Mike Morrell from The Ooze says:

The Ooze, the Web’s most prolific ‘emerging church & friends’ website, is looking for 50 participants in a unique partnership with quality publishers. You will be mailed books for blog review on an every-other-month to quarterly basis, free of charge. These are books on culture, theology, church history, justice, faith & science, global issues, spirituality, novels–you name it. The Ooze pre-screens each title brought up for our consideration to ensure you that it is a book of singular distinction.

Interested? Well, if you’re an off-the-beaten-path, thoughtful blogger (you don’t have to identify yourself with ‘emerging church’ conversation per se, though it’s certainly fine if you do) who enjoys blogging about the above-mentioned topics, and you have a Technorati authority of 50 or higher, you’re an ideal candidate. Just send me your name, blog URL, authority ranking, and snail-mail address by March 25 to zoecarnate [at] theooze.com. (Please do not leave this info in the Comments section of this post.) Then I’ll send you a more detailed email as to what this entails and we can go from there. Feel free to post this invitation on your own blog as well.

Thanks for your interest!
Mike Morrell

Mike’s sent me some great books. If you’d like to get the hookup, email him as it says above.

Yes, you read that right: Emergent is promoting a contest to encourage creative thinking and expression about various theories of atonement.

Tony Jones explains:

We decided it would be fun to propose a contest to the highly creative Emergent Villagers out there, and Lent seems like the perfect time to do it. So we’ve collected an august panel of judges (who will remain anonymous), and we’re asking you to get creative:

• Think about the saving power of the cross and the resurrection.
• Maybe read one or two of the books mentioned above, or others, on the atonement. And try the Bible — it’s full of great stuff!
• Develop a written, graphic, video, or song depiction of your metaphor.
• Submit it by March 7 (that’s one month from today) to atonementmetaphors@gmail.com.

Sounds like a good exercise for Lent.

I just signed up for the Mustard Seed Associates New Conspirators conference.

If you’re undecided, check out the list of speakers/participants:

Experience the creativity of Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution and co-author of Jesus for President, and his companions at The Simple Way as they help their Philadelphia community rebuild after a destructive fire

Join Karen Ward and her friends as they celebrate their faith at the Church of the Apostles in Seattle and the Fremont Abbey Arts Center

Learn how Sanctuary Covenant Church, a multicultural congregation led by Efrem Smith, co-author of The Hip Hop Church, is making a difference in Minneapolis

Join Mark Scandrette, author of Soul Graffiti, in re-imagining what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in San Francisco

Discover with Julie Clawson how God is raising up emerging women to re-invent the church

Celebrate with Tomas Yaccino what God is doing through a new generation of missional leaders in Latin America

Learn how to create more missional churches with Tim Morey from Life Covenant in Torrance, CA

Imagine with Mark Pierson, co-author of The Prodigal Project, how to create ancient/future forms of celebrations and worship for both traditional churches and new expressions

Imagine new forms of social entrepreneurship with Devin Erhardt of Pura Vida Coffee

Meet those who are fashioning emerging expressions of church with Dwight Friesen of Mars Hill Graduate School

Travel with Romanita Hairston, from World Vision, to visit urban churches that are finding a way to make a difference in tough places

Join Mark Van Steenwyk in creating a monastic community of Jesus Radicals in Minneapolis

Learn with pastor Eugene Cho about the flourishing of Quest here in Seattle

Discover with Andrew McLeod how to create economic coops in uncertain times

Explore with Lisa Domke how to make choices as we race into the 2008 US presidential election

Learn with Eileen Hansen how to grow new mustard expressions in a traditional Church

Learn how to find resources to fund creative new ventures with Tom Balke

Imagine how to be friars in the 21st century with Mike Morris from Britain

Create spiritual practices for those in emerging and traditional churches with Bruce Bishop

Imagine with Melanie and Jonathan Neufeld innovative ways churches can provide leadership in urban transformation

Join Ricci Kilmer and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz in beginning the revolution at home

Discover with Christine Sine, author of Godspace and co-author of Living On Purpose, how to create a liturgy of life

Imagine with Tom Sine, author of The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, how to create missional whole-life faith and whole-life communities for uncertain times

Early registration ends Monday, January 14, so sign up now before the price goes up.

Register here

Whom do my beliefs affect? If I’m currently doing something, can I honestly read scripture and make an unbiased decision about the morality of my actions? Or do I have an inherent conflict of interest?

For example, Jesus criticized the man in his parable who tore down his barns to build bigger ones. If I move from an apartment to a house, or buy a nicer car, you could say I did the same thing. One you’ve done something, you tend to rationalize it, particularly if you benefit from it and enjoy it.

On the other hand, what if I’m not affected by a particular issue, yet I have an informed opinion on its morality? Let’s say I believe it’s wrong to own a yacht. It’s easy for me to judge those who have enough money to purchase yachts and choose to do so. But do I understand the motivations of the buyer, and the full consequences of the purchase? Probably not.

