Whatever the title, the idea is that I have come on board to basically develop and jettison the community deeper in their spiritual lives. The idea is that I would be thinking deeply about the practices we do as a community to draw us deeper into worship while also developing relational discipleship within the community as well.

So my first major task I’ve set for myself is starting a Saturday service, focused on developing a contemplative worship experience set to a liturgy with plenty of time to stop and be still before God. It is very hard to have those times within the normal contemporary {Protestant} worship service. Even many liturgical traditions leave little time to simply be still before God.

My hope and my desire through the crafting of this time is to do exactly that. I am starting conservatively with one service a month, though I would love for this to get legs and become a weekly event.

I desire to share all my created resources here, for those who are interested in doing this themselves. For each person I am creating hand crafted booklets including original work by local artist Amber Perrodin. I will include high quality downloads of that plus images of them printed and bound after production.

I am really excited about this event. It is something I have been dreaming about for some time, finally getting actualize it. Below is the trailer I made for our Sunday gathering.

It is prophetic voice from the wilderness—the urban jungle, a voice calling from under the overpass. We are confronted with our hypocrisy our indifference our isolation from what really matters.

In the first study you have a story about Donnie. Donnie is living under the overpass, not even 10 minutes away from where our storyteller lives. Our storyteller sees Donnie on the side of the road right after he is leaving Mc Donalds. He describes how, begrudgingly, he U turns, stops, offers his food & a ride. Through this time he is opened up to a new world, a world where Jesus promised us that we could find him—to the one who is hunger that you feed, to the one who is naked and you clothe you will find me.

The second study is titled “enough”. How much is enough? He describes & reflects upon Mother Teresa’s old worn out shoes that he has seen in a photograph, while then reflecting about how many pairs of shoes he owns. He provokes us with the question:

If it’s true that ‘God has not created one person poor and another person rich,’ how do we explain the discrepancies in our wealth? What are our responsibilities as individuals and faith communities to ensure that no one goes without?

Ouch, I know it is easy for me to someone else for not doing something, ‘the rich’ it is there fault. But this isn’t talking about them, the question is what am I doing & what is my faith community doing to change this?

The third, fourth, & fifth studies continue to build upon these thoughts about money, power, & the church—wondering how we as the church might transform this world through a kingdom of god economics.

The study is well made, cutting right to heart of the issues, pointing the finger directly at ourselves and what we should be doing. Just simply reading the questions made me shiver, let alone thinking about having to answer to a community with them. It seems to be a study where it would be difficult to simply give easy answers, that sidestep the real issue. It is definitely one of the most compelling studies I have seen to date, not to mention the stunning design work that the house studio put into the book & DVD.

He isn’t a crack pot theologian.

He puts forth a sound argument from sound and reasonable premises. He calls himself & his methodology ‘critical realism’; in that there are real objects in the world to be found, even of history, though they are mediated through a conversation of subject/object. We must therefore be critical of the knowledge we acquire but nevertheless we are able to get at some real beyond ourselves. It is a middle ground approach to the two ditches of pure subjectivism on one hand or pure objectivism on the other.

This approach is refreshing. He claims openly that he isn’t trying to create something new but is comfortable being very close to traditional orthodoxy. He isn’t trying to be progressive for its own sake or dogmatic for the sake of refusing change; rather he describes it as answering the questions of today with the wisdom of the 1-2 cen. early church.

I have grown tired of so many contemporary writers who claim to have discovered something new to the Christian faith, something lost or forgotten. It seems that more of us should stop trying to be sensational and be comfortable with the old, stewarding it for our & future generations.

Secondly I appreciate his focus on setting a clear understanding of worldview in his work. His understanding that thoughts and actions do not happen in a vacuum or a bubble what rather are mixed up with other parts of one’s life and also the life of the community.

These thoughts on worldview have been insightful to me in talking with people of disimilar outlook. I am beginning to see that discussions of disagreement are a result of underlying beliefs structures more often than simply A vs. B decision making. A is chosen over B because of a mountain of other decisions which it implicitly acknowledges within a certain worldview framework.

This reminds me of Rob Bell’s phrase of ‘the thing behind the thing’. Bell is speaking something very similar, things are rarely living on the surface; we have to dive down under the surface to under why the thing ticks the way it ticks.

Another great source of N.T. Wright of late has been his recent lectures at Wheaton College. The lectures included some reading of critical papers dealing with various aspects of Wright’s work. It was really illuminating to hear others dealing with his work in a rigorous and academic manner. I would highly recommend listening to the whole of the conference. Thanks to Wheaton for freely distributing those freely online & through iTunes.

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.

