Top 5 for 2006: Blogs

Here are my favorite five blogs for 2006 (in no particular order):
Graham Old

Will Samson

Scot McKnight

David Fitch

Chris Erdman

links for your perusal

In case you have been in a cave for the past decade and didn’t already realize this: Latinos are the future of the American theological landscape. Read this article from the Pew Forum for some of the stats.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Mennonite youth in Philly are tackling gun violence. (Btw, does anyone know of a US alternative to the UK’s Ekklesia New Service?)

As some of you know, I went to seminary on a full scholarship, made possible by the Kern Family Foundation. The foundation was created by Robert and Patricia Kern, who had made their fortune from making generators. The Kerns set aside millions of dollars to pay for up to 50 seminary students’ tuition EVERY YEAR–up to 150 at any given time. Today, I heard some happy news on MPR. Robert Kern, who recently retired, decided to give hundreds of thousands of dollars in Christmas bonus to his employees at Generac. Bonuses ranged from $500 to $50,000–depending on how long the employee worked for Generac. Read the story here.

I can’t help it. I want to see the new Rocky film. I don’t know how he did it, but Stallone has apparently pulled off a decent film.

Reflections on Evangelism: Call for Comments

Hmmm…I’ve very rarely put so much thought into a series and has such little feedback. I thought perhaps my perception of my “Reflections on Evangelism” series was wrong…but then I noticed that at least a couple other bloggers have linked to them and folks are commenting on them there. And so I’m giving y’all one more chance :)I love pontificating, to be sure, but I’d much rather have conversation centered around my pontifications
Here are the posts. I welcome–nay, beg–for for your thoughts:

Reflections on Evangelism 1: How the message got separated from the medium
Reflections on Evangelism 2: The task of re-integration
Reflections on Evangelism 3: Understanding the Gospel
Reflections on Evangelism 4: Bringing evangelism back to the Church
Here are some questions to get your though processes flowing:

• What are some implications for HOW we “do” evangelism?
• What, do you think, it looks like when we “embody” the Gospel?
• Do you think there are a core set of ideas that must always be included when narrating the Gospel?

Top 5 for 2006: books

These are the top five books that I’ve read this year–though they weren’t necessarily published this year (in no particular order):

The Theopolitical Imagination by William Cavanaugh

The Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin

Dissident Discipleship by David Augsburger

Making Room: Recovering Hospitality As a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl

Tie: Ender’s Shadow series or the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card

Top 5 for 2006: movies

In many ways this has been a disappointing year for film. In addition to slimmer pickin’s, I haven’t watched as many movies in recent months as is my custom. Nevertheless, here are the top five movies that came out in 2006 (in no particular order).
The Departed
The Illusionist
Apocalypto
Stranger than Fiction
Thank You For Smoking

I suspect that I haven’t seen some of the best movies of 2006. Here are some movies I’d like to see that came out in 2006:

Little Miss Sunshine
Deliver Us From Evil
The Last King of Scotland
Letters from Iwo Jima
The Good Shepherd

Top 5 for 2006: missionthink posts

Here are the top five posts of 2006, in my opinion, from missionthink.org. They aren’t the most commented upon, but they are my personal favorites…feel free to revisit them and comment.

1) Discipleship in America, Part 2: The Problem with Individualistic Consumerism January 25, 2006

2) Discipleship in America, Part 5: Misinformed in America February 6, 2006

3) Crisis in Generica July 16, 2006

4) The Transformational Leadership of Prophets: A RANT May 16, 2006

5) thanksgiving or angst-giving? November 20, 2006

I was tempted to include some more recent posts, but I didn’t feel like I had enough distance from them, since they are still fresh in my mind. The ones listed above still spark something within me when I read them.

A stroll accross the Washington Avenue Bridge

Apparently my “reflections on evangelism” series isn’t exciting anyone enough for them to comment. Perhaps this means that one shouldn’t post anything like a class paper or notes for a class lecture online. Every instance of this has ended in blog silence.

