Missional Church :: Friends blog

http://www.kezrush.com/2008/11/daily-tweet-digest_22.html

• 10:47 twitpic.com/nb3y - Our Xmas tree is up. Now we need to decorate
• 11:46 test: testing a post via email tinyurl.com/6hqjrs
• 12:57 Watching OSU beat up on Michigan!
• 12:58 Daily Tweet Digest: 13:02 The Fray | Ask Anything: I'm a big fan of the Fray. I just pre-ordered their ne.. tinyurl.com/6gd9rk
• 15:51 Know Your Audience: I was in Children's Place in mall the other week and realized they where playing song.. tinyurl.com/65qmu2
• 15:53 On my way to NH to make sure everything is ready for tonight.
• 18:56 twitpic.com/nfd0 - Worship at our NH-Loudonville Campus
• 20:56 Selah Saturday | Boom!: A video of Selah almost falling over. She's cute! tinyurl.com/6h74cd

http://www.kezrush.com/2008/11/selah-saturday-boom.html

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=352

Writing to me follows a cadence. Not one of sound or feel. A lived cadence, in which my life begins to find a rhythm of being. As I find the feel for it, my creativity soars, my mind wanders towards varying depths, and there’s a curious interplay of intellectual and emotional liveliness.

I’ve not felt that rhythm for a while now. And I’ve not written for a while now. Neither here on my blog nor anywhere else. My thoughts have dissipated, sometimes outwards in low measure, sometimes reabsorbed within my being.

Unlike past seasons the cause of this disturbed rhythm is almost all good. Good, but presently thrusting me into a prolonged transition, where I don’t feel either here or there or anywhere in particular, a commuter to school, in relationship, in thought, in all kinds of ways.

My class on beauty, which I had hoped to write more about, is done in a few weeks. My musings from this entry into academia have fallen way below my expectations, even as I realize I look back and don’t see missed moments of sharable insight. Just that dissipation that never quite settles into coherent thoughts.

While there are still massive changes ahead, I see these changes as not being yet more prolonged transition but rather new beginning, a profoundly changed settledness in which I can rediscover a new rhythm as I begin life with another, in my own established place.

And, honestly, I miss writing. It’s a boon to my soul, thought and emotions. Leaving it aside is impoverishing for me, in ways that only become apparent when I begin to exhibit the signs of a scurvy of being, a quiet wasting away that increases my sensitivity to the negative and lowers my perseverance towards light and hope.

I don’t see anything changing for a little while, as I try to hold onto what little rhythm I have I put my energy into two major projects.

But, I see it as a goal.

I’ve been away. I’m going to be back. Maybe with a little more theologizing than might be preferred. Probably again with an assortment of pictures of birds and beasts.

http://www.kezrush.com/2008/11/know-your-audience.html

I was in Children's Place in mall the other week and realized they where playing songs in the early 90s that I was really digging.  I began thinking to myself...

"Why does a trendy clothing store for children, toddlers and babies play music that are over a decade old?"

They market/audience is young men and women who are starting families who are in their late 20s early 30s.  ME!  When you are...select music for a party, ...or picking a worship experience...selecting a radio station when a friend joins you in the carKnow your audience!

http://www.kezrush.com/2008/11/daily-tweet-digest.html

• 13:02 The Fray | Ask Anything: I'm a big fan of the Fray. I just pre-ordered their new album coming out in Feb... tinyurl.com/5fhbya #
• 17:32 Heading over to my parents to meet up with Sondra amd Selah, and have some fun! #
• 10:47 twitpic.com/nb3y - Our Xmas tree is up. Now we need to decorate #
• 11:46 test: testing a post via email tinyurl.com/6hqjrs #

http://aholydiscontent.wordpress.com/2008/11/22/theres-a-sheep-in-my-bathtub

What?

 There are some 2,530 questions in the Book.  

Sick.

 That rocks.

Are you one who ASKS?

Always

Seeking

Knowledge

from others.  I'm glad I've had an inquisitive nature.  Yes, questions can be perceived as time without action, as boundary pushing without purpose, but why does it have to be so?

What does the absence of questions in a persons life mean?

apathy?  arrival?  abandon to status quo?  

 Mmmmmm.

May our questions lead us to clarity and action in the days ahead. 

http://www.kezrush.com/2008/11/funny-friday.html

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DreamAwakener/~3/460589198/

I love reading and posting short reviews of books.  I read this book a while back.  This is an anaylitical report, meaning I share a bit about the author, then the thesis, an overview and then my own thoughts about the book.  With that said, here is my review.

AUTHOR

Biblical theologian Gerhard Lohfink is an author of many books and was a New Testament Professor on the Catholic Theological Faculty at the University of Tubingen (1976-1986).  At that point he resigned his professorship and moved to Munich, Germany in order that he could live and work within the context of the Catholic Integrated Community, practicing with others what it meant to live as a contrast-society.

THESIS

Gerhard Lohfink in Jesus and Community makes the case that in a day riddled with individualism, it has always been God’s intention to work through a visible, tangible, concrete community that lives as a contrast-society in the world, for the sake of the world.

OVERVIEW

Lohfink takes us on a four-part journey to demonstrate the idea that the reign of God must have a people who are a visible sign of salvation.  In part one, Jesus and Israel, Lohfink demonstrates how Jesus was re-creating Israel around Himself and that choosing the twelve “illustrated the claim which Jesus made upon Israel as a whole” (22). In part two, Jesus and His Disciples, Lohfink continues to survey the gospels to help us to see that, “when Israel as a whole did not accept Jesus’ message, the circle of disciples acquired a new function.  It received the task of representing symbolically what really should have taken place in Israel as a whole: complete dedication to the gospel of the reign of God, radical conversion to a new way of life, and a gathering unto a community of brothers and sisters” (34).  In part three, The New Testament Communities, Lohfink surveys Acts and the Epistles to show us how the church understood herself as the “True Israel,” an eschatological people whose communal life was to demonstrate this new social reality of togetherness patterned after Jesus and the disciples.  And finally in part four, The Ancient Church in the Discipleship of Jesus, he shows how “the reception of Jesus’ praxis of the reign of God continued beyond the New Testament communities into the age of the ancient church” (149).



MY THOUGHTS

Lohfink does a great job in Jesus and Community at consistently reminding us that “Jesus wanted to gather the people of God as a divine counter-society” (164) so that we might be a light to all people.  By sustaining this focus throughout his book, he gives us a greater sense of focus when it comes to our mission.  By tracing this idea from Jesus through the early church, he makes a convincing case that the good news is not simply pietistic sayings designed for personal contemplation.  Rather, Jesus intention was to create a new society that, through their life and practices, demonstrate “the arrival of the new world of God in Christ” (93) where the Spirit of God “dismantles national and social barriers, group interests, castes systems and domination of one sex over the other” (93).  His emphasis on this new social reality is a much-needed message for those of us in the West who have been trained from birth to simply be individuals or a collection of individuals.

Another strength of this book was how Lohfink traces the themes of non-violence, renunciation of domination, and togetherness from Jesus to the ancient church.  By doing this he both strengthens his primary argument and makes a case for how we need to live as a contrast society today.  I will be taking these different thoughts to heart as I help to lead a community here in Hollywood.   I enjoyed this book so much that I went ahead and ordered his fuller treatment on this topic - Does God Need the Church? - which I plan to study with a desire to implement what I learn.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DreamAwakener/~3/460543047/

dream awakener posted a photo:

1. JR's Photo Shoot, 2. Wired Gate, 3. JR's Photo Shoot, 4. la lights



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