emerging curiosities

Technology as Perpetuating the Buffered Self?

2010-05-27T04:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a hell of a long time since i've done this. this has been a long year with many transitions moving from flagstaff, az to st. paul, mn. one of the reasons for not writing is that i have been swamped with papers and getting into the new grove of writing/reading phd materials. it has been a rich year through trinitarian theology, theological hermeneutics, including philosophical hermeneutics, and organizational leadership developments over the past 100 years. another reason beyond all this busy work where i've been hibernating is just becoming cynical about this social technology, part of it being that i wonder how much of it actually perpetuates the buffered self that charles taylor speaks about in his book a secular age.

charles taylor takes a detailed look at the sources of the self, the origins and consequences of the development of the self through modernity. In chapter seven, “The Impersonal Order,” he suggests that the mechanized world has involved a withdrawl. Descartes, he offers, is responsible for taking this withdrawl to the point of disconnection between the location of where meaning is constituted in the mind apart from one’s existence as an embodied agent. He says that what has resulted from these Cartesian influences is that the real ontological center of experience has shifted to the mind, even as experiences themselves are caused in other areas of the body. For example the notion of taste and the experiences that occur in the senses in the body are understood to be constituted first in the mind, where we think that is the case. Taylor calls the process by which the self perpetuates this gap “disengagement.” This disengagement comes, he says, from the “role of disengaged thinking in the most prestigious and impressive epistemic activity of modern civilization.” This disengaged way of thinking becomes a self buffered from the rest of the world where one lives isolated, in the mind, apart from the bodily existence of the world. Taylor suggests that this is an illegitimate explanation of how the self actually functions in the world. He notes, however, that it remains one of the strong cultural trends of modernity.

In the FB age where we can "hide" people we've friended because we're damn sick and tired of their clear misguided updates and don't want to hear from them anymore or where we can de-friend them completely without them even knowing it. Sure social media gives us access to a plethora of information and more importantly people we can connect with, but how does it help us to converse better with one another? Does it? More often, than not, I'm thinking we find those areas of interest that are more like us than different from us. And when we do find those differences from ourselves we just peer in, as if a scientist doing exploratory research on some distant land that we would never choose to be a part. Sure we can connect with like minded people, but is it having an affect of helping us to engage with difference better or is it merely perpetuating the way we'd rather just live a buffered, withdrawn and disengaged existence, without in any real way, engaging the other as other.

I believe the other is irreducibly other which means that there is more difference than sameness and this is scary as hell when we come to realize this. what do you all think? is there ever a time when social media can lead to healthy, healing and constructive conversation? where and when has it happened? maybe you all can help me think about this.

Celebrating Curiosity with Jurgen Motlmann

2009-08-28T07:07:00.000-07:00

My reading this morning in preparation for my Monday systematic theology exam takes me into Jurgen Moltmann's The Coming of God. He's a theologian with a fascinating story of later conversion. After being drafted into the Germany army of WWII he gave himself up to the first British soldier he saw. A POW chaplain gave him the scriptures and his imagination was captured in a new way.

His primary way of thinking about God is around themes of hope, particularly fascinating given his place in history. Jurgen feels that hope is recaptured best in the way we think about the end things, the future that God accomplished in Jesus on the cross and by raising him from the dead and the implications that has for us here and now. This book published in 1996 follows a dozen or so previous books, the first of which was published in 1969 entitled a Theology of Hope.

What captured my own interest was what I read in the preface regarding his understanding for what is known as theological method, his way for how he engages in God. You might just pick up on why I resonate with his thoughts, not the least of which is that my blog's namesake follows his own thoughts for engaging God. Enjoy these selected quotes.

“What interests me are theological ideas, and their revision and innovation. I have first to discover everything for myself, and understand it, and make it my own. Theology has continued to be for me a tremendous adventure, a journey of discovery into a, for me, unknown country, a voyage without the certainty of a return, a path into the unknown with many surprises and not without disappointments. If I have a theological virtue at all, then it is one that has never hitherto been recognized as such: curiosity."

"I have never done theology in the form of a defense of ancient doctrines or ecclesiastical dogmas. It has always been a journey of exploration. Consequently my way of thinking is experimental – an adventure of ideas – and my style of communication is to suggest. I make suggestions within a community. Theologians also belong to the communion of saints, provided that the true saints are not merely justified sinners but accepted doubters too, thus belonging just as much to the world as to God."

"Theology is a communal affair. Consequently theological truth takes the form of dialogue, and does so essentially, not just for the purposes of entertainment. For me theology is not church dogmatics, and not a doctrine of faith. It is imagination for the kingdom of God in the world, and for the world in God’s kingdom. This means that it is always and everywhere public theology, and never, ever, a religious ideology of civil and political society – not even so-called Christian society."

If you're in the area or interested in listening in on an amazing upcoming conversation with Jurgen Moltmann check out the upcoming 2009 Emergent Village Theological Conversation in Chicago September 9th.

an american passion

2009-04-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

This for me was the Good Friday sermon proclaimed to me this morning to hear through NPR and wanted to pass it along. An American Passion "Camilo Jose Vergara has been photographing America's urban neighborhoods for more than 30 years." Watch the photographs and listen to the radio story "Finding Jesus In America's Inner-City Alleyways."

theooze.tv

2009-03-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

theooze.tv is now up and going. Check out here their first video interview and production of Shane Claiborne.

Albuquerque EC Conference: The Nature of Being Church

2009-03-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

This last weekend one thousand gathered in Albuquerque for another emerging church conference. But to say this was just another ec conference would be dismissive of a larger movement and initiated beginnings of things to come. I've been to ec gatherings before, but nothing like this, perhaps and primarily because it was an attempt to include EVERYONE at the table, Roman Catholics, Protestants and Evangelicals (even though protestants are evangelical and catholics simultaneously, ah the dreaded language barrier). Under the facilitated leadership of Richard Rohr and Brian McClaren, and in conjunction with Phyllis Tickle, Alexei Torres-Fleming, Shane Claiborne and Karen Sloan, the wisdom of the years was able to make space for a hospitable environment of blessing, sharing, and appreciation for who we are, individually and collectively.

I came with a group of 18 from Lutheran Campus Ministry at Northern Arizona University. Mind you, our own group included yes some Lutherans, but a pentecostal, a menonite, non-denom and baptist students. Our own community of LCM reflects a diverse denominational background that adds to the richness of learning to be church. We had just flown in, leaving VERY | 3:30 a.m. | ungodly early from New Orleans where we spent Spring Break being renewed reconstructing homes and encountering the ambiguous complexities of loss and hope that arise from tragedies such as Katrina. Of the 32 that were with us in New Orleans more than half now joined us for this conference and so for me I was able to experience the event through the fresh eyes of our university students many of whom had never heard of the emerging church.

Katie, a women's studies major, 19, is the most delightful human being you will meet. She is without agenda and embodies pure joy, irrespective and beyond her youth and potential naivete, I have the sense this is her gift. She shared one of her table time conversations with us. McClaren as always initiated the youngest at the table to begin. She was clearly the youngest by at least 30 years. And so reflecting on Alexei's talk she told her group "this is what I feel called to do with my life. I feel called to be with these kind of people." It wasn't as much her inspired sense of call that caught my attention as the response of those gathered around the table. She continued, "they listened to me as though I was the most important one there at the table. Then they began to pour themselves into me and share their wisdom with me in the most honorable way imaginable." Then Katie said that an older, "wiser" I like to say, man in his late 60's grabbed her hand and gave her the sign of the cross on her forehead, blessing her. Tears began to flow as she shared her experience.

Arriving home and on Tuesday attending text study with some colleagues and retired pastors we were asked to recount our time in New Orleans and Albuquerque. One of the retired and somewhat wise clergy asked, "did you come away with something that local congregations can do in their parishes?" It caught me off guard for a moment because directly the answer was no. There was no program we were given, there was no plan of implementation. Sure there were the challenges from Shane and others to be more active in our faith. But the essence of it all grew of the nature of how we were with one another, reflecting the nature of God in our midst, connecting us together as God's people in special and profound ways. It was less about the functional and organizational aspects for church, the nature of the thing itself through our very engagement with one another. You might even say that the conference was less about asserting as it was about attending to the Christianity that's been emerging in each of us and our traditions over time for the sake of discovering, hearing, experiencing something fresh and new. This nature is about listening, blessing, making space in me for you even as you differ from me, and through it all staying at the table because this thing doesn't belong to us but God. The nature of things comes down to the fact that, for me, this weekend embodied the very presence of Christ at work in the church all for the life of the world.

The event was more an experience filled with some of the greatest denominational diversity I'd ever been a part of. Over a decade ago I attended the World Council of Churches in Salvador, Bahia and while there was great diversity there it didn't have the feel of really making space for each other as this event did for me. It was an experience of blessing and integration among generations in these various denominations. And with the "wiser" generation at the table too it added a necessary source of connectedness and life that is frequently missing for me as I attend emergent events. There are so many that dismiss the older folk as irrelevant because of their antiquated theological stances and ways for practicing church. But underneath it all those supposed "old" people share a profound and deep love to passing on, and a sharing in the faith, with young emerging church folks who not only will be the church someday, but are right here and now, even as many of them struggle to figure it all out.

The weekend produced in me hope for what could be as we move forward as a church. I'm one who hold the opinion that first and foremost what that all means is that this is Christ's church and it will never die. The only question is, will we be a part of it as it moves into the future? If it's going to be anything like we experienced in Albuquerque I'm thrilled to be sharing and living into something new and with a greater diversity for what God is up to in us and the world.

A People's History of Christianity by Diana Butler Bass

2009-03-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

I just received my copy of the newest book, A People's History of Christianity, from Diana Butler Bass yesterday and look forward to engaging it soon. I have for quite a while appreciated her contribution to framing our faith since first hearing a couple years ago at a conference in Richmond, VA lecturing and sharing in conversational collaboration with Brian McClaren. You can hear a great half hour lecture on her new book from her recent conversation March 8th at The National Cathedral's "Sunday Forum."

As a side note I've got to say that I especially appreciate her reference to radical hospitality she describes within the early church, a concept that I've been communicating for a long time at the heart of who we are as the people of God in Christ. Listen to the lecture and get this book, it's a necessary re-framing for "a", (how humble is that?!) history of Christianity reflected through a people's loving engagement of and with it.

Thank you so much Diana for this new look at where we've been.

Becoming Homeless: When Language Falls Short

2009-03-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

"I've got issues (front), some of which I'm aware of (back)." If I were to have T-Shirt campaign this is the one I'd promote. As a matter of fact, maybe that's what I'll do. Anyone want to order one?

I'm flailing these days about how best to speak of God. I'm an incessant theological thinker, to a fault perhaps. I just can't help it and don't want to apologize (not in the defending sense of the word, but in the feeling bad sort of way) for it either. Many colleagues don't affirm this new grasping for descriptions around God to the point where I often feel like I'm trying to become as irrelevant as possible for the sake of staying alive.

I find myself wanting to listen and ask questions more than speak. Even though I write books in my head (as my CPE supervisor used to say about this introvert) I find myself becoming more and more silent and with-drawn into the dismissive territories of culture where life is lived and engaging in honest, vulnerable and transparent ways and where flaws aren't feared to subvert divine beauty but enhance and drawn attention to it.

I'm at a cross-roads these days wondering where I really fit in. I'm completing a two year interim in a congregation where initially I was going to spend my time cultivating an emerging community. I am looking forward to time away, cave time some would say, to listen to the Spirit deep within bubbling up and in new ways. I've been schizo really, giving language to a traditional community while yearning to speak a new language which takes so much energy to describe to the traditional community that I feel I'm always having to explain or defend myself.

Through it all what I struggle with more than anything is realizing an emptiness to a language that once brought me life within the framework of my faith. There are completely new and different categories by which I embrace my faith in the world. Previously it was enough to talk about God, say words about Jesus to get at some semblance of encounter with God. But for what? To hold on to God as if in any way I actually could? Perhaps this is the challenge, perhaps this is the illusion. I feel homeless to the limited reality of what words can deliver.

I've been drawn deeply to the homeless as a compassionate concern of mine befriending my local homeless shelter. This has been a tug at my heart since college, a deep residing concern for people who aren't treated as people, but objects. Thinking back I find myself sharing some of values for homeless living, not in some romantic, bohemian kind a way, but in the sense of longing for something beyond what it actually is, in search of a community who will embrace me in my ugliness, not for what it could be, but for how it is currently in need of being held, affirmed. It is this in-person-dynamic-engagement where God emerges and is felt beyond the very words that can frequently domesticate God.

No word can ever really solve a homeless person's issue (as if their issue is greater or less than my own) or make them feel any better. And yet, in another radical sense, words are the very thing that validate and encourage human dignity. This is precisely what I'm yearning for, a community of so-called "homeless" people who willingly and openly engage the divine in, with and around all of who we are as if God has already shown up our gathering waiting to be discovered. You see, for me, I know through the conversational forums, listening and making space for me in one another, God is somehow becoming present in ways for which "churchy" language, space and time, has created a vacuum. This is why it is becoming so important for me that the very language we reserve for God be created as safe havens of respectful and fragile engagement that affirms the presence of God in our midst. I wonder, if we can move away from language as words that define to language as art that provides hints and shades, colors and hues, referencing fragmented and blurry images of the One creating and sustaining us, one with another.

Maybe what I'm journeying toward is reflected in this word of encouragement from a FB friend: "as indicated in the early christian letter to Diognetus, for Christians "any foreign country is a motherland, and any motherland is a foreign country." Somehow we are suppose to be a migration rather than territorial movement i think." A people of the WAY? A lot more challenging.

selah

2009-02-22T19:27:00.000-08:00

Selah

If we are living in exponential times, and clearly with information overload, what are we to listen for and to whom as our primary source? Facebook? Twitter? As much as technology connects us, and will certainly impact us for years to come, no getting around that, I wonder if it doesn't even more deafen and distract us to A Voice, A Presence that has been and will be there through it all. So where does our attention get to go? I'm just curious...

Transfiguration Sunday: Mark 9:2-10
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

Selah

Mark 4:9 And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

Selah

pneuma-narrative

2009-02-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

A couple conversations I was listening to earlier today have me bustling with thoughtful imagination about the Christian meta-narrative that might best perhaps be re-framed as pneuma-narrative. While its frequently a challenge to track one's thought processes I'll try to share the dialogue that was racing through my head this day through some random sharing in hopes that I get the point across for what I'm curious about today.

I woke up early today, like 4:41 a.m. early, because I have another paper due for class on a book I hadn't before today started reading by Judith Butler Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. The book is a critical response to post 9/11 life and our responsibility as a nation to find ways of reflecting on our own actions in partnership to a greater global power structure rather than the framing of events through our own USAmerican eyes.

The first essay of five, "Explanation and Exoneration, or What We Can Hear," highlights what Butler calls the "rise of censorship" and "anti-intellectualism" that occurred in response to challenging and probing questions surrounding how such an events could have happened in the first place but were quickly dismissed as attempts to exonerate "those" terrorists.

Of particular interest to me in her development of this topic surrounds the notion for how the story has been told, who's doing the telling and how it serves to justify war and demonize any who stand against it. While I'm guessing not many will disagree with her critique she puts forth giving it a fair hearing, it is equally interesting to hear some of her quotes through the lens of church as the primary power reference point in place of the Bush administration. Her driving question is this: "Can we find another meaning, and another possibility, for the decentering of the first-person narrative within the global framework?" (7)

Other helpful quotes that frame her argument and at least, give this reflective church person, some curious imagination for how we are missing the point for broadening our discernment of the unfolding story of God at work in the world.

"If we are to come to understand ourselves as global actors, and acting within a historically established field, and one that has other actions in play, we will need to emerge from the narrative perspective of US unilateralism and, as it were, its defensive structures, to consider the ways in which our lives are profoundly implicated in the lives of others." (7)

"My sense is that being open to the explanations...that might help us take stock of how the world has come to take this form will involve us in a different order of responsibility. The ability to narrate ourselves not from the first person alone, but from say, the position of the third, or to receive an account delivered in the second, can actually work to expand our understandings of the forms that global power has taken." (8)

In closing her first chapter Butler suggests the solution lies in "hearing beyond what we are able to hear. And it means as well being open to narration that decenters us from our supremacy, in both its right-and left wing forms." (18)

Secondly and shortly following my reading of this first chapter I checked my twitters to find that Phyllis Tickle was lecturing at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and that iamjoshfrank (thanks Josh, btw, nice to meet you) was twittering it (or is it tweeting it? not sure the lingo on this quite yet). One of the tweets he wrote from a comment of Phyllis was this question "how are we becoming literate in the 21st century? how does the church become literate?"

While I wasn't in attendance at this event, though I was present for The Great Emergence in Memphis, I believe I understand some context of where she is speaking from and I replied with the following comment: "perhaps literacy comes in the space we make for reading, or hearing, in new ways that allows church to b decentered." You may begin to see that Butler's thoughts on deconstructing power in allowing others to help generate a greater narrative is the back drop for my response. And so my thoughts continue...

What if literacy, as asked by Tickle, also wonders who gets to help tell and discern the story? How broad can the story be told and by whom, without and in any way, diluting the story that has been gifted to the world through the story of Jesus? Maybe we need to move away from the idea that there is a meta-narrative as a story already completed and accomplished, but one that is still being written and in need of continuing discernment. It seems to me, especially if we start probing the question of authority, i.e. sola scriptura, we need to wonder who's the authority behind the narrative?

If the location of authority is the church, then in many ways, we loose the ability to keep an open ended listening and dynamic perspective for what God is up to in the world and how God is calling us to be on board. If the church is the authority it sets up a dualistic sense for defining and defending instead of discerning. There is a massive distinction between these concepts. Don't we also acknowledge this authority to exist primarily with God, i.e. Matt. 28? So it would make sense then that the church isn't the one and only body that holds authority but perhaps is the body calling the world to discern a greater pneuma-narrative. We call others to the table to wonder with us a story larger than ourselves.

What if we aren't the primary story tellers as much as the story-reflectors, and like the incarnation, it is God's story taking hold of us and being told through us? What then? I suppose we could enter a little more freely and non-anxiously into this story as curious adventures waiting to discover how and in what way God's presence is emerging in the world. Maybe our function as church is to convene the space and open the conversation for where we are to discern (sift) through the global partnership trusting that as life unfolds God's very Spirit is what is being lived through us. It is a shift from defining to being, from epistemology to communally discerning existentiality, a shift from objective knowing to knowing "in, with and under," radical subjectivity.

Even our practices have different implications when we don't hold the narrative as belonging primarily to us rather than to the One who claims us first. Even our prayers could be understood not as our own, per se, but God's praying through us for the life of the world. Thus Paul suggests that "the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words." And what of worship, reading Scripture, hospitality and generosity? Again perhaps the very breath of God's Spirit making its way through us for the life and common good of the world.

So here it is, some initial theological meanderings in and around how church could be engaging God's pneuma-narrative. What do you think? What are your thoughts?

don't define me, just love me DAMMIT!!!

2009-02-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

Don't define me, love me DAMMIT!

