Brian McLaren was in town last night speaking about his new book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope. It was an excellent presentation, one of those "big idea" kinds of presentations that just build and build. I thought he did a great job of packing all of these concepts into a 1 1/2 hour presentation. While I felt like I was keeping up with him, tracking with where he was going, I still left with my head spinning. There was just so much that he covered and the implications are innumerable.

Later in the evening Brian joined us at the Princeton Emergent Cohort and we were also joined by the North Jersey Emergent Cohort. We packed 20+ people into a small corner of the Yankee Doodle Tap Room. It was a great time of informal conversation and we picked Brian's brain about Narrative Theology, Stanley Hauerwas, Radical Orthodoxy, global economies and local economic practices, Wendell Barry, Plato, eschatology, N.T. Wright, Andrew Perriman, terrorism, the presidential election, pastoral care, dealing with conflict in the local church and the writing process. It was a great conversation with a great thinker.

I've loved all of Brian's books that I've read so far but I had Everything Must Change on the backburner. No more. After last night I want to dig deeper into what Brian's getting at in this book because I think it's going to be incredibly important for the church as we quit playing "intramural games" as he put it, and start addressing how the Gospel frames and narrates our lives in such a way that we are sent into the world in a posture of serving, reconciling, compassion and healing.

If this stuff excites you like it does me, be sure to check out the Deep Shift tour. Brian will be in the Bronx May 2-3rd. If you can't make it to the tour be sure to check out everythingmustchange.org where people are contributing and dreaming of ways to change the world one act at a time.

Labels: Discipleship, Emerging Church, Life, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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As I've been preparing for an upcoming series on sexuality in our High School ministry I've been trying to read some fresh stuff that engages sexuality from a theological point of view with special attention towards discipleship. I've been pretty underwhelmed by so much of the church's teaching on sexuality for so long. I've used curriculum that I felt went straight for the "what's over the line" question and felt schizophrenic in it's mixture of guilt and affirmation of sex. As I teach on sex I wanted to really do an excellent job of engaging sexuality, theology and discipleship this time around. So two books immediately hit the top of my "must read" list. 1. Rob Bell's Sex God and 2. Lauren F. Winner's Real Sex. I've heard Winner speak on the topic of chastity in a break out session at Youth Specialties this past year and she was great.

I'm really glad I took the time to read Bell's book before engaging this subject with the youth at our church. Bell's style of writing is so conversational that it belies the deep theological work he's doing in this book. Bell's catch phrase quickly becomes "this is really about that." And over and over again he makes connections between sexuality and spirituality and about how "this" is really all about "that." Bell's definition of sexuality alone was extremely helpful.

"For many, sexuality is simply what happens between two people involving physical pleasure. But that's only a small percentage of what sexuality is. Our sexuality is all of the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other, and with God (42)."

Hmm, sexuality is all the ways we try to reconnect? That means that even the celibate can practice and express their sexuality. And on the very next page Bell makes this point saying,

"Some of the most sexual people I know are celibate.

They sleep alone.

They have chosen to give themselves to lots of people, to serve and give and connect their lives with beautiful and worthy causes (43)."

Bell takes this understanding of sexuality to deconstruct our culture's definition of sexuality. Some of the most overt expressions of "sexuality" in our world are the exact opposite of real sexuality. To illustrate this Bell describes the infamous "Red Light District" in Amsterdam where women sit in store front windows advertising themselves for prostitution. The transaction that happens between a man who goes to one of these prostitutes and the woman herself is just that, a transaction. Physical sex happens, but there is no reconnection. Indeed this kind of sex only serves to further divide and isolate the two parties. The man uses the woman for his own physical gratification and the woman falls deeper into the darkness of her situation. This is the exact opposite of two human beings reconnecting, and we still call it sex.

