Another speaking tour

I hope you already have purchased your tickets to see Rob Bell at Nokia here in a few weeks. Another great speaker is coming our way in February. Brian McLaren will be leading the “Everything Must Change” speaking tour which is actually a two day conference based on his latest book that shares the same title. Cost is reasonable and it’s being held in Dallas, February 22nd - 23rd. Many disagree and I don’t buy everything, but I would argue that McLaren is one of the most important theologians of our time.

Here’s the website for more info.

Book info:

“Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope” (Brian McLaren)

Church Mission Statements

Building a Christian community where people are becoming deeply committed followers of Jesus.

What do you think?

What’s wrong with foundationalism?

I’m reading a book right now that is hurting my brain. The book is Beyond Liberalism & Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy set the Theological Agenda by Nancey Murphy. I’m reading it in conjunction with an independent study for seminary on Emerging Church theologies. I know it’s full of tons of great information. It’s just hard to digest so much “head” knowledge at once. The first section of the book is all about the development of modern theology and paritcularly addresses the ways in which the church has developed two polar opposite responses to modern philosophy; liberalism and fundamentalism. The second part is all about postmodernity. As you can imagine, I’m enjoying the second half much more. Here’s the opening of that section.

Contemporary theology, like an empty pile in solitaire, is waiting for a new king to come along and get things started again.” So says, Jeffrey Stout. Stout is pessimistic about the appearance of such a kind, and I am too. but what STout fails to consider - and what will be the focus of the second part of this book - is the possibility that the rules of the game might be changed instead. If all the possible move have been tried within the limits set by modernity, this should be a cause for dismay only if we believe modern thinkiers have had the final word on the topics of knowledge, language, and the ultimate nature of reality. It is becoming more and more widely accepted that modern thinkers have not had the last word.

He goes on to this quote from Karl Popper who is writing in 1935.

The empirical basis of objective science has thus nothing “absolute” about it. Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or “given” base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simple stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.

W.V.O. Quine who wrote, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” which Nancey Murphy uses the publication date to mark the end of modernity writes this.

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mahtematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundaries are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions re-adujustment in the interior of the field.

Finally, Murphy writes…

…beliefs that are useful for justifying other claims will always turn out to be indubitable, and in fact will be found to be dependent upon the structure they are intended to justify… What finally brought empiricist foundationalism to an end was the recognition that scientific facts are “theory laden.”

All quotes taken from Murphy, pp. 85-91.

World Trade Center

I’m a little tired today because I stayed up late last night watching Oliver Stone’s, World Trade Center. I actually started watching the movie a few weeks ago, and never finished it. As you can imagine, it’s quite an intense film. I’ve now watched both of the first movies made about the 9/11 terrorist attack. About a month ago, on my day off, I watched United 93. When I heard about each of these films, I must admit that I was quite skeptical about their release. First, I felt like it might trivialize those terrible tragedies. Second, I was worried that they would be received as “political statements” that might polarize audiences. Just as an aside, I don’t mind films that make “political statements” but I really didn’t feel like that would be appropriate given the subject matter.

What I can say is that both films overwhelmed my expectations and to the best of the medium’s ability, captured the horrific moments surrounding September 11th. At the same time, they portrayed in a way that I did not think was possible, the excellence of humanity that was displaced in the midst of those tragedies. So, if you’ve been thinking about seeing the films, I’d strongly recommend both of them. They are not easy to watch. They will take you back to moments that you would probably rather forget, but they are a wonderful reminder of what we value the most; family, friends, and the life we share with them.

How do you see the church?

I ran across this quote from Rob Bell who was recently asked what it was like to be a part of one the “hottest” churches in America. Here is Rob’s reply.

I don’t even know what that means. I know there’s a woman in the second row in the second service that has cancer for the third time. I know there’s a single mom named Erin who needs a place to live. I know this guy who just got custody of his kids and he’s trying to figure out how to be a single dad. So to me a Church is real people trying to figure it out.

