Category: reflections

it consumes my life

I talked with a co-worker today about social media, networking, new media and the like in the classroom and church setting. She had just returned from a conference and was amazed at all the things available to academics – usually at no additional costs to the users (i.e. professors or students). She mentioned that we needed someone who could evangelize (my word) all this new technology to folks across the district. Someone who could explain what it means and how to use it to professors who are fed up with being forced to use “technology” (typically antiquated technology at that).

I wanted to jump up and down and say, “Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”

I didn’t. We were in a semi-public environment and I didn’t want to cause a scene (so instead I just post this in a very-public environment).

I mentioned this scene to Laurie and she made the point that I’d be good at a job like that because, “it consumes your life.”

I think she’s pretty dead on. I just have a passion/fire/drive for connecting people. Whether its online or offline (or a combination of the two) I love to see people making connections. I want to see a distributed Christianity and world – rather than a mainframe world. I want to see crowd-sourcing rather than scholarly opinions. I want to see people understanding others in new ways and thus building newer, stronger relationships.

So as a side note: if you know someone wanting/needing a social media guy (like the job Chad just got) let me know. Let’s talk!

And — all this to say — I know I typically turn to Twitter or micro-blogging to share what’s going on in my life — but figure I owe all the readers here an update on my weekend as well.

weekend roundup

Each and every Saturday I do my best to meet with Josh to discuss life, faith, church, families, friends etc. This week was no exception. Due to a few schedule changes, we made plans to meet at 8 a.m. I arrived at his house and he fixed some great BOBs (breakfast on bread). We ate and chatted for an hour or so and then I was off to event #2.

Another friend had a deep freezer his mother wanted to donate to Daniel’s Den in Waxahachie. Brad met me at Josh’s house and we headed to Duncanville to pick up the freezer and then back to Waxahachie to deliver it. As soon as we finished I rushed back to Red Oak to make it home before event #3. I had hoped/predicted I’d back home by 11. I didn’t make it back till 11:38 :-(. Laurie had said as long as I was home by 11:30 things would be fine and even though I was “only 8 minutes late” it really irked me that I didn’t make it by either time.

After I arrived home, I quickly changed shirts and we were off to take Presley to the dog park and the vet. We spent 30 minutes or so at the dog park before Presley got to “enjoy” her visit with the vet. Seems like more and more we’re realizing she doesn’t like men. Not sure what it is – but she doesn’t like em. After the vet we headed to the doggie wash – where she got a nice warm bath with shampoo and conditioner.

Presley would rather sniff than play

Getting a wash

We stopped by Sonic on the way home. And then I was off to a birthday party for Juston. Had a good time and got to play some ping-pong with his younger brother Andrew. We did a cool thing at the party – in that each “man” gave words of advice to Juston as he turned 13. I shared 3 things I wish I would have known — (or actually paid attention to) when I turned 13.

  • find a group of guys/friends that will stick by you no matter what — and stick by them no matter what
  • find a mentor who will be honest with you and be willing to set you in the right direction when you’re going the wrong way
  • have fun! and don’t worry what others think except for your family and the guys mentioned above.

After the party I headed back home to finish cooking the dinner we had planned to share with Josh, his wife Shalyn, their baby girl, and my sister Kara and my brother-in-law, Tim.

They arrived short time later and we enjoyed some chicken tacos, rice, beans and assorted fixings along with some fun stories and conversations.

One thing I truly love about Laurie is that she loves hosting people at our house. She’s not near as outgoing as I am and usually doesn’t “thrive” in group settings like I might – but she still loves serving others by inviting them over and enjoying dinner with them. We both love doing that and I hope its something we continue doing for years to come.

Sunday was a whole different day but just as fun (other than the annoying sunburn I got).

Our church/tribe gathered outdoors at the Tucker’s house for our normal celebration time as well as BBQ and games. I was there outdoors from roughly 8 a.m. till 2 p.m. No wonder I got a little red ;-).

Some folks even took a ride on the Tucker’s 4-wheelers before it was all said and done.

Carl and Brian 4 wheeling

I came home and crashed on the couch before mowing the yard and pulling some weeds in the front.

All in all a tiring weekend but one I’d gladly do all over again (minus the sunburn).

So there you have it (if you’re still reading).
Be sure and click over to Laurie’s blog for her take on the weekend as well.

re-posts re: church

Was reading The New Christians today at lunch and came across a familiar name :: Jonny Baker.
Thomas introduced me to Jonny a while back and while searching my site for a few things I came across these quotes I shared back in 2006 from Jonny.

