books and prayers and things
When I read this today, I thought to myself, “Has she seen my desk, my bedroom, my house?”
“Wherever I have lived my room and soon
the entire house is filled with books;
poems, stories, histories, prayers of
all kinds stand up gracefully or are
heaped on shelves, on the floor, on
the bed. Strangers old the new offering
their words bountifully and thoughtfully,
lifting my heart.
Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier
Over the last couple of months I’ve had the privilege of reading the book “Prodigal Christianity” with a group of my friends here in Spokane. All of them are good thinkers and we had a wonderful time processing the ideas by Dave Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw.
The book is really an attempt to locate a way forward that is truly prodigal in today's Christianity, a third way if you will. A writing device the authors employed is a cyclical juxtaposition between a Neo-Reform perspective of Christianity (Piper, Keller, et al) and a more “Emergent” version (McLaren and Jones). Honestly, a device I am not entirely thrilled with and I would suspect the authors represented in the book probably were not wild about either. Nonetheless, while looking at both of these poled perspectives they seek to mine out an alternative way for the church to move forward in the undulating social challenges of Western society.
How Do Beautful Words Affect Your Life?
I am embarking on a summer discipline of reading some poetry every morning in hopes of whetting my appetite for something other than “churchy, missional” stuff. I have never been good at reading anything other than non-fiction. So, in light of that of that goal I asked my good friend and author Shann Ferch to recommend his Michael Jordan of the poetry world. He immediately suggested Mary Oliver. So far, he was spot on. Here is just one of many amazing poems from her book Thirst.
The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist
Pete Rollins – Answers and Questions
(A blog I wrote before coming to Europe – a bit late, but better than never)
I got the chance to go to a couple of lectures a couple of weeks ago by Peter Rollins. His latest book is entitle, Insurrection and has of late caught much of a certain stream of Christianity by storm.
Rob Bell is NOT a Universalist (and I actually read “Love Wins”)
On the basis of a publisher’s promotional paragraph and an advertising video in which Rob Bell questions someone’s certainty that Ghandi is in hell, Justin Taylor sounded the web-wide alarm that Rob Bell’s forthcoming book Love Wins espouses universalism (the doctrine that everyone will eventually be saved). Though he too had not yet read the book, John Piper followed up with a puzzling melodramatic tweet bidding Rob Bell “Farewell“. An avalanche of tweets ensued — all (so far as I could discern) by people who had not read Bell’s forthcoming book — to the point that this yet-unpublished book became one of the top ten tweeted topics. (If this was planned by HarperCollins, the publisher of Love Wins, it was brilliant!!!)
via www.gregboyd.org
Rob Bell and Love Wins
Here is what I have to say about Rob Bell's latest book…
Essential theology books of the past 25 years | The Christian Century
I thought this was an interesting piece entitled, "Essential theology books of the past 25 years," from The Christian Century.
The Holy Spirit and the Task of the Church
God doesn’t give people the Holy Spirit in order to let them enjoy the spiritual equivalent of a day at Disneyland. Of course, if you’re downcast and gloomy, the fresh wind of God’s Spirit can and often does give you a new perspective on everything, and above all grants a sense of God’s presence, love, comfort, and even joy. But the point of the Spirit is to enable those who follow Jesus to take into all the world the news that he is Lord, that he has won the victory over the forces of evil, that a new world has opened up, and that we are to help make it happen.
Missional Theology: Concepts of the missio Dei – Pt 2
Here are several seminal statements about the church from Karl Barth’s "Church
Dogmatics" as cited in the book, The Witness of God; The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and the Nature of Christian Community .
“The community is alive, there, and only they are, where she
is engaged in recruitment and when she strives for this recruitment especially
in the apparently darkest areas of the world: in places where the Gospel is
still completely unknown or completely rejected, in medio inimicorum. The community is this such a missionary
community, or she is not the Christian community.”
Missional Theology: Concepts of the missio Dei
reading a book right now called, “The Witness of God; The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and the Nature of Christian Community." It's written by John
Flett.
There's much written about the "missio Dei" right now, but quite a bit of it resides on a superficial level. To hear people talk about the concepts basic to the missio Dei – “…the Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the Spirit, and the Triune God sends the church,” is good! There has been a wonderful correction in theology as a result of the missio Dei concept, but often times the superficiality of describing it misses some essential elements. In this book there is a deeper, more full-orbed exploration of the notion. This book is not necessarily for the casual reader, but I think a significant contribution to the field of missiology.
I'm reading the book my intention is to insert a quote or two from each section
I'm reading. Here are a few from the first couple chapters:
quoting Bosch:
“’Our mission has no life of its own: only in the hands of the
sending God can it truly be called mission.’” He continues (his own words now),
“Mission is not something the church does, dependent on ecclesiastical
management and developed according to some notion of the efficient use of
resources. It is justified by neither human capacity nor historical accident.”
is also from Bosch:
“’The recognition that mission is God's mission represents
a crucial breakthrough in respect of the preceding centuries. It is
inconceivable that we can again revert to a narrow ecclesiocentric view of
mission.’”