Jesus For President

June 27, 2008. 7PM. Calvary Baptist Church. Washington, DC.



it was good to see shane and chris again. last time I saw chris was in his living room when the book was just being started and ... well, some interesting conversation indeed broke out. which is why i really want to say that while i think i may bring other perspective to the conversation - i really really appreciate the things these guys are saying. and doing. i think its spot on. i think its needed. particularly within american evangelical, let alone christian fundamentalists circles. i perhaps most appreciate the constant theme of the upside down ness of the kingdom of god - which we dont get. i mean we dont understand. which is to say we really dont get it. and we need to talk about it. and keep talking. and keep reminding each other. i also like that they aren't leaning or pointing in a particular political direction. and on top of it all - i think their presentation is gracious and respectful for both people and process. i highly recommend attending an event if you can - to catch up with (or even make) new friends (and not to celebrate emerging church celebrity) and/or reading the book. its in my currently reading queue right now!

it was also great seeing some psalters action again. they bring so freakin much prophetic intensity with them...



and Jay is always such a musical badass motha monster.



J4P interview on CNN

on american news

lara logan on john stewart.



zactly.

emergenting

re: emerging-vs-emergent-redux

i think its incidental that emergent is both emerging and missional in that venn diagram. its a compliment to emergent - but its not the point.

i would like to see emergent acknowledge its identity rather than try to blur the lines between emergent and emerging.

to do so adds clarity! to acknowledge and know and embrace who you are - is healthy!

you say your a node - right up there. so say it! loud and proud! youre a node. youre an organization. you have a logo. people can put a gif on their blog. you have no reason to hide from that.

its not creating artificial seperation and fragmentation. even bush knows the difference a letter makes can mean attacking the wrong country.

to blur it may fit better your discomfort with brands and identities. with walls and borders - however porous. or maybe there isn't a border and people orbit your node - thats how we think of it. but i dont' see how its integrous to resist embracing your node-i-ness and pretend you have cloud-i-ness.

you knew you were starting a something when you started emergent village. embrace that. you guys are a great organization! and the way you run it so loosely is awesome! your a great leadership model for other to look at and learn from.

but - youre a degree of freedom away from the beginning, and blurring this issue allows those who are just discovering the emerging church (sans logo) to think were based on emergent village (mit logo), rather than the root concept of emergence. and that misdirection and loss of richness of understanding is incalculable in my estimation.

say youre a node. say the emerging church is a cloud. end the confusion.

COIN

the military may occasionally refer to it as the long war, but they don't often refer to it as the "war on [verb]"... mostly 'cause they can't get [verb] to hold still long enough to ask him to stop. no, the military knows it is fighting against an insurgency - i.e. a Counter Insurgency - or COIN for short - standing for Counter Insurgency OPerations.

while ceaser may have impressively stupid ideas of how to create and then drag out a war out for a hundred years or more - many of the best military and other thinkers outside the military - such as the iraq study group report - have done some much better thinking. some of that thinking is done at blogs like Abu Muqawama's COIN blog (he often blogs opposite the reputable Small Wars Journal but with an increased arab awarness. Abu Muqawama is almost a cross be SWJ and the Arabist, a renowned egyptian blogger).

recently, abu muqawama featured a gentlemen named Greg Mortenson, and his co-author David Olivier Relin who have written a book called: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time; an abject lesson on gaining influence in the world's most difficult and dangerous places. the whole article is really good (although the verbage may seem impressively hard to the uninitiated), but i wanted to include a quote here - just to blow your mind about what categories of stuff fit into where.

With due ceremony, Syed Abbas tilted back the lid of the box, withdrew a scroll of parchment wrapped in red ribbon, unfurled it, and revealed (Greg) Mortenson's future. "Dear Compassionate of the Poor," he translated from the elegant Farsi calligraphy, "our Holy Koran tells us all children should receive education, including our daughters and sisters. Your noble work follows the highest principles of Islam, to tend to the poor and sick. In the Holy Koran there is no law to prohibit an infidel from providing assistance to our Muslim brothers and sisters. Therefore," the decree concluded, "we direct all clerics in Pakistan to not interfere with your noble intentions. You have our permission, blessings, and prayers."

amen. and amen.

now that, my friends, is a blessing.

