|
the ramblings of an ecclesial dreamer
for amphetadesk users:
Other rss readers: *RSS FEED*
"We must not be afraid to dream the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality."
Vaclav Havel
My name is James Mills.
I am married to Janell and
we have three kids--Jarod, Matthew and Teryn.
We live in Parker, Colorado.
In addition to this blog you can find out more about my ecclesial dream at Knowtown
or Missio Dei.
If you would like to add your thoughts to a rambling,
click the "Talk Back" link at the end of each post.
If you would like to talk IM (MSN) me or send me an email at: jmills@knowtown.com
..::Favorite BLOGS::..
Andrew Hamilton
Andrew Jones
Doug Pagitt
Dry Bones Dance
Emergent Group Blog *NEW*
Dwight Scull
Fluid Faith
Jason Clark
Jason Smith
Karen Ward
Katy Raymond
Maggi Dawn
Michelle Bainbridge
Rudy Carrasco
Scott Holden
Scott Raymond
Tony Rodasta
..::LINKS::..
My Personal World Clock
Ekklesia Project
Emergent
The Holy Observer
The New Pantagruel
The Vine
Reconstruction
Observing Differently
Open Source Theology
..::Previous Ramblings::..
|
Emergent Group Blog...
There is a fairly new Emergent Group Blog initiated by Jason Clark. Fellow ecclesial dreamer Jason Smith gets the ball rolling...
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/30/2004 10:45:00 PM
|
Friday, January 30, 2004  |
Pony Express, Y2K4...
My twin sister was able to get me an older used laptop for one of the Backyard Missionaries who needed one. It was nothing fancy but it worked and the price was right. I shipped it off at the end of October via USPS. Being that it was an older laptop it would have cost more to ship it to Oz via FedEx than the laptop is probably worth so I though I would save a few bucks. I sent it the cheapest parcel post available and was told it would be 4 weeks. I thought that would be acceptable and he would have it maybe by thanksgiving. Well, turns out it just turned up last week! I thought the Pony Express was put to pasture with the emergence of the automobile but it appears they may still be in use if you send things cheap parcel post through the USPS. That poor pony was probably very tired by the time he swam down under.
Moral of the story: Use Fed Ex. You get what you pay for.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/29/2004 09:36:00 PM
|
Thursday, January 29, 2004 |
Faith, Person, and Church...
that is the title of the last chapter I read in Volf's book. He is continuing his argument that the church is an image of the Trinity and exploring how we relate to the church and each other and how our ecclesiology effects our soteriology, etc. He begins this chapter like this:
"As is well knownm Friedrich Schleiermacher distinguished between two opposing forms of Christian communion. Protestantism, he maintained, 'makes the individual's relation to the Church dependent on his relation to Christ', while Catholicism 'makes the individual's relation to Christ dependent on his relation to the Church.' Similar to the social models customarily called 'individualism' and 'holism' (or 'colectivism'), these two basic ecclesial models seem to be imcompatible. One comes either by way of Christ to the church, or by way of the church to Christ. Yet appearances are misleading here. Only a simplistic theory contains the alternative 'person-Christ-church' or ' person-church-Christ'. In the compex ecclesial reality of all churches, the relation of individuals to the church depends on their relation to Christ, just as their relation to Christ depends on their relation to the church; the two relations are mutually determinative."
He works this out in great detail in the rest of the chapter. I like what he is saying here because I think it is very important. We not only form churches by confessing together our faith in Christ, but the church forms us as well. I think we (at least I know I am guilty of this) sometimes forget that the church is designed to be a formative assembly--it ought to shape us, change us and mature us in deep and tangible ways. As I read through this chapter I wondered how much of my ecclesial dreaming is an attempt to deny this? I wonder if "emergent" dreamers are so focused on what the church is becoming in this post-modern, post-Christian society that we forget to look at the fact that the church also needs to be changing us. Maybe if we would shift our focus we would make more progress. Maybe we need to assemble, confess our faith before each other and the world and focus on how God wants each of us as persons to emerge to be more like Christ and THEN we will see the church emerge in a wonderful new way. I don't know if I said that right because I'm still thinking this through.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/29/2004 07:45:00 PM
|
|
Volf continued...
Did I say already that this book is incredible! I hesitate to post too many comments about this book because I will not do it justice. This should be required reading for all ecclesial dreamers. I should also state clearly that this book is designed to be a complete argument. It is probably not appropriate for me to pull out small portions of it because you really need to read the work in totality to appreciate it. Having said that, I am going to post more on it anyway because 1.) its really really good, and 2.)I know many of you will not be able to get it. Just remember that these reflections are only my warped observations of a much larger and well articulated argument.
