http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=111

No posts for a while. I’ve been doing all sorts of small things that has kept me away from home. More than that I’ve been doing all sorts of small things that clutter my mind and haven’t allowed space for pondering.

After tonight, though, I’m settling in for the season.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=112

It’s told that when no one else would listen St. Francis preached a sermon to the birds.

Me? I’m no preacher. The birds come to read what I’m writing.

Or at least this one junco did.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=113

San Bernardino Flying Squirrel out on a rainy, stormy evening feasting on sunflower seeds outside my bedroom.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=114

So reports are in that The Golden Compass fairly tanked in the box office this past weekend. MTV suggests this means there won’t be a sequel.

According to CNN, “Parents with children accounted for half of the film’s audience, so New Line is counting on family crowds that flock to theaters over the holidays to keep the movie afloat, Mittweg said.”

It’s reported, though not officially, that the other half of the film’s audience consisted of hipster Evangelicals, who were eager to ‘participate in the conversation’ as well as reject the burden of previous boycotts.

However, the parents with children hustled out of the theaters for ice cream or dinner elsewhere, leaving the hipster Evangelicals to talk only to each other. As usual.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=115

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to get my way through some ministry books. Mostly emerging/missional related stuff. I’ve had them around for a couple of months but hadn’t cracked them. I tried again this week, got a ways through, and once again noticed that my eyes were skipping whole paragraphs, my mind was wandering, and even when good points were made the thrill didn’t last for hardly a moment. I’ve been on and off depressed, on and off irritable, and otherwise struggling to keep my focus.

Then I turned and opened a Moltmann book, Trinity and the Kingdom, which is the one Moltmann book I haven’t read all the way through.

After fifteen minutes I felt renewed and refreshed and invigorated. My mind was tossing around thoughts related and on tangents all at once, in ministry, theology, and life.

It was like I was awakened.

The fact is that I get more ministry thoughts out of theology books than I do out of ministry books. Why is that?

I think it’s because theology books are talking about God. Focusing on God renews me, sharpens me, excites me. Focusing on practice, good or bad, isn’t very interesting to me. Something I’m realizing more and more.

Even with good ministry books I get bogged down. Good theology books get my motivation back on track.

I think I need to read more theology books. My ministry life depends on it.

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2007/12/12/okay-okay/

It’s a dance.

Sometimes things are moving fast. Sometimes things are moving slow. Sometimes its amazing to be out on the dance floor.

Sometimes a person realizes they’re stumbling over everyone’s feet and forgot the right steps.

I’ve kind of been going through that. Hence my quiet here.

That’s going to change. Not because I have this sudden new insight. But because instead of flailing about I decided to step back and listen, get a feel fro the music, let the rhythm get back in.

I have been sitting with the thoughts of It’s a Dance for over two years now. The burgeoning motivation began at the end of 2005. I began reading with a strong intent, then a few months later began writing. It was a flurry of writing. Finished the first draft in about 2-3 months. Then came my own editing. That lasted through the summer of 2006. I submitted it to Barclay in late September 2006, stepping up more editing for when, I hoped, they would want to see more. They did want to see more. Then in March 2007 they accepted it. But that was a new beginning, as there was yet more editing, writing (the chapter on holiness was a late addition), and decisions. This process ran through the summer of 2007. Then there was the marketing, and other tasks, including putting together this website.

For the first few months of 2007 I audited a couple of classes, and did the work for them. One was a theology class in which I had to read one Moltmann book a week. All through reading I had in mind the thoughts of It’s a Dance.

So I’ve sat with this stuff for a long time now. And that’s good. I see It’s a Dance not as a final moment of completed discovery but as a beginning. I introduced themes that could take a lifetime or more to examine and I see the rest of my life engaged in this task, in writing, in ministry, in whatever ways present themselves.

But with the book being published in November I was hit with something a little unexpected. Spiritual weariness. I got tired of thinking about spiritual topics. Not that I reject or dismiss or discount them. Just that the freshness was gone. It began to feel stale, repetitive.

It began to feel like a task I was doing as work, rather than passion.

I didn’t know this consciously. But I realize that is what has been going on.

What I’ve done is stepped back and returned to the sources. Scripture, theology, spirituality–books that drive me back to seeing God for his own sake, rather than seeing him as a subject I use in my own efforts.