This was an ad for a church on Jonny’s site:

You love God but you just can’t do Sunday morning style church?
You’re really not into singing songs all the time or you don’t believe that singing songs is the only way we can worship God?
You would like to be part of a church where you are accountable to each other and are responsible for helping each other grow?
You’re tired of professional Christianity and you just want to be church like it was with Jesus and his followers back in his human days?
You believe Church is more fluid than a building or tradition.

And how about this…

Can we imagine church as ::

  • church beyond gathering?
  • church beyond once a week?
  • church as always on connectivity to christ and one another?
  • church where community is the content?
  • theology and resources of church being open source?
  • church valuing the wisdom of the crowd rather than the knowledge of the expert?
  • our church/spirituality being easily found by seekers because we tag it that way?
  • an ethos of low control and collaboration?
  • an economy of gift?
  • church as spaces for creative production and self publishing?
  • church as providers of resources for spiritual seekers and tourists?

I hope its coming true.

Some Beautiful updates

I don’t normally plug our podcast here too much (at least I don’t think so) but thought I’d give you a heads up on some great interviews we’ve had recently and a few that are upcoming.

Be sure and check out somethingbeautifulpodcast.com to listen to all our past, present and future shows.

This week on the show we have the first part of my interview with Greg Garrett. Garrett’s an English professor at Baylor University and also a lay-pastor at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. He recently wrote a great book – “Stories from the Edge A Theology of Grief” based on the summer he spent as a chaplain in Austin, Texas. I talked to Greg about how he dealt with his own personal “demons” and how he was led into the chaplaincy and some of what he learned in the process. Great stuff.

Also, last week we talked with Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church in Washington DC. Batterson recently released his second book, “Wild Goose Chase” and we talked about the book, the adventure of chasing the Holy Spirit and how Batterson has seen it play out in his own life.

Coming up we have the second half of my interview with Greg Garrett, as well as an interview with Frank Viola and a two part interview with Trucker Frank (aka Frank Schutzwhol).

I think they’re all stories worth talking about (whether you agree or disagree with the particular story) so be sure and check them out and let us know what you think.

Also, if you have a story, poem, or message that you think our listeners would love to hear — send it to us. You can send it as text only or if you’d like to record it in your own words you can send an mp3. Send all your submissions to :: somethingbeautifulpodcast (at) gmail (dot) com.

www.somethingbeautifulpodcast.com

web 2.0 rant

[rant]

So I love this idea of ambient intimacy. I love that I can get to know the folks in my community better and better through things like twitter, and facebook status updates and even their blogs.

I love that I can learn so much about people in short 140-character thoughts and quotes and comments throughout the day.

But I’m also getting annoyed that twitter is starting to become a “link dump” and/or a “read my new blog post!” @tonyjones twittered about this last week and I originally thought, well that’s a bit unkind – then I realized how many text messages (aka noise) I get throughout the day that are nothing more than “read my new blog post!”

I hate it because while I don’t mind seeing these things in facebook’s news feed or on my twitter friend feed I also see them in my RSS reader. So having an announcement about them show up on my cellphone as text messages really bugs me.

I know, I know – everyone just wants to plug their stuff — and honestly I’ve plugged a blog post here or there too. But I guess what gets me about the whole scenario is that for those folks I chose to go the extra mile in getting to know and actually opt-in to get their tweets sent to my cellphone (rather than just following them via the web). I don’t need a reminder to check your blog. And the fact that you automatically send me announcements every time you update your blog (rather than just highlighting the really good stuff) — or send a mass of tweets 3 or 4 times a day that share all your blog posts from the last several hours — makes me that less interested in following you or subscribing to your twitter feed. All the automatic posts just add to the noise and turn me off.

Am I making any sense? Maybe not — but I guess that’s why it’s a rant.

In full disclosure, the encounter blog and website are setup to automatically post a tweet anytime and every time a new blog post is updated and/or we post a new announcement or podcast to the website. So you can probably rant and rave about that and argue that I’m being biased (maybe this is where my rant/argument falls apart). However, I would argue in response that both the blog and the website are updated on a fairly limited basis and I’m/you’re not following the encounter twitter feed because you want to get to know someone better – it’s setup as a “news/announcement/prayer feed” for folks interested in encounter.

So there you have it. What say you?

[/rant]

I better post a link to this via twitter to be sure everyone knows about it and responds. 🙂

[rant continued]

update :: I also hate reading RSS feeds that don’t show the entire blog post. I don’t want to have to click “read more” or “this post continues elsewhere.” Just put the entire blog post in your RSS feed — PLEASE! I’m dumping a lot of RSS feeds right now that make me click on another link to read — it makes the entire point of RSS rather pointless.