Volf had some interesting insights into the church as "bride" or "body" of Christ and how that relates to the "one-flesh" of the marriage relationship. It would be a mistake to say that Christ is the church just like it would be a mistake to say that the husband is the wife. It is possible to keep your identity as a person and be "one-flesh". He suggests that we need to have this non-organic understanding of "body of Christ" if we are to understand our relationships to the church, each other and the world. Also, he has some great thoughts (that I do not have time/space to get into here) about gathering "in the Name" of Christ and the name of Christ being Immanuel, God with us. Fascinating! He does a great job of showing the difference between merely "preaching" and the act of "proclamation":
"Every genuinely Christian speech act is, at least formally and implicitly, an act of confession. Thus, for example, a preacher can proclaim Christ as Lord only if the activity of proclamation is accompanied at least formally by the activity of confessing faith in him. Without this confession accompanying and supporting the proclamation, there is no proclamation. By confessing faith in Christ through celebration of the sacraments, sermons, prayer, hymns, witnessing, and daily life, those gathered in the name of Christ speak the word of God both to each other and to the world. this public confession of faith in Christ through the pluriform speaking of the word is the central constitutive mark of the church. It is through this that the church lives as church and manifests itself externally as church. Although such confession is admittedly always a result or effect of the 'word', just as faith, too, is a result of effect of the 'word' (see Rom 10:8-10), the 'word' is proclaimed in no other way than in this pluriform confessing. The confession of faith of one person leads to that of others, thereby constituting the church."
This has HUGE implications for the "leadership" questions that keep cropping up in the protestant traditions. Volf explains that he is going to speak about ordination in more detail later in the book so this thought is a little incomplete but I loved this quote:
"If one takes the communal confession of faith as the basis of ecclesiality, what, then, is the significance of office and of the sacraments for the being of the church? Since the only necessary intraecclesial condition of the constitutive presence of Christ for the church consists in people gathering in the name of Christ to profess faith in Christ before one another and before the world, the presence of Christ does not enter the church through the 'narrow portals' of ordained office, but rather through the dynamic life of the entire church. The presence of Christ in not attested merely by the institution of office, but rather through the multidimensional confession of the entire assembly. In whatever way 'office' may indeed be desirable for church life, either in apostolic succession or not, it is not necessary for ecclesiality."
Last two thoughts for this post as it is too long already: First, Volf has some great thoughts on the need for local churches to be "open" to other local churches (and even further to the world). There may be differences of opinions but we must come to a place where we see each other as confessing the same Christ. Without this openness, Volf says we will be "a private religious club and not a church of God". Secondly, Volf states that while we can speak for a plurality we can never speak for all. This is important within churches and between churches. We can have A voice but we cannot have THE voice for the Church. As he puts it, "on this side of the eschatological gathering of the whole people of God, there can be no church in the singular."
Is it just me or is this good stuff?
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/28/2004 02:25:00 PM
|
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 |
Don’t quit your day job…
for an ecclesial dreamer that is good advice. If things go well for Dryject® of Colorado I may have a new day job in the near future. Too early to tell but this could be a good thing for me. At any rate, with the many changes going on at the Denver Department of Human Services it will be an interesting year vocationally for me.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/28/2004 12:07:00 PM
|
|
More reflections from Volf...
I am continuing to get a lot of great stuff from Volf's book, After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity
I have finished the overviews of Ratzinger and Zizioulas' thoughts and am starting the beginning of Volf's argument. Remember, this book is about the Church as the image of the trinity and is dealing with relationships persons have with the church and each other (especially the role of "leaders" to laity, which is a hot topic right now among the many the blogs I read). Volf begins his arguments with a simple and profound question:
"Exploring the question of ecclesiality means exploring what makes the church the church. On the one hand, this represents a restricted point of inquiry, since it overlooks much of the rich life and multifaceted mission of the church; our interest is directed not toward how the church ought to live in the world according to God's will nor how it can live successfully in the power of the Spirit, but rather toward the sine qua non of what it means for the church to call itself a church in the first place. On the other hand, we simultaneously find that the question of ecclesiality directs our interest toward that which is decisive in the strict sense, toward that which supports and shapes the entire life and mission of the church. The preeminent ecclesiological significance of this question comes fully into view when one considers that its answer must in its own turn involve a consideration of the most important soteriological, anthropological and Trinitarian issues."
What hits me is how fragmented we really are and as a result we have so many disconnected pieces of ideas and theologies that we assume when we say things like "church". Volf is pushing me to be more reflective about this so that I truly understand what I am talking about. Our ecclesiologies assume certain theologies, soteriologies and anthropologies that may be inconsistent with each other. This is important because we often overlook these assumptions and as a result we don't ever get anywhere. For example, the issue of women as pastoral leaders is cropping up all over the blogosphere. But we have to remember that we are not talking about women leaders in a vacuum, we are placing this in the context of women leaders in the church. This means that we need to first answer Volf's foundational question, "what makes a church a church?" The same is true when we talk about things like "church planting", "mission", etc.