and it just so happens building schools for girls is sound counter insurgency strategy too. who knew the gospel and doing good for the poor could have such a clear voice in ceasers newest, uh, coin?

a citizen of rome

like paul i have found myself to be a citizen of rome. and like paul, i didn't ask for this citizenship. or do anything to deserve it. i showed up, and presto - citizen of rome. so weird.

anyway, turns out i have certain rights and privileges that most of the world & history doesn't have: i have a certain degree of affluence that most of the world / history doesn't have; i have a certain degree of education that most of the world / history couldn’t conceive; and i have an incredible degree of opportunity that most of the world / history couldn't comprehend. take me out for a hundred dollars of sushi and i will tear up and pontificate on this all night.

what i dig about paul's perspective on his citizenship - is that he wasn't afraid to actually suffer a little bit. that is, he didn't seriously consider this birthright to be part of his intrinsic worth. but at the same time he wasn't afraid to casually mention his citizenship when it would highlight an injustice or upset the status quo. i fuckin dig that about paul.

it may not be apparent but i was a centurion in caesars army at one point - in command of a hundred. i basically looked like this:

i would tell this man to go and he would go. and i would tell this man to bring me a latte and he would look at me funny. but mostly i was smart enough to know i didn't know what i didn't know - and i listened to what my old school non-commissioned officers told me... and taught me. about human nature. and about how to trust my gut and make decisions quickly about people. i owe two of these guys in particular a debt i will never be able to repay.

i also had a few real smart soldiers who followed me not because of my rank, but because i didn't actually wear my rank. they would salute me with the wrong hand on purpose just so i would make them do pushups. this deconstruction of rank vs humanity was threatening to the old timers there - but the games encouraged me.

this last weekend i saw a commissioning of future centurions at one of caesars most prestigious schools (make sure you make 'prestigious' sound cool when you say it). i'd always appreciated the numbers of senior officers that were christians - i believe christians desperately need to be in the military, if we have one - and this weekend indicated those numbers haven't changed much, unless they've increased. yet the discomfort i have with the relationship between church and state and the state and church has never been more present to me. i'm not sure its easy to quickly separate these threads - i couldn't think of a way to express it succinctly last weekend - but i'm pretty sure the direction of the relationship is where i think things are so very wrong.

so - with that as background, as a citizen of rome and a former centurion, i've introduced a new piece of who i am, and things i want to talk about.

besides the aforementioned church and state issues - i also want to share what i believe are common misconceptions about the relationship of the military to our foreign policy and the role of the citizen. even more complex, is how a christian thinks in the midst of all this.

mayberry

if you haven't seen the blog indexed - you're missing out on a little daily morsel of conceptual fun.



anybody thinkin the gospel as also been sanitized for the protection of our american way of life?

TOE

a theory of everything is a fundamental concept used to describe an underlying reality that is theorized to exist, and which, once understood, would help to explain and even predict everything we see. the reason i consider a TOE to be important is because having one results in a holistic and consistent understanding regardless of your frame of reference.

physics is in search of one. right now newtonian mechanics (needed to get a spaceship to the moon) and a refinement of that - einsteins relativity (needed to keep satellites for your tv in orbit / sync) describes everything big; and quantum mechanics describe everything really small. quantum mechanics says things like - one photon went through two physical slots - unless you observe it and then "the wave equations will collapse" and you'll be able to tell which one it really went through. combining these however, this leads to macro-paradoxes like schrodinger's cat, alive and dead at the same time until observed. there really is no reason one set of rules holds true for one set of conditions - and another set holds true for another. when you do the math and try to combine these - you get a divide by zero. and those suck.

fundamentalism could use a TOE as well - but i'm not certain they’re looking for one. fundy's insist upon a certain way to think, to look at truth, to see the world. while they remain convinced that this approach gives them security and keeps them grounded - there no consensus / agreement as to what the specifics (i.e. facts) are - only that there are, for sure, specifics. i have come to think of fundamentalism as a religion all its own (ht: john austin) - regardless of its roots be they in christianity, islam, or mormonism. divide by zero.

evangelicalism has a softer version of this "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty". still, who defines essentials? the very existence of the word "denominations" encapsulates the telling failure of a holistic and consistent understanding that ascribes to this view. like in physics, there really is no reason one set of rules holds true for one set of conditions (denominations) - and another set holds true for another. divide by zero.

