No Sleep Til Tenure

Matthew's Geneaology: A Vindication of Mary

2010-06-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

I recently started reading the Book of Matthew in order to prepare for teaching the middle schoolers come September. However, in my own reading I came to a rather interesting conclusion that I hope to turn into a legitimate article but for now am just sketching out.

In Matthew’s genealogy he lists forty fathers, one named brother who lineage is not described (Zerah, 1:3) and more than eleven unnamed brothers (Judah’s and Jechoniah’s). In the sea of all these men Matthew mentions one unnamed woman, the wife of Uriah, and only four named women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Mary. Without a doubt in my mind these four other women were intentionally choices, women whose stories would resonate with the Jewish-Christian part of the Matthean community. Interestingly enough, in my limited personal collection of books on the Gospel of Matthew only one makes reference to the four women is Douglas R.A. Hare’s Matthew. He explains their inclusion as necessary to remind “the Jewish and Gentile readers of the Gospel that G-d’s great plan of salvation included Gentiles, even unrighteous Gentiles.” (6) Like Hare’s other conclusions, my additional volumes are concerned with what the genealogy says about Jesus and who he is. Instead, I would like to consider what the reference to these four women tells the audience about Mary.

Who are these women? A pretend-harlot, a for real harlot, a foreign woman, and a woman who commits adultery (though whether or not she had a choice is debatable since David was the king) and then ascends to power through her role as wife of David and son of King Solomon.

Tamar turns to the custom of her people as laid out by G-d and is redeemed. Rahab acknowledges the power and existence of G-d and in doing so saves her family. Ruth takes on the yolk of G-d and saves herself and her mother-in-law from suffering and starvation. Bathsheba becomes mother to King Solomon, one of the most prosperous kings to ever rule the land of Israel and makes him King by relying on a promise made to her in front of G-d. No matter how questionable each woman’s background or choices seem (depending on the modern or ancient reader) each woman is ultimately vindicated by her faith in G-d. And thus so will be Mary.

Seth Godin + Horror Movies

2010-05-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

For the past few days I have been reading Seth Godin's book, Tribes (We Need You to Lead Us). It is a quick 150 page read with no chapters and innumerable subheadings. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and the only thing I wished is that it had been online with tons of hyperlinks so I could look up all the people he was noting in his anecdotes as I was reading as opposed to getting sucked into the next section and intending to come back to them later. Godin gives you just enough information about these people to be tantalizing.

So what is a tribe? "A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea." (1) Godin goes on to note that people enjoy being part of tribes and participate in many of them. Reflect on your own tribes and you will realize this is true. However, I realized that many of the tribes that I would say I participate in do not have a leader so are they therefore not tribes?

For example, I love Horror Movies. When I meet another horror movie fan we enter into our own realm of name dropping and jargon but there is not one horror movie critic or afficiando whose opinion I look to in order to be inspired or motivated to watch more Horror movies. But there is a definitive difference between people who watch horror movies and people who don't.

Seth Godin would call the Horror Movie tribe stuck because it lacks a movement. And this is entirely true. Where have the Wes Cravens and John Carpenters of the world gone? What about the Tom Savinis or the Jamie Lee Curtises? No one has stepped in to fill their shoes. No one is currently leading in the horror movies tribe. For a genre that is incredibly popular there are no names from today's generation or directors or actors/actresses that make you automatically want to go see the horror movie they are in. It's sad. Horror Movies are stuck.

What would the ideal leader look like? Godin says "Leaders make a ruckus." (19) The guy who directed the Saw movies made a ruckus with the first one. The latter ones...not so much. Maybe he's stuck too. The last movie to make a ruckus was Paranormal Activity and what before that? I'm not sure; which is surprising since the word is almost synonymous with the genre.

What can we as tribe members do? We must transform "our shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change." (25) What is our goal? To see horror movies that leave us unnerved to leave the shower curtain closed and make us scream. To be fascinated by the dark parts of the mind, lulled into sympathy and then shocked back into the terror of what is happening before our very eyes. (Zombie movies may be the leader?)

In order for an idea to spread it has to be a good idea. And the person with the idea must believe in it. Perhaps we no longer believe there are unique ideas; most everything feels like a play on something else or is an adaptation of something else. What do horror movie fans believe, now?

I think Seth Godin would tell me to get off my soap box and make something happen. New Blog time.

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I realize this post has nothing to do with Christianity, but it's where my mind is right now. I am also pretty sure that the goal of Seth Godin's book was so that it could be applied to any and all tribes. And it did give me a lot to think about in terms of my goals for religious education. The story that stood out most to me was about a woman who wanted to get into the furniture business. Instead of presenting investors with sketches she went out and had her furniture built with the company's signature fabric on it. Similarly, I think if I want middle school RE at my church to go the way I want it to I have to take Godin's advice:

"Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow."

Since the semester is almost over I believe I will use this blog for the summer as away to catalogue both my secular exploits and my creation of a curriculum that does what I believe it should for middle schoolers. Excited doesn't even begin to cover it.

How would Jesus deconstruct?

2010-04-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

He would start by handing out copies annotated copies of the New Testament.

I just finished reading What would Jesus Deconstruct? by John D. Caputo and the question that titles this blog post is what I came away with. Using the book In His Steps* as an underlying symbol in his work, Caputo, continued to ask the question of what would happen if Jesus showed up, unannounced, anywhere two or three are gathered. If he saw people picketing abortion clinics or hung around ministries which made worth a primary virtue what side of Jesus would we see? How would he respond? John makes educated guesses at how Jesus would respond but never places restrictions on this hypothetical response based on the limits of his own imagination. Caputo also shares his own views based on his understanding of the NT and they are insightful as a kick to the gut by a prophet (check out page 114).

What is fascinating about Caputo's work is that reading it is more like a reminder of what already exists in the Scripture. What he says and how he says it is mind-blowing but it is not new. To say that Jesus loved children and the poor, was against hypocrites and war and believed that we must love the outcast and the enemy is not new. To say that we must uphold the teachings of Jesus in how we live our lives is not new. Nonetheless Caputo is a master craftsman of writing in a way that all at once leaves you energized and at the same time uncomfortable. If one was to pick up the New Testament, I think this is a good way for it to be read.

To return to my original thought at the beginning of this post I don't know that Caputo would agree to me as to how Jesus would deconstruct the systems around him. This book was full of wondering how Jesus would respond to our actions but the question was never raised

How would Jesus react to reading a copy of the New Testament?

I think we all have a clear idea of how he would respond to a commercialized Christmas and the millions of children who die every year of starvation. But the question I just raised is the one on which I would love someone to speculate. Maybe he would annotate it. Maybe he would sharpie out all the parts he didn't like. Maybe he would burn it to make a point. Who can say?

The one challenge I had in reading this book was in trying to explain a story from the text to my partner. We got into a long discussion about the relationship between church and state. What I read and took as an imperative to be true to my beliefs in the public sphere,

It is our responsibility to breathe with the spirit of Jesus, to implement, to invent, to convert this poetics into a praxis, which means to make the political order resonate with the radicality of someone whose vision was not precisely political (95)

Alex took this to mean advocating for a Christian state. .