I think the reason so many of our conversations about emerging ecclesiology digress into (unhealthy) conflict is because many of us are too lazy to do the work that ties all of our fragments together into a holistic theology. We have inhereted, adopted, assimilated or perverted the theology of past ecclesial dreamers and created an ecclesiology that looks more like Frankenstien's monster than the body of Christ. Does it really make sense to have goals of "planting churches" when we are not even able to answer what makes a church a church? Can we really paraphrase the great commission as "planting churches that plant churches" when there are dwindling and dying churches that need us? Are we to value our individual needs in a church community above the need to participate fully in the universal church by exercising our gifts? Can we resolve the issues of ecclesial stewardship when we have no understanding of how "leaders" relate to "non-leaders" regardless of their gender? How are we to understand the "preisthood of all believers"? Should we see this, as my friend Tre Cates says, as a bunch of sub-priests (laity) in submission to the High Priest (pastoral leaders)? Until we get around to wrestling with these foundational questions of the faith in our moment of history I doubt we will ever "emerge" from or into anything. We will simply be putting new clothes on the monster.
What excites me about all of this is it is forcing me to do what many emerging ecclesial dreamers have been talking about for a while now and that is rethinking theology, soteriology, ecclesiology... We are not trying to figure out how to put the same message in a new, more contemporary container. We are looking at changing the message itself. I think this is good because the issues of gender, social action, distributive justice and every other one will not be fully addressed until we have a theology that allows us to really deal with them. It is not enough to recognize that women can and should lead. We have to dismantle the structures that pay pastors $100k a year while the single mom who runs the childrens ministry makes $700-1000 a month. When churches budget in this way it will not matter if more women are involved at higher levels because the structure itself is broken. I am looking forward to getting further into Volf's argument as I sense he is about to rock my world.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/28/2004 10:39:00 AM
|
|
Snow...
We got a surprise snowstorm yesterday so I am off to shovel some walks. Can't wait for spring to come.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/26/2004 09:36:00 AM
|
Monday, January 26, 2004 |
After Our Likeness...
The Anapapist let me borrow Miroslav Volf's book, After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity and it is great. As the title indicates, Volf is exploring how the Church is an image of the trinity. Throughout the book he is interacting with a Catholic theologian (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) and an Orthodox Theologian (John D Zizioulas) as he explores the relationships of the church to our triune God and persons to the community of faith. EXCELLLENT!! So far the book has been surprisingly readable even with the deep theological themes. Here is a quote from the introduction to the American edition that hit me as I read it because it speak to issues that have been on my mind a lot lately:
"Put most broadly, my topic is the relation between persons and community in Christian theology. The focus is the community of grace, the Christian church. The point of departure is the thought of the first Baptist, John Smyth, and the notion of church as 'gathered community' that he shared with Radical Reformers. The purpose of this book is to counter the tendencies toward individualism in Protestant ecclesiology and to suggest a viable understanding of the church in which both person and community are given their proper due. The ultimate goal is to spell out a vision of the church as an image of the triune God. The road that I have taken is that of a sustained critical ecumenical dialogue with Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiology in the persons of their more or less official representatives.
Though feminist theology is complex and multifaceted, the major thrust of feminist ecclesiology can be fairly summarized by naming titles by two of feminist theology's most prominent proponents, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's Discipleship Of Equals and Letty M. Russell's Church In The Round. In Russell's terminology, the main task of feminist ecclesiology is to dismantle the model of the church as a 'household ruled by a patriarch' and replace it with the model of 'a household where everyone gathers around the common table to break bread and share the table talk and hospitality.'
A major strand of my argument stands in close affinity with this egalitarian agenda of feminist ecclesiology. I argue that the presence of Christ, which constitutes the church, is mediated not simply through the ordained ministers but through the whole congregation, that the whole congregation functions as matter ecclesia to the children engendered by the Holy Spirit, and the whole congregation is called to engage in ministry and make decisions about leadership roles. I do not specifically address the ordination of women; I simply assume it. Everything in my ecclesiology speaks in its favor, and I find none of the biblical, anthropological, Christological, and theological arguments against it persuasive--neither those propounded by fundamentalist Protestant groups nor those offered by the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church."
Obviously I agree with his take on ordination of women and his articulation on the participation of the whole community is intriguing (gets much better as the book goes on, by the way) but that is not what really hit me. The big idea for me was the way he frames "gathered community" as being in opposition to "a community of grace". I think there are a lot of ecclesial dreamers who think that their gathered communities are communities of grace but Volf is setting these ideas up in opposition to one another. This makes a lot of sense. The concept of gathering seems to assume that those who gather believe the same way, where as a community of grace allows for real, genuine and intimate relationships to form even between people who may not agree with one another. There is no grace needed to share a table with someone who thinks, believes and acts like you do. Grace is only required when you did in the cup with someone who is not like you. This is a BIG idea and one I think we need to wrestle with. Perhaps the reason the "emerging" church is getting identified as primarily white and male is that we have not realized the opposition between "gathered communities" and "communities of grace".
I vote that we become more intentional about becoming "communities of grace" knowing full well that to say that means that my voice cannot be the voice of the community of faith I am part of. This means things may not turn out like I want them to. When everyone around the table has a voice I may have to eat new foods with flavors I am not used to. Do I have the courage to go there? I hope so.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/26/2004 09:32:00 AM
|
|
More Radical Orthodoxy...