I found these from the tweets I follow on twitter through emergent village. These are helpful frames for wondering through the emergent conversation. First is this interview video of Peter Rollins done from Calvin College, a few weeks back, when he visited and held lecture/conversations with several others. Click below to hear some classic Rollins framing on emergent Christianity as only he so amazingly can do.

Peter Rollins Explaining Emergent Churches

Secondly, a couple videos offering a thoughtful and interesting montage from several emergent voices who help provide a larger vision, beyond one voice, for what this emergent thing is up to. Notice it isn't completely about destroying what is known as the "inherited church." Rather this expression could perhaps best be described in terms Mirslav Volf refers to as "differentiated unity." Or as I so graciously say, "this frickin' thing isn't an ecclesiastical beauty contest!" Enjoy.

part 1

One of the pieces I especially appreciate is the challenge for pinning this emergent thing down. People often ask me about this too and I feel their desire for information just falls within our sound bite culture of reductionism. One of the pieces that I find particularly dangerous at this attempt to define lies in the very concept of objectification. For it is this objectifying that leads too easily to dismissive and arrogant knowall attitudes. I realize that in the best sense these questions are motivated by a curiosity (which I'm all for) for achieving some semblance of understanding so as to know the other, to learn about the other, in this case the other as a fresh expression of church known as emergent, all in order for the sake of loving and appreciating this her/him, not IT, in a new formative relationship to oneself. However, rarely if ever do I sense this is the motivation behind the questions. It is instead asked through the a functional lens of getting at the next, latest, greatest and sexy trend for "getting people" back into church.

I often feel this very question asked about emergent is an attempt to domesticate it within a previous frame pre-determined by the location from which one is coming from, i.e. Luther, Calvin, etc. (Obviously and after all how could we think otherwise?) But this comes from a closed rather than open approach to knowing and engaging. If it can't be explained or understood in a short period of time, sadly enough, it is often and frequently dismissed by those within the walls. For me, it is precisely the same trouble we have when truly describing, what was mentioned in this viedo, what it means to be Christian in general. Many have come to hold Christianity with particular definitions such that this has become the standard for identifying it and we have done so without understanding the assumptions or philosophical evolution that has brought us to the place we've arrived at. If we are really going to explain this thing known as Christianity to someone who had never heard of it many would find it difficult to explain logically. I suppose you could do it with words and images but they would just be that and not the very thing itself. In the end the very essence for being church is inherently incarnational in the sense that it must be embodied before one comes to articulate what this actually is all about.

This is the one of the great gifts of emergent as it calls people, self identified in church or not, to have to deal with people and a growing engagement in God as God seeks to be born in our curiosity and wonder and that is not reduced to mere conceptual agreements. The gift is the thing itself being engaged and being encountered (encountering), not what it describes itself to be. This is the challenge, this is the shift, this is the gift.

In our little and fledgling community people still ask, "now what are we doing again? what is this abbey thing all about?" I LOVE IT!!! How often are people in churches even asking what they are doing anymore? How often are people posing the question of why they even gather and for what purpose? If anything, this provides the very framework for a new form of engagement as church, as listening space(s), for encounter of God in fresh and new ways, through each other and God's ability to wonder into us.

part 2

The Transforming Theology Journey Begins

2009-02-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

Today I received the book I am assigned to read from The Claremont School of Theology for the Transforming Theology project. This book, as the pic shows, is titled Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness by Philip Clayton. I'm also linking here a brief youtube video from Philip who answers the question "How Can Theology Bring Change?"Is anyone familiar with this book or this topic? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

2009-02-09T22:46:00.000-08:00

Tom Sine from Mustard Seed Associates will be hosting an online conversation that we all need to be paying attention to and participating in. From his new book The New Conspirators he will engage people in missional imagination for creative ways God is calling us to be the people of God given today's political and socio-economic climate. Check this out and follow it! You will NOT be disappointed.

"Cur!ous, a psalm" by nic paton

2009-02-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

I've copied this poem verbatim from Nic Paton's blog, an emergent from Cape Town, South Africa. His personal blog is entitled Sound and Silence. After following a link posted today from Emergent Village I found this beautiful poem and, for some reason I'm drawn toward it, read it on another blog he contributes to called Emerging Africa.

Thanks Nic for the a wonderful and encouraging prayer-psalm.

Blessed are the curious
Blessed are the brave
Blessed are the questioners
For they are not afraid

It's sad to be a knowall
It's sad to be bored
To be someone smug at heart
Who has their reward

So much to unlearn
To be like a child
Filled with awe and wonder
And a heart free and wild

There's nothing too embarrasing
No question is too hard
No problem is too vexing
When you talk with God

Blessed are the curious
for they will know the truth
They will drink each day
from the fountain of youth

Ask, it shall be given,
to Him our lives we bring
Blessed are the cur!ous
knock and enter in.

"Barriers to Innovation and Change"

2009-02-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

Check out this NASA video from youtube about corporate change and innovation. What do you think? By the way, when I first viewed this there were just over 14,000 views...mmmmmmm.

epiphany 5 litany

2009-02-07T20:26:00.000-08:00

ONE: For those who have not known and for those who have not heard, hear the people of God proclaim the Gospel.

MANY: Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting. The Lord builds up and gathers the outcasts. He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.

ONE: For those who have not known and for those who have not heard, hear the people of God proclaim the Gospel.

MANY: He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the downtrodden; he casts the wicked to the ground.

ONE: For those who have not known and for those who have not heard, hear the people of God proclaim the Gospel.

MANY: Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre. He covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills. He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.

ONE: For those who have not known and for those who have not heard, hear the people of God proclaim the Gospel.

MANY: His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner; but the Lord takes pleasure in those who revere him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. Praise the Lord!

is the shack missional?

2009-02-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

I just responded to a question on emergingumc I followed through an emergent village tweet. I really liked my response to the question so I'm posting it here. The Shack is a interesting read as a relates to introducing a trinitarian expression of church. I said:

"i think the shack does begin to invite some new missional imagination. primarily because "missional" for me really could be framed as "trinitarian" in that God is missional in respect to God's complete relationality in and through all of life, penetrating the darkest and deepest of human experiences ensuring God's sustaining presence in and with the world.

i've appreciated this book as an accessible entry point into this trinitarian conversation that is practically demonstrated for what God is up to in the world and how involved in life God actually is.

i was particularly drawn to God's response to Mac as he struggled to make sense of his despairing loss. God responds wishing She could take the pain away but suggesting the only way Mac would heal was through "a little bit of time, and a lot of relationship." THIS could preach!!!

where God promises to dwell with the least of these, with those in most need throughout the world, where the greatest pain and suffering exist comes good news, we are not alone, God is closer to us than we could ever possibly imagine and involved in the messiness of life.

if this isn't missional, the deep indwelling of God's presence in and through all of life, i don't know what is? Great question and wonderful wondering. thanks."

relationally connecting to what?

2009-02-02T08:47:00.001-08:00

An interesting struggle is emerging through our community and this last week there was a heated debate, rising anxiety among some, around absolute (T)ruth. It has been a gift to have at our weekly table gathering an assortment of faith backgrounds. This gift, however, comes with its own challenges for the determining ground centering our engagement and very reason for gathering in the first place. The community reflects right and left perspectives, those embracing Jesus as Lord and Savior and those merely listening in with a lot to contribute to the conversation.

Recently Peter Rollins in his blog mentions a significant conversation that arose in a dialogue he participated in at Calvin College. He said this debate centered around "the place and nature of belief in faith." What he is really getting at is that faith is an embodied expression and beyond mere reductionary efforts propositionally framed. In fact these propositions are in no way predictors for the very embodiment they seek to describe, and in fact, are quite alienating and impersonal.

It is precisely this embodied form of faith that I have been particularly intrigued for quite a while. Equally, what does it look like to begin cultivating a community with this as its primary emphasis for being church, the people of God in Jesus through the Spirit for the life of the world?

When and as we go down the road of challenging our propositions, our subjective way for describing God, it raises significant issues for how we are engaging with one another, and quite frankly where the hell God can be found in it all. Often times it escalates into an emotional WWF tag-team match, smashing theological and biblical chairs over each others' heads only to be left with bloodied and bruised bodies. (NOW WASN'T THAT FUN?) There are NO winners and losers in this, we are all losers.

What I believe has happened is that these kinds of conversations, which are secondary discourse engagements, have been misplaced as the primary arena for our God engagement. We have substituted the primary discourse for being the people of God, allowing and reflecting God's grace, reconciliation, peace, mercy, forgiveness and hope for our thoughts about it. Our thoughts about the "it" quickly deteriorates into who can be included as well as the correct procedural requirements for participation. The consequence of which result in heated debates where what is at stake is our concern for defending God no matter who is hurt or alienated in the process.

For me, it is not the ideas of God we are relationally connecting to, although there are deep ceded and strong feelings around them and they do reference helpful convictions and claims for who God is and who God is not. It is our ability to see outside of ourselves or view with a new kind of lens for how we are embodying the very thing we seek to articulate. What is this thing? It is the Trinitarian social community of God in, through and under (absolute)ly everything that we do, say and think. This is why for me there is a great necessity around how we are listening to and discerning (sifting) with one another. It is the "creating space in me for you" reality for where God is acting on me, not just me acting to defend a particular description of God for others to adopt and agree with. I/We become the very ground we are seeking to describe. The space itself becomes the very practice field, or demonstration plot to use Craig Van Gelder's organic metaphor, for what the kingdom of God reality can be like as it breaks into the world and around which we are being caught up in its very own life.

It is this space too that is prophetic in the sense that it becomes a word of challenge pushing back on us and the world through us. We need to pay attention to this very thing in us that resists and gets defensive for this is where God is working to break forth something new and set us free for a greater capacity to love and make space for our neighbor.

So my question comes back: relationally connecting to what? The question really needs to be, relationally connecting to whom? Unfortunately we have taken God, placed God as a cadaver out on a table before us to dissect with any real certainty. God however is not the object before us to examine, but the very subject that has encompassed all of life including us, for us to discern in and around as the very reorienting point for understanding our life as in God, or in Christ as Paul suggests.

For me, in our relationships we are connecting to more than ideas, for our ideas of God will more than frequently say a hell of a lot more about ourselves than about God. Relationally we are connecting to the God being made flesh in my neighbor and in me simultaneously. Together we are discerning this God emergence. It is the community's challenge to see with new eyes and hear with new ears how God is actually acting on us through our discomfort and joy, our disagreement and hopes. Cultivating a community in this fashion is making disciples, it is the substance and kind of disciples God desires us to be, not just getting adherents who agree with us about how we have come to articulate God.

dangers of familiarity: cultivating a listening church

2009-02-01T13:47:00.001-08:00

"Let those who have ears to hear, listen." Mark 4:9

With all this banging around in cyberspace, blogging experts espousing their latest, greatest, sexiest and hippest interpretations for God, church, faith and life is anybody really listening...listening to a voice from God that deeply challenges us, displacing our own agendas and making space for God to break in through new and fresh expressions? It seems that too often we slip into the place of familiarity, the place of hearing the voices we want to hear, those voices that help to legitimize our own cause, those voices, that in the long term, are more like us than different from us.

I have been wondering lately around what God is doing to us when we create space for listening, and deep listening, to the other whom we most immediately dismiss and want to have nothing to do with.

The above verse finds its context in the parable of the sower. Many take as a primary interpretation that of the word, seed, taking root and the call to be good soil. What is of particular interest to me is that it is bracketed between the word "listen." For the word to make its home in good soil, a new awareness for perceiving is necessary. My question is how well am I listening, especially to the ones I want so quickly to dismiss?

The second and related piece is this: who is God using to speak to us? Consider these words from Jesus in Matthew “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” (Mt. 25:45) While the context here is related to the judgment of the nations it is equally apportioned to where God shows up and through whom. I think this is where Nadia in her book, Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television, is going. In the end, as repelled as she is to hear "those missing-the-mark-Christians" she has to face the fact that they are her brothers and sisters in Christ as well. She has learned that they have a place in God's house too and that we, as antithetical types to the conservative movement as many of us are, we can't take the same alienating posture as has been forced on us.

What I want to add to this conversation however is that it is not merely a postulate that we arrive at in our minds. It must be embodied! This notion of "making space in me for you", my definition of hospitality, is about what God is up to through the other for the life of me, for the re-orienting of my life. God is touching and speaking to me through the other, as despised, angry and saddened as I am about this "other" person that is so radically different from me and my perspectives on truth.

Today we proclaimed a text on Jesus' authority as different from the scribes. The difference is how Jesus uses knowledge of God as an instrument for liberation and connection. The man with the unclean spirit cried out "what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?" This cry could also be translated "what to us and you?" This fragment emphasizes the very thing that under girds Jesus authority, it is his necessary connection the One that is fractured, broken and isolated from God.

We question God's authority all the time through the words we say or don't, through the actions we convey or don't. But God's response is greater, "you matter to me, you cannot be without me, I re-value you and draw you into myself once again connecting you to a greater communal reality you're intended for."

It is my hope that I too resist the dangers of familiarity. It is my hope that I can continue to keep an open spirit to how God is speaking to me through those I want to dismiss. It is my hope that we can embody the very life we desperately seek to articulate here in the blogosphere by learning to re-value and welcome those different from ourselves, no matter their orientation or faith descriptions. Because in the end, it is this other, the "least of these", the minority voice that is God calling as a prophetic voice into us to rupture a new kingdom God reality through us for the life of the world.

perichoretic rhythm ala wynton marsallis

2009-01-28T22:09:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been able to get inside a moment? I mean, when you are aware of two realities: the very event that you are participating in and the subconscious reality of the moment at hand, and all related interactions as if you're outside of the event analyzing it, appreciating it. This double-space reality is one of the gifts of living in God. Words and language never accurately articulates this reality it can only be sensed even as it is happening. This must be the place from which Jazz artists can operate. Once they learn their voice, their notes, their contribution they are able to play, but resting back into a deeper reality of listening to and enjoying all the related voices integrating with their and theirs with the groups.

This is the perichoretic life and this is what its all about. This is the authority, the panentheistic presence around which all of life revolves and penetrates. It is relational, communal, hospitable, humble and constantly concerned with the other, whether we are present to it or not. One of the greatest frames for this life that is always so hard to describe can be found in a book by wynton marsallis Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life

"When I was growing up in Kenner there was a crazy lady on our street named Geraldine. She was an old woman, chewing on no teeth with deep, empty-canyon eyes, but she dressed like a little girl and wore her hair in pigtails. Everybody knew she was crazy. You never knew what she would do: life up her skirt or follow behind people and hit them with switches. As kids, we made fun of her. But my mama used to say: "Don't talk about her like that. She's got a life she's living, too." My mother wanted us to see that she wasn't just Crazy Geraldine; she was a person, with a history and a life that included us." (66)

In Class All Week...

2009-01-26T16:41:00.001-08:00

This week I'm with my doctor of ministry cohort down in cave creek, az. On Wednesday we have a missional church conference with Craig Van Gelder and another dude, along with some workshops one of which I get to lead, "The Listening Church" or something like that is what I'll be wondering around. I don't even know this other dude, we'll see and hear soon.

While Craig self identifies as late-modern, which I think is VERY true, he definitely has helped to enlighten me to connect missiology and ecclesiology which for many is not connected. What I mean is this, most understand the sending aspect of the church as one of its many functions. This type of thinking compartmentalizes missionaries as those who go out from the church, usually to foreign land, to convert the masses in dominant, oppressive, arrogant and imperialistic fashion.

What missional church instead suggests is that the very sending aspect is the essence of its primary nature, the very thing that it does all the time. The church is created by God as community to live in the world for the life of the world as called through the Spirit. And so, this is all framed around who God is as a sending God, i.e. God sends the Son who sends the Spirit. And so too, the church engages in this centrifugal mission in partnership with what God is already up to in the world.

So...is this preachy? Perhaps. Is it significant? Absolutely. This is no small blog post as an update. The implications for this are enormous for new and innovative ways for being church that already exist, as well as new experiments are emerging.

It has been in conjunction with this entire way of growing to understand who God is that I have come to understand who the church is, and in particular, the emerging, fresh expressions of church, church in a beyond modern culture.

Diana Butler Bass | October 2009 Conference Grand Canyon Synod

2009-01-25T14:45:00.000-08:00

Two years ago I attended an Anglican conference in Richmond, Virginia on "Church in the 21st Century", including speakers Phyllis Tickle, Peter Rollins, Karen Ward, Brian McClaren and Diana Butler Bass to name a few. I connected with Diana following one of her sessions and asked if she'd consider coming out to Phoenix sometime to speak. She wasn't available the particular time I wanted but a couple years later she is coming...and thank God. Her's is a helpful perspective, a bridge-voice. She will help to navigate and provide insight for our own wondering around our missional concerns as a synod, individually as congregations and the some emerging perspectives. She will be coming sometime October 2009 to speak to the rostered leaders of the Grand Canyon Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

I asked her what she's immersing herself in as of late to get a sense for what's shaping her own thinking even as she engages congregations. The following is a list she sent me today in a reply email I sent her a couple weeks ago:

"In the following mode, however, I'm re-reading a lot of Niebuhr (Reinhold), Bonhoeffer, and Nouwen at the moment. I'm also reading a host of pilgrimage literature--everything from Egeria to pop stuff (Graceland, etc). Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan have a new book on Paul coming out--and it is brilliant. And Barbara Brown Taylor has a fabulous book on practices coming out, too: "An Altar in the World." I'm also reading two bios on FDR, struggling through a bunch of international political theory, poking around in books on the history of the Social Gospel and the Depression, and reading some novels. See the movie, "Milk." It is an awesome piece on movement-building and leadership. Finally, I just read a new book called "Claiming the Beatitudes" by Anne Sutherland Howard--it has a real emergent spirit and I like it very much. Perfect for a Lenten study in a church.

Other than that, I'm writing--my new book on church history comes out next month--"A People's History of Christianity." You can already pre-order it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble."

Thanks Diana for passing this along.

Hope this is a helpful list to get some insight into where she's probing.

Transforming Theology Theo-Blogger Consortium

2009-01-24T10:46:00.001-08:00

I'm looking forward to participating with Home Brewed Christianity in an up and coming blog-dialogue. Of course, if you're a blogger as well and would like to join in, feel free to email Tripp and get on board.

What's this all about? Well click above and read what they're all trying to do. I, for one, am particularly excited that there are those who actually want to think about who we are, what we're doing and saying about God and how it all works its way out practically in new and innovative ways. I'm also excited as one who loves to read, process and integrate theology into what we're all up to as church, working critically where mind and heart converge! It'll be interesting to see where are this engaging takes us.

So my best guess is that soon I'll be given some suggested reading material to critically engaging around through blog posts. I also hope that many of you as well with follow along and give your feedback on what you're thinking and hearing.

btw - Home Brewed Christianity is a great resource for downloadable podcasts. Check it out!

'what is emerging about emergent?'

