Can't say where this came from, but I've been walking through this whole Christmas season with a bit of an edge. People have heard me say cranky little quips, and even the occasional mini-rant. In part, it's the consumerism of the season that a lot of people are cautious of. There are good efforts out there already to combat that mentality, and to make something better. For the most part, though, I've had a more theological sort of thing going.

I'm more concerned about the gross imbalance that exists between the time, money, effort, and overall attention that Christians and churches give to Christmas vs. Resurrection Sunday. Hear me now - I'm a grateful believer in celebrating the Incarnation, and the amazing story that it is. I do think it's good and right for us to make a big deal of that.

But let me ask this question - How many Christians do you know that redecorate their whole house to celebrate the Resurrection? Not talking about Easter bunnies here, either. I'm talking about clearing the coffee table so we can set up a little ceramic scene of a big rock mountain with a cave cut out of it, and a stone that's been rolled away from the entrance. You've got your ceramic angels hanging out at the tomb, ceramic Mary looking confused while talking to that strange ceramic gardener dude, ceramic Peter and ceramic John sucking air from having just finished their foot race. Everyone except for the angels, and the aforementioned gardener have that expression of "Wha??" on their faces. O.k., so I got a little out of control there . . . all that might be a little creepy.

How many Christians do you know that use even 20% of the money they'd spend at Christmas to give it away to Christian missionaries or causes?

Almost all churches make a big deal about their Good Friday/Easter Sunday services. Celebrative gatherings, sunrise services, special musical presentations. Many new church plants hold their public "launches" on Easter (a thing I've got a whole different set of misgivings about). I don't want to be completely unfair here - there is special emphasis on the Resurrection. I'm just wondering if it's equivalent to Christmas.

All of this, when in two of our four gospels, the narrative of the birth of Jesus isn't even mentioned! Do I need to bother asking the counter-question of how many gospels have the Passion narrative?

With all that said, let me rescue myself from this scrooge-y corner I'm in. I DO LIKE CHRISTMAS. Michelle and I will be traveling great distances to be with family and friends for celebrations. I LIKE GIVING GIFTS TO PEOPLE, and think that Christmas represents a beautiful time for us to honor those that God has placed in our lives. I DO LIKE SOME CHRISTMAS MUSIC - this is good stuff (but this and this make me want to hurt people). I LIKE CHRISTMAS COOKIES. Oh, and I LIKE SEEING LITTLE CHILDREN GET GIDDY ON CHRISTMAS MORNING. I've got no beefs with Santa - he's always been better to me than I've been to him. In the interest of full disclosure, let me also say that I LIKE RECEIVING GIFTS - especially those that show that someone really thought about me and wanted to express their love.

My main thing here is to put things in perspective. Thank you God for the Incarnation. Indeed. But thank you, thank you, thank you Jesus for inaugurating an everlasting Kingdom by your words, your deeds, your sacrifice, and your Resurrection!

With all that said, let me wish all of my readers out there (I could name the four of you, but I wouldn't want to embarrass you) a great Christmas. I do hope this holiday season is a wonderful celebration. Just remember, when you open your Bible to Luke 2, feel free to follow it up with some time in Luke 24.

Peace

Labels: Christendom, Christmas, culture, family, friends, theology

Just in case you were wondering, I'd recommend NOT trusting everything you see and hear in mainstream American media. I've come across two different stories this week that illustrate that the news-as-business machine gets very sloppy, very lazy, very biased, even as it sells it as "investigative," "straight talk," and "everything you need to know."

One of the stories has to do with the referendum in Venezuela recently. The media told the story as a corrupt, power hungry president, trying to become a "dictator for life," but getting defeated in the election. I smelled something a little fishy, given that if Hugo Chavez was truly a dictator, he'd have won the election easily. Anyway, this morning, I came across this video analysis of the news coverage, so I thought I'd share.

This is just one example about a story most Americans don't really care about. But it makes you wonder what else we "learn" from our media sources.

This is why I get most of my news via Google Reader, and read stories from the BBC and Al Jazeera as much as stories from the New York Times.

Labels: culture, media

Wow, this has been a heavy set of days for me. Having come off of two conferences last weekend (one of which involved around 12 hours of driving round trip to attend), I've had a heavy school project working - hard work on structuring my dissertation and outlines. Much frustration here. I know the work will pay off, but oi! It's funny, because words and writing and ideas have always been pretty easy for me, but there have been multiple moments this week where I've felt the same as I did in my college chemistry classes - completely stuck. I'm making small breakthroughs, so no worries. I'm just whining.

