James Cone on success.

A great clip, short, (7min) by James Cone on Tavis Smiley's "State of the Black Church."  It would be a gross injustice to not hear this message for the whole church in the US.

Church Dogmatics online

Glen at The Hiddenness of Blog has either done us all a tremendous favor or terrible evil.  He has located and arranged the Google Books versions of Barth's Church Dogmatics for your reading pleasure.  I don't think each instance is from the same publishing run or house, but there is a lot of text available.  It's a pretty cool find.
He explains though, that :

Google books is great. Wonderful. But when it comes to Barth, there were two bummers: One. The books were incomplete. I don’t know if there were copyright issues, or they wanted you to buy the book, but you couldn’t get it all on there. In fact, a pivotal part I was in need of was missing. Blerg. And two, they were difficult to figure out how to get to the actual volume you needed. The layout was funky. So I took the liberty of just throwing them all down here:

And here is the fruit of his labor:
The Doctrine of the World of God:  Vol. I/1 – Vol. I/2
The Doctrine of God:  Vol. II/1 – Vol. II/2
The Doctrine of Creation:  Vol. III/1 – Vol. III/2 – Vol. III/3 – Vol. III/4
The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Vol. IV/1 – Vol. IV/2 – Vol. IV/3.2 – Vol. IV/3.1 – Index.
Clearly, this is a resource only a student with a too-near deadline could love, but I do, too. Ultimately, I guess I'm waiting for the Blogger Church Dogmatics widget.  I did find some Moltmann at my local library.  Anyways, Glen also mentioned a free 30 day trial, too:

Alexander Street Press. Maybe the publisher? Anyways, they claim to have the whole library online. However, like everything, there’s a catch. You have to pay. But, I guess you can get a free 30-day pass here, so if you just need it once, or are just testing it out, this would probably be a good option.

So there you have it.  "Free": sometimes a great argument for "purchase".

missional church: a practical rub

David Fitch has (re)posted a set of 10 theses about what to expect when joining a missional church, and I must say it is a list of things that Kevin and I grouse about to one another.  (That is an admission of guilt.)  He wrote it when he was a bit peeved so it  might have a bite to it, but overall he addresses exactly the issues we feel sometimes.  The bonus #11 is particularly poignant.

TEN THINGS ANYONE WHO JOINS IN A TWENTY FIRST CENTURY MISSIONAL CHURCH PLANT SHOULD NOT EXPECT

1.) Should not expect to regularly come to church for just one hour, get what you need for your own personal growth and development, and your kid’s needs, and then leave til next Sunday. Expect mission to change your life. Expect however a richer life than you could have ever imagined.

2.) Should not expect that Jesus will fit in with every consumerist capitalist assumption, lifestyle, schedule or accoutrement you may have adopted before coming here. Expect to be freed from a lot of crap you will find out you never needed.

3.) Should not expect to be anonymous, unknown or be able to disappear in this church Body. Expect to be known and loved, supported in a glorious journey.

4.) Should not expect production style excellence all the time on Sunday worship gatherings. Expect organic, simple and authentic beauty.

5.) Should not expect a raucous “lights out” youth program that entertains the teenagers, puts on a show that gets the kids “pumped up,” all without parental involvement. Instead as the years go by, with our children as part of our life, worship and mission (and when the light shows dim and the cool youth pastor with the spiked hair burns out) expect our youth to have an authentic relationship with God thru Christ that carries them through a lifetime of journey with God.

6.) Should not expect to always “feel good,”or ecstatic on Sunday mornings. Expect that there will ALSO be times of confession, lament, self-examination and just plain silence.

7.) Should not expect a lot of sermons that promise you God will prosper you with “the life you’ve always wanted” if you will just believe Him and step out on faith and give some more money for a bigger sanctuary. Expect sustenance for the journey.

8.) Should not expect rapid growth whereby we grow this church from 10 to a thousand in three years. Expect slower organic inefficient growth that engages people’s lives where they are at and sees troubled people who would have nothing to do with the gospel marvelously saved.

9.) Should not expect all the meetings to happen in a church building. Expect a lot of the gatherings will be in homes, or sites of mission.

10.) Should not expect arguments over style of music, color of carpet, or even doctrinal outlier issues like dispensationalism. Expect mission to drive the conversation.

O AND BY THE WAY Should not expect that community comes to you. I am sorry but true community in Christ will take some “effort”and a reshuffling of priorities for both you and your kids. Yes I know you want people to come to you and reach out to you and you are hurting and busy. But assuming you are a follower of Christ (this message is not for strangers to the gospel) you must learn that the answer to all those things is to enter into the practices of “being the Body” in Christ, including sitting, eating, sharing and praying together.

