically, the agonistic logic of rights is replaced with the peaceable logic of reconciliation. The end of forgiveness is the return to God, reconciliation. God in Christ extends the gift of forgiveness to humanity for the sake of reconciling humanity to God, and Christians are empowered to receive and return the gift through its interhuman extension for the sake of reconciliation with God and one another.

Bell, p. 150

Immediately my mind goes back to the major thesis of Charles Marsh's book, The Beloved Community, which he introduces with an observation about MLK:

Although a boycott was neccessary in Montgomery to bring an end to discriminatory laws, King urged the church people in the movement to keep in mind that a boycott and its achievments do not in themselves represent the goal. "The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, " he said, "the end is the creation of the beloved community".

Marsh, p. 1

Bell goes on to describe the REAL SIN of capitalism:

The sin of which capitalism is guilty in the final analysis, is not that of the gross violation of basic rights, especially the rights of the poor to life. Rather capitalism is sin becuase it fractures the friendship of humanity in God. It disrupts the original, peaceable flow of desire that is charity; it ruptures the sociality of desire, which by nature seeks out new relations in the joyous conviviality that is love. Capitalism is sin becuase it harnesses the productive power of desire in its original mode, which is donation or giving, to the market. IN so doing it corrupts it, rendering it propritary, with the result that desire no longer flows in the harmonic symphony of joy that is the fruit of the creation and extension of the non-proprietary (that is, participatory) relations of desire, but is submerged in the agonistic struggle that is contemporary life under savage capitalism, where even the excluded poor, who can hardly be characterized as driven by a passion to acquire and consume, are nevertheless forced to compete with their brothers and sisters for life.

Bell, p. 151

I would elaborate and suggest that this corruption of desire also pollutes the community of the church such that the beloved community is obstructed; the drive of corrupted desire steers us away from the reconciliing community and shapes us, conditions us, compels us, to tend to our own desires first; and thus "discourage" us from pursuing the desires which compel us toward community. Even the most "justice-emphasizing" and "justice-activist" churches do this. The neccessary structures upon which this "work" depends are set aside , since the implication seems to be that to tend to the inward journey and the disciplines of giving attention to the journeys of one another is to take time and energy from the already dfifficult task of "working for justice".

I myself am glad to have groups that do this and to which I can contribute, but I also recognize and long for the accompanying attention and disciplines (the alternative "technologies of desire" needed to "fund resistance to capitalism"). I continue to give money becuase I know that in a sense, I am "holding out" a fuller giving of my personal energies because I sense that there is a neglect of attention to discerning call, and discovering gifts, and listening to God for new and needed structures of resistance and mercy and alternative emodiments.

This throws our consideration of this into the classic struggle between the Journey Inward and the Journey Outward, of which the writings of Elizabeth O'Connor attest and give testimony, and of which we desperately need more and ongoing narratives to bring to the light of day the dark inner struggles we have in bringing to ministry the wholeness of dimension it requires in order for us be faithful.

Pastor John Wright with a Christmas Eve sermon on the LIGHT which shines from the advent of the Christ; a light which illuminates what amounts to nothingness; a "revealing" of what is true that overcomes what is absence of light.

Pastor John Wright

Amidst the poverty, at the very margins of the land of darkness in which people dwell, God becomes human and dwells among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory of the only begotten Child. The Light shines in the darkness. Unto us a child is born. God has sent God’s own Self into the land of darkness in which we dwell as this poor Jewish child, born of a displaced, poor Jewish woman. As Benedict XVIth said yesterday, “God our Lord did not use the outer trappings of power against the threats of History as we men do in keeping with the norms of our world and might have expected from Him. God wields the weapon of kindness; revealed Himself as a babe in a manger; and so uses His power against the destructive might of violence. Thus, God saves us and shows us what He saves.” Amidst the darkness God has sent the Light, God's very Self, the Word made flesh that has dwelt among us.

Pastor John quotes from Daniel Bell's paper: What is Wrong with Capitalism: The Problem with the Problem With Capitalism

Pastor John Wright

The ages are not juxtaposed; they overlap (1 Cor. 10:11). God has given and continues to give here and now more than capitalism’s Christian proponents can see.

What is it that they fail to see? For one thing, the way that God has and continues to gather persons together into a body called the church where, by means of the divine things in our midst – Word and sacrament, catechesis, orders, and discipline, human desire is being healed of its capitalist distortions and set free to partake of a different economic ordering, one ruled not by scarcity and struggle, debt and death, but by a charitable logic of donation, gift, and perpetual generosity. They fail to discern the divine economy that is already taking form in our midst as persons enter into new economic relations, giving and receiving, exchanging, not according to the rhythm of capital’s axiomatic of production for the market but animated by the Spirit of faith, hope, and love. In more recognizably political and economic terms, this divine economy takes the form of what the Christian tradition identifies as the Works of Mercy.

