A few weeks back I had a post involving a conversation with Mark Driscoll and Brian McLaren. Of those of you that commented the general feel was that Driscoll’s behavior was off, and some would say, embrassing and immature.

To be fair to Mark I must post his apology that he published on his blog.

After reading it, and re-reading his comments to Brian and Doug Pagitt I am very grateful that Mark followed up with this and did not just let it die. It takes courage to apologize — my hope is that he didn’t let this public venue fulfill his call to forgiveness. I hope that he also sent both brian and doug a personal email

peace
joel

“A good leader will, in time, disappoint everyone. Leadership requires a willingness to not be liked, in fact, a willingness to be hated. But it is impossible to lead people who doubt you and hate you.”
-a friend of mine

peace
joel

I believe that this list is a common one, but it is the first time I came across it, thanks to Justin Baeder over at www.radicalcongruency.com…..after reading it I am torn between laughter and tears.  I want to laugh because of the felt ridiculousness of some of these, but I want to cry because with the simple replacement of a few words in each reason and they suddenly become ‘real’ reasons that have been used against women for years.  Without further adieu, I invite you to laughter and tears….

10. A man’s place is in the army.

9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.

8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be“unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.

7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.

5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshipers.

4. To be ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.

3. Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it. Thus,they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.

2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, and maybe even lead the singing on Father’s Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.

1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was aman. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.

peace
joel

The best television commercial ever. Every time I see it on TV I still laugh hysterically.

peace
joel

If I were to add something to this site what would it be?

If I were to remove something what would it be?

peace
joel

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Many, if not all of you know that I attend Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle WA. And many, if not all of you, have an opinion of this school — for good or for ill. This school is only 9 years old, or young, or wahtever indicator of time you want to attach to it. It has been through high-hi’s and low-low’s and for the past three years I have had the opportunity to be a part of, and influence a few of these. And now, as I am in my final breathes of my life with the school I am once again fortunate enough to be a part of a conversation that, if done with patience, grace, and humility could drastically influence the face of the Church for the next millienium. This conversation is the conversation of harm that has been caused to women by the Church. Some people like to call it the conversation of ‘women in ministry’ and others like to call it ‘ordaining women.’ But for the sake of this post I will refer to it as neither of these, I will refer to it as standing at the edge of the image of God.

For years, too many years, we have lived in a world that has structures that are solely male, educational systems that are solely male, leadership structures that are solely male, and theological conversations that are black and white, in part, because of the male curse.

So here we are. Arguably the most progressive church movement in America (Emergent) is dominated by males. At the recent National Pastors Convention a group of people associated with Emergnet got invited to speak about the Emergent conversation — guess what? They are all males. Emergent Y/S published rouglhy 25 books — 3 of them are by women (two of the three women authors, at one point, have been associated with MHGS). The emergent board is almost all male. And yet, if asked in conversation, each one of these men that are associated with emergent will say that they are for women in ministy. And yet, there is this strange glass ceiling that is still present. What is that all about?

I wish that Christian men, not just men in Emergent, would have the grace to say to a woman, “I need your voice” Better yet “the Church needs your voice.” If we do not do this soon we will only propogate much of the same ill’s that pain us from the past 500 years.

Men, it is time to recognize that redemption is possible. It is time to recognize that we continue to voluntarily play into our fall and ‘dominate’ women. It is time to recognize that redemption begins with forgiveness and brokenness.

God — break us men and forgive us for the ways in which we have caused great harm to women. may this conversation that I have stumbled into continue and may I fall face down and weap for the harm that my gender has caused.

humbled
joel

p.s. My using Emergent as an example is as much that — an example — as it is a frustration of mine. I continually get frsutrated by people who say one thing and live another. We need leaders of character.

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I uploaded some new pictures (don’t mind that the template is broken — i’ll fix it when i have more time)

Pictures from Nate and Emily Worden’s Baby Shower

Pictures from the Great Harvest Grand Re-opening

Pictures of Tulips that I bought for Brooke

Pictures from a Wits’ End Service

I hope you enjoy them. 

peace
joel

A Prayer
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have the desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Vocation
A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live
and begins to live. Thus, if one is called to be in solitary, he will stop wondering how he is to live and start living peacefully only when he is in solitude. But if one is not called to a solitary life, the more he is alone the more will he worry about living and forget to live. When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or gives in to life so that out life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation – thought and life are one.

