Batterson hangs ten

The Leadnow/Fusion conference blew through town; not really my thing but I went to hear Don Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz and others) and Dan Kimball (author of Emerging Church and others). My impressions:

• It was my first time in a suburban megachurch. I expected it to be like other (merely) large churches I've known; but no-o-o. Not only was everything supersized; everything was super-perfect -- surround sound, stage lighting, HD video, theater seating, overall architecture, etc. I guess someone's got to be at the upper end of the size and polish range. Still, I had to chuckle at the incongruity of speakers dressed in deliberately casual clothing (to appeal to 20/30-somethings) but bathed in crisp pink-white lighting on a gleaming hardwood stage.
  
• I was impressed that the conference only charged $25 for an evening and a morning, including a working lunch and self-serve snack carts. (Somebody, somewhere, must've stood up to the suits.)
• I heard a few too many very polished talks for my tastes -- delivered mostly without notes, with just the right levels of enthusiasm, humor, and pathos. One of these is delightful; two are lavish; but I found three, four, five to be like too much maple syrup. (Somebody, please lose your train of thought or fumble a joke!)
  
• I realized with a shudder [so long, innocent idealism] that some are approaching "20/30-somethings" not (primarily) as a disaffected, skeptical, or unique group, requiring new emphases, metaphors, etc... but (mostly) as a market for fairly familiar forms of Christian media and ministry, just with slightly different wrappings.
  
• Miller and Kimball were exceptions to that; I felt they reached into a whole new set of metaphors and messages. Dan Kimball drew on his "They like Jesus - not Christians" theme to get people out of the "Christian Bubble". In describing the "bubble" he fearlessly waded right into several aspects of the conference itself (e.g., worship concerts; favoring int'l over local mission). Impressive.
• Don Miller wove some great stories, and vignettes from Robert McKee's Story Seminar, into a call to "write" worthwhile stories of our own, not with ink or camera but with our lives. He introduced the topic by asking people to answer two questions: "What's your favorite movie?" ... followed by "What's your favorite part of the Nicene Creed?"
• Gracia Burnham wisely chose not to rehash her well-known story (dramatized on video screens before she came onstage). Instead she spoke (briefly) of what she's doing now: like Moses in Exodus 4, she prays, "Lord, what have I got to tell people? I'm just a ditzy blonde whose life is a mess..." -- to which He replies, "...Who made your hair?"
• [update] I enjoyed watching Mark Batterson's flip-flops hang ten off the front edge of the stage throughout his talk. But he never did fall onto the audience -- a true professional! His "Chase The Lion" talk was as energetic as his 4-posts-a-day blog; at times a bit too close to a mere motivational speech ("live your life on offense, not defense!" "accumulate experiences, not possessions!"); still, he pointed to "Jesus the author and perfecter" of our stories, and to love as a source of fearlessness.

So, that was my foray into mainstream, suburban, big-budget, business-tainted, but still mostly well-intentioned, American Evangelical Christianity. To think that some would consider this "normal"! Still, I was glad to be there ... once in a while.

Andy Whitman, blast from the past

Well lookie here... Andy Whitman has been syndicating (?) excerpts from his near-daily blog with Paste Magazine ("Signs of life in music, film, and culture"). It'd been 12-13 years since I'd read Mr. Whitman's winsome writing, on the USENET (!) rec.music.christian newsgroup, where he sparked and fueled many a young person's exploration of "real thinking feeling people's music" with pointers to such artists as Peter Case, Victoria Williams, T-Bone Burnett, Bill Mallonee, et al. When he quit the newsgroup around 1995, it quickly lost what little creative / edgy content it had, and imploded in theological squabbles. But apparently, in all these years Andy's flair for writing and his passion for music haven't abated a bit. And his refreshing, holistic approach to music, life, faith, and culture seems to be shared by Paste Magazine as a whole. Nice to see some "signs of life" on the magazine rack.