2009-01-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

An interesting way of framing the emerging church is moving away from the notion of "emergent" as an adjective describing church to a way for discerning how the Spirit is being birthed in new and creative ways. Follow this link to Thomas Brackett's blog Church Planting Central for more on how the Episcopal church is navigating this conversation. Thomas is the program officer for Church Planting and Redevelopment for the Episcopal Church. What, he says, if we begin asking: “What of the Spirit’s work is longing to emerge in my life, right now?” Sounds a lot to me like the missional church frame: What is God up to? What is God wanting us to do? This is why the two, emergent and missional church, have a lot in common, more than what I've been hearing. Emergent is a highly contexualized form of missional church that is just unrecognizable to many.

social pulpit | social god

2009-01-23T12:40:00.000-08:00

Johny Baker does a great job of framing the importance of technology around the political influence Barak Obama has been able to effectively cultivate. Baker suggests that Obama gets it because Obama is native to the culture of communicative involvement through this technology. You can check out the rest of the article here.

But what is of particular interest to me are some underlying theological connections as it relates to who we are as church as extensions of the very nature for who God is.

The listening church as I'm calling it, the church as "table ministry" or "church in the round" as Letty Russell suggests from the early '90s, is not merely a technique that individuals learn for the potential of membership acquisition within church community itself, nor as the place where people come and just sit passively listening to the expert resident theologian. Rather becoming a listening community as church is learning to form, in a new way, how we engage in the world as church.

What this listening looks like is to engage beyond our familiar denominational tribes in new ways around learning the richness of Christianity over the two thousand years of Church allowing voices to speak like the ancient celtic faith, Eastern Orthodox faith and the monastics. Equally church needs to make space for listening to those who opt out and find no home within our communities. It is these places that will expand our engagement of church through the act of listening. In essence the challenge and change for church life in its very engagement as a people of God will be through the act of listening, and the act of listening as participating in the very life and way of God.

There's a lot of talk these days about the phrase "the world is flat" that Thomas Friedman coined. This flatness is occuring through these emerging online networks as opportunities to have a voice in ways that previously people weren't able to have prior to this form of technology.

And so when we ask the question "what is God up to?" we need to realize that this move may be creating significant openings for us as God's people, to get on board with, not only what God is up to, but equally who God is as a social, holy and divine, community.

For me, the challenge for being church stems from being the presence of God at work in the world through the very way we engage and embody this holy presence with others. The listening church will then learn skills for what it looks like to better engage as God's people making more and more room for more and more voices at the table, discerning together what God is doing in the world and in us too!

I think some of these initial skills are:
*learning to make space for the different opinions of others
*learning to live with ambiguity
* asking ourselves 'who's not at the table who could or should be at the table?'
* learning to listen as community, not merely individuals, and taking that communal practice to the streets to be lived out from our insolated and isolated spaces we've grown accustomed to.

This is the point: the listening church doesn't use listening as technique for some market ploy to get people into church or to bore people to death by mere passivity to listening to the resident expert. Rather the church is the very space of allowing listening to convert the church itself as well as seeing this practice for what it is as the very participatory work for engaging with God as life itself to the world.

missional church | table ministry

2009-01-19T21:10:00.000-08:00

I'm starting a new conversation on Facebook with others from my Doctor of Ministry class in Missional Church (congregational mission and leadership, CML) at Luther Seminary.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the title 'emerging church.' Not that I don't share the values and deeply embrace what it stands for, but realize that it comes with too much misunderstanding and freakin frustration to explain it to those not even willing to give the time to try and understand it. There's evidence everywhere that people are wanting to distance themselves from this language from the recent Luthermergent article to a conversation I had recently with Dan Kimball at an Outreach Convention in San Diego back in November when he said "we've grown beyond that term and don't even want to associate ourselves with it anymore." We are at a significant period after ten years of emergent where significant contributors are reflecting on where it all stands today over at Next-Wave Church and Culture online site.

I think everyone is ready for some new language. My hope, in the end, is that we're really all trying to contextualize church within a theological framework grounded in God as we learn to become the people of God faithfully in and for the life of the world.

I'm going to start using the phrase "Table Ministry" as a better descriptor of the particular Missional Church we're cultivating at The Flagstaff Abbey. While we'll always have an emerging ethos because of new DNA and maturing community, the word is slowly falling out of our vocabulary. This idea of Table Ministry is so much richer and clearer, at least for me, and makes helpful relational connections to the very source and ground of its description, that is, it's God's table that becomes an extension into our lives, in and through our discernment to participate with who we are already claimed and called to be in the world.

It's not that I think this will be the new term, but for me this is the metaphor for the very emergent concept we're all trying to gravitate toward: who's not at the table who should be at the table? Who is God calling to nourish for the life of the world? I'll be leading a workshop on this next Wednesday down in Scottsdale for the Missional Leadership Conference at Spirit in the Desert.

When it comes down to it these are the primary convictions around God's banquet table:
1. God is already at work in the world before we even show up, duh?!
2. God is calling us to figure out what that work is.
3. God is calling us to get on board with that work, actually show up together and do something about it.

So, if you're interested in listening, sharing and shaping the conversation, I sure would love to have you with us. You don't even need to be Lutheran, and to God I hope you're not because we need all the help we can get to break this thing open into new territory. The more voices sharing at the table the better.

Again, you can check us out on the FB Group titled "Congregational Mission and Leadership, CML DMin. Program at Luther Seminary."

Living Out Our Callings

2009-01-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

Introductory Note: The heart of missional church is collectively discerning an imagination for what God is up to in the world and how God wants the community to respond to God’s discerned presence. I have, however, particular questions regarding a “sending” model that does not also consider the continued formative aspect of the church as well especially when those being sent are contributing to the consequences. Too often, I’ve observed communities that go out with a charity mind sight with no regard for how those to whom we’re sent are used by God to equally challenge us, not too unlike church groups that go to Mexico and build a home without learning about the people or the CEO who attends worship on Sunday only to continue heinous work environments overseas. Therefore, this paper focuses on a reciprocal approach for a missional calling in congregational life as it relates to God’s use of society as lens by which God is calling for the continuing conversion of the church itself.

The missional calling of congregations with God in civil society is the fulfillment of reconciliation realized in service to the world. The missional assumption that underlies this conversation is that God is already at work in the world and that we have been grafted into this work of God and called to reflect this work, reconciliation, by the way we hold and embody the place of this work in civil society.

The heart of this missional calling is the willingness to take seriously the transforming and converting work of the Spirit of God. That is, God is equally doing something in the church as well as through the church. This is a dynamic process of living Spirit, not a static place from which we move from one place of certainty to another. The church is called to live the words of Jesus we hear from Luke, inaugurating God’s Kingdom work in the world.

“He (Jesus) stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.” (Luke 4:16-20, NRSV)

It would be theologically correct for the church to piggy-back on Jesus’ words for getting out into the world to show the world the love we have received from God. It is also theologically correct that this functionality entails opening eyes to how God is at work in the world, offering opportunities for us serve the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed.

It is an interesting piece to note, however, that Jesus’ response following this reading, as eyes were fixed on him in the synagogue, is this: “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This raises a number of questions. What is the relationship between the scattered work of God in the world and Jesus’ statement that this “has been fulfilled in your hearing?” Curiously, and somewhat cynically, I ask, “now how could it be fulfilled? How was life for the blind, oppressed and poor different minutes before Jesus read from Isaiah, a text that had existed for hundreds of years, and now all of a sudden new because Jesus merely reads it?”

I wonder however, if this is a reference to radical incarnation, the place of all those who suffer, now found and located within the place of God-in-flesh reality. If this is true, that the suffering of the world is the place where God is present in the world, what orientation or re-orientation, would that suggest for us as individuals within communities of faith? How would that affect our interactions with suffering? How would we see its place in our own formative activity as “life for the world?” What would it have to say about who we are as being shaped by God simultaneously to the world we are being called and sent to serve?

Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda makes similar connections when she seeks to articulate starting points for how to move forward as public church. Making moves away from the Lutheran hermeneutic of “two kingdoms”, she instead embraces incarnational theology as determinative for being public church for the life of the world. She says, “I have chosen to relocate the discussion of church in public life in the incarnation of Christ as seen in cross, resurrection, and living presence.” Moe-Lobeda also suggests that the incarnation can be fruitfully located within a couple of Luther’s theological frames including the Living Word of God and the Theology of the Cross.

Consider that the church becomes the demonstrating plot for God’s activity of sharing the struggle in the suffering of the world, and with that collaborative struggle comes the proclamation that there is re-valuing of humanity as reclaimed worth for the life of the world, and being restored as a living hope for the fact that God does not give up on the world. What this move makes theologically is developmental maturity between God’s work on us simultaneous to God’s work through us.

This is primarily what we are up to at the Flagstaff Abbey as listening community for the life of the world. God is restoring us even as God is calling us to be present in the world. This deep interconnected and reciprocal activity moves us out of a privileged place and into God’s continuing work on us. The church is the primary demonstrating plot for those being converted, changing minds for how it views itself in God and in the world, all for greater witness to the world as God’s reconciling community.

Read more...

Living Out Our Callings

2009-01-17T15:31:00.001-08:00

This is the reflection I've put together for my class. Looking at our revised schedule just found out that I'm actually ahead of the new post date!

Any way for those who are interested my paper, Living Out Our Callings.

The books I used for this paper:
Living Out Our Callings in the Community,Gary Simpson, Diane Kaufmann, Raymond Bakke, Published by Centered Life, an initiative of Luther Seminary.
Public Church For the Life of the World, Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress.

Oh yea, this photo goes with it, footnote 6, but it was too much information to be placed inside the document itself.

writing way over due...

2009-01-17T08:22:00.000-08:00

This morning, with the family away, I'm making my way through reading and papers long over due for my DMin program in missional church. Of course not stalling by writing this post, how dare you think that?

The specific assignment I'm working on is articulating the missional calling of congregations with God in civil society as we enter a new era of mission. The good news and the bad news is that it only has to be a five pager.

So where does one start? Interestingly enough I wonder that most people's experience of congregational life has become too isolated from our neighbor with individualistic tendencies, deeply reminiscent for obvious reasons of our american culture, of narcissistic spiritualism not too unlike the adrenaline that comes with lustful pursuits. Many continue to live out the privileged status as church with no regard for rethinking or teasing out what is of God for us as church, and what has crept in to taint, disrupt, distract and threaten the church's role in the world.

Does the conversation begin with ourselves as church, the imperialist power bringing Truth to the world? Do we begin with the culture, the world? Where is this beginning point of departure for a such a dream?

An interesting question for us to ask and ponder especially this weekend, inaugural weekend, Martin Luther King, Jr. (not to be confused of course with the 16th Century reformer Martin Luther). There is a hopeful spirit in the air. If we are honest that hopeful spirit comes and goes. Our hopes today will be our shattered dreams tomorrow.

But through it all perhaps one of the things that we realize is that we yearn to participate in a reality larger than ourselves, an event, one of a few events many will actually get caught up in through this communal celebration. What is the role of church? What is its place as community for the life of the world? And where is God in all of this?

Enough ruminating for now, something else is calling me. peace to you all this day.

What is the flagstaff abbey?

2009-01-16T21:43:00.000-08:00

Words shared last evening describing what our community is seeking to be:

The Flagstaff Abbey is an exploration in alternative church. We welcome the exploration of all streams that have together formed the pool of Christianity. We seek to become listeners in the conversation to one another and the ancient past, not afraid to be critical, and not pinned down to the certainty that their claims define. The real defining is the very work of becoming a Christ follower, as our lives unfold and emerge as a greater oneness of the reflection of God at work in and for the world. The confession of faith then is not merely orthodox doctrine, but orthopraxic transformation, as people being the presence of God, one to another, in the world. Through this listening, we engage as God’s people, together, being formed by God in ways of which we are aware, and yet, many ways for which we don’t have a clue. It is in our gathering, our engagement and sharing, that God is opening us to fresh expressions for becoming the people of God for the life of the world.

Necessary Podcast!

2009-01-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

Homebrewed Christainity is a wealth of resources and information. If you haven't followed it, get on it!

One of the great pieces that comes through this site is their podcasting, many of which I've downloaded myself to my ipod and serve as important learning resources for anyone seriously wanting to be church and those leading it. In particular is this lecture from Tom Sine who, for over an hour, speaks about his new book The New Conspirators. This is a must listen for anyone who is going to be taking seriously what it means to be church, what we can expect in the future and how to best begin preparing for it as faithful incarnational embodiments of this church. This podcast by Tom Sine will help to contextualize the emerging movement, that's really just a conversation, for everyone who has been wondering and is still wondering, "what the hell is this thing?" Listen to this, and you'll definitely have a more complete understanding for what is going on here.

Other helpful podcasts can be found here as well.

New Blog to Watch: Queermergent

2009-01-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

I admire an open voice that takes seriously the struggle toward identity of self and in God, accompanied with the love and acceptance that slowly comes with both. My journey has taken me into the lives of several gay folks that have opened me up to a more expansive vision for how God is at work in the world.

In honor and inspiration of this new blog queermergent I want to share part of my own emerging story for being changed by listening to and shaped by a gay man...the first of many really that have helped me to learn a life of love.

I was 19 years old and serving a summer volunteer position in Holden Village. Words will never describe this place, you've got to visit this quaint little village nestled in the remote woods of Washington's Cascade mountains!!! That summer ('89) I attended an open forum on sexuality. Now you've got to remember Holden has always been more progressive than many other faith communities, even since its inception in the early 60's. During this session I remember watching from the balcony as one of the summer directors shared his own self discovery journey as a gay man. Of particular "wow-factor" for me was his direct invitation to the crowd toward the end of his talk. He said, "don't just judge me when you haven't even gotten to know me. If you want to know who I am, get to know all of me. So come and talk to me."

There it was, the invitation. I was so impressed and honestly very curious. I mean how many opportunities come along like that when someone says, "yea, get to know me I'm gay!" Not many I've known about.

That evening, guess who was standing in line with me waiting for some delicious Holden ice cream? Yep, you guessed it, this forum dude. And so i struck up a conversation saying, "I was listening to you today at the sexuality forum, you said people should just learn to make up their minds by talking to you. Can I talk with you? I'm pretty ignorant of this whole thing, but very curious, and I do want to make up my own mind, that is, by listening to you."

With that we arranged a time and later that week went hiking together. You know, interestingly enough I only can recall a couple things. One, that he never remembered choosing this life but that it was a gift from God. Two, and more than anything else, I remember feeling a shedding away of all preconceived notions for what gay people were like. My comfort level soared to new places that I never thought were possible. I wasn't afraid any more. I'd never really knew any "out" gay people before, but had my first encounter through this amazingly transparent, REAL and refreshing engagement that changed me for life.

This, although a simple story, had profound implications for me and my emerging openness to the struggle of gay people as well as offering a gift to me, the gift of being transformed by another person, learning to make space in me for another, and not to be threatened by it, but to celebrate it.

By the way, when my parents came to visit me a little later that summer, I had them hook up and go on a hike with this guy too. Turns out, this was one of the first encounters they'd ever had also.

To all those queermergents, gay and Christian AND gay and whatever, I welcome you, I celebrate you for the gift God has created you to be.

More Coming...

2009-01-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

More coming soon, I promise! I'm brainstorming ways to become a space set apart for interesting resources, lectures, articles, websites, podcasts, etc. I come across things all the time and want to desperately share them with so many of you.

August Rush - August's Rhapsody ( SoundTrack )

2008-12-22T13:39:00.001-08:00

"The music is all around us > all you have to do is listen." - August Rush

The incarnation of the wind...music/sounds, carrying the very Spirit of the living God. Do you hear it? see it? taste it? feel it? I do. And amazingly it is taking me to places not everybody understands.

Merry Christmas to you all. I love you all.

ikon advent event

2008-12-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

I'm waiting around to participate in the first ever international ikon online blogging event outside of Belfast, Ireland. Their "Ikon Advent" event currently has 51 people signed on through facebook from all over the world to participate. You can click the above link to check out the entire event's conversation if you missed. I am waiting, just waiting...anticipation is key really...whenever!

Part 4-Phyllis Tickle and Peter Rollins discuss Emergence Christianity

2008-12-18T21:41:00.001-08:00

4 of 4: "Radical is Root"

Peter Rollins: "This is a message to the whole church, not to a certain segment of the church."

Part 3-Phyllis Tickle and Peter Rollins discuss Emergence Christianity

2008-12-18T21:39:00.001-08:00

This 3rd of 4 videos looks at "What's Happening Outside the US?"

Part 2-Phyllis Tickle and Peter Rollins discuss Emergence Christianity

2008-12-18T21:37:00.001-08:00

This 2nd of 4 videos explores the notion that "God Can't Be Defined." Peter Rollins shares some insights about the "traumatic event in Scripture." He wonders about how we can make sense of juxtaposed descriptions of God that are placed side by side within Scripture?

Peter Rollins: "Truth is in the rupture."

Peter Rollins: "We've reduced God to an idea, to something we can speak about rather than this traumatic event which transforms and changes us."

Peter Rollins: "We're the object and God's the absolute subject."

Part 1-Phyllis Tickle and Peter Rollins discuss Emergence Christianity

2008-12-18T21:24:00.001-08:00

I just found out about these great youtube videos that were put together by Paraclete Press, the publisher for Peter Rollins' books. This is the 1st of 4.

This first conversation wonders around what Emergence Christianity is and the operative values within it. The two values Pete speaks about here: 1. "Suspended Space", 2. "Doughnut Structure".

thinking outside the cookie cutter

2008-12-15T20:10:00.001-08:00

tonight was the night. the cookie dough had been cooled for the three required hours and we were ready. we took out the dough, argued over who was going to roll it out, argued over who was going to sprinkle the flour, argued over who got which cookie cutter to use. it was great! LOVE IT!

ok, aside from the usual grief that comes with a 7 and 6 year old, brother and sister respectively, it was a great night. we laughed, listened to christmas music and found joy in just being with each other. after a couple cookie cutter cuts, i took out a knife and began to carve my own figure. the kids observed intently and guessed inquisitively. "it's a cross" grace said. "no, it's an airplane!" derek yelled. "yep, said dad, that's it. you got it D".

