Sunday, October 29, 2006

Hanging with Tony

Tony was very gracious a number of months ago to invite readers of his blog to hang out with him. I took him up on the offer and tonight Kirk drove up and Josh, me, and Kirk took Tony out to Applebee's to talk about what we are going to try to do next at First. Kirk did a great job of giving our church history and the opportunity before us.

He shared that the church in a church model hasn't worked. He gave examples of three churches, the only one I can come up with is Graceland and Dan Kimball. He did say there was one that he knew of, that was similar to our situation, was a church in Edina, MN called The Upper Room. He invited us to come up there and see what they were doing.

The other thing he said is to get a group of people together. A group of people who are tired of the church and disenfranchised, people who are just hanging on by a thread almost giving up on the church. Get those people together and start sharing life and talking about what the church needs to be and letting those people form the core for the start.

One other thing he said that was interesting is of these people, we should ask them to make a serious commitment to the community. Ask them to stay here and partner with us. To not move. To not take other jobs. But to commit to being there.

That is GREAT! And that's what Jen and I are longing for. To meet with people and do life with them. The more I am involved in this emergent conversation and the more I think about what church can be, the more pumped I get at doing it. It is going to rock.

Sidebar: Tony was great. A great guy. Great thinking. compassionate. Caring. great to be with. Time well worth spent.

Tony at the banquet

Ah, Tony in his usual form, trying to get everyone riled up and thinking. They had people talk at the tables about what thier dream church would be, what three things do we think the church can be and needs to be. Then they had people share. One lady said that she thought we should make love more (pause) real to people, or something to that effect. A lot of us in the room couldn't help but chuckle at the awkward placement of the pause.

Tony said something that really stuck out to me when people were sharing. Someone said that the church needs to be more relevant, which is something I've said before. Tony said he was more concerned with the church being more authentic than more relevent. That authenticity was more imporant than relevancy.

He also shared that we need not be afraid of the troubling texts in God's Word, but we do need to acknowledge it, and take the good with the bad instead of pretending the bad doesn't exist. He used Jephthah's story in Judges 11 as a text of something incredibly sad and horrendous.

Workshops with Tony

This morning Tony spoke about contemplative prayer and spiritual disciplines. The afternoon workshops were on body prayers and postmodernism.

Good stuff.

Josh and I were both taken back with the idea that conversational prayer, in the form that we know it as today, has only been around for 40-50 years! I wonder how people prayed 60 years ago...

I told Tony that I thought he was going to easy in the postmodernism workshop, but I think it was more of a passive (anabaptist pun) group than I have experienced with Tony before. When I've heard him before it's in a room of youth pastors and they are defending and fighting and arguing. This group was pretty tame. He talked about Solomon's Porch, Jacob's Well, and a church in Seattle and UMC in Florida.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Tony Jones, 2nd session

Moby, a Christian, as a picture of postmodernism.

Human objective truth is a myth. There is objective truth. But our minds are finite and it makes it hard to really know all the facts possible. And so human objectivity is a unicorn. Never existed. Instead there are authoritative communities of interpretation.

The interpretation of MLB’s strike zone is not a science. It is an art. The community of baseball changed the strike zone over time. It has been pulled down and outside. 2001 MLB tried to go back to the fundamentals of the strike zone, but by 2002 it had gone back to down and outside. “Balls and strikes come into being only on the call of an umpire.”

What is church? What is the church? On one level, the church is nothing, until we decide what it is.

Acts 10. Peter’s vision. Don’t let your blinders, like Peter, keep God from doing what He needs to do. Don’t let yourself be blinded from what God is doing throughout Christianity. God’s activity is not contingent on the church.

The church of my dreams, maybe God’s dreams, has bands of covert believers who are committed to interpreting God’s activity in the world through authoritative communities of interpretation.

Sidebar: Two interesting twists about this conference. First, they have flown in young adults who are sharing their thoughts on the church, and a lot of their experience of church and how church is now. The second thing is that they have an open mike at every session to allow immediate feedback and conversation. As in, Tony is not the only authority but that everyone has something to share. It’s very, very interesting.

