Information or transformation?

The Heresy has an interesting comment on ministry:

In conventional ministry the life blood of ministry is information. The underlying assumption is that knowledge changes people so find the right people who will present the right information to everyone else and they will change. It isn’t working out so well now.

If sacrificial love is as important as Jesus, Paul and John make it out to be why doesn’t this value shape what we do? If love is more important than knowledge than why do we spend so much time absorbing information and so little time interacting with people we care about? In as much as I believe in a simpler approach to church organization the size isn’t the pivotal factor. It really isn’t about how many people are meeting where. It goes deeper than that. It is about the Spirit having an opportunity to work through the body and that a Christlike genuine sacrificial love be evident in the lives of those who are committed to each other. If we organize ourselves in such a way that we prevent real genuine caring relationships to form and we put curbs and barriers up to manage people we are squeezing off the life blood of Christ’s body.

He goes on to say that knowledge is essential to prevent weird directions, but is secondary. Read the whole thing.
<idle musing>
The structure of our meetings and church bodies is not a secondary consideration; how we are organized has a huge effect on the results. In the May Christianity Today there was an article that said we are not “brains on a stick” (which just got posted today), yet we organize everything around information transfer (i.e., the sermon). That needs to change in order for God to get our whole lives under His control! And just changing it from emphasis on the sermon to emphasis on the liturgy doesn't reslt in more interaction! A responsive reading or collect prayer isn't any more interactive than silently absorbing a sermon! We need real community, not just a Sunday morning “worship hour” in order to become the body of Christ on the earth.
</idle musing>

Rapture Ready?

The other day, Ben Myers published a long review of the book Rapture Ready!. I am quoting a long excerpt from his review, but even so, you should read the whole thing. His insights are disturbingly accurate:

Most of all, however, Radosh’s hopeful outlook arises from his confidence in consumerism itself. Concluding the book, he suggests that the problems in evangelical pop culture – its tendency towards intolerance, for example – will be resolved as Christian pop culture is more fully assimilated into the mainstream market. The weirdness and bigotry that characterises some aspects of evangelical culture will thus eventually be smoothed out – not so much through dialogue, discussion and reflection, but merely through the levelling operation of market forces. The result will be a more liberal and more tolerant Christian culture – in short, a more precise mirror of the values of mainstream culture.

By and large, this analysis is probably correct: in the setting of late capitalism, the creation of a vibrant and distinctive niche market goes hand in hand with the emergence of mass homogeneity. But I’m not so sure this is a comforting prospect. Instead, it ought to raise some disturbing questions about the nature of evangelical culture. It seems to me that the only flaw in Radosh’s analysis is his assumption that evangelical consumerism can be neatly distinguished from evangelical identity – as though the modification of evangelicalism’s consumer culture would not also be a modification of its religious identity.

The issues involved here are, to my mind, far more urgent than Radosh’s concerns about helping evangelicals to become nicer and more tolerant. We should perhaps ask what it means for religious believers to identify themselves by the merchandise they consume; what it means when we allow ourselves to become not a community, but a sub-culture, and thus one more market niche alongside others.

As Slavoj Žižek has observed, the logic of late capitalism presses towards the
commodification of a niche identity for its own sake; the Christian merchandise I buy is not itself the desired commodity, but it is merely an ephemeral signifier of the real commodity, which is my identity as a particular sort of Christian. In this case, the product I am really purchasing is radically non-material, wholly spiritual; I am purchasing religious meaning and belonging, religious “community” (since the merchandise allows me to participate in a specific market niche). Here, any neat separation between my “faith” and my “consumer culture” is simply fictitious. To change the latter simply is to change the former.

So what we need today, I believe, is a sustained theological critique of this commodification of Christian identity, and a recognition that the spiritual identity provided by a consumer sub-culture is a seductive simulacrum, an obstacle to the risky venture of Christian faith. If we are to find authentic Christian identity, it will arise not from the benevolent operations of the market, but in a community which creates a new economic space within the world, with its own practices and its own ways of belonging.

<idle musing>
Amen! True Christian community, with a true following of God's kingdom principles is a necessity.
</idle musing>

A publishing parable

I like this, from IVP's chief editor, Andy Le Peau:

The key personnel gathered. “Listen,” said the publisher. “A publisher went out to publish. And as he published, some books fell on deaf ears. And the remaindering houses came and snatched up the excess stock at a fraction of its cost. Other books fell on hard-headed readers where the ideas were not able to root deeply in their minds. So as soon as the readers’ preconceived notions arose, the ideas from the book withered away. Other books fell among a huge glut of other new books and choked out the shelf-space, so the books were not seen. Other books fell into fertile minds and grew there, making a difference in the readers who in turn touched the lives of thirty, sixty or even a hundred other people.”

He then goes on to interpret it. Go read the whole thing.

Where's the focus?

Scot McKnight was in South Africa last week, so he had some guest posters. One in particular stood out to me, the one on Friday:

I spent so much of my early ministry years living in fear. Fear that I wouldn’t be a good enough pastor. Fear that I wouldn’t be a good enough parent. Fear that I wouldn’t be able to financially support my family adequately. And all of that energy that I invested in fear (and a fair amount of corresponding inner anger and depression) was so unnecessary. If only I had listened to my own sermons on God’s grace and faithfulness...

