I’ve completed my new site FilmNite.com, to promote our church’s Film & Spirituality events. It’s powered by WordPress, but it’s not a blog. Let me know what you think. I’m working on a tutorial on how to use WP for this purpose, but it’s not finished yet. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll be more motivated to finish it.

If you use the Google toolbar or one of the many search bars available for web browsers these days, you can use it as a handy second clipboard. Often when I’m editing something online, I want to switch out two sections of text or code, but you can only put one thing on the clipboard at a time. So I cut and paste into the searchbar, then cut and paste the second item, then retrieve my first item from the search bar and put it where it belongs.

RSS Feed: I am experiencing some problems with my RSS feed at the moment. Hopefully the bugs will be worked out in the next version of WordPress. For now, I think it’s giving excerpts, but not whole posts as I’d like. I’ll keep you posted.

Cleave has some great thoughts from EC04 and Brian McLaren:

It seems to me that as Christians, when we say that our story is “the story” (rather, we should say “God’s Story” is THE story, because, as McLaren likes to mention all the time, when we say “our” story, what story/version of Christianity are we really talking about), we’re saying that our “story” is the metanarrative. Now, postmoderns have a general incredulity toward metanarratives (thanks Lyotard?or was it Derrida?oh well) ? they don?t like the stories that like to beat up other stories. McLaren says that our story, GOD’s story, is in fact not a metanarrative, but just a big story (mega-narrative ? not a phrase he’s really latched onto, just used for lack of a better term). Our story is the story that embraces all other stories ? the Christian story is the one that welcomes, embraces, redeems all other stories. So, in the name of Jesus, we can say that we need to embrace the story of Buddhism ? to look for what is Good, True, Beautiful and Right about Buddhism. In doing so, we are truly showing respect (not disregard, rudeness, or a false imperialistic confidence) for the other stories that God may in fact have the power to work through.

Mmm. Beefy.

First, some thoughts in defense of the idea of Christian metanarrative. If God created the universe, then everything is really all about God and his work in history through Israel, Christ, and the church. Viewing Christianity as the holder of the metanarrative is then in some sense justified. But just because God holds the metanarrative doesn’t mean we do as his followers, at least not perfectly. Other religions may have found pieces we have missed.

Second, I think Cleave and McLaren are right that viewing our story as a metanarrative comes across as arrogant and imperialistic. Plenty of people respond to this with “Darn right it is. Jesus is Lord, and I’m not going to water that down.” Understandable, but maybe not the best approach.

I think society would be fine with Christians saying “This is a big story that’s worth being a part of, because it’s going somewhere.” We can acknowledge the validity and limited truth of other stories, while at the same time acknowledging the incompleteness of the truth in the story we present - not because it is an inadequate story by any means, but because we do not yet have full grasp of it, and it’s not over yet.

My main problem with critiques of the Christian metanarrative approach is that a lot of them lead to the conclusion that Christianity is no better than any other world religion. On the one hand, I can see why people wouldn’t want to come across as arrogant when talking with people of other faiths. On the other hand, if you don’t believe that your faith is real and true above all others, why bother? Sorry. My commitment to Christ is higher than my commitment to pluralistic values and being nice - even if it’s not above my commitment to truth and wisdom. Fortunately, these need not conflict. Thoughts?

Found via Hamo

I had a great discussion via IM with Hamo a few weeks ago, and the ideas are still rolling around inside my head.

I explained that our church planting team is very egalitarian and anti-pastoral-model. He was concerned that we may not be allowing for differential roles as God has prepared us for and called us to. Hamo mentioned Ephesians 4:7-13:

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. [8] This is why it says:

“When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men.”

EPH 4:9 (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? [10] He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) [11] It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, [12] to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up [13] until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

A major implication of this passage is that if we are insistent upon a flat leadership structure, with no one person serving in a way that exercises specific gifts of leadership, we are missing out on what God intends for us. Diversity, rather than flat egalitarian structure, is the idea presented here.

