Via TSK comes this announcement of a major national emerging church conversation called Emergence 2007. It’s organized by Zondervan, which just released the book “Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches.”

The book, edited by Robert Webber, features Mark Driscoll, John Burke, Dan Kimball, and Doug Pagitt, and is included with the $49 registration fee for the event.

The Seattle event is at Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church, and is hosted by Krista Tippett of NPR’s show Speaking of Faith (previously mentioned here - Aaron says it’s a good podcast). Other speakers at the Seattle event include:

• Mark Driscoll
• Dan Kimball
• Doug Pagitt
• Karen Ward

Here’s a PDF of the brochure, uploaded by Andrew Jones (TSK). Blurb from the official non-website (which doesn’t even include a proper title for the event):

Over the past several years there has been for some a growing uneasiness and for others an unprecedented excitement about the church among emerging generations. There is a movement afoot in our world called the “emerging church” that has called into question the normal way of doing church and being the church. Many are wondering if In our post-Christian world the church has become little more than a resting place for all things religious. The emerging church movement is making waves that have caught the attention of PBS, ABC and other major media networks. The New York Times, Time magazine and Christianity Today have featured lead articles on the churches and leaders who make up this movement.

Joim us for a unique weekend conversation that will feature many of the key leaders in the emerging church movement. This event will provide you with a first-hand experience with people who are reimagining what the church can be for a post-Christian world. Come and interact with key leaders about the beliefs, practices and ways of engaging culture in the way of Jesus. They may not always agree with each other, but one thing they all agree that the church can be a place where people meet God. link

For the record, while I’m glad this is happening, I doubt I’ll go (though some strange people might convince me otherwise :)). My reticence centers around two questions:

• Is this just a way to sell books? Are we being co-opted by publishing houses?
• Is the emerging conversation - at least, the highly blogosphere-centric part - petering out?

On the first question, I think the most accurate answer is no, we’re not being co-opted. But I’m definitely less excited about this event because it’s being run by a publisher, even though the big names are going to be there.

On the second question, I think a lot of us have gotten used to the idea of doing things in new ways, and are tired of talking about it or arguing about it. I know Radical Congruency sees a lot less of this type of conversation than it once did.

It’s now mostly people from traditional churches who are talking about the emerging church, or people who are brand new to the conversation. If that’s you, welcome.

Sorry the site (and others I host) are a bit slow at the moment. Growing pains. We’ll be adding more servers in a more robust load-balanced configuration ASAP.

The town of Ballymena, in Northern Ireland, had a big scare yesterday. An unidentified “object” was found outside a police station, and duly detonated in a controlled explosion by the army due to terrorism concerns.

From a police spokesperson:

In this case, the object was outside the perimeter of the station, and away from the entrance - and totally out of place - so we therefore had concerns for the safety of members of the public as well as for police officers and staff.

The object in question? A roll of tape.

This seems to be the type of overreaction on the scale of the Boston Mooninite Scare last month.

Via BBC.

Can you blame them?

Wal-Mart vice-chairman Michael Duke is in Mumbai for talks with Bharti bosses and government representatives. Wal-Mart and Bharti are planning a joint venture for cash-and-carry.

A statement from Wal-Mart says Mr Duke is visiting India “to learn more about the market first-hand and to further explore the wholesale cash-and-carry business”.

Via BBC.

AMC Theatres is hosting an “AMC Best Picture Showcase” event Saturday, Feb. 24, at 78 select AMC theatres nationwide (check local listings for availability and showtimes). For $30 (and about 13 hours of your time), see all 5 films that are nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, plus bottomless soda and popcorn. (The award show is this Sunday, February 25).

Yes, I think it’s a fine idea to spend all day sitting down, watching five emotionally draining films, while overdosing on trans fats (”butter spray”), sodium, caffeine, and sugar/corn syrup. Oscarwatch calls it a “butt-numb-athon”. Heh.

Although (or perhaps because?) I am excited and enthusiastic about the Oscars, I don’t need to go to the Best Picture Showcase - I have seen 4 of the five films nominated (Babel, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen). I’ll try to see Letters from Iwo Jima if I have a chance.

