Archive for March, 2008
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
Tony Jones has published “The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier”, an insider set of observations on the Emergent movement in the USA. (Jossey Bass)
Tony is the national coordinator of Emergent Village and is working on a doctorate in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He’s known for his earlier books, Postmodern Youth Ministry and The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life.
Leaving the Old Country
I found the first chapter a bit hard going, to tell the truth. Tony sets out to explain why there’s a need for an alternative to the mainline denominations (Episcopalian, United Methodist, United Church of Christ and Presbyterian), and Evangelical protestantism (the loosely aligned born again Christians who tend towards literal interpretation of the Bible, emphasise personal conversion to Christ). No mention of Catholics here. Maybe the USA is more polarised than here downunder but my experience of the Uniting Church in Australia and Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand is that the tension between left and right is found within those denominations. In smaller countries there’s more likelihood that people will have attended conferences together, perhaps trained together at Bible College, or served together in an interdenominational organisation such as Scripture Union.
I appreciate Tony’s first two ‘dispatches’ from the Emergent Frontier:
Dispatch 1: Emergents find little importance in the discrete differences between the various flavors of Christianity. Instead, they practice a generous orthodoxy that appreciates the contributions of all Christian movements.
Dispatch 2: Emergents reject the politics and theologies of left versus right. Seeing both sides as a remnant of modernity, they look forward to a more complex reality.
I’m reminded of the behaviour of my third child as a toddler. The older two had the seating arranged for television. Kristen found that she had to push them to the left and to the right to get a seat in the middle.
The reality is that our formative heritage biases us, despite our discomfort with blanket generalisation. And so the “liberals” throughout the book are described by Tony (who comes from a Congregational background) as people who are all required to conform to a politically correct orthodoxy combined with conservative traditional liturgical worship. Although I’m living a long way away, I don’t believe that the mainline churches can be summarised through the writings of authors such as Marcus Borg or Stanley Hauerwas.
I did enjoy the inclusion of the Jon Stewart episode on CNN’s Crossfire show - which I’ve written up on my Propaganda blog.
After Objectivity: Beautiful Truth
One of the common critiques of the Emerging Church movement is the perception that these postmodernists have rejected the concept of truth. Tony responds by saying that Emergents embrace the whole Bible, the glory and the pathos. Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings. Emergents embrace paradox, especially those that are core components of the Christian story.
I enjoyed Tony’s personal reflections on the art of umpiring baseball and the difficulty of ‘calling’ and ‘naming’ what is true. I appreciated his consideration of the story of Jepthah’s sacrifice of his daughter. It’s a messy situation that calls us to consider our responsibility for our actions and God’s presence in great suffering. I like what Tony has to say about the way in which Christians qualify the word ‘truth’ with ‘absolute’ and other such adjectives. What Tony’s saying here resounds with my experience of attending a range of congregations in which the
Inside the Emergent Church
There are some great stories told here, with honesty. We’re taken behind the scenes at Jacob’s Well in Kansas City, Missouri, Journey in Dallas, Texas, Church of the Apostles in Seattle, Washington, and Solomon’s Porch in South Minneapolis.
Tony introduces us to the diversity found in these groups, the openness to newcomers, the commitment to dialogue, experimentation, and also the vulnerability found in small start up groups. Will they last? Does it matter? Will these groups get past the tentative dialogue stages and harden into something more definable such as Mars Hill Church (with Mark Driscoll) in Seattle?
Wikichurch
This is a brilliant analogy for the way any movement forms. Tony talks about the Emergent belief that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a heirarchy or bureacracy. He writes about attempts to move out of the clergy-dominated meeting structures found in most churches and develop an ‘Open Access’ approach to dialogue.
Tony points to the way Wikipedia trusts the collective editorial community to weed out abberations or rogue entries. In the same way he beloieves that the collected people of God, in community with the Spirit, will stay on track and engage with God’s work in the world. Two painful test cases are the issues of homosexuality and women in ministry. Already Mark Driscoll has parted ways with the Emergent crowd, now that it is clear that the Emergent crowd disagree with his hardline approaches.