I commented before on the book, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology. One of the best (definitely the most difficult) books I read last year. Now there is a good group blog going on. Check it out.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/26/2004 12:26:00 AM
|
|
Man on a mission...
I am hooked on NASA TV. I watched the coverage of the landing of Opportunity and it left me speechless. I can't help but think there are a thousand analogies full of spiritual meaning in this historic event but I can't get my pea-brain around it. I think of things like context. If I built a robot that took pictures and examined rocks it would be no big deal but if you launch it into space and hit a moving target millions of miles away and can still control it with the equivalent of a 56k modem it as astonishing. And watching the celebration and news conferences I am impressed with the concept of "team". This was truly a group effort. I like the relationships that are in play and the way the questions determine who will answer. Questions about the rovers are answered by someone different than questions about entering the Martian atmosphere. I sense there is something really cool being demonstrated in this but I can't quite put my finger on it.
But in all of this exciting stuff one man has really impressed me so far. Steve Squyers seems pretty cool. He is definitely a man on a mission. When he speaks he does it with passion that is captivating. He can talk about rocks and minerals for 10 minutes and have the audience hanging on every word. I actually look forward to these press conferences. Anyone else watching the events of Spirit and Opportunity? I would love to hear what your thoughts are.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/25/2004 11:47:00 PM
|
Sunday, January 25, 2004 |
New blogs...
I am linking to two new blogs that I have really been enjoying lately. First is Maggi Dawn. This is a great blog from an ecclesial dreamer who thinks with a refreshing perspective. Has got me thinking about a lot of things in new ways. Next is Fluid Faith. Jimmy is writting some very good autobiographical ecclesial dreaming stuff right now. I am resonating with his blog right now because it sounds like a situation I was recently in at my past church. His honesty and courage is inspiring.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/25/2004 11:12:00 PM
|
|
Facts are facts...
Here is one. Miroslav Volf is awesome!!
I'm reading him for the first time and love it. More later...
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/23/2004 03:10:00 PM
|
Friday, January 23, 2004 |
Same as it ever was…
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?
(courtesy, Talking Heads, Once in a lifetime)
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the beginning of The Corps of Discovery’s great adventure. Ever since reading Stephen Ambrose’s great book Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West I have believed strongly that the Lewis and Clark expedition is a beautiful analogy for the emerging church. The story of a group of men and one woman (who may have been the most important person in the Corps but is severely marginalized because of her gender) joining together in a quest to find the new has many touch points with emerging ecclesial dreamers. Like them we are standing with our backs to the known world and facing a horizon of unknown, unpredictable situations. Like them we are given a charge that will require undaunted courage. And like them, many of us are looking for something that doesn’t really exist.
Lewis and Clark were looking for an all water route across the North American continent that hypothetically was there. It looked good on paper. Unfortunately, the headwaters of the Missouri River ended with the Bitterroot Mountain range. Along the way, they ran into Indian tribes and political systems that they did not expect and had no idea were coming. In almost every case, the information they had about what they would find on the journey was wrong. And even though the trip never accomplished what it initially set out to do, those of us in America still celebrate this expedition as one of America’s greatest exploration success stories (rivaling the other successful failure of Apollo 13). Why? The Corps never let the geography of theory trump the geography of reality. They faithfully followed the road (in this case, the river) that was before them. They did not find what they were looking for but they learned to appreciate and value the actual things they discovered around them every day. What can we learn form this?
I have this tendency to look for things that don’t really exist. I dream and scheme about what “church” can look like as we move forward in history. I stand with my back to the known and engage in the conversation with other dreamers who are imagining new ways of practicing the faith. And a lot of the theories floating around are very, very good. But I tend to start putting to much faith in the geography of theory and it alters my course away from the river. Fortunately, Janell is every bit as competent a guide as Sacagawea was and exposes this flaw in me before it’s too late. She is bringing me back to the ability to “see” and appreciate the things that are in my reality. Over the past year I could tell you many theories about how to minister to younger people and get them into “church” but I have failed over and over again to engage with my own children. I could tell you all the reasons why I believe it is important that women be allowed freely to serve as pastoral leaders but have failed to listen to my own wife. I could articulate my dream of being involved in a community of faith that was made up people from all walks and stages of life not realizing that I already have that in the context of neighbors, workmates and friends.
I was reading through Ephesians last night for the millionth time and am amazed at how well Paul speaks to the geography of ecclesial reality and how little he mentions the things I look for as “church”. In this epistle the only building mentioned is the one Christ is building out of us. No “worship leader” but we are all instructed to speak to each other in songs, psalms and spiritual songs. No “senior pastor” but we are all called to do works of service that are prepared for us. No word on how to create children/youth ministries, but called to parent our children well. He touches on spouse relationships, labor relationships and even instructs us to lovingly include our neighbors. In the end, Paul discovered a beautiful church in the faithful of Ephesus because he was not looking for something that didn’t exist. Instead, as a radical ambassador of reconciliation he was redeeming everything that crossed his path.