I’m feeling a renewed rhythm. My soul is being reset, away from wondering what the book is doing or where it’s going, back to the things that prompted the book to begin with. Where my outer expression is derived from inner reflection.

Just thought its good to catch up a little here.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=116

Richard Bauckham, The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann, p.125ff.:

The church is related to the whole, through its participation in the universal mission of Christ and the Spirit on the way to the universal future of all reality in the messianic kingdom, but it not the whole and will never itself become the whole. Consequently, ecclesiology can and must recognize the relativity of its subject and its own standpoint without subsiding into mere relativism. As a particular related to the unique eschatological person, Jesus Christ, and his universal future, the church fulfills its eschatological mission in open and critical relation to other particulars, its partners in history on the way to the kingdom of God.

Because it is itself ‘on the move’, as one element in the movement of God’s trinitarian history, it can engage in real relationships with these partners, living relationships in which both participants are open to change, and direct these relationships in hope towards the common future of the kingdom of God. In other words, although the church does have a special relationship to the universal (the kingdom of God), it has this special relationship only in relation to other particulars. It fulfills its messianic vocation not by absolutizing itself but in open relationships of dialogue and co-operation.

Which is why when those in the church begin to see themselves as the absolute context of God’s work in this world the church begins to leave behind its power and effectiveness, isolating itself and increasingly dependent on its own energy. The circuit is broken. As a part of God’s kingdom, however, it comes alive, listening, discerning, assessing, shifting, focusing, transforming through the power of the life endowed Spirit.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=117

One of my big projects this year, beginning in January and continuing now onwards to at least this next March, has been to read Moltmann as a guide for emerging/missional thinking. This won’t be too surprising to those who have read my book and have gotten to the end and into the “About These Sources” section in which I talk about the foundations of my thinking. Moltmann makes a strong appearance. When I ventured back into the emerging/missional world and read Emerging Churches by Gibbs and Bolger I was struck by how similar the themes in that book were with Moltmann’s Spirit of Life. Not directly correlated, mind you, but similar enough that I was provoked to think more about the relationship between the Holy Spirit and emerging church practices.

At the beginning of this year I sought a little more study, not on the emerging side but on the theological. So I sat in on a PhD class focusing on Moltmann. We read through and discussed all his major works. Though I was not required to do so I wrote a research paper on Moltmann titled Hope for the Kingdom: Jurgen Moltmann and the Emerging Church in Conversation. In that paper I took a section from his last ‘Contribution to Systematic Theology’ and used his points to interact with various emerging church texts. I also took a few leaps. I had read his major works but that’s only a part of his collected writings. I’ve since ventured into more. And the more I read the more I’m narrowing in on a couple of realities. My leaps are in fact a lot more grounded than I supposed. And, second, Jurgen Moltmann was emerging before the emerging Church began to take off, not just in hints and suggestions as I had supposed. Pretty directly. Though, as Bauckham suggests, most people took up Moltmann’s discussion on other theology topics while almost entirely ignoring his pleading and hopes for a new expression of ecclesiology.

Take a look at this quote from his 1999 book, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, a book I’m just now reading for the first time:

Mission in the original theological sense of the word is missio Dei–God’s sending. But what does God send? According to biblical understanding (both Jewish and Christian) he sends nothing less than his Spirit into this world, through the Christ, the Messiah. This is the Spirit who is the life-giver and who is therefore called the Spirit of life, or the source of life. According to the Gospel of John, what God brings into the world through Christ can be summed up in a single word, life. ‘I live and you shall live also’ (John 14:19). What is meant is the fulfilled life — the wholly and entirely living life — the shared life — the eternal life — the fullness of life.

It is experienced in the new livingness of love. Nor is it just human life that is meant, for according to the prophetic message this living power of God will be poured out ‘on all flesh’, which in the language of the Old Testament means everything living. God’s sending is biocentrically oriented, not anthropocentrically. It is not concerned with the political or religious rule of human beings over the world, and not merely with the salvation of human souls, but with the liberation, salvation and final redemption of the life shared.

Its goal is therefore ‘the new creation of all things’. The eternal life which is the gift of the Spirit who is the life-giver is not a life other than this life here and now; it is the power through which this life here will be different. This mortal, temporal life gains a share in the divine life, and through that becomes life that is eternal: ‘This perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality’ stresses Paul (1 Corinthians 15:53). So Nietzsche was right: ‘Eternal life is eternal livingness.’ If Gods’ sending embraced the whole of life, the shared life of all the living, it must not be reduced to religion and inwardness and ‘the salvation of our souls’, important though our ’souls’ are.