Mark Scandrette & Soul Graffiti

I joined the Emergent Village DC Cohort for a dinner with hippie cowboy preacher poet Mark Scandrette. He asked us a bunch of questions (? wasn't expecting that); read (and riffed on) excerpts from his new book "Soul Graffiti"; and (with a slight nudge from Mike) closed his eyes and recited his poem "ReIMAGINE!" -- a sort of trippy psalm spiced with wordplay, bright urban sounds and colors, a fleeting mention of "Tai-Chi Mariachi"... you get the idea.

"Soul Graffiti (Making a life in the way of Jesus)" is a book best read slowly and savored. I'm halfway through; I may reread some chapters before going on; I'm surprised at how many times I've paused and thought, "this is what I've been wanting to say but hadn't found the words." Instead of a real book review, I'll post "gems" from the book as I stumble across them. The "ReIMAGINE!" poem above is one (so go ahead, give it a listen); and here's another:

"Graffiti can be a plea for identity or a proclamation to puncture the darkness. ... The fragmentation I recognize in the world and in myself weighed heavily upon me as I cut words into a waxed paper stencil. I prayed as I sprayed the paint through the stencil out onto the sidewalk: CREATOR - RECREATE HERE NOW - INSTIGATE A REVOLUTION OF FAITH HOPE & LOVE...... What question or statement would you shout out to the universe or to God right now? Go public with your yelping. Write it with chalk on the sidewalk or post it on a Web site and see what kind of response you get."

More excerpts in a later post.

"Where Uncle Phil go?"

My brother visited us from Los Angeles for a couple of days this week. He quickly made three young new friends, including 2-y.o. Diesel, pictured here finding a shoulder to lean on at The Awakening in DC. (I'd hoped the statue would be partially submerged after all the rain upstream; but we got some great pictures anyway.)

[UPDATE: the day after posting this, I read that "in the coming months" the Awakening would be moved across the river. I'm pretty sure it will lose some of its charm -- but we'll see...]

It was great to see Phil and his nephews interact, really for the first time. (Previous encounters were all at some kind of family reunion, with kids relegated to a separate room, and lots of competing activity.) In fact, I don't think our boys have bonded so eagerly with any other visitor. A few hours after Phil left, Diesel headed toward the guestroom: "Where Uncle Phil go?" He wasn't very pleased with the answer he got.

On Phil's last evening here, he and I escaped to the nearby brewery for drinks and conversation. Not a frequent occurrence for me anymore ... with anyone! let alone my brother from another planet. Quite a treat. Funny though, we were both tired enough that we stopped to get coffee on the way. (He can blame his fatigue on jet lag and time zones; me I'm just a doofus -- no matter how hard I try to pin the blame on baby Timo.)

Here's to more visits from Uncle Phil.

Gratitude

I'm such a lousy blogger that I forgot to bring a camera on our early-morning visit to the Washington cherry blossoms last week. So imagine, if you will, standing under a canopy of translucent Yoshino blooms that both glowed from the gentle sun shining through them, and shimmered and flickered in the reflections off the Tidal Basin... all of this against a cloudless blue backdrop.

Less famous, but equally delightful, is the Awakening statue at the tip of Hains Point. On this day, its appeal seemed especially broad: toddlers sat on the statue's teeth and fingers while high-schoolers dared each other to jump off his knee, 12 feet down to the ground.

It was a much more successful visit than we had any right to expect, especially with three little boys along for the trip: we found parking on the Potomac; missed the crowds; soaked in the day's best light and springtime warmth; and were home by mid-morning. And wouldn't you know it, the remainder of that week turned rainy and increasingly cold. "Lord, you give us what we need -- and sometimes so much more."

A few days later, I caught a nice picture of the unseasonable weather: I'm not sure when the DC area last saw snow in April, but there it was. I took this out our front window as we were waking up. (Click to see the full-size picture.)


With all of our sickly grass hidden under snow, the front yard looked pretty inviting! Hopefully this spring & summer we'll get it to look nice even without snow on it.

Tonight we took in another Washington-area delight, a Bowie Baysox game. There's something magical about a baseball diamond bathed in electric lights under a richly hued evening sky.

Because this is the Minor Leagues, the mood is calm and relaxed; the playing is great but the stakes are low; and tickets are cheap or free. We had comp tickets, so we didn't mind leaving after the 3rd inning (!) to get the boys into bed. Well worth a return visit.