Bell's treatment of pre-marital sex is good. As far as I remember he never even used the term "pre-marital sex." Instead Bell contrasts "taking your clothes off" and "getting naked." Anyone can take their clothes off and have sex, but in the end this is not true reconnection. Real reconnection happens in physical sex when both parties can be naked with one another. Being naked is about way more than taking off clothes, it's about trust, it's about security, it's about accepting the other person with all their faults and still loving them. It's about being willing to die for the other person and the promise to remain faithful. Getting naked requires the commitment of marriage, the commitment to serve one another as Christ did the church. As always, "this" is really about "that."

I could go on and on... needless to say, I thought it was a great book.

Labels: Books, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Theology, Youth Ministry

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For Lent this year I gave up television with the exception of LOST. I got a lot of flak for including this caveat when I was asked about lent. I understand why people would think this was only going half-way or just a lazy attempt at spiritual discipline. The truth is I was really fasting from useless background noise.

Tv and film for all their similarities have very different effects on the viewer as well as the intended outcomes their producers have in mind. On a very basic level their relationship to selling products is very different. Insightful critiques about the constant product-placement in film not withstanding, the film is the product. The film is selling itself, we pay to see the film and then for 2 hours we watch the film uninterrupted. Television is set up to draw us to the tv for long enough that we will sit through commercials trying to sell us products. The show itself is not the product but the means by which we are exposed to the product. And so it is in the interests of television creators to create content that always leaves us unsatisfied, always wanting something better to watch. An excellent film will likely attract more attention and then more ticket buyers, but a television show that can be entertaining enough to keep our attention while always leaving us wanting something better helps to perpetuate the genre and expose us to more advertising. Bad tv is good for tv.

If you're like me, you've fallen into this trap. I'll turn on the tv hoping to find something good to watch (knowing full well that I can count the number of quality programs on one hand) and just end up having the tv on as background noise. After years of doing this I've become so comfortable with having the tv on in the background I felt awkward alone in a room with out it's constant stream of sound. This is bad.

I never have a film on "in the background" simply to fill the air with sound. When I watch a film I do just that, sit down and watch it. So for lent I decided to give up all tv. I put the LOST exception in there because I interact with LOST like film, I sit down and engage the narrative and then turn off the tv and talk about it. LOST is never "background noise" I use to eradicate silence in my life. Tv in had become just that for me... a way to eradicate silence.

So for the entire season of lent I watched 8 episodes of LOST and the Oscars. That was it. In forty days I had watched 11 hours of television. It was so good. I wasn't staying up as late, I was way more productive in my work and I began to read so much more. So I'm trying to keep up the habit. I haven't been as strict as I was during Lent, but I'm trying to only watch tv if I'm going to engage it and turn it off if I find myself using it to drown out the silence. Because silence is good for the soul.

Labels: Christian Time, Discipleship, Life, TV

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A few days ago I finished Jesus for President and I've already lent it out to the first person on the growing waiting list. What a magnificent book! If you went to seminary and constantly had your nose stuck in a Hauerwas or Yoder book but wished you could lend a more accessible version to someone... this is that book. It isn't dumbed down, let me be clear about that, it's just that this book was really written for the church. This isn't the kind of conversation that takes place in the ethereal upper layers of academia, this is the best Kingdom-of-God theology taken to the streets. And what would we expect? Shane & Co aren't professors, they're subversive prophets living in the abandoned places of the empire. Making their own clothes, living with the poor, dumpster diving for food... always pointing to Jesus. They are living at the margins pointing us to Jesus. They are shouting with their lives (and this book) that the America we live in is a pitiful and fallen Kingdom not worth our allegiance.

The Eagle is fake, the Eagle is dead.

Follow the Lamb!

Labels: Books, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Military, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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Last week I picked up a book that I've been looking forward to reading for several months now. I didn't even know that it had been released until I was wondering the isles of my local Barnes & Noble and bumped into the display for Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw's new book Jesus For President. I'm about a third of the way through it now and it's everything I was hoping it would be. Claiborne & Co have taken theologians and biblical scholars close to my own heart and made them scandalously accessible to an general audience. The book (so far) is tackling our own ideas about empire by taking a look at God and the people of God and their relationship to empire. The book is a creative mish-mash of art and prose and Kingdom Propaganda. This book provokes us towards a Christian imagination of politics and calls us to seriously rethink where our hope and allegiance really lay. Go pick it up now!