Jesus didn’t bring a new religion into the world. He brought new life. He didn’t found ‘Christianity’, nor did he set up an ecclesial rule over the nations. He brought life into this violent and dying world, the life ‘that was from the beginning, which we have looked upon and touched… and the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the life that is eternal…’ (1 John 1:1-2). Christ is the divine Yes to life. That Yes leads to the healing of the sick, to the acceptance of the marginalized, to the forgiveness of sins, and to the saving of impaired life from the powers of destruction. This is the way the Gospels tell about Jesus’s mission. And according to the Gospels this is also the character of the mission of the women and men who life in his Spirit (Matthew 10:7-8).

Absolutely. The question remains, however, why we all should care what a theologian that the great majority of Christians have never heard of has said on this topic. It is important because so much of emerging/missional thought has risen out of a interest in liturgical or organizational change. And so much of the books are about practices or church models or leadership or other kinds of structural issues. However, underlying these instincts towards institutional change is something much deeper, and I think not as well explored. It is a renewed look at the core theology of our faith. This isn’t about ignoring Scripture or drifting into liberal rejections of core principles. It is about taking Scripture as a whole, a more thorough examination, and finding where we have missed the mark.

Fundamentalism and Liberalism are, as Moltmann states earlier in the book, products of the Modern Age, actively fighting against each other with now very clear models of attack and defense. However, modernity is behind us and so we entire into something new.

And what this something new becomes is not a rejection of the past as much as it is an embrace of the future of the Holy Spirit who has always been working in the life of those who call on Christ, even if the church has not well reflected this.

So Moltmann is important because he comes to the conclusions mentioned above not out of a rejection of church leadership or an experience of dry, parched Evangelicalism. He comes to those conclusions having walked forty years through the utter depths of Scripture and Theology. Which means he, and those who share this journey, can give emerging church thought a foundation that goes far beyond fleeting liturgical transformation and becomes instead a new face of the Church that takes better more holistic note of Scripture, better more holistic understanding of the Trinity, better more holistic balance of breadth and depth, and in every way points to the fuller, richer mission of God that we experience and are called to pursue.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=118

I’m looking through my moleskin notebook and found this little tidbit I wrote in it. Sometimes I write quotes I like. Sometimes I have thoughts connected to the particular book I’m reading. Sometimes a book shoots me off in another direction. Sometimes I’m staring at a tree or bird and have thought.

The following is one of the above.

There are two forms of religion:

1. Being Right and Securing power

2. Serving God and Reflecting him

This stands out to me because I’ve been wondering how people can share the same basic fundamental beliefs but hardly in any way share the same real faith. There are, I’ve noticed, a lot of Christians whose religion I don’t share. Only we affirm the same basic doctrine and we call ourselves Christians. But they’re almost entirely Christians for a different reason I am.

Certainly there’s a dynamic too. Not everyone is fully one or the other. But the extremes clash even worse than other religions clashing, because each claims orthodoxy and each asserts heresy to the other.

In James 1:27 we read “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

Which rings more of the second than the first. But I’m thinking that most of Christendom was the first and Evangelicalism itself (which I’m still determining if I’m part of anymore) is a mix of both, depending on the church, leader, or topic.

Jesus I think wants us all to be of the second. He wants our obedience, service, and reflection. The rest? That’s for us when it comes down to it. Even when we forcefully crush an opponent beneath the weight of perfectly chosen Scripture. It often has very little to do with God.

But it looks, sounds, feels like real Christian religion, doesn’t it? Only it tastes like dust and poisons growth, bringing only anger, division and separation.

The second form might seem more passive, be less exact, and be more fluid. But it brings people closer to God, revealing him to this world as he desires, not as we want him to be revealed.

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2007/12/16/replacements/

The reality of this world is that we can’t live without some kind of influence in our lives. They are everywhere and come in all sorts of flavors, shapes, directions and sources. We are bombarded with influence pushing and pulling.

So much so that we’re not ever independent thinkers. Even the most individualistic among us reflect influences that most of the time we can’t identify.