If anyone out there is interested in this kind of place please join us or another missional church gathering somewhere.

Now we don't really pitch ourselves as a "missional" church: it seems like "missional" is another burgeoning church movement of sorts.  Now that the emergent church is dead in its deconstructed parking space, it seems like missional church is a new more open way forward.  It is, in the first place a positively stated movement.

We're a tiny mixed church that is trying to be missional (theologically) though not a part of any missional movement, so these points really ring true.  How do they match up to your experience?
What do you think?

Yoder: unafraid

So the Notre Dame website has an interesting bio about John Howard Yoder.

Mr. Yoder's stance reached a wide theological audience when his book The Politics of Jesus was published in 1972. But his analyses of Christian attitudes toward the state, of pacifism and of major theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth had been gaining notice since the 1950's.  .......   Mr. Yoder first drafted a 50-page critique of Barth's views on pacifism while a doctoral student under Barth at the University of Basel in Switzerland--and he gave a copy to Barth shortly before Barth was to be on the panel conducting Mr. Yoder's final oral examination.

That is hard.

via Check 1-2, thanks :)

the cross has nothing to do with Christianity

Ok, this was too funny to pass up. I don't have TV so I just watch it online. Don't watch unless you understand satire. From the Colbert Report if you didn't know. It's a pretty savage clip, but he does tip his hand a bit by throwing in the Nicene Creed at the end :)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Symbol-Minded
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Religion

theologians and their crazy talk, pt.2

Ok, here are some thoughts about theology and the church that I have been stewing over for a bit. I’m a pastor, not a theologian, so my reflections have more to do with the intersection of church and theology. I so desperately want church to relish theology in word and deed!

1.) I’ll start with my most practical argument: In the end, I think churches don’t really listen to theologians because theologians have chosen to say nothing to them. It is easier for theologians to remain in another country, with another language, instead of engaging in the assiduous work of laboring alongside churchgoers to change them and live their theology out with people in real places. Of course this is not fair nor even true, but it is perception.  Teachers could be the handmaidens for what God is doing in the church through experts.

2.) Of course, people don’t want them to, anyways. Everybody’s guilty. For many church goers, theology rarely resolves anything, it doesn't get anything done-I mean, at least since the reformation… they wonder, "What's the use?" Academic theology is often the talk of privileged people.  Of course, the anti-intellectualism of the congregation seems to defend against actually having their privileged lives shaken up.  But If theologians can't agree on anything, how do we evaluate who we should listen to? Why would someone who cannot understand what they are saying let them steer their church? ...unless of course, they had a reason to trust them.

But academic credentials are not enough to garner trust any longer for a church that feels alienated by Academia. How bad is it?
Mark Driscoll may start a seminary.
People want (A)nswers, not answers with footnotes disputed in Godless Europe and Princeton. Sadly, theology has little utility to churches and pastors other than sussing out new growth techniques and self-protectedly reinforcing boundaries. I think that’s part of the reason there is emphasis on “theological imagination” in a lot of writing these days.  So much is lost that would enrich and nourish the body.

3.) Pastors should shoulder much more of the blame then they do. Perhaps there was a time when the pastor was a go-between, someone who could interpret and apply and make sense of all those PhD concerns. Only pastors don’t really do that anymore because people don’t want it. People want leaders. They want businessmen.

And we give those people D.Mins.

The pastorate is determined by money at least as much as truth. Evangelism sells. The “life you’ve always wanted sells.”* Economic trinity vs. immanent does not. Heidegger is irrelevant to ditch diggers, bankers, programmers, chefs, and case managers, and those are the people who give, and have pastors. (Side note: liturgy isn’t really helping here, either, despite churches believing it’s the next big thing.)

We pastors pander too much to the empire’s values. I know this because 1) there are still many poor in my town, and 2) theologians point this out to me.

4.) Knowledge is a threatening power and people don’t trust the way theologians wield it because they don’t get it.  They don't have community with them or perceive they share the same values in quite the same ways.  Besides, aren't they all liberal?  Theologians just don't live in the real world to the US church.

But how could they?

 In the race to publish or perish, correct tests, attend functions, maybe even have a family, who’s got time to integrate professional and personal church life worlds? What needs to happen between churches and academic theologians: -they need to listen to one another more. Feeling “heard” builds trust and safety even in the midst of disagreement, but every person I’ve ever met in academia, friends and enemies, is struggling to survive. You can't make it without a platform.  More so than the engineers and small businessmen in their churches.  I'm not suggesting that everybody at the potluck pitches in on the next dissertation, but it seems like academia and the church are on perpendicular courses sometimes.