So what wisdom would I give to a new pastor if were asked the question, “What should I focus on?” Focus on God’s grace and faithfulness — for your people, but especially for yourself!

<idle musing>
Wonderful wisdom! So often I can give the answer to a problem in someone else's life, but ignore the answer for my own life! Isn't there something in Matthew about the speck in your brother's eye, but not seeing the log in your own...
</idle musing>

Have we arrived?

Joel over at Grace Roots has a good post on arriving:

My point here is that I did have some sort of a sense that I had "arrived" at some sort of definition of what the Lord wanted to do with my life, and He would build this "vision" in due time, even if the "vision" wasn't perfectly clear at the time. But over the months and years, I discovered that my life in Christ isn't about some ministry "brand." Even if/when I write a book, my life in Him is still not defined by it. I am in Him and He is in me, and I usually don't have a clue where I'm going!

<idle musing>
Years ago, while I was mowing the lawn one day, I heard a teaching tape from Keith Green's Last Days Ministries (that tells you how long ago!). The message was on how every time the Lord puts us in a new place, we think we have finally “arrived.” His point was that each place is simply a way station on the journey of life. God may allow us to stay there for a short or long time, but it isn't the end of the journey.

I like to say that God gives us milestones along the way, to mark major points in our life. The problem is, instead of seeing them as milestones, we treat them as altars, set up a temple, and worship them. God wants us to celebrate them, and then move on, sort of like the Israelites after the crossing of Yam Suph (Red Sea). They rejoiced, had a good old gospel celebration, and then pressed on to Mt Sinai.
</idle musing>

A truly interesting book

This book caught my eye in the latest Columbia University catalog:

From Student to Scholar
A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor
by Steven M. Cahn
Columbia University Press, Forthcoming September 2008
112 pages, English
Paper
ISBN: 9780231145336
Your Price: $14.95
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~CAHFROMST
Description:
Steven M. Cahn's advice on the professorial life covers an extensive range of critical issues: how to plan, complete, and defend a dissertation; how to navigate a job interview; how to improve teaching performance; how to prepare and publish research; how to develop a professional network; and how to garner support for tenure. He deals with such hurdles as a difficult dissertation advisor, problematic colleagues, and the pressures of the tenure clock. Cahn's witty insights are invaluable to traversing the thickets of academia.

Social action

I ran across this post the other day from Dan Kimball about social action:

What I am wondering about, is how do we avoid patterns of the past when the church jumps strongly in the realm of focusing on the gospel's impact for this earth and in this life - but slowly neglects teaching and reminding people of the gospel's impact about the reality of eternal heaven and eternal hell in the life to come after we die?

Ron Sider wrote a book called "Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel" which impacted my thinking on this. I read that at exactly the time I was beginning to realize how much I was personally focusing on "the gospel is all about going to heaven when we die". So the timing was great. He raises how the pattern seems to be where churches will focus on what he calls a "one-sided gospel". What he means by that, is that he has seen churches who only focus on evangelism with little or no passion for the poor and liberation for the oppressed. But then he makes the important point that it also goes the other way. That he also sees churches who focus on peace and justice, but do not have any focus on evangelism. He goes on to say how we can "put so much emphasis on social action that they almost entirely forget to tell dying sinners about our wonderful Savior" (page 17). He even called that "ghastly."

Coming from Ron, this is important to listen to. Ron's life and ministry is all about social justice. He leads the Evangelicals for Social Action network. But here we have someone voicing the need to never forget the need for personal evangelism in the midst of focusing on social action.

<idle musing>
Take that! those of you who claim that emerging is all about relevancy :)
</idle musing>

All quiet

Well, not really. I've been a bit busy of late, between tilling and planting—both raspberries and trees, and mowing and... Wow, I had forgotten how much time being a home owner consumes in the Spring.

But, it is always fun the first Spring in a place. You get to see all these flowers and plants come up that others have planted. We had daffodils, which I love, in front of the house. They finished blooming late last week. There was a lone tulip that is still in bloom. We also have two nice lilacs with purple blossoms that are opening up. The fragrance from them comes in the windows and flows through the house.

But, my favorite discovery was the redbud in the back yard. One day, Debbie looked out the back window and saw that there was a tree with a mass of purple on it. We had no idea that there was a redbud on the property, but it is now in full bloom and very beautiful. If I ever remember, I'll take a picture of it and post it.

Last night, we dodged raindrops and bought flowers and vegetables. We ended up with 8 tomato plants, 4 cherry tomato plants, 4 bell peppers, 16 impatiens (red), and 42 begonias (also red). Now we get to plant them! Hopefully this weekend will be nice enough for that to happen. Meantime, I still have to till a small spot for our herb garden.

Oh, I almost forgot, we have a wren couple that has taken up residence in one of our wren houses. It is fun to watch the male sit on top of the house and scold anything that comes near. It was also fun watching them build the nest; they have a lot more patience than I would. The male would bring a long straw and try to get it in the small opening. It would fall to the ground, and he would try again, and again, and again, and...you get the idea. They finally got it built.