21 Friday Mar 2008
Posted in Uncategorized
I was 12 for 16 yesterday. Here are the answers for the second day of madness:
East: North Carolina, Indiana, University of Oklahoma, Louisville, Butler, and Tennessee win
Midwest: Villanova, Vanderbilt, Gonzaga, and Georgetown win
South: Memphis, Mississippi State, St. Mary’s, and Texas win.
West: Western Kentucky, and Connecticut win.
Am I right?
20 Thursday Mar 2008
Posted in Uncategorized
The NCAA Tournament will begin minutes of my starting this post. And the best thing about the “dance” is its accessibility, anyone can fill out a bracket. You don’t have to know anything about the teams (I’m still not sure if knowing the teams helps me or hurts me) you can go with the seeding, or ignore it completely. Some years your gut makes you look like a genius (like the year I picked Missouri and Kent State, who were both 12 seeds to go to the elite 8 and I was right about both of them!) and other years it makes you look like an idiot, like my upset picks every other year.
I would like to combine the ability that the bracket brings to make anyone an expert with blogging’s ability to allow anyone to have a platform to pretend to be an expert. Today I am going to post the winners of all 16 games today, and I will timestamp my picks for each day. We’ll see if the picks I make in the later rounds are teams that are even still playing!
The other great thing about blogging is that it is interactive. So, feel free to tell me where you disagree and who you like.
Ok, so here are my picks for Thursday March 20th:
In the East: George Mason and Washington State win
In the Midwest: Kansas, Kent State, Kansas State, and Wisconsin win
In the South: Michigan State, Oral Roberts, Marquette, and Stanford win
In the West: UCLA, Texas A&M, Baylor, Xavier, West Virginia, and Duke win
Let the games begin!
19 Wednesday Mar 2008
Posted in Technology
Tags
Goodness gracious, do we care too much about our computer loyalties! Check out the comments that Tony Jones got on his blog when he posted about his new Mac and missing the right click. Some of them are helpful and some are hillarious (my favorite was comment #23)! But what struck me is that Tony writes some insightful and thought-provoking stuff, but it is the mundane post about missing the right-click on his new Mac that gets a quick 23 comments!
Brand loyalty among Mac owners is almost ridiculous. I finally bought the hype last February and bought a MacBook when my PC laptop’s screen would no longer work. I like the Mac very much, I think I would buy another one, but I am definitely not as hardcore as many of the people posting at Tony Jones’ blog. But, I had not figured out that you could change a setting on the trackpad and be able to use a two finger click to replace the PC right-click.
You learn something new everyday.
18 Tuesday Mar 2008
Posted in Book Review
I have seemed to enjoy each one of Brian McLaren’s new books more than his last. It was, therefore, with great anticipation that I began to read his latest book: Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.
McLaren seeks to address two preoccupying questions in Everything Must Change; What are the biggest problems in the world? And, What doe Jesus have to say about these global problems? These questions led to further questions like “Why hasn’t the Christian religion made a difference commensurate with its message, size, and resources? What would need to happen for followers of Jesus to become a greater force for good in relation to the world’s top problems? How could we make a positive difference (12)?”
Everything Must Change is carefully organized in order to address these questions. The book is organized into eight parts that each consist of around four very short chapters. The first four parts discuss McLaren’s “preoccupying questions,” the problem as he sees it and how Jesus relates to the questions and problems. The next three parts of the book discuss the three primary parts of what McLaren refers to as the “Societal Machine.” These parts are the Security System, the Prosperity System, and the Equity System. McLaren argues that the Societal Machine has gone suicidal. McLaren writes: “Eventually, you’d have to agree, the societal machine could grow to a size where it demanded more resources than the environment could provide and produce more wastes than the environment could absorb. At that point, the machine would go suicidal” (63). McLaren’s argument is that the Security System, Prosperity System, and Equity System are all dysfunctional and unless we find a way to reframe the story, the machine will go suicidal.
One of the major strengths of Everything Must Change is McLaren’s boldness in drawing attention to some of the ways that American culture is dysfunctional and ultimately self-defeating (or suicidal). Everything Must Change offers a needed critique of the culture of comfort and security that has proliferated without a critique from the American Church for far too long. While McLaren is certainly not the first person to offer such a critique, his growing popularity as the bearded grandfather of Emergent places him in a situation where he is able to speak to a larger and larger audience.