And that is the reason why it’s so vital to come to terms with the work of the Holy Spirit, who is God’s influence among, with, and for us. It’s not just an academic exercise or a theological game. It’s not trying to put into dry words what is a vibrant experience. It’s coming to terms with discerning the spirits, the influences, that drive us every single moment.

Ignoring or dismissing the Spirit, either actively or implicitly, doesn’t mean we can go on our merry way. If we are not following the voice of God’s Spirit, the ruach, then we are replacing the Holy Spirit with another spirit. When this other spirit is clearly offtrack it’s easy to see. If we’ve replaced the Holy Spirit with the spirit of lust, or the spirit of anger, or the spirit of gluttony, then our actions will reflect these driving influences. They will be the goals for which we move and act.

But we can also replace the Holy Spirit with good things.

Luke 9:57-62

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”

Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Home, work, family, church, responsibilities–all good things, and all influences which replace the Holy Spirit as guiding voices in our lives.

Even more difficult to discern, and maybe even more destructive, is using such gifts as theology or Scripture to replace the Holy Spirit. Wayne Grudem, a theologian who I certainly don’t agree on every topic, said this in an interview:

“We can…become too rationalistic; give too high a priority on knowledge instead of relationship and this can produce in us a bibliolatry (believing in the Father, Son and the Holy Bible). The net effect of this is the depersonalization of God and that part of the motivation for depersonalizing God is the increasing craving for control. We want to affirm that God is still a God of healing and miracles; Evangelical rationalism can lead to spiritual defection; many of the power brokers of Evangelicalism have been white, obsessive-compulsive males since the turn of the century; the Holy Spirit’s guidance is still needed in discerning the will of God; we must not avoid the sufferings of Christ in seeking out the power of the Spirit…”

This isn’t a problem with or an attack on Scripture or knowledge. It is a problem with people who use Scripture and knowledge without the Holy Spirit, dismissing the Spirit and then asserting verses to fit their preconceived perspective that they see as being equivalent to Scripture. As we see in the temptation of Jesus Satan himself is a master of Scripture and uses it quite well to assert what is entirely opposite of God’s purpose.

Very scary really. And that’s why there are so many wolves among the sheep, tearing and biting and destroying, all while dressed in pretty white sheepskins.

Understanding the doctrine and patterns of the Spirit, then, becomes a guide. The Holy Spirit works in ways that the whole of Scripture testifies about, and it is in looking at the whole, not parts, of Scripture that we must first discover and then watch ourselves and others.

The more we understand these patterns the better we dance with the real Spirit.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=119

Roads go ever ever on,

Over rock and under tree,

By caves where never sun has shone,

By streams that never find the sea:

Over snow by winter sown,

And through the merry flowers of June,

Over grass and over stone,

And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on

Under cloud and under star,

Yet feet that wandering have gone

Turn at last to home afar,

Eyes that fire and sword have seen

And horror in the halls of stone

Look at last on meadows green

And trees and hills they long have known.

Peter Jackson is going to start making The Hobbit.

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2007/12/19/continuationism

In the last post I linked to an interview with Dr. Wayne Grudem. It’s a two part interview and it’s well worth reading. Here’s part one and here’s part two.

I found the interview because I was particularly interested in finding perspectives on cessationism, the doctrine that the Holy Spirit stopped doing charismatic works after the New Testament era. Well, that’s not exactly right. I was interested in hearing the thoughts of dispensational theologians on cessationism because I had read a text that said not only are there not miracles, but in fact the only way we hear from God is through Scripture. The Holy Spirit, the writer wrote, doesn’t speak.

Now that’s absurd. I won’t list reasons why because that’s basically the topic of It’s a Dance. If you’re here you likely know my thoughts on it.

Read the interview. For those serious about Scripture, and not just traditional forms of interpretation or particular parts of Scripture used in isolation, the subject of the Holy Spirit can be, I think, a very unifying topic. Especially as the discussion gets beyond the more obvious charismatic gifts and into the ten traits listed in It’s a Dance.

Especially since unifying diverse people is what the Holy Spirit wants to do and works at doing among us.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=120

From Wheaton College.

Jonathan Blanchard wouldn’t approve… but I really like it.

I don’t remember getting a Christmas greeting from my ol’ alma mater before. I think it’s quite a lovely thing to do. And very well done.

Merry (almost) Christmas .

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=121

Here he is, in an interview from late last year.