The "Catch Me If You Can" pen

The local Staples store had these nice-looking pens on clearance this week. (...they gleam so ... but I don't really need another pen -- oh look, only 50 cents for a 3-pack...) Just as I was about to be reasonable and walk away, I saw that they were billed as somehow resistant to check fraud. And I spotted an ornate seal of approval on the back of the package: ... Abagnale .. A mouthful of a name ... Frank W. Abagnale ... Waitaminute ... That rings a bell ... Yes! This is the guy from "Catch Me If You Can," who singlehandedly invented dozens of tricks to forge documents, con people, and steal a few million dollars. At first I didn't get it: would we want Ronald McDonald certifying our filets mignons? But further study showed that Abagnale & Associates are a bona fide business -- lucrative enough, in fact, to pay back all the money he swindled. (Good thing he didn't pay them back four times over -- preachers everywhere would've made him a sermon illustration.) Among many other things, A&A helped formulate the Uni-Ball 207's special ink that sinks deeply into paper fibers and can't be washed out.

On the company Website, Abagnale comments on the book and movie and how he's changed since then. And Wikiquote has some juicy quips:

• "If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been 'Catch Me In Two Days'."
  • Frank Abagnale, on the Killian memos.

• "Remember what being an adult is: It has nothing to do with money or awards."
  • Frank Abagnale, speaking to high-school students in Highland Park, Texas [4]

• I had no fear -- like a kid driving down the freeway at 100 miles an hour.
  • Frank Abagnale [6]

• I did not make this film about Frank Abagnale because of what he did . . but because of what he has done with his life the past 30 years.
  • Steven Spielberg. [9]

I bought nine pens. I think I've already lost two.

Jonny Baker in Lancaster, PA

One man went out to mow - Uploaded by jonnybaker

Jonny Baker (a creative force in UK "Alternative Worship" and co-author of the rather unique book by that name) is giving a workshop series this week, entitled "Faithful Improvisation: Worship and Mission in Post-modern Times" in Lancaster, PA. Lancaster's closer than London; but still two hours away; so I can't be there myself, but hopefully I'm only a couple degrees of separation from someone who can. (It's all free and open to the public.)

I've never met Mr. Baker, but his blog and other writings (including his "worship tricks" series and Flickr photo collection) have been an inspiration to many, and a source of highly creative thinking about Christian worship, theology, and culture. And for me and presumably others, he was the first link to the outstanding work of Andrew Jones, Pete Rollins, Kester Brewin, Roger von Oech, et al. Here he is (above right) mowing a prayer labyrinth -- one of many concepts he's catalyzed in the UK emerging church scene.

The Man Lift

I often wonder whether I've run out of things to blog about -- but something noteworthy usually comes up amidst the impenetrable blandness [blindness?] of my days. Last Saturday I joined my church's Men's Ministry work crew. At left is the late-afternoon money shot -- too bad all that gossamer structure will have to disappear under walls and roof. Reminds me of the balsa gliders of my youth.

My highlight was operating the manlift pictured here for most of the morning. Gotta love the name; though there's nothing "manly" about operating it -- a joystick rotates the boom horizontally and vertically, and a toggle switch telescopes you in & out. So it's like a 3D video game (at a snail's pace). In my groggy Saturday-morning state of mind I found myself wondering what combinations of longitude, latitude, and radius adjustments would let me move parallel to the x, y, and z axes relative to the ground. Fortunately I kept this powerful conversation killer to myself. Just call me Mr. Cross-Cultural.

Curse your blessings

Nearly all the things I complain about -- lousy job, cranky kids, ragged yard, squeaky bicycle, etc. -- are closely tied to rich blessings: gainful employment, a loving family, a nice home on a lovely cycling road, etc. Some years ago I coined a snide little hymn: "Count your blessings, Curse them one by one / And it will surprise you what the Lord has done..."