My response is this. Last week one of my classes visited CrossRoads, which is an organization designed to help women recently released for incarceration get back on their feet. We asked the nun whose ministry this was how she saw her faith fitting into her work. She answered (paraphrasing) in this way:

I should never have to say that I am a Christian. It should be evident enough my actions that I should never have to name myself as such.

I think this is more what Caputo is getting at then a "Christian state." I imagine Dr. Caputo would be more in line with the thinking of St. Francis, "preach the gospel always, if necessary use words."*

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and it left much for me to mull over and chew on. Highly recommended.

(*I think both Charles Sheldon and Dr. Caputo would be disappointed to see the cover of this version)
(*Seeing as the first response to this quote via this link is to say that the gospel has nothing to say about helping the poor)

Selective Proof Texting is Not a Gift of the Holy Spirit

2010-04-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

This post is my paper for Christian Ethics. We were asked to review a case study in which a Presbyterian congregation is choosing whether or not to become a More Light congregation. We were asked to take a stance on the resolution "Shepherd Presbyterian Church will not exclude any active member from election or ordination to office on the basis of race, class, gender, marital status or sexual orientation." I also wrote this paper keeping in mind that a More Light congregation had their church building burned down (arson) this past week.

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G-d does not want us to ground our decisions in fear and prejudice but in love. Therefore, before a decision can be made several factors must be taken into account. First we must consider what it means to be an elected or ordained member of this congregation. The journey to ordination or election begins with an inner sense of call on the part of the individual. That call to a specific vocation comes from G-d who chooses people according to G-d’s will and who are we to place obstacles in the path of that call? Remember who Moses and Paul were before G-d revealed Himself and His plans to them; G-d calls people from all walks of life to serve G-d and the faithful community. It has been stated that to be a minister is a responsibility and not a right; however, I would respectfully disagree and say that to be a minister is a right; it is both a right and a responsibility bestowed by G-d on those whom G-d calls to serve.

The role of the minister is to lead a congregation, to love and be accessible to the parishioners, to serve them, to teach them, to share in their joys and their sorrows and to walk with them along their own faith journeys. The role of the lay leadership is much the same though it seems to involve considerably more committee meetings. If the church can be compared to the body then the leadership are the feet, the foundation upon which the rest of the body stands and which must serve the body, without which they would simply be motionless, dead parts. Therefore the congregation must ask itself: what makes the feet unserviceable to the rest of the body?

If the leadership is the feet then the Bible is the heart. Therefore we must take the words of Scripture seriously in deciding this matter. If we are honest then the challenge we face today is to acknowledge that we pick and choose which passages we apply to our daily lives. Consider the words found in 2nd Timothy; we looked for the historical purpose of those words and other passages that speak against female authority in the church and did not find them binding to our lives today. If we did, women would not be ministers in the Presbyterian denomination and one would not be pastoring this particular congregation. There is much from the Bible that after prayer and discussion we choose to leave to the wayside. Do the prohibitions against homosexual acts in the Bible not warrant the same consideration we gave to the passages against women taking roles in the church?

If “by their fruits you shall know them” is a guiding principle in Christian life then we must look deep into our souls and ask what it means for our community to exclude those who love Christ and want to serve G-d? There is a lot of fear in the community that allowing homosexual people into leadership roles is the gateway to moral relativism and a free-for-all moral attitude. We must look to the experience of More Light congregations before we take our assumptions to be fact; has this degradation of family oriented services and a divided church been their experience? We must also look to our own experience; has having homosexual members in the congregation and on this board led to catastrophe? At what point does the exception become the rule?

Margaret Farley describes love as an active response, writing “When I love you I want you to be….to be full and firm in being.”How can we, following the words of Jesus to love our neighbors as ourselves, force our brothers and sisters to choose one innate part of themselves over another innate part, the call from G-d? We must take an active response as a congregation to affirm the resolution before us because it is the right thing to do. Selective proof-texting of the Scripture is not one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and is not what Jesus has called us to do. As a church body we are called to speak truth to power even if that means turning the lens upon ourselves. As a congregation we have the power to ordain elders and deacons and by becoming a More Light congregation we stand in solidarity with our lgbtq brothers and sisters in listening to G-d’s call for them to become ministers and we stand in hope that the regional session will come to the same understanding. The church is a unified body but that unity cannot stand without its feet. To affirm this resolution is to acknowledge that the body of Christ does not cut off potential feet, feet that will dance when the body rejoices and soldier on when the body suffers, because the toes are painted with rainbows.

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Thoughts and Responses would be appreciated =)

Doctor Says, "The Christmas Tree Needs to Come Down"

2010-04-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

What does that even mean? Well, essentially, our Christmas Tree is still up. We started taking it down Saturday night and yet it is still here with most of its decorations. I think it may be a symbol for the need for things to happen in a timely manner or they will never get done. The tree may no come down until we move out of this apartment and it has to be packed with everything else.

I went to the doctor yesterday and was told that I needed to get on top of my stress in order to stop feeling so tired. My response is to eat some delicious challah and followed by some Irish soda bread.

I am debating what to do about my final project. It's something I need to figure out this week. I have put my feelers out to people at GTU about the film project but haven't heard anything back. So I have to figure out my back up project. I'll have to see Professor Clayton. Perhaps I will do an anthropological study on active virtual churches and what we in "first life" churches can learn from them. And combine it with cyber ethics.

I'll figure it out.

Doubting Disciple

2010-03-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

The passage of Flickering Pixels I found to be most liberating was Hipp's discussion of the doubting disciple.

Image culture is learning to make space for this kind of person. The person who is a true follower of Jesus, a student and a learner, but perhaps not yet - and maybe never - an orthodox believer. This category of doubting disciple didn't seem to bother Jesus; after all, his parting words to us in the book of Matthew were, 'Therefore go and make disciples..." Jesus didn't tell us to make believers. He called us to make disciples, and disciples are followers and students on the way of G-d. Followers learn to change their beliefs as they walk. (91-92)

As someone whose christology is at best inarticulate I found this passage to be a freeing reminder.

Virtual Community < or equal to or > Real Community?

2010-03-22T19:19:00.000-07:00

Having read Shane Hipp's book Flickering Pixels during the remainder of my RE Congress time I was struck by many of his ideas and they led me to turn my gaze inward.
In OurNomadicLife, Hipps writes,

"...I am concerned that virtual community is slowly becoming our preferred way of relating." (114)

This made me pause and reflect on my relationships with others. It made me think about the layers of virtual community. How many times have I chosen (assuming close proximity to others) a phone call as opposed to a face-to-face visit? How many times have I (or you, dear reader) chosen a text, a tweet or an email as opposed to a phone call? I don't know how it is with younger generations but let's be honest about us in the 20s+ range. When you are texting someone it is a sign that you are uncomfortable with what your are saying to them/you don't want to call them back/you don't really want to talk to them.

Of course there are plenty of times when we text in order to talk to multiple people at once or to communicate information but let's be frank. We all know those texts.

I agree with Shane Hipps that virtual community is becoming our preferred way for communicating in certain ways or communicating certain things.

