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Churchlandia (portland)

I am fascinated by the culture clash that seems to be generated mostly out of BIG churches.

I was born in Ohio, raised in Chicago, spent 6 years on the Canadian prairies, married a girl from Montana before moving to NY  and then training for ministry in California.

It was in California that I encountered a kind of church I had not really seen before. Some call them mega-churches but I have developed a different name for them, since not all of the churches I am talking about qualify simply based on attendance figures.

After college I lived on the NY-Vermont border for over a decade before moving out to the Pacific NW. Arriving in Portland that first week was a reintroduction to these types of churches.

I call them Castle Churches. They can usually be identified them by three primary factors: Continue reading “Churchlandia (portland)” →

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Different Kinds of Books

The 100 top selling Christian books of 2010 came out. It is an interesting list.
It triggered some thoughts in me.

When I was a pastor, I used to joke that despite your best intentions and regardless of what you learned in college, much of what comes across your desk and occupies your time is answering two questions:

  1. How do we get more people? and
  2. How do we get those people to give more money?

That may sound cynical but much of the time I was even suspicious of other young pastors who were rabid about doctrine Continue reading “Different Kinds of Books” →

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Ministry is a privilege

I was reading a book on ministry this week  (Practicing Gospel by Edward Farley) and it spurred three thoughts:

When we talk about ministry it is good for us to begin quietly with the humble  admission that firstly, we are called by God. That in itself would be enough. If this were what we were asked to do by God then doing it would be its own reward.

Secondly, we recognize that this work of ministry does a great deal of good in the world.

Continue reading “Ministry is a privilege” →

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Religion in Public

As my semester comes to a close, I finally have some breathing space to post the backlog of stuff I have thinking about and finding along the way.

One of my classes this semester was in Ethics focusing on Pluralism and the Public arena.  A conversation that interested me deeply revolved around the famous JFK speech on religion and the more recent one by Mitt Romney. Though they were probably more similar than different, their differences were profound.

I found this interesting article today in the Washington Post where JFK’s niece says that Sarah Palin gets the argument wrong in her new book.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303209.html

Continue reading “Religion in Public” →

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Buying Books

I had a wonderful opportunity to buy some books this week. I had not seen my folks since I finished my Masters (they had been out of the country) and as part of my graduation gift I got to shop on Amazon!  What a gift.

It was especially fun since I am in this new program and have some books that come up frequently in my classes – books that I have not read and do not have in my collection.  So I got 12 new books. pretty exciting for a grad student

After the flurry of activity was over – I had to make some quick decisions between my official ‘wishlist’ in Amazon and the unofficial list in my Moleskin notebook – I got the confirmation email from Amazon and an interesting trend developed.

Most of the books that I picked fell into two broad categories: the diversity of the early church and the multiplicity of the world that we live in now. This was an interesting revelation to me and I realized that the place where those two things come together really is my passion. As a Practical Theologian in training, my concern is the intersection of the theological diversity of the tradition & the practices in the world as it exists.

“Where the diversity of the past meets the multiplicity of the present” really does sum up the great concern of my heart for the church.  It is interesting to see the juncture of these two themes in a single book order.

Books that I am most excited about:

The Past

– The Churches the Apostles left behind  by Raymond Brown

– Unity and Diversity in the New Testament by James Dunn

– The Emergence of the Church by Arthur Patzia

The Present

– God is not One by Stephen Prothero

– Transforming Christian Theology by Philip Clayton

– A New Religious America by Diane Eck

– Modern Social Imaginaries by Charles Taylor

honorable mentions

– Oil & Water: Two Faiths – One God by Amir Hussain

– Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington

– Theology for the Community of God by Stanley Grenz

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Spending My Time: PhD

I am  very excited to be in a Practical Theology program.  The idea behind this is exhilarating to me and I look forward to the future part of the course work that focuses on the Practical part of Theology!

[I have heard so many times, by everyone from District Superintendents to the grocery-bag packers at the supermarket, that Practical Theology is an oxymoron: there is nothing practical about Theology. This is exactly why I am hoping to be part of the change. ]

I was reflecting this week about what has been getting the lion’s share of my attention over the last several months. Four major categories emerged.