In better news, we had another teach-in with inter::mission last night. Good times. I made enchiladas, guacamole, and some cinnamon tortilla chips. Tasty, if I must say so myself. Mike Gunn, pastor of Harambee Church in Renton, WA joined us for a discussion of gospel and culture. I really enjoyed that a lot. Mike is skillful at reading culture, as evidenced by his movie reviews over on Hollywood Jesus. His approach to culture is in the tradition of Lesslie Newbigin. He also made reference to Kevin Vanhoozer's book, Everyday Theology . . . though that mention made me sad, as that book has been sitting unread on my desk for the past two or three months . . . even now, it's only about thirteenpointfive inches away from my left elbow, mocking me, taunting me, daring me to lay aside the piles of school books I'm already delinquent on . . . but I digress. Mike hammered the Christian ghetto culture more than the culture of the bigbaduglyworld, which is a no brainer for some of us, but a stunningly new approach for many. All in all, it was another stellar evening at The Purple Door, and another signal that we're continuing to move in a quality direction.

Labels: conference, culture, inter::mission, school, the purple door

In all the buzz and hubbub of the emerging church (a mostly Western/Northern world thing), the voices of the Church Emerging in the global South have not been heard. This is the focus of my school research, so I was delighted to read this:

The rumble of the drums and the joyful voices of our brothers and sisters from the Emerging World are getting louder and louder each minute. With all due respect, dear brothers and sisters from the west and north, you’ve been speaking for quite awhile. Now it is your time to show some humility and listen. [read more]

Good words. May they - and the ears to hear - increase.

Labels: culture, emerging church, Global South, Seattle

I wasn't able to pay close attention to news updates yesterday as I had the previous couple of days. The fires continue, but the weather has begun a more helpful turn, so hopefully that will give the firefighters an edge. Nothing new to report on our immediate family and friends. Everyone is safe and sound, and as far as we know, they're all back home . . . which is more than can be said for a lot of others, in particular, those who have lost their homes.

O.k., time for a rant or two.

RANT ONE:
In the national as well as local (San Diego) news coverage of this event, over and over, I have heard little off-hand comparisons of this situation with the hurricane Katrina disaster. Perhaps its the scale of evacuations, perhaps its the fact that many evacueess are at a major stadium. Whatever the case, with my one lone voice in the blogosphere, all I can say is this: PLEASE STOP. These situations are most definitely not the same. There are a ton of reasons why.

First, the evacuation is different because a huge number of people have had family and friends within the same region to stay with. There was a ton of traffic, but not for hundreds of miles in every direction, like with Katrina. Second, given that San Diego went through this just four years ago, people are extremely well rehearsed for this, and the relief work was done in an impressively organized way . . . which, by the way, is markedly different than the last go round. City/county officials know how to run the show without merely hoping that FEMA can handle everything. Third (this is the one that may open a can of worms), the economic realities of most of the people affected by these two scenarios couldn't be more different. Many of the areas devastated by Katrina were the poorest areas of the city . . . which was already a very poor city, mind you. In San Diego, the damage done by the fires has primarily been done in upper middle class to wealthy areas. I don't say this in any way to take compassion away from the people who have lost homes to fire - it's an intensely difficult thing for them, and I hurt for them. Having lived through a little piece of this myself, I know it's going to be hard, but the difference in economic starting places is different. Trust me, I'm also well aware that some poorer folks have lost their homes - no insensitivity to them intended. My point is not class warfare here, but to say that San Diego wildfires and Hurricane Katrina are just not the same.

For the record, my San Diego and fire disaster credentials are already on record, and I've been to New Orleans twice since Katrina, so I'm not completely ignorant (perhaps unintelligent, but not ignorant).


RANT TWO:
Jason and Brooke, and their housemates in San Diego are part of a really great effort to aid the migrant workers who have been displaced by the fires. Dangit, I love those people. Michelle mentioned to me just a minute ago that 1/3 of California's avocado trees were lost in the fires - think for a minute about the people that work those groves, and pick those delicious guacamole gems. That makes me actually very disturbed at reading this story this morning. Talk about adding insult to injury.


Sorry to be cranky this morning. I just want to think and pray with a clear head about these things, and help others who don't know the situation to do the same.

UPDATE, 10:10am - Now I'm really pissed. Read Jason's latest update on his family's efforts to support the migrant worker volunteers. Speechless.