And yes, I have caught a bit of Moltmannia. I’ve a big presentation due on the 15th on Jurgen Moltmann and emerging church pneumatology. Moltmann is the main speaker at the conference and might be in the audience at my presentation.

No word on if any emerging church folks will be there.

I’m actually excited. I think I’ve found a fun new rhythm with the presentation and am hoping to take full advantage of my non-establishment status.

How emerging of me!

But yeah, check out the interview. I don’t agree with everything Moltmann says or writes, but I’m loving how he pushes me to think in great new directions.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=122

Scientists figure out traffic jams.

For a few years I was in daily traffic. All that time in traffic got me thinking about what caused it and what to do. I came up in my mind exactly what they are talking about in this article. But unfortunately I was a theology, not a physics, student so couldn’t publish my intuitive findings.

The wave increases in intensity as others adds to the slowing, making small increments into eventual stops. So the answer to this is to be a positive force, by maintaining following distance, advancing in speed when possible and otherwise serving to refocus the traffic speed to it’s right pattern. One person can’t fix it but if everyone does then it’s fixed and slowdowns are alleviated.

Of course, being a theology student now I think how this applies to church and ministry. Cautious, nervous people in churches can slow down ministry, getting ever more cautious, insisting everyone else goes no faster than their worries and fears. Soon the church is stopped. People get off and travel down different roads or are stuck for no real reason in the same place for a long time.

Church is like traffic! I think I made a point on that somewhere in my book.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=123

I’ve decided, for a couple days at least, to post the revised article I finished a couple of weeks ago. I’m curious to hear some responses, especially from the emerging church side of things. Because there isn’t a settled emerging/missional theology I’m picking and choosing as I go from a selection of writers who I see best getting to the heart of what’s going on in a positive, rather than deconstructive, way.

It’s also the case that as I turn more academic in my writing I don’t want to be an academic writer… ever. I want to develop a style that can be dynamic, adjusting one way or another depending on the particular audience, but never leaving one side out altogether. So I’m curious about a broad reading.

I’m going to leave the link up only for a week or so mostly because I don’t want the link I’m posting to be broadly accessible for very long.

Please let me know your thoughts, if you get download it, either as a comment here or an email to dualravens at yahoo dot com.

I’m writing a new paper that bounces off some of the ideas in this one so I’m curious to see how those idea work.

Have a merry Christmas week!

Here’s Hope for the Kingdom.

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2007/12/23/hope-for-the-ki

I’ve decided, for a couple days at least, to post the revised article I finished a couple of weeks ago. I’m curious to hear some responses, especially from the emerging church side of things. Because there isn’t a settled emerging/missional theology I’m picking and choosing as I go from a selection of writers who I see best getting to the heart of what’s going on in a positive, rather than deconstructive, way.

It’s also the case that as I turn more academic in my writing I don’t want to be an academic writer… ever. I want to develop a style that can be dynamic, adjusting one way or another depending on the particular audience, but never leaving one side out altogether. So I’m curious about a broad reading.

I’m going to leave the link up only for a week or so mostly because I don’t want the link I’m posting to be broadly accessible for very long.

Please let me know your thoughts, if you get download it, either as a comment here or an email to dualravens at yahoo dot com.

I’m writing a new paper that bounces off some of the ideas in this one so I’m curious to see how those idea work.

Have a merry Christmas week!

Here’s Hope for the Kingdom.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=124

Have you seen the movie Millions? I saw it for the first time this past week. Honestly I was a little disappointed. Not by the movie but because Netflix sent it instead of The Simpsons movie. At some point someone recommended Millions, I added it to my queue then, likely a few months or more back, and it’s time came.

I was very much not disappointed by the movie. I was utterly appointed. (shouldn’t that work?) Actually, in a way I was because it turned out to be a Christmas movie of sorts. Christmas in both setting and Christmas in theme. Not the theme of rush to the store to buy the last figure and endure all sorts of mayhem. The theme of giving. The theme of overcoming consumerism to find something richer and deeper.

And both Francis and Clare of Assisi have cameo appearance, the former with birds, the latter with a cigarette

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2007/12/24/progression/

I’ve noticed something over the last few months that I didn’t intend to do.

I think there’s a progression in the book. The chapters can’t really be re-ordered. I’m not talking in terms of the narrative. I’m talking the topics.

