The Lingering Lemon of Death

there is no emergent there there -- wishing for better criticism

[ background for those who need it. i have been really challenged and encouraged in my quest to reconcile the faith i seem to have been given with historical christianity by a network of friendships across the country which are typically connected to an organization called "emergent". recently as this network has begun to influence christian thought, it has begun to receive criticism for various gatekeepers and inspectors in the wider christian community ]

there's a famous quote of gertrude stein about oakland, on returning as an adult to her a town where she spent part of her childhood, she concluded "there is no there there".

many people seem eager to level this criticism against the collection of creatives and theologians and warriors and poets gathered under a banner with "emergent" written on it. the there isn't really something new. the there isn't really something needed. the there isn't really something true. the there isn't really what it claims to be.

what all the critics miss is that there isn't supposed to be a there there. the whole point of emergent is to not create a "there", but to try and encourage the types of relationships which can help us each, in our own personal there, be the people of jesus. we find it useful to come together and walk while talking, to eat and laugh, to yell and bluster, to sit and pray.

maybe we haven't been good at fostering these relationships. for example, i think the emergent/ys conventions, which were an honest attempt to be more welcoming, to open the friendship up to more people, ended up working against emergent in some ways because it seemed to insist there be a "there" around which a convention could happen.

maybe this is heaven -- heaven is not where everything is perfect. heaven is when your critics see you clearly and criticize for the right things.

funny paper speech bubbles

hee hee.

generate your own cartoon bubble

thanks marius

why does there have to be a senior pastor?

i often hear people asking, this question: why does there have to be a senior pastor, or any paid staff at all, can't we just all sort of "be the church" without all this organization and politics?

this all started with my stumbling across Swarm Sketch. one example of these sketches is to the left titled "Prison Break". these sketches are drawn collectively. each person can only add about one inch of line at a time, and then you get a chance to vote on other people's lines. lines with lots of votes are darker.

what is interesting to me is that if you look at past sketches, every single one of them looks, at first glance, like a page filled with meaningless scribbles.

but isn't this what you are always destined to get when nobody is "in charge"? competing visions, some people who don't even care about vision are there only for the chance to draw and fill space, no one person given enough time or resources to fully accomplish anything. maybe these are great visual maps of any collaborative process.

that doesn't mean they aren't beautiful or interesting. it just means that what is beautiful or interesting about them is how they are put together. and though there is an ugliness or chaotic look from the outside, even that ugliness is beautiful because it is reflecting a beautiful thing about the community that produced it.

so, "why does there have to be a senior pastor?" the answer is that, if you aren't willing for your community to look to outsiders like one of these sketches, then you need to have someone in charge, telling people to not draw in the blank space, and assigning people to work on pieces, and maybe even erasing things that should not have been drawn because they distract from the goal of the drawing. this is not a bad thing for a person or a community to do.

however, i am still attracted by the chaos in these pictures, because when i read the words of jesus, it seems to me that he too is concerned about how communities are put together, perhaps even at the expense of the beauty of what they produce. at the same time i wonder if i would have the courage to live in a community as chaotic and hard to explain as one of these drawings.

"lion the witch and the wardrobe and the beaver and the lampost"

the family toy caught the midnight showing of the narnia movie.

while i have nothing in particular to complain about, there is also nothing about this film which is standout excellent.

i'd love for them to make lots of these movies, i read and enjoyed the books as a child. i predict this one will only do moderately well at the box office and there probably won't be a second one.

a sermon

i wrote a sermon as an exercise.

i was given a choice of passages, and i picked the passage that seemed the hardest.

i find that sermon writing is both easy and hard.  as a blog writer, i think i have become really good at wondering, at asking, at looking at things from an angle that is unique to me.

what seems to be hard is to go further than that, to say more than "huh, isn't that odd".

[ later ]

ok back from sermon critique -- very interesting to hear what others hear, how different processing styles respond to what i say.  i guess that learning to hear voices and viewpoints not your own is part of what makes a better sermon.

i am in awe of people who do one of these a week.  it may take me a month to get mine right, and i've been working on it for a couple weeks already.

when i first posted this, i included the text of the sermon, and offered in exchange for a donut, to preach it pretty much anywhere.  now that i've actually spoken it out loud in front of non-relatives, i'm hiding it again.  lots of work to do before it gets to fly free i guess. the donut train will have to wait.