I also think that there are times in a person's life where virtual community is just as important as real community. Like when I was in high school. My role playing community was as close to me, if not closer, than my friends in real life. I spoke to them online for hours (4-5) per day. Weekends during the day that was all I did. College happened and, unfortunately, due to time and schedules, we fell out of contact. But their impact on me was as palpable as anyone that I met in real life.

At the TAG conference I met a woman who was a pastor for a virtual church in Second Life. It was both fascinating and disappointing. Many of the people who were part of her virtual church were there because they had been shunned from churches in "First Life" because of their sexual orientation.

Virtual community can be a joy and it can be a refuge.Virtual community allows exploration of the self in relation to the community and of the idealized self in ways that cannot be fully accomplished in real life short of becoming part of the witness protection program.

I do not think that virtual community will overtake real community in all ways. What I find problematic are the "negative" aspects of community life for which it is becoming the preferred method.

Muslim Catechesis in Catholic Schools

2010-03-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

I hope that post title made you quirk your eyebrow. Today was the first day of LA RE Congress 2010 and I came out of it with two ideas.

My third workshop of the day, hosted by Thomas Groome, was on the new framework for Catholic high school curriculum. There is nothing more affirming as an oft-frustrated Catholic than listening to a bunch of frustrated, pissed off Catholic educators. There were innumerable valid complaints about the new system but Professor Groome left me feeling empowered. The new cirricula are still being written and it is still up to the teachers to decide how to teach it and there are certainly enough of them to voice any problems they have with the system. There is a reason textbooks have editions.

Professor Groome shared an anecdote about how he had seen many Catholic schools in Pakistan, where the student population is 90-95% Muslim teaching Muslim catechesis. This anecdote came out of one woman's outburst and tons of grumbling voices attesting to the fact that this new curriculum assumes an entirely Catholic religious student body. What I took from hearing this frustration and this story is my proposal for Catholic schools:

Offer catechesis for people within their own religious traditions and require everyone to attend dialogue sessions with one another to share what they are learning.*

(If atheists want a catechesis for atheism then awesome, if not, study hall but still must attend dialogue sessions)

2. My first afternoon workshop was about human sexuality and the theology of the body. What I heard made sense within the Catholic understanding of natural law and was logical within the system. I heard some good things and some problematic things.

The good thing: as an educator you have a responsibility to know the why behind the things you say. Students have a right to ask why and you have to have an answer more so than "because I said so."

The bad thing: any artificial form of insemination is a sin. Sterile couples = meant to be sterile. The priest meant well but it irked me.

However, the whole abstinence/chastity talk made me think about writing an article on the subject. "Sex with the Imago Dei." It would be an abstinence talk not based on the "sex is bad/dirty/hell-worthy/only for marriage" idea but on the basis of:
1. Mutual respect
2. Empowerment through Knowledge
3. Why it's worth waiting not just on sex but also oral sex, etc. Everyone remembers their first sex experience; everyone also remembers their first experience giving and receiving mouth-pleasure (yes, i did just call it mouth-pleasure).

I think sex is an important, sacred experience and needs to be taken seriously. But if people want to teach abstinence and chastity then it needs to be done without disparaging the sex act or placing intercourse as more important/meaningful than any other. Down with the cult of the hymen!

Would love to hear feed back on these thoughts.

This Post Contains no Graven Images

2010-03-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

I have just completed reading about a half of Shane Hipps' book, Flickering Pixels, and I am currently intrigued and full of questions. I have also just returned from the "Youth Day" portion of the LA RE Congress 2010 and there is a lot of overlap.

The seventh chapter, "AThousandFeelings" address the interchangeability of images and text. Generally, Hipps doesn't jive with images (hilarious). He writes, "the image reduces our capacity for abstract thought," (77) and images erode and undermine imaginative creativity (80). His reasoning is that images do not require us to think but to feel and tell us everything we need to know in the blink of an eye, something we cannot do with print culture. TV kills the brain, yada yada.

I don't agree. If images told us everything we need to know then advertising wouldn't work. He uses the example of a photo of a boy crying compared to the sentence "the boy is sad." The sentence makes us ask questions but the image "leaves no doubt of the boy's sadness." But the photo doesn't tell me why the boy is sad - it's the text accompanied with an image that usually does that for us. A picture of a crying African child is usually accompanied by the words "This is . He is " followed by more information." Images inspire questions. Advertising leaves you with questions, the most important being, "Yes, but will it work?" The little boy (hopefully) leaves you asking "What happened in his life/his parent's life/his country's life that brought him to this?"

As for television we can debate the issues associated with reality television but I would like to think the tv shows I watch require thought. Like West Wing. Just saying....

In the defense of images Hipps notes the "resuscitation of Jesus" brought about with images. "The photograph led to the resuscitation of the person of Jesus as central to our faith" (81). As was voiced by, I believe, Jaroslav Pelikan, people depict Jesus as they want him to be, not necessarily as he is/was/ever shall be.

And that brings me to today's Youth Day.

In a nutshell there was a lot of worship/praise music, a lot of militaristic/cheerleader chanting, a speaker I wasn't a huge fan of (I'm in the minority on that opinion), a 2 hour mass where they ran out of bread and another speaker who talked about (because it's inescapable now) facebook and myspace.

During the two hour mass there were lots of pictures of Jesus on the big screens around the band. Anyone who has ever typed "Jesus" into Google images knows that there are some great, inspiring images of Jesus and then there are the other ones. You know what I mean. The ones where you just cringe because they either look like Thomas Kinkade rejects, or they're super bloody or, you know. I think the Jews got it right on this one.

Social Media is Not Just Restricted to the Internet (Part Two)

2010-03-13T12:50:00.000-08:00

On Making Film: You are smart enough, You are pretty enough, Your Story is Worth Being Told

-Dave Huth

Our focus in this part of the discussion centered on the fact that technology for filming movies is so much more accessible and less expensive now than it was back in the day. You can make films that are relevant to your congregation's social context. Making film is about telling your story or telling a story that is important to you.

Michael Cox suggested that film is a good stepping stone for a congregation that is not technologically-savvy. Maybe your parishioners don't want to have a Twitter but they would be interested in making a film for the church's uses.

Furthermore, once you make your film, there are plenty of purchasable or online resources for editing, adding sound, etc. If someone in your congregation has a Mac, it's pretty likely that they have iMovie or iDVD already.

Again remember that film allows people in your congregation who don't otherwise know how to get involved in church community life an opportunity to express themselves and share their talent with the congregation.

Ideas From Discussion

Purchase some flip video cameras (around $150 for the basic ones) and have the young people in your congregation make short films about older parishioners

If your community does social justice work film community members and the community you are partnering with (homeless, migrants, etc) and learn their stories.

Good Organizations To Be Aware Of:

IAM - International Arts Movement

Active Voice

The Ooze

Sherwood Pictures - See how a church got into making feature films - FAQ

My notes for this portion are a little scanty. If you were at this discussion and want to tell me what to add in I would be happy to do it. Also, if you want a voice recording of the discussion - email me at angelina.duell@cst.edu or send me a tweet or leave a comment with your email address and I'll send it to you =)

The people involved in this animated discussion: Ryan Parker, Spencer Burke, Ken Austin, Brian Ammons, Gray Hamspon, Vajaah Parker, Dave Huth, Michael Cox, Angelina Duell & Janis Brown
(Hey all - if I haven't linked your name let me know what url you would like your name linked to)

Social Media is Not Just Restricted to the Internet (Part One)

2010-03-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday at the TAG conference I had the pleasure of attending the "Film Making & Film Watching as Spiritual Practice" Breakout Session hosted by Ryan Parker and Spencer Burke. These are notes from that session that address film viewing. There will be a separate post on film making to keep these posts from getting too bulky.