"so who wants to use your brain to cut cookies instead of cookie cutters?" i asked. "your brain or cookie cutters?" i asked emphatically again. grace shouted out, "my brain!" i gave each of them a knife (hope you're not listening kc) and watched as they began to imagine, engaging with creative thoughts bubbling up from within. what a sight to see. they had become co-creators! how fun and frustrating at the same time, but wondrously free to be.

there was a snag however and it was this: all their brainy creativity was taking FOREVER. i said "alright now, let's just go back to the cookie cutters and stop using our brains." they argued again and demanded not to go back. i agreed after the usual ping pong match of words. in that moment i thought it kind of interesting how impatient we can be...i could be.

isn't this how life is sometimes? we get excited about trying new things, using our brains for a change, getting creative, and yet for some reason it never gets along as fast as we would like or hope. but maybe that's the point. isn't it about the creative process and not merely the "getting-it-all-over-and-done-with"? isn't it about the gift of wondering, and together, what could be? what we also learned was that if it failed, we balled up the sugar cookies and started again. ahhhh, fresh starts, who doesn't like those?

and so i celebrate tonight, that for a moment, for a short break in time, we were able to stand in opposition to the constraints unassumingly and unconsciously imposed on us...and for that time, we were able to think outside the cookie cutter!

taking a leap

2008-12-15T12:08:00.000-08:00

well, i have done it. i have discerned, for better or for worse, for what i hear God calling me to do. i have been serving as an interim/transitional pastor simultaneous to beginning the flagstaff abbey an emerging expression of church. last week i notified the bishop, council, call committee, all to their surprise, that i will not be submitting my name as an interviewing candidate for the traditional parish. that means i'll only be serving for a few more months as an interim in this setting. i am discerning what to do, but very much feel called to put old wine in new wineskins, not for the sake of an ecclesiastical beauty contest, but for being true to the kind of leader i hear God calling out in me.

i feel too schizophrenic to be living in two completely different cultural realities. the best example, although i know they all break down, is this. i feel i'm not the leader to restore a 1964 vintage mustang, but do feel called to work on hybrids and push even further into the future with the very way we build and use transportation. this is the best expression for helping to share the divergent and vexed reality i have continually found myself occupying.

i've got to say at another level but very much related, i'm also concerned about the professional aspect of church leadership, lay and clergy alike. i don't know how it will all work out, but i just know that the perception from those supposedly outside the church, don't really give a flying shit that there is a professional and many won't actually and financially support such an effort. what this doesn't mean however is that they aren't concerned about generously contributing to good causes for the sake of serving the common good. but the church is loosing its ground on how to sustain itself. which in and of itself is a telling reality. i realize this is a huge generalization toward mainlines and that they will vary, but when i think about 20-30 somethings here in my southwest context, i am not seeing an interest and enthusiasm in financially supporting and sustaining such communities with full time paid church staff. this doesn't mean that there won't continue to be churches who have people willing to pay their pastors, but i believe there is a decline happening, with attached suspicion toward this whole venture.

where do i fit in?

2008-11-10T20:30:00.000-08:00

i love life! my wife and two children derek and grace. what a gift to be held by each of them, and warmly. i have great and real friends who share an understanding of God that can't be articulated only lived.

i'm sitting here doing my favorite activities, indulging in some belgium beer i picked up from a liquor store in san diego, Corsendonk an abbey ale. i was drawn to the picture of mary holding jesus, what better sales ploy could you have really. i've got my incense burning as i'm listening to Duke Special, suggested from my friend and mentor who doesn't even know me, peter rollins. all the while reading and sitting here wondering.

last week i attended, at the invitation of the synod office and our new assistant to the bishop for outreach, an outreach national conference in san diego. little did i realize how i've grown to be anti-evangelical, that is, those who i have determined to be driven theologically more by propositional concerns than matters incarnational. i had a stirring conversation, albeit short, with dan kimball. even though i was a bit agressive in my questioning, probably too judgmental (sorry dan i just yearn for conversational parnters). from my perspective in what i was wanting to talk about the conversation boiled down to heeding jesus call to make disciples. dan's claim was that peter rollins and others like karen are not doing that only gathering people together with no real leadership development into discipleship. i think we'd all agree that discipleship is key, the question for me becomes what does it mean to learn from jesus and what are we actually teaching people from jesus? do we teach all the biased perspectives from scripture as truth or could they be contextualized. is there a formational, character building piece, in isolation from being missional in service to God's world? what does it mean to cast your nets? i've always thought about it in relationship to his first words about his primary mission "repent and believe, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." what does it look like for us as disciples to learn that we are caught in God's kingdom net? is it merely a propositional venture? this is where i love peter rollin's ideas that propositions are the very aftermath seeking to articulate the very encounter we've had with the holy.

i'm wondering recently about the pursuits we have in life. i've been listening and learning about the emergent conversation and heard a lecture from the 2007 aar event, the second emergent forum at the event. the event had scott mcknight, diana butler bass and tony jones. tony mentioned an interesting thing about those who are pursuing this thing. he said essentially, 'you know, a lot of those who are involved in this are involved because this is their last ditch effort for being involved in church. if this didn't exist they will be joining the 125 million who are predicted to be leaving the church by 2050.'

wow! so where is my home? i want to be a part of a church that isn't afraid of critically thinking about absolutely everything. that learns to live the very grace oriented life it so eloquently articulates and celebrates.

ya know in my own wondering and discerning for going to get a phd i have had a lot of people tell me that i shouldn't do it because i'd be missing out on the very thing i was trying to create, an alternative church. the other thing i hear is that you don't want to do that because you'll become too aloof, esoteric and elitist from the very people you want to help and make a difference for. this all has me thinking because that's how i've often experienced a lot of those phd people too.

but on the flip side maybe it has something to do with what tony jones says, this is the only way they would ever be connected to church. you know, me and my judgmental ways, i wonder why is would it be that one of my professors whom i admire so much through my dmin program at luther, why does he not attend a local church, why is he himself not connected to an incarnational community of faith? even as he helps others to be church, how is he being church? maybe this is the only thing keeping him alive as in any way connected to the church and if he didn't have this outlet he wouldn't even be involved.

i admire tony for at least being connected to his place solomon's porch, even though i've had a bad experience years ago with their pastor. maybe at some level we're all just doing the best we can with where we are and what's available and for how we're trying to make a difference. maybe that's just what a lot of this comes down to. maybe its the best way to deal with the depression for the immensely systematic mess and enigma we find ourselves in as the transitioning church and how God is trying to work through us to birth a new reality. maybe. all i know and all i really hold on to are the thoughts from bonhoeffer's "i am" poem...wherever i fit in, wherever my place is in this world even as i'm still discerning what i should do and where i fit in..."whoever i am, i am thine."

Peter Rollins on Irony

2008-11-09T16:03:00.001-08:00

Peter Rollins is, in my opinion, the foremost thinker and framer of the emerging church conversation. This introduction briefly gives you some insight into the person we can read about and learn from. Hope others can gleen from him the very gold that I have. thanks pete for your inspiration and humility.

What Would Jesus Buy? - Official Trailer!

2008-10-14T09:07:00.001-07:00

a great film speaking to the deep challenges of our consumption driven society. we have become so ingrained in it we don't even realize. rent it, you can get it on netflix.

The Great Emergence

2008-10-13T12:14:00.001-07:00

Check this out. a helpful contextualized notion for where the church is trying to find itself today.

pete rollins lecture

2008-10-12T17:15:00.001-07:00

check out this link to a pete rollins lecture. WOW!

you might also want to look at his blog: peterrollins.net/blog/

also his new book: a fidelity of betrayal

abbey's call to worship

2008-09-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

What is it, or perhaps who, that calls out to us? A voice inviting us to engage or to be engaged…to participate in a reality bigger than ourselves? Our own voice or the voice of another? Is it our own voice masked in the other or the other way around?

And what per say is the voice | the silent voice | saying..speaking to the depths of the very being and into the essence of who I am, really...the longing that I yearn to hear deep within, a longing for connection? significance? wholeness? meaning?...a new way of ordering, re-orienting world, community, self?

Whatever this voice, whenever | wherever this voice, it seems to be a call, a call toward stillness and silence, for a willingness to sit and be, waiting and wondering. Whatever this voice, I am moved…not into further noise and distraction, but into a quiet space of reflection, of stillness, of silence. Waiting into who I am and who I am to be...all the while consumed by the One who was, who is and who will be…immersed in this presence and assured | the journey | is never lived or grown alone.

Let us pray…let us be, in God and with each other…

Selah

Amen.

abbey outreach practices

2008-07-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

well I'll tell you right now, we're not gonna be knocking on doors. we'll be knocking somethin' else! Cheers!!!

So there was this guy...getting on a plane

2008-07-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

(dedicated to my friend chris and tamie)

So there was this guy at the airport. He was on his way to class, of the religious sort for getting smarter and stuff. While at the airport he began to have visions for his final thesis and started brainstorming, as is the case with his free-association-type brain, on paper, actually it was his really cool laptop.

Anyway, he wrote about all the themes he's been hearing himself make reference to including knowing and being known, holding and being held, hospitality, humility, monasticism, questioning, intimacy, loneliness and not least of all listening; ya know the normal sorts of things everybody thinks about from time to time.

Well, the time came to get on the plane. He stood in line, waiting and waiting and waiting. He walked down the tunnel thingy and onto the plane. And he walked all the way back through this long 757 locating his seat two from the very back, 39C (at least it was an aisle). After he made his way to the seat he was greeted by one of the most awkwardly friendly persons. As he was still standing, making his way to be seated, the guy who would be his ride-along-companion for the three hour tour, reached out his hand and said "Hi I'm Caleb. I don't like to do this thing." This thing of course meant flying. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Me? I'm Dave" he said.

Within the first minute of being seated Caleb had asked him practically every conversation starter you could imagine. "Where you from?" "Where are you going?" "Have you lived here your whole life?" "Are you married?" "Do you have children?" A generous portion of diarrhea of the mouth was shared.

Finally Caleb charmed in...again, "I don't do this flying thing very well. I was schedule to fly yesterday but I freaked out so I got off the plane. I'm traveling to Buffalo, NY with a stop in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I just need to talk to someone for a little while to keep my mind off of all this. You don't mind do you? So what do you do?"

Oh no the dreaded, "what do you do" question. He hated that question and usually avoided it at all costs. There was a lot to do for his class, he had to complete some reading, another paper, yada yada. Anyway, he had for a moment recalled the previous things he was writing while waiting in the boarding area. Ya know, those things about knowing and being known, being held and hospitality...listening! sh#$

So out of his mouth it came, "I'm a pastor, a Lutheran pastor." Not quite loud enough for everyone to hear mind you, a little louder than say a whisper, but just loud enough for Caleb to hear.

"You're a pastor?"

"Yep" he said in a quick, don't-disturb-me-look-the-other-way-type fashion.

"Wow, I guess things will be alright now." he said with assurance.

"Yep" said Dave the gracious pastor, "everything will be alllllll right."

Once they took off the pastor guy pulled out his head phones, rather quickly if you can imagine, along with his ipod, and the book he was to read. He turned on the ipod and then sat back to listen and read. In a matter of seconds however, the battery light came on and said, "low battery" and proceeded to turn off. This didn't effect the gracious and loving pastor for a second as he continued to sit there anyhow reading his book, head phones on in clear view...without music. Ah yes, he did this for a good 20 minutes or so. Can you believe it?

THE END

So why do we write? Why do we brainstorm books to be written about grandiose ways of embodying life? What's going on inside of us that we need to get things out of ourselves...and for whom?

Miroslav Volf writes this about his own writing of books. "Most books I write, I write for myself, as a spiritual exercise." A little later writes saying "In the book (Exclusion and Embrace), I argue, among other things that we should embrace our enemies as Christ has embraced us. Well, an 'enemy' - a small one - arose in my life after I wrote the book, and I sense in myself the propensity to return in kind and exclude rather than forgive and embrace. And then I heard myself saying, "But you argued in your book...' It was like an academic's version of the still, small voice my wonderful and godly mother so often speaks about."

Ahh the ironic situations in which we find ourselves. Peace all.

Great Book!!! Go and Get It

2008-07-06T17:24:00.001-07:00

I just completed one of my many books for class, one of the few I actually read. Nonetheless, this is a fantastic vision of a life in God for any individual/community to aspire to. As one who's been claimed as living in the "rainbows and lollipops world" I commend this book to you all, to any who may be listening out there. This book spoke profoundly to me of a life not merely theologized, but embodied spiritually, a challenge to those aspiring to a beautiful life.

Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace by Miroslav Volf.

Closing the Gap Between the Gathered and Scattered Church

2008-06-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest complaints (as if there's only one, come on...) to church is the isolation aspect of those church goers. Ya know, the one singlemost segregated hour of the week where like minded people gather to hear stuff about God, exchange pleasantries, do some spiritual calisthenics and then go their various ways only to meet up again a week later.

But what about bridging this gap? What about integrating the gathered/scattered side of church? What would it look like for a church to simultaneously be both? What does it look like to listen to the voice of God as a gathered/scattered community? Could it be that the church gets to listen "with" others, culture/world, etc., instead of only having others listen "to" what the church dispenses? Could it be that God is simultaneously seeking to convert the church right alongside of the world in some greater sense for what God is up to in the world?

This is some of what we're experimenting with at the flagstaff abbey. And I'm talking in the gestation stage of things here...pretty fresh pups, if that. We're now meeting in a local bar, the green room. We're looking at having semi-structured thematic nights where missional aspects of God's world are heard, discerned, exposed, acknowledged and integrated into a curious setting for what God is doing in the world and how we are being called to become a part of a larger view of life ourselves. I especially invite you to check out our latest thoughts for what this community values by clicking down below at "Last Time at the Abbey".

The monastic life generally entails some semblance of silence. But I've been wondering if it isn't more about stillness...calming oneself down to the point of actually being present and attentive to other movements, other vibes, others reverberations. Obviously the silent thing is going to be a wee bit difficult in a bar. However, the stillness thing? Not so sure. With an invitation to hear things differently, especially in a different setting? What if becoming still ourselves for the sake of listening to something radically different and again, hearing it in a completely unexpected setting, sets up the stage for hearing differently, what could this do? to me? to others?

Who knows what's going happen with all of this. I certainly don't. But what I do know is I'm being called out to something new, and that there's a significant relationship to this gathering and scattering that hasn't quite been integrated in a way that is consistent with God's work in the world. What do you think?

Last Time at the Abbey

2008-06-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

Follow the above link to hear what's been happening at the Abbey.

Catching Up with God's Expansive Movements

2008-06-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Recently I was asked, along with a friend, to lead a workshop at our regional church conference, i.e. synod (gathering) assembly. The challenge we faced was that we were given the title for the workshop without any involvement on our part ("Who are the Unchurched: New Models for Ministry") even as we were asked to write out the description which went something like this: "why are we getting the right answers to the wrong questions?" One of the wrong questions for me includes "how can we get more (young) people in the church?" People, and young people especially, are not some acquisition in need of possessing! Are they not already possessed by God? Hasn't God already redeemed the world? Isn't God in the process of redeeming (whatever that big religious word means) me too?

So at the assembly we decided to run the workshop more as a conversation. I don't think people got the point. We didn't spell it all out for people either, which, I'll go out on a limb here and say, is always good to make people think about and experience things differently. Most people however only think in predetermined programmatic terms that has some kind of pre-fixed infrastructure, which then requires the people, resources, etc. to be put in their place to run. But what if the program is the people engaging in a process, discovering as we go what this is all about and including more and more people to the discerning table of God's activity in the world?

It was my sense that not everyone got it. I think there was much more of a frustrating and dismissive tone around how we engaged. Everyone was looking for formulas, templates, these "new models", without any sense for the experience itself as the new model of engagement through listening and conversing with one another. What it seems that people desire most is some kind of an end rather than a process. There's no doubt that process makes people uncomfortable as it reveals less certainty about where we're going. And yet, what if the supposed "end" of this missional stuff is about how we are engaging in the journey rather than a nice and polished end? When we come to hear about a "new model" and expect it to be delivered and deciphered through the same means we've been familiar all along no wonder we have a hard time getting it or as Jesus might say, "let those with ears hear."

And so the challenge I face is not to seek to describe this thing (this thing as an expanded movement of God the church gets to be a part of) in words as much as to provide space for it to be experienced and allowed to emerge. Not too unlike an artist in process...the color pallet being all the resources God is redeeming to tell a story, to paint a picture, larger than any one particular area could do on its own. So if you can stand back far enough, watching and listening as the collage unfolds, can you actually begin to see God emerging? Calling us into something bigger than ourselves? Perhaps the new leadership style should be viewed more as an artist/muscian and less like a CEO or manager of a franchise.

The flagstaff abbey is looking at meeting downtown flag...it's about time! Church without walls here we come! We'll be meeting a local bar, the green room on Tuesday night. Martin Luther took music out of the bar and brought it into the church, i.e. worship. We're looking at taking the church out of a building, i.e. sanctuary, and taking it back to the bar, the contemporary social gathering to see what God could do to expose each of us, now I'm talking about me too, to a greater, more expansive view for what God is doing in the world. Just a thought: isn't this the very thing that Jesus embodied when "the word became flesh and tented among us?" I'm wondering and talking about helping to create space, an expanded notion of God-space, for a larger view of life.

So what will happen? I don't have a clue. I just know God is already everywhere and with everyone inviting us to get on board with what God is doing. Didn't Jesus help share this point by becoming one of us? I'm just trying to facilitate a community, belonging to God, where we can better and with greater perspectives, wonder how God is at work in the world and where we may be called to get involved too. I never liked the idea of going to church given the fact that "I am the church" someone once said. Instead I like this notion of being church in the world, exposing the place, movement, presence of God and listening to others for how they are hearing that movement too. Who knows, maybe the only young person to be "gotten" in this whole process will actually be me!

The World's Music as 'One'

2008-05-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

Click above to read this article. You can also check the music examples by clicking the 'Listen Now' link too!

As I listened to this I couldn't help but to wonder what this could look like from an ecclesiological perspective. It reminded me of what we're trying to do at the abbey and what i hear going on in the emergent world...a sharing of the gifts to express something altogether different than exists in isolation from each other. The beauty of music as an exemplary metaphor for the gift of being 'one', WOW!

what do you hear?

praying reconciliation: pentecost 3

2008-05-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

One: Gracious Father, we look around the world, and even into our own lives, and see the beauty of your creation from a fractured perspective. Much of life is like shifting sand, unsettled and unstable. Come Lord and speak to our lives, come and make a home within us.

Many: Lord God, give us eyes to see you in our daily lives, in the good and the challenging, so that our vision of your world, and presence within it, can allow us to be witnesses for you.

One: Lord Jesus, we are aware of the fragility of relationships, among spouses, children and parents, friends and even those who, as enemies, make it challenging for us to love and understand that we are worth being loved. We feel the disruption of these relationships in our lives and the pain goes deep.

Many: Forgive us for the times that our own words and actions create sinking sand pits within which others are consumed by the darkness of life. Give us patience to endure the words and actions from others who don't demonstrate your compassionate and forgiving ways. Give us the wisdom and courage to see ourselves as your children, worthy of love and life. Help us to build others up in the same way you build us up.

One: Holy Spirit, continue to breathe into our lives your fresh and uplifting power that we might be hopeful rather than cynical, understanding rather than judgmental, humble rather than haughty, and forgiving rather than contemptuous.

Many: Breath and Wind of God, it is a gift to be here today. To be reminded of how much you love us and continue to be present in our lives. Come and make your life in us as a rock upon which we can rest and from which we can serve with your love. Give to us the strength to be your people, a people of hope and forgiveness, compassion and mercy, generosity and love.

One: Community of God, it is God's desire to write his words of promise and life in your hearts and souls, to have them written on the palm of your hands as a reminder of how much and how often God is at work in your life bringing peace and reconciliation. And so trust God's word for you this day, 'My very Life is the rock upon which you can build your life. Come to me and make your home in me as I have made mine in yours.'

Many: Thanks be to God! Amen.

embody it and they will be...coming and going in God

2008-05-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

Missional ecclesiology is centered first and foremost in the nature of God. Churches attempt at surviving causes great anxiety and begins the anxious work at operational levels of function and organization. This is most notably seen through the adapted idea 'build it and they will come.' Many have the idea that if you create space, as if the beginning point is void of space, it will be filled, eventually. And in some sense I suppose it might. But the real question for us to wonder is what is it that is being built? Who's doing the building? Who's being built?