I’ve never been in the yacht-shopper’s shoes, and probably never will be, so my judgment of yacht-buying as wrong is both irrelevant to my own life and free from the questions that would arise if I were actually able to buy a yacht.

I say this to point out that we can’t depend entirely on ourselves to judge our own actions, and we can’t just judge others and expect our judgment to be fair. We need to make these determinations in community.

Encouraged by the response to my last post, I feel I should flesh out what I see as the future of interaction between Christians in an area, from a post-congregational perspective.

In this model as I’m envisioning it, there would be no congregations. There would be tons of gatherings of Christians for various purposes, but they would have overlapping membership and leadership, and would be part of a fluid network across the region.

Elders, pastors, deacons, and the like would all still have their roles, but without being split off into congregations. People who are obviously wise and godly will naturally be looked to as leaders, even without formal power or titles or money.

My bias is, clearly, toward forms of church that do not require staff, buildings, or a great deal of overhead. Most of what Christians want and need to do to live out their faith can be done without all the spending that goes on in the name of church today. Let’s consider some examples:

• We continue to hold film & spirituality gatherings on alternating Saturdays
• Matt & Colleen have people over for dinner and fellowship on Wednesday nights
• Gary leads a bible study at his house on Tuesdays

These are real examples, and I think they represent some of the most powerful possibilities for the future of the church.

Some types of gatherings, though, require more overhead and are not sustainable without a more congregational approach. For example, a worship service that requires a large venue and staff is not possible without a gathered, committed group of people who are supporting it financially as well as through their involvement.

Or is it? What if we started to treat events such as worship services for what they are, and started paying for them by selling pay-what-you-can tickets that reflect their true cost? What if their expense was removed from church budgets, or better still, what if churches ceased to have budgets?

Our church has decided to stop meeting on Sundays, as I mentioned a few days ago. In the past week or so, I’ve been surprised at how there is a general sense among members that this also means the church is ceasing to exist, or that we have now failed in our efforts to plant a church.

We are continuing Film & Spirituality as well as our mid-week book discussion groups, which are currently focusing on How (Not) To Speak of God and The Great Divorce. So SMC is far from gone, and I consider it far from a failure.

However, I did underestimate how much it would feel like a failure to stop having our Sunday “service,” a term I despise because, well, I’m not a big fan of the idea of a weekly worship service. I never assumed we’d have a Sunday service for the long term, yet somehow we ended up with one.

Worship services are not easy for a small, leaderless group to pull off. For a long time, we didn’t really worry too much about the format, since we’re just a fairly small and informal group. A few months ago, though, when we had more people, we developed a liturgy to lend some consistency to our weekly gatherings.

More recently, without enough people to fill all the spots on the liturgy, it became difficult to sustain or see the value in this format, so we decided to stop doing it. While this has been deeply disturbing to our group, I think that’s a good thing, because it’s shaken us up and is forcing us to consider what it really means to be Christians in community. Here are some of my initial thoughts.

First, it’s time to stop doing things just because we always have. There’s no scriptural mandate to have a worship service, and if we’re bad at running it and not getting anything out of it, it’s time to find other ways to spend our time.

Second, it’s time to get beyond the idea of a church, a congregation, as a valid and discrete entity. There is only the church and groups that subdivide it. For too long, we’ve been subdivided but not connected to the other parts of the church in our area. We’ve taken Paul’s metaphor of the church as the body of Christ and shrunken it down so each congregation or gathering is the body, and everything outside that body is either a potential invader or an organ that’s been removed from the body.

If we’re to use Paul’s body metaphor correctly, we need to see the entire church as the body. Jesus’ messages to the seven churches in Revelation address the entire city as if it were one church, not many churches. I don’t know the congregational status of the Christians in these cities, but I’m guessing they didn’t all meet all at once, nor consider themselves separate, isolated congregations.

Third, we need to start seeing the church as a network of Christians in community and in relationship with each other. For the past five years, we’ve done very little networking or connecting with other Christians in our city. This past weekend at Off The Map Live, I got to see and catch up with several church planter friends, many of whom have left the church-planting business. As I spoke with people, I got the sense that, as Dwight Friesen said in a slightly different context, our best days are ahead of us. We’ve got a lot more thinking to do, and that thinking must include further development of trans-congregational ecclesiology.

As I said a few months back, it’s been a long while since I thought seriously about ecclesiology, probably because we’ve been spinning our wheels as a church and were getting to the point where we needed a shakeup. That shakeup as come, and now the thinking is coming fast and furious.

This past Sunday we had the pleasure of visiting The Ohana Project, a church started by some great people several years ago in a manner fairly similar to SMC. They meet in a community center and seem to be growing nicely, though they have observed that many people are not interested in coming every Sunday. Membership is much more fluid, and I think this reflects the network nature of the church as it is developing in Seattle.