The session started with Ryan offering his thoughts on using film in ministry. The first questions you have to ask yourself are the following:

What [films] do we embrace? What do we resist? What do we watch? What do we make?

What are the steps to introducing film use in your congregation/ministry:

Before

Conduct an entertainment survey. Find out what are people watching, what are they not watching and why on both counts. You could also ask how they would feel about the use of film in the worship service and where they feel it would be appropriate. These questions provide a democratic basis for working with film. Don't do this only once: if you introduce film then you should be constantly seeking feedback about what is and what is not working so that you can adjust to better serve the needs of the congregants.

Brain Storming Session: Consider where you would use film

Go see movies in the theatres with congregants
Reference film/show film clips during sermons
Use film clips in other parts of the service (benediction, offering, etc)
Develop intentional film study programs
Use clips in Sunday school

If you're making film in your congregation think about what type of film you want to make. It could be as extravagant as a feature film or as simple (but still meaningful) as filming your Sunday school classes and showing the congregation what these ministries are up to.

Logistics

Now that you have ideas it's time to take stock of your physical location. What would be required for your worship space/associated buildings to show film. Consider the equipment you would need and the money you would spend. This relates back to whether or not you want to view film or make film, or both. You don't have to think big to start - for example - can you afford a television and a dvd player? a projector? a ton of flip video cameras?

If you are going to use film in the worship service this is where you address these questions:

At what point in the service would you use film?
How often would you use film?
How do you address clips that may contain sex/violence/cuss-words
Will the clip(s) you intend to show be so emotionally impact-full that the congregation will focus more on them than on the message you are trying to convey
Are you going to use films that the congregants are familiar with or something more obscure?

Tip 1: Always keep it under three minutes to avoid legal issues
Tip 2: Clips with little to no explaination are ideal
Tip 3: Know your congregation - are there people who are blind? hard of hearing? Consider how you would accommodate them when working with film

If you are using film in a different way, i.e. outside of the worship service then make sure to include congregants in making the decisions on which films to use. There may be movie-buffs in your congregation and this is an ideal way to involve them in the life and serving of the community.

BIG QUESTION:

When using film - do you have an end goal in mind? Is there a message you are trying to convey or is your event open ended?

"If there is a purpose in showing the film then sell it that way; don't trick people." - Spencer Burke

Remember: if you have an end goal then at best you are using the film for teaching, at worst, for propaganda. Know thyself.

Ideas presented in the discussion

4 F's - Film, Food, Fun, F-hilosophy - going to see a movie and have a meal with members of the congregation
Use film in place of the sermon
Use short films as opposed to feature length
Who's Your Jesus - a study of Jesus in various films (Life of Brian, Last Temptation, Jesus of Montreal)
Rent out a movie theatre - ask them what their lowest attendance night is and rent a screening room for your congregation

Films Mentioned in Discussion

Doubt, Up, Lars the Real Girl, Pulp Fiction, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, Born Into Brothels

Questions to Ask Yourself: Does a film have to be controversial to inspire dialogue?

The people involved in this animated discussion: Ryan Parker, Spencer Burke, Ken Austin, Brian Ammons, Gray Hamspon, Vajaah Parker, Dave Huth, Michael Cox, Angelina Duell & Janis Brown
(Hey all - if I haven't linked your name let me know what url you would like your name linked to)

Post Modern Hell: Hand Out

2010-03-11T20:46:00.000-08:00

Our conversation meandered so I will address quotes in terms of themes (not necessarily in transcript order)

Callid's Definition of Post Modern
"The modern project as I understand it is an articulation that we are somewhere, we came somewhere and we are going somewhere."
[So history is progressive and linear and viewed this way right up until we had two World Wars. However, the linear modern mentality did not die with WWII - it's still alive and kicking but other opinions are now getting more air time]

Postmodern condition is the fact that there are (and have always been) a number of lines that go in all sorts of directions that are generally moving towards something but we don’t know what it is. What we do know is that there’s motion. Something’s happening, that’s what we know. But what we thinking we are happening towards is all different. Postmodern is people acknowledging that there is more than one line.

Glen's Reponse:
"Post modern is too amorphous, all it tells us is that we are not modern, this age should be called the Age of Interaction."
The modern/secular world operates on a closed-world system. The individual is closed; a person is like a billiard ball. There is no room for G-d to do anything in a Deist/secular system,

Glen on the Kingdom of G-d
What does the Kingdom of G-d look like to Jesus? Read the Prophet Isaiah
There are seven marks: Deliverance, Peace, Sense of G-d's Presence, Delivering Justice, Healing, Joy, Return (from Exile/to G-d)

Callid on the Kingdom of G-d
Ask people in their experience and in their heart and in their life what is the Kingdom of G-d? I'm not saying Scripture doesn't matter, I'm saying you matter.

Asking about the Kingdom of G-d drives us into interaction.

Kristina on Other Cultures (she was quoting another person but I didn't catch the name - if anyone knows, I will edit this post)
“Other cultures are not waiting to discover something that makes them into your culture. They are not waiting to become you.”

Kristina Explains Eco-Tones
The place where two geographic spaces meet is called an eco-tone. An example of this is where the meadow meets the lake. It's no longer one place nor is it really both. It's chaotic but that's where life is happening! Those are the rich places where difference meets.

Dialogue Moment - A number of participants shared that they had come from fundamentalist backgrounds and regarded their families either positively or negatively. Callid brought this point to the front:
"We just articulated an ugly fundamentalism. What if they're right?"
One woman responded: "Then I want to go to Hell."
"But if they're right...what do we do about it?"

This led into a conversation on right and wrong and one conclusion that was offered was this (from Callid)

Right/Wrong has to be embodied and contextualized - it can't be abstracted.

This statement came out of the idea that right/wrong is relativistic. Callid pointed at the man next to him and asked what our initial response would be if he snapped that man's neck. Everyone agreed that it was wrong.

Noteworthy Quotes

"The process of the thing we're doing is the thing we're doing"

"Start with dialogue - don't get caught up in the content"

The question is: Do you burn the boats behind you?

Book List
The Yoga of Jesus
Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust
The Fire Raisers (play)
A Secular Age

Buddy Christ & Weak Links

2010-03-10T10:28:00.000-08:00

One of the surprising discoveries of complexity theory came from Mark Granovetter of John Hopkins University. He proved that a strong network is made up of many weak links. In fact, a network comprised of many weak links is stronger and more enduring than a network made up of fewer but stronger links

- Dwight Friesen, Thy Kingdom Connected (138)

I know very few people in my church. I know the middle schoolers; the middle-school youth group catechists/volunteers and the religious education leadership. But when I go to church on Sunday I have no idea who I am sitting next to. If I stopped going to church or if the church was sucked into a black hole I would never see these people again and I wouldn’t think twice about it. I am connected to them only because we all chose to go to the 9:30am service that particularly Sunday.

