About a year ago I figured out that if I didn’t put a moratorium on talking politics, that it was all we would ever talk about.
So I implemented a 1-hour prohibition on saying the ‘T’ word in our gatherings. It has a made a huge difference.
Here is a short (5 min) video
How do you experience the divine presence in an average day?
This topic has become one of my favorite things to chat about. I have found two powerful trends that seem to be developing.
First: Depending on your phase of life, there are certain ‘givens‘ that seem to be assumed and everything else becomes a ‘variable‘. In the formula of life, the question seems to hinge on either how to manipulate (change) the variables or how to transform a given into a variable.
[more about this in the video]
Second: This seems to be one of those categories where “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. People who can sense the divine presence in one area of life can translate that into finding the sacred in many other areas and moments of life. People who don’t develop that ability in the big stuff, unfortunately, can’t detect the divine in any area of life.
This is why I am so passionate practicing together when we have gathered! If Sunday is done right, it helps me see the sacred in the other six days of the week. If our activity at church is effective, it opens our eyes to see the sacred at work in the rest of the world.
Watch the short video and let me know your thoughts. I love comparing notes on this topic.
This 5 minute video presents 3 ideas that come together in a powerful way.
Here is my most adventurous and experimental theology.
Please let me know what you think and how I can tighten up the concepts (as I will be presenting this to a live audience soon)
Yesterday’s post on Christianism is Frankenstein Christianity is here as a 6 min video
Step 1: Formalize
Step 2: Hierarchy/Authority
Step 3: Military Power/ Violence
Step 4: In/Out Boundary
Step 5: Membership not based on faithfulness/fidelity
You now have an ‘Ism’. This “floating signifier” is untethered from its anchor teaching and model.
We know that the way we measure ‘success’ as church leaders is not an accurate way to address actual ministry.
The old line about ‘nickels and noses’ doesn’t tell us if we are actually doing God’s work in the world or meeting our communities’ needs.
It also doesn’t tell the story behind the number … there is no room for narrative.
So I have come up with a different metric that I want to propose.
Moving on from Nickels and Noses to:
Hands – how many people did we touch?
Feet – how many people came across our property?
Mouths – how many people did we help feed?
Eyes – how many people saw our us? Street fairs, facebook, youtube.
Ears – how many people listened to the podcast?
The advantage to this new approach is 3 fold:
Here is a short (3 min) video – let me know what you would add or change to this approach.
5 min on Christology using 4 splits that frame the debate.
This approach recognizes that Jesus was unique in human history in that:
It avoids the dangerous temptation to say that Jesus was not fully human, only appeared human, or was a different kind of human. It also allows us to embrace Jesus as a model for full-humanity (to the Nth degree) and openness to God’s calling in our own lives.
I would love to hear your questions, comments, and concerns.
The 3-letter word ‘god’ gets used to signify a number of different concepts. Here are 5 popular ideas that people are attempting to express when they talk about ‘god’.
I have ranked them from the highest level of commitment to the lowest for this 5 min video.
I would love your thoughts and feedback for an upcoming presentation/use of this model.
Thank you for all the support and affirmation during my study break!
The request to do 5 min videos instead of 10 min videos has been heard I will be redoing the series from last summer as a 2.0 theme starting with God 2.0
A new mic has been purchased and the whiteboard has been upgraded.
Here is a quick summary of 4 things to look for when framing an issue.
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 