Labels: Books, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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A few weeks ago we hosted a youth worker training night for the Middle School and High School shepherds at our church. Mike King was gracious enough to come facilitate the training for us. Mike is the President of YouthFront, an interdenominational youth ministry assisting organization. They put on a lot of concerts, community service events, camps, prayer retreats and the like to be a service to youth ministries in the Kansas City area. But another focus of YouthFront is training youth workers and that happens all over North America, primarily through their branch called SonLife. Both Mike and the President of SonLife, Chris Folmsbee, have recently written some amazing books for youth ministry, Presence Centered Youth Ministry and A New Kind of Youth Ministry respectively.

What's funny is that I didn't meet Mike during some big youth event or camp while I was in Kansas City, I met him at Seminary. Mike's in his 50's, he's the President and CEO of an incredibly successful youth ministry organization but he still has a passion for learning and thinking theologically about ministry. If you pick up his book you'll see what I mean. So it was a pleasure to have Mike come and do some training with our youth shepherds. He was very encouraging and affirming about the work that's happening in our church. It's always good to be with friends. Later Mike had breakfast with some of our staff at the Princetonian Diner and after that he and I went to Small World Coffeehouse to hang out until he got picked up on his way to visit Ian Cron and the youth workers at Trinity in Greenwich, CT.

What a great week.

Labels: Discipleship, Emerging Church, Life, Theology, Youth Ministry

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I like Barack Obama. Since his speech about faith and politics at Sojourners Call to Renewal I have been a "supporter" of Barack's. Barack embodies a lot of things that are important to me. Things like his diverse cultural background, the way in which he's in touch with life in Africa, his honesty about his faith and even his doubts and questions, his roots as a community organizer in Chicago. His values overlap with my own more than any other major candidate I've seen in my lifetime.

I really hope that Barack is elected president.

But I won't be voting for him. I won't be voting for him because I am tempted to really believe in him. I am tempted to put hope in Barack Obama. And it's no mistake that Obama's campaign has seized on this. They constantly use the words "believe" and "hope." And if I was indignat about Bush hijacking Christian hymns for his own speeches I must deconstruct Obama's use of the words "hope" and "believe" in light of what those words mean to us as followers of Christ.


But let's be honest, we've become so cynical and polarized about politics in the US. People really do want someone/something to believe in. Obama's vision really is a fresh drink of water in the midst of the desert this country is in with all our corruption, war-mongering and trampling on our poor. Plenty of people are desperate for change. I am one of them. But that's just it - if I'm desperate for change there is but one king who can really bring about change. I'm talking about the king of kings. In all my political obsession I am so tempted to take my eyes of Christ and his project of radical change, his project of renewing creation and putting things right. I'm tempted to glance to the side and take notice of Barack Obama and maybe hope that he can change things. If I put my hope for change in Barack I'm committing idolatry. I've given up my hope in God to make things right and I've put them in Barack.

Now if I were a bit more politically detached I'd vote for him. But precisely because I am a political junkie and I am tempted to think "oh, if only Barack were president" that I cannot vote for him. For me it is a matter of spiritual discipline that I will abstain from voting in this election. My absence at the voting booth will be a tangible practice to remind me who's really in charge, who my real king is.

Now, as I've said, I'd really like to see Obama become president. But let's be honest, voting really is the laziest and smallest way to be politically active. If Barack and I are on the same page (and I hope we are) then I'll do a lot more good by working for that kind of kingdom change than I will by voting for it.

Labels: Discipleship, Politics

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Chris Folmsbee presented in one of the "Super Seminars." His was all about a narrative approach to youth ministry. As a youth pastor who has been deeply shaped by narrative theology and is in turn beginning to use narrative theology in youth ministry I was naturally drawn to his seminar. That and Chris brought his ministry SonLife to Kansas City and now works with my friend Mike King at YouthFront.