One of the challenges with the modern church, among other great gifts this expression has been, is that in many ways it sees itself as the builder, the operational manager making space for others to occupy. But again, first and foremost, it is the very nature of God that occupies the space already, at the center and who builds space for us. All for the sake of our own occupancy, IN GOD! It is built 'for me', space created 'for me' so I can both be affirmed in who I am as a child of God and challenged to 'change my mind' about things that aren't also IN partnership with GOD. This IN GOD stuff, or as Paul talks about it, 'in Christ', is what is being built. God's very essence of life lived out IN us as we gather together.

I'm convinced that healthy expressions of church, no matter what label or designation you want to give, will at their best be present to the One who is present to us. These communities will embody the very notion that God holds us so closely, dearly, intimately and tenderly, that by the very encounter and experience IN GOD, we will be affirmed and changed within. Whether its through a verbal confession or an intuitive 'yes, God is here, and I'm a part of God's life. Now breathe through me.'

There is a challenge we face in the life of being church between the tension of gathering and scattering as God's people. The way we attend to the relationship between these two the better off we will be in our efforts at 'being' the very people God intends us to be. It is not just in the gathering, nor in the scattering, but in the very dynamism occurring between the two. So we need to wonder and explore together, why do we gather? What do we do when we gather and why? And what does that allow us to do differently (in our scattering) than if we never gathered at all? I believe how well we attend to the very nature/being of who we are IN GOD and in conjunction with these thoughts it will appropriately and helpfully place us in the direction of embodying the way of Christ in the world. It is not an anxious way, but a peaceful one, at least in some way because God is the one who holds all of us and we, in our part, model a life of being held more than a life of holding, whether it be doctrinal, denominational or whatever.

cool jones quote:

2008-05-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

"If you want to be a good archaeologist you have to get out of the library." ~Indiana Jones

not another frickin' church!

2008-05-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

That's exactly how I feel when I hear about another church start, another property purchased, a developer doing whatever they do to perpetuate themselves without any critical regard for why we are doing what we're doing. How's about we move from church starts to church ends. I mean the last thing the world needs is another church. Didn't Jesus come to do away with the in-a-box thingy? What the world could benefit from, and especially those churchy people within, is a new way of being church. There is a HUGE difference. That's exactly what we're up to at the flagstaff abbey, being church in a new way...through our differentiated unity, through a contemplative way into peace and reconciliation. Who knows, I'm not particularly interested in the grandiosity or even the aesthetically cutting-edge aspect of it all as much as an attempt to embody a new way, faithfully rooted with the ancients, while walking with some others today just to see what might happen. What if the very doctrine of the 'new kind of Christian' (to use McClaren's language) community was not in the propositions of faith we held, but in the way we celebrated being held? What if being held was about how we engaged with each other as if we, humanity, really mattered, had value, each of us and that God was in and around it all, creating something new? What if in our celebration of being held it also included other's ability to engage and change us? Could God be in the other, changing me, calling something vital in and from out of me? Give it up to God and say, here it is, here we are, broken, lonely, exhausted, take what you will, use us as we gather and scatter in your name and make it, us, your own.

prayer of reconciliation: pentecost 2

2008-05-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

One: Gracious God, we gather this day to push back on the frantic pace of life, to make space for you to come to us, to speak to us regarding the life that belongs, not to ourselves, but to you, as has been spoken to us in Holy Baptism. We gather this day to put our lives into perspective in light of your presence with us.

Many: May our words spoken now be more than words on a page, but a prayer within. Come to us Lord and speak into our lives, lives that have been reclaimed by you for the sake of your Spirit’s home in us. We come to allow your voice and presence to give perspective to the priorities of our lives. Come and give us the wisdom and courage to hear you. Convince us of the value that each of us embodies because of your claim on us.

One: Lord Jesus, we hear challenging words this morning about regarding our value, our focus and priorities and how much you desire to serve and strengthen us in this life.

Many: Help us when we are more concerned about what we have, what we look like, and where we are going. Give us your peace to know that this life isn’t just about acquiring possessions, position or prestige, but about you coming to us in your words and in our neighbors. Restore us to a life that daily desires you, and that is free from the clutter and distraction of all we have and want.

One: We give you thanks Holy Spirit that God’s truth continues to blow in this place, a truth that helps us to realize ‘first-things-first’. Give us the ability to discern your Spirit’s calling into daily life and relationship with you.

Many: Forgive us for the times we want to control situations according to our own interests rather than as it might relate to the broader, common good of your community for the sake of your mission in the world. Help us not to worry about our life but to trust that in you, through prayer and discernment, we will reflect a life that is filled by you.

One: Community of God, just relax, and take a deep breath, all will be well. ‘Do not worry about your life., consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, it is not due to their own effort that they grow but because of their inherent life in the One who creates and sustains all things. You don’t have to be anxious about holding up the universe, God is already taking care of that…just trust God, for all will be well because, as God says, ‘I love you and care for you.’ In Jesus’ name we pray.

Many: Thanks be to God! Amen.

playing "we"

2008-05-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

This morning during the children's message i asked: 'what do we do when we come together every week?' Responses came...we praise, we talk, we pray. I said, 'ya know, the most important word in all of that is the 'we'. I had them look to this icon and asked them what they saw...'three people sitting at a table, God?'

I've been wondering all day around this spirit-of-the-moment phrase, that the most important word is the "we". The community of God makes space for us at God's table, no matter who we are...that as we are together God is present, the God-between, in and around our and all of life.

I can't help but to have a final thought on this eve of Trinity Sunday...the thought that what God is inviting us into in this life is a game, the game of "we". So who gets to serve first?

praying for reconcilation: Trinity Sunday

2008-05-16T12:34:00.000-07:00

One: Heavenly Father, creator of all things, through your word you generate life and bring things into being that did not previously exist. Through your very being you begin a relationship with all of creation to couch your own generous life and reflect your beauty to the world.

Many: Forgive us when we constipate your life-giving efforts. Help us to see the goodness of life that you have created in us and in those around us that we might live with renewed eyes for your work in the world.

One: Lord Jesus, you are God’s sending gift to us in order that we might know God’s heart beats for us and for all those who are broken, exhausted, lonely and in need of joyful companionship.

Many: We give you thanks Lord Jesus that you heard God’s call to be sent to live among us and show us the presence of God at work in our world. Forgive us when we aren’t receptive to the ways you come to us. Help us to grow into the fullness of life that only can come when we are in relationship with you.

One: Holy Spirit, wind and breath of God, you continue the mission begun by Jesus to expose your Kingdom-life breaking into our world. You choose to blow through us to continue this work in your world, be with us and help us to attend to you.

Many: Help us to grow in our understanding for what it means to be your sent community to a world in need of your loving touch. Give us the wisdom, courage and openness to discern new ways you are at work trying to equip us to be your living body. Forgive us when we think we have it all figured out and when we no longer have to come to you for direction for how we are to move forward into your world.

One: Community of God, you are precious in God’s sight, honored and loved, ‘I have called you by name, created you as my child,’ God says. ‘Now GO…go forth into my world equipped in love, peace and reconciliation to encourage others in my way of life. Go!’…in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, GO! And remember, I am with you always.

Many: Thanks be to God, amen.

The Monastic Method

2008-05-05T21:24:00.001-07:00

Acts 17 has been swirling in my mind as I prepare to share some thoughts on May 15th for a proposed Flagstaff Abbey among partner churches. Paul goes into the marketplace noticing the religiosity of the crowd and that they've built an altar to an unknown God. In his usual argumentative/persuasive fashion he helps them to understand that this unknown God has a name and that it is Jesus Christ.

As I think about the possibility for this neo-monastic community I share Paul's courage to be present in the marketplace with all of who he is. He doesn't isolate himself from the world to engage in his faith, but comes to the very center of public life to offer another explanation, an explanation that the philosophers were all to welcome to receive as they were always open to exploring new information.

Celebrating Paul's ability to live faith publicly, but differing from his Socratic method of persuasive speech, what would it look like to substitute the monastic way? And again, differing from Paul's somewhat arrogance for certainty in truth, what would it look like to enter the marketplace with all of who we are, the best of our vulnerable selves, as pursuers of Truth ourselves, as those needing to be touched just as equally by God, as fumbling listeners and fractured lugs in need of God's healing touch? What would it look like that the emphasis is less on our own convincing words, but in yielding to a way, the monastic way of hospitality and humility? Instead of worrying about having to prove "God, Jesus' whatever to the world, what of allowing the proof to be our very lives lived seeking to be transformed and converted ourselves by each other? Could the humility that we are attempting to embody through centered song, word, and silence be enough of a witness to change hearts? And most of all, OUR OWN?

Then, and only then, maybe we'll have the wisdom and courage to discern where and how we need to have a voice and where we don't.

Now this is Good News I can get on board with!

2008-05-03T23:08:00.000-07:00

WOW! I have never heard such a clear and profound understanding for the essence and task of evangelism as I hear articulated in this article from one of the brothers of Taize. You can get this and other great articles at this link, Taize articles.

What does it mean to evangelize?

In these days of marketing, we have learned to mistrust those who promise us good things. In this context, the New Testament verb “to evangelize” can frighten us. We are embarrassed to propose our faith to someone else, as if we were trying to sell something. And we are so deeply concerned to respect others that we do not want to give the impression of imposing our own ideas or to try and convince others. Especially when it is a question of a subject as intimate as trust in God.

But do we really know what the New Testament means by “evangelizing”? In Greek, the verb is used for the expression “to announce good news”: someone who is “evangelized” is basically someone who has been “made aware, brought up to date.” The verb can be used to announce a birth, an armistice or the inauguration of a new leader. It has no religious meaning in itself. And yet it was that word, almost too commonplace, that Christians used to describe the most precious aspect of their faith: the announcement of Christ’s resurrection. What is interesting is that, gradually, the word lost its complement. People didn’t say “make someone aware of Christ’s resurrection” but simply “evangelize someone.” This was obviously to save time, but that lack of a complement also has a deeper significance.

To proclaim the Good News of the resurrection is not, for Christians, to speak of a doctrine to be learned by heart or a piece of wisdom to meditate on. To evangelize means above all to bear witness to a transformation within a human being: because of the resurrection of Christ, our own resurrection has already begun. By his infinite respect towards those he encountered (visible through the acts of healing we find in the Gospels), by taking the lowest place so that no one would be lower than him (that is the meaning of his baptism), Christ Jesus restored worth and dignity to every person. Still more, Jesus was with us in death, so that we could be close to him in his communion with the Father. By this “admirable exchange” (Easter liturgy), we discover that we are fully accepted by God, fully welcomed by him just as we are. The Christians of the first centuries summed this up by saying, “God became man so that man could become God!” To evangelize thus does not mean in the first place talking about Jesus to someone but, on a much deeper level, making that person aware of the value he or she has in God’s eyes. Evangelizing means communicating these words of God that rang out five centuries before Christ: “You are precious in my sight, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:4). Since Easter morning, we know that God did not hesitate to give everything so that we would never forget what we are worth.

Can we “evangelize” someone while respecting his or her freedom?

Causing people to realize their worth in God’s eyes is not something optional. Paul even goes as far as saying, “Woe to me if I do not evangelize!” (1 Corinthians 9:16). For him, evangelization is the direct consequence of his attachment to Christ. Through his resurrection, Christ unites us inseparably to God. No one can ever again feel they are excluded from that union. And at the same time, humanity is no longer fragmented: since the resurrection, we belong to one another.

Still, the question remains: how can we communicate that news to people who know nothing of God and seem to expect nothing from God? First of all, by our personal attachment to Christ. Paul said, “You have clothed yourselves in Christ” (Galatians 3:27). Evangelization calls us to start with ourselves. It is first of all by our life, and not by words, that we witness to the reality of the resurrection: “To know Christ and the power of his resurrection and a sharing in his sufferings, coming to be like him in his death, so that [we] might finally attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11). It is by our assurance, by our serene joy in knowing that we have been loved from all eternity, that Christ becomes credible in the eyes of those who do not know him.

There are situations, however, when words are necessary. Peter puts it well: “Always be ready to reply to whoever asks you the reason for the hope which is in you” (1 Peter 3:16). Of course, speaking of an intimate love requires much sensitivity. And sometimes it is hard to find words, especially in situations where faith is brutally called into question. Jesus knew this well, and he said to his disciples, “When you are brought before (…) the authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you need to say” (Luke 12:11-12).

Because Christ clothed himself in our humanity and we have clothed ourselves in Christ, we should never be afraid of not knowing how to speak. In the Christian vocation of not choosing those they love, but of receiving everyone without discrimination, there is a generosity that is touching, and even more, that encloses someone in the life of Christ. In our capacity as servants, we share our garment with those we serve, a bit like Jesus who, when he washed his disciples’ feet, “took off his garments” (John 13:4). It is above all the disinterestedness of our acts that will speak for us; it will authentify the words we speak.

prayer of reconciliation: easter 7

2008-05-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

One: Lord God, this morning we hear a prayer from you Son on our behalf. What a gift it is to know you care so much for us, our life in this world with you and how we live it out. You are the essence of glory…light, peace, power and new life. May we honor your glory present in and through us.

Many: Forgive us when glory is more about our rise to position and prestige at the expense of others and when we diminish the presence of your glory finding its way out of us.

One: Lord Jesus, through your presence in our world you have brought a renewed understanding for the goodness of humanity and its essential worth. You have given us a new lens for knowing God through intimate and personal terms.

Many: Help us to move away from a knowledge of you that is more grounded in doctrine, and sophisticated words about you, than in an actual 'living-breathing' relationship with you, and the very way we love. Help us to make space to grow in you, that by being present with you, our knowledge of you can affect every decision and relationship we have.

One: Holy Spirit, author of the Church everywhere on earth, you give us the opportunity to celebrate the oneness of who you are with the world in the way we engage with one another. We thank you that care for this unity. We also recognize the challenging and fractured ways that it is often lived out.

Many: Help us to celebrate the differentiated unity we have in you. Give to us the ability to embrace differences in others while still learning to love. Help us to remember that our own unity is a result of the you, the one who hold us and keeps us throughout our entire lives.

One: Christ's prayer for us is that we might reflect this glory, knowledge and unity in him with the whole world. As God's people gathered together this day, know that you are loved and accepted for all of who are, and that because of this claim on your life, we have been given the opportunity to live freely, to love and to serve in Christ's holy name we pray.

Many: Amen. Thanks be to God!

~in conjunction with John 17:1-11

because church belongs to Christ and not me...

2008-04-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

I want it to be of public record that those of different skin colors and heritage are welcome here.

I want it to be known that those who suffer from any kind of addiction (whether they are recovering or not) and their families are welcome here.

I want it to be known that women and children are welcome here and that they will not be harassed or abused here.

I want it to be public record that in this church you can bring children to worship and even if they cry during the entire service, they are welcome.

I want it to be known that those who are single by choice, by divorce, or through death of a spouse are welcome here.

I want it be known that if you are promiscuous, have had an abortion, or have fathered children and taken no responsibility for them, you are welcome here.

I want it to be known that gossips, cheats, liars, and their families are welcome here.

I want it to be known that those who are disobedient to their parents and who have family problems are welcome here.

I want it to be of public record that people of various sexual orientations and members of their families are welcome here.

Let it be public knowledge that we take seriously that all are simultaneously fractured and fabulous. The young and old, the rich and poor, all who recognize that life is not merely dependent on our own effort, but given and shared with each other and God.

Let us not condemn the world, but proclaim to the broken, lonely and hurting God's gift of reconciliation and peace.

May God give us the wisdom and courage to welcome and forgive one another as Christ has shown us this nature in the way of God among us.

(adapted from a guy, chuck hazlett who put this in his congregational newsletter)

If you're saying 'no duh!' to all this, good for you. These words need to be said, even more importantly...embodied, not merely by individuals, but entire communities because in the end, it seems to me, this is the way God makes space for us...all of who we are.

easter 6: prayer of reconciliation

2008-04-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

One: Merciful God, we begin this first day of the week to be in agreement with you. "You are precious in my sight, honored and I love you" says God. And yet, a disparity still exists between the way you see us, the way you want us to build up each other and the way we actually live in relationship to you by the way we care or don't care for others.

Many: Make me joyful and proud when I love well and give me a conscience when my actions and words deny my neighbor the life that you intend.

One: Lord Jesus, we hear words this morning about loving as you loved us. If we're honest we have to say, like the disciples before us, that we too fall short in our ways of loving. Perhaps our own loving, or lack thereof, is connected to the depths of understanding how much you could possibly love us, a fractured and fragile people, who yearn deeply to be accepted for all of who we are.

Many: Help us to live into the fullness of your grace for us. Help us to know that we are more valuable than we could ever imagine, and that we have the capacity to do, in your holy name, the most remarkable 'life-giving' work.

One: Spirit of Truth, the gift of love you pass on from Christ empowers the fullness of humanity that God created. That Christ loves us means that his intention is that we too could become fully human through the way we reflect this love, even to those we hold in contempt. Give us the wisdom and the courage to embody this love, not simply with our feelings that change like the wind, but with our words that carry the power to raise to newness of life.

Many: We give you thanks that you have trusted even us to continue your ministry of love, reconciliation and peace. Give us the strength, compassion and understanding, when loving our neighbors, to realize the power and impact our own words and actions have. Help us to choose wisely your way of love and therefore become the transforming community of God you intend us to be.

One: God intends for us to live in the fullness of life which is the product of being loved well. Hear these words, again, from the One who loves you more than anything, "I have called you by name, you are mind, you are precious in my sight, honored and I love you. Now, love as I have loved you."

Many: Thanks be to God!

Can people MAKE time for God anymore?

2008-04-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

I am amazed at the frantic pace of people these days. The church I'm serving is filled with over-worked, stressed out, over-programmed, dysfunctionally-driven and under-attended people strangled by these social knots. I often wonder if the exasperation I feel is connected to what is coming at me (of course my own stuff too, not to minimize that) through the parish...a people who are deeply depressed, tired, disconnected and numb. And then I think, how is church life really set up? Is it set up to allow people to thrive in what God would have us receive as REAL LIFE? I suppose at some level this is the constant juggling act of life itself, the balance of work and play, rest and responsibility. But is the church helping or hindering a full life in God? No wonder people hesitate getting involved if its all about perpetually serving on some committee until Jesus returns. What in the world have we made church into?

Where is the space to be silent? Where is the space to allow God to speak to us and communally so...to wonder together as God seeks to address us, without commentary from the expert? Is there another way for people to MAKE time for God that isn't consumed, or better yet, constipated by an institutional framework? Certainly God in God's almighty power can and does work through such institutional structures to be sure. There are even people who grow and flourish in such systems. I'm just wondering about another way that God might be wanting to connect not only to the non-confessional, but even more importantly to the confessional, who need to be jolted in new and fresh ways for listening how God is speaking and engaging in the world.

