07.03.09
Posted in learning, formation at 9:32 am by len
Christine Sine shares an article from the Mustard Seed Sampler..
“Many years ago, our pastor was asked, “Why do you spend 20 hours per week preparing your sermon, when you should be relying on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit on Sunday morning to preach God’s Word?” The implication was that exerting the effort to research, study, and write during the week somehow hindered the work of the Spirit while in the pulpit. Our pastor replied with remarkable patience and good will, “Well, the way I see it, by giving 20 hours each week to sermon preparation, I am actually exposing myself to 20 hours of the Spirit’s inspiration rather than just 20 minutes.”
“The spiritual discipline of sermon-writing involves daily spiritual exercises that get and keep a preacher in shape for that 20 minutes of heavy lifting on Sunday morning. It helps the sermon writer adopt new habits, skills, spiritual strength, and the mental tenacity required for the task to become second nature. The spiritual discipline of sermon-writing relies on other disciplines to feed into it as streams merge to create a river. Sermon preparation is a composite of silence, solitude, Bible study, meditation, prayer, journaling, worship, and practicing the presence of God.”
More..
See also “Journalling as a Spiritual Discipline” and
“Blogging and Communal Formation ”
and
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07.02.09
Posted in poetry/prose, the arts, pilgrimage at 8:54 am by len
Cockburn’s first album was published in 1970. I purchased it around 1977. A short while ago I found the old cassette tape - but I no longer have a cassette player. My daughter, however, made the purchase on iTunes.
It’s a great album and brings back a few memories. Bruce was a new believer at the time, but a sacramental perspective is already in his bones. Here are the words from the title above:
Rain rings trash can bells
and what do you know
my alley becomes a cathedral
Eyes can be archways
to enter or leave by
vacuum’s replaced by a crystal
O Jesus don’t let Toronto take my song away
It’s easy to love if
you let yourself love it
but like a moth’s wing it’s easily crushed
O Jesus don’t let tomorrow take my love away
And then these words are from “Man of a Thousand Faces,”
I’m looking to be by a window
that looks out on the sea
anybody here know
where such a place is?
Surf of golden sunlight
breaking over me
man of a thousand faces
In the Garden paths take form
but the hailstorm guards its own
things forbidden, things unknown
you must travel on alone
In memoriam friends come round
but the hard ground holds its own
time for pulling, time to ride
it’s my turn but where’s the guide?
On the jetty shadows lie
and the gulls cry once or twice
swelling thunder, truth is hid
behind the glass eye of the idol…
anybody here know
where such a place is?
You know, these city towers,
jewels on the Serpent’s crown,
twist the space between them
till every eye is blinded
Lord will you trade your sunlit ocean
with its writhing filigree
for any one of my thousand faces?
It turns out that a photo album celebrating the life and work of Bruce Cockburn is nearly finished.
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07.01.09
Posted in learning, transition, semiotics at 9:12 am by len
There is this scene in Contact where Jodie Foster’s character is making a final presentation to the board members of Haddon Enterprises, asking for money to continue the CETI project. One of the members comments that the search is more “science fiction” than science, and the good doctor responds something like this:
“Science fiction.. right.. well, have you heard of this guy who thinks man can fly? He is building this thing called an aeroplane. Crazy right? And how about trips to the moon? Science fiction right?”
Whatever the future holds, there are few who possess the vision to imagine it.
In an article in the latest issue of UTNE reader Clay Shirky writes that “The Revolution will not be Published.” About halfway through the article Clay reviews Elizabeth Eisenstein’s research into Gutenberg’s revolutionary printing press. Her interest was not so much in the press itself or its impact, but in how the press was a catalyst for change and in the cultural process that made up the revolution.
It turns out that the process was immensely chaotic.. or perhaps chaordic. He writes, “Only in retrospect were experiments undertaken during the wrenching transition to print revealed to be turning points.” He points out that key innovations didn’t seem like keys at the time. They had unintended consequences. Small perturbations were magnified in unexpected ways. He comments,
“That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent in the moment; big changes stall, small changes spread. Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can be neither mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify…
“And so it is today. When people demand to know how we are going to replace [all kinds of things- add your favorite institution here] .. they are demanding to be told that the old systems will not break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
“There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.”
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Posted in culture, emergence, mission at 8:54 am by len
Eugene Cho posts this YouTube video of a spontaneous male dancer at the Sasquatch Festival in Washington and the viral way the dance expands.
Is this the way “evangelism” works via belonging? Watch the video. Eugene asks some good questions..
* What is going on? What do you think?
* Is this an example of visionary leadership?
* Is this an example of courage? Individuality?
* The first guy dancing has guts but isn’t the 2nd person that join him even more courageous?
* How great is it to see the group grow into a huge ‘movement? But at the end, is it just herd mentality?
He also comments:
“All interesting questions to consider but I was absolutely struck by the 2nd person that joins the ‘dance party.’ The first guy just looked awkward dancing all alone. His dancing didn’t help either. We all know how important the primary visionaries are but we often underestimate the importance of the primary supporter, #2, executive pastor, ‘right hand person,’ partner, the Jonathan, or whatever other word you like to use.”
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06.30.09
Posted in ekklesia, formation, leadership, hermeneutics at 11:22 am by len
I’ve had a number of conversations in recent weeks around complexity and the need to reach for simplicity. The focus has ranged from governance structures to the Trinity. In general the feeling is, “can we get on with the work” and spend less time discussing details?
But it has also cropped up in relation to teaching in the gatherings. The general feeling is “keep it simple” .. we have short attention spans and there isn’t much theological sophistication out there. Besides, we have practical concerns (see “get on with the work” above).