So, amidst the tempest 'n' tumult described earlier, it's been interesting to review the good things that were happening. Here's a list (call it "Ebenezer" if you will):

• Little T.Mo (8 months old yesterday) is learning to (a) sit up and (b) hold his own bottle. This is not just cute: it frees up Mom & Dad to do other things, like sweep or eat or sometimes even think.
• I finally dejunked the garage -- so thoroughly that it's sheltering not one but both cars (they'd been out in the rain / sun / hail / snow for months, maybe years). Our second car (... motor vehicle ... ok, minivan) has about 3" clearance front and back, and 1/64" (really!) under the tandem bicycle. It's a beautiful sight.
• My lovely Quicken Queen (and brand-new blogger) wrestled our taxes into submission: we're expecting a refund worth about a month's wages. (Note to self: revisit withholding.)
• Several geeky-glee moments: I finally downloaded the latest Fedora Core (6) Linux and installed it on our Frankensteinian kitchen computer. (*) I also snagged a Handera 330 (the nec plus ultra of handhelds) on eBay. And, thanks to a work-related visit to George Mason University, I got to shop at Micro Center (supermarket for geeks) in far-off Fairfax, VA.

... I'm sure several more items will occur to me as soon as I click "Publish." So ... to be continued, probably.

(*) This computer deserves its own blog. Starting with a motherboard and CPU from an office trash-heap, and a wood gift box at home; inspired by the world-famous Humidor PC; I got to tinkering. I'll post pictures when it's finished (... in 2010).

Hiatus

Just when blogging seemed to be going so well, becoming a nice habit, ... there went February. (I think we can agree "electric pee" was getting pretty -ah- stale after 18 days.) Not quite sure what happened. But for one thing, all my posts were late at night (Blogger's time-stamp shows when the writing started) -- which was doing nothing for health, sanity, or family harmony. And then my employer asked me to drop my current NASA commitment and head up a new project elsewhere. I was pretty sure I didn't want the new role; but I didn't want to leave my colleagues in the lurch. Unfortunately, this brought out the worst in me: instead of saying "No" promptly and clearly, I let the inner turmoil and second-guessing begin; I clammed up, and avoided them for most of a week. So mature and professional. People were leaving me voice-mail: "Did you get my email? Hope to hear from you. Here's my cell..." And of course, blogging is hard enough even when my inner thoughts are clear and confident. So, that's my story... Now that that awkward episode is over, things should pick up a bit around here.

In the midst of the hubbub, I found Sam Phillips' bizarre song "Zero Zero Zero!" oddly comforting: "... everything that I'm not is all that I've got." (If I'm a zero, at least I have a theme song.) And of course, there's always the beatitudes: "Blessed are the [zeroes], for theirs is the kingdom of heaven..."

Semantic aptitude 2: electric pee

Dylan's semantic aptitude makes it that much funnier when he misunderstands something. The other day he announced gloomily to Grammy and everyone at the table, "Mommy says I might have electric pee." ... Umm... run that by me again? Turns out he'd been told that for an upcoming doctor's visit, "you might have to collect your pee." He took a moment to process this new input, then joined in the general hilarity.

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.)

Semantic aptitude 1: Chameleon

5-year-old Dylan understands what's going on, better than most kids his age. The other day, out of the blue, he asked from the back of the car, "dad, ... so does he mean he has trouble loving himself?" Huh? I then realized we were listening to Michael Knott's Life of David CD, and he'd understood pretty clearly what this dark refrain was about:    

I'm the cunning culprit
and the little lamb
and I love all God's children
all but one
This chameleon

Not bad for a five-year-old. He asked whether it was a prayer; Actually, yes: a sad and honest prayer...




Note to self: some of the repertoire may be a bit more difficult to explain.

Pierce Pettis and Howard Finster

Looks like I'll have to miss tomorrow night's Pierce Pettis performance over at Jammin' Java. I've only seen him play once, at Harvard's Veritas Forum, about 15 years ago. I was impressed then not only by the thoughful depth of his music but by how long he stuck around afterwards to talk with people. At first listen, he might seem like just another reflective-Christian singer-songwriter type -- but his songs really grow on you. And as a longtime Mark Heard fan, I have to admire Mr. Pettis' custom of starting every one of his CDs with a Heard cover.