When I was in college I remember bumping into someone who told me she was culturally Catholic. This is a concept I hadn’t considered prior to that moment. Catholic jokes, movies about or that feature Catholicism, memories or opinions on Catholic school, feelings/opinions on the Pope, etc. When I tried to bring up Catholic jokes/humor as a thing that unites Catholics together I felt the other volunteers go quiet, go cold. I’m sure some of you reading this have had this experience where you think you have a great idea but you are regarded with suspicion. And it got me thinking; I can’t be the only one in my whole congregation who has a Buddy Christ sitting next to my icons. So how do I meet these like-minded people? Because, I’ll be honest, these are the people I would love to meet and the people I would still want to hang out with if the church building disappeared.

So how do I make these weak links? Whose responsibility it is to make these relationships? Who says I can’t get to know people in my church on an intimate friend basis through watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer as opposed to through a weekly Bible study? But the church doesn't offer a weekly B-Horror movie night. I think that it should. I would love to see this in my church bulletin “Holy Family will be offering a night of laughter – sharing Catholic jokes over dinner” or “Who wants to go get coffee after the 11am service? I’ll be waiting by the holy water font” or “Holy Family will be offering a screening of Dogma/Homicidal” or “Who wants to go watch the Hurt Locker? Here’s my phone number/email.”

Individual and church offerings that are not directly related to religion would be great. If you’re both going to church and reading the bulletin you’re probably going to get on the subject of your faith organically – it doesn’t necessarily have to be a starting point. And if it is, it can have a sense of humor. People's identity is built on their beliefs but not only on those beliefs. Building weak links through social contact is a multi-pronged process that involves partnership between the individual and the church. Furthermore, those weak links should be BOLD.

So let’s get on it.

Theology After Google is Synymous With Posion

2010-03-09T10:10:00.000-08:00

Apprising Ministries Article One

Apprising Ministries Article Two

I came across the first article via something called the 'Rapture Forums' when I typed in "brian mclaren philip clayton' on Google. This Ken Silva guy seems convinced that there is one orthodox, true Christianity. And it isn't the one Brian McLaren or Philip Clayton believe in. He discusses process theology, emergence, (anything not sola scriptura based) as being a labyrinth maze of theologies that sound good to the listener but are not actually the good news. They're the work of the devil!! And Ken Silva believes Satan is a real figure. Ken Silva needs to be reminded of his social location.

He mentions the upcoming TAG conference and describes it as being in error for:

Therein lies their attack in trying to say that there’s more than one way to be Christian

And the conference is going to be a:

For the TAG conference next week will begin a major Emerging Church push of this poison progressive Christian theology, which is nothing more than a warped and toxic twisting of the actual Christian faith.

Nonetheless, as someone who believes that there are multiple ways of being Christian, I'm still looking forward to it.

test

2010-03-06T11:10:00.001-08:00

Ireland, Youth Group, and Brian McLaren (and Comics)

2010-03-05T22:47:00.000-08:00

I promised on my twitter that I would post about Ireland and Comics. I also want to post about Youth Group and Brian McLaren so you lucky ducks get all four in one! I'll subtitle them so you can skip sections if you like =)

Ireland: I was asked in chapel recently about my opinion on what went on in Ireland during the time frame about which the Murphy Report was written. My response has to do with the number of clergy present in Ireland and the amount of church attendance. From the 1990s onwards, with abuse scandals coming to light, the number of priests declined as did the number of parishioners - drastically on both counts. In some places (including Ireland) church attendance is at 20%. Pedophilia is a crime of opportunity. With those numbers it's easy enough to imagine. That does not pardon those activities but it does not make them surprising.

The larger issue is how far up this cover-up goes. That is the damnable thing. Four bishops have resigned from their pastoral roles. But they're still on the bank role of the church and are still receiving pensions. I find this part extremely troubling. In Catholicism, a bishop is always a bishop, that title cannot be taken away. How it is in Protestant denominations?

These articles makes it clear that the religion for which the Irish have been killing and being killed for, for hundreds of years, will cease from Ireland in our lifetime. To be replaced, however, by a new form. The article linked about (drastically on all counts) describes how in France the decline of priests has led to most churches being run entirely by lay people, with a priest visiting only once in a while. I would love to conduct a study on this. I wonder what it looks like to have a church without a priest and how that has transformed the way people experience Catholicism in those areas. It would be fascinating to spend a year in Ireland studying this phenomenon.

Brian McLaren: Speaking with Brian McLaren has made me want to give his other books a shot. I was not wild with "A New Kind of Christianity" when I finished it but speaking to him in TAG class on Tuesday was great. (Sidebar: I talk to him at around minute 55. I talk with my hands like I have ties to the mob) He is incredibly pastoral and very friendly. I wish had had more time so that I could have pressed him on my question. I asked him about "losing respect for Jesus" and his response to me, in a nutshell, was that the best way to talk about Jesus is through story telling. If someone has no intention of opening up a New Testament then we are responsible, as Christians, for the stories we tell. The other questions asked were fascinating.
He shared an anecdote that really struck me. When he was working with a youth group he pulled out a drawing board and asked them to help him construct two lists. The first was about what debates were going on in the church. The second was about what they stayed up late at night talking about with their friends. The two boards had *nothing* in common. It was with this idea in mind that I went into Youth Group this Wednesday.

Youth Group: I love my youth group. I never thought when I started that I would enjoy working with middle schoolers but G-d gives us surprises all the time. This week I had to facilitate a discussion on the "four marks/pillars" of the church: one, holy, catholic, apostolic. I made a sweet power-point presentation and we showed an "Epic" video. After wards was an hour that rejuvenated me for the whole week. Hands shot into the air! The kids were straining to ask their questions, to have their thoughts addressed. And the questions were all over the map - everything from genesis to transubstantiation. And we set aside two shoe boxes - one for "i want to see more in youth group" notes and one for "i have questions about Catholicism/g-d/sex/whatever that I'm too embarrassed to ask out loud." Both boxes had slips of paper in them. From your perspective and experience, how would you explain the difference between Catholics and Protestants?
I love those kids.

Comics: That's right. Comics. I am surrounded by them at my awesome job. I love working for Nostalgic. Today we had the latest Star Trek movie playing in the background. I have now essentially seen it three times. I also spent a good part of the day reading Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8. And making a Librarything for the store. The other staff are really chill, interesting people. I can't wait to borrow Battlestar Galactica. And make time to watch it. I love working there.

Anything New about McLaren's Christianity ? Not Really

2010-02-17T22:15:00.000-08:00

Chapter 22 - Conclusion: A New Kind of Christianity

As I sit here with ashes on my face I agree with the fourth point McLaren makes, referring to one of his older books. He writes,
"...all our world's religions are failing to inspire us to address the first three crises (prosperity, equity, security), and in fact too often they are inspiring us to behave in ways counterproductive to human survival." - 254

What McLaren is feeling is what people in every single generation of religious people have felt. "...a curiosity, a desire for better answers than you inherited so far." (259) This last section of the book is nothing that I have not read before. It's comforting to see those words in print but they are the same ones that I have heard every day at Divinity school. We as leaders are called to inspire our congregations to good works, to reconciliation and healing, to question and to seek answers as we are learning to do effectively in the classroom. Therefore, A New Kind of Christianity, was an interesting read but I can't say that I learned anything new by reading it.