The ideas in this book are already put into practice in subtle ways. For example, the book itself is “green” as the dust jacket testifies that it is printed on “acid-free, environmentally friendly paper using approved green printing standards.” The copyright page further mentions that the paper is from “well-managed forests, controlled sources and recycled wood or fiber.”
McLaren mentions in a footnote that his prior book, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth That Could Change Everything, should be seen as a companion volume to Everything Must Change. I would actually say that it is essential to read The Secret Message of Jesus before reading Everything Must Change because I often felt that McLaren’s discussion assumed familiarity with the arguments and information presented in The Secret Message of Jesus. In other words, the explicitly Christ-centered material is not as obviously present in Everything Must Change.
My other thought, which I touched on in my review of Tony Jones’ The New Christians, is that Brian McLaren is famous! I have been amazed at the amount of publicity surrounding this book; book displays at Barnes and Noble that John Grisham would envy, a book tour, and I even got a random email asking me to pass out fliers before a book tour stop (that was actually nowhere near where I live). It seems to me that many people who have responded to McLaren’s message are fairly cynical of celebrities and people who seem to be larger than life. Brian McLaren is coming very close to becoming a celebrity, if he is not already one. I am interested to see how folks in Emergent respond to his increasing popularity, and what would seem to be a corresponding inaccessibility. Emergent seems to really be gaining a lot of momentum, and I will be watching to see what it does with it. Is this just the beginning, or is Emergent already peaking?
Ultimately, Brian McLaren raises some very important questions in Everything Must Change. I hope this book inspires the people who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ to examine more closely their allegiance to the kingdom of comfort and security in relationship to their allegiance to the kingdom of God. In as much as McLaren encourages followers of Jesus to bring hope into a world that is on the verge of going suicidal, this book is well worth the read and promises to stimulate much needed conversations about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in the twenty-first century.
10 Monday Mar 2008
Posted in Book Review
This weekend I was in Norman and I found myself in a Barnes and Noble with a 15% off coupon (plus another 10% off for the membership discount) and a $25 gift card all burning a hole in my pocket. The combination of these things meant that I was a man in need of a new book. The book I picked up, and ended up purchasing was The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier by Tony Jones. I found myself with some unexpected, but very much appreciated, down time on Friday and read a large chunk of this book in one sitting.
The New Christians is an engaging book that provides a helpful introduction to Emergent, from a few different angles. Jones, who is the national coordinator for Emergent Village, is ideally situated to provide many of these perspectives.
In the first chapter Jones discusses problems with the “Old Country.” One of the things that I appreciated about this chapter was that he critiqued both the problem on the left and right. The next chapter, “Dispatches from the Frontier of the American Church” is probably my favorite of the book. Jones gives a sort of insiders narrative description of how Emergent came to be. He is honest about disagreements and points of departure (particularly with Mark Driscoll) with others in the movement, especially as it has developed. In the books that I have read about Emergent, I had not previously read a narrative chronology of the development of the movement that was as helpful as this chapter.
Jones also focuses quite a bit of energy discussing the primary role that theology plays among Emergents. Jones writes:
As I looked back on my experiences in college, both at the liberal Congregational church and in the conservative campus ministry, I came to terms with the fact that these weren’t malicious people. Instead, the ways they lived out their faith were a natural response to the theologies they held. It was the theology that was broken. I’ll put it this way: theology begets a way of life. The better the theology, the better the way of life. Therefore, I claim:
Good theology begets beautiful Christianity.
And so it follows that
Bad theology begets ugly Christianity (103).
Jones concludes the book with case studies of several Emergent congregations, which helps to provide a glimpse in the variety and breadth of Emergent practice.
As I read the book I had three, not necessarily related, thoughts:
So, what are your thoughts? I am particularly interested in what ways you think Wesleyans can respond to or be a part of the Emergent conversation. What contribution do you think Emergent has to make to Wesleyan practice, or how could Wesleyan theology/practice inform Emergent?
06 Thursday Mar 2008
The seventh sermon “Watching Over One Another in Love” in the “Blueprint for Becoming Disciples” sermon series is now up. You can listen to it on my podcast here.
This sermon discusses the Wesleyan practice of “watching over one another in love” through small group accountability. One of the central arguments of the sermon is that you will either move forward or fall backward in your faith. John Wesley understood this and used small group accountability as a way to help Christians keep their faith in its proper place as the number one priority in their lives. When Christians have gathered together in order to “watch over one another in love” both communities of faith and individual Christians have tended to grow in their love of God and neighbor. Especially for Methodists, when we discontinued this practice we began to decline and lose our zeal.