Distress
Distress is to our advantage when we have nothing to seek but mercy.

peace
joel

“Joel where are you?” I answer “I can barely hear you, can you speak up.” The cry that I hear is a cry from the other side. The side that has so much to do with my future, my friends, and wife. But where I sit, admist 30-40 books I can barely hear them yell my name. The thought of Leadership and the New Science, the thought of Power as relatiosnhip, the thought of Darwin and the Holy Spirit, and the thought of trying to write my thesis while having 4 other classes and working drowns out that voice that I am trying so disparingly to listen to.

This morning I woke up about an hour before Brooke. I went and sat down at my makeshift desk, opened my laptop and began typing a paper that I randomly ended in the middle of a sentence last night. As I sat down it felt like I hadn’t even left. My coffee mug was still in the same spot, the cursor on Microsoft word was still blinking in the same spot at the same rate, and the books were still stacked or laid open. But what freaked me out the most is that I was able to finish the sentence that I started the night before. I was able to pick up in the very spot I left off without even missing a beat, or moreso, feeling like I had ever left.

But that is not the point of this story…so let me try again…

This morning I woke up about an hour before Brooke. As I began to type (see above paragraph for explanation) I entered into my world deeply. So deeply in fact that Brooke said good morning to me, asked me if I wanted coffee and began to make breakfast before I even comprehended any of it. The first interaction I remember having with Brooke was through words that I muttered, “The dog really needs to go out.” Willis was sitting by the door whining, and by golly, I wasn’t going to get up from my work to take him out. In fact, my very thought was, “take yourself out you damn dog.” So as I continued to read Brooke took Willis for a walk, a long walk, by my best estimate she was gone for 12 pages. (not I have no concept of time in this sentence). Upon returning she was cranky (rightfully so) and I could, amazingly, from behind my wall fo books, feel her crankiness. I got up from my chair gave her a hug and felt no real return of the embrace. This is when I asked, “are you mad at me?” (note my assumption in my very verbage of the question). She played it off like it was no big deal, so I asked again, “Did I make you mad?” For some reason this question was either more accessible, or Brooke just didn’t want me to ask again, so she nodded in agreement and then provided me with the data of our inneractions of the morning thus far.

And so the question remains, where are you Joel?

peace
a man with a keyboard

So this past week I had a week long intensive class.  One of my hobbies to help myself may attention in class is to spend time searching the internet for new great technologies to use.  Now, you may be thinking, “but joel, if you are surfing the web then you aren’t paying attention.”  Well, this is true — but i’m freeing my mind up to do other things so that i can stay engaged in the class longer.

This week was a good week for new technology discoveries.

ZohoWriter:  an online wordprocessor that you can store documents on that you can then automatically email, save as a word document or as a PDF.  This is arguably the way of the future.  Google just bought Writely and as soon as they open it back up for membership i will start using that because i hope it is universal with gmail and google desktop and google earth and google calendar (soon to be released)

Mambo:  a higher end blogger, and content manager.  It is really, really easy to set-up and it looks great.  It has the capability for users to sign in and for users to see different information.  I don’t know what i will use it for, but its good to know that it is out there.  The only problem is that templates are scarce and most people want you to buy them.

Local.live.com:  this is a beta, but when it gets fully released it will be awesome.  This is essentially the next version of map software — it has street level maps that you can direct so it looks like you are actually walking on the street.  Right now there is limited areas of Seattle and San Fran.

Plaxo:  This is amazing.  It is a free service where a person can keep all their contacts.  But that isn’t the amazing part.  the amazing part is that if someone moves, changes email addresses, changes phone number then it updates your contact book automatically as long as the other person keeps their plaxo account up to date.  I can’t wait to fully have the time to set this account up.

Ma.gnolia.com:  For those of you who are familiar with del.icio.us this is very similar but the interface is much friendlier.  It is essentially a socail bookmarking system that keeps track of your bookmarks and shares them with people.

icalx.com: I’ve been using this for quite sometime to help brooke and i manage our schedules.  But what this does is keep an updated calendar on the internet that is accessible to whoever i give the info to.  I use Mozilla Sunbird for my calendar and so I have Sunbird set-up to update it.  It will become even more powerful when my calendar becomes crazy(er).

And the really cool part is all of these are free and all but local.live.com are open-source and non-Microsoft.

peace
joel