I am eager to continue to think about these issues, visit with other Christians, and develop new ways for Seattle Metro Church to serve in our area. I also look forward to the ways we as a faith community and a group of friends can continue to enrich each other’s lives and faith.

The best is yet to come. Love to all.

Ross over at LessTravelled.net is one of the great thinkers of the emerging church blogosphere, which lately has seemed like it’s in decline. But after reading Ross’ recent post on Jesus, I’m encouraged and hopeful that we’re reaching a good equilibrium, where we can share our insights without being obsessed with blogging to the exclusion of other faith-forming activities.

What’s so great about this post? First, Ross name-drops NT Wright, which is a sure way to get my attention. I recently finished the New Testament and the People of God, and while I haven’t finished digesting it and, as we said when I was a kid, “applying it to my life,” I’m confident that it will, in the long run, be one of the most influential books I read in my lifetime.

The main effect of NTPOG is that the reader is confronted with the undeniable Jewishness and first-century-ness of Jesus. This does not detract from our perception of Jesus as the son of God and the messiah, but it does impact another perception - namely, the Jesus who is either our heartthrob or our genie-in-a-bible. Savior and lord, yes, but feathered-haired dude with sheep? Hardly.

This insight from Wright bothers Ross:

The more I have thought about Jesus in his own context, and tried to understand him as his disciples would have, as his contemporaries would have, the more disconnected he has become from the Christ of my Christian youth. The more sense Jesus made as a 1st century Jew, the less plausible he became as a timeless big brother intent on undoing the litany of errors I am so gifted at making.

But perhaps Jesus needs to start sounding a little more strange to us, if we are to understand him fully:

Jesus became real for me in a very new way; suddenly when I read the gospels, I could imagine Jesus saying the words he was quoted as saying, and I understood what he meant. Suddenly Jesus had context. He left the stained glass window and entered into the real world, where he was concerned about Roman occupation and Jewish resistance and the Kingdom of God within the world of God’s creation.

It is rare that I read a blog post and get that feeling that you get during a really good time of worship. Doxological reading, you might call it. Thank you, Ross, for lifting my day, and motivating me to start the next volume in Wright’s series, Jesus and the Victory of God.

If you’ve never read NT Wright before, I recommend starting with The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is.

Ross at Less Travelled blogged recently for the first time in a few months, and some of his comments about faith and blogging hit home:

And so, after six months or more of not having written anything, most of that time not really having thought of anything particularly to say, I’m back in bed with my laptop, blogging at bedtime. Something seems to have gone “click” inside me, and all of a sudden my brain is back in this groove where I need to start thrashing out my ideas and angsty quandaries about God. I guess I’m no longer content to be discontent. link

Right there with you, buddy. I think Hamo did as much blogging during his blog sabbatical as I did while claiming to be actively blogging here. I did post a lot about bottled water and such, but not much about faith and church.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about our church and how we are not a very typical church at all, nor do we desire to be. We are more of a tribe than a congregation, and I’m not sure whether that’s OK. But maybe it is.

I’m reading the last few chapters of NT Wright’s New Testament and the People of God right now, and the insight I’ve gained in to the early church is not comforting. The first Christians feel like strange people from a lost era in a faraway land.

Wait a minute - they were (rather) strange people, even by contemporary standards, in a faraway land a long time ago. They were not basically the same as us in belief and practice, with only minor differences in language and culture. They were enormously different from us, yet we can still learn from their faith. What can learn, though, is a more complex question than our attempts to replicate the “first-century church” would indicate.

Many emerging churches have radically different structures than their mainstream counterparts - yet not all do. I’ve been thinking for years about church structure, and how our church is going to be different. We’re five years into Seattle Metro Church now. Over the past two years or so, I’ve been wondering whether it’s OK for us to be different - for us to exist as a group of friends rather than an organization.

Part of what frees me to see this as OK is the knowledge that “the church in Seattle” is not just us - it’s lots of little groups and some big groups too. Each church is just a small part of the church as a whole. The balance and diversity that the church needs to have in an area does not have to be visible in each small community.

To be a part of our community means, among other things, friendship. That can be a barrier to new people, especially when the existing friendships are very strong, but I don’t know that our church could be what it is without that emphasis on friendship. Should your church be your friends, and should your friends be your church? I haven’t seen much discussion of this question, but I’d like to. I suppose it depends on how you define friendship and how you interact with your friends.

I don’t think we can “restore the New Testament church” as the Restoration Movement sought to do. We can certainly revive its best features, but not by imitating forms we know little about and which have little relevance in our culture, 1900 years later. But I do think we have a long way to go in bridging the gap between how we live our lives, individually and as a church, and how we should live as followers of Christ.

N.B. I recently received a review copy of a book called 97 Random Thoughts about Life, Love, & Relationships. I haven’t read it, but I thought it was a good analogy for this post - random. Hopefully I’ll get a little more organized in my thinking as I dive back into more regular theoblogging.