Here’s the order of the chapters:

• Focusing on Jesus


• Breaking the boundaries between Sacred and Secular


• Drawing us into Community


• Empowering for Right Living


• Welcoming Strangers


• Spurring us to Give


• Provoking Participation


• Inciting Creativity


• Leading as a Body


• Uniting us through Worship

As I noted in the book, these topics aren’t my original idea. All but the chapter on Empowering for Right Living (holiness) come from the book Emerging Churches by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs. The chapter on holiness was a suggestion from my publisher, and the one that I wrote last. When he suggested the idea, however, it immediately hit me how perfectly suited it was with the others, so I wrote it up and fit it into the narrative where I felt it would be most effective. My more immediate reason for including it near the beginning was pacing and rhythm. I introduced a new character and wanted the conversation with him to fit where there could be a more natural break in the conversation between Nate and Luke.

Plus, I did have a sense that holiness is one of those foundational aspects that should be touched on early. I didn’t see how well it fit into the rest of the overall pattern of progression.

I started noticing this progression after reading one of the reviews that made a comment about the chapter on leadership, calling it the weakest chapter if I recall. Not because I had somehow faltered in writing skill, but because it wasn’t really that new in ideas and was though to reflect old, tried methods that didn’t quite pan out. This bugged me. Not the review. I just about agree with that and that’s why I got to wondering about leadership in particular and why the flow in that chapter didn’t emerge with something better or more fresh.

As I pondered this I realized that it’s not the content of the chapter or the leadership style expressed in it that is the problem. It’s the progression. Most church plants, you see, start with the end. They start with the liturgy and gather together a core group of leaders, giving each this set responsibility to organize a stylish worship experience so as to attract those burned out by traditional models.

Starting with an open leadership model, however, leads to a lot of problems because there are no set boundaries and there are not yet developed instincts on how and when to share and move with leading. It becomes an intentional, imposed model, equal for equals sake.

With an understanding of progression, however, the worship gathering is not the first piece and open leadership is not imposed upon a new community. Rather, a gathered community must first focus on Jesus. If the focus is on the ecclesiology, method, outreach, or anything else it’s going to crumble, because that means its running off the power of the invested participants, not the inherent power of the Holy Spirit. Personalities and leaders can go a very long way in mimicking the power of the Spirit in charisma and action. But the Spirit lasts. People don’t. That could be why there is such turnover in emerging church communities, with almost every one I’ve personally seen exhibiting a 3, 5, or 7 year itch in which the driving leaders feel a ‘call’ to go somewhere else abandoning what they helped start and often leaving the community without roots to sustain itself.

The emphasis has to start with Jesus. All I know is Christ and him crucified, Paul said. To live is Christ, he also said. This is the centering, the focus, the drive, the model, and the hope. Everything else must derive from this center, or else the community goes out of balance.

And that is the work of the Holy Spirit–bringing emphasis on Jesus.

I’m going to work through this progression more through this week. Stay tuned.

And let me know if you see or feel any other rhythms in the book. I’d love to start looking at those too.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=125

It’s my mom’s birthday! Happy birthday Mom!!

A person couldn’t ask for a more wise, more caring, more loving mom.

I got a wee little blurb in the Wheaton Alumni magazine about publishing my book! I’m doing my part to keep the Wheaton tradition alive!

I officially applied for a PhD in theology at Fuller Seminary, to study the Moltmann and the Emerging church. The paper I posted below might very well be the outline of my dissertation. Assuming I can pay for this education, of course. Right now I have utterly no idea how I’m going to pay for it. But I am pretty sure I’m going to get accepted at least. So that’s a start.

Why such confidence about that? Well, God has been good. All this time away from the normal path got me to reading and thinking and progressing in a creative way. Early in 2007 I took a class on Moltmann taught by Dr. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. After the quarter he invited me to apply, saying I needed to do so. So I have, and he’s written a recommendation. Dr. Eddie Gibbs, one of my favorite and most valuable professors at Fuller, an expert in emerging church and church growth, has graciously writing the second recommendation.

And I got this in the mail today:

Dear Patrick Oden,

Thank you for your letter and your papers. I have already sent a recommendation to Fuller Seminary in your favor. What you have written on my method is good: I don’t have much of a prefixed method that I would have to follow every time. Your paper on “the emerging church” raised my interest. I have heard about this new phenomenon but have no experience. I am looking forward to your study, and shall learn from you.

If I am free I shall listen to your presentation at Duke on “an emerging pneumatology”.

