What are you reading?

I like to read. Sometimes it takes me a while to get through a book. I've always been jealous of those who learned how to speed read. I tried to learn back years ago when I entered seminary...but I felt like I wasn't retaining what I read...anyway.

I'm curious what others are reading. What have you read in the last year, six months that was really insightful or has made an impact on your outlook, theology, thought processes, etc?

Irenaeus on Pentecost

From Against Heresies

This is why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.

"The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God" came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world in which, according to his own word, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.

A different starting point?

As I've read blogs, books, and thought through this "phenomena" of emerging, it appears to me that the paradigm shift, the reform, the reaction to the approach of "doing church" in what was considered to be THE way, is based on a move past a pragmatic efficient model that finds itself couched in a modernist framework. The work of Alan Roxburgh helps us see that the church in the western hemisphere finds itself being pushed out of the position she used to hold: the cultural (music, art, etc), moral, and scientific center of society. We now find ourselves on the margins, the periphery of society, along with the outcasts and the has-beens.

It is interesting how Robert Webber led us to see that we find ourselves in a world, that while it's unfamiliar to us (coming out of a Constantinian framework where the church plays a significant role in culture) it is not unfamiliar to the church. Webber said that our culture is not far removed from that those beginning few hundred years in the infancy years of Christianity.

I think what is different about this emerging thing from what some might call the mega church model is the starting point. I don't want to be disrespectful to this approach because it has been helpful and has done amazing things to help bring people into relationship with God. They took (and take) the call of the Great Commission seriously. Their focus is different. It seems to me that these churches have taken the approach that the church is a business and draws examples and direction from marketing and efficiency found in the business world. It seems to me that this emerging movement's domain is different--it "operates" with a different set of values. Rather than business as a deep foundation, it seems that the emerging movement returns to a theological foundation that the mega-church approach seems to take for granted. Maybe it was so "dumbed down" that theology wasn't seen as a really important matter or issue. Well, maybe just not their starting point--who understands theology but churched people, right?

But in recovering a theology of God, particularly seen through the lens [hermeneutic] of God's mission (missio dei) we see how we choose to cooperate and partner with God in his mission. That shapes the direction the church takes, forming all that the church does. If it doesn't connect with this theological understanding, then it is questioned as whether it is an important factor for the church. Worship is moved past a focus on pre-Christians and to return to Christ and a strong Trinitarian focus. Discipleship moves from individual piety to how the personal fits with communal Christian spiritual formation in the way of Jesus. Evangelism is different. It's different in that it's not about saving souls for heaven and from hell, but it's about pointing people and orienting them to the coming Kingdom of God's gracious and loving reign.

Because we are in this in between time and are on the early stages of this shift we find ourselves in, there's still the need for the mega church and their model. But because fewer people are finding that approach valuable, this new approach is taking a significant step forward in helping connect people's spiritual desire to God, and not the many other things they use to try to satisfy it.

What do you think? Does this make sense? Is this short-sighted? Is it fair?

A Genesis

Here's to a beginning. There's a whole lot we have behind us. It has shaped us, directed us, moved us. Where we have been is directly linked to where we are going, as well as where we are going is directly linked to where we have been. Robert Webber was well known for saying, "The road to the future runs through the past." I agree. An important question that needs to be asked is, "which past?" We are creating space for a place to discuss what it looks like to be connected to a matrix of relationships (Church of the Nazarene, evangelicalism, Protestantism, catholic orthodox Christianity, modernity, post-modernity, post-everything) and how that plays out in West Texas and a more localized context of our communities. Finding ourselves in the 21st Century, we are awakening to a major geographical change, like Dorothy coming out of her house to find that she's not in Kansas anymore.

I remember a Mickey Mouse Cartoon that was connected to Walt Disney's animated version of "Robin Hood" called "Brave Little Tailor." In it Mickey is misunderstood to be a giant killer and is recruited to kill the giant in the kingdom. Mickey does his best and in a brilliant orchestration he tangles up the giant, pulls his feet out from under him and he goes down with an enormous earth-shattering fall--creating a swath of land upheaval around him. He's out cold. The town decides to celebrate by putting up a carnival around him. They're playing around, having fun in this new place, powered by the sleeping giant. But I wonder about something Disney didn't take time to address, what will happen when the giant wakes up?

Anyway, the land around them changed and they adapted and used it to their benefit. Now, my mind is wandering about the metaphor of this new land and the giant. I kinda like the Wizard of Oz one better, because there is no sleeping giant, only a wiked witch looming in the background that is easily "liquidateable."

Maybe this is where the call in Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon to make their selves at home in this new land speaks to us. Our goal, our aim, is NOT to return to Kansas, but to see our way forward in this new land.

Peace,

Michael