As fun as it sounds to binge on the best films of 2006 with like-minded procrastinators, I’d recommend taking it a little easier. Little Miss Sunshine, The Departed, and Babel are all out on DVD. That just leaves The Queen and Iwo Jima to see in theatres, if you must be fully informed by Sunday.

I’m going to take a wild guess that being the last movie, the most lighthearted movie, and the most sweet movie, Little Miss Sunshine will be seen as the best of the five.
-Oscarwatch

Check it out. The only participating theatre in the Seattle metro area is Kent (compare to the 7 theatres in the Los Angeles metro).
Link.

No, I did not write these, but there is a certain resonance with my sense of humor, as my friends/victims can attest.

• What if there were no hypothetical questions?
• If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?
• Is there another word for synonym?
• What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
• If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?

Badum-ching. Via email forward (yes, I’ve sunk that low in my blogging, at least temporarily).

To give this post some redeeming value, I will include some personal news: yesterday I went to Virginia Mason Hospital to visit the gastroenterology department and find out why I’ve gotten food stuck in my throat twice now (it happened again a few weeks ago). I apparently had a Schatzki ring, which the doctor discovered during my esophagogastroduodenoscopy, which is both a procedure used to look down the throat and quite certainly the longest real word I’ve ever used on this blog.

The ring was treated via Bougie dilation (hehehe). I had a type of anesthesia which the doctors say does not cause unconsciousness, but makes it so “you can’t feel anything, you don’t care about anything, and don’t remember anything.” They were right - I didn’t remember a thing, including getting the anesthesia. I’m fine now. I will post the pictures of my esophagus if enough people leave a comment, and that would make your day more exciting than you could possibly have anticipated, right?

Perhaps the anesthesia has not worn off after all. Fun fact: any documents you sign after receiving this type of anesthesia are not legally binding, and you are not allowed to drive for the rest of the day.

King County Executive Ron Sims wants to know. King County, which includes Seattle and surrounding suburbs, is considering banning trans fats in restaurants.

As you may recall, NYC moved to ban trans fats in restaurants a few months ago. At the time, I was under the impression that trans fats do not occur in nature, but apparently I was wrong about that. The poll says:

Eating trans fat increases the risk of coronary heart disease. Trans fats occur naturally and in small quantities in some meat and dairy products. Most trans fats are created as a side effect of partial hydrogenation of plant oils. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires that products containing trans fatty acids require stringent nutritional labeling starting in 2006. Learn more below and vote.

I will be interested to see how people on the west coast feel about this proposal.

How will people come to faith in Christ without the shared vocabulary that was commonly understood in our culture fifty years ago?

Twenty years ago, the solution was to remove all of the vocabulary. We ended up with vacuous megachurch theology, and stupid books with no theological content but lots of pseudo-Christian tips for better living (I’m making assumptions here, so forgive me if I’m wrong about this book).

While megachurches are still cropping up all over the place and growing like crazy, they have failed to capture the imagination of the postmodern generations. They are big and popular for the reasons that malls are big and popular - because people like what they can get there. They aren’t popular for the reasons that, say, the Jerusalem church was popular in the first century.

So let’s assume that the way to faith is not through a church with no religious language or icky bible talk. The Christian faith is a complex system of beliefs, practices, history, and documents, and can’t be faithfully reduced to four steps or ten chapters in a how-to-believe book.

Consider the plight of someone who encounters Christ and the Christian faith, and wants to sign up, or is at least considering it. They enter a church that uses the insider vocabulary (which could be a non-traditional housechurch, or a very traditional church in a building), and are taken aback.

All religions have some type of specialized vocabulary. Some people are attracted to the ancient-sounding words (especially the Latin), and find that such language awakens their sense of mystery and transcendence. Some people find it weird and off-putting. What’s a church to do?

The best advice I have heard is to use the terminology, but be ready to explain it when necessary. For someone new to the faith, though, that may not be enough. Will we need to explain 4,000 years of history in order to help someone understand the pivotal concepts of Christianity?

Perhaps we can translate the bolder points of the Gospel into more readily understood terms. What would such translation look like? Do we need a user-friendly dictionary for our faith? Would such a project become so densely self-referential that it would no longer be helpful, at least in communicating with someone who is only casually interested?