Intergalactic ailments

I recently changed my office calendar. This year for some reason, NASA's Occupational Health program has done a mass distribution of its "2007 HealthierYou" calendar, featuring some of the strangest collisions of form vs. content that I've ever seen. Pictured here is a sample of the delightful absurdities that will be gracing people's walls all year long (and now maybe yours, too, if you print that PDF). I've tried to construct some meaningful explanation but had to give up. Enjoy the tension. Stop making sense.

(Click on these to see them full-size.)

(Yes, this is the "really inane" post I promised last week.)

Finding our voices - maybe

At my fairly "normal" church (ARP, conservative Presbyterian), I've been trying to describe and explain emerging(-missional) churches [links updated] to a Sunday School class of about 50 people whose ages range from teens to 90s. It's been -ah- enlightening for all, and definitely a first for me. I'll try to post the slides as soon as I work through the copyright details.

The first week (Dec. 3) I successfully deferred discussion of the big "P" word, to focus on "people rethinking church" (regardless of self-consciously philosophical concerns). I borrowed liberally from Messrs. McKnight, Bolger and Gibbs, Baker, and especially Jones; but did add some fun things like a termite mound (emergent behavior), Gordon Cosby info [emerging church in 1947?], and "Babe, the postmodern pig"). Also threw in pictures of Upstream Communities, Vaux, Vintage Faith, Solomon's Porch, Grace, and local group The Common Table. So far so good; apparently a couple of people were concerned that we were going to start worshipping with parachutes but OK.

The second week (Dec. 10) we took a deep breath and looked at postmodernity and how to engage it as Christians. I borrowed from Wright, McLaren, Jones (again), and Rollins; and threw in some fun artifacts from Schultz, Launer, Ikon, and timetoturn. Unfortunately, I only got about halfway through my talk because a few folks had a strong aversion to the whole notion of skepticism. (And I didn't even get to the hard part [from Rollins], about how some skepticism about our own notions might be valuable!) So in closing, I skipped ahead to my favorite Peanuts cartoon ever (displayed here), explained the view that God is bigger than anything we could ever describe or imagine, ... and wished everyone a good week. To be continued.

Pete Rollins @ Emergent Baltimore

Spent a delightful evening Nov. 20 with Peter Rollins (in town on a book tour) and 15 or 20 Emergent Baltimore types (including a middle-aged, bald introvert with a small Buddha belly who identified himself as "Brian, Pete's driver"). Pete R. talked a mile a minute in a delightful accent that made "doubt" rhyme with "light." He wove together a number of points from his book, and some additional thoughts and jokes, in what I thought was pure free-association until he paused to check his notes about 20 minutes in.
Here are a few notable themes (if you've read his book these will be familiar):
- Powerlessness. He used this joke to evoke the risk of mixing the Christian message with an apologetic of power and fear and violence. Said we needed to avoid these in our message, but without letting it get anemic.
- Hypernymity (the other extreme from anonymity). He contrasted the Cartesian view, in which God is revealed and present, with Anselm's view of God as "something greater than can be thought," whom we can receive but never conceive.
- Conceptual idolatry. He likened Meister Eckhart's "God rid me of God" with Nietszche's "God is dead," which he suggested could be read as the death of one's concept of God.

Pete also talked about Ikon, the group he leads in Belfast, and showed some pictures. He described their "Last Supper" and "Evangelism" projects, their recent "Fundamentalism" service, and their new Wiki-based website. (all the more powerless to become?)

I had my book with me, so I asked him if he did autographs. He seemed willing but pretty reluctant so I changed the subject. He seemed to enjoy playing with little Timo as we spoke. (Yep, brought a baby to a theo/philosophy lecture...)

Browsing around the Ikon Website this weekend, I enjoyed the playful intro to their principles (iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging, and failing -- which may sound pretty unsafe at first glance but don't let that fool you). I was also tickled to see that they used Michael Knott's Screaming Brittle Siren in last week's service. Maybe my "emerging journey" was already underway back in 1993 (?) when I fell head-over-heels for this CD myself.