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Heretical Orthodoxy

I am excited to begin a new series in which I will work through How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins. As I read the book, I keep thinking how helpful the concepts will be in responding to questions and criticisms levelled at the emerging church. I hope readers will help me to work through it, asking important questions both to clarify and challenge the thoughts I will be sharing.

Peter Rollins seems to prefer the phrase "emerging conversation" when referring to the emerging church. This is what he says in his introduction to the book:

While [emerging Church] is a useful term, the word 'Church' can be quite misleading, since the movement is not so much developing a distinct religious tradition within Christianity, but rather is re-introducing ideas ideas that help to both revitalize already existing religious traditions and build bridges between them. (xiv-xv)

I like where he's going with that statement, but the problem is that there is such a plethora of opinions about what "counts" as emerging. I would hope more people would come to view this whole phenomenon as a conversation more than a new denomination or an adjective to describe individual churches. We'll probably talk about this more later in the series.

Body Prayer

Body Prayer, by Doug Pagitt and Kathryn Prill, is a nice little collection of postures for prayer.  The book is divided into 30 short chapters, each of which gives a description of the prayer focus (i.e. reconciliation, hope in the journey), something poetic, and a description of the prayer posture.  There is also space given for journalling about the experience.

My family has been using the book before my four year old son goes to bed at night.  We have found it to be a fun way to talk about concepts like kindness, praise, and healing.  The kindness posture involves sitting down and gently rubbing your hands together "as if you were putting on lotion."  This made such an impression on my son that my wife spied him practicing the motion the next day!

Preaching Re-Imagined

I just finished reading Preaching Re-Imagined by Doug Pagitt.  The main idea of the book is that preachers need to move beyond the practice of delivering persuasive speeches based on a biblical text.  He calls this kind of preaching "speaching" and describes it in the following way:

The "speacher" stands in front of the "audience."  The speacher is the only one with a microphone and therefore the only one with the power to speak on the subject at hand.  The content of the speech has been decided on with little, if any, input from those who are hearing the speech, and the conclusions drawn are those drawn by the speacher and no one else. (p.48)

The alternative he suggests is called "progressional dialogue."  This concept is fairly simple.  Instead of doing all the talking, the preacher allows time for discussion.  Her opinion is not the only one that counts.  Preparation is not done by the pastor, alone in a study, with commentaries as basically her only source of information.  At Solomon's Porch, the church Doug Pagitt serves in, they have a gathering every Tuesday night where the passage for that week's "sermon" is reviewed and discussed.  This helps to shape the thoughts that Doug will share on the following Sunday. 

My only problem with the book is that it did not provide much in the way of "how to" information.  Most of the book is spent trying to convince us that preaching needs to be re-imagined.  Unfortunately, I began the book already convinced and was hoping for a little more in the form of practical suggestions.  I think that the author could have shared more insight about how he has made "progressional dialogue" work without being overly prescriptive.  Perhaps he could have even interviewed other pastors who are trending away from "speaching" in order to share what has worked for them.  I realize that there is always a danger of people thinking they should just mimic other ministries, but having personally experimented with this, I think that some more real life examples of what has worked would be helpful.

Overall, I recommend this book to anyone who preaches or is planning on preaching sometime in the future.  I'm convinced that some things need to change and I hope many more people will be, too.

Used Book Search Engine

A friend just told me about a great site called AddAll.com.  It's a search engine for books, both new and used.  You type in a title and it gives you a list of stores that have it with the price of the book including shipping.

The Liberated Imagination

The Liberated Imagination, by Leland Ryken, is a great examination of the arts from a Christian perspective.  I was just reminded of it because I was asked by a prospective church to talk about books that have had an impact on my view of worship.  I would like to take the next few days to blog through one of the best chapters, which is entitled "Creativity, Beauty, and Recreation."

Dr. Ryken, who is an English professor at Wheaton College, starts his discussion of creativity in Genesis 1.  "Artists create because God created first," he writes.  God is depicted as the creator of all things and as the One who "saw that it was good."  Abraham Kuyper wrote, "As image-bearer of God, man possesses the possibility both to create something beautiful, and to delight in it." (Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism, p.142)

Some Christians have traditionally had trouble justifying the pursuit of the arts.  The tendency has been toward utilitarianism.  Some act as if art is only "worth it" if it teaches some spiritual truth.  On the contrary, Dr. Ryken insists that "works of art have value because they are imaginitive and creative." (p.69)

This is not to suggest that we cannot pass any judgement on artistic creativity.  Dr. Ryken suggests three standards we should pay attention to:

1. The purpose, or intent, of the artist.
2. The effect it has on its audience.
3. Aesthetic excellence.

I wonder if readers agree with these three categories.  What do you like or dislike about them? 
   