I am beginning to realize that because I am a follower of Christ who happens to have a spouse, children, neighbors, friends and workmates I have everything I need in the geography of reality to be part of a community of people from all walks and stages of life. I do not need to keep “looking” for something that may or may not exist. I just need to stay on course and continue following Christ with undaunted courage.
Thanks, Janell. You are a great traveling companion.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/23/2004 10:52:00 AM
|
|
Rough week...
This has been a rough week for me. Things in my day job are getting a little crazy and it feels like I am slowly becomming disconnected from some important things. Time to take a little time for reflection, refreshing and reconnecting.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/21/2004 07:10:00 PM
|
Wednesday, January 21, 2004 |
New RSS feed
I am attempting to use a NEW RSS FEED . If anyone tries it out let me know how it works. Thanks!
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/20/2004 10:01:00 AM
|
Tuesday, January 20, 2004 |
Ecclesial leadership models...
My friend Jason has been talking a lot about leadership development lately and he has my wheels spinning. In the center I find myself agreeing with him that the church does not do a good job of preparing leaders and opening up leadership positions to both genders and a diverse demographic of people. But there is something in this whole conversation that does not sit well with me that I am not quite able to articulate. I thought if I tried to write about it here that perhaps some of my random thoughts might get tied together or corrected by others.
I guess my initial question is, "are there any truly ecclesial models of leadership?" It seems to me that even when those of us in the church say "leadership" we are thinking in the framework of corporate, capitalistic business models. And those in the business world who write in a way that attempts to bring ecclesial principles into the vocational sphere (such as Peter Block in his great book,Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest) do not get the same voice as the Maxwells and Coveys. I wonder if we would be as excited to participate in "leadership development" if we really understood what that meant from an ecclesial standpoint?
The gospels record occasions when the disciples would be arguing about "who would be the greatest in the kingdom" or "who could sit at the right and left hands of Christ" and he had to remind them that the ecclesial kingdom does not work that way. The first will be last, the weak will be strong, blah, blah, blah... Later, Peter (arguably the "leader" of the disciples) would write that we are not to rule over people the way the rest of the world does. But still we talk about preparing successful leaders in the church.
I am beginning to think that the problem is not that the church is doing a bad job of leadership development. In fact, it is doing too good of a job but using the wrong criteria. So we have an overabundance of powerful, visionary ecclesial dreamers who do not have a framework of leadership that allows them to think of others as more important than themselves, pray for their enemies or love those who persecute them. They do not create structures that allow the oppressed to be heard over those with the power. There are no systems in place for the younger (or wrong gendered) "leaders" to be seen and heard. These characteristics are seen as weaknesses and our leadership models do not allow for weaknesses even though we all can quote the verses about God's strength being made perfect in our weakness. Puzzling.
I am beginning to see the church as a redemptive process of re-creation. God is moving through the church to redeem all things, including our warped views of leadership which are based on power, control, conformity and coercion. In the original creation story man is given dominion to steward over everything in God's creation except other human beings. And while some take the biblical language of mutual submission in a marriage relationship to argue that ALL men have dominion over ALL women, the Genesis narrative is pretty clear that men and women, working together as followers in right relationship to God would rule over the rest of creation. But only God is to rule over human beings. And when the political nation of Israel longs for a human to rule over them God reminds Samuel it is not a rejection of Samuel's prophetic voice (he was most likely too "weak" to be a leader) but a rejection of God's rule.
I think Jesus’ correction of the disciples’ quest for power and Peter's instruction to those who serve as under-shepherds are both pointing us back to the created order and design of God. So how do we implement this in our ecclesiological contexts? Can we begin to re-imagine and re-define "leadership" without appealing to the political or corporate business models that quest for power and influence? Can we begin to lead as "servants to ALL" instead of exercising control over others until they conform to the patterns we have adopted? Or will leaders who take this path of stewardship development continue to be persecuted, marginalized and even assassinated like Dr. Martin Luther King? I vote that we start renarrating leadership after the pattern of Christ who willingly laid down his life to illustrate a greater power. Why pay thousands of dollars to be mentored by a powerful leader like (insert name of your favorite leader here) when we can follow Christ for free? "Free" is starting to sound pretty costly. Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/20/2004 09:56:00 AM
|
|
Blogmatrix...
Several people have got me hooked on rss readers. I finally got one installed tonight and I love it. But there are still a lot of blogs I like to read that do not have an rss feed (you know who you are!!!). Visit here and add an rss feed to your blog.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/17/2004 10:47:00 PM
|
Saturday, January 17, 2004 |
It takes one to know one...
I saw Big Fish Friday night with my family. I liked it but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I think this may be one where I would like the book a lot better. But perhaps it takes a great story-teller to recognize all of the subtle beauty in a film about story-tellers. Just so happens that I link to some writers who have the ability to write very well. I like to believe that if I read enough gifted people I may somehow acquire the gift. At any rate Scott Raymond is a GREAT writer and captures the theme of Big Fish in ways I can only dream about. Read and enjoy.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/17/2004 04:05:00 PM
|
|
Know Thyself...