So the week leading up to Christmas, I received Chris Seay’s recent book The Gospel According to Lost; it sat in my stack of books all week. To be honest, I didn’t have high expectations for it, so I wasn’t in a hurry to read it. After being rather sick Christmas and the following day, I had down time to read. And not feeling like reading anything to substantial I reached for Chris Seay’s book.

The basic layout of the book is profiling the main characters, only at the beginning and end does he muse in general about the story the main thrusts of the plot. I was rather disappointed with this. I was hoping for some good discussion about the large sweep of the narrative. In my experience writing lit papers in college the easiest paper was the one simply about characters. So it seems, from a cynical perspective, that this book was hurriedly written to meet a press deadline to release on the tidal wave of promotion for the last season.

With that being said let me say a few positive things about it.

Laying aside all the negative things I could say about it, I think this is a great example of contexualizing the gospel via/to culture. This was done by Paul when he spoke to the Greeks of their temple to the unknown god. I think we could take this book as a model of not something to simply pass on to our non-Christian friends (which I’m sure, Thomas-Nelson Publishing is banking on), but a way of life by which to live by. We should be able to put on glasses which allow us to see everything through the lens of the gospel; so that anyone conversation can be turned upward or inward.

This became an art form for me while working at a Christian camp in college. While leading kids on backpacking trips in the Colorado mountains, we were trained to see/describe things like aspen trees or beaver damns as the interconnectivity of the Christian community or the blockage that sin causes for the flow of Holy Spirit in one’s life respectively. Those were the standards, but we loved to push things to the furthermost extent so that any random statement could be spiritualized.

I must praise Chris Seay for actually including Biblical passages. It seems many of a similar a genre of Christian pop writings will make vague corollaries without actually biblical citations. The passages are all from his The Voice translation which is actually something to praise much more than this.

On a light hearted note, it definitely helped me remember the previous seasons adding an excitement and anticipation about the coming season…just like we as Christians celebrated during Advent last month. Advent is about waiting, the anticipation of the coming messiah, as child and also as returning triumphant King—{see that’s exactly how it’s done}.

Worth buying? I have a hard time purchasing a book that I read in 5 or 6 hours. If you are a Lost fan though, you should at least look up the public library for a copy; there are some nice original iconic-style paintings of the cast members that are worth a look.

Hats off to those guys over there, they realise the importance of their web presence and actually put dedicated people there to serve.

It is a beautiful image. With the design/imagery you can see exactly what they are wanting to get across.

TheResurgence – Churches & Pig Flu

Tall Skinny Kiwi – Swine flu and a calm, reasonable, rational Church

I haven’t been keeping up with this whole ‘thing’; I kind of quit consuming any kind of news a month or so ago, but I am taking this ‘epidemic’ as serious as last year’s looming pandemic or even the one before that. You remember when mosquitoes were going to take down most of the southern United States? Call me cynical but I’m not too scared or impressed with the fervor of the media which drags us into hysterical fits of insanity.

So I couldn’t help but start reading Don Miller’s book prayer and the art of volkswagen maintenance. This is the first book he wrote, prior to his more now famous books blue like jazz & searching for god knows what. Like both of those, it seems like this book is just filled with tons of great quotes. If I was one of those people that could just memorize quotes and repeat them all them time, I would definitely quote Don Miller all the time. So since I can’t do that, I’ll just paste them on the internet. Hopefully you can enjoy some of these from my first short bit of reading so far.

Tonight we are travelers in the truest sense of the word; a slim notion of a final destination and no schedule to speak of. We are simply moving for motion’s sake.
Our plans were shared with friends, but few understood. “Going off to find yourself,” was the standard interpretation. I don’t think that is really our point. We are shaped by our experiences. Our perception of joy, fear, pain, and beauty are sharpened or dulled by the way we rub against time. My sense have become dull and this trip is an effort to sharpen them. p.10

But theirs is an existence under the weight and awareness of time; a place we are slowly escaping; a world growing fainter by the hour and the mile. Our letters will arrive like messages in bottles from shores they may never know. p.14

I want to grow beyond my childish understanding of God into an adult reality: A faith based on the facts of Scripture and the knuckle-grinding reality of a day-to-day existence. I need more than a bedtime story. I need more than a youth group God. I am looking for a savior. A guide. An existential answer to my questions about purpose and meaning. I want true fulfillment in my Christian faith. I am looking for joy. p.19

Dallas is the Seattle of Texas. It is what Chicago used to be and wants to be again. p.29

It gives me great confidence and pride to think that, had the Israelites been influenced by German engineering, Paul and Timothy might have journeyed in an old Volkswagen camping van. But the timing was all wrong and they were left with foot travel and… p.32