Who has the right?

There is an article on Christianity Today that tells about a group from India, who upon reading a recently-translated-into-their-own-language Bible, discovered that they must be of the lost tribe of Manasseh.  Apparently, they felt similarities between their ancient customs and the customs of the ancient Israelites.  Ergo, they must be from the lost tribe.  As a result, this group of newfound Jews has been practicing Judaism for about 30 years.  A delegation of Rabbis is investigating their claims to determine if they have the "right of return" which would enable them to move to Israel as Jews. 

While I suppose that it is possible that they are truly from the Tribe of Manasseh, it certainly isn’t very probable.  Their story brings to my mind the number of Christians I know (myself included, by the way) who "discover" that their beliefs are akin to some older or different theological tradition.  For example, many evangelicals find themselves appreciating sacramental theology, and claim Orthodoxy or Catholocism or Anglicanism as their own, without actually becoming a part of those traditions.  They feel they can claim a Tradition from outside of that Tradition.

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In Defense of Theology

Great post by Maggi Dawn in defense of doing theology.  Here’s a sample:

How is it that Emerging blogs can depict theologians as disengaged
Ivory Tower types on the one hand, and endlessly quote John Drane, NT
Wright, Robert Beckford, Alan Jamieson, Jurgen Moltmann, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Rowan Williams, Len Sweet, Stanley Hauwerwas, etc etc on
the other?

Hardees says: Screw You!

Hardees just rolled out (perhaps literally) a 1,420 calorie burger, in spite of the current trends towards a kinder, gentler, approach within the fast food industry.  I’m torn.  Part of me is disgusted.  If you’ve seen Super-Size Me and had any sympathy for the cause of the movie, then you’d be disgusted too.  However, another part of me is like, "Ha! Way to go, Big H! Way to stick it to the MAN (who I guess would be Ronald McDonald)."  There is something inspiring about Hardees intentionally cranking out its Monster ThickBurger (two one-third-pound slabs
of Angus beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and
mayonnaise on a buttered sesame seed bun) while the other guys are cutting back amidsts fears of litigation and angry consumers. 

*warning, blatantly obvioius analogy ahead*

You know, we can learn alot from our friends over at Hardees.  In a world where fatty burgers are beginning to be despized, Hardees gets fatter.  They are making their stand on the fattest burger of which they could conceive.  We, the church, need to make our stand as well.  As popular opinion and sentiment begin to errode at the church, we need to take a stand.  We need to be the fattest, greasiest, bacon-iest, most caloric church we can be. 

Addition to the Blogroll

I just added the shared weblog of Chris Erdman and Alan Roxburgh to my blogroll. Check them. They have a missional perspective from within existing denominational structures.  In my mind, they are among the best advocates for the role of denominations within the missional and/or emergent conversation. 

An Evil Question

It seems to me that there has been little discussion within the emergent/pomo/post-liberal/post-evangelical/etc. dialogue about the nature of evil and the nature of Satan.  Why do you suppose that is?

Just a thought on a tired subject

I don’t really listen to contemporary Christian music.  Nevertheless, I found myself reading an interview with some guy named Derek Webb, who apparently recently left a group called Caedmon’s Call in order to stretch his wings and fly.  I believe what he says in indicative of many who believe Christian art needs to get better and be more relevant.  In the interview, he was asked "How would you suggest Christian artists should impact the culture?"  This is the dude’s response, intersperse with my comments:

First of all, we’ve got to learn as a church to
support artists who are respectfully engaging culture with good art.

I agree…sounds good so far.

I
think one of the reasons the church in this country is irrelevant in a
lot of circles is because our art is bad-and it’s always been a primary
way of how the church has engaged with culture.

Hmmm….I know that this is a cool argument.  It is the one Christians use all the time.  But, think about the times in which art was REALLY the way in which the Church engaged culture…oh yeah, that was when the CHURCH WAS THE CULTURE.  You see, art is an expression of a culture.  Also, as much as I like the arts, the times when we were the most culturally relevant weren’t the best and brightest times in the history of Christianity.  In fact, the bright spots were when we were the most counter-cultural (the early Church, St. Francis, Jan Huss, the Radical Reformation, etc.).  I’m not advocating that we take a fundamentalistic separatist tone; however, it seems that people toss around the word "relevance" an aweful lot without realizing how precarious and dangerous relevance really is. 

Great artists can
engage culture, not by getting up on a box and reading off all sorts of
laws, but by making tremendous art, doing that work with excellence
where the world would be intrigued and engaged with that.

I agree.  Great artists can engage culture.  And engaging culture is very important.  But I don’t believe art should be the primary way in which we engage culture (as Mr. Webb aluded to before).  I’ve experienced truly great art that draws me into a sense of awe (numinous) before God.  Art that challenged me to the core.  Such art is a gift.  But the current CCM system doesn’t foster that.  Nor does most of the regular market-driven stuff.  Artists shouldn’t aim for the whole of culture.  They should engage the small pockets of culture that they can–and express all the artistry God has given them.  To me, the CCM approach is the same as the Mega-church approach…bigger and more professional is better.  I prefer a more grassroots and obscure approach to both church and music.  My favorite musicians never were very popular in the mainstream (Rich Mullins, for example).  But I would take one Rich over one-hundred Jars of Clays anyday.