Perhaps we're losing, if not already lost in many ways, the essence for how God seeks to encounter us rather than how we, egotistically-driven or otherwise, want to engage God. What if God really wants to use difference and diversity as a lens for speaking more clearly to us for what he desires to create within and out of us? Today, how is this embraced and even practiced within the Christian faith short of elitist dialogues that happen in some aloof space far from daily living? And then, what are we to make of all of our differences denominationally? If difference again is key to the reconciling work of God, how are we in the life of church embracing this truth in such a way that we allow it to work on us? I'm not suggesting that we deny who we are, collapse our identities or differentiated expressions into some ecclesiastical homogeneity as the non-denoms do. What of allowing the differences to co-exist and allowing them to engage one another in a joint effort/effect of living out a faith in Jesus that celebrates these differences without trying to minimize them? What could it be for a community to embrace the idea that 'we shouldn't be surprised that we will come to different conclusions about the bible, faith, church and God, and that it does not disturb God as much as it does some of us'? What of a post-denominational community of God? Could this happen? And what could it look like?

What about an ancient way, a contemplative way...the monastic way.

This might be a viable option alongside the pantheon of others available. In fact I saw a glimpse of it when I recently visited the community of Taize, France last month. This monastic community prides itself on being an ecumenical community, living life together grounded in prayer seeking reconciliation and peace.

What would it look like for these denominations to come together in prayer, like the Taize community, to allow God to address all of us together in one setting? What would it look like from the stand point of a supposed 'outsider' to see people gathering who are not seeking to convert the outsider, but rather to be converted itself by the difference of each other, to learn this way of reconciliation by, with and alongside the other through prayer?

So, this is my newest, emerging (pie-in-the-sky) dream...to create an abbey, a Flagstaff abbey. I hope in the near future to invite and involve interested parties to the table for a conversation. Included are American Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians to start.

Well, we'll see how it all goes and what God wants to do through it all...oh yea, and in the process, through me too.

a challenging quote:

2008-04-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

"The safest place for ships is in the harbor,
but that's not why ships were built."
-Anonymous

Now would this be more reflective of purpose, identity or both?

my emerging blog

2008-04-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

It has been a long passion of mine to be an evangelist for the emerging church conversation, especially among friends and colleagues who have been seeking to understand it. I too must admit however that much of my own drive has been related to a deep ceded attempt to 'win over' those who would dismiss this approach to church as another faddish movement. Perhaps at some personal level what resonates in me is the need for reconciliation, to be in agreement with me, a yearning to be understood for who I am. And so my long attempts at explanation drive to figure out, help others perhaps, come to appreciate what I have come to appreciate in this thing. For me there is something deep and rich, highly contextualized within this whole emerging church conversation, that allows for a different expression of being church, different not better, than I have ever known. I feel that I have explored as experientially and theologically as I could have to this point, arriving at rich fountains of wisdom and knowledge for things emerging. I too wish to help to cultivate someday a community that reflects emergent values and beliefs.

This said however, I am emerging in my own 'blogosphere' right beyond perhaps what might be called 'emerging apologetics' and into a broader world of curious wonderment. So to grow into a deeper sense of freedom through curiosity and less defensive and argumentative posturing with the need to preserve or protect the emerging community from dismissal, I am having a repentant heart. My site will remain in joyful favor and celebration for things emergent but with hopes of becoming a more inclusive and playful discourse of all things created by God. A justification for a new format? No, just descriptive explanation of who I am and what I hear God calling out in me.

Cheers to all other curious and adventurous souls.

What's the point?

2008-04-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

after blogging and blogging for several months i just got warn out. i took on a gig at a local church here in flag helping to serve as their transitional pastor. it's been good helping to facilitate church and all, bringing some insights from missional and emerging church ideas, but still i'm left a little dull inside. god is teaching me to love people and to be patient. no wonder our dog's name is patience. what i miss however about this blogging stuff is the creativity to wonder in new ways without judgment, or at least until your readership causes you to hesitate and compromise what you're truly feeling and thinking. for instance, on sunday as i was preaching i mentioned that Jesus works beyond Lutherans and that we are Christian first. I suppose this isn't quite profound, but does shake up a few of the old entrenched ones who have been Lutheran since conception. but along a different but somewhat broader note what of the idea that God isn't Christian? I mean is that really true? Can we say that we believe in a Christian God? You see for me, I can say that I'm a follower of Jesus and that my limited understanding of God is known, seen, experienced through the lens of Jesus. But to say that God is Christian is to pit this Christian God against all other adjectival expressions of God. What is interesting for me too is that many of my friends who dismiss church, but deeply believe in God, are much more quick to relax into this concept than those who have been lifers. Is this the Pharisaical stuff coming through? Is it a foundation that is afraid of being shaken for being cast into the abyss? And so what's the point of it all really? If we aren't given the space to wonder more deeply in and around who God is why even engage in authentic relationship with God. I love Rollins understanding of all of this critical reflection as determinative and responsive to the God who holds us. My critical stuff allows me to say I do love God because God gives me the freedom to explore who God is and who God is not. Today I'm insightful and a genius and then I read my writing tomorrow and I'm way off base and naive. What's the point of it all if we aren't allowed to enter into the mystery of God by challenging our own perceptions of who God is while trusting simultaneously that what is most important is God's holding of us rather than our holding, 'theologizing', of him. until next time...

Daily Advent Devotionals

2007-12-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

I'm setting up a link to my friend tamie's blog, our local home brew of daily reflections through the season of Advent. Enjoy the light emerging through the darkness, for that is our hope and life. For more info on advent click here.

Church in the Round

2007-11-17T23:19:00.000-08:00

I invite you all to check out a new blog that I hope will allow some space for those of us interested in being church together, in a new kinda way, here in Flagstaff. The blog is called 'church in the round'. I hope that this can become for us the place where an ongoing discussion and creative expression demonstrates what it means for us to be church in a way where power is shared and God's hospitality is freely offered...for all.

I invite you to check in from time to time to see how this little emerging thing unfolds here in flagstaff for a few of us who will be sharing in the church planting business. it's another experiment that i came up with and we'll see how it all works out.

speaking up for the poor

2007-11-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended a community meeting around establishing a new shelter for homeless in Flagstaff. The meeting became emotionally charged with words that summed up to mean 'not in my neighborhood'. Check out the local write up here.

I had to respond, at least my little part for speaking on behalf of the poor, helping to raise the voice that not only do we help the poor, but they help us to become more human through the way we see them as real human beings, a stretch for many. I was pretty frustrated with their comments and short sighted vision for helping those without as you can tell. Either way, here's my letter to the editor:

"As a concerned citizen for the homeless and as a clergy frequently assisting such individuals myself, I was looking forward to a hopeful conversation around a community yearning to help the poor. What I found was a sad expression of community social interest more concerned about self-preservation than hope-filled community engagement. I can’t say I’m completely surprised, but I do believe we have to stop demonizing people and believe that if our communities are as strong as we say they are we can use that strength to perpetuate goodness rather than to allow ourselves to be controlled by fear. We will never get anywhere in our journey to become more human if we can't understand that how we treat the poor is a statement for how we really think about ourselves. I came to the meeting with my children in hopes of allowing them to see what a community caring for others might look like. Unfortunately, I was not able to shine the light bright for them for this kind of witness. No doubt, fear is driving this. It is interesting to me that many are afraid for how the ‘bad’ people coming to the neighborhood while simultaneously registered sex offenders exist right down the street (I looked online!). Do we really think the Flagstaff shelter wants more negative activity engaging the neighborhood? Until we can make a home inside ourselves for the homeless, identify with their radical brokenness, I wonder who the homeless really are in this town?"

What difference does it make? Well, I guess I'm more interested in being faithful to what it means to live in the way of Jesus, this of course, means sharing the values of God with a community who may or may not listen.

embodiment

2007-11-11T07:19:00.000-08:00

The following quote comes from Roberta Bondi in an article through Christain Century, Nov. 2, 2004. I was reading this morning in preparation for today's sermon (i know, leave me along about sermon prep).

These words remind me that was is of ultimate importance for an authentic spiritual community, the communities the emerging world is trying to facilitate, is more concerned with embodiment than intellectual pursuit or elitism seeking to justify its existence. I especially appreciate the last sentence below from Bondi.

"While I had continued to read and be profoundly moved and strengthened by the early monastic abbas and ammas, I was happy where I was, teaching Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac to small classes of students. I didn’t want to leave. But the imagined voices of my early monastic teachers wouldn’t leave me alone. "You have a choice," I heard them saying. "You can continue teaching Semitic languages which you enjoy, or you can act on what you know -- that we have saved your life over the years, and we can save the lives of others as well if you chose to teach them about us."

What could it look like for a community of forgiveness and hope to embody the very existence it seeks to understand and describe? At what point does embodiment shift to become more important than philosophical constructs or argumentation? I truly believe the emerging community, in its seeking authentic expressions of life through faith, at its heart desires to be a community embodying this truth in its own fractured and fumbling way. It is not a claim of truth by what it says, but by how truth itself becomes embedded in its very ethos; reflecting fruits of this very truth, of love, peace, patience, kindness, etc.

sacramental meanderings

2007-11-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

Check out my friend tamie's blog. She does some great imagining around sacrament, sacramental life/eucharist and its place in and through church communities. If, as many are saying that all of life is worship, than how is this exploration different? Perhaps, this is the tangible connection and reminder we all need over and over again that both shapes our identity and purpose; one that is deeply connected to the divine in and through all of life.

One of the essential leanings through this eucharistic theology/ecclesiology directly references God's own presence as lived out in and for the world. The challenging part of this perhaps is the polarity of connecting what goes on inside the gathered community, as church, and what that means for the scattered community, again as church. Embracing this seemingly ambiguous reality is the key that this notion is attempting to either bridge, breakdown or critique. There is a simultaneity in its gathering/scattering ethos that, for some reason, we so quickly want to compartmentalize or segregate out from the world instead of connecting it to the world as a means for receiving/extending The Life that is offered to us, individually and collectivelly, and lived through us, individually and collectively.

rant: what the hell is this emerging community doing?

2007-11-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

I'm sick and tired of assumptions that think the emerging community is a relativistic, 'anything goes' cocktail of a little 'my friend Jesus' here and a little 'whatever you want' there, with a couple candles, icons and a cup of joe thrown in to make everyone feel cozy and warm and somewhat spiritual (but not too much for fear of stepping on toes). The emerging church is not a free for all exchange of ideas for the sake of 'i'm ok, you're ok', with no serious engagement for who God is, what God is up to and how God wants us to get on board with it all.

What it seems to me, both from my own experience and my fumbling attempts, is that the emerging churches are enacting a radical notion of living out the tension between a missional congregation in relationship to its context. This, of course for some, seems to create an ambiguous relationship that appears to allow everything. The emerging church radically and authentically seeks to wonder and live out what it means to be church, not just talk about it. The essence of this answer is best arrived at in relationship to the very God who brings it all into existence: the trinity, a holy community engaging in 'mutual interpenetration.' That is, through Jesus God is known in time and space...in the Spirit, Jesus continued ministry of (not about) God is made manifest through communities willing to listen and engage and ponder and serve.

I found this great quote from Scott Frederickson who wrote a paper that was presented at Luther Seminary's first annual missional church conference in 2005. In this thesis entitled "The Missional Congregation in Context" he is talking about this tension around congregation and context. He mentions 'coinciding' as it refers to the trinitarian undrestanding of God coinciding as three persons, persons as it relates not the independent identity of each, but rather, the interdepedent identity, the importance of each 'person' as it is defined in relationship to and through the other. This 'otherness' is key! He says:

"The God of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit, has created and redeemed this coinciding. The very incarnation of God into the Son and the resurrection of the Son to God is the way Christainity claims the context. This means that a missional congregation and its context are related. The missional congregation claims the reality of the context (the Incarnation) while not being subsumed wholly beneath it, in order to show the context of a deeper reality (the Resurrection), namely, that God is constantly at work in the world."

I love this idea for how context/culture is redeemed as God's presence in and around the incarnated Christ (Holding). I love that we can be free to engage alongside and with our culture and context without "being subsumed wholly beneath it." (Hospitality/Humility) I love the idea that we could challenge and interject hope that God hasn't given up on the world and that God can be trusted. I love the idea of sharing a new vibrancy for what God is doing in the world and how it is available for all.

What is difficult, I think, for people to understand about the emerging communities is this differentiation between the essence of church and the serious engagement with and alongside of culture.

This is not the end of the conversation of course. This is only one slice of pie, or whatever taste this might leave with you. Hopefully, it's something nourishing and somewhat tasty and doesn't just taste like shit, although a few of you out there might think so. The emerging community seeks to embody this challenging notion of missional community contextualized. It certainly is a venture that leaves many wondering 'why has everything become so watered down'. On the other hand of course it has energized others to re-engage an environment, context/culture, that has dismissed us for dissing them, trusting profoundly that both, working on each other, are necessary for God's continuing emerging work in and for the world.

what is worship?

2007-10-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

I got this great email from my friend Ryan and wanted to pass it along. These are helpful thoughts that further an understanding of church, and the worship life of church, that is more driven by the way individuals and communities embody the message that they so desperately seek to articulate and embrace. These words are at the heart of an emergent expression of church and the way it seeks to order its life through worship, and faith active in love. Enjoy!

"The conversation continues. I was just thumbing through "Love and
Living" by Thomas Merton and came across the following on page 181...

"The West has lived under the sign of will, the love of power, action,
and domination. Hence, Western Christianity has often been associated with a spiritual will-to-power and an instinct for organization and authority. This has taken good forms, in devotion to works of education, healing the sick, building schools, order and organization in religion itself. But even the good side of activism has tended toward an overemphasis on will, on action, on conquest, on 'getting things done,' and this in turn has resulted in a sort of religious restlessness, pragmatism, and the worship of visible results. There is another essential aspect of Christianity: the interior, the silent, the contemplative, in which hidden wisdom is more important than practical organizational science, and in which love replaces the will to get visible results."

The idea of "worshiping visible results" grabbed my attention. We discussed this before in regards to doing church a new way. Having visible results as top priority makes church into self-worship, right? Then self-worship deafens us to hearing God.

The new way puts the focus back on God. The less time spent looking for visible results, means more time available for listening."

Thanks again Ryan for these insightful thoughts.

holy communion?

2007-10-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night I was invited by my friend Dahamane (to the right of me) to their end-of-Ramadan feast. It's always a joy to learn from and talk with my Muslim friends around great food, a cultural invitation, that I don't often get to engage in. I'm in the company of newfound friends from Yemen, Cameroon, Mali, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. It was one of those special evenings where, as you sit and listen, you feel...well, holy, a 'set apart' time, to cross the boundaries of cultures and religions for the sake of acknowledging that we are, all of us, held by God, that God has come all too close to us, united us in him in a strange way we may never completely understand.

So...for all intents and purposes we could go around and articulate, through our various doctrines, how we have come to hold God and realize that there may be some differences, but the reality is we are created in God's image for the sake of reflecting his love and life to the world. Was this meal holy communion? It certainly was a 'set apart' event, a communion feast, a meal where the alien outsider (me) was invited to the table. Not in the same way theologically that many have come to speak of...or is it? This meal was not consecrated in the name of Christ by whose very death the fear of death has been vanquished forever and in whose resurrection presence we celebrate until he comes again (whatever that means). Could we say that Christ was present? Could we say that the Christ who died to reconcile people one to another was present incarnationally embodying that very belief in the way we shared a meal with one another? Would it be true that this is the very kind of community that Jesus came to constitute through his very death on and resurrection from the cross? The very hope into which God's future is unfolding?

For me, the evening was an expression of my new, favorite phrase I've come to enjoy from my new mentor Miroslav Volf: this night was an experience of the "anticipated eschatological community of God."

casual update

2007-10-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

hello everyone. needless to say, life has been very crazy. i was looking forward to a slower schedule when the summer came to an end, being the primary parent and having no other responsibilities than the pursuit of my dmin at luther and starting this emerging church. as it turns out, an opportunity came to help out a struggling local congregation here in flag as the interim pastor, part-time, 30 hours a week. so, that's the story. now i've got the craziest schedule when my wife kacey has been called full time as pastor for lutheran campus ministry and me, the part-time everything role.

it's good work helping out a church, one of those traditional types, helping to ground them in the missional church stuff, really helping me personally to bulk up on some of my own leadership skills and biblical/theological reflections in an adult community once again. it certainly is a breath of fresh air for me.

so that's it. i'll start blogging more when my 20-30 page paper is done for seminary...it's our missional ecclesiology paper; great stuff, this is precisely why i joined the program, for the rich theological engagement and the practical integration of it all. so keep me in your prayers as i continue with this venture.

also, i got sick and tired of waiting to start this emerging community. SOOOOO, this last thursday we met for the first time with seven of us in attendance. it was good conversation, great probing questions from legitimately suspicious folks (we have a lot to repent for in this church that segregates and delineates in too many exclusive ways creating an idol out of every newtonian segment of church). this is what gives me excitement and passion for doing the things that i'm doing. the interim is fine, but this is great! the challenge. the 'out there' aspect of our faith, alongside of those who believe, those who don't, those who question, those who are cynical and those who just want something real.

i'm going this friday to the episcopal convention down in phx as i've been invited to do a workshop on emerging churches. i look forward to it and hope they don't kick me out! i figured out what my handout will consist of...two images, that for me, encompass this missional church expression known as emergent church. one an icon, rublev's icon of the communal nature of God and the other which has become an icon to me, Kissing the Face of God, the window through which reflects God's embrace of all humanity. nothing else, no fancy powerpoints (thx tamie!), just me, Christ's church created, reflected, and brewed in me. a shot or two i suppose, of God's brew filtered through me with the grounds of emergent friends like karen, tamie, chris, richard, mike, morgan, bob, ryan and cecilia and so many more. Thank you God for this perichoretic community!

Where's Waldo?

2007-08-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

Locating oneself amid the world of assumptions, expectations and longings to connect is quite an adventurous, and often confusing and complex tale. For me, the last few weeks have been a good sabbath rest of tending the primary relationships of life, immersing myself with companions along the way who are equally concerned with meaningful existence and how to extend and envelop others in it as well as the experience of bumping up against what many refer to as the modern day ecclesiastical empire.

A two week vacation with the kids and family camping down the oregon coast beginning in Astoria and ending in Newport Beach. One of the most beautiful coastlines along the west that one can ever experience. It sure is healing to breathe in the clean, crisp, salty ocean air and rich fertile greenery that is offered in this stretch of land. With visits to museums, beaches, aquariums, historic bridges and lighthouses, even breweries, i.e. Rogue in Newport Beach, our trip offered great time away with newly shared experiences that will enrich our family life for years to come.

My seminary experience was fine. It's always great to be with those who give you encouragement for the journey engaging around meaningful conversation. I was fortunate as well to have met a couple emergents including one of the pastors at House of Mercy, and share some beer one warm mid-west evening with Ryan Torma at Spirit Garage. Thanks for the time and insight Ryan.