Labels: culture, family, friends, politics, San Diego, social action

Over the past ten to fifteen years, my denomination has engaged in a discussion of how to read the Bible. This has produced a "victory" for those who favor a view of inerrancy. The Bible is literally God's word, and is completely without error. Meanwhile, those who take even a slightly moderated view of this position are described as liberals and borderline wack-jobs.

Among many issues that these liberals get taken to task on is a sense in which they approach scripture with an agenda in their back pockets, and read those agendas into the texts in order to get them to say whatever they want them to say.

Given the "victory" of the biblical "conservatives" over their left-leaning conversation partners, imagine my surprise at reading a report regarding a poll recently taken by one of the denomination's agencies. An outside polling group was contracted to take a survey of our views regarding the use of alcohol. I won't waste time listing all the questions and responses here, but when asked to respond to the statement, "Scripture indicates that people should never drink," a full 41% of pastors agreed. Come again? 41%. Ummmm, where exactly did they get that?? I must have a bunch of copies of the Lutheran Bible or something, because none of the ones I've read say that.

My point here is that in the middle of our fight to save the Bible, we've gotten so conservative that we've turned liberal. People have approached scripture with an agenda in their back pockets, and chosen to believe that the texts say what they want them to say.

Look, we all do this to some degree. For example, some use "grace" texts in order to go on with selfish, greedy ways without remorse because the sin's already covered. But 41%? Of pastors? I just wonder what kind of uproar there would be if 41% of pastors in my denom were found to have a biblical position opposed to the war in Iraq. Or if 41% believed that scripture teaches that women should be ordained.

So perhaps my denomination is more liberal than I thought. No wonder I was beginning to feel a little more comfortable around here.

Labels: culture, denomination, politics

Is Missouri considered part of the Bible belt? Not sure. It's Midwest-y, and I thought pretty conservative. Anyway, if I were to ask anyone familiar with college campus religious life what the top campus religious organizations at a college in Missouri, what responses would I get? Campus Crusade for Christ? InterVarsity Christian Fellowship? Well, apparently, at Missouri State University in, well, Missouri, the 2nd largest campus religious organization is . . . wait for it . . . The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Indeed. If you haven't heard of them, or their noodly appendaged object of worship, they've been around for a couple years now. But apparently, they've gotten some traction in the heartland. Interesting stuff. You can check out their Facebook Group here.

HT: onegoodmove

Labels: Christendom, culture

For the past several days, Eugene Cho has been keeping us up to date on the hostage situation involving a Korean relief worker team. He has asked many times over why this story hasn't been covered more widely by the major U.S. media outlets.

Just to confirm this, in the past five minutes I've scanned a few news sites (their front pages only) for mentions of the situation. Fox News? Nope. CNN? Nope. US News & World Report? Yes, if you're willing to scroll to the bottom of the page. Time? Yes, a link at the top of the page. Of the pages I've scanned so far, you know who has the most prominent and eye catching emphasis of the story? Try Al Jazeera. The UK edition of BBC also gets honorable mention. Actually, when I look for news headlines, I do so via my RSS reader, and I have three news feeds - Al Jazeera, BBC, and US News & World Report. I hardly ever visit the other pages I've mentioned . . . seems that I get my fill of stories about Spears, Lohan, Vick, Beckham, etc. elsewhere.

By the way, these are Christians being held hostage . . . which leaves me wondering why my denomination's "news" page's latest coverage of the story is four days old.

By way of update, Korean officials are now in talks with the Taliban. Pray for this as you are able.

Labels: culture, friends, media, prayer

My buddy Jeremy comes through again. He sent me a link to this TED video. It's a talk by Jonathan Harris, talking through a project he put together called We Feel Fine. It's a super fun, amazing computer program that he wrote that aggregates blog entries that use the words, "I feel" or "I am feeling." It's a wonderful universe of emotion, accessed through what Harris calls "passive observation." It connects human emotion in a way that will make you smile. So go the site, and click the "Open We Feel Fine" link, and explore.

Labels: culture, technology

Charles Marsh, a professor at the University of Virginia wrote a devastating article (actually, an adapted chapter from his new book) in the Boston Globe a couple weeks back. Here are a couple of snippets:

These past six years have been transformative in the religious history of the United States. It is arguably the passing of the evangelical moment -- if not the end of evangelicalism's cultural and political relevance, then certainly the loss of its theological credibility. Conservative evangelical elites, in exchange for political access and power, have ransacked the faith and trivialized its convictions. It is as though these Christians consider themselves to be recipients of a special revelation, as if God has whispered eternal secrets in their ears and summoned them to world-historic leadership in the present and future.

and

If only holiness were measured by the volume of our incessant chatter, we would be universally praised as the most holy nation on earth. But in our fretful, theatrical piety, we have come to mistake noisiness for holiness, and we have presumed to know, with a clarity and certitude that not even the angels dared claim, the divine will for the world. We have organized our needs with the confidence that God is on our side, now and always, whether we feed the poor or corral them into ghettos.