Tony writes about the need for sustainability in response to criticism that the Emergent churches are not growing fast enough or making enough disciples. He suggests that the messiness of new startup groups can be a good alternative to highly ‘efficient’ congregations in which people burn out or are dominated by egomaniac pastors. Fear of failure is what stops movements like this starting or progressing.
Bloggers, leaders, writers mentioned in The New Christians include Postmodern Negro, Sivin Kit, Brad Cecil, Brian McLaren, Mark Driscoll, Doug Pagitt, Jonny Baker, Jason Clark, Scot McKnight, Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi), Dan Kimball, (typo on page 59!), Len Sweet, Karen Ward.
Tony’s epilogue suggests that Emergent Christians are a bit like the feral camels in Australia, once domesticated, but now out in the wilderness pushing over fences, occasionally returning to bother the establishment.
Thumbs up Tony!
If you’d like to discuss the book further join the Facebook Group, administered by Sue McMahon-Jones and Doug Pagitt.
Posted in Emerging Church | No Comments »
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Brian Bailey, who blogs at leaveitbehind.com, is the web director at Fellowship Church (Texas and Florida) and part of the AlamoFire team who produce social games such as PackRat on Facebook. Together with Terry Storch, terrystorch.com, he has published a book on blogging for church leaders.
Why Blog? Is blogging a toy or a tool? Bailey strongly recommends that churches only invest their leaders’ time in blogging if it is genuinely going to be useful. He suggests that blogging can be used for sharing news, casting vision, reaching out to the community, connecting staff with one another, volunteers and church members, learning from others, spreading the Word.
The book includes practical chapters on getting started, building a better blog, pitfalls to avoid, using RSS feeds, and podcasting.
Bailey intersperses his content with chapters asking five questions with Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill Church Seattle), Perry Noble (NewSpring Community Church Greenville), Craig Groeschel (Life Church, Oklahoma), Brad Abare and Kevin Hendricks, (Church Marketing Sucks), Tony Morgan (Granger Community Church, Indiana), Greg Surratt (Seacoast Church, Charleston) and Mark Batterson (National Community Church, Washington DC). There’s also a few references to interactions Bailey has had with well known bloggers such as Robert Scoble.
I’d recommend this book highly to any church leaders considering launching a blog or improving the effectiveness of their online work. The tip I picked up and intend to use is including a disclaimer “these opinions are those of Duncan Macleod and not his employer”.
Posted in Blogging | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
Welcome to the March 12, 2008 edition of Carnival of Australia.
There are 25 posts to check out here. Your challenge is to take a look through them all, leaving friendly and helpful comments. Would you like to join this happy team of contributors? Read my earlier post on the ins and outs of the Carnival of Australia. The next edition will be in two weeks time,
Animals
Kay presents Having fun with digiscrap posted at Moggie Madness.
Naomi presents Diary From England: FAREWELL CROCODILE HUNTER posted at Diary From England.
Business
Ross Hill presents David Greiner from Freshview (hatchthat.com) posted at Hatch That.
Noric Dilanchian presents Australia’s first 11 in performance and valuation - Dilanchian Lawyers posted at Lightbulb, saying, “The vast majority of books on business success are either humdrum, American or fail to recognise that in many respects Australia is different. In this respect one standout, now in its second edition, is The First XI: Winning Organisations in Australia (John Wiley & Sons Australia, Sydney, 2007). However, its chapter titled “Comparing our findings with other studies” provides reasons why it is a good thing that the book’s discoveries are not startling.”
