October 10, 2008
Third Way Faith
Is the middle ground the way of wisdom or simply savvy marketing?
I’ve noticed a trend lately among Christian writers, thinkers, and leaders: they are framing their approach to faith as an alternative to left/right categories. Some stake out a via media between two poles, while others critique the very essence of the polarity altogether.
I’m not alone in noticing a growing third way sentiment. Scott McKnight’s excellent Christianity Today article, "The Ironic Faith of Emergents", points to the same trend. He notes that McLaren and other emergent Christians offer him hope of a third way of faith—a faith without the strictures of neo-Fundamentalism that also avoids the loss of theological clarity.
I’ve also spotted third way thinking in the works of N.T. Wright (his approach to eschatology in Surprised by Hope comes to mind), Tim Keller (see his introduction to The Reason for God), and Tony Jones (The New Christians testifies that emerging types don’t fit liberal or conservative molds). There’s even a British magazine devoted to the Third Way.
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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 10, 2008 | Comments (8)
October 9, 2008
Live from Catalyst: Day 2 Play by Play
Updates all day from the mega-conference in Atlanta.
by Skye Jethani
6:20pm
Groeschel encouraged us all to believe that there is “more in you.” And to focus on a simple prayer: “God stretch me.” But, he added: "Before God can stretch you, he's got to heal you. Before he can heal you, he's got to ruin you." Groeschel drew from Joel 2 and the imagery of weeping and brokenness and fasting. We must repent in order to get "it" back in our lives.
6:00pm
Some of Groeschel’s puns: “It’s about the Holy Spir-IT.” “Some people are full of IT.” “IT happens.” Irreverent humor, cleaver communication, or slick product placement? You make the call.
5:52pm
Craig Groeschel is on to talk about “It.” (Also the title of his book.) He defines “it” as “that something special of God.” “You know it when you see it.”
5:33pm
A plug about a new film, “Call and Response,” dealing with the trafficking of sex slaves around the world. Social justice issues are very prominent at Catalyst--even the complementary coffee is attached to a cause. Many of the booths around the arena are plugging global causes, and there are large containers near the front entrance for donations. I’m not sure you would have seen that 10, or even 5 years ago at a conference for evangelical church leaders.
4:55pm
Slide from Godin's PowerPoint:
Leadership = Marketing
Marketing = Leadership
4:49pm
Godin: "I am begging you to become heretics." [Cheering] To be different, new, and innovative is to be heretical. Godin doesn't mean this in a doctrinal sense, but in a cultural one. He says, "A huge problem in your industry is control." Religion tries to control rather than influence and lead.
4:19pm
Back in the arena for session 4. The trampoline slamdunk basketball team just left, and now Seth Godin has taken the stage. He's the #1 business blogger in the world. (And I must confess a mistake from this morning...Jim Collins is not the only person here in a jacket and tie.)
Godin is Mr. Marketing. He says traditoinal marketing, like commercials that interrupt people, isn't working anymore. We must go back to the idea of people talking to people. He frames this around the idea of "tribes." Talk to consumers, and they'll spread the idea all over the world themselves. "People want to belong to tribes.... Fitting in, being with people like us, is so important." The goal should be connecting people to each other, and then get out of the way.
1:45pm
I finally got lunch...oh, blessed fried calories. I'm out during the next session for a meeting. I'll trust other Urthlings to fill in some details. (Sitting on the floor of the mezzanine outside the arena, I can hear the band fire up "We built this city on rock and roll." Well, I guess it's sorta like Jesus saying he'd build his church upon this rock. Wait, where am I again.)
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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 9, 2008 | Comments (5)
Live from Catalyst: Day 2 Color Commentary
The Shack and Its Aftershocks
Skye is offering a terrific play by play. Let me offer a word of commentary on one entry he mentioned.
One of the people I was most interested to meet at Catalyst was William Paul Young, the author of “The Shack,” the self-published novel that was given a spectacular endorsement by Eugene Peterson, got amazing word-of-mouth distribution and rocked the publishing world, selling millions and sparking a heated blogosphere debate among Christians over whether the book is heretical in its depiction of God or whether it’s a helpful and clarifying portrayal of God’s three-in-one character.
Today Paul (he goes by his middle name) was interviewed on the main stage. At yesterday’s Catalyst lab, Paul explained to a mostly supportive audience the origin of the novel. He said it was NOT written to make a statement about the Trinity. Instead, he said, it was written to be given to family members to help them better grasp issues of God and gender! To work through the pain of earthly fathers who are distant or absent during times of Great Sadness.
Oh, my, I thought. If anything is more volatile than the Trinity, issues of gender would be on a fairly short list of things guaranteed to be impossible to address without offending a whole lot of people. The intricacies of describing the Trinity will offend the theologically trained, but the suggesting God has gender issues will disturb just about everyone.
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Posted by Marshall Shelley at October 9, 2008 | Comments (2)
October 8, 2008
Live From Catalyst: McKnight on Bad Bible Reading
Five common, but flawed, approaches to reading the Bible.
by Skye Jethani
Day 1 at Catalyst in Atlanta is dominated by the Labs. These smaller breakout sessions give conference attendees a more intimate setting to hear from authors, thinkers, and leaders in a more interactive environment. My first stop was Scot McKnight’s lab “The Blue Parakeet” based on his new book by the same title. The book advocates a “third way” of reading the Bible. (Scot is a friend and a regular contributor to Out of Ur.)
Next week, Brandon O’Brien will be posting his review of The Blue Parakeet so you should stay tuned for a more in depth discussion of McKnight’s ideas. For now, I’ll just mention a snippet from his lab I found helpful.
McKnight outlined five flawed ways many people read the Bible:
1. The Morsels of Law Approach
These people search the Bible and extract ever commandment. They see Scripture as fundamentally a book of rules to be obeyed. The problem, says McKnight, is that no one really obeys—or even tries to obey—every commandment. And we’re not just talking about some obscure stuff in Leviticus. Scot mentioned a number of New Testament commands that many Christians dismiss as well. We are all selective.
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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 8, 2008 | Comments (4)
October 7, 2008
Urban Exile: Suburban vs. Urban Church Politics
Does our setting influence our politics more than our doctrine?
by David Swanson
As on any other Tuesday, my wife and I hosted our weekly small group on Election Day of 2004. A quick scan of the TV stations after the Bible study showed that we’d have to wait until the next day to learn the results. “Just pray that John Kerry doesn’t win,” said one of the members on his way out that November night. Over early morning coffee a few weeks later another church friend expressed his relief that George Bush would serve a second term as president.
More recently, after a pizza dinner with some volunteers from church, someone asked where Barak Obama’s home was. Soon a small caravan was driving through Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood to see the house of what many of these volunteers hoped would be the next president. A few weeks later I watched one of our worship leaders tactfully cover her Obama t-shirt with a jacket before our Sunday service began.
What happened between 2004 and the current election season to account for this shift in the political sensibilities of our community? Maybe the political priorities of some folks have changed. Maybe churchgoers feel taken for granted by the “Grand Old Party.” Or perhaps Americans, including those within the Evangelical tradition, are just ready for change.
Or maybe not. What changed was that between these two elections we moved from an established suburban church to a 6-year old-church plant in Chicago. And that, as they say, has made all the difference.
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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 7, 2008 | Comments (19)