Most recently some interesting developments with the elca national church and concerning the grant we applied for for this new emerging church. I should not have been suprised to learn that the national church has some reservations about this new venture here in Flagstaff and turned down the grant. However, I have been told that it is not dead and that they are interested in learning more about it by sending out some 3 individuals (someone from Chicago, some other leader who has supposedly been doing this emerging stuff and someone else, pretty vague at this point) to have conversation with us to better articulate, all for their own needs, and devise a better system for measurement to ease their concern for investing. Interestingly, after sharing this with one of our emerging companions he said, 'isn't measurement kind of anti-emergent idea?' This is exactly the friggin problem that we have. I am not averse to measurement, but I do have my own reservations as to the old ways we've measured, especially around an externally imposed understanding for success that is much more conducive for a growing suburban territory that is supposedly a universal way for effective congregational development, as if the 'butts in a pew' methodology is the only marker of faithfulness. I know a lot of people who are in church every Sunday who still just don't get it! This is why, as I mentioned back a few months ago, Margaret Wheatley has some wonderful and helpful ways for bridging us into the future. Her article on measurement suggests much more of a feedback based system which can lead to a more effective and comprehensive way of "justifying" one's existence and the broad reach/influence that it is accomplishing.

I'm not really sure how Jesus, or his disciples, ever managed without such a system in place!

The first few hours following this news I was hit pretty hard, but words of encouragement kept coming from both inside and outside that this is exactly what the present church is in need of. We are a part of a reforming, rather than 'reformed', church and we need to, all of us I suppose, learn to learn and be open to one another. I'm not particularly worried as I once was however. At least in my situation, I'm pretty fortunate that my wife is carrying the burden of our financial stability and can branch off and follow the dream of what God is up to in the community of Flagstaff as well as inside of me. Following Derek's first day of VBS I asked him what they did. He said we talked about Abraham. "Daddy", he said, "God asked Abraham to leave his country, with his whole family." Out of the mouths of babes really!

God is asking me to leave a country that many of us have become familiar and comfortable with for the sake of exploring new lands for how God's promises and life are unfolding. I guess it shouldn't come as any surprise that the battling over territory in the middle East is exactly the kind of struggles that will continue to manifest themselves in the life of church. But, at least, I'm still of the opinion, perhaps naive, that the best is desired and that further opportunities will be sought for and found. Not, of course, without its continued frustrations and heated debates. But there is definitely a strong need for everyone in the system to be reforming even as much as those from the mother ship even suppose that we're the ones who perhaps just don't get it.

Who knows how it will all work out. I'm a more than a little suspicious for the strings that come along with funding and am not quite sure if this is exactly what we should be ready and open to receive as yet at this point. So from my perspective with a potential upcoming consultation we'll be interviewing them with as much consideration and critique as they desire to check us out.

We're bridge builders! McClaren described this in some article somewhere, and I completely agree. To what, I'm not completely sure. Perhaps to a more diverse perspective of being and doing church that is as shaped by the dreamers and grassroots movers as it is encouraged and even welcomed by those at the supposed "top" of the ecclesiastical food chain.

The story continues to unfold for sure exposing our our own assumptions and expectations as we dream and bump up against one another. My only prayer is that I don't become too cynical, and that my cynicism is upheld by hope instead. For after all this is not my venture or yours or theirs, but God's! For me, that's a word of hope.

D. Min. Week at Luther Seminary!

2007-07-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

This is the week I'm in class at Luther Seminary for my d. min. program in congregational mission and leadership here in St. Paul, MN. Two weeks each year we get together for our on-site cohort work with several other students, one week in July and another in January. We're immersed in a theological whirlwind of missional church imagination. We're wondering around multiple thoughts, from Western to Eastern perspectives of Trinitarian theology and everything in between; and how various theological ecclesiological assumptions inform our way for being/doing church.

A couple simple, initial and yet profound nuggets...

"A missional church discerns God's activity in the world and gets on board with what God is already doing."

"Getting people into church is not the end of God's mission, for the horizon of God's kingdom is beyond the church and into God's world."

We enter into prayer each morning with the seminary community at Chapel of the Cross and enjoy the beautiful artistic expressions scattered throughout the seminary landscape.

House of Mercy, St. Paul MN

2007-07-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

On Sunday evening I worshiped with another emerging community here in the St. Paul area. House of Mercy is of the American Baptist tribe and are immersed in the downtown area of St. Paul. The worship was wonderful emergent form with words that didn't connect the dots for you, meaningful liturgical acts of our common work as God's people, proclaiming the promises of God through the indigenous kids 'art camp' (their version of vbs) and of course the Holy Eucharist. Needless to say, it's always difficult to describe these worship experiences. It was helpful to have some further conversation with Russell, one of their pastors 11 years, following worship.

One of the most beautiful parts of the liturgy was a dedication. The parents were invited forward. A piece was read on servanthood and reference made to John 13, Jesus washing of the disciples feet. The parents were then invited to was the little feet of their newborn baby as a promise to be servant to their girl. The father cradled here with her feet dangling over his forearms while the mom gently poured water from this pitcher over her feet. They were dried, prayers and community commitments were exhanged. Absolutely beautiful!

Peter Rollins on the 'emerging' of Church

2007-07-16T03:14:00.000-07:00

This helpful and direct quote comes from Peter's website coordinates regarding what the 'emerging' of church is all about. It is in reference to his understanding as it relates to the community he serves, ikon. Emerging is one of five coordinates available to read at their website.

Emerging
"Flowing naturally from the previous statements Ikon does not view itself as having reached some final destination/destiny but rather as being on a journey toward that which forever transcends us. As a result of this we understand ourselves in a continual state of kinetic movement and fluidity. As such we would prefer to call ourselves a community becoming Christian rather than a community of Christians, for if a Christian is someone who selflessly follows Christ and radiates divine love in a broken world then we are profoundly aware that there is much of our being that lies in darkness, still needing to be evangelised. The term ‘emerging’ should not then be thought of as a provisional one that will some day be replaced with the word ‘emerged’, for we embrace the idea that re-reading, critiquing, constructing and deconstructing are all processes which remain vital for our spiritual development. By recognising ourselves as pilgrims and sojourners we endeavour to regularly meditate upon the direction of the movement and be open to the divine call that would draw us down paths we have not yet discovered. As such there is an implicit ambiguity and openness built into the heart of our structure."

Who's neighbor to me?

2007-07-15T13:34:00.001-07:00

Luke 10:25-37
All too quickly we want to ask the question who's our neighbor. We want to figure out what/who God wants us to touch all too quickly before realizing the depth of our own being touched by a Presence which engages with us in a way that is much more akin to the relationship between a Jew and a Samaritan. What is that relationship? Well, the people of Samaria were half breeds, considered such by those superior religious and righteous Jews, who themselves were part of the true Abraham-Isaac-Jacob tribe. What good could an outsider, like a "Sammy", do to provide for a godly Jew that such a Jew didn't already have? Well for starters...life, conscientiousness, true companionship, a demonstration of true humanity.

Perhaps through good intentioned interests we do want to know who we can be of service to in this world. We do, many of us, want to know who our neighbor is and, at least on a good day, when we're feeling good about helping others, help out. This good Sam story seems to pry into the depths of the Complete Other, foreign to our own sense of welcome, coming to save us along the ditch, this good Sam being God, who is 'moved to pity' by our own helpless condition and sets us up with good health care and assurance of another day. So what do you think? Will that traveler, perhaps it was a Jew but the text doesn't explicitly say so, be willing to reach out one day and help someone else? Will this experience in anyway change his heart, 'move him with pity', when he comes across another traveler similar to himself.

I wonder...looking into our own reflections and the ways we're broken and have been received through compassion by others, embraced and accepted fully by God for who we are, will that cause us to be more compassionate too? Or will we resort back to the ways of the priest and Levite? Something in me, that good 'ol cynic I guess, feels that the secondary question wants to replace the first, that is, 'who is my neighbor?' The first however, "who's been neighbor to me?", seems to be suggesting that the alien Presence, completely different than myself, God if you will, has come and welcomed me just as I am in order to show me that I am something of worth, significance, even as those around me pass me by along the way. I'm wondering today about motivation. I'm curious about what 'moves one with pity'.
Perhaps as human beings it is by taking the time to peer into the reflect pool of the inner self realizing that in our darkness, emptiness, and isolation we're not alone. There is One who cares deeply and picks us up. And again, perhaps it is through this realization, that in our own fragile nature, Someone has taken an interest in us, maybe then we will learn to take an interest in those who are not really too different from us after all.

So as this week moves along I'll be attentive not merely to the neighbors I run across on my journeys, but also, be wondering what neighbors God is sending my way, to soften and re-sensitize me to my true humanity.

Could it be that the good Samaritan, in it's multiplicity of incarnations, is present in the emerging church, those of us half breeds, who are in relationship to the mother-ship church? Could this radical other reality be an expression of an emerging body bringing restoration and healing to another who is dying? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Is protestant mission an oxymoron?

2007-07-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

The emerging church, or the church emergent for that matter, is undergoing a lot of criticism and critique in so far as it is seeking to do/be church in radically new ways that, at least for those familiar with church in their own traditional form, appear unfamiliar. But what about roots, those things that are at once hidden beneath our very feet and which continually nourish and sustain our very existence, that contribute to the current story in which we find ourselves? In particular I'm wondering about my own protestant roots. From all indications I'm beginning to question whether Lutherans can even claim to have a missional approach to church that is not merely reduced or elevated to a system of beliefs. Our very historical origins suggest that we are speaking to an existing "faithful" and "insider" crowd, justifying our particular ways, albeit rich and truthful about who God is, without any concern for those that the Kingdom of God is seeking to include.

A couple things get me thinking and wondering. These words from David Bosch, a South African Dutch Reformed missiologist in his monumental work on the history of mission over the past 2000 years, who speaks about 'Lutheran Orthodoxy and Mission':

"...the Protestant descriptions concentrated on the correctness of teaching the sacraments. Each confession understood the church in terms of what it believed its own adherents possessed and the others lacked, so Catholics prided themselves in the unity and visibility of their church, Protestants in their doctrinal impeccability. The Protestant preoccupation with right doctrine soon meant that every group which seceded from the main body had to validate its action by maintaining that it alone, and none of the others, adhered strictly to the "right preaching of the gospel". The Reformational descriptions of the church thus ended up accentuating differences rather than similarities. Christians were taught to look divisively at other Christians. Eventually Lutherans divided from Lutheranss, Reformed separated from Reformed, each group justifying its action by appealing to the marks of the true church, especially correcting preaching."

"In all these instances the church was defined in terms of what happens inside its four walls, not in terms of its calling in the world. The verbs used in the Augustana (this references article VII on the church in the Augsburg Confessions of 1530) are all in the passive voice: the church is a place where the gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are administered rightly. It is a place where something is done, not a living organism doing something."

"The Reformation had come to its conclusion with the establishment of state churches, and of systems of pure doctrine and conventionalized Christian conduct. The church of pure doctrine was, however, a church without mission, and its theology more scholastic than apostolic." (Bosch, Transforming Mission 248-249)

Is there any missional component to the Lutheran DNA other than a fantastically sophisticated construct of God? I, in no way, want to down play the importance of a balanced approach of head and heart faith, of faith seeking understanding. But I do want to radically critique the same system that is seeking to critique this radical form of missional church known as the emerging church. I suppose there will be some of us who will get defensive regarding our tradition and do doctrinal and historical acrobatics to justify both our own existence but even more that we are a missional church.

Again, don't get me wrong, I appreciate the correction and centrality placed back on God's activity in the world as free gift, a theology of the cross, a vocational emphasis on the life of a Christian and the paradoxical freedom that comes with it.

However, it seems to me that one of the best ways we can approach a deep missional perspective as Lutherans is by "confessing" or "agreeing" that we fall short of a complete and comprehensive ecclesiology and that we are not the ultimate end of what the true Jesus Church is all about. This post (beyond)denominational approach doesn't seek to negate our own identity, but views and lives it in conjunction with other amazingly faithful perspectives. Contextualizing ourselves and integrating the greatness of what we have to offer Christianity, humbly and hospitably, while at the same time embracing the greatness of other deeply profound traditions is key to a healthy future. When we can learn to do this, without an nervous breakdown, I think we will begin growing more fully into what the true Jesus Church is all about.

Why wonder around these things? Well for one, it's a personal struggle to reconcile my own tradition with what I'm working out in this new emerging paradigm. Secondly, if we are to be an ancient/future church or even a church in a postmodern culture, we need to take seriously and critically engage in the family album of the past just as many of us seek to pave a new and faithful way into the future.

I found it quite interesting to read about a couple other thoughts in Bosch's final summary of his book Transforming Mission that are more generally wondering about Christian mission.

"Speaking at a consultation in Kuala Lumpur in February, 1971, Emerito Nacpil depicts mission as 'a symbol of the universality of Western imperialism among the rising generations of the Third World'. In the missionary, the people of Asia do not see the face of the suffering Christ but a benevolent monster. So he concludes, 'The present structure of modern mission is dead. And the first thing we ought to do is to eulogize it and then bury it.' Mission appears to be the greatest enemy of the gospel. Indeed, the most missionary service a missionary under the present system can do today to Asia is to go home!"

and another thought...

"We may have been fairly good at orthodoxy, at "faith", but we have been poor in respect to orthopraxis, of love....there have been countless councils on right believing; yet no council has even been called to work out the implications of the greatest commandment - to love one another. One may therefore, with some justification, ask whether there has ever been a time when the church had the "right" to do mission work." (Bosch, 519)

COTA Contextualized

2007-07-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Click the above title to check out a recent video I got permission from Karen to post on youtube that Church of the Apostles put together. I found it to be a helpful and well done synopsis and inspirational vision of what God is up to through COTA. It is a great perspective of a missional church radically contextualizing itself around an integrated and multivalent ethos of neo-monasticism, a cultural celebration and embrace of community arts, and ancient-future forms of worship.

Will the true Jesus church please stand up!

2007-07-03T21:07:00.000-07:00

The reality is, if we are really honest (but since we're sinners i guess the paradox is we can't be all that honest, anyway) there isn't just one ecclesiology by which we go about being/doing church. But are we even aware of the fact that there are major assumptions underlying the way we are and do church? Most within church don't even realize that there is more than one way of doing it. We know/realize there are different denominations, but not the meaning behind deep ecclesiological underpinnings for what we are then up to on the surface.

If we are honest, church is much more multivalent in its approach than the Western church wants to admit or celebrate. I've been thinking a lot about differing ecclesiologies (ways we live out or understand what it means to be church) such as Trinitarian ecclesiology, missoinal ecclesiology, liturgical ecclesiology, sacramental ecclesiology, Celtic ecclesiology, doctrinal ecclesiology and even incarnational ecclesiology. WHEW!!! To add to the complexity, each of these are viewed differently whether you're speaking with someone in the Western or Eastern church. Many churches embody each of these understandings at certain points along their journey as congregation.

Will the true Jesus church please just stand up! In short perhaps what the emerging church is helping to demonstrate is the expansive nature of church and the ways in which it can be embodied, its beautiful diversity, over against rock solid traditional means of being church that have existed and been passed down mindlessly without any thought as to why we're doing what we've been doing only to allow a modernistic tool such as measurement to let us know we must be off track because our numbers are slipping. Ah, that's not really fair, we have been thinking about this, but we tend to keep it locked up in the place where knowledge really lives and needs to be, the academic realms of the seminaries.

Recently I've been thinking about one of the great distinctions that the emerging church is really confronting head on, not only by talking about it, but living it. What I'm talking about is the distinction between doctrinal or propositional church versus incarnational or relational church. The Western church, and the mainlines heavily included, have operated out of an enlightement/Modernistic church driven by epistomological (knowledge is most important) concerns. And so what this looks like is that we have confirmation classes to inform our young about the baptism into which they were baptized by suggesting that what is most important is memorizing our catechisms and having knowlege "about" God rather than a living, breathing relationship with God. What would it look like, by the way, to just have a confirmation class and their parents discover what church was by doing it, rather than merely talking about it, DO IT. "Ok everyone, your assignment for the next 2 years is to learn how to be church! Now what should we do?" A big request I know.

What I call 'fake emerging' are those communities who are really driving a doctrinal/propositional approach but manipulate others relationally, either aggressively so or REAL nice, for the sake of only pouncing on them later to get to their real point of making the pitch, "now here's what you really need to believe about God. Do you believe it? Pray with me. Now you're a real follower! Congrats!"

What's going on in emerging communities is an emphasis and freedom within relationships, gathered around particular habits of Christian faith, to discover individually and corporately, who God is, what God is up to and what God is calling us to do. Through an incarnational ecclesiology relationships are central rather than doctrine. We are more concerned with how we are treating, living with and loving one another rather than what we actually believe (doctrine) about God. Or that the doctrine becomes so as it is lived not merely confessed. Or even more, that it is through a relational process that beliefs about God emerge. Belonging precedes believing. This is a little of what I think Peter Rollins is up to when he talks about orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy in his book How (Not) to Speak of God.

The emerging church understands that people come to trust and are drawn into God, not by telling people what to believe and then expecting them to become the very essence their propositional faith suggests ("you need to believe x, y or z and by the way, I'm ABSOLUTELY right about all this so just believe it"). NO!!! Rather, through relationships engaging freely and openly around the promises of God that for us as Church come through time shared in dialogue with the ancient practices of faith which include worship, scripture, prayer, service to the poor, oppressed and marginalized and the ways we reflect and use the resources God has given us. Of course, each of these habits come with incredible baggage because even as I share what they are each one of us has preconceived notions about how to define them.

The approach I'm celebrating and learning to live into is no different than Jesus' words to love God and love neighbor. Great! Now what, how do we do that? How do we embody that...and together? For me, this incarnational, Trinitarian ecclesiology fits, I don't know about you.

EmMersion Pictures

2007-06-30T22:45:00.002-07:00

Click on the above title which links to my pictures from my EmMersion experience and check out my some of my pictures on my flickr account. Love to hear your thoughts.

emerging, incarnational, trinitarian, sacramental, ancient-future worship

2007-06-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about worship a lot lately. A week ago Thursday I worshiped alongside of this community, Church of the Beloved in Edmonds, WA a church plant from COTA. Emerging worship can be an interesting beast to navigate for those just learning it's own particular ethos. With the sophisticated images configured, projected and displayed, at least sophisticated for those not familiar with "how to do it", and the amazingly gifted song leaders with voices that could sell, and well, to a relaxed atmosphere of couches and coffee. This veneer can appear to be "the holy grail" we've all been searching for, but in reality and beneath it all, is a profoundly thoughtful, incarnational, sacramental and trinitarian expression of integrated cultures, sacred and secular if you will, that is all reflected through this particular worshiping community. One could easily go away thinking and believing that anything less than cool graphics, hip art, with fantastic lead vocals, in a relaxed environment is the essence of emerging worship. I can understand that, but there's really so much more going on.

So again, I've been thinking a lot about worship lately. This primary function of being church is deeply personal for each of us and with those personal convictions come strong opinions around what is most important and necessary for a TRUE worship experience. In a book entitled “Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America” there was an interesting reflection that I thought I’d pass along as we wonder together and live into the centrality and commitment we have as church to our worship life.