Thanks to the Anapapist for helping me discover my true self:
"God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience
of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless."
| You are Augustine!
You love to study tough issues and don't mind it if you lose sleep over them.
Everyone loves you and wants to talk to you and hear your views, you even get things like "nice debating
with you." Yep, you are super smart, even if you are still trying to figure it all out. You're also
very honest, something people admire, even when you do stupid things.
|
What theologian are you?
A creation of Henderson
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/17/2004 09:51:00 AM
|
|
New from THO...
Frightened black family flees Pomo Church is in the newest issue of The Holy Observer. This would be even funnier if it were not so close to the truth in some cases.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/16/2004 07:01:00 AM
|
Friday, January 16, 2004 |
MSN messenger...
For anyone interested in IM, I am now using my email address for my (MSN) IM account. Feel free to add me to your lists if you want.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/15/2004 09:25:00 PM
|
Thursday, January 15, 2004 |
The New Pantagruel...
Volume one is now online. I have not read it all but this is good stuff.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/15/2004 08:44:00 AM
|
|
Ramblings...
Yesterday, Scott, Jason, Dwight and I had the great good fortune to have breakfast with Jason Clark as he passed through Colorado on his way to Jacob's Well in Kansas City. It was a great morning of encouragement, challenge, sharing stories and ecclesial dreams. It made me reflect a little bit on how thankful I am for Emergent the collective group of Christ followers that brought the 5 of us at the breakfast table together. God is doing good things.
Then, last night Jason Smith let me borrow his copy of the show "the Changing Face of Worship". This was a documentary that examined several new ways of doing church. It was pretty interesting and I may write more on that later. But it made me wish that some of the ecclesial dreamers at these churches kept blogs. You may notice that I returned Doug Pagitt to my blog roll. He was on before but then he stopped posting for a while. He is posting more regularly again so I put him back. He is a great dreamer and I love the vocabulary he uses to express what it means to be the church. He says things in a good way and his blog is a good reflection of that, though I think he is much better in person. I found myself wishing that Tim Keel would return to the blogiverse. He is not posting anymore but his archives alone are worth reading. Tim was really good at sharing some outstanding resources and I found all of his book recommendations to be excellent. So that got me thinking about other people I wished had a blog and the two that pop into my head almost immediately are Chris Seay and Tony Jones. I can understand why they do not blog but it would be good stuff if they did.
Next, I added a link to what looks like a great organization, The Vine, that I was introduced to by Dry Bones Dance. I will be attending a regional dinner/discussion hosted by the Vine in February so I will post my thoughts at that time. I must admit that I find the descriptions of the organization on their website to be some of the most refreshing ecclesial dreaming I have heard in a very long time. It should be good.
Finally, I wanted to make a brief comment here about a small get together that Jason Smith instigated for Missio Dei. Long story very short, I do not think this meeting lived up to anyone's expectations BUT I think it got us all thinking about getting together in a way that we were not thinking before. I don't want to say too much more than that until our group gets a chance to discuss this and process it together as I know my opinions are heavily slanted and I need the input from the rest of the community to really flesh out my final interpretations. We do have another meeting penciled in for the end of the month. I was thinking about these assemblies in the light of the movie Groundhog Day. What if every time we got to gether we just did the same disciplines over and over until we get it right? We could start each one by saying, "last time things didn't turn out like we feel God is leading us so we are going to do it over and see what happens. Like Bill Murray in the movie we could keep making adjustments and corrections until the next thing you know we have reached a new place and the process starts all over again. This process will require some serious revisionist ecclessial dreaming but you all know I'm OK with that.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/14/2004 08:56:00 AM
|
Wednesday, January 14, 2004 |
Waiting is hard...
I wrote about "waiting" this Advent season (by the way, anybody out there celebrate Epiphany??) and I am finding that waiting is very hard. Especially when you are waiting for good things. I am finding it difficult to wait to read this book and am anxiously looking forward to the San Diego Emergent Convention.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/09/2004 12:33:00 PM
|
Friday, January 09, 2004 |
Hearing the Gospel...
Special thanks to Rudy Carrasco for pointing people to the outstanding message, Hearing the Gospel by Ray Aldred. This is one of the most powerful messages I have read in a very long time. I have read it several times already and it continues to break me each time. I hope and pray with all my heart that the community of faith I am part of will take this message seriously as we attempt whatever cross-cultural ministry God calls us to. Thanks RC!
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/08/2004 02:13:00 PM
|
Thursday, January 08, 2004 |
Prodigal Gatherings...
I spent much of the holiday season sick but not all of it. I actually got to do some fun stuff and a little bit of celebrating. I had the opportunity to meet the gifted individual behind Dry Bones Dance. She informed me of a local organization called Prodigal Gatherings. I spent some time checking out the website and I am totally amazed that organizations like this can fly under the radar for as long as they do. What this group is doing is awesome.
I know a few people who do not like to give financially to churches for various reasons but they do like to give to "ministries". If you fall into that camp I would suggest that you check out Prodigal Gatherings and consider giving to this organization.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/08/2004 08:44:00 AM
|
|
The Modernist Element in Protestantism...