Too overqualified to affect change?

2010-02-17T22:07:00.000-08:00

Chapter 21: Living the Questions in Community
This chapter addresses the problem that all pastors face: "I felt I had to convert everyone to see things my way before I could confidently live out my new perspectives" (243)

He voices the same system that Dorothee Solle espouses - praxis --> theology --> praxis

He offers a hypothetical Q&A session for people who feel they are advancing religiously beyond people in their congregation (either as lay or ministry).

McLaren then quotes Schaller who is quoting Thomas Kuhn:

"Almost always the [people] who achieve these fundamental invitations of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change." (247)

Yes, everyone has something to offer, but I found it disenfranchising to read that:

"It's young leaders, often without formal credentials, who can help established denominations change in ways the "properly trained" can't. (247-248)

Something about these two sentences made me bristle.

There is something arrogant about them and may be a reflection of McLaren's own social location and experience. However, as someone who is being "properly trained" (what does this actually mean?) to bring changes to my established (Catholic) denomination it's frustrating to read the implication that I will never be able to change my denomination as well as someone who is unfamiliar with it.

I ask others who are taking Masters Programs or who are ministers who were "properly trained" however you define it, how you feel about these quotes?

Current Religion Color: Rainbow!

2010-02-17T21:58:00.000-08:00

I was assigned to blog on the last part of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity. So here goes -

Like the other parts of this book, Part X: The What-Do-We-Do-Now Question is divided into three chapters that I will address in turn.

Chapter 20: How Can We Translate Our Question Into Action?
He opens with one of the quotes that has always appealed to me from Acts 5:38-39 (It's accuracy is debatable but it poses an interesting question that can be applied to all major religions) - the words are said by Rabbi Gamaliel, speaking out against those who wish to destroy Christians.

So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; ³⁹but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!’

What does a quote like this mean for religious pluralism? Can this statement not be applied to all of the world religions? Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism itself are all validated in this quote's framework if we consider a religion's success based on numbers and longevity.

The other quote, McLaren's own that I appreciated (on page 227) was this:

When the head, heart and hand come together...then faith, reason and tradition will come together too, and personal and social holiness will be for us two expressions of one great love.

He then went on to do something that was a combination of mixed metaphors and gave me pause. Like many others who want to take a macrocosmic view at history, McLaren took a stab and describing the history of Christianity in terms of seven stages - complete with their own colors. The easiest way for me to explain it is to do a diagram:

Problem: Presented in a progressive way - as though one moved cleanly from the other and all people made this transition at the same time. But wait! We're all at different places in this quest! (233)

And each part is not better than the one before it, "the new stage into which we are growing isn't right; it's simply appropriate and adequate for the challenges we now face"(237) - but isn't this sentence implying that there is one that's preferable, because it's more appropriate? - so zones red through violet are inappropriate - well, that's not stopping anyone from feeling those ways long past they are acceptable to people from the "higher rungs (of the metaphorical religion ladder)" (237).

Losing Respect for Jesus - Response to A New Kind of Christianity

2010-02-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

Brian McLaren, evangelical, thinker, innovator. I would never have anticipated picking up a book by a self named evangelical and enjoying it but color me surprised. His latest book, A New Kind of Christianity, had me hooked from the quote on the first page. These are my impressions from the first chapter.

He describes doing a speaking engagement while people were leaving sheets of paper on cars outside about what a heretic he was (I paraphrase). He describes the problem this way:

Expansion inside the building, contraction outside (3)

It begs the question: What role can social media play in bringing the “expansion” outside?

My answer: The Internet is awash with information. If we have power over this information, if we control/are the machine, then we should be able to use these technologies to essentially ‘spam’ the web with positive depictions, signs of change. Reading a tweet is not the same as sitting in on a lecture but it is a start.

McLaren writes,

I increasingly understood why more and more of my friends winced when the name “Jesus” was mentioned in public. It wasn’t due to a loss of respect for Jesus, but for those who most used his name. (7)

My question: Brian, are you sure?

Let me share an anecdote. When I was in my senior year at Sarah Lawrence our Christian Union hosted an event called “Grill a Christian.” An interdenominational panel sat in the Titsworth (insert snickers here) Lecture Hall and was willing to listen and respond to any question asked. One girl raised her hand and shared an experience with us wherein some sidewalk preachers had told her that the New Testament described Jesus stoning lesbians. Don’t ask me where those guys got it and even if she misheard what they were saying, that was the impression she was left with. An agnostic atheist (atheist until scientific proof of G-d is discovered) who was unchurched and unversed in the NT has no way of knowing whether or not this is true. She clearly didn’t go and look it up and she had not been provided the space to ask that question before hand. A Biblically illiterate (not meant as a derogatory statement) girl has been left with the impression that Jesus stoned lesbians. So when she cringes at the word Jesus, I am going to go out on a limb and say that it is because of the name, not only the people who used his name.

How can we assume that a person can have respect for Jesus at all? (Given the visible pervasiveness of negative action that happens as a result of people interpreting WWJD in ways that hurt others)

A cynical question, perhaps, but I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Nonetheless I am eager to see where the next chapters take us and will update accordingly, culminating with the post I have to write for class, on chapter ten. The importance of developing space where questions can be asked without worry about how to ask them or the appropriateness of them is crucial to the church today – making those spaces is how I want to spend my life.

The Isolation Experiment?

2010-02-07T20:04:00.000-08:00

"Technology is anything that extends the human senses." Example: a glass extends the capacity of the body, making it so that you can hold water and something else, as opposed to if you were using your hands for water and could therefore not do anything else with them at the same time.

Technology changes how we interact with the world. The Medium is the message.
Technology reshapes patterns of social interdependence.
Example: I went to a flea market this morning with my mother and she saw a painting that may have been worth something. If she had an iTouch or an iPhone she could have checked the artist immediately.
Example: A few weeks ago I went with a friend to Long Beach and on the way home we got lost. Instead of relying on going to a gas station to ask for directions we used her iPhone. This got me to wondering about how access to technology that extends almost all the senses (except for smell) and gives us access to people hundreds of miles away also cuts us off from the people within a ten block radius.

I wonder if I had an iPhone and only used self-serve lines in stores and movie theatres how little would I need to speak to people? I mean, use my voice. If I still had access to social networking on my device, how socially isolated would I feel? Perhaps a study to undertake.

"How we express our experience of the divine can change how we experience the divine."
This makes a lot of sense to me but thinking about my social experiment above - how would my experience change if I did mass online? or watched it on tv? Or listened to it via podcast without visual aids? I am going to try these sometime in the near future and report back. The iPhone...well, if someone wants to give me one =) I hear a lot of Catholics describe missing the Latin Mass as "missing the smells and bells" - this has only rarely ever been part of my experience so I can't say it's something that I would miss. Recently, I have been noticing the sun flickering through the windows in church and the way it plays of peoples' hair. I think I would miss that; we'll see.