I am aware that I cannot resist the forces of capitalism on my own. (Some will scoff at calling capitalism a "force", since that is an automatic association with "America bashing", which is all lumped into the "liberal conspiracy". While I can assent to there being a "liberal conspiracy", it is of an entirely different shape than that perceived by the reactionary and aggressive forces installed in our government right now.) The "conspiracy" envelops the whole apparatus, subsuming liberal and conservative thought alike. The "resisting" requires a larger questioning; a further and more radical envisionment of what it is God has in mind when the Kingdom Of God is brought to bear on our predicament. "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light".

Even if capitalism succeeds in reducing poverty, it is still wrong on account of its distortion of human desiring and human relations. As Alasdair MacIntyre has noted, “although Christian indictments of capitalism have justly focused attention upon the wrongs done to the poor and the exploited, Christianity has to view any social and economic order that treats being or becoming rich as highly desirable as doing wrong to those who must not only accept its goals, but succeed in achieving them. . . .Capitalism is bad for those who succeed by its standards as well as for those who fail by them, something that many preachers and theologians have failed to recognize.” Capitalism is wrong not simply because it fails to succor the impoverished, but also because where it succeeds it deforms and corrupts human desire into an insatiable drive for more.

This "distortion" of desire from its God-given home/goal, that of "the heart that is restless until it finds it rest in thee" , is only for the gathered people of God. This light can shine forth from that people, and illuminate the darkness that surrounds it, but the light is nurtured in continued, disciplined, intentional discipline AWAY from that which is offered by the world as "the way it is" and TOWARD that which is truth. I have a conviction that this MUST of neccessity include a radical attention to the reformation of our own desires; which is much like, as Gordon Cosby told me, a very real addiction that must be overcome, and is that which we are taught by various forces that puound these distortions of desire into us.

What has always attracted me to the LIfe Together as told by the history of the Church of ther Saviour is that their concept and claim for the church is equally determined to be a community of "recoverers" who need constant care and feeding to fund their efforts at resisting the "darkness" and naming it, and confronting our own inner resistances and arguments and rections to why we consent to remain separated from one another. As important is the end result and the constant attention to how this community of recovering cultural addicts are called to be a force for reconciliing the two sides of various divides whch separate us from "the least of these" and bring to us the recognition and discovery of difference which is a key source of God's gift of reconciliation announced to us by the coming of the Christ into the world.

Not because they are , as we often conceive of it, "technological", but as "technologies" in the sense of how Daniel Bell* speaks of "technologies"; as "systems, structures, economies, politics, buildings, education, etc. " which work together as a package to some ends. What "piece" of this "technology set" do blogs represent for the church? What can they be rightfully said to enable or accomplish, or "transmit"?

To review the question in the previous post, courtesy David Weinberger:

Jesus was God's blog. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Hmm, then I suppose the Talmud would be God's blog for the Jews.

Anyway, I know I'm off base and off track here. Nevertheless: A Merry Christmas to you and your families.

Not so much (as in: not so far "off base"), since considering Jesus, the Talmud, etc. as God's blog for Christians, Jews, etc. is a good vehicle for conversation on who Jesus is, what the Talmud is, etc. As I have been reading Daniel Bell's book today, and the theme continues with the need for "technologies of desire" that exist as a challenge and and alternative to the capitalist order, with its "technologies of desire", it occurs to me that here is one such technology or "mechanism" that arises amongst almost any community which embodies itself as an alternative. Not that it's because of its being a "technology" (since that is in the contemporary sense of "modern electronic/computer-based technollogy), but because of its role as an enabler of a system of shared narrative and conversation around that narrative.

I believe that blogs enable a dfistributed sense of community that in at least some sense, brings us into communion with that piece of ours and others' humanity and faith that is able to be "transmitted" in this way. It seems that what happens is that the "communion" experienced is not itself transmitted, but the use of language transmitted as text , re-assembled on the receiver's end, reminds us of a community which is beyond and NOT technology. IN oter words, as a servant to a larger system of desire, directed at helping us to find and experience face to face community more fully, to the extent that this can be said to happen at all. For me, enough of it happens to make me hopeful that we Christians on the Web can learn to employ the TOOLS we have here to further the church as the "City of God"; as the "Community of Character" ; as the "recovery group where we pool our collective resources to resist the deformation of desire.

* as in Bell's Liberation Theology at the End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering

From David Weinberger:

Joho the Blog: A thought for my Christian friends as Christmas approaches

Jesus was God's blog. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Hmm, then I suppose the Talmud would be God's blog for the Jews.

Anyway, I know I'm off base and off track here. Nevertheless: A Merry Christmas to you and your families.

This has me thinking. Although there will be numerous qualifications and "no, it's more like....." and "The Kingdom of God is more like ...." it is an interesting idea to float. It would be interesting to hear what Radical Orthodoxer's would think.