Rob’s sentiment here reminds me of a message that our Senior Pastor shared a few weeks ago with our staff and entire congregation. In it, he shared with the congregation the way he sees the church. He talked about people fighting cancer, families struggling with divorce, individuals struggling with addictions… You get the idea. I thought it was a powerful reminder to our church that our pews are filled with “real people trying to figure it out.”

Get your tickets

Last night I bought our tickets to see Rob Bell at Nokia Theatre in Grand Prairie, mid-November. There seem to be great seats still available. We pulled down 4 up close. Click here for more info. on this year’s tour.

Proceeds benefit Turame microfinance project.

Catching Up…

So far I’ve had a pretty fruitful Spring break. I’ve had a chance to catch my breath and look ahead at what I have coming up in the next three months. The calendar is filling up pretty fast for me which is making me a bit anxious, but I am really excited about participating in several of these upcoming activities including, “The National Conversation on the Emerging Church” in April (Austin, Texas) and the Generation X|Y Gathering for UMC church practitioners (Fayetteville, Ark). I hope everyone else is having a good break, and taking some time to breathe in life.

Crafting Community

I really like reading Bob Hyatt’s blog. Bob is a new church start pastor in Portland, Oregon. So, I enjoy reading his thoughts first and foremost because I think a church plant might be something I would consider in the future. More importantly, though, I keep up with Bob because he is so transparent about the struggles we all deal with in ministry. Like most people, I really appreciate knowing that someone else is working through many of the same emotions that I deal with on a regular basis. One of his latest post, Pressure, is a great example of Bob sharing something that really hit home with me as well… I recommend checking out the entire post, but I want to highlight one section where he says:

“We had a real (over) emphasis on the actual gathering. I honestly thought at the time that if we had a cool gathering, a great community would be formed around it. I now know that the opposite is true- gather a good community and the time you gather as a whole community will largely take care of itself, flowing out of the goodness of the community itself.”

As I’ve processed through the development of our Mosaic community, I’ve really experienced some of these same feelings, i.e… the pressure to craft a great community experience at (sometimes) the expense of developing community. The problem is developing community takes time, energy, resources, and most importantly, it takes the investment of all of those who seek to participate in the community. Finding time in my own schedule, much less inspiring everyone else to do so, is enough of an issue to make this community development project extremely difficult. Of course, the irony is that for most of us, we’d exchange a great gathering for the experience of being a part of a real community.

So, maybe I’ve got it backwards… Maybe I’m investing myself in the wrong way. I appreciate Bob’s honesty because it invites me to ask myself questions that I probably wouldn’t have the courage to do otherwise…

Special Announcement

I watched The Departed on Sunday night after the Oscars.

And after much prayer and reflection…

I have decided to forgive Leonardo DiCaprio for making Titanic.

I can now publicly confess.

I like Leo.

Technorati Tags: The Departed

One more thing

While we are on the subject of Mars Hill, I thought I would also share something the Mars Hill community is calling the XYZ. Again, you may have heard Rob talk about this if you regularly listen to their podcast, but the leadership of Mars Hill decided to put their heads together and dream about ways in which their community, in partnership with local agencies and officials, could bless their community. When I was at Church of the Resurrection last fall they also talked about trying to do something similar in the Kansas City. Basically, two large churches seeing that they have the resources to implement major social change in their communities and deciding to do something about it.

Mars Hill has set these audacious goals.

• Every Kid in West Michigan Should Have Food and Shelter.
• The poorest of Grand Rapids who are willing and able should be given a chance to earn a living.
• The poorest people in the world should be given a chance to help themselves.

Here’s what they say about why they are doing this…

“When we start to make a big, noticeable difference among kids in West Michigan who need food and shelter and when we can actually start pulling loads of poor people out of poverty in Grand Rapids and beyond through micro finance… a whole new conversation will start about what the church is and who Jesus is.”

wow.

Read more.

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