quick links - not so quick reads

So before I get to another more lengthy update, here are some links to some excellent articles/blog-posts that I've come across recently.

Conversation about Walter Rauschenbusch - Brian McLaren
David Evans is a brilliant emerging theologian, African American, currently working with the Mennonite Central Committee and soon to begin PhD work in American religious history. He and I had lunch recently and talked about Walter and the social gospel, Anabaptism, civil religion, and other topics. He sent me this reflection after our most recent lunch which I thought was worth sharing. He gave me permission to post it here. If you'd like to email him for further dialogue, his email is . - Brian

First Corinthians circa 2005 - Patrick Mead
Be a part of God's blizzard. By yourself you're, well, just a flake.

Opening the Gift of Time - Jason Clark
Let me ask the question I hope you'll post an answer to as a comment, before you read below? How are you finding ways to subvert the rhythm of our consumer culture? Here are some of my ways and thoughts.

Enjoy!

back from elderlink 2005

Yeah, you read that correctly... I went to ElderLink 2005 in Nashua, NH. I am in no way, shape, or form a church elder or leader, nor do I intend on being either of those things anytime soon (well, at least that's what I think, God may have something else in mind). For me, this was a great opportunity to re-balance my life a bit. Since I've been working a lot lately, I kind of felt my spiritual life suffered a bit since I didn't really have the time or energy to reflect on much.

In short, the plenary sessions with Randy Harris about doctrinal disagreements were awesome! I think a lot of what he had to say shook up some people who were there, and while this was primarily a Church of Christ event, I think a lot of what he said translates directly into inter-denominational and inter-faith/religion relations. I also thoroughly enjoyed David Wray's talks on Christian spiritual formation. He started with a brief introduction to some of the thoughts conveyed in Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy concerning modern churchs' overemphasis on spiritual information, as opposed to spiritual in formation. David Wray jumped off from there and talked about a need for balance of 3 things: spiritual information, spiritual formation, and spiritual transformation. I would translate this to the ideals of education, nurturing growth, and openness to being conformed to the image of Christ. Ok, you got me, that last bit about conforming was some more from David Wray's talks.

However, I would be horribly rude to leave out the main reason I went to ElderLink. Paul Clark was a co-presenter with Jeff Christian in a couple of sessions about being and becoming a missional church. The idea being that a missional church is not a place that you go to, but rather is a group from which you are sent out into the world (local, regional, global, or whatever your groups' calling is). I would say that while some of the tools and topics that were covered have no bearing on my current station in life (me not being a church leader of a church looking to move more missional), I did find the concepts helpful in understanding the kind of church community I want to be a part of. Paul is a great friend of mine, and he recommended that I come up for the event, for which I am grateful since I enjoyed his sessions and everything else. I did have a few people comment that I seemed a bit young to be at a conference aimed primarily at church elders, which was a bit amusing to me as it was truly curiosity and nothing more on their part. Most who continued in deeper conversation got a small taste of the ideas I have been floating around on this blog over the past year, along with the address of my blog (Welcome!).

I will have to check out what is on the books for next year's event, and maybe shake things up a bit more (I admit, I was mostly a wallflower). Anyway, I've rambled on plenty to make up for my weekend away from the blog. Coming up next, a recount of my winding outdoor journey from today (from which I am exhausted) and my current plan for expanding my prayer life and dwelling in scripture.

divulge from the norm

So in a brief break from my typical spiritual and/or faith related musings, I just have to shoot out a quick blog about Apple and their super cool new stuff. First of all, when the ipod was introduced I really wasn't even paying attention to the digital music player market so I didn't really know what it was or how cool it was going to be. Once I saw one and saw how crazy consumers went for it, I kind of figured out that it was going to take something impossibly innovative to knock the ipod off the throne of digital music players. To date, the only thing I've ever seen is company after company attempting to mimic the ipod, albeit with some minor twist (thumbwheel, touchpad, indiglo screen, brushed metal skin, etc). However, no matter what the competition did, Apple always seemed ready with the one-up trump card -- ipod mini, ipod color, ipod shuffle. Now I think Apple has once again proved why they are on top of the digital music world.

Enter the ipod nano. It's smaller than the ipod mini in every aspect, but it packs the features of a regular ipod - such as a color screen, picture storage, and calendar/contacts. It utilizes the extreme featherweight concept of the shuffle (including the flash memory, not hard drive), but is as fully-featured as the heaviest ipod with long battery life to boot. And to top it all off, it comes in white or black (for now, I assume). Now while I do have a music player already, mine just doesn't have as much of a whiz-bang gadget impact as this newest ipod. I use a Sony netMD N510-S -- using those Sony proprietary minidiscs. It is cool in that technically speaking I can't run out of space for songs, but the downside is that I have to buy more discs if I want to carry more music -- which translates into carrying more stuff overall. Maybe one day I will treat myself to something cool, new and gadgety... but not today, I have too much will-power and recognition of my lack of need for it. Although, it would be nice...

Now couple that with their partnership with Cingular and Motorola to provide the ROKR - an iTunes enabled phone with functionality similar to an ipod shuffle - and I think the future dominance of Apple in the digital music world has been secured for quite a while longer.

If only honest, loving Christian faith were as prolific, contagious, and sought after.....

blogging about beliefs

Matt Ritchie does it again! I've thoroughly enjoyed his Untangling the Gospel series of blog posts. The most recent one hit on some topics that I've mused upon at various times in life. The idea of beliefs and doctrines - which is which, which is important, how do we know what we hold, and other similar questions - was probably the most influential line of thinking in moving me philosophically outside the realm of what I would call the "doctrinally focused" church. What I mean by "doctrinally focused" is essentially that a group of people are more concerned about what they should believe rather than how they should believe. The following quote, from Kevin Smith's Dogma, I think drives home the idea - in this situation, associate their use of "belief" as doctrine.

Rufus
... the factioning of the religions. He said that mankind got it all wrong by taking a good idea and building a belief structure on it.

Bethany
Are you saying that having beliefs is a bad thing?

Rufus
I just think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. People die for it, people kill for it.

Not to say that being able to flip-flop on issues is to be applauded, but more along the lines of understanding what those ideas are that you hold onto and live for so that you can adjust to the times, cultures and events as necessary. After all, when learning to multiply, rote memorization of the multiplication tables only gets you so far - you need to understand the concepts and principles behind the math if you want to make real progress.

Oh yeah, and check out Matt's Untangling the Gospel 9: You'd Better Believe It!

A New Kind of Conversation

So I came across this upcoming blog-book in my daily blog reading. It's a grass-roots, free-form kind of discussion being geared up in blog format by Brian McLaren, Mabiala Kenzo, Bruce Ellis Benson, Ellen Haroutunian, Myron Penner and you! That's right, sign up to be a part of the conversation and you can make your voice heard if you so wish. Here's the description from the site...

Blogging Toward a Postmodern Faith

This blog-book will discuss what a postmodern evangelical faith looks like. The blog format will make it possible to allow you the reader, to participate in the writing of both the blog and the eventual published book to follow by Paternoster Press. Be a part of this experiment in conversation by adding your voice to the discussion.

Sign up if you are interested at http://www.anewkindofconversation.com/