Churches need to take much more seriously the support of seminaries as academic universities, not just cookie cutter pastor factories. Please not that. You can’t train a pastor in a seminary. That happens on the job. You can teach theology in seminaries. I think the whole thing is a mess and suggest that the path should look more like: --train a pastor in a church, teach them how to care for people in the midst of community that shapes them, --then send them to an academic institution to challenge their thinking. Right now it’s the other way around. We send people to seminaries to learn how to be a pastor and then when they get into a church, they have to learn how to think. Or just do really good seeker services.

5.) Theology is neither rhetoric or dialectic, but parrehesia. Theology must be completely free speech, dangerous and threatening. To speak what is true, theologians must set themselves outside the normal headspace of the world and proclaim the in-breaking of the gospel. Formal training helps to shape this kind of pointed reflection, and their critique is often as incisive as their alienation from normal society/church’s thinking. Good theology shows you things too wondrous to believe and things you don’t want to know. (Like that weird charismatic lady who throws her hands and “amens” up in worship just as you were getting comfortable, reminding you it’s a room full of people…)

6.)  As truth telling, theology is the analytic side of truth in the church. As the one side of the parrehesia, theologians engage the analytics of truth for the church – they help ensure in a formal way that the confession of truth remains true, at least to what has been established; reason, tradition, scripture,etc.  So it is committed to the western traditions of philosophy that consider the verification of truth. It is the science of theology that we see in universities. Here the morality of the theologian is always unfairly on trial. The goal of a theologian doesn’t determine the fidelity of theology with God’s word in this analytic sense. Nor does it determine the word of God that I might hear within their thinking. The two will never be identical. Good things are done for bad reasons and vice versa. For instance I am writing this post out of a profound and deep-seated need to control my environment through understanding, but it’s still pretty good, huh?

Oh.

..crap.
excuse me, but I need to arrange my sock drawer again..

7.) Theology has fidelity to Christ as the critique of the Church. Foucault describes the critical side as the one asking, “what is the importance for the individual and for the society of telling the truth, of knowing the truth, of having people who tell the truth, as well as knowing how to recognize them.” Here it can be admitted that despite theology’s aim to engage in God-talk, it isn’t Christian until it has love as its goal, in which case, it will always be chastened and bear witness to its inadequacies. Does it think more clearly about faith? Perhaps, but as Paul says, knowledge puffs up, love builds up. That seems to always have been the chopping block for the discussion. It’s one of those patently abused verses, and yet it still applies. Does a theology aim towards love or not? When the aim of even critique ceases to be love, perhaps all is lost…for the theologian, anyways. Love must always critique the critiquer, and chasten them, too. Who watches the watchers? Well, Jesus does and his rule of love would seem to shape the best theologies. I know, too simple, but the best critiques generally are.

8.) I love theologians and theology. Seriously. I personally feel both challenged and encouraged and the deep thinking of theologians has guided my life positively time and again. In their reflective considerations both formal and informal, I feel I have heard the Word of God address me again and again. In some of my darkest times, good theology and well considered arguments have been a rope dropped down a well to pull me up. I cannot overstate this. If scripture is the window through which the Word of God calls out to me again and again, theologians help remove the cotton from my ears to hear it! I even love theoblogians, especially theoblogians now that my time in school is over. Thank you all!






*I am not referring here to Ortberg’s book, which as a practical introduction to the disciplines is excellent.

a cartoon

seemed topical :)

theologians and their crazy talk

A fascinating discussion is about theologians is taking place. What is it? Well it’s long and wander-y as you might imagine, spanning various blogs, so I’ll try and sum it up. First, Halden at Inhabitio Dei stepped to, writing:

“Its hard to find a more scandalizing bunch of people than theologians, and not in the good way. One would think that among a guild of professionals dedicated to getting to know God as well as possible you’d see less infidelity, churlishness, affluence, and apathy towards injustice than in other professions.”

But Adam of An und für sich was like

,...to act like theologians are unique in their lack of attention to the poor is appalling, in the face of the massive indifference displayed by the vast majority of church members….Theologians should be exemplary in two areas. First, they should be exemplary in the degree to which they reflect intellectually on the gospel. I’d say that we’re on pretty firm footing here, on average — there are a lot of intelligent, reflective Christians out there, but few of them are going to reach the level of someone who earns a PhD, teaches, and publishes in the field. It’s elitist to say so, I know, but academic theologians really do consistitute an intellectual elite. “

Dag, yo! Halden played it off smooth:

That our attempts to talk about God often end up condemning us is, you might say, far better than the alternative. If our God-talk simply validated us, clearly we’d be doing something far worse. Though, of course this happens all the time, too.

Finally, Kuehn’s summary crushed it with, “Theologians talking to one another about themselves.”.... Child, please!