I found this interesting article from Edward Farley (author of the book I have been recently posting about). In this article he has a different take on MOdernism in the Protestant traditions. He specifically explores the Presbyterian denomination but his thoughts are easily transferable to other mainline denominations as well. He presents some interesting insights on pluralism, science, etc. Overall, he makes a case for viewing the "modrnism" of our heritage in a positive light. Interesting.
"SOME MAINLINE Protestants are tempted nowadays to think that these are, to borrow from Dickens, "the worst of times." Mainline denominations, once used to vitality, growth, and widespread influence, experience torpor and decline. In denomination after denomination, the response to this experience is intensified denominational consciousness and repristination. But the historical past of the Protestant mainline tradition is complex. It includes not only the event of the Reformation and such seminal figures as Calvin, Knox, Wesley, and Campbell, but a century-long series of controversies in which these denominations struggled to come to terms with historical ways of understanding Scripture, science, and ecumenism. The outcome of this struggle was, to use the term that arose in the struggle itself, the modernist element in the Protestant mainline. This element is also part of the vitality and contribution of mainline Protestantism and it risks much when it attempts to repress or forget it." continue reading, The Modernist Element in Protestantism
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/07/2004 10:01:00 AM
|
Wednesday, January 07, 2004 |
Stumbling at the speed of life...
I am finding that I do not have the ability to keep up with life. Today I went from ecclesial dreaming, to work related issues, to a lunch with a friend who is having a rough time right now, to a hopeful discussion on the church for the next generation and back to work again. It feels like my being is pulled along at warp speed and my mind is crawling along at a snails pace. No doubt in about 10 years I will finally realize what I should have said to my friend at lunch today...
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/05/2004 04:07:00 PM
|
Monday, January 05, 2004 |
Last thoughts on Fragility.
I finished Farley's book over the weekend. This book was so much better this time around becaase I was a little more familiar with some of his thoughts and where they were coming from. He ends the book really well with suggestions for reformulating the problem (the loss of "theological" education in the church and university) and suggesting some ways to improve things.
There are a couple of really powerful themes that weave throughout this book. The first one is the idea of "fragility of knowledge", hence the title. For Farley, this idea of fragility is a way of showing that knowledge is not as sturdy as we hope for because it fails to look at things in all of their dimensionality and complexity. When we fail to listen to the correctives of other perspectives knowledge becomes fragile. Additionally, the next theme, is that of corruption. Fragile knowledge is actually corrupted knowledge. This leads to a third theme, and one that really hit me in the book, the idea of "redemption". If knowledge can be corrupted it can also be redeemed. I like this theme because it is truly "good news" and reminds me of the calling of Christ followers to live lives of redemption as ambassadors of reconciliation.
Much of the last part of the book is an attempt to correct the widening gulf of "knowledge" and "ordered learning" between the clergy and the laity. Farley does a good job of showing that ordered learning with in the Christian faith has become fragile and corrupted because it has the wrong aim-- to make clergy. So the only way you can access truly ordered learning is to choose to become clergy. The Seminary, university and church will only make serious ordered learning available to clergy. What this does is minimize every other vocation. But shouldn't Christian workers/laborers/employees be taught how to live reflective, responsive, redeeming lives regardless of their vocation? How can this be done when only the clergy profession is valued in the Christain education system? But now the clergy have a problem as well. They have become irrelevant to the majority of us who live in a different vocation. They have bought into the myth that ordered learning is only for themselves so all others must learn "the faith" through their homeletics. Now they have the pressure of preaching things that are "relevant" for those poor people who live in a meaningless vocation. To preach "relevant" messages they have to contribute to the fragility/corruption of knowledge. The gulf becomes wider and wider. One final quote from the book:
"The matter of clergy education aside, a hermeneutic of vocation for the believer or the university student of the Christian religion must seek to understand both the primary and the secondary situations of vocation.
The primary situation of vocation is the work forming the primary occupation of the human being. To believe this is not necessarily to surrender to an older piety that seeks work-sanctioning "calls" to particular occupations--to nursing, farm labor, plumbing , or heavy metal music. To suppose that there are "calls" in this sense invites human beings self-deceptively to invent specific divine sanctions for what they do. A similar self-deception occurs when church leaders imagine that there are specific callings to their line of work alone. Rather, the point is that the believer need not live in dichotomy that severs work from the spiritual and churchly life. The environments or social worlds of work in contemporary society pose special problems of interpretation. The environments may be governmental, military, educational or corporate bureaucracies, small shops or stores, or service-oriented institutions. Almost all of them are organized around the succesful accumulation of the primary means of survival, power, and influence--namely, money. Work involves specific kinds of social relations, opportunities for human accomplishment, and occasions in which there is the corrupt experience of power. It is through work and the primary occupation that culture exercises its most powerful influence on human beings. If believers regard work as outside the spere of theological interpretation, they turn the issues associated with work and the environments of work over to the environments of work themselves. They subjugate themselves to the management of human responses that the work environments promote. This is why work poses a special hermenuetic task for theological study which is not reducible to clergy education.
