Subversive Influence

Missional Conversation for 2009

As I was compiling my 2008 review post, I gave a bit of thought to what the missional conversation for 2009 would hold — or what I hope it will hold. There are a few areas that we as a — what are we? Conversation? Movement? ?? — need to talk more about, and I hope that 2009 will see us tackle some of these areas in greater depth. And what are they?

1. Discipleship — this is a bad word, but it may be the commonly-used one for the topic that needs attention, which is spiritual formation. Some discussion has already been had around the subject of missional orders and rules of life, but the heart of all this is spiritual formation. This is an important subject that needs further shaping to describe what this looks like and how it is intentionally integrated into the missional way of life.

2008: The Subversive Year in Review

As I’ve done for 2005, 2006 and 2007, it’s time to review my posts for 2008 and see just what I’ve been posting about — and what’s worthy of mentioning in a year-end summary. In my mind I’ve not been posting anything particularly good for a while now, but a few other people mentioned me in their year-end bloggers-worth-mentioning summaries (David Fitch and Bill Kinnon, your cheques are in the mail), so dang, I must have said something worthy of note. Let’s see.

January
The year started off with a discussion of Measuring Converts in Simple / House / Missional Churches (twice). I moved on to The Lucifer Effect: Why Good People do Evil and allegorical interpretation of the Bible.

February
The first half of the month was largely taken up with Pagan Week, which got held over as I reviewed Frank Viola’s book Pagan Christianity in five parts, followed by an extensive three-part interview with Frank. In the second part of the month, I did an overview of The Shepherding Movement in response to a question. Discussion on that post still trickles along, with Stephen Simpson (son of Charles Simpson) joining in.

Brother Maynard’s Family Pancakes: A Dad-Challenge for New Year’s Day

The regulars around here will know that I mention pancakes from time to time, as in, “Daddy made pancakes for breakfast again!” People tell me “offline” that they really like my pancake posts — and I didn’t even realize I had any kind of theme going. But I’ve mentioned pancakes as a Sunday morning family activity, a theme which made my open letter to Stuart McLean. Not to mention the Shrove Tuesday tradition of the Pancake Turtle. In these and other posts, I’ve mentioned that I make pancakes for the kids, who are generally thrilled by the whole affair and have been known to issue special requests on a not entirely infrequent basis now. So considering all this and by no demand whatsoever, I’m going to offer my very own pancake recipe for general consumption.

But I’m publishing it with a challenge for the dads… make pancakes for your kids on New Year’s Day. Start a tradition, shock your wife, and be a hero to your kids.

Dunn & Crowder: Charismatics Reaping What’s Been Sown?

I’m not always the best at responding to comments here on the blog, but I read everything. Sometimes I compose responses in my head, which only helps on those occasions when I get it out through the keyboard and into the comment space. Then something comes along like, oh, Christmas, and I get sidetracked without ever having properly replied. So a week or more ago, my critical review of the Dunn/Crowder CD prompted a more serious discussion. First, Barb asked me a direct question in her comment on the post, and I wanted to be sure I responded… and it’s a good question. She wrote,

Bro. May, could you answer a question for me. I can’t get anyone to sit still long enough to have an intelligent conversation about this.

HoMY 85: Away in a Manger

Now that we are past Advent and into the Christmastide season, I can legitimately publish Christmas carols to the list in my series, Then Sings My Soul: The Hymns of My Youth. In the church of that youth, the Christmas carols might carry on for a week or so after Christmas (depending how the calendar fell), but that would be it until December. I’m sure it was the same for many of us, who would begin the carols of Christmas again sometime early in the Advent season. This week I add a carol which it is unlikely that one can pass by a Christmas program without hearing: “Away in a Manger.”

Random Acts of Linkage #92

It is a little-known fact that before becoming president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee was for many years foreign corresponcent for Life magazine, dividing his time between their New York and Seoul offices. One day, he left New York for a routine trip to Seoul, but, when he wasn’t heard from, the New York office became worried and called the Seoul office. The Seoul office confirmed that he had arrived as scheduled but had left almost immediately for North Korea. They quoted him as saying that he was not at liberty to say where he could be reached but that he would be doing a story on how the other half lived, promising to cable it to Seoul and New York on completion.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

This evening as my wife prepared to go back to work after the holiday, I remarked that this has been a better Christmas for us than last year. “The last two,” she replied. And it’s true. We were sitting in our new basement rec room, surveying the “media wall” I had built, with the new Wii plugged in to the home theatre, complete with brand-new KEF center channel speaker purchased at a Boxing Day sale this morning. We’re looking forward to family time in the space, which has been a lot of work. Just three weeks ago, it was a mess of bare walls, exposed 2×4 framed walls, and an assortment of boxes of excess miscellany overflowed from the storage room. There was more than one night in the last week that I worked until 3:00AM, and my wife got started at 6:00AM the following morning to sand or paint. We were both burning the candle at both ends, actually. We kept telling ourselves it would be worth it, and the end of the project was very satisfying.

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