SpiritFarmer

The September edition of Next-Wave has gone live, which includes as its “cover story” an autobiographical piece by none other than Brian McLaren. I actually read this over the weekend on the Emergent Village website. Interestingly, the same day I read it, I finished D.A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, which obviously mentions McLaren more than a little bit.

I’ve tried to avoid reading book reviews on Carson because I wanted to read it with an open mind, without too many subscripts running. Overall, I have to say I was disappointed. I did expect to disagree with him and his critiques of the emerging church, but honestly, I expected a heartier effort on his part. I found his descriptions of postmodernity shallow and simplistic. I almost felt like he didn’t have a command of the theories and thrusts of the philosophy – at least not enough to be writing his own book length critiques. He takes some shots at Stanley Grenz, who’s Primer on Postmodernism was my first in depth exposure to the thought. He would have done better to learn more from Grenz before pulling up short, as he appears to have done. And then, of course, he goes off on Brian McLaren – at length.

I actually found some of Carson’s critiques to be helpful and insightful, even if not profound. But there’s just way too much broad-brushing – as though McLaren is the unquestioned pope of this movement/conversation. Clearly, this thing is about more than just the one guy.

The main beef I have with the book is that Carson shows his lack of understanding of his topic by his insistence on making linear, foundationalist arguments in an attempt to expose a non-linear, post-foundationalist mode of thought. I would have liked for him to be clever enough to find a postmodern approach to debunk postmodernism. Add to that the fact that this movement/conversation has never simply been about postmodernism. Many of us all along have noted the significance of the socio-cultural shift, without buying into all the precepts and epistimology. We recognize it for what it is, and then get on task with missional theology and ecclesiology.

I’m starting to sound like an academic now, so I’ll stop. I am still looking for the first good book that will put us in check. I mean that – we need a book like that. I guess I’ll give Carson some credit for trying, and for meaning well. He does display a somewhat generous spirit at times, which is more than I can say for some of Carson’s own critics.

This post from Ryan Bolger very nicely summarizes some of the issues I’m facing in my campus ministry position, and suggests a good, slow way forward.

I just want the world to know that I’m a really unimpressive bachelor. Michelle flew down to California last Friday. She’s coming home late tonight. I’m happy about this. Now, I’m a guy who likes his alone time and everything, but really, I’m pretty much cut out for marriage.

Michelle is going to come home very very tired. She went to CA to help her parents move out of our house into their new house. She has also had the un-fun job of prepping the house for tenants to move in later this week.

It was nearly two years ago now that the wildfires in Southern California took Michelle’s parents’ home from them. And after a long, very stressful process of putting life back together and building a new house, they’re finally in their own place again. I’m really really happy for them – especially because their new house is truly amazing. The ironic thing to me is that they’re moving in, even while people in the South are losing their homes to the hurricane. Natural disasters are equal opportunity destroyers, I guess.

Well, at long last, I’ve made some changes to the ‘ol blog design. I know it’s still not impressive, but hey, I’m no web genius. That image up there at the top is part of a painting Michelle and I have hanging in our house. It’s by an artist out of California, named James Leonard.

Well, comment if you are able and tell me how ugly this looks. If you hate it enough, I’ll let you redesign it your own self.

One Sunday a young Quaker came to visit and the Assemblies of God people were in charge. We had spiritual prayer singing, hand-raising, and a strong truth message from the front. The Quaker visitor went and told friends and family that MaryKate was planting a Pentecostal church. Another Sunday the Assemblies of God people had family visiting and the service had quiet at the beginning, centering prayer, and a more reflective message. His family came after him with, “Why are you planting a Quaker church?”

read on . . .

The September edition of Off The Map‘s Idealab is live. Good stuff as always.

Hurricane Katrina blogger.

Via kottke

O.k., I don’t really know enough about Google to know how funny this might really be, but for those of you that do . . . here’s a little Google world domination (in South Park form).

In all the good evangelical books and teachers on the topic of preaching, you’ll pick up the sense that in addition to having three point outlines that all start with the same letter (you are allowed to have more than three points in your outline as long as the starting letter of each point combines into a word like: BLESSED, HOPE, or maybe LAME SERMON), it’s always good to make reference to greek word roots.

One other really popular tool is to count the number of times a given word or topic is mentioned in the Bible. If something is mentioned a lot, it must be important to God . . . at least, that’s the rationale. O.k., so why doesn’t the following normally come up in good evangelical sermons?

The Bible contains more than 300 verses on the poor, social justice, and God’s deep concern for both.

Don’t believe it? Go here for a sampling.

Thanks to Rudy Carasco for the link.

N.T. Wright on empire, on following Jesus:

Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come . . . on earth as it is in heaven.” And we Christians have all too often said, “on heaven as it is in heaven, and if we can sort out a little bit of earth, that’s OK, but it’s not terribly important.” Jesus’ kingship is all about a different way of power, a different way of life, within this present world.

Here’s the long article this quote came from. It’s the transcript of an address at Seattle Pacific University earlier this year. Wait a minute! Who forgot to tell me that N.T. freakin’ Wright was in Seattle?!! I totally would’ve crashed that party. Oh well, maybe next time.

By the way, I found this article linked on Jordon Cooper’s site.

I know at least one of my friends will laugh at me for being impressed by this, but I ran into this mess yesterday. I was configuring my new laptop, and importing my e-mail from my gmail account into Outlook, and it brought over all the messages just fine . . . including all the archived messages and the ones from my “Sent” folder – all into my Inbox. All 2300 of them. Oi! My gmail account hasn’t even been open for a year, and I’ve sent and received that many messages. That doesn’t even factor in my e-mail from my last job.

Again, 2300 may not be very impressive to others, but it did make me stop and think about how reliant I’ve become on technology.

On a related note, I’ve also had a couple of recent conversations in which I’ve made a statement close to this: “I know this sounds cheezy and overly dramatic, but seriously, blogging has changed my life.” Pathetic? Perhaps. True? Absolutely.

I know I’m not a widely read blogger, but I’m a thankful one. I’ve made good friends and been encouraged big time in my days in the blogosphere. I will likely be a part of this community for a long time to come.