Chris really hit on a lot of the same ground Lauren Winter did in her chastity seminar on the foundational idea that we have to start with the story of God before we ever get to sexual ethics (or whatever).

In a similar vein Chris helped us to see that the foundation of youth ministry is the Story of God. On that foundation is built the next level, Theology, what we say about God based on His story. Then comes the Identity & Calling, or what we can say about ourselves based on the Story and who God is... and the implications of what that calls us to. Then that calling or implication moves towards a Rule of Life, how do we approach life in light of the Story, in light of who God is, in light of who we understand that calls us to be. Then... and only then, can we talk about behaviors and practices in a way that is truly rooted in the gospel.

Chris's critique of youth ministry is a good one, we have for too long started with the behaviors and practices... what good kids should be like, etc. and then tried to get to the story of God from there. While it's well intentioned, it gives no context to why of all those behaviors and practices might be important. This was the same point I believe that Lauren Winter was making in her seminar on chastity, we have to do the hard work of weaving the gospel in to the lives of kids before we can start talking about concrete practices of the Christian life.

We need to be honest enough to say that Christian living isn't just about "common sense." The stuff we do is weird and odd and while it might seem really wise and good to an older generation the younger generation needs to be brought along to find themselves in the Story of God before we can ask them to live like Christians.

That involves a risk on our part. It means we work harder at weaving the gospel into the lives of our students before we try to instill "Christian ethics" into them, because without the foundation of the Story of God those practices will be rooted in a very shallow soil and inevitably will wash away when they leave "youth ministry" behind.

Labels: Discipleship, Theology, Youth Ministry

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Phyllis Tickle spoke at the general session the second day of YS. She gave us a brief survey in church history of what she called "rummage sales," that is those times of major upheaval in the church, usually when something huge in the prevailing culture challenges the church's assumptions about reality, etc. It seems that these major upheavals happen every 500 years or so. In 70 AD there was the fall of the temple when Christianity became seen as more than just a sect of Judiasm, then there was the decline of Rome between the 400's and the 500's, next there was the Great Schism in 1054 between the East and the West in the church dividing Christianity between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. Next would come the Protestant Reformation beginning in 1517 with Martin Luther.

Tickle explained that we are in the beginning stages of one of these great upheavals right now, one she called "The Great Emergence." Of course she was talking about the shift in our culture from the modern to the postmodern and the church's response, largely seen in movements like the emerging church. YS is such a diverse gathering, not lacking in anti-emergent types, so when it became obvious where she was going with this I was delighted. Tickle has such a great gift of communication and I was glad to have her explain the emerging church to a crowd that would be full of both full-on emergents and anti-emergents alike. She briefly explained that technology has made our world much smaller, giving us access to so much more of the world than we had during the previous 500 years. Christians are much more aware of (and appreciate) the rest of Christianity in ways they didn't before. To illustrate this Tickle drew us a diagram which I've tried to recreate here.

In the top left quadrant are the Liturgical Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, etc.) who are starting to look more and more alike in the current landscape of Christianity. In the top right quadrant are the Social Justice Christians (a lot of our mainline churches fall into this category - Presbyterian, Methodist, Christian Church, etc.) and though they come from different theological streams they are beginning to look very similar to one another in the current Christian landscape. In the bottom left are the Renewalists (she equated them with the Pentecostals) and the bottom right are the Evangelicals. I think she tried to give each group a new name to emphasize that these quadrants are not necessarily descriptive of entire denominations, that is, these days you can find fairly Evangelical Presbyterian churches (I work at one, I should know!) or Liturgical Nazarene churches (again, I've been in a few of those). Her point was, the landscape is changing and we are becoming more aware of the other quadrants. Not just more aware, but many of us are finding those other quadrants to not only be entirely compatible with our own, but attractive and beautiful.

To boil it down even more...

