This piece from James K.A. Smith’s latest book is something of an expose on the “Church Growth” movement, or it’s more unapologetic and unabashed culture-adopting and affirming “mega-Church” cousins, who emply seemingly every device to create a “religious version” of Starbuck’s, Barnes and Noble (I prefer Border’s books, B&N coffee and seating (soft chairs are more plentiful in most B&N). Continue Reading
James KA Smith, in Who’s Afraid of Postemodernism?, in his chapter on Foucault (how society and its institutions function as a means of discipline wielded by power) provides the following in his “conclusions to be drawn by Christians and their churches*” section: we can distinguish good discipline from bad discipline by its telos, its goal or end. So the difference Continue Reading
I think it’s the Bush administration and their deluded “faith” in the “strength” of their capitulations to the power games and the economic domination and manipulation of the “less than elite” opens me to the realization that all “ideologies” are based on “narratives”, regardless of whether they identify them as such;; in fact, they often appeal to “common sense” and Continue Reading
The conclusion of the chapter in Jamie Smith’s book, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? on “nothing outside the text” is important for us today, as it frequently dawns on us in various ways how “our ways are not God’s ways, and that we have to “see via the text” in order to be the “Deconstructionists” that God actually calls us to Continue Reading
James KA Smith, in his new book, with this piece that sticks out in my mind tonight, since there is a heavy dose of “objectivity” that seems to be getting claimed by today’s brand of Southern Baptist theologian (Mr. Mohler comes to mind). They’re so certain that they have it right (for me, their nasty behaviour and smug self-certainty betrays Continue Reading
Blogging Church is mentioned as an upcoming book that has been contracted for the Fellowship Church blog gurus. As you can see by my previous post on the initial reactions I had to visting their sites and blogs, I am skeptical of the amoutn of “church” that will flavor this book, based on the heavy CEO/Successful Church/Successful Pastor stuff that Continue Reading
Internet Efficiencies p.41—-see later post Blogging is word of mouth on steroids p.43 “Blogging is faster and more effective than walking from village to vilalge and knocking on doors” p.44 Welll, not exactly (perhaps for products…not for the fuller engagment whcih leads to community, and more specifically, the type of community we are about)…….the aim I have is to draw Continue Reading
“Transparency is not high-risk unless you have something to hide” Vic Gondrota, General Manager for Platform Evangelism, Microsoft in Naked Conversations, p. 17 Another quote from Microsoft’s Tech Evangelist, Lenn Pryor: “There’s no doubt we moved the needle, he said, adding with apparent pride, “and we did it without so much as a press release” p.16 The above attest to Continue Reading
When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. Brokerage turns the church into an organization rather than a new family of rebirth. She ceases to be something we are, the living Bride of Christ. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and Continue Reading
I’ve been reading this, along with the other two books I mentioned last week (The New Monasticism book and In Good Company: The Church As Polis by Hauerwas. I have some designs on rolling back through Becoming the Authentic Church again as well. The Taylor Branch book, Parting the Waters: America In The King Years 1954-63 has me hooked. There Continue Reading
Most recent Amazon boxes to arrive at my house: Schools for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism (various writers involved in communal living) They have a web, http://newmonasticism.org/ The 12 Marks Moved by God’s Spirit in this time called America to assemble at St. Johns Baptist Church in Durham, NC, we wish to acknowledge a movement of radical rebirth, Continue Reading
I have completed the bookshelf’s hotspots here: Movable Theoblogical: The Office Bookshelf There are two additional shelves over my computer desk:
OK, the hotspots are all the way down on the leftside bookshelf. The right side and the various little “satellite stacks” will come later. I was just thinking how this might even be a good way to catalogue/photograph what I have in the house in case of something unforseen such as a house fire. I thought of that last night Continue Reading
I decided that this is not such an exercise in vanity and nerdiness as I first thought. It gives me the opportunity to do some fun reflecting on the past 30 years of reading. (Maybe 31) I started my theological reading with my membership in the WORD book club, soon after I discovered Keith Miller and Bruce Larson’s The Edge Continue Reading
OK, I did an incredibly geeky thing here (not geeky as in complicated or highly technical, but geeky in a whyd-I-just-spend-that-much-time-get-a-Life kind of a way). I made hotspots that pop up an enlarged photo of that section of books from closer-in photos of those books on my shelf. I may do some more later, but that’s nerdy enough (yeah, that’s Continue Reading