Listening to "My Life of Crime" today, I realized he also deserves a place on the list of "cleverest lyrics ever" with the following mournful lines:
I have held some people up
I have robbed the stage
With my trusty six-string
I have made them pay...
A couple of days ago, I noticed that his CD "State of Grace" features artwork by the Rev. Howard Finster. That name sounded vaguely familiar..... a quick Wikipedia search later, I was floored to learn that uber-quirky artist-evangelist Rev. Finster not only painted for Pierce Pettis, but also did the Talking Heads' Little Creatures, R.E.M.'s Reckoning, and Adam Again's In a New World of Time. That's a lot of excellent (and very different) bands, linked only by ... well, not even linked by geography.

And sure enough, it's his preacherly voice peeking out of the sound mix on Adam Again's "Homeboys". To complete the picture, I checked out the rockumentary Athens, GA: Inside Out from Netflix. Next time I'm in Georgia, maybe I'll visit Paradise Garden.

NASA's grim 3-way anniversary

Every year, this is a peculiar week for NASA:

On Jan. 27, 1967, an unexpectedly ferocious fire aboard Apollo 1 suffocated Grissom, White, and Chaffee during a pre-launch test.

On Jan. 28, 1986, an unexpectedly brittle booster seal destroyed shuttle Challenger and killed Scobee, Smith, Resnik, Onizuka, McNair, Jarvis, and McAuliffe.


On Feb. 1, 2003, unexpectedly severe heat shield damage destroyed the shuttle Columbia and killed Husband, McCool, Chawla, Clark, Anderson, Brown, and Ramon.

James Oberg's 2005 commentary raises some thought-provoking points about these events and how they're publicly depicted:

"It has become easy to look away from these horrible space disasters -- and I never call them "accidents," a term that relieves the people involved on the ground of ultimate responsibility. NASA prefers to literally bury the wreckage in underground concrete crypts, to shove the investigation reports onto another bookshelf, and to allocate one day per year to honoring the dead while ignoring what killed them the other 364 days. But spaceflight is not easy, and that particular "easy way" is a roadmap to doom..."

He goes on to debunk the "73 seconds" we've all been told to associate with Challenger's last flight -- whose crew probably lived more than 2 horrific minutes longer, as they continued upwards, then arced down and finally crashed into the ocean. He writes,

"...enough of comfortable make-believe... whenever some space official who ought to know (and say) better uses the phrase '73 seconds', you have one more unintentionally self-confessed averter of eyes."

Randy did a nice riff on this last year. But what he didn't get into is how universal the willful delusion is. Oberg again:

"In space as on Earth, bitter experience teaches that a good 'safety culture' decays from a variety of causes. There is the lulling of anxiety through repeated success, or the loss of respect (or fear) for past experience. And sometimes it’s from the elevation of other measures of goodness higher than safety... Especially when the chain of cause-and-effect logic leads right back into one’s own heart and mind, the ugly consequences of such triggering actions are hard to contemplate."

Try replacing "safety" in that quote with any number of other concerns -- freedom, prayer, justice, sobriety, love -- and see how it reads. Then read Don Miller's Blue Like Jazz (*):

"The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been. I am the problem. I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest... I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read 'I AM THE PROBLEM!'"

OK, end of sermon. One more NASA-related post coming up (a really inane one!) and then I'll stop playing with fire w.r.t my employment.

P.S. Further reading if you're curious: Gregg Easterbrook's 1980 prediction, tirade, and concerns about the Shuttle and the Space Program. Teaser quote: "The space station was conceived mainly to give the shuttle a destination, and the shuttle has been kept flying mainly to keep the space station serviced."

(*) I'm (re)reading "Blue Like Jazz" now and leading a group study of it, so look for more quotes soon.

Life lessons from an experimental cosmologist

As some of you know, I work at NASA. I don't do anything particularly brilliant but just upstairs from me is NASA's Nobel-prize-winning pride and joy, John Mather. I sometimes like to think some of his insight and perseverance will rub off on me as we share a few air molecules via the HVAC. (OK that was pathetic.)

