“Number Nine. Number Nine. Number Nine. Number Nine. Number Nine….”
- Christianity Today: Robert Webber’s Ancient-Future Legacy. “He reminded evangelicals that ‘the road to the future runs through the past.'”
- Missional: So THAT’S the Word! It is the word indeed. And now that I read that back, I would say “Missional: The word in deed. Maybe I should submit that as the entire new Wikipedia definition of “missional.” Speaking of “missional,” one might say, “But… this “missional” idea changes everything.” Why yes, it does. One might even imagine Distinctives of a Missional Reading of Scripture.
- Comparing old/new or institutional/missional represents a considerable shift in thinking for many. Adam Feldman offers missional ministry: philosophy versus program, or as Tina Gasperson puts the whole program-oriented style, Selling church to the world, wherein she’s noticed something that I’ve felt as well… she writes, “I have noticed that it is much easier and makes much more sense to share Jesus with others now that I don’t have the burden of loyalty to the religious system. In other words, I don’t have to try to sell that system to anyone by saying, ‘but my church is different.'” Still along the contrast theme, Alan Hirsch proposes a consideration of spiderman v. batman where one is the emerging missional church, and the other is the institutional church. My spidey-sense is tingling….
- The death of the institutional church?
C’mon, you gotta love the photo! - If Irish protestants and catholics can work together, and if an emerging church and an inherited/institutional one can officially merge (another update), then there’s hope for all of us.
- Grace, who posted her real name somewhere on this blog this week (that’ll get you scouring the comments!) has been running a series on men, “The Good Fight.” It’s got warrior/hero themes but isn’t really one of those sword rattling woof-woof-woof fist-in-the-air things. (Phew!) Maybe that’s a result of the observation coming from a woman rather than a man. (I can’t deal anymore with those big arena-style events where every third sentence begins, “As a man, I…”) The sixth post labeled “part four” has most of the specifically men-oriented bits, and they’re well done — insightful and challenging. Thanks, Grace. | The Good Fight – Intro | The Good Fight – 1 | Clarifications, Maybe | The Good Fight – 2 | The Good Fight – 3 | The Good Fight – 4 | The Good Fight – Conclusion | It looks long this way, but each of the posts is short.
- Churches come to being in a lot of different ways, particularly the smaller homestyle variety… but some ways of starting are much better than others, and perhaps less prone to repeatedly asking if it’s a good idea.
- John Smulo has posted that the podcasts from the “God For People Who Hate Church” conference are online now. Speaking of God-Yes/Church-No, Dan Horwedel engages with Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations as he talks about Forgiving the church.
- Any LifeHackers out there? In the past week or so, they’ve had items on How to make latte art, The ten most useful knots and how to tie them plus When not to change careers, and two Weekend Projects, Fancy Pancakes and Build a cardboard castle as well as a ton of other items, including a wide variety of tech items from very tech to shortcuts of the “just hold the shift key to…” variety. They were also asking, How well does your name Google? I guess I do okay, I’m #1 for my blog name here as well as for my real name. This came up around here this week in our discussion of the Brother Maynard Lookalike Contest, in which we discussed secret identities, or pseudonyms and aliases. And on whether I would ever reveal mine. btw, anybody know what Superman does now that phone booths have been replaced by cell phones? Lastly, we’ve also been having a good discussion this week Concerning Bible Versions, Editions, & Traditions, and even welcomed Laura from Tyndale to the discussion of the NLT. Still time to add to that one, do go and read it if you haven’t yet — and if you blog, take Laura up on her offer.
Well, that’s it for #9.
What in heaven’s name are you going to do when you get to “Random Acts of Linkage #78” … for example?
I’m just sayin’ … you’ve set quite a bar for yourself ;-)
10q for the linkage. Good stuff.
Sonja —
I won’t be increasing the number of points by one each time! I just kind of “forced” it to 9 this time because of the way I started… it’s just the first association in my mind; hope people get the reference, might be lost on some of the young’uns ;^) Some of my past “RAL’s” have been topical… just mixing it up. I actually have 29 outbound links on this post (I just counted) but if I made a bar of it, I probably couldn’t clear that bar for more than the next dozen posts anyway!
Shane —
I want to be diplomatic… I’m interested, but very cautious. In the post that I linked, you criticized the E/MC movement a bit harshly, but it was obviously based on a very early reading of a small sample, and the overall tone of your post suggests an openness to missional ideas and an intent to continue investigating. I hope you will do more reading and thinking on the matter to achieve a bit more of a balanced view and understanding of what’s really being said in emerging church circles.
I skimmed through your dialogue with Jamie on the post that I linked, and I am a bit disappointed… refer to my preceding paragraph. I think perhaps I read your critical paragraph more softly than Jamie did, and perhaps more so than you intended. Would it not be fair to say that without the wind of the Spirit, we really are just dirt… so being moved by the wind of necessity is a good thing? The issues to be thought through are vast and complex. People in the E/MC movement don’t all agree with each other on nuances, but we’re agreed on purpose. I think it’d be fair to say precisely the same thing about most institutional churches (and with much stronger words based on the way that many distance themselves from each other), so I’d be cautious about the criticism. As my mother used to say, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
I also took a look at the Cross Bloggers link you provided. Based on skimming the first three pages of posts there, it appears that the vast majority of the posts are all about abortion. I recognize there was just an event about this that is important to some, but either this is always the tone or it illustrates the weakness of a single cursory survey, which so far is what you’ve done on the Resonate bloggers. For my part, I’m on record as critical of single-issue voting; I don’t believe that a vote to a particular party or person should be tied to your faith… that’s what got George W in power in the USA, and I think that’s a bad thing. Even if I agree with the pro-life stance, it will form only a very small part of my voting decisions, if at all.
Concerning joining the Cross Bloggers, maybe I’ll check back on the page a few times before signing on. If you’re asking because of a recognized need for balance within the group, I would be much more willing… but for now I’d probably have to link to the group with a disclaimer that the majority of bloggers there do not reflect my views, based on what I’ve seen so far. Given that the majority viewpoint there seems to be pretty consistent, I wonder if most of them would be accepting of my views within the group? I’m not saying no at this stage, but there are implications. Would be interested in your thoughts on it.