so i woke up this morning and there was this large yellowish object in the sky. i didn’t know what it was and just thought that since i was out late last night that maybe my brain was playing tricks on me. so i closed my eyes again, reopened them, and this thing was still there. suddenly i gor freaked out, what is it? is the world ending? is it a UFO? a terrorist?

so much like all normal people, i logged onto google and searched for a “large yellowish object in the sky” hoping that at some point someone else had seen this object and either blogged about it, or posted something about it. but all i could find was lyrics to a song by somebody named shari bauer on some website called 96 decibals. i was starting to think google was going to let me down, and just then a google calendar reminder appeared on my screen and took me to my calendar. as i was looking over my calendar for the day i saw a small image of something similar to what was in the sky, i clicked on the image and began to read, “scattered clouds in seattle” this left me even more confused, clouds? what are clouds? is it possible that the sky is not gray? and that the grayness is clouds?

then i was brought back to my childhood and i remembered my mom telling me stories of this warm object in the sky that made sure life went on, and helped keep the earth warm. i seem to recall her calling this object the “sun.” so, i googled that. but unfortunately that didn’t even seem to lead me anywhere, except to this thing called “sun microsystems”

so can anybody tell me what this thing in the sky is called? and how long will it be around?

peace
joel

another week of my life has gone by — i wonder how many i have left? and once again, i have stolen away to put some words on the world wide web for anybody to read and interact with.

this past friday i was at a meeting with an individual who does church coaching. rather, he described himself as ‘the bridge’ between past forms of the church and emerging forms of the church. he gave us a hangout that had on it three forms of church that he has seen, or been a part of, in his lifetime. the first is the ‘historic church’ where everything is believer center and the leader is a man/woman that preaches the word. the second, that was born in the 80’s through bill hybels and others is the ‘contemporary church’ that is seeker center and the leader of the church is CEO. where all decisions go through the pastor and the pastor teaches sermons as well as does capital campaigns, hires, fires, and casts vision. the third, and most emerging of the three is what is called the ‘missional church.’ The missional church is a church that is other centered and the leader is a missionary that is sent out into a geographical context.

the leader of this meeting then had us gather into groups and discuss our church history. as i ran through my head the types of churches that i have been a part of I found myself landing, at least for a time, at each of the three. the church that i attended growing up, Berean Bible Church in Holland Michigan was and still is a ‘historic church’ that on occasion looks outward but mainly does so through the desire for growth. My parents and I then made the decision at the age of 16 to leave that church to go to a ‘contemporary church’ that was more seeker centered and have an overwhelming attractional model to it. everything was at the church. the youth group had a huge gathering area with ping pong tables, pool tables, a coffee house. from there, i left for college and after about a 2 year religious sabbatical i found myself in a church that may look like a seeker centered church, but is kind of a hybrid of contemporary church and missional church. i then left that geographical area completely to attend seminary in Seattle and now, after i have graduated I find myself in the process of birthing what is labeled a ‘missional church.’

ok, i’m sure you are thinking, that’s great joel, but why do i care about your church history?

i’m glad you asked.

in the process of going through all three of these labels the speaker said something that i learned early on, and am continuing to learn. he said, the tendancy of anyone of these when speaking about what they are and what they aren’t is to say “we aren’t this” and “we aren’t going to do that” he went on to say that this isn’t a profitable way forward because the more one talks about what they aren’t the more they continue to subtly subvert that which exists and in time will alienate themselves and lose track of who they really are. a philosophical category for this is sometimes called a ‘reactionary movement.’ where movement happens, but it is simply in reaction to something and therefore it ends up being short lived and shallow with no real sustainability. i call these movements ‘hip-blips.’

so the challenge for me became a gut check. where is my identity in my ecclesiology? is it an ecclesiology birthed out of a reaction to what i feel doesn’t work? what isn’t me? or, is it an ecclesiology birthed out of who God is calling me to be in and through him?

now, granted i can never remove myself from my context, and i am consciously and sub-consciously influenced by my surroundings, but, because i believe in a spiritual realm and in a story that goes on apart from me i have another realm in which i can defer to.

so thank you Steven Ogne for being a bridge and for giving me a gut check and reminding me of what my identity is truly found in.