Have you had any experiences with “watching over one another in love?” How did it help you in your growth as a Christian? What are other thoughts or reactions to this sermon?
05 Wednesday Mar 2008
One word of warning: I caught whatever has been going around just before I preached this sermon. I did the very best I could under the circumstances, but I felt terrible. I am afraid that shows a bit in this sermon. So, I apologize in advance.
Again, I would love to hear your reactions to this sermon!
04 Tuesday Mar 2008
Posted in Book Review
This continues the Good Readin’ series that I began a few weeks ago. I did not anticipate that it would take me this long to get to posting about this book, but sometimes life happens!
Preaching as Testimony is written by Anna Carter Florence, who is Associate Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary. I found this book to be beautifully written and it contained some pleasant surprises in a book on preaching. The primary surprise was my favorite part about the book, Carter Florence divides the book up into three sections: stories of testimony, theories of testimony, and practicing testimony.
The first section, for me, was the highlight of the book. She relates the stories of three women who preached before the practice of women preaching was widely accepted. I tremendously enjoyed the way that Anna Carter Florence was able to relate the stories of Anne Marbury Hutchinson, Sarah Osborn, and Jarena Lee to the tradition of preaching and giving testimony.
The second section was also very interesting and helpful. In the second part of the book, “Waking Up the Secrets: Theories of Testimony,” she discusses “True Speech in the Mother Tongue: Paul Ricoeur and Walter Brueggemann” in one chapter, and “Making Trouble and Making Good News: Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Rebecca Chopp” in the other chapter. These chapters helped me to think about what is happening when we give testimony and it stretched my approach to preaching in helpful ways.
The third section, “Waking Up the Preacher: Practicing Testimony,” was probably the one that I connected with the least, though it was still definitely worth reading. Readers who are looking for practical advice on how to be a “better preacher” may be tempted to skip to this section, because this is the place where Carter Florence is the most obviously offering concrete suggestions. However, to skip to this part would be, in my view, to actually miss the most helpful insights of the book, which center around the importance of reclaiming testimony as a central part of the act of preaching. Readers who are looking for “the five keys to preaching a better sermon” will be frustrated by this book, because the very nature of testimony prevents a universal catch all approach to preaching.
This book will help preachers who are trying to find their own voices in their preaching, and are trying to figure out how to claim the ways that God has moved in their lives as they preach the Word of God.
29 Friday Feb 2008
Posted in Ministry
I have been trying to make some practical applications that are specific to the General Rules in my recent sermon series on Wesley’s General Rules. When I preached on the second rule, “Do all the good that you can,” I wanted to think of a concrete way for our church to “do good” to others throughout the season of Lent.
The result of this was the decision to start a campaign at our church during Lent to give to Blood:Water Mission. If you are not familiar with Blood:Water Mission, it is an excellent organization, doing wonderful work. You should go to their website in order to get the most accurate and comprehensive information available, but here is some random info about Blood:Water Mission:
27 Wednesday Feb 2008
Posted in Book Review, Ministry
I recently read Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices by Frank Viola and George Barna. In case you haven’t heard anything about the book, Pagan Christianity? looks at many of the most taken for granted church practices in protestantism and argues that they come not from Scripture or the teachings of Jesus, but from pagan practices that were co-opted by Christians.
I found the book to be interesting, thought-provoking, and challenging. But I often got pretty frustrated with the basic premise that was, to me, applied too broadly and without nuance. To over simplify my understanding of the premise of the book: Anything that has become part of the practice of the church that did not come directly from Jesus and the New Testament is bad. (Like I said, I may be overstating it or oversimplifying the argument, but that is the best I can do in a nut shell.) Nevertheless, the authors make some excellent points about how much of what we do today in the church encourages a view of active clergy and passive laity. This is a huge problem!
In any case, I was intending to write a review of it in a week or two, in part in order to create the space to wrestle with some of the thoughts I had about the book as I read it. However, yesterday I read Dan Kimball’s review of Pagan Christianity, and it says what I would have tried to say much better than I would have said it. Kimball promises a second installment where he will post Viola’s response to the questions that Kimball raises at the end of the post. Kimball also references several other reviews in his post. If you have heard about Pagan Christianity? and you are interested in reading a review that is sympathetic yet critical, I would highly recommend this review.
For those of you who may have read this book, what are your thoughts about Pagan Christianity?
Kevin M. Watson 