Nowadays, we’re not building bridges to culture.
We’re building escalators up and down the floors of our own little
world. We’re all just trying to get popular and secure our own little
living for ourselves, and that’s not kingdom thinking. You have to get
beyond all that and think, As an artist, what is my role in culture? How do the decisions I make as an artist really effect eternity?

I like the escalator imagery.  But Mr. Webbs language borders upon the idea that the Church should be the soul of the Culture.  Our role in culture should be to challenge and offer an alternative.  I hate to say it, but I think the impact of most Christian artists that make it to the mainstream is pretty low.  It is because they don’t challenge.  It is because they sacrifice distinctiveness in order to be artists.

Just a few thoughts. 

Great Preaching Secrets?

Google provided the following ad on missionThink. Apparently, if you listen to their great preaching secrets, you’ll be a great preacher.  While I am by no means an expert, let me share with you what I think is important in preaching:

1) A good preacher I know (Penny Zettler) gave me great advice.  To paraphrase, she said: "There are no rules to preaching.  Saturate yourself in the bibical text.  Marinade in it.  Use all the imagination and creativity you can, and go for it." In other words, you don’t have to follow the conventional wisdom of what other preachers do or follow how you were taught in Seminary.

2) Be careful that the focus of your preaching and ministry isn’t technique, but an overflow of the Spirit at work within you.  Pray. 

3) Let the Spirit show you what is the most important thing to say to your church, and then say it.  Don’t embellish too much.  Don’t try to raise the level of cool.  Become an expert at communicating what you really want to say, and add other feature later. 

4) Record yourself, and listen to yourself a few days later.  You’ll be able to listen to yourself a bit more objectively.  If you can videotape yourself, that’s even better.

5) Short is better than long.

6) It is better to be faithful than it is to be cute.

These are just a few nuggets.  I’m not what I would call a great preacher…nor am I probably even good yet.  But I think I’m good enough to know that the list I just gave is pretty good advice.

Trinity

I’ve been studying the Trinity.  Currently, I’m reading Experiencing the Trinity .  The book is pretty solid…but also pretty basic–which is what I was looking for, I guess.  I’m trying to get to the point where I can explain why I believe so strongly in the Trinity in a way that shows my passion, but also in a way that is clear for those without a theological education.  I’m learning that part of the problem is that people lack the vocabulary to engage the doctrine–in other words, it isn’t so much that the idea of the Trinity is so high-falutin.  Its just that the past few hundred years of theological language hasn’t been Trinitarian.  And this unitarian way of talking has trickled down into the church.  Now the average church-goer is asked to engage in the Doctrine of the Trinity in unitarian vocabulary.

Here’s a quote from the book that is pretty indicative of the subject matter:

Here is the good news: The living God is not a solitary God.  The living God is not a lonely God.  The living God is the Trinitarian God.  From all eternity the living God has existed in community as Community; in fellowship as Fellowship; in relationship as Relationship.  From all eternity the living God has existed as Father, Son, adn Holy Spirit.  From all eternity the living God has been able to speak of himself as "we," "us," and "our." (73)

A Personality Test

Hey, I got the following from Emergent Like Slime.  Take the test here.  It labeled me, oddly enough, as an "Evil Genius."  Go figure.

Accidie in America

The Medievals had a word for that feeling of listlessness, apathy, and lethargy that strikes when one is alone–accidie (ak-sid-ee).  We’ve all felt this.  We are sitting at home alone, or perhaps with our spouse or roomate.  There are lots of things we could be doing…but we lack motivation.  We feel bored, restless, apathetic, and lazy all at the same time.  Apparently monks–particularly those of a hermetic sort–dealt with this feeling enough to warrent the attention of writers such as St. John Cassian and Thomas Aquinas. 

You’d think, in this well-connected culture of ours that the spiritual disease of accidie wouldn’t be so prevalent in our society.  After all, it appears to be a malady particular to those within medieval society that were isolated.  However, much study has shown how pervasive loneliness is in our society.  The technologies that were developed to help us stay connected, or to make our lives easier so that we could focus on the luxuries of life, have caused a sense of fragmentation.  In spite of the business around us, social research shows that we are plagued with relational disconnectedness.  It is epidemic.  Those who don’t believe this to be the case have probably lived their whole lives within this social reality to the extent that they don’t know what authentic community and relationality is like. 

And so, we are isolated within the throng.  And our isolation breeds accidie.  Our first responce to the onset of accidie is probably to entertain it away–go to a movie, turn on the tube, play a game.  However, the medieval "cure" was persistent prayer, manual labor, or the contemplation of death.  In other words, they didn’t yield to accidie; they dealt with it head-on. 

So much of how we deal with problems like accidie in our culture is to distract ourselves with entertainment or succumb to it.  We’ve lost our ability to fight.  Persistence in prayer is highly uncommon in our churches.  Many of us don’t know what manual labor is really like.  We avoid thinking about things as serious as death.  So little has changed in the past couple millenia–we still struggle with the same problems.  However, our ability to cope has changed.  At least in America.  We’ve lost our ability to cope.  We are an America of accidie.

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