In addition to the primary situation of vocation, there is for the believer a secondary situation as well: that of the believer's "occupation" in the ecclesial community. The community of faith is the occassion of egalitarian experience in the sharing of ritual, sacramental life, worship, and social life. But the community of faith cannot, ironically enough, nurture this egalitarian experience without allocating tasks and responsibilities. An utterly heirarchical allocation loads virtually all the tasks on the ordained leadership--which in the past was, and in some quarters still is, wholly male. In a nonhierarchical allocation, the community of faith endures over time and pursues its aims through a wider distribution of roles and responsibilities of teaching, music, community service, pastoral care. The responsibilities may be brief(e.g., a stint of official leadership) or unduring(e.g., a lifelong teaching of children). In any case, they do not constitute one's primary occupation or work. They instead define special situations that evoke the believer's interpretive response. Vocation, then, embraces both the believer's work and the believer's special way of being part of the ecclesial community. Both are situations of interpretation and both call for disciplining--that is, self-conscious rigorization--of the interpretation by ordered learning."
My fellow ecclesial dreamer, Tre Cates, has done a lot to try and resolve this in his own way and I think he has a lot that he could say about this. He has succesfully brought his organizational, structural church to a close and has entered the area of redeeming vocation. I am looking forward to spending some eyeball-to-eyeball time with Tre in the next few weeks to see how things are going and what he is learning. One of the things his story has me thinking about is the "fragility of gatherings". Could it be that we have become so tied to the gathering that it has become not only fragile but corrupted? I am amazed that we work so hard to create succesful gatherings when so many of us spend a minimum of 40 hours a week in a natural gathering and do not know how to redeem that. Who is going to teach us to be faithful in the contexts in which we live when all of our time is spent shoring up the fragile structure of the gathering that only serves to continue widening the gap between clergy and laity?
To put it another way, how are our gatherings helping us to redeem our faith rather than corrupting it? How are we breaking down the walls of ordered learning that divide our clergy from our laity? How are we becoming more a people owned by God and following the model of the incarnation in the contexts of our church gatherings? (like the author of the epistle to the Ephesian ecclesia does.) I am becoming more convinced than ever that the ecclesia is not just a good idea when it comes to redemption but is actually a necessary thing, a sacrament. How are we going to fulfill this responsability faithfully in our moment of history? I have some ideas that I need to work through but let me say that I am very hopeful. I think good things are going on all around us and that we, as the church of Jesus Christ, are truly emerging into a more faithful way of being the church.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/05/2004 01:47:00 PM
|
|
The Money Quote…
Here is my favorite excerpt from Farley’s book so far:
”Why is it that the vast majority of Christian believers remain largely unexposed to Christian learning—to historical-critical studies of the Bible, to the content and structure of the great doctrines, to two thousand years of classic works on the Christian life, to the basic disciplines of theology, biblical languages, and Christian ethics? Why do bankers, lawyers, farmers, physicians, homemakers, scientists, salespeople, managers of all sorts, people who carry out all kinds of complicated tasks in their work and home, remain at a literalist, elementary-school level in their religious understanding? How is it that high-school-age church members move easily and quickly into the complex world of computers, foreign languages, DNA, and calculus, and cannot even make a beginning in historical-critical interpretation of a single text of Scripture? How is it possible that one can attend or even teach in a Sunday school for decades and at the end of that time lack the interpretive skills of someone who has taken three or four weeks in an introductory course in the Bible at a university or seminary?
A defensive reaction to these questions will point to the religious—and Christian—education movements, with their sophisticated literatures, the profession of specially trained Christian educators, the thousands of devoted teachers throughout the church’s Sunday schools, the carefully designed denominational curriculum arriving month after month and year after year as attestations of the church’s seriousness about the education of the believer. Such evidences only deepen our mystery. In the light of all that, how can it be that the majority of Christian believers remain theologically uneducated?”
Long live the intellectual elitists! The rest of chapter 5 continues to illustrate the gulf between clergy education and the education of the laity. It is a fascinating look at the rise of anti-intellectualism in Evangelicalism and how we not only continue to allow it, but have designed our systems to keep it in place. In the footnotes he points out that we continue to perpetuate “…the first commandment of Protestant church education, which is the commandment not to engage in ordered learning.”
For the rest of the book Farley explores the “study of theology” by reformulating the problem and offering a suggested solution. Good stuff.
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/02/2004 02:23:00 PM
|
Friday, January 02, 2004 |
Changes for a New Year.
Jason Clark has made some very nice changes to his blog. If you have not checked out his stuff in a while I highly recommend it. Jason has some great thoughts on all things ecclesial and shares a plethora of outstanding resources. Whenever I need to feel challenged or inspired I turn to Jason's blog and have yet to be disappointed. Check it out when you have time to surf all of his side links.
Typepad looks reaaly good. Is it a sin to have blog envy?
posted by Ecclesial Dreamer @
1/02/2004 12:11:00 PM
|
|
|
|