peace
joel

today is my day-off. i don’t get many days off but when i do i value them a lot. I usually do some thinking that I should do, reading that I want to do, and praying that I’m compelled to do followed up with lots of tea, maybe a nap here or there, and a lot of n-o-t-h-i-n-g.

so as i sit here i have been thinking about a wide variety of topics lately, none with a whole lot of congealed thought — but that’s ok, the thought of a thought is often more exciting than the actual thought. (that’s Heideggar speaking, not me — although i tend to agree)

Thought of a thought 1: Forgiveness. In the last couple months i have really been thinking about what salvation is, and what salvation means, and why salvation matters to the here and now. On this thought journey I have bumped up against two things. One — the typical theory of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins) is incredibly limited and is steeped in legal metaphors and not impacted by relationship at all. Two — since I am thinking about starting a church the need for me to have an understanding of salvation is incredibly important. Otherwise what do I call people to? This is where I think many churches run-amuck. Instead of calling the faithful to salvation churches will call them to politics, or to be against ‘agendas.’ or to isolation from culture. But that is a conversation for another day and another topic.

So my researching of what can be called relational salvation led me to the territory of forgiveness. In reading Moltmann, Barth, Grenz, and Pannenburg there are undertones (or overtones) of forgiveness being necessary for salvation. Therfore I hopped on Amazon and went to town looking for books on salvation and forgiveness. To my surprise and strange delight I found a book written collectively by a therapist and a theologian, The faces of Forgiveness: searching for wholeness and salvation. I was instantly hooked. Could this be the beginnings of a relational salvation? After all, forgiveness is a relational act that is necessitated by an interpersonal injustice.

As it turns out the book is excellent. The first part runs through forgiveness from a therapeutic perspective an apart from talking about ‘face’ a lot it does a really good job of differentiating the ways in which the word ‘forgiveness’ is discussed. The second part though, being a wanna-a-be theologian, is the part that i ate up. Leron Shults examines forgiveness throughout the Bible, starting with the Jewish understanding of a forgiving god and then goes into the Greek understanding of god forgiving through Jesus and the Spirit. Shults then does a brief examination of how the global ‘C’-hurch has viewed forgiveness as it informs salvation. All that to say, what i am coming to believe is that salvation to the emerging post-modern Christians is a deeply relational act that has forgiveness and reconcoliation as its conduits. Without either of these, salvation tends toward escapsism, and after-life-isms that do not inform the fact that I have 70+ years of life on this Earth that I get to participate in the Kingdom of God now. Forgiveness is also deeply important, in particular, to the emerging generation because we see the global harms that both the myth of progress and the Enlightenment era have done to global health and global welfare. So on a very basic level, the world can not continue as is — forgiveness and repentence and therefore reconciliation must occur.

Thought of a Thought 2: I had more, but now i forgot them and have spent all my blogging time already.

peace
joel

p.s. the next book on forgiveness and salvation i plan to read 9starting tomorrow) is No Future without Forgiveness by a South-African Genius Bishop by the name Desmond Tutu

this past weekend marked an event that i have been waiting 3+ years to do. And i was finally able to purchase the necessary equipment (thanks to a misc. check from MH that i didn’t expect to get) to brew my own beer. This is step one for a dream that is about 20 years out which is for Brooke and I to own a microbrew/restaurant.

I purchased a book ‘How to Brew’ and all the fun equipment necessary to boil, steep, ferment, and bottle. and I purchased the ingredients for a Winter Ale that is dark is color with chocolate overtones. As I sit and type i am watching the airlock bubble as the fermentation process does its job. I can wait to have a party over here to celebrate this — as there is no way i want to drink 5 gallons of the same beer. That is, assuming that after i take my first drink I don’t have to throw the whole thing out because i screwed up somewhere in the process (which is perfectly possible).

Sometime in the next couple weeks I hope to make another beer, i’m thinking i’m going to make a cinnamon spice beer with some other flavor in it. Certainly a winter, or Christmas beer.

And a hearty thanks to Bob at Bob’s Home Brew for owning a phenomenal store and an overwhelming sense of wanting to help me get off the ground.

peace
joel