Seems hard to believe, like it’s been forever but also like it was only a year or two ago at most. Yet six years ago today was my first post here at Subversive Influence. It’s not the six years of blogging that seems so unbelievable (particularly given my lack of consistency over the past year), but the events that precipitated it and the changes in our lives since that time. It was just over six years ago when the pastor I’d been working with for ten years on a in the church I’d been part of for sixteen showed up on my doorstep shortly after I’d gotten home from church one Sunday morning and gotten my kids some lunch. I stepped out onto my driveway to speak with him while he had his wife and kids sitting in the van, and he proceeded to blow a gasket, not only yelling at me and telling me my contributions were no longer welcome, but throwing some of my own vulnerabilities in my face and asking how I dared critique anything they were doing when they were serving? I’d say it was the beginning of the end, except the beginning had really come some years before that, creeping up on us unawares. Instead, this was the proverbial straw that did the camel in.
Six Flippin’ Years???
Musings of the Day
This evening is in a way a day of closings. It’s the end of the week, and the end of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I think our television has been on almost nonstop for 17 days now. And it’s been good seeing our Canadian athletes doing so well. 14 gold medals, more than any country has ever won in any winter Olympics. I think the early glitches of the games were pretty much forgotten as we showed the world how we party at home. People in the street spontaneously singing the national anthem? That’s pretty remarkable for any country anywhere, I’d say. And of course, we made sure to remind the world that hockey is our game. I might have over-tweeted that point, but there it is. Here we are being Canadian… thoroughly proud to the core of all our athletes who scored a podium finish, and feeling sorry for those who didn’t, whether those others are Canadian or not.
Just Clearing my Head
I was going to post this earlier this morning, but none of it had happened yet. This morning I was groggy-headed and bleary-eyed staring at my computer monitor. I had nothing to say and was too tired to say it… don’t know why, really. so I had a nap and then went out with my wife to do “errands”. You know those miscellaneous days when you both have odds and ends to get done?
- Returned library books and picked up one that was on hold; the waiting list was two months.
- Bought dog food.
- Washed the car.
Monastic Discipleship, Spiritual Formation… and the Jedi
I’ve been thinking about the spread of Christianity in China for some time now. China fascinates me… I was there in 1987, and have ever felt some kind of pull back there. Presently some good friends are in China for a year, teaching English. We were only half-serious when we talked before they left about visiting them sometime in the spring of 2008, but I haven’t half given up on the idea even though it’s really a long-shot. I blame Alan Hirsch for getting me thinking about China again this morning, with his two posts, latest take on china and lastest take on china II…through rc eyes. Quite some time ago, I mused about the underground church, and what we could learn by observation about Structures for Church Growth. I’d been musing along these lines for a couple of years already when I put them down briefly here — and then Alan Hirsch’s book, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church dove into some of these same waters, with essentially the same conclusions (but with more research to back it up). It was good to discover that either I was on the right track or I at least had good company on the wrong one. I’m pretty sure it’s the former though.
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