Megan Bayliss presents What we do at Imaginif posted at Imaginif…, saying, “Attending a professional network recently I was faced with how out of touch I have become with a non computer based audience. Several colleagues mused around not knowing what it is I do anymore because I do a lot of that weird computer stuff. Point taken. But conversely, do you know what the talk doctors of Imaginif do off line? This is who we are and what we do in the office of Imaginif:”
Current Affairs
char presents Back it Up Colleagues! posted at Psych Matters.
Gavin R. Putland presents 100 words for the Australia 2020 Summit posted at The World According to GRP.
Megt presents Things that make you go hmmm posted at Dipping into the Blogpond, saying, “Just a few random stories that make me think “WTF?”"
Micellaneous Mum presents A poem for World Women’s Day posted at Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum, saying, “A poem by an Aussie Poet in honour of International Women’s Day”
Environment
Suzie Cheel presents Random Acts Of Kindness posted at The Abundance Highway, saying, “Last Sunday was Clean up Australia Day, so one might expect that there would be less litter around. I have continued on with my randon act of kindness each day we go to the beach. Mondays we usally go with a plastic bag as there is always more cans, paper cups, and often half full water bottles on the beach.”
Family
Carole Fogarty presents The Emotional Cost of Clutter: posted at THE HEALTHY LIVING LOUNGE, saying, “We all have an emotional attachment to our stuff. Sometimes healthy and sometimes very unhealthy. The trick is to take an honest look at everything t”
Food
Gillian Polack presents Explaining food posted at Gillian Polack.
Health
Sue presents World Voice Day 16th April 2008 - 6 PM until the fat lady sings! posted at Spasmodic Dysphonia, saying, “Come and join us giving voice to neurological movement disorders.”
Helping a mate
Two from Craig - as his first submission just missed the last deadline.
Craig Harper presents Just Another Life. posted at Renovate your life with Craig, saying, “Have you ever thought about your funeral? I have. Mine that is, not yours. Sometimes I wonder what it will be like. Who will be there, what they will say. Good stuff or bad? Will it be a sad or happy occasion? Will there be three people or three thousand? Or fifty perhaps? It’s certainly not something that I dwell on (that would be creepy), but from time to time (usually when I’m at a funeral myself) I let my mind wander and consider what that day might be like.”
Craig Harper presents Mind of a Teacher, Heart of a Student. posted at Renovate your life with Craig, saying, “To say that Bobby Cappuccio came from a background of adversity is like saying that Bill Gates has a few dollars in the bank.”
History
Jason presents 1902: Harry “Breaker” Morant and Peter Handcock, “scapegoats for Empire” posted at Executed Today.
Literature
Duncan Macleod presents One thing leads to another at Borders posted at Duncan’s Print, saying, “Borders Asia Pacific is helping customers make the connections between genres with a print advertising campaign, “One Thing Leads to Another”. Asia is connected with design and sculpture in an impressive hairdo. Travel is connected with D.I.Y. on the back of a motorbike. Automotive is connected with House and Home and Baby Names in the back of a Volkswagen Kombi.”
Politics
Gavin R. Putland presents Mark my words, Mr Rudd posted at Gavonomics.
Sport
Anne K presents A Funny (Yet Sad) Thing Happened At The Range Today posted at Doug Kercher Golf.
Technology
Duncan Macleod presents Schweppervescence Burst in Slow Motion posted at Duncan’s TV Ad Land, saying, “Schweppes has launched a campaign in Australia bringing new life to the branding concept of Schweppervescence. The ‘Burst’ campaign consists of five videos using slow motion cameras at 10,000 frames per second to capture the final moments in the trajectories of water balloons.”
Travel
poetloverrebelspy presents The Art of Being a Gracious Houseguest posted at Less Than a Shoestring, saying, “Travel on a Shoestring Carnivals highlight budget travel tips and destinations around the U.S. and the world. We would love to feature your posts on Oz hotels, restaurants, museums, churches, hikes, daytrips, parks, whatever! Submit by the third Wednesday of each month.”
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That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival of Australia using our carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
Posted in Australia, Blogging | 7 Comments »