Friday, October 27, 2006

I am Tony Jones

Josh and I are in Hesston for the Anabaptist Vision and Discipleship Series where they have brought out postmodern guru Tony Jones (who is a spitting image of our very own Todd Ramsey!).  And I stole Tony's name tag, much to his approval.
 
Tonight was just an intro.  Some great stuff though!  Other than some young kid flaming about being brainwashed as a creationist and biblical literist.  Don't get me wrong, I get what he's saying.  But he needed to pull the ejector seat badly! 
 
Tony shared about the idea of Globalization.  That there are three options:  Secularism (which is dead), Fundamentalism & Ethnocism(?), and what he believes is the only answer, postmodernism.
 
A couple things he said were key to this conversation.
 
#1.  Didactic Tension.  As in, holding two things that don't really go together, but holding them much like a paradox.  As in, how can I be a robust Christian, believe in Jesus, love Jesus, etc. and also be truly authentic, open, and interested in another's viewpoint, regardless of view point, because he is a child of the Creator.
 
#2.  Epistomological (?) Humility.  As in, understanding the process of thinking and how we think and believing that we truly do not know everything, do not process information the same, we do not fully understand nor comprehend the process of thinking, as in, we truly may not fully understand.  We don't have the corner.
 
I felt like I butchered both of those.  Maybe Josh can add something here.
 
Nevertheless, he ended with a sweet story about his son that is a great illustration of these, especially the first.  It reminds me of my sweet boy Noah.
 
His son was in first grade and they were at home doing the dishes when his son asked, "Dad, how come kids at school call each other 'kid'?" 
 
"What do you mean?" said Tony.
 
Tony had his son repeat the question to which Tony replied the same.   This led his son to explain.
 
"Well, like today.  I was at my locker putting on my backpack when this fourth grader bumped into me and said, 'Hey, Sorry, Kid.'  Like, why would a 4th grader call another kid, 'Kid.'  Why wouldn't he say, "Hey, Sorry, friend'?"
 
Tony of course got a couple laughs with this.  But what a great illustration.  We are not enemies with everyone.  Everyone is not against us.  Instead of starting off against each other we should start off with "Friend."
 
Jen Rawson, my sweet wife, totally gets this.  I struggle with this.  I am always so defensive.  Hard of listening.  And many times when I'm listening, I'm really just looking for loopholes in someones logic so I can throw them down.  I have to be proven wrong. 
 
What a bad attitude.  I need to listen more and start off with "Friend."

Me love some Tony Jones

Tonight begins a conference in Hesston, KS. Hat tip to the college there for bringing out Tony Jones to talk about doing church in an emergent culture. It all starts tonight and Josh Melcher and I are heading out for that.

With my renewed desire to cultivate my soul as well as my body, I'm excited to learn from Tony and his workshops on prayers as well what I'll learn that will impact what we're doing at First.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Sometimes the Bear eats you and sometimes you eat the bear

So I was talking to my Senior Pastor, a great guy (and I wrote that even though he doesn’t know I have a blog), about my struggles with feeling overwhelmed, lack of time, can’t get things done, etc.

And he said to me, “Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.”

Yeah, except that the friggin’ bear has been eating me for weeks!!!  I rarely eat the bear.  And the next month I am going to miss Saturdays with my kids for the bear because of my bad planning, not saying “no,” and my insatiable appetite for people to like me and feel validated.  I’m going to a conference with Tony Jones this Saturday.  Youth event on the 4th.  Then I’m speaking at two workshop things the next two Saturdays.  I want to be with my kids, but obviously not.  So much to do and so little time.  I’m always feeling overwhelmed!

 

Lack of Blogging

So I’m blogging a ton at the wichitasbiggestloser site.  Hardly anything here.  And I thought this morning, “Man, I’m blogging a ton and really enjoying sharing my journey of weight loss and what I’m doing.  So, I’ll blog a ton about the transformation of my body, but what about the transformation of my soul?

Paul says that physical exercise is good.  But working our souls is for eternity.  And the fact is, I don’t have much to share.  The transformation of my soul has really taken a back seat.  Isn’t that sad.  I’m so delussioned.  But here is to a renewed effort to continue keeping my soul healthy, fresh, and alive and blogging about it here.

Next, I’ll have to blog about what some of my fellow youth workers shared yesterday about their theology of war.