[/rant]

Lauries procedure today

For those interested or curious I found some info on Wikipedia about the EP study. She may also have a heart ablation (I’m hoping that’s the right link/description) as well — depending on how the EP study goes.
Ill post updates on my Twitter feed :: twitter.com/jdblundell

Reimagining Church

Finished “Reimagining Church” last night. A good followup to Frank Viola’s book “Pagan Christianity” The book picks up in many places where Pagan Christianity left off – but also works as a standalone piece as well. As the summaries and publishers suggest, Pagan Christianity deconstructs the church and Reimagining reconstructs it.

Don’t know if it fully reconstructs it – but it definitely get’s the ball rolling.

Viola explains in the introduction:

Herein lies the purpose of this book: to articulate a biblical, spiritual, theological, and practical answer to the question, Is there a viable way of doing church outside the institutional church experience, and if so, what does it look like?

Many could see Viola as a threat to the church – especially the institutional church – but perhaps that’s why I really enjoy the book. He adds in the introduction, “I’m writing this volume because I love the church very much.” It’s the institution that he (and I tend to) have problems with. (Viola later suggests that “institution is any patterned human activity.”)

Viola argues that the institutional church as we know it is ineffective and also without biblical merit. That our current churches are constructed more on programs and rituals than relationships. That institutional churches are built around a highly structured “worship service” where the audience is separated or set-apart from the professionals (pastors, ministers, worship leaders, etc.).

In the institutional church, congregants watch a religious performance once or twice a week led principally by one person (the pastor or minister), and then retreat home to live their individual lives.

In place of the institutional church (which Pagan Christianity explains came about through many Greco-Roman customs — especially during the Constantine era), Viola argues for a more organic approach to Christianity. One in which there is no separation between lay-persons and the clergy. One in which each person’s spiritual gifts are valued and each person takes part in the group gatherings. One that meets in homes during the week rather than multi-million dollar sanctuaries/malls.

Viola compares these two views of church throughout the book, but perhaps the most beautiful illustration is one from Hal Miller.

Miller says that institutional churches are like trains. They go a certain direction and continue on that direction making a lot of noise and blowing a lot of smoke. They’re easy to find, hard to stop and can’t change direction without coming to a crawl and someone flipping the switch on the track.

Organic churches are more like people walking through a neighborhood. They move much slower but can turn at a moment’s notice. Because of their slow pace they can be genuinely attentive to the world around them, as well as to the Lord.

And because of it’s organic nature, the organic church is always growing and reproducing. And no matter where it grows or shows up, this organic church should always reflect the same DNA elements ::

  • It will always express the headship of Jesus Christ in His church
  • It will always allow for and encourage the every-member functioning of the body
  • It will always map to the theology that’s contained in the New Testament
  • It will always be grounded in the fellowship of the triune God

Those first two points are probably the stickiest points for everyone and likely why Viola spends a vast majority of the book discussing them. Unfortunately, I felt like he spoke more on what that didn’t look like than what it did look like.

In addressing these issues, Viola argues that the body of Christ must not be about the hierarchy systems of the world but must instead be about mutual edification and mutual submission. I personally believe this is a lot of what Christ spoke of in John’s 1st letter ::

I’m praying not only for them
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—
I in them and you in me.
Then they’ll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That you’ve sent me and loved them
In the same way you’ve loved me. (john 17)

Imagine the impact this would have on the world around us if we all truly lived as one. Where no one person took precedence, where church decisions were based on consensus rather than dictatorship or democracy. If the members of Christ’s body are truly submissive to Christ and to one another, I believe Viola would argue that this would turn the world upside down.

Yet for someone who’s grown up in a traditional, institutional church, the idea of a church led not by a man (or woman or group of men) but by the headship of Christ (through the Holy Spirit) is foreign. And yet I can definitely understand the reasoning behind it. I can agree with the Scripture Viola uses to make the point — but to picture it and understand how you would bring that about is foreign to me (and probably 99% of “church-going Christians). Perhaps this will be addressed in future books.

It does look as though this is part of several more in the “series” as Viola mentions two more books coming out in the near future. “From Eternity to Here” is the next one on the map.

Regardless, this book leaves me hungry for seeing something more in our churches today. It’s a great supplement/compliment for what I’m feeling/thinking/dreaming in my soul. It leaves me aching for truer community, where there are true spaces of grace, intentional relationships and God experiences are shared by all.

I hope to come back and share some of the many quotes/thoughts that stood out to me in my reading — but I just started a new book by Greg Garrett, “Stories from the Edge – A Theology of Grace” so it might take me a week or so to get back to “Reimagining Church” :-).

related ::
www.reimaginingchurch.org
www.housechurchresource.org
www.ptmin.org
SSL :: looking back at a house of prayer
encounter :: priests in the hood
encounter :: tribal faith