When I was in a class on Sufism at Sarah Lawrence with professor Kristin Sands, we had to spend a week speaking without using self-referential words (I, me, etc). I will post the paper of my impressions in my next post just as soon as I learn how to do html cuts (>) on blogger.

The Internet is Only Liberating to Those Who Have Access to It

2010-01-31T20:24:00.000-08:00

Bob Ekblad writes in his book, Reading the Bible with the Damned, "All who follow Christ are called to be bearers of G-d's good news to the poor. ... We must seek out personal contact, always with an openness to listen in order to understand, recognizing our own tendency to distrust and judge. ... When mainstream Christians are absent from the lives of marginalized people, the gap only widens, impoverishing everyone." (xv-xvi)

I have been thinking a lot about the Theology After Google class and the value we have been placing on the technological revolution that we are currently going through. It's amazing, it's spectacular! (no word in the vernacular...) If you have access to a computer and then to the internet. I know that there are exceptions - Steve Knight shared his knowledge of homeless men who use internet cafes to blog, but on the whole what this revolution means for the church is comes under fire in my mind because of its inherent exclusivity.

Bob Ekblad writes about doing Bible Study in prison and working with men whose family's cannot afford the phone call to communicate with them (13). What does it mean for the church if we invest all our time in appropriating new technology to better reach our middle class congregations? How much risk do we run by further alienating the marginalized through technology?

I think its very difficult to imagine what it must be like not to have access to instant information. Not being able to shoot a quick email to a family member and hearing back that day. But that is the case for innumerable people in this country and around the globe. We giggle about 56k but there are plenty of people who use that connection still. If we look then only at people who use weak internet connections then we can make the best website in the world, fill it with links and videos, but it won't matter if it takes twenty minutes for that site to load. Do people who are already isolated sit back and hope for an email over a face-to-face encounter?

The internet is a great tool for people who have access and time. I recognize the irony of pondering this subject on the internet.

More Later.

No Growth = Church Death - Really?

2010-01-31T17:30:00.000-08:00

Tripp posted this link on his twitter. The article is about trends in the church and the writer said this:
"5. Declining mobility rate. Americans have stopped uprooting (that is, relocating at least 10 miles from their current home) at the pace they used to. According to a Nielsen study, the percent of the U.S. population that moves is at an all-time low. This could spell trouble for churches whose growth is tied to the turnover rate." (I added the bold)

The first comment for this article was "why does a church have to grow?" and a discussion followed wherein numerous others pointed out the necessity for church growth while this commenter held his/her ground. I thought I would throw my two cents in here. Church growth is, in my mind, never a bad thing in theory (of course, it depends on the kind of church). As I learned last semester in World Religions in Dialogue, many new immigrant religious communities are incredibly focused on educating their children so that their religion will continue to survive in a country where it is not the majority. So in my mind a church that is dying is one that has no young people, or very few young people. I worked in a church that had only one family with children, so if that family didn't show up, there wasn't Sunday school. In its hey-day this had been a church that had to split up its Sunday school by grade and it longed to return to that. It wasn't for lack of trying, they just couldn't retain new members.

Going into a church that's mostly empty is like walking into a dance that only has ten people in it. You know what I mean, you open the door and you look inside and you either back out slowly or grin and bear it. It's awkward. What's more awkward is when the people really want you to stay. Have you ever noticed that the more someone wants you to do something the less appealing it starts to become? Similar with churches that are worrying about their numbers. It's written all over the faces of the congregants.

I think that when a church is concerned about its numbers then it is dying. When a church has a community that is self sustaining with its members are happy with one another and confident with the continuation of their denomination then that church is not dying, in my mind.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.
More Later

GenX's Religious Music Videos

2010-01-30T18:15:00.001-08:00

Black Hole Sun is next on Beaudoin's list of music that expresses GenX religious sentiment.

I agree with Beaudoin on this one, it certainly captures the middle-class-izing of Christianity in a way that is unnerving but honest. Though I am inclined to think there is more to what the intentions were behind this video. However, the internet has told me everything from "it meant nothing" to that it's about sex and/or drugs to that it's a prayer to Satan(?)

Unfortunately, unlike Tori Amos or Stipe - the guys from Soundgarden don't like to do any crazy wiggle-y dancing. Neither does Kurt Cobain

The GenX Music Video Playlist

2010-01-30T18:02:00.000-08:00

Virtual Fatih: The Irreverent Spiriutal Quest of Generation X provides the reader with a list of music videos that express the opinions and feelings of GenX on the subject of religion, or at least, the institutions thereof. Being unfamiliar with some of them, I decided to look them up on youtube and post them here for your enjoyment and my learning. I believe that Tom Beaudoin's descriptions of the videos are accurate and his interpretations valid but I wanted to see them for myself.

Tori Amos' Crucify video - the "i've been raising up these hands, drive another nail in" line is particularly poignant. I am embedding it here - however, after hunting around on the internet I cannot find the version that Beaudoin refers to in his book on page 52. He says there is clip of her in relation to this video where there is the image of a cross in a birdcage. If anyone can find it and could post the link that would be great. The video is worth watching nonetheless.

R.E.M. - Losing My Religion
Found a Gregorian chanting version of the song - pretty cool. Putting it here even along with the original video.

I could not find an version of the original music video that I could embed so I am linking it here. (It loads with an ad before it, my apologies). So here is my challenge - do you think the person who falls from the sky in the video is Jesus? I also think that Beaudoin spends too much time looking at the first image in the video, not the whole video. He writes that spilled milk is the image for religion and if that is the case "Is the loss of religion, of an institution something to be mourned?" (53). I think that the characters in the video want a restoration - otherwise why would they attempt to reconstruct wings for the fallen being? Why would the book at the end of the video have the wings placed behind it, if not for it to rise back up? Beaudoin also says that the video is missing a "proper religious icon" (53). The characters in the sky, I believe, are reminiscent of religious icons. Are we to say that because there isn't a cross that there is no icon in the whole video?

Losing My Religion is a lament, to be certain, and Stipe said it was about obsession - and isn't that what faith is to begin with?

There are many more songs but I fear this post is getting too long so I will update with more of the videos discussed by Beaudoin in upcoming posts.

More later.

What Would Google Do? - Post Two

2010-01-25T17:33:00.000-08:00

Hello again! I am continuing to peruse this book and will share more thoughts on it. I would recommend checking out the following other blogs that have some great posts about the work. Go read what Wes and Jon have to say.

Working my way through part one of the book, which gives the rules of Google, I was reminded when reading the section "Think Distributed" (36-39) of this SinFest strip. The speaker clearly expected everyone to come to him and that's why it didn't work. It is a similar situation in the church today - we must go out to the people; we no longer live in a world (we probably never did) where it's expected that everyone goes to church on a Sunday. In my youth group there are plenty of kids whose families are "busy on Sundays." I wonder how many of those parents know that the church has a podcast and if they did, would they listen to it? Jarvis speaks about removing advertising as a business and relying on the word of month of the consumer. I think that this will be a challenge for most mainline churches because many parishioners are uncomfortable with evangelism even as small as inviting someone to come to church with them. So, some advertising is necessary. I am pretty sure that's why every church has the board outside that says what the sermon title is for the week. I know I once when to a Lutheran service because I liked the billboard. Would it cheapen a church board to say "Follow us on Twitter?"