the emergenting (i'm still gonna get you for that Tony!) church should be in search of a TOE as well, i think... although i do think its a bit early for one to have fully emerged (who among us could predict a honeycomb by examining one or even several bees?). i'm really thankful for peter rollins work - far and away i think he is presenting the most cogent thoughts representing (vice describing) the emerging church and how to/we think. however, i believe we have our own divide by zero waiting, lurking - not unlike the issue in physics. while our thinking does operate in the realm of high dimensionality (allowing for seemingly mutually exclusive things to be simultaneously true / with a better understanding of point-of-view), i think we have been unable to offer a cohesive theory of how, statistically speaking, God doesn't hate brown people. what i mean by that is - if we understand that the path to heaven lies within Christ/Christianity - and statistically speaking brown people are not exposed to Christianity - how do we account for salvation outside an understanding of Christianity? assuming we believe the new heaven isn't comprised of balding middle aged white men. um, because i would hafta rename that place ;-)

while i have my thoughts on the subject (my four longtime readers might even guess how i would put that together) - i think there are a few ways to get there... and, i'd love to hear others. there might not be enough room in the comments - but i'd love a link to your blogpost!

tag!

gangstagrass

what does dobro, banjo, steel guitar, hillbilly yodeling, and fiddle have to do with urban beatz, gangsta rap and prodigious use of the n-word?

well not much if we are knowledgeable of the context and culture of appalachian bluegrass and urban gangstarap respectively. but if - while appreciating both - we can recognize these categories to be only arbitrary - the idea of any "real" or absolute walls between the two fall away. that is, while genres are not true - i think the music of gangstagrass is. (more on my take of arbitrary vs. true)

(download gangstagrass free - you might need a meal or two before it finishes downloading)

while it is important to appreciate the context, culture and story of genres (styles), i think there is a huge difference between (particularly the integrity of) recycling old ideas/formulas just because thats the way its always been done (or worse because it sells); and respecting the heritage and stories of the past, but creating something new with integrity that reflects your story, or a new story, or a new take on an old story.

(as a groove-challenged caucasian i can do those links better with bluegrass than i can with the gangsta / urban side of things).

while listening to gangstagrass - its is difficult to conjure up the circumstances by which this music would've emerged organically. there is a convergence of elements here that don't correlate to anything we know about (earth's) history: black urban america doesn't use acoustic instruments - and the downward spiral of urban decay and drum machine beatz has no meaning where there is little infrastructure.

still - after listening, we might begin to consider that a dobro can sound as badass as a drive by shooting... and we might start to think that rappers have a thing or two to learn from the machine gun timing of an olde timey auctioneer (track 15). and we might even begin to see commonalities in these respective stories: that the hard times in urban america and the hard times in rural appalachia are both born of pain and truth and expressed in sounds that resonate - with each other.

and thats the magic - i think - when an appreciation, mutual respect and a bridging happen.

so anway - i could be talkin about anything - but last night i was talkin with some friends about rethinking worship & arts & integrity & church & tradition & respecting historic christian modalities...

____ from the front

when i first started participating in track events (driving around a ten-turn racetrack with your daily driver production car) i did ok. i was able to pass more often than not. instructors like it when you pass. even tho, officially, were not racing ;-) still, no one likes to go slow. and they probably feel that they are doing a better job instructing if you are going faster.

i didn't really have a lot of engine back then - a 140hp (rwd) 240sx. so it felt nice to be able to say "bye bye" to some higher powered vehicles in the twisties where engine (or top speed) made less of a difference. even though a civic or something would occasionally be seen going "quick" compared to me. it's all driver - as we learned. stupid civic.

as i attended a few more of these over the next few years - i finally got enough instructors to sign off on me so i could drive solo - and i started working my way up into the next class (there were four total), which really upped the ante. i remember one old man who was my instructor in the next class up who calculated how many tens of thousands of laps he had logged around summit point ... and HE really liked the way i drove. he felt comfortable that i had my car - even though i was playing with the limits a bit - haha. that was really nice.