Today I attended a luncheon* featuring Dr. Mather. In fewer than 25 minutes, he breezed through his 20 years with the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) (which confirmed that the Big Bang is more than just a clever idea); described the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST); and ended with the lessons he's learned from it all, ... which I felt deserved a broader audience. So, all three of you, listen up:

- Aim high: the world will change in the 20-year lifetime of your project.
- Your space-based telescope should only try to do what ground-based telescopes can't do.
- Don't be intimidated by difficulty of your project, if no law of nature actually forbids it.
- It it's not forbidden, it's required (in the case of science and exploration).
- If it's not required, it's forbidden (in the case of project management).
- If you don't test it, it won't work (confidence is no guarantee of success).
- If you do test it, it still won't work BUT you'll have a chance to fix it before it has to work.
- Elementary things do fail (simplicity is no guarantee of success).
- All the hard work is worth it -- there's no substitute for major space missions.

I'm no cosmologist, yet something tells me the good Dr.'s onto some genuine wisdom here.

He gave another interesting gem to -ah- chew on: We atoms make up only about 4% of the universe. The rest is cold dark matter (23%), which no-one knows much about; and dark energy (73%), which is even more mysterious.

(* Lunch or luncheon? After extensive study, I have concluded that the "-eon" suffix is code for "wear a tie". Then again, the required preliminary chit-chat does fit the other definition.)

The other family portrait

The formal portrait we paid good money for last fall turned out pretty starched & bleached -- and besides, Olan Mills Studios would break our kneecaps if we posted it. So, here's a livelier picture of our little clan: "Ms. P., are we all stuck on the ceiling until Mom and Dad stop laughing?" CCW from top-left are Suvia, Dylan (5), Diesel (2), T.Mo (0.5), and yours truly. We'll include this in our sesquiennial Christmas - Easter newsletter... soon.

Low frequency effects

I've been enjoying my new subwoofer -- a bit of reckless Christmas generosity from the Suvias (my wife and her mother). Funny, it says right in the manual, "most people turn up the gain much too far." Understandable; I can see why subwoofers and condo apartments are an ugly mix. Fortunately our nearest neighbors are 150ft. away through trees. (If they come knocking...)

Of course the thing really shines on movies like Terminator or Finding Nemo. Besides beefing up the obvious concussive sounds (e.g., Darla tapping on the fishtank), it just makes everything a lot more immersive. But I was surprised at how much it also "anchored" solo acoustic guitar music. Also surprising: my best subwoofer demo so far (amidst stiff competition from Miles Davis' "Blue in Green") is a piece by Carrie Newcomer ("Another Thunder"). [Edit: oops, how could I have omitted Arvo Pärt's "The Beatitudes"?]

Homeland security and memories of Dad

So I was filling out the 20pp. "resistance is futile" questionnaire the other day, for the latest wrinkle in the Homeland Security blanket. Among other things, I had to come up with 3 "people who know you well ... who together cover the last 7 years of your life. No relatives, spouses, etc." A daunting task for this hermit; but I did finally come up with three. So if some disturbingly normal-seeming person calls you up asking about me, ... you've been warned.

In looking up people's addresses etc, I stumbled across a Lycos listing for my father: full name, past addresses (Hines, MN, followed by Wheaton, IL -- omitting his 40-some years as a missionary overseas), and age: 71... even though he never made it to 66. Creepy.

The same afternoon, I found a photo of him and Mom, stuck in an old Java book on my shelf. I think this picture was taken the week Dad's cancer was confirmed (Christmas '96). He died about 4 1/2 years later -- two months before 9/11. I often wonder what he (as a lifelong student of the Arabic language and Christian ministry to Muslims) would've thought of this brave new world.

Now that we've totally changed the subject... In recent years I've sometimes thought we've moved on a little TOO well since Dad's death -- sure, life goes on, but ours would probably be richer if we paused once in a while to remember him. Because he preferred counseling and coaching to publishing, there's precious little evidence of him online. So, I wonder what the Wendell Evans blog would've been like. I should write a spoof post every year or something.

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.