I can fairly say I am sympathetic to all this. I’m well along in years of study of the gospel and culture, leadership and spirituality, yet I am still learning. And ultimately all this study has had limited impact on my own life. The greatest impact has come through friendship and love. I recognize the need for moving slowly and being sensitive to the capacities of our community members, and for integration of the pastoral and apostolic tasks. I embrace the wisdom of James Houston in this:
“When we are looking for help from the right kind of people, “teachers” are not enough… We forget that the nurturing and caring relationship is inherent in effective teaching. Wisdom, after all, is more than data processing. Activism that is devoted to a cause can also be a poor substitute for relationships, because it is too busy to cultivate friendship. The Greek philosophers were wiser when they stated that “thought is not meaningful without action; and action is not meaningful without friendship.” James Houston, The Mentored Life
Yet to divorce friendship and love from the dimensions of truth and practice and a community gathered around the word would also be an error. We are to love God with all that we are: mind, body and spirit. Truth has relational, covenantal and propositional components. To leave any of these out is to distort God’s intention for us (the ecclesiology of Acts 2). Read the rest of this entry »
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06.29.09
Posted in audio, leadership, emergence, prayer, pilgrimage, health/recovery at 10:08 am by len
The first song I ever wrote.. of the three or four in my lifetime.. was themed from the story of Pilgrim’s Progress. One of the lines was this:
“The dreamer meets the Dreamer, keeper of his warriors true..”
God is a dreamer! He created all that we see out of nothing but a loving community of conversation. He continually envisions an alternate future, passes his dreams on to us, and those of us with the courage to embrace them pray and work them into concrete expression - the subversive reality of the Kingdom.
This kingdom is literally not of this world - yet breaks into our world in power and in surprising and brilliant ways, bringing light into darkness, peace into chaos, and replacing sadness with joy.
Let’s face it - anyone who imagines an alternate future in this world will face many disappointments, and heartache and pain. Sometimes we don’t attain our dreams because they are too large for one life - they might take several generations to attain. We are “prophets of a future not our own.”
Sometimes we don’t attain them because they weren’t really God’s dream in the first place. They were our own distorted ego with a kingdom veneer. We sought success, and not fruitfulness. We were more concerned with looking good in the eyes of the broken world than in bringing a smile to God’s heart.
And sometimes we don’t attain them because we live in a broken world and we are broken people. Our dreams for a shalom future meet resistance from the world, the flesh and the devil. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in learning, transition, emergence at 5:30 am by len
Paul at Prodigal Kiwis points to this article in the Alban Institute journal:
“When congregations, with all good intentions, make plans for change but don’t seem to get anywhere, they may be experiencing the very common phenomenon that some have called the “knowing and doing gap.” You know what you need to do, but can’t seem to do it. The situation is not hopeless, however. There are approaches that we, as leaders, can take to get beyond this tendency.
“First, change that endures mines the best of what has been in the past, responds thoughtfully to the challenges of the present, and discerns wisely and prayerfully a future among possible scenarios….”
You can read the rest of the article here.
For more on this theme from the world of business, you could read: The Knowing and Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action
For a summary of the core of Appreciative Inquiry go HERE.
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06.28.09
Posted in formation, leadership, mission at 5:30 am by len
Stephen Seamands recalls Lee Yih at the 1989 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Mr. Yih, a businessman from Hong Kong, contrasted how frogs and lizards acquire food.
“The frog just sits and waits and lets the food come to him. As soon as an insect gets close enough, all a frog has to do is stick out its tongue and get it. If a lizard behaved in the same way, it would soon starve. It can’t afford to sit and wait. It has to go out into the world where the food can be found and hunt.”
Yih went on to suggest that many full time Christan workers are like the frog. They go off to Bible school or seminary, get a degree, become a pastor or join a staff at a church, and they expect that somehow the people around them will know that they are in the business of meeting spiritual needs. Soon their froglike habit of waiting for others to come to them becomes deeply ingrained.
Given the increasingly post-Christendom environment we live in, those of us who have been trained to be ministerial frogs must now become “retooled lizards.”
From Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God
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06.27.09
Posted in formation, prayer at 9:51 am by len
When someone at METRO recently asked for some teaching on prayer, I got thinking what I would say in a short space of time. What would I report on what I have learned over the years, yet keep it simple and accessible and practical? Well, I don’t know how well I did. But this is what I came up with. The link to the two page document follows.
* prayer is subversive
* prayer is submissive
* prayer is effective
* prayer is Trinitarian
* prayer is spiritual
Short Notes on Prayer
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06.26.09
Posted in theology, gospel, reviews, ekklesia, mission at 5:30 am by len
Missional Church still seems to stand apart, almost a map for the conversation and movement as it exists ten years later. This is not to say that the collection of essays said all that needed to be said, or got it all right. It does seem to lean the conversation too near the church, sometimes asking church questions of the kingdom instead of asking kingdom questions of the church. But that separation and distinction, between church and kingdom, is always tenuous and a bit murky anyway. In one form or another, it’s all here, and it remains relevant and often prophetic.
I was a little surprised when I was looking for a quote I remembered vaguely and bumped into Craig Van Gelder’s section in chapter two on pages 32-36, making distinctions between the uniqueness of the Canadian landscape and experience versus the American. While four pages is not much, he manages to get it right and summarize some critical material. Just before this section he does another neat piece of work, describing in six pages “five facets of the modern self.” Craig breaks it down into these:
1. the self as citizen with rights and freedoms
2. the self as consumer
3. the self as constructed roles and identities
4. the self as product oftechnique
5. the self of feeling, intuition, and desire (Dionysian).
This last one is particularly interesting for me because it introduces the psychic duality we experience as so much tension.
Like all the chapters in this collection, there is a level of insight and engagement that is only rarely attained in other published material. If you have this book, like me, you should pick it up at least once a year. It will continue to grow with you.
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