The Sacred Way

I took a "mini-break" this week.  Valerie, Liam, and I drove up to New York state and stayed with some friends.  From Tuesday afternoon till Friday night I didn't go on the Internet at all!  To be honest, I didn't really miss it that much.  I know you all must have missed me terribly!

Anyway, while we were up there I picked up The Sacred Way by Tony Jones.  It was pretty cool to see the long quote from Adam Cleaveland.  The book is an interesting introduction to all of the various "contemplative" practices throughout the ages.  Tony freely admits that he is not contemplative giant, which makes the practices seem approachable.  My problem, after reading a good portion of the book, is figuring out how to implement some of these things.  His epilogue, entitled "Developing a Rule of Life," should help in that area.

I am definitely drawn to the idea of a more contemplative lifestyle.  I question whether I will ever be able to adapt such a thing, however.  Anyone out there have the same struggle?  What have you done to overcome the busyness of our world.  And don't tell me you get up at 5:00 a.m.  I only believe in one 5:00!

Millenium Book Poll

At some point, Amazon did a "Millenium Poll," in which they asked users to choose their favorite book of the last 1,000 years.  Wouldn't you know it, right up there at number 19, between "War and Peace" and "Catch 22," was your favorite and mine—"Left Behind."

Can I just say that I think that's sad?

The Challenge of Jesus

I have been discovering a whole new world of thought in the pages of "The Challenge of Jesus" by N.T. Wright.  Wright's challenge is to reconstruct a solidly historical picture of Christ and his mission while on earth.  He does so over and against the liberal tendency to trap Jesus in a modern, "enlightened" perspective (i.e. the Jesus Seminar) and the conservative tendency to simply ignore historical readings in favor of an overly "spiritualized" understanding.

I'm not sure that I agree with all of the conclusions that Mr. Wright comes to, but this book has been a real eye-opener.  It has helped me to move further away from the "flannelgraph" image of Jesus we sometimes tend to have.  I think this is an accurate assessment of the kind of error my tradition has fallen into:

"...many Christians have embraced a Jesus who only seemed to be human, have read a Bible that only seemed to have human authors..." (p.24-25)

We seem to have this concept of Jesus who came out of the womb ready to preach "the gospel" and do miracles.  We are unwilling to question Jesus' own understanding of vocation/calling.  We say he is human, but distort that image with our Platonic view of "perfection."  We say human beings wrote the Bible and we say we do not hold to a "dictation theory," but is that really the case?  In all practicality, I don't see much difference between our view of Scripture and an Islamic understanding of the Khoran.

One of the very interesting things that Mr. Wright does is to describe Jesus as a political figure.  He describes how Jesus, in his word and in his deeds, sought to disrupt the various political schemes of the day.  He talks about how Jesus' parables were rooted in Old Testament porphecy concerning the kingdom of God.  He shows how these parables go beyond the realm of the spiritual platitude.  More on this later...

A New Kind of Christian

I just started re-reading "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian McLaren.  Reading the introduction was an encouragement to me as I continue on this path that began in Modernity and extends out into the mysteries of the future.  Just to know that there are others who are unsettled, frustrated, desiring to be liberated from a paradigm that seems more and more broken as the days go by...just to know that others have experienced the depression and fear that can come from something new that God is doing...just to be reminded once again that there really is no right way to go except forward...all of that is an encouragement to me.

I look forward to reading about the journey of a fictional pastor once again as he struggles to go down the path God has provided for him.  I look forward to gleaning some new thoughts because so much has changed in my own life and thoughts since I first read the book (which was probably not more than a year ago).  If you haven't read it yet, I encourage you to do so.

Primary Readings

I keep telling Liam that if he really wants to have a serious theological discussion with me, he must have some kind of background in historical philosophy to undergird his thoughts.  You can imagine how happy I was to find that he had chosen this text for a little pre-nap reading this afternoon!