The article makes note of the fact that evangelicals in the U.S. chose conservative national political alliances over global spiritual alliances. Christians from around the world overwhelmingly opposed the war in Iraq . . . Christians in the U.S. overwhelmingly supported it.


Via: Fast Company Expert Blogs

Labels: books, Christendom, culture, politics

Labels: culture, friends, missiology, politics

So there are a bunch of people around Seattle buzzing about the cover story in yesterday's issue of The Stranger. For those of you outside the area, The Stranger is the local alternative newspaper. Check that . . . The Seattle Weekly is the local alternative newspaper, and The Stranger is the alternative to the local alternative newspaper. Anyway, the article is basically 30 staff writers getting sent out to 30 houses of worship on the same weekend, and writing witty, snarky reviews. Some of them are hugely hilarious, some of them are a bit unnecessarily mean spirited, some of them are a waste of time. Personally, it seemed to me that some of them tried too hard to be funny.

Anyway, something I noticed on balance from these pseudo-reviews was the number of digs the writers took at church music. All the churches with a non-hymn format are described as having bad indi-soft-rock cover bands. In one case, the lyrics of the songs are called into question for sounding a heckuva lot like pillow talk (very very funny). With the whole seeker movement a long time ago, church music shifted in the direction of "contemporary" in order to be more welcoming to the unfamiliar nonbeliever. In many cases, churches produced what they thought were pretty solid musical packages. In a few cases, even I thought the music was fairly decent. I've lost count of the number of church ads I've seen that actually use their hip music as a selling point for the church. Perhaps it's time to stop . . . people aren't that impressed. Even with the best musicians, and the purest hearts, it's just not that great. Sadly, most churches that make an attempt DON'T HAVE the best musicians, even if they have pure hearts . . . and then it's even worse.

I hope we've impressed ourselves with our cool music (of course, it would be better if we've honored God with our worshipful attitudes). At least that way someone enjoyed it.

Labels: Christendom, culture, music

O.k., so I've blogged before about the wonders of Facebook. Working within an environment of college students, it's been on my radar for a while now. I think I joined up about a year and a half ago. But since they recently opened up membership to non-students, I've noticed more and more of my friends popping up there . . . except I don't know who is and who isn't signed up. So hit me up, yo! Add me as a friend . . . I promise I wont stalk you.

Labels: blogging, culture, friends

I'm going to withhold my own commentary (good, bad, and indifferent) on the death of Jerry Falwell. You want to know what others are saying, though? Digg has a story with close to a thousand comments . . . brutal.

Labels: Christendom, culture, politics

Yesterday morning, I had a conversation with a UW student who lives at The Purple Door. He's Jewish (by culture more than belief), and is considering joining the UW fraternity that is primarily Jewish in membership. He told me something I didn't know - the frat house they occupy is next door to the home base for the campus Islamic organization. Ironic indeed. Sadly, even among these enlightened, educated, hopeful young people, the same kinds of tensions arise that take place in the Middle East - bottles and bricks have flown between the two in some isolated incidents. The parking lot that separates the two buildings is known as the Gaza strip. Clever. I don't think anything has reached fever pitch, and hopefully it won't, but it's definitely disappointing to hear this stuff.

Labels: culture, the purple door

For those of you who read this blog and don't know me, let me just state something that's fairly obvious to those of you who do - I'm a geek . . . but about obscure, mostly irrelevant things. The traditional image of Geek (notice the formal capitalization there) is someone who hovers over their computer keyboard, typing code, and taking occasional breaks to play World of Warcraft. I'm not that kind of geek. However, because I believe geeky technology - especially that of the computer variety - will continue to shape our culture, relationships, economy, justice, education, and religion, I have a few techy blogs in my feedreader.

This morning, one of them, Robert Scoble, posted a short ditty trying to define Web 2.0. In the tech world, lots and lots of people throw that term around, companies develop business strategies around it, investors throw down huge bucks for it . . . but not very many people can actually tell you what it means. A lot of people use the term in ways that make web developers want to pull their hair out, because they're so off base. Scoble gives the ol' college try this way:
Web 1.0 was about pages. URLs.
Web 2.0 was about users. Adding them onto corporate pages. Wikis. Blogs. Myspaces.
Web 3.0 is about getting rid of pages altogether. Being able to make the Web YOU want or need.

