some links & thoughts

With the start of the new year, new terms for school, studying, & teaching, the first real thrust of winter; things have been busy. Here are a few different articles that I found worthwhile enough to save.

How To Spot a Church Movement – Tall Skinny Kiwi

Andrew Jones passes on some wisdom that he gained from Fuller prof. Dr Paul Pierson.

Key ideas that stuck out to me:

They always begin on the periphery of the institutional church

The result is the desire for a more authentic Christian life that often leads to concern for the church and world.

The movement is countercultural in some ways, often because it reaches out to those who have not been valued by their society.

Consequently there will be opposition by many in the dominant culture and church.

Make Plans, Not Resolutions: Reflections on Proverbs 16 – Jeremy Carr

The night before seeing this blog post I had a significant conversation with my wife about our plans for the future. I’m not sure how to take these words, because I’ve always been uncomfortable with planning. It seems so contradictory to faith and trust in God’s sovereign plan. It seems this post makes things rather simplistic, rather than speaking to the complexity and the aspect of faithful obedience while blind to an understanding of future events. On one hand we are to plan. I see this closely tied to Genesis 2, where we are called to be God’s stewards of the Earth. Conversely though, we often times—seen most strongly in the Bible—we are called to blindly step forward without much of a, or any, plan. The pin which holds it together I would argue is obedience. If you aren’t living in obedience then the call of faith won’t come. That life of obedience requires planning, but that won’t get you all the way when it comes living faithfully. Many times you will be called to do things that aren’t planned for and can’t be explained logically.

So this is the place I am. Trying to understand how to continue moving forward in faith when you don’t have much of a idea of where you are being lead.

The Revolutionary Table (aka living la vida local) – Mark Van Steenwyk

Mark describes himself as a ‘foodie’. He is not the only one; there has been a resurgence of food-conscious persons within the U.S. recently. Mark as many others also have realized the implications of their food choices beyond the organic/fast food dichotomy. Mark’s post speak of the economic implications that purchasing foods shipped around the world, cheaply priced by being subsidized by the backs of the farmers in already poor and marginalized countries.

What is most helpful, is that he finishes his post by giving a list of different web resources for living a sustainable lifestyle through locally-seasonally grown & preserved products.

Augmented Reality used to Fix Cars – Slashdot

Here’s a story via slashdot. I have never been good at fixing any car I’ve owned. Maybe this is what I need.

Pack a Gun to Protect Valuables from Airline Theft or Loss [Air Travel Tip] – Life Hacker

Never time you travel, just pack a gun in your check-on luggage. TSA will make sure that it doesn’t get lost.

the difference between “cultivating communities” and “building churches” – Kathy Escobar

A thoughtful post about the personal struggles of a community being a community instead of building a church. The interesting point that she makes is that she found that they needed to separate the two. Having them mixed caused a lack of commitment within the group. Having strong doses of music, teaching, & programs caused people to disengage from the messier {though essential} parts of community building.

If I reflect I can see a lot of her experiences within my own experiences. My community, while making up some families of our church, isn’t really tied to the church much at all. We could drop one or the other without much noticeable impact on the other.

It seemed that in previous centuries the church building was a cultural center for the community; today though, it has a periphery place. It may be a place of teaching or worship but not community. What are the implications for that? Is that good? Is it something I/we should be trying to counter-act?

She also recommends Jean Vanier’s Community and Growth a great read on communal living. He is the founder of the l’arche community in canada where henri nouwen lived and was deeply inspired.

Haiti | To Hell With Altruistic Capitalism – Kester Brewin

Here is my last link for the day. With all the blog post about Haiti or Pat Robertson’s comments on Haiti, here is Marxian analysis. I can deeply sympathize with his outlook. It is amazing that we can ignore the horrible conditions of a nation for decades, and it isn’t until a natural disaster that we come to help. Kester Brewin rightly points to many of the problems originating from economic relations, where we have dealt extremely unjustly with them. I pray that this incident will shed enough light upon the people of this nation for long enough for some substantial change.