Most of the comments on DW's post didn't seem too serious (most, but not all). For myself, I see more ways to talk about the Bible as blog rather than Jesus. There's too much "engagement" and "relationship" involved in the "meaning of Jesus" as incarnation to be captured in blog/text. Of course, there are dimensions of the Advent that are "message" and "proclamation" in the sense of what "content" they explicate. But even these considerations hang off of; or proceed from the original question or postulate: Jesus was God's blog. (I wonder how long it will take for AKMA to chime in on that one.......as of Dec. 23 920am CST, it seems to be down)

Anyway, I may work with this one for a while. Thanks David for the idea.

Radical Preaching: Dan Bell's Response to Our Reflections

Too much of modern theology and contemporary Christian life seems to take not the good news of God’s gift, but sin as the starting point for talking about the Christian life. We talk with sin having already set limits on what God and we can do in this world. And then the Christian life becomes just a matter of managing sin, of a utilitarian calculus of making sure sin works out for the greatest good that always includes me.

What bridges the gap between these two realities? Between the possibility of victory in Christ and the (im)possibility of sin persisting in our life? Confession. Lamentation. The spiritual disciplines. The Means of Grace that make us better than we otherwise would be, that help us grow on the way of salvation, the way of holiness.

As I move through the Advent season and the "entering in" which Jesus embodied; the "God with us"; the "Means of Grace" is such a valuable thing and a needed thing for all who seek after God. This "way of holiness" is not possible without the formative structures of Godf's people seeking to immerse themselves ever more fully in the Jesus story. The vision of church being forwarded in the little publication from Gordon Cosby and Kayla McLung of the Church of the Saviour communities ("little in terms of lenght but hefty in vision) has heightened the sense that tthere is something on the horizon. But I must say that I have been a bit disapoointed lately that things are not moving as quickly as I had hoped. I have to find some more ways, other than my blog here, and a couple of efforts to reach out and find some audience or reception for the things going on inside of me. There seems to be no outlets for me at the present that are local. That's not to say that I'm giving up on this. I can't.

I know that I need this "Means of Grace that make me-us better than I-we otherwise would be". I can't imagine what life must be like for people who long for something that they can't envision or articulate or even know that it is the source of some undefined un-ease. I have the gift of awareness of the call of God into some expression of church. But as it says in many different ways in "Becoming the Authentic Church", we are called to share this journey. But the structures in existence don't seem to have room , or "opening" for this. I am seeing more clearly what Hauerwas may have been thinking when he spoke of "the cracks" where the church might find a way to break through and be the beloved community that it is meant to be. So much of what is trying to burst forth from the Spirit's moving is needing to be let through.

If the church is not rightly gathered, then the only kingdom Christians end up preaching and proclaiming is that of whatever nation state or market they happen to be living in.

The Kingdom of God encompasses such riches, and opens the door to the ways of becoming freed. Our culture and its supporting and assumed "neccessary supports" is NOT be our guide. Dan Bell's words in his comments I read tonight brought these thoughts to mind. I haven't had too many words lately.

(Oh, BTW, thanks for pointing those comments out , Eric. I had read his first comment on Radical Preaching, and was not aware that he had posted again. )

for instance, this one from "Grasty"

Outchurched » Blog Archive » Outchurched Podcast 2.004 - “Is the ‘Outchurched’ Thing Just Movement Away from Political Conservatism?”

I really think that the Americhurch is asking for a lot of problems some day by getting into a “Republican” mode because it only serves them while they have power. But, what happens to christians when the government has the kind of control that it has, but the Americhurch and churchianism loses its popularity? If they were the ones in political and economic disfavor, they’d be signing up at the ACLU in a heartbeat.

Grasty's Blog:

What an absolutely "spot on" affirmation of the life of the church. Living the story, "joining" that story, and discovering the depths of our addiction does not immediately change us, but we are forever changed in that we are "freed" to be in an in-depth, intense working together on our "captivity" to the culture. As I wondered about the mall last night as my Janet and Kelli looked for gifts, I was struck with the commercial captivity of "Christmas" in the world. This is most assuredly NOT Christmas. When I hear people talk about the "War on Christmas", they are almost always complaining about what the retailers are doing. This seems to me to be entirely irrelevant. This "exchange of gifts" thing is also ENTIRELY irrelevant to the birth of Christ unless it is in the context of BEING the church in the first place; being a church where the gift that is each of us learns to know what GIFT is. Of course the gift that is Jesus from God is our template and guide and power to do so. And this REQUIRES that we immerse ourselves in the alternative life that Jesus lived and partake of the Kingdom that Jesus announced, and take up the cross that Jesus said we must.

Movable Theoblogical

In saying yes to the church's story, we say no to the world's story of power and violence and greed. Saying yes to the church's story doesn't end our addiction to the world, but it ends our denial. And once we move out of denial, God is set loose in us in a way that wasn't possible before. We are freed at last to become the gift of love that is our deepest nature, who we truly are.

When we enter the authentic church, we enter a recovering community rooted in honesty and accountability whose healing is found in reaching out to help heal the world. Like any addict, we'll be there for the rest of our lives.