Biblical Studies: I am fascinated both with the depth of investigation that scholars put into the text,including work behind the text, and how little of that seems to play a role in the life of the average congregation.  There is gap. It is wide.  I am afraid that it is widening into a gulf.

Church History: I have come to love and embrace church history. I think that it is more than illuminating about where we have arrived and what we have arrived with. It turns out that my former hatred of church history was a naive reaction against dogmatic uses of church history to dominate people of other opinions. I had unfortunately given in to ‘bumper sticker’ understandings and cliches that are nothing more than boiled down (maybe water downed) bullet-points and slogans used for winning arguments.

Philosophy: It turns out that philosophy has and continues to play as important a role in the Christian faith as the Bible does. It is the lens through which each generation reads the Bible and decides how to behave. It goes far beyond John 1, Acts 17, and Romans 5! It is barely acknowledged in the Creeds and Councils that led up to Chalcedon’s proclamations. I might go as far as to say that the Bible is merely a paint job on the car of the church – a car that is designed, manufactured,and powered by philosophy.

Inter-religious Dialogue: In a pluralistic world where we are inter-related and hyper-connected as never before, inter-religious dialogue is somewhere between vital and essential. The old boundaries of the Middle Ages and the definitions constructed under Colonialism will not suffice in the world that is becoming. Things have changed. Things need to change more.

Continue reading “Spending My Time: PhD” →

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2 quick thoughts on getting a new phone

My 2 year contract with the my Cell phone provider ran out this month and so I ungraded.

I am 24 hours in. I REALLY like my new phone and the things that it does.

Two little observations:

I got a phone that would not communicate with my old phone in order to bring over my address book.  I am going to have to figure out how to sync the phone with my computer’s address book this weekend.
Until then I have a problem. When someone sends me a text message, their name does not come up alongside their note.  It is just numbers that I do not recognize as I am use to seeing names and not numbers.
SO here is my observation: the content of a message makes little sense apart from the knowledge of who sent it for context.

Thought: You can read something, but without knowing who said it or where they are – it feels like you are missing more than half of the message. Continue reading “2 quick thoughts on getting a new phone” →

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>Emergence: Richard Rohr, Phyllis Tickle, and Peter Walker

>Fr. Rohr has been talking this week about Emergence and Emergence Christianity

He says one day: … I predict, with some historical certainty, this judgmental  thinking will continue to happen in every group, in every denomination if we  see everything with a dualistic mind.   No new emerging church will emerge very far. The judgmental mind is not  looking for truth; it is looking for control and righteousness.  For some reason  when we split and refuse to receive the moment as it is, we end creating and  even reveling in those splits as our very identities.  These are the culture wars and the identity politics we suffer  from today.  They will not get us very  far spiritually, because they are largely ego-based

 And the next: Whatever “Emerging Christianity” is going to be, it will have to  be much more practice-based than doctrine-based… 

Pete Walker was talking about it here:  http://www.emergingchristian.com/2010/09/fr-rohr-on-emerging-christianity.html

SO I just wanted to point out  that Emergence is not just a shadow side to a dualism pairing – it is a different way of thinking about the world. It is saying that the world works a little different than we were told that it does.

Some people find “Process” thought a helpful way out of the old cosmology and meta-physics arguments that go round and round without leading anywhere.
It resonates with both ‘relational’ truths and ‘evolutionary’ thought.

For some, that comes together in Emergence thought. Here is the thing: we have to remember that it does not originate in nor is it most suited to Theological frameworks. That is where folks like you and me have to do some translating.

 Phyllis Tickle talks about it here and it’s implication for the future of denominations. http://www.faithandleadership.com/multimedia/phyllis-tickle-anthill

She says Emergence Christianity is going to organize a little like an anthill.

Steven Johnson wrote a marvelous book called “Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software,” which everybody should read who’s talking about this.

“Emergence” is an unfortunate term. It came out of emergence theory in the biology lab. For centuries we had thought that a beehive and an anthill were the same thing. Both had a queen, and it worked top down. In the middle of the 19th century, scientists discovered, “Wrong; au contraire.”

Plus you just have to watch the video : she is soooo articulate and makes an amazing point about history and the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches.

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Moving is tough – but sometimes it’s just what ya gotta do

I am relocating some of my various projects into one simple place (simple for me)

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