I think the other statement made by Jarvis that is important for the church is related and found on page 35 "...ask yourself: How can you act as a platform?" I am thinking about this in terms of religious education (which I what I want to do). So many books on the subject offer a section on how to evaluate a curriculum to see if it is right for you. Is there a review site or a forum for this issue? I found one but it's not fully comprehensive. I would love to see a mashup of RE curriculums that would show me which ones use the same information/techniques, etc so that I could make my own mash up from the selected options. Maybe I'll make that website for my final project =) Frankly, I am also curious to know how many other curriculums rip off an SNL Chris Farley monologue to talk about the Holy Spirit. Forums would be part of this site as well, or a highly detailed review section to talk about the effectiveness, etc of these selections. I think this would make a world of difference for Religious Educators.

The final part of section one spoke to my understanding of my role as an educator: "Make something useful. Help people use it. And then... Get out of the way" (118). That's what I want when I teach; to provide tools that the other learners can utilize themselves and then step out and let them use it. I think it's crucial to the church today. I would not mind an empty church if I knew that people had taken what they had learned and were using it to make themselves and the world a better place. I think WWGD has a lot of insights that the church could benefit from and I am also seeing ways many churches are already on the bandwagon. Churches with comprehensible, easy to find websites are thinking appropriately for the new technological age. The Vatican recently told its priests to start blogging. The experience of church (community gathering for worship, etc) was never confined to one hour on Sunday morning and but I think it behooves us to be using new technology to our advantage.

More Later

What Would Google Do? - Post One

2010-01-21T17:24:00.000-08:00

----
This is my first homework assignment for my course "Theology After Google" at the Claremont School of Theology
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Jeff Jarvis' work, What Would Google Do? poses some interesting questions. In the opening chapter of Jarvis' rules it was the first that struck me as having implications for the church. What do I mean by the church? I mean the church as a worship space and as a body of people connected by common threads of belief. The first rule of Google is "Give the people control and we will use it" (13).
When I had my first job this was my reason for leaving. I felt as though I had no control whatsoever, that I was not treated as an intelligent human being. I couldn't handle $20 bills for goodness sakes. I left because I found a job where I was given responsibility and the ability to utilize it. What would the church look like if everyone had control? Theoretically, even with hierarchy, everyone does have control. If no one shows up to the worship space, can we even still designate it as such? If no one gives money to the church, how long would it last? Conversely, people in a congregation act autonomously of one another; and I doubt how many people participate in forums and blog about their experience at a specific church. I don't go online to read reviews of congregations like I would restaurants or movies; instead, if I want to go to a new church I have to show up and hope for the best. (Unless, of course, I go here, as I have just discovered).
But the question remains - what if each church had a component on its website (assuming it has one) that allowed to post their opinions about the space, the service, etc. I wonder if a rating system could be developed. The problem with the Yelp! search option is that people give churches stars based on what they like about the space; there is no system for searching in a more advanced way about a church. For example, I may give a church 5 stars because I like that it's small, whereas another person might find that suffocating. If there was a way to refine the search the address such things as congregation size, friendliness/welcoming of the congregation, rate the sermons given, what sort of music they use and how much people participate, etc. No system is perfect but it's something I would like to see. If such a thing existed, people would use it. I also wonder if people communicated more openly among themselves and with their leaders that we wouldn't see more churches dying out.

A quote from the last chapter: "An age of transparency must be an age of forgiveness" (232). This quote reminded me of high school. It's often said that the first two years of high school aren't as important as the second two. If you pull your grades up junior year, that's more important than anything you did the first two years. Mistakes in those two years can be forgiven. One of the predominant concerns that I first had when I joined Facebook was the same that others had - employers might be looking. At what point does something become forgivable? If there is a picture of me with a silo cup on Facebook from a year ago is that going to count against me now? For those of us learning and working towards becoming professionals in the religious field (teachers, ministers, chaplains, etc) what is it appropriate for our congregants to know? Should we be entirely open? There are so many social networking sites would I be betraying those I serve if I had a social networking account for them and kept a different one for my friends?

Jarvis talks about Generation G- the G standing for Google. I decided to search this term and the predominant posts talk about the G standing for Generosity. Perhaps this explains why concern for Haiti seems so pervasive.

More later.

And it was night

2009-07-13T21:58:00.001-07:00

Arguably one of the most dramatic lines in the Bible* from John 13:30. Jesus has just given Judas a piece of bread that has been dipped in a dish (is it possible for there to be black humor about the Eucharist? If so, it's here) and "So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night".

I was originally looking for another quote from John but I came across this one and I remembered the first time I had heard it read aloud and how it sent shivers down my spine. If this done in a play or a film I would hope for an immediate black out, with an ominous voice in the background. This is perhaps the wrong way to think about it, since without Judas' betrayal none of this would be possible; however, the lover of creep and macabre in me enjoys the suspense, the rush of adrenaline that comes with this passage.

I intend to take some time this summer to look at how night is used in the New Testament. Not darkness, dimness, or day (for comparison) but the word night alone. I may stretch to the other words but for now only that one. John's usage is very specific, I believe that the authors wanted that sense of candles being blown out, especially with the way John juxtaposes light and darkness throughout the book.

It makes me think of the dark night of the soul and about Judas in those moments. Rumi might say that the dark night of the soul is not something to be feared because as long as you are longing for G-d then that means He is speaking to you. Rumi phrases it more eloquently in a poem wherein he writes that a man is crying out to G-d and G-d responds "every time you called out my name it was me whispering "I am here" " (I paraphrase here). So when Judas goes out into the night, out away from the light, which is assumed here to be Jesus, is he experiencing the dark night of the soul? He is doing the bidding of G-d, what has to be done in order to redeem mankind.

And then I think of John's description of Judas eating the bread is that the moment he consumed it "Satan entered in to him" (13:27). Again there is this example of Satan as henchman of G-d, entering Judas...perhaps because it was something Judas could not do himself? But the writers paint Judas in a very poor light in the book of John, claiming that he stole from the poor box (12:6 - one my favorite parenthetical inserts in the Bible).

John is a confusing text and there is more to think on in all these matters.

*New Oxford Annotated Edition

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In other news, I had my first day of work today at the Huntley Bookstore. I think I am going to like it there, even the green aprons. The people are friendly and the hours I have for this week allow me to sleep in every day I have work. On Wednesday, I am going with Brenda and Christian down to the San Diego Zoo.

I found out three of the courses I will be taking next semester at CST:
Basic Aspects of the Study of Hebrew Bible 8:30am - 11:20am Tuesday
History of World Christianity 1:00pm - 3:50pm Wednesday
World Religions in Dialogue I 1:00pm - 3:50pm Thursday

That's nine credits. I need to do 12-13 in the semester. I am not sure what my next class will be because I don't know how registration works yet but I have some ideas of what I would like to take. I am interested about the Hebrew Bible course because it sounds similar to what I did at SLC. The books are different, though.

More to follow in the coming days