It's a topic dear to my heart, and I've been thinking about it for a while, at least from the angle of "how theology and churches interact." I will post some inadequate ramblings myself, tomorrow, but I'd love to hear your own thoughts - how do theologians exist in your world? What is their role in the church you attend?

time for a makeover

time for a makeover.
I cannot for the life of me understand why HTML is so ridiculous, or why blogger is worse. Seriously. The preview in blogger looks vaguely similar to what the page will look like. I'm trying to move to our church server and host the site entirely there, but until then,
move that bus...

conservapedia bible project

Ok, this is either fantastic satire or frightening: Conservapedia has launched a new Conservative Bible translation project. The goal is to alter the language of the Bible to better reflect conservative values. And yes, they have already rendered a number of books. Their reasoning:

"Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:

• lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
• lack of precision in modern language
• * translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.

Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error is liberal bias. Large reductions in this error can be attained simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English."

It's just got to be a delightful Colbert-ian ruse, otherwise, we've all been duped by the evil forces of F.F. Bruce and the NRSV committee. Scholars everywhere must be scrambling to control the damage, their inattention to "precision in the original language" exposed. A lot of those verbs are conjugated, you know...

Thankfully, if you are confused about the Bible you're reading, they offer some interpretive guidelines:

"As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots"; using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God." "

Here's an example of the extraneous additions they've detected in the Bible:

"First Example - Liberal Falsehood
The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:
Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible"

You almost believed that! It does make for a great introduction to text criticism, though.
I'm not trying to espouse a political position here, but I am a theological one: this is bad interpretation all the way 'round. Still, it's hard to argue with tenet #10, " Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness." Never mind that it contradicts rule #3: they may just adhere to a simpler worldview. Poe's law?

If there's one thing to be drawn from this, at least it highlights how much everything is interpreted. Every time we read scripture we are biased by our own assumptions and viewpoints. I mean, at least they are honest about theirs. How much more damage has been caused by the church's hidden and unexamined biases' that just reflect "the way it is" (slavery? women? imperialism?). And so the project undoes itself so far as it tries to better represent absolute, timeless, universal propositional truths.

Entertaining stuff. It's like a giant Chinese Finger trap: I want to look away but can't, and today, somewhere in the distance, I hear D. Hagner gently weeping.

free journals trial

Once again, Sage is offering free trial access to their online journal content until Oct 31. So you can gird your mental loins for Halloween. They seem to do it every year, so I feast and print like a gorging bear and then hibernate on it until the next time. So here's a dilemma- I would, at some point, love to put in our church budget an item for either the Logos software (GK/HB grammar and/or Church Dogmatics) or Sage Journal Access. If you had to pick, which would be most useful? For the link, just click their banner:

Who do people say I am?

There is a brief but interesting article in the Baptist Standard about the differences between the right and left sides of American Christianity:

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A new report confirmed long-held assumptions about religious activists from the left and right. The only thing both sides seem to have in common: faith is a more important part of their lives than among the general public.

But beyond that, the two poles differ dramatically on political priorities and biblical interpretation.

If you’re a conservative religious activist, you’re likely a male evangelical who reads the Bible literally and views fighting abortion and same-sex marriage as the top political priorities.

On the other hand, if you’re a woman who attends a mainline Protestant church, hold an expansive view of Scripture and think health care and poverty are top priorities, you’re more likely to be labeled a progressive religious activist.

I'll resist poking too much fun at the descriptions, after all, they seem to confirm the basic tension and stereotypes we carry around with us. Unfortunately, the article doesn't delve into the theology of each side, it describes more the social perceptions. I would like to read more about the theology that under girds both poles - this seems more fruitful for finding common ground than the specific policies we argue over.

It also confuses me about what to call our church, Epic: we really don't see ourselves as conservative or liberal. We're not emergent or mainline, just American Baptist. But we're not like Southern Baptists, whom most people associate Baptists with! And in Orange county, anything short of John Piper is liberal, so I know we an look different to many Christians. And that's ok; I'm already used to looking different...

Now we're trying to be a church that is for our city. Perhaps instead of trying to figure out who we think we are, one day the city will tell us whether or not we were a church that loved Fullerton.

*photo by Patrick Dirden

audio resource update

I've been able to find another 20+ lectures. Thanks you all for your suggestions and please keep suggesting :) Thanks, too to Ben Myers at Faith and Theology for driving traffic up - it's a helpfully targeted pool of suggesters, I think. It's amazing how little there is in terms of deeper lectures available. I wonder how much copyright/ownership laws have to do with it. A shame, really. I would love it if professors, theologians, seminaries - everyone really- utilized the Internet Archive site more profligately. Probably won't happen but it sure would make searching easier.

Besides, some of the most beautiful music is already over there, a soft bed for the theologians to fall into: (Sense:Bubbleblower)