The market is flooded w/ religious bloggers, of which I am complicit.
So just had a great convo w/ Ron Pai and the RCC staff about technology in the church and how it’s revolutionizing Christendom, much like the Gutenberg press had done centuries before. I mean, think about it; other than business folks and scholars, who uses technology more than the Church? Blogging, twitter, skype, you name it, religious technophiles comprise an important and large segment of the technosphere. Enter the idea of “statewhores” or in more accurate parlance, “stathoe’s” (did I spell that right?) who are basically in it just to get noticed, trying to rack up stats on their websites. But isn’t that what the game’s about? Getting noticed? Read more…
What does worship look like in the emerging church?
In deconstructing everything ecclesiological, does the emerging church discard, re-embrace, or presume to re-define our historical heritage in Christian worship? I personally tire of the repetitive choruses not because the words are bad, but because good words have been drained of meaning through over-usage. Thus is the worship music of the past few decades. So I wonder what the response of the ever-emerging church is today? Do we amp up the volume even more in an effort to compensate for our mediocrity as John Stackhouse asserts, (in a great article btw), or have we not found that “new song” just yet?
How is your (emerging) church re-inventing, re-defining, or returning to our historical heritage of worship in the church?
Continuing previous thoughts about pastors and depression. I’d like to introduce another important and related dimension; Sabbath. What do u guys think? Is Sabbath related to keeping depression @ bay? My talk last Sunday on the subject resonated w/folks but I find myself still wrestling: Is Sabbath really about a 24-hr period per se? What day should it be then? And is not Sabbath (in a sense) re-defined, maybe even re-voked in the NT??? At any rate, Read more…
As per a past post I re-raise this issue where angels fear to tread; well, thank goodness no one reads my blog anyway. Professor of New Testament, Rikk Watts, here @ Regent College has given a chapel lecture titled: “Up Zion’s Hill: Imagining a New Jerusalem” – and I walk away feeling like I missed the punchline – kinda half-full / half-empty – but here’s the synopsis: Read more…
Discovering how healing it is to be @ Regent – to talk about life, vocation, spirituality with other ministers-to-be. There is healing happening here in the context of community. But as I look back in my life I have not always had such support; where the resources of community have been made available to bring restorative listening and “life coaching”. I think of my recent foray into church planting, which has potential to be one of the loneliest periods in a pastors life. So I wonder if there is a way to strategically subvert the alone-ness inherent in planting a church. I’ve already concluded after the failure of missio that if I were ever crazy enough to attempt planting again I would… Read more…
Love him or hate him – he’s important. He’s the new voice of evangelicalism, and while he may not have received the warmest reception from the chilly crowd in DC, he is going to be the next Billy Graham advising presidents and world leaders. He’s in a caliber of his own. So here I’ve transcribed the text of his invocation – it’s choppy – so feel free to correct – but what did u think of his invocation? Read more…
Apparently he’s in the news again, with rumors of making some kind of comeback via documentaries. While the past few years have been rough on him – some say the homosexual-bashing conservative evangelical deserved it – I don’t see what he’s trying to accomplish with a public statement – perhaps some vindication. You gotta feel bad for the guy – his life, vocation, future, promise, career, possibly family life – all destroyed. As a pastor myself I am sad for him, but at the same time I don’t know why he’s trying to get in the spotlight again – no one ever really recovers from these things. But the real question is – how did this ever even happen in the first place? Did he have any accountability or any confessor at all? Was he alone in his struggles? And how much imbalance did he have in his life to get to the point where he was using crystal meth and seeking out prostitutes? I know first-hand the hardships of pastoral ministry – but someone tell me -
how does somebody get like that?
No better way to get the year started, aye?
Instigated by my recent foray into the theology of the Old Testament under professor Ian Provan, I found myself fascinated by a number of things – his perspective on Ezra / Nehemiah / Esther for one – but also the look into the wisdom lits, particularly Song of Songs. Long been held an allegorical reading of the love of Christ for the Church, I’ve always walked away thinking that was a stretch; it always seemed to me a pretty obvious picture of one thing: eros. Defining songs as allegorical just never really convinced me as I can’t seem to see that as the author’s intent. At any rate this is not so much about splitting hermeneutical hairs as much as it is about the deep redemptive value of a theology on sex; Songs has the potential to address the neurotic dysfunctionalism of our view on sex today; the problem is the allegorical message of Christ and the church keeps getting in the way – it seems to be blinding us to the more obvious – the literal interpretation of songs as a theology on the “healing of sex”. But at any rate:
Is there indeed, such a thing as a “theology of sex”? Is it in there, in the text? Is it an a priori of secularism? Is it relevant, devotional-type material? Can you make heads or tails of it? Does it speak to the church or the individual?
While Rick Warren has no problem making headlines, I think Obama’s recent selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration is going to propel Warren even more into the spotlight and a really important position, more than ever before. Love him or hate him – he’s going to be an important figure. Here’s why. Read more…
Maybe last night’s sermon @ NCC that Christmas is “jihad” went too far. Read more…
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