But, Scoble also links to another tech geek blogger who muses on the question. Different responses over there. Whatever the case, I've gotten the distinct impression that most web developers would say something like, "I can't define Web 2.0 for you, but I know it when I see it."

So now I come to the question: What is missional? Lots of people are using the term these days in the Church. Few could give you a concise definition if you asked them. A lot of people would give answers that seem well off the mark. A lot would say, "I can't define missional, but I know it when I see it." There are increasing attempts out there by some very smart people to define it in clear ways . . . but the ones who say, "I know it when I see it," may not even care - it's more about living into it than defining it. Ultimately, there will be people who don't "get" missional, but say the word all the time. Frustrating or not, it's still more about living into it than having some sort of linguistic power over definitions.

Labels: culture, emerging church, missiology

Here's some encouragement for you to do what I just did . . . go buy The Cobalt Season's new record! I can't wait to hear the yummy goodness.

Labels: culture, friends, music

Interesting article over at Fast Company on Mark Zuckerberg, one of the brainy founders of Facebook. Three years ago, he was a 19 year old Harvard sophomore. Today he's running a company that reportedly turned down an offer from Yahoo! valued at $1 billion. I know from working in a college environment how powerful this thing is.

It's a good illustration of how fast things move these days. From literally nothing to being the sixth most trafficked website in the U.S. in three years. Social networking . . . whatcha gonna do about it?

Labels: culture, innovation, technology

What? You mean you didn't realize America had a pope?? Say it with me - "Oprah." Massive financial success and power, fiercely loyal following, self-styled spirituality for sale, generosity to others, literacy, oh the list goes on.

Her latest venture is sure to be an interesting one: unscripted drama (read "reality TV"). Variety.com is reporting that her company is developing a show for ABC called "The Big Give," which "follows a group of 10 people who will be handed money and resources -- and then challenged to find dramatic and emotional ways to use the coin to help others." Whoever wins gets one of their own wildest wishes granted.

So many interesting questions here. Like this one - "Is this the commodification of generosity?" - or another way of putting it, "Who's making money from other people giving it away? ABC? Oprah? Advertisers?" Or how about this one - "Are non-dramatic, non-emotional forms of giving now somehow inferior?" The questions about what all this communicates could go on for hours. I'll leave it to you to ask some more. Mind you, I'm not trying to be a cynical jerk here - there are likely some more positive questions to be considered. I'm just trying to get the ball rolling.

Labels: culture

At the conference I attended at University of Aarhus last week, I very quickly noticed that I was the only person there that didn't have some sort of affiliation with some form of the Lutheran church. There were faculty members from a few "public" universities in Denmark and Sweden, but by virtue of these countries having state-endorsed churches, they're connected. Also, a couple of participants were there from the Lutheran World Federation mothership in Geneva.

I had one very interesting discussion over lunch with a couple of professors - one of whom has served at very high levels in the World Council of Churches. I was asked about the nature of the emerging church movement in North America, so we talked about that for a while. We also talked about the degree to which this kind of a renewal movement would be possible/likely within the Scandinavian context. They didn't give the emerging church much of a shot at bringing about renewal - at least not within the state church. In large part, they said, it's because if you start messing around with the ways they do church, you're literally messing around with the ways they do citizenship in the country. Wow - very different. Interestingly (frighteningly?), one comment was made to the effect of, "You can deny the resurrection of Jesus, deny the virgin birth, deny the Trinity, but don't you dare mess with baptism because that's how citizenship is sealed."

Is it any wonder that while everyone "belongs" to the church, virtually nobody shows up? Not to these professors. They're in an interesting position, though - they are not officially employed by the church, so they don't fear for the loss of their jobs, and yet they're able to make some critiques based on their observations.

I actually do have a bit more hope for the emerging church viability than my learned friends. Mainly because of the decidedly non-Christendom approach that the emerging church ethos involves. It won't require or significantly involve the state church to make it work. Tony Jones' recent trip to Scandinavia is a good example of some connections being made.

Within the context of a conference discussing the church in the global south and east, it's more than a little ironic to me that the theological conversation is still very Euro-American centric, despite the fact that the church is far more alive in the south and east than in the west. It's validated some of the directions of my doctoral work, but also potentially significantly shifted the practical focus of my work. I'm still chewing on some thoughts in that regard, but maybe I'll put some sentences together here in the days to come.

Labels: Christendom, conference, culture, emerging church, travel