Enjoy the blessings of Christmas and go with the Spirit of Hope into the new year.

Yours in Christ, Jürgen Moltmann

So, three pretty good recommendations. That’ll do.

A nice Christmas eve. Still a lot of work and a lot of money are necessary. But it’s a nice day to be sure.

Merry Christmas to all! May God’s blessings shower upon you in manifold ways!

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=126

And thus the Great Creator said, “…Man disobeying,

Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins

Against the high Supremacy of Heav’n,

Affecting God-head, and so loosing all,

To expiate his Treason hath naught left,

But to destruction sacred and devote,

He with his whole posterity must dye,

Dye he or Justice must; unless for him

Some other able, and as willing, pay

The rigid satisfaction, death for death.

Say Heav’nly Powers, where shall we find such love,

Which of ye will be mortal to redeem

Mans mortal crime, and just th’ unjust to save,

Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear?”

He ask’d, but all the Heav’nly Quire stood mute,

And silence was in Heav’n: on mans behalf

Patron or Intercessor none appeared,

Much less that durst upon his own head draw

The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.

And now without redemption all mankind

Must have bin lost, adjudg’d to Death and Hell

By doom severe, had not the Son of God,

In whom the fullness dwells of love divine,

His dearest mediation thus renewed.

“Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace;

And shall grace not find means, that finds her way,

The speediest of thy winged messengers,

To visit all thy creatures, and to all

Comes unprevented, unimplor’d, unsought,

Happy for man, so coming; he her aide

Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost;

Atonement for himself or offering meet,

Indebted and undone, hath none to bring:

Behold me then, me for him, life for life

I offer, on me let thine anger fall;

Account me man; I for his sake will leave

Thy bosom, and this glorie next to thee

Freely put off, and for him lastly dye

Well pleas’d, on me let Death wreck all his rage;

Under his gloomy power I shall not long

Lie vanquisht; thou hast given me to possess

Life in my self for ever, by thee I live,

Though now to Death I yield, and am his due

All that of me can die, yet that debt paid,

Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave

His prey, nor suffer my unspotted Soul

For ever with corruption there to dwell;

But I shall rise Victorious, and subdue

My Vanquisher, spoiled of his vanted spoil;

Death his deaths wound shall then receive, and stoop

Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarm’d.

I through the ample Air in Triumph high

Shall lead Hell Captive maugre Hell, and show

The powers of darkness bound. Thou at the sight

Pleas’d, out of Heaven shalt look down and smile,

While by thee rais’d I ruin all my Foes,

Death last, and with his Carcass glut the Grave:

Then with the multitude of my redeemed

Shall enter Heaven long absent, and return,

Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud

Of anger shall remain, but peace assur’d,

And reconcilement; wrath shall be no more

Thenceforth, but in thy presence Joy entire.”

His words here ended, but his meek aspect

Silent yet spake, and breath’d immortal love

To mortal men, above which only shone

Filial obedience: as a sacrifice

Glad to be offer’d, he attends the will

Of his great Father.

~John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III

Merry Christmas!!!

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2007/12/27/verses/

One of the core reasons I wrote It’s a Dance was because I read Scripture. Starting early on in life with various versions, including a constantly used Picture Bible, and continuing through college and seminary I have spent a lot of time with Scripture. The Picture Bible is worth noting because it taught me how to view the Bible as a whole, expressing a common theme, rather than a collection of scattered verses plucked out and pieced together in support of a theology.

And so it is in reading Scripture that the themes of this book were validated as real Scriptural themes, not just the emphases thought up by postmodern church planters. When I tested these emphases against Scripture I found they resonated, far too often covered up by other church emphases that I found little or no actual Scripture about.

That’s why I made it a point to use Scripture as the foundation of the conversations and why in most cases I included the full passage of the text rather than just a reference. I want people to get into Scripture and see the themes for themselves, to look at whole passages. Often looking at whole passages for the first time.

This is part of my fundamentalist heritage. I value Scripture and think it is indeed the canon by which we gauge everything else. Only so many of those who hold up the Bible and proclaim inerrancy or other kind of authority often don’t really take that authority holistically or seriously. The Bible becomes a tool and a weapon, instead of a source and guide and gauge.

I noticed the other day that it would have been nice to have an index where I posted the verses I used or referred to in the book.

And that’s the nice thing about having this blog. It’s not too late. Here are the portions of Scripture I specifically used, categorized according to chapter.