Let me take my reflections on evangelism into a new direction. A couple months ago, I was walking across the Washington Avenue Bridge, which connects the U of M East Bank with the West Bank. Student organizations can promote themselves by painting a section of plywood along the interior walkway of the bridge. I noticed two things: 1) MANY Christian organizations were represented and 2) almost all of those organizations really fell short of conveying anything interesting or artistic. I decided to take cell-phone pictures of some of the more interesting displays…here’s the first one (I may show you more later). My random thoughts follow:

Ok–the classic “scare the hell outta ya’ will mean scaring Jesus inta ya’” approach. Does this really work, like ever? I wish someone would do a study on conversions among post-adolescents to determine reasons for conversion and also the extent to which fear was a motivation. I know sometimes children will convert from within strongly Christian systems out of a desire to avoid hell, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever met someone who was an adult who converted out of fear.

It is interesting that this display doesn’t mention Jesus.

Is the assumption that the non-Christian will get so scared that he or she will scribble down “Rom. 5:12″ and/or “Rev. 20:15,” proceed to run back to the dorm, go to www.biblegateway.com and then look up these two verses in order to discover a way to escape coming wrath? That is a lot to expect of a casual passerby.

Let’s assume they DID visit Rom 5:12 or Rev 20:15. This is what they’d find:

Romans 5:12–Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned–

Revelation 20:15–If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
What would this casual passerby conclude from these verses?

Reflections on Evangelism 4: Bringing evangelism back to the Church

Evangelism is always ecclesio-centric, because the church is both expression and interpreter, embodiment and witness. So then, this is what we?re trying to do at Missio Dei: We?re limiting our witness to a particular geographical area, and attempting to live as much of our life there as possible. We are attempting to root our spiritual practices in the neighborhood as we offer radical hospitality to our neighbors. We both invite them to join us in our community?s practices, but also go out to establish friendships with people wherever they are. We are trying to live as though the most important thing we can do as a community is be PRESENT-and thereby Christ?s presence is mediated through us (after all, we are a nation of priests)–and then to narrate the ways in which we see God at work in the world-past, present, and future.

Reflections on Evangelism 3: Understanding the Gospel

Evangelism flows out of one?s understanding of the Gospel. When Jesus proclaimed the Good News, he said it was that the kingdom is here. And when Paul re-affirmed the Good News, he pointed to the Cross and the Resurrection, and to Christ’s continued presence by his Spirit–so that through these events we can experience a reconciled relationship with God. He dwells among us. And his presence transform us.

And if we, the Church, are to be people of the Gospel (evangelicals in the truest sense of the word)…then we need to not only proclaim the Good News, but live as though it were true. The reason that we are given an entire Testament in which to discover the Gospel is that there are many terrifying and beautiful implications to the reality that God is among us. Our being and doing and proclaiming all should point to the presence of God among us. And that is why we, the Church, exist-to proclaim and embody the Presence among us.

If the Gospel is God?s Triune presence among us, then what evangelism is, in my estimation, is first a matter of embodying Christ?s presence in our world (with all of its Sermon on the Mount goodness). Flowing out of our embodiment, Gospel proclamation is a NARRATION of what God has done, what he is doing now in our midst, and what he will ultimately do.

Therefore, the church, which is not the Kingdom, is its visible expression and its interpreter in our world. The church both embodies the Kingdom and its life and witnesses to its presence and future in its mission.

Reflections on Evangelism 2: The task of re-integration

Reconnecting the Gospel message with the shape of our lives is fundamentally a task of re-integration. What people are hungry for, I believe, is a deeply spiritual way of life-not a set of beliefs that if believed, secures salvation. Nor are they interested in cold ritual detached from ones regular flow of living.

We need to re-root our understanding of the Church in our understanding that the Church participates within the Triune life of God-that we participate in his mission into the world and we participate in Christ?s worship of God-all of this made possible by the Holy Spirit.
We need to move beyond seeing evangelism as merely an activity-of communicating a set of universalized disembodied truths. Instead, we need to explore the ways in which we can embody the Gospel and have evangelism be the outward communication of that embodiment.

« Previous Page — Next Page »