one time i decided to try to save a little money by going to a single day event (track events are usually two day weekend events) - still hoping to get my speed fix (these actually help to slow me down on public roads). since i clearly wasn't a novice anymore ;-) and not driving a slow car either, i kinda pushed to not be in the bottom class because i wanted to go fast and not be held back by a bunch of n00bs.

what i failed to appreciate was that there were only two classes in the one day event. and so, if you weren't in the bottom class, you were in the *open* class. which means anything and everything can drive; including vipers (with literally two and half of my engines under the hood), guys who would show up with two trailered $90k Porsche with drilled rotors, even non-street legal kit racers. there was even a new Porsche GT3 there because the guy had just totalled his M5 a few weeks before. not only were there some brutally fast cars out there, these guys were seriously experienced drivers. the kind of guys who obviously do this more weekends per month than not.

i gave it my best shot, but my same make of vehicle had rolled a few weeks before and an instructors arm got caught flailing outside the car (you drive with windows down) - and everyone was nervous. i kept getting told to slow down which was frustrating. but in fairness i'm sure i wasn't driving well. nothing felt right. it was miserable. for everyone. suffice it to say i was the slowest moving piece of turd out there.

i got a different view of the track that day. i got a view of the track with all kinds of open space in front of me, and ten cars lined up behind me trying to get by me in the strait (the only designated pass zone, we weren't allowed to go two-wide in the turns). i realized what it means to be in front with a clear view and have a bunch of capable guys behind you. it doesn't mean you are their leader. it means - you are holding up progress. it means that, for whatever reason, you are holding guys back who've got places to go and people to see. it means you are a piece of human cholesterol.

maybe you've seen the motivational poster (usually accompanied by an image of horses galloping) which says "the speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack". well - yeah dude, that's cause the "leader" is slowing everyone down. in hierarchical leadership no one is allowed to pass the "leader". you're never allowed to go two-wide.

while its presumed apparent that the person in front is the fastest - this seems to hold true only if everyone begins at the same starting line... if everyone is coming from the same place. which works in carefully controlled environments - like the olympics -- but never in real life - like the golf course or toll road. in real life - where everyone is coming from a different place - the person in front is going the slowest. anyone behind you is going faster than you or they wouldn't be there.

everyone works differently than everyone else. if i'm at the top of my particular class... i may be better in the turns, but a porsche will be faster than me down the straight. if he is courteous (or if i "let him know i'm here" as my instructor encouraged me, by driving a foot off his bumper through six strait turns) he will lift off the gas on the strait and let me (maybe even beg me to) go by him. i may even be able to put some distance between us once we get back in the twisties. but i'll never be his leader. btw, isn't it interesting that some porsche aren't real happy letting a rice burner go by them... so sometimes you really gotta let them know you're there ;-)

its awesome to me that i don't feel held back at common table and our amazingly-collaborative loosely-structured structure (which isn't really documented anywhere - though we hope the lack of insistence of such a hierarchy speaks for itself) ... even though were small and don't have many resources, and really only a heart document and a creed to guide us organizationally. yet when i worked full time in a big church building with big budget and lots of toys and a big staff and a big loud pastor (with a culture that readily supports burnout, and a healthy lack of teamwork, and survivor-like culture thrown in for added instability) - i regularly felt restricted. and tired. there was just too much that needed to move in lock step. or not move at all. and all the lanes. and politics. and the reactions-neigh-convulsions to accommodate the senior ceo's whims. it sucked. ass. it sucked ass is what i'm trying to say.

turns out that i drive best when i'm allowed to drive my race, my line, my pace, with brothers and sisters around me to support me, cheer me on, turn a few laps with me when we find ourselves flocking, spur me on when they think i could be doing something better, tell me they miss me when i'm not there, are cool when i take a few laps at a different track once in a while, and generally celebrate our different lines and approaches and philosophies for driving around the track. its so cool that i get to do such cool shit here. i can't even believe it. and with my buddies around. yo buddies... love driving with you. watch how i find the apex on this next turn...




footnote: i've been poking at this one for like a month. but croghan - the blogging maniac that he is (and three time recipient of my new blagor0xx0rs tag) - has recently posted an awesome "aha" moment of his own that does not suck ass.

Thanks for voting!!

House of echO are now the R&B Lennon Award Winner!

oh, i'm getting into textures now...