Nazarenes are discovering the liturgy and they're falling in love with it.

Presbyterians are starting to talk about Jesus and having a personal relationship with God.

Pentecostals are buying compact-fluorescent light bulbs and building houses for the poor.

and on and on.

The purple circle are those who are somewhere inbetween in this whole emerging church thing, they're emergent but they're not giving up on their particular tradition (the Presbymergents, Emergent Nazarenes, etc.). This is where I find myself.

This phenomenon of blurring the distinctions between one narrow stream of Christianity and another, the borrowing of someone else's tradition's gifts and using them as if they belong to the whole church... that describes what's happening in the Emerging Church. In some ways it's a (re)discovery of some of the gifts within our Christian faith that we've separated ourselves from over the past few hundred years. Denominations are becoming less important. And I pray to God, that the glue that holds this whole Emerging Church thing together is Jesus Christ. At the center of this diagram, the Emerging Church is an experiment of what it might look like to do church as if the denominational boundaries aren't what hold us together, but Jesus is.

And here's where the corners of each quadrant are so important. The corners are the reactionary anti-emergent voice within each tradition. They keep us from from falling off the face of the map into "unity for the sake of unity"-ism. Their critique's may seem harsh and inflexible, and they may call us heretics for embracing (or at least appreciating) what another stream of Christianity has to offer... but they are our roots, that's where we come from and it's important to remember where you come from. The hardliners will help the emerging church to articulate its faith by challenging it so much.

Tickle gave a warning and a charge at the end of her talk saying, every time there has been one of these church upheavals Christians have deionized each other and resorted to violence in their disagreements. This time we need to remember that there are Christians all over that map, our tradition does not "own" the only true expression of the Christian faith. We would do well to work out the tumultuous future of our faith with humility and peaceableness.

Labels: Discipleship, Emerging Church, Youth Ministry

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Mike King led a break out session that covered a lot of the same ground he covered in his book Presence Centered Youth Ministry on Saturday morning. Mike's calling to those in youth ministry (and to be honest Christians in general) is to take care of our souls and find ways and rhythms in which we connect to God and are fed. This is a much higher priority for the integrity of our ministry than any program or strategy no matter how "effective" they promise to be. So for a little over an hour we explored Christian disciplines that have been life-giving to the Church for thousands of years. There were no programmatic suggestions, or 7 highly-effective strategies to take home to our youth, just Mike's passion for youth workers to connect with God and to do so in a way that is true to themselves.

This means opening our eyes to the deep well of Christian spirituality. For so long we have been told that Christian spirituality was about 15minute quiet times and praying through a list of wants and needs. Mike explored with us different ways of reading scripture, especially meditatively, through practices like lectio divina or imaginative reading (visualizing the text as a world you can step into and explore). I am especially excited about the contemplative spirit Mike and his team at YouthFront have brought to camp ministry.

Labels: Discipleship, Youth Ministry

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Shane Claiborne was tonight's general session speaker. These speakers are usually the "big guns" and are charismatic, charming, well polished, impressive... you know, the kind of speakers that make you wish you were way better at speaking or preaching. And as we all know Shane Claiborne just wrote a book in the past two years that has just been hugely important for so many of us. It's turned this little-known servant of Jesus from the rough part of Philly and made him somewhat of a Christian rock-star. People are calling him our generation's Mother Teresa, etc, etc. I love Shane's heart, I love his vision, I love what he's about. And Shane is all about Jesus. Tonight he showed us that, while simultaneously begging the question if we are indeed all about Jesus. You see Shane was flown in here to be tonight's "big gun speaker" and after about 30 seconds of intro, playing with fire and a joke, Shane just launched into the Sermon on the Mount... and I mean ALL OF IT. Then he ends with "Wow, that was the greatest sermon ever preached. Jesus give us the courage to live it out."

Done.

Exit stage right.