A woman "who, after attending worship and disliking the sermon, asked her visiting friend, “Now tell me, what did you get out of that worship service?” The woman was taken aback when the friend replied, “That’s not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, ‘Did this community of God’s people worship God today?” It never occurs to many people to define worship in terms other than meeting individual needs, or to put God rather than personal satisfaction at the center of worship. This situation is the result not just of people’s individual perversity, but of the pervasiveness of the power of individualism that tries to determine not only the answers but also the way one shapes the question.” (MC, p. 112)

What missional activity are we up to during worship? What missional work is God doing as we, being church, gather from Sunday to Sunday? These are the heart of the questions that worship in emerging communities are exploring and experimenting around. How we answer, live and embody this and questions like it, speak volumes about where we are at in our, collective and individual, journey with God and what God is trying to communicate through us. How we answer this question has profound and far reaching implications for our very practice of worship.

Now go in peace to love and serve the Lord...with your heart as well as with your head, and your feet as well as with your mind. Thanks be to God!

I've Quit Going to Church!

2007-06-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

Alright, at first this may seem a bit rash, but yeah, there's good reasons for this. Many of these good reasons are just tied into some of my own issues, of which I have many, even some of which I'm even aware of. This issue of which I speak is one of my greatest pet peaves. And so, I'm coming out to the world to say I'm no longer going to be going to church. This way of speaking about church conjurs up in me notions of location, destination, accomplishment and perhaps one less thing "to do" on my long, ongoing lists.

The concept "going to church" is even something I'm trying to engage with my children around, beautiful and formative little souls that they are, even as they are only six and four. "We don't go to church Derek, WE ARE THE CHURCH! Damn it! Come on, can't you get this stuff?" Perhaps a bit harsh, maybe a more gentle approach would be helpful. But seriously this goes on deep down inside of me, this little voice cries out, WE DON'T GO TO CHURCH! One of the functions of being church is to worship and so we worship with the gathering of God's called and sent ones. But even then, do we really "go" to worship or do we rather attend worship with deeper implications for whose "attending" to whom?

And so on some other level too I'm wondering what and how our language forms the ways in which we understand who we are as Christ's Church. What difference would it make if we began referring to ourselves and our function as church differently? Would it mean anything? Would we be dismissed, or perhaps, heard differently by those with whom we speak? How much of what we say, in our language, is even for others, or does it also and even more have something significant to say about our own formation? I'm inclined toward the later on this one while still allowing others to engage in and around us as we are faithful to who we are, as Church.

I mean come on, do we really want to say we 'go to church' when at the same time in and similar ways we 'go for a run', 'go to the grocery store', 'go to a baseball game' or even 'go to the bathroom'? Is this form of "going" implicitly getting in the way or constipating anything God's Spirit is wanting to birth within and through us?

Who knows really, maybe it doesn't make a difference how we speak about these things. Maybe I won't bother after a while trying to swim upstream against the linguistic currents. Maybe I won't be able to shape even my own children in an ecclesiastical language that is more constistent with identity than organization or function. All I do know is that going to church for me feels like I'm reducing and limiting the scope of who we are as church and what God is doing in and through us/me, for the sake of the world. So for now, I've quit going to church...although I'm seriously thinking of staying faithful to my calling that came through church to the way of being church with a community that is the body of Christ with particular habits God's Spirit uses to create and sustain faith that reconciles and propels forward and beyond itself into a world in need of hope and light.

The Commodified Christ

2007-06-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

Never knew Jesus cost so much! Hanging out with Karen yesterday and doing an errand to a local Roman Catholic supply store to buy some wine for worship I couldn't help myself but to snap this photo. You've got to be kidding me! The image, at least for me, is pretty telling regarding how we as church are miscommunicating the nature of who we are as well as the ways we've adopted American values of marketing and selling Jesus to the world. If this doesn't create cynicism for being church and living in Jesus I don't what does.

Moot Community and the More than Right Rev. Ian Mobsby

2007-06-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

No doubt one of the true gifts of my time here in Seattle was getting to know and learn from Ian Mobsby, an Anglican priest of the Church of England. Around three years ago he began an emerging community called Moot in Westminster, London UK. If you want to know what 'moot' means look it up, that's the point of the name. On Monday morning, EARLY, we (aaron kennedy, ian mobsby, karen ward and I) headed down to Portland, OR for our first and most important stop of the day at Stumptown Coffee Roasters, as you can tell it helped us to wake up! We traveled down for the second to the last of 18 lecture presentations Ian did throughout US cities regarding his recent Masters in Theology (more like our American D. Min. programs however) about the emerging church. The title of the book is Emerging and Fresh Expressions of Church (link to it down below at "Emergent Books" and get one, you'll have to order it from their community as it was self published through Moot).

His presentation at Trinity Cathedral in Portland was an explication around Rublev's icon as the locus to emerging mission and ministry. The communal trinitarian expression gets at the heart of the emerging church conversation and movement in and through culture. There are numerous and great articles on Moot's website as well where you can go to explore more about what this thingy is all about. You can access them by clicking on moot:greyspace.

I greatly appreciated our time together, new friendships and the opportunity to learn alongside the ways in which church is unfolding in fresh ways in the Church of England. Thanks Ian and Aaron! Had a great time with you guys!

2007-06-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

I discovered my blog's namesake yesterday on one of my excursions around the city of Seattle, it caught my interest and opened up my imagination for the ways my life in service to God is an unfolding adventure. The shop with which I'm engaging is the world, the location and stage of God's mission and movings. What a blessing and gift to wander around it and be attentive to the ways in which God's Spirit is making God known and trying to just get on board.

zen church

2007-06-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

This morning on my run around Greenlake I was intrigued by an asian gentlmen in deep meditation, legs crossed and hands pressed, right alongside and in the midst of pedestrian traffic. It was touching to witness, but even more so when I came around the 2 mile lake and saw him a second time, STILL there and very content and peaceful. I thought to myself for an instant, I'd like to go over when he's done and ask him to teach me what he was doing. But then I thought again, that question says more about my Western linear thinking and probing than his Eastern methods of practice. In reality his response would be to invite me into his way of meditating, inviting me to watch him and imitate him. And in so doing I would learn for myself along the way through experience and reflection as I was beginning to put into practice what I was observing. He would have put it back into my court to learn for myself, to hear, see, taste and feel for myself.

This is the life of a monastic. This is the life of a way that cannot in any way be reduced to formulas, 5 minute descriptions and/or a powerpoint program that, when completed, one completely understands. The only REAL thing one can understand from these approaches is an epistemoloigcal framework without the innards and true substance that comes with embodying spirit through community and the practices that shape and knit together such communities.

As one whose own spirit is inclined toward the contemplative this kind of intentional community, around a vow of life, is both attractive and intriguing. Zen church, or a monastic expression of church is no more than an Eastern expression of communal life that revolves around a particular ethos/habit of faith that allow God's Spirit to penetrate in and through, to bring transformation and awareness of God's life lived for me and beyond me.

thinking outside the what?

2007-06-22T11:44:00.001-07:00

What a great work of genius. Certainly God's people are more creatively innovative than a bunch of fleas, wouldn't you think?

My time here in seattle with the communities of COTA, Freemont, and COTB, Edmonds, has been a time to rise above and beyond the lid recognizing that not merely is it we ourselves who are stretching the boundaries of thought and action, but rather are participating alongside of a God who is already at work in such ways, in ways we have been constraining, controling and commodifying.

cota worship and other thoughts

2007-06-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Worship is at 5 p.m. every Saturday evening. COTA is gifted with wonderful musicians who understand the liturgy and incorpate the ancient elements of it in fresh, creative and innovative ways. There were around 70 people in attendance many of whom were in their 20's. Although getting to know them last night I have learned that most of them are disenfranchized Christians in the sense that they no longer were able to find a home within the conservative/fundamentalist churches from which they were raised. Last night hanging out at a pub one of them mentioned that there really aren't too many unchurched who are participating. However, following the worship I meet a young 20 something guy who did not grow up in any faith tradition and was open to exploring. He was invited by a friend who is a member at COTA.

It seems to me that there are couple things going on here that are very helpful and beneficial for the church and yet there are also shared challenges very similar to what I see all churches struggling with too. Some helpful things include providing a space where those on the margins of faith and Christianity can stay connected through the openess to question and wonder and at the same time to grow in deep and meaningful ways through rich and ancient practices of faith. It is clear from many with whom I spoke that the ancient practice of liturgy holds an engaging sense of meaningful encounter with God, especially the eucharist.

So simultaneously to providing space for those who are interested in these alternative and yet faithful ways of being church and followers of Jesus there is also the role of shaping a new attitude within the broader culture of what it means to be Christian. That is, the mission of the church is functioning as redefining in positive ways who the church can be for and with the community as an extension and expression of God to the world. The role of course is very important and is a lifelong and continual process that they as many churches will be faced with.

Finally, the challenge is this, where are all those who are unchurched and why are they not coming to participate? My personal answer to this question has to do with the fact that conversion is a process that happens over the course of years and decades. The reality I think is that COTA is still, even after only 4 years, establishing themselves by earning the right to be heard by those who have dismissed the church and in no way view it as a viable option for growing in knowledge of God or engaging in a committed community intentionally around Jesus Christ. These are the challenges that all of us are faced with as we commit ourselves to living the way of Jesus even as we ourselves are caught up in the promises and warnings of God too.

here we go...

2007-06-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the biggest day of the year in the neighborhood of Freemont, WA as they celebrated solstice with a parade, a sustainability fair and the Freemont fair market. All of which I was immersed into this first day of the experience. I was recruited to help out as evey apostle and monastic does around here, they are all workers contributing to the general welfare and promotion of the church community. We got up early to help set up a tea tent, one among many tents, at the sustainability fair that was sponsored by the Freemont Art Council. Karen, a member of this art council (another leadership strength in being connected to and involved in community power players in town) volunteered to host the tea tent having managed a tea bar for a year and for their first store front property here at church of the apostles, more fondly referred to around here as COTA. Even more importantly she was able to do so under the COTA name, great presence and publicity!

COTA is lcated in Freemont, a 20,000 person neighborhood right outside of the Seattle area, and is considered the least churched population in the nation. There are only two churches in this neighborhood Freemont Baptist and COTA. I'm told by some cota members that the baptist church is a dying church that is not adapting in any way to the surrounding neighborhood. Cota houses itself in a property that was formerly a Lutheran Church. They are currently in the process of purchasing this property that they inhabit and are using it for the Freemont Abbey, a neighborhood art center and separate non-profit entity started by Karen. The arts here include audio, visual, literary and culinary. The Freemont Abbey has an executive director who oversees all the events that happen within the center including booking groups and artists, as well as the marketing communications that go along with it. Church of the Apostles then can say that they only meet at the Abbey even as they become a cultural attraction of engaging community around the arts.

So why exactly would I come all this way to learn about the emerging church and get up early in the morning to help set up a tea tent, and hang out the neighborhood's biggest cultural gathering of the year?

This really all leads into an important conversation and consideration about what an emerging church exactly is. Karen shared, during our tea set up what she called the three pillars of the emerging church that include a churches engagement around culture, theology and leadership. This first pillar is quite important especially in those communities that are suspicious, and for good reason, of Christians. There is a great need to recontextualize who we are over against horrible stereotypes that tend to create negative images for who we really want to be as God's people. The following picutre taking at the entrance of the Freemont Market explains what many people believe about who we are.

So in light of this, how ought we to missionally convey an alternative way of being church that is embedded in a deeply theological understanding? First is the idea of how we engage and immerse ourselves as God's people within culture not by demonizing it but allowing ourselves to be in it without judgment, and in many ways in fact, celebrate along with it. Because God has redeemed all of culture and is continuing to redeem it, including ourselves, drawing it to Godself through Jesus Christ for the sake of reconciliation in God AND for the sake of our neighbors in need, we need to be radically open to the ways in which we engage with it. We can affirm the goodness of and shared experience in culture and the common humanity that is shared within it. God is working in and through others creatively to establish the joy of community engagement that brings with it new life. It is alongside of this incarnational recognition that we stand and participate in culture without judgment. This is an important conversation we need to be having within church that, in many ways, the emerging communities are taking the lead on.

transitions, training and tastings

2007-06-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are...in a new space soon to become place, at least for me. This new space not defined merely or simply geographically but spiritually, emotionally, pastorally and even familially. Kacey, my wife, was ordained Sunday June 3rd after 8 long years of preparation for a call that had been deep seeded in her for years! Thank God! She has been ordained to serve Lutheran Campus Ministry full time as pastor. For me, I transition into some new roles, one of the biggest, as primary parent. This last week was pure gift to be with our children Derek and Grace! Here's my dear Grace poolside, what a beauty, huh?! I know, I've heard it before, she looks a lot like her mother, that's where all the beauty comes from! Amazingly enough I was also able, as newly installed domestic manager, to clean the house, to the surprise of some I'm sure, I am able to do these things.

The other transition, professionally, is being demoted, in some way, to learn what it means to pastor on the streets, in and through culture, living, being, breathing and tasting life and church in fresh ways. And so I find myself in Seattle with Karen Ward at COTA for twelve days. After a great lunch with my dear friend and colleague Laurie I headed off to the Abbey to set up my space. The openness and willingness to engage in the Spirit's work in and through others at the Freeont abbey is something I anticipate as a cross culture experience...many things will be new and many will not. On the way we realize, I suppose, differences but even more and profoundly so, similarities.

Keep me in your thoughts and prayers as this journey begins. We're never really alone, that's the promise. If we can actually believe that life can be lived so much more fully and non-anxiously. Peace friends.

more than information but "in-forming"

2007-06-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

On Friday June 1 from 9:30 to 2:30 I shared in conversation through the invitation of the Episcopal Bishop of Arizona Kirk Smith. I joined 11 other priests in a conversation in and around the emerging church. I thought the discussion went well as we all wondered together what this is about, what God is up to here and what God might be calling us to do. I've got to say, the more and more I'm involved in trying to describe what this thingy is all about the best I can do is to speak about it as a relationship that needs to be engaged in rather than merely and/or only understood. The heart of the emerging conversation is what happens and is happening to those gathered in and through the engagement. Unfortunately we have cornered ourselves to some degree within the life of Western church with an epistomological emphasis that wants to comprehend and compartmentalize everything completely. The 'understanding' for emergents happens by engaging the things of the Holy, ('imago dei=relationships') through conversation, prayer, listening to God and each other, reading and reflection around Scripture and frankly, just living out the way of Jesus...TOGETHER.

I think the challenge comes when we are so results, rather than process, oriented. Living the way of Jesus among different contexts and cultures needs to be given the freedom to organically and incarnationally emerge. The epistomological persuasion of the Western church in some ways has already predetermined what that will look like. This is, for me, why my first principle of the emerging church "holding-being held" is so important. This paradigm shift actually lived out helps us to hold Truth, God, Scripture, etc., much more gently, carefully and even playfully while yielding to the more theologically profound faith of being held by God who is shaping and molding us as his people, in his image, in and through us for the sake of the world.

The bishop asked us at the end of our time together 'what emerged for you today?' It was clear to me that this engagement was an invitation to new relationship with new voices creating space and becoming place where God's people could learn and be hospitable to one another. I am encouraged and hopeful by what God's Spirit is doing down here in the Southwest. There appears to be an openness to trying "new things" even as this emergent thingy isn't as new as we would like to think. Where do go from here? What happens next? Well I hope conversation continues because its not simply the new information generated from new voices around the table that merely makes us SMARTER, its rather the power in relationship this is being 'formed-in' each of us through our listening and sharing. And it is there that the Trinity is made known and comes alive, by how God is forming me through community engagement.

some lightness for the journey...

2007-05-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

sorry i haven't posted in a while. there's a lot of stuff going on as i wrap up life as pastor for campus ministry, help to coordinate our synod assembly as this is the 100 year anniversary for Lutheran campus ministry and we're hosting, getting grants for this new emerging church, completing my dmin papers and reading, saying good-bye to students for the summer, it goes on. i'm sure i'm not the only one, but whew!

anyway, here's some great viewing pleasure to add to your day. i got them from an emerging friend of mine here in town.

1. Great tips on how to parent your children in the faith
2. door to door atheists
3. the submissive jesus prayer
4. the atheist delusion

a perichoretic lifestyle

2007-05-02T12:03:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to live in and around the life of God? Are we really bringing truth to the world? Or are we just caught up in the truth that embraces us, dwelling in time and space, that reflects through us? Rather than some watered down and vague description of an ultimate existence, what place does the trinitarian God play in unfolding an understanding of God's life in this world in conjunction with mine and yours? The inter-play of these, yielding one to another, exposes and presents for me, the picture of God whose very relational existence, speaks of a movement much more intimately involved in all of life than we could ever imagine or even hoped could exist. The circle dance of God's existence is a lifestyle I'm wondering about...what does it look like? What does it mean for me, those I encounter and the event going on between us? What does it mean then to be 'sent' (missio) in this God's name? Am I really 'sent' from a place of static existence or am I centrifugally propelled from a pre-existing presence/momentum breathing through me? In what ways can Rublev's icon of the Holy Trinity become a window through which we wonder about and engage in Gods' mysterious and holy communion with humanity and all creation?

This emerging journey has led me into a lifestyle that is more interested and intrigued with listening and learning than talking and teaching. If I have become the expert, woe is me! If I can be so arrogant as to try to communicate the mind of God, woe is me! If I become the sole voice, echoing my own misunderstood assumptions and perceptions of truth, which have more to say about me and my own myopic and biased environments that have shaped me, woe is me!

This listening and learning is, for me, being grafted into a partnership within God's Spirit revealed through discernment in the lens of a guy named Jesus, the words, people and circumstances that testify to him and the people of my own learning community. This 'learning community' of which I speak includes what some may refer to as 'insiders' and most especially 'outsiders' (I personally don't prefer such designation for those who like the reduce the church to this most simplest form of complexity, the binary, and who can all too often and conveniently include themselves among such elite places).

God's perichoretic movements take place around those who are beyond my familiar and comfortable life, those who engage my imagination of God's presence in and through them, helping me to develop a broader experience of God's voice and activity. Who is this circle for me that God is using? It is my Greek Orthodox friend Father Nicholas as I bump into him while picking up my children as he also waits for his or who, over coffee, teaches me the riches of an Eastern tradition that is in many instances and at once neglected/dismissed and simultaneously deeply rich and profound. It is through other parents who share a similar place in life as we, with our children, can gather with them to journey in the blessing and challenge of raising kids. It is through conversations with and among those who deeply care about the choices we as humans make around our relationships and the environment and their ability and concern to create sustainable and healing structures and lifestyles for healthier ways of relating. It is through voices searching to articulate the thoughts and movements of God on both mystical and practical levels. It is through conversations around philosophical constructs that challenge and deconstruct frameworks by which I've thought were solid foundations of truth and meaning, church and God.

There is freedom in this dance...for the joy of dancing comes (even as this pilgrim with two left feet can resist the dance) in the fluid movement, the give and take, the dynamic God-between, which involves me in ways beyond myself. Getting 'caught up', to use the apocalyptic language of John's Revelation, I am listening and learning what it means to not so much become a holding tank for God's Spirit, as a broken and porous vessel through whom God's breezes blow. For in many ways and often, I hear this wind's sound, but don't always know from where it comes.

Use me, O Lord, as an instrument of your love, as one through whom you breathe to create sounds of silence and movements of Spirit.