We have attempted to be positive in our beliefs and methodology, yet I fear that perhaps we are remaining in the negative on leadership, acting more out of what we don’t want than what we do want. This does not mean we need to appoint a pastor in the traditional sense. It may mean that we need to see ourselves leading in ways that may currently make each other uncomfortable when we’re all together.

Taking on differential leadership is hard when we perceive ourselves as equals. But it seems like we are called to very different things, and this has to have implications in the way we view ourselves as leaders.

Any thoughts?

More on leadership

Here’s my quick-start tutorial for installing WordPress. Click the following link to read it.

(more…)

I had to import my blog entries in 5 batches. By my rough calculations from the text file exported from MT, this blog (including comments) is about 50% longer than the Bible. 14 months of blogging.

Scene 1: I had a great conversation with David yesterday about how we view our mission here in Seattle. David has done a much better job than I have of focusing his efforts on being there for people and seeing himself personally as a missionary, while I’ve focused more on events and systems for our church.

We came to the conclusion that we need to represent ourselves as people that others can turn to for advice and spiritual counsel. David suggested that a Buddhist monk is not seen in a negative light the way evangelical preachers are. The idea of a guru is alive and well here. How can we connect with this as Christian missionaries?

Scene 2: DesertPastor mentions the idea of wearing clerical collars. He points out that an increasing segment of the non-Christian population really responds well to people who wear them. Discussion ensues, and he revisits the idea more recently.

Scene 3: We discuss it at church today, with some amusement and some genuine interest. We agree that it would be weird for people like us from non-vestment, non-clergy denominational backgrounds to wear them in everyday life. But we also think it would be interesting to see how people respond.

Scene 4: Neo is cool. He is trustworthy. He wears a rather Orthodox-looking outfit that doesn’t seem to interfere with martial arts or flying.

Scene 5:

Too much?

OK, it’s actually an Avery 5160 mailing label, not a clerical collar. Try before you buy, I suppose. The Reverend Mrs. Baeder didn’t like it.

What do you think? On the one hand, I strongly favor the priesthood-of-all-believers approach, even to the point of not having one person in charge of the church. On the other hand, I can appreciate the fivefold gifting paradigm of Ephesians 4:11. I don’t think that excuses anyone from being fully involved in the work of ministry as a lifestyle. On the contrary, I think it makes it clear that we are all to be heavily involved in serving Christ in some way, though that will be different for each person, as Paul’s 5 examples make clear.

This is all very complex in the context of mission in a post-Christian culture. We are not doing something that is entirely foreign and new to the people here, nor are we operating without the constraints of our own history. As people pointed out in the comments on DesertPastor’s post, even the non-liturgical denominations like baptists have designated clothing for clergy - a nice suit rather than a robe or cassock, but special clothing nonetheless.

For the first time, I find myself considering the idea that this may actually be a valid approach. It runs the risk of being misleading - we don’t want to communicate that we are actually Methodist or Catholic or Orthodox if we aren’t - but neither do such associations do us any harm. People trust those who are obviously “ministers of the gospel” or whatever you want to call them/us.

It becomes even more complex in the context of bivocational work, when we have employers who have a say in what we wear to work every day. I don’t know how it would be received if I tried to teach middle school in a clerical collar, much less a monk’s robe (an extreme option for the monastic order Jesse and I are looking into starting). I think there is a large amount of latitude in dress here, but it might not send the right message for a classroom teacher in a public school.

Right now, the only identifying garb I wear is a WWJD bracelet, which I’ve worn out of personal habit since about 1997 (well after the initial craze had crested in the South, which was intentional on my part). A lot of people notice it. Lately, I’m looking for something a little less 90s-teen-church-subculture. Maybe I could make one of those knotted bracelets with a NES controller cross (like in the UrbanMonastery banner) on a clerical-collar-black-and-white background.

Now would be the time to tell me if I’m being weird, or if this makes sense in some way. Input appreciated.

In case you didn’t hear, Aaron’s sister-in-law Charlene was in a major car accident recently. Here is her status at the moment. Aaron has started an effort to send her photos like these. Please pray for her. Here are pictures from church today:

You can email your pictures to atogle [at] eudoramail dot com.