Chapter 2 - Focusing on Jesus

Acts 2:1-13

John 15:26-16:16

Titus 3:3-8

Ephesians 1:13-14

Ephesian 3:4-5

1 Peter 3:8

Matthew 1:1-25

Chapter 3 - Breaking the Boundary Between Sacred and Secular

Acts 10:1-48

Luke 10:30-37

Acts 8:26-39

Acts 6:1-7

Acts 7:44-50

Romans 7:6

Chapter 4 - Drawing us into Community

Matthew 8:18-22

Luke 18:18-30

Acts 2:42-27

Matthew 14:25-33

Acts 4:31-37

Luke 15:11-32

Acts 5:1-11

Chapter 5 -Empowering for Right Living

Romans 7:14-25

Acts 19:11-16

Romans 8:2-4

Romans 8:5-17

Chapter 6 - Welcoming Strangers

Luke 19:2-9

John 4:1-30

Acts 8:13

Acts 9:10-31

Acts 15

Acts 9:31

Acts 11:17

Chapter 7 - Spurring Us to Give

Isaiah 61:1-11

Matthew 2:2-5

Galatians 5:22-25

Matthew 25:31-46

Hebrews 12:15

Chapter 8 - Provoking Participation

John 7:-39

Luke 11:13

Acts 2:4

1 Corinthians 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-6

Acts 11:28-30

Acts 21:10-14

Chapter 9 - Inciting Creativity

Exodus 31:1-11

Exodus 35:30-36:7

1 Kings 18:7-16

Chapter 10 - Leading as a Body

1 Kings 22:17-28

Romans 7:6

1 Samuel 16:3

Hebrews 5:12

Acts 10

1 Corinthians 12

Chapter 11 - United us through Worship

Philippians 2:1-13

Ezekiel 36:24-27

Song of Solomon 3:1-4

Ephesians 5:25-32

Isaiah 63:11-14

2 Corinthians 13:14

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=127

In 2007 I had my first book published. I went to my 10 year college reunion. Experienced another savage fire in the mountains.

I renewed contact with a valued professor from Fuller who invited me to pursue PhD studies. I applied. I took a class from this professor on Moltmann, read all of Moltmann’s major books, wrote a paper on Moltmann, was invited to give a presentation on Moltmann at a conference in 2008. Moltmann read my single book, wrote a wonderful little blurb for it, read my humble beginning attempts at writing about his work, and I received a PhD recommendation from Moltmann.

I took a class on the missional church with Alan Hirsch, who had just weeks before graciously consented to write the forward to my book. In the class I was curiously appointed to be the teaching assistant and I graded a lot of papers, immersing me even more in various views of emerging/missional theology and practice. I had left the church behind and I was back in the middle of it. People even invited me to join a weekly conversation about God and life, which I’m still wary to see as church, but am hopeful it might be a burgeoning spiritual community.

2007 was the year of re-engaging with the world more actively after several years of distancing. I had left the church to pursue Christ. I had left community to pursue wholeness. I had left rational pursuits to pursue dreams. God pulled me away and then in 2007 seemed to push me back a bit.

But only a bit. I end this year feeling halfway in all my being.

My application is submitted. But not accepted. I have no money for a PhD but that is the one opportunity pushed before me. I find a lot of encouragement, but all is vague and diffuse and lacking practical substance. I follow the open door as I wonder about doors that never seemed to open as I thought.

All year I felt more distant from God in my discipline and focus than in years past. I end the year noticing how much more at peace I am, feeling much more emotionally and spiritually mature. I became bored with angst in 2007.

I found new friends, became disenchanted with old friends, both leading me to discover friendships without expectations, accepting what is there and when. Loves were lost and found and misplaced and wrongly placed and resolved and left unresolved.

I end the year with nothing in my life more tangible than what I had at the beginning of the year. I end the year with everything in my life more hopeful than what I had at the beginning of the year.

I found great approval at high levels and great approval at the lowest, still lacking that far more broad middle place leaving me both curiously noticed and greatly ignored. I don’t know which is more real and valid.

I end 2007 feeling it was a good year, a year of openings and a year of beginnings and a year of possibilities and a year of progress inside and out.

I have high hopes for 2008, that what was begun will find new life, and what hasn’t yet started will begin.

Happy end of 2007. God bless 2008.