There was an interesting reaction. On the one hand a lot of people are thinking, what?? he got paid the big bucks and got center stage to just go up and read from the bible? I could have done that. Then immediately following those judgmental thoughts came the reflection on just how hyped up we get on "good speakers" and how distant Jesus' words have become to us when we hear the greatest sermon ever preached and find ourselves thinking we didn't get what we came for. You could feel the awkwardness rise in the air as people began to wonder to themselves "was that really IT?" and then a reverence fall over the crowd as we realized what we had just thought and how pitiful we can be at times.

Labels: Discipleship, Life, Theology, Youth Ministry

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National Youth Worker's Conference is something I've wanted to go to for years and this year I am finally here! A bunch of youth staff and shepherds came out from our Church together. We left Allentown at 5am to get on a plane from New Jersey to Atlanta and it's been non-stop ever since. I wasn't here 5 minutes before I spotted Mike King and gave him a big hug.

I want to take a moment to highlight some stuff from Lauren F. Winner's breakout session on teaching chastity to teens. This has been something I struggle with as a teacher/preacher/mentor to teens. As Winter said, the "pragmatic" scare tactics obviously don't work and they don't speak to the sacredness of sex in it's right context. One major mistake we often make in our teaching on sex, Winter pointed out, is that we focus teaching about Chastity on sex itself rather than framing it within the life of discipleship. So chastity becomes a "strategy" to win a good Christian partner or something along those lines. This avoidance of sex as a way to make yourself more sexy to the right person is not chastity.

Winter reminded us that chastity is a Christian discipline, specifically a discipline of restraint (like fasting). And like fasting, Chastity is meant to turn your attention from one thing (like food, or sex in this case) and instead focus on God. By approaching chastity in this way, "not having sex" is not about avoiding disease or attracting the right kind of mate, but is a very important way in which you discipline your body to obey God. Chastity is a practice of surrendering our will and desire to God so that he might rehabilitate our will and our desire. This kind of chastity cannot simply be undertaken by the lone individual but must be lived out in a community that will support such disciplines.

This kind of chastity only makes sense then, to disciples of Christ who are already on the journey towards surrendering their lives to God. This seemed to upset some people in our session who wanted Winter to talk about how to explain this kind of chastity to a non-Christian kid. Her answer was pretty simple, chastity is a Christian spiritual discipline, and you can't expect a kid to live into that kind of discipleship before they actually connect with God. But we seem to get the cart in front of the horse on this one by trying to conjure up reasons for non-Christian kids to stop having sex, and in so doing we abandon the language of discipleship that is at the very core of what chastity is all about.

For more check out her book, Real Sex: the Truth About Chastity

Labels: Discipleship, Life, Youth Ministry

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Several months ago I incorporated something new into my devotional life... a podcast. That wonderful group of Catholics called the Jesuits have been doing a daily (during the week) scripture meditation called Pray-As-You-Go. It's really very similar to Lectio Divina. The podcast begins with some contemplative music ranging anywhere from monks chanting to solo guitarists singing in Spanish. Scripture is then read and there is a long time for prayer over the scripture passage, then the scripture is repeated and more time is given for prayer. There are usually some questions to think about during the prayer times. As the Jesuits say, it's really more of a framework for your own prayer than a sermon, etc. They usually last anywhere from 9 to 12 minutes long and are always keen to observe the Christian calendar. In the spirit of Mike King any many other wise people, I wanted to practice this and actually have incorporated it into my life before I went and started recommending it to others. That being said, it has been a blessing in my own life and has given structure to my own prayer time that I think many of you might find helpful.

Labels: Christian Time, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Life

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I know it's been a few days since I've posted on EP but I felt as though I should really give Sharon Huey's sermon (click for the mp3) some time to digest and work on me before posting a sentence or two of summary and then moving on.

Sharon's sermon spoke deeply to many of us. As clumsy as it may be, I'll try to sum up a bit of what she had to say that's been at work in me of late. Those of us who meet at EP every summer tend to lean towards the "radical" and the "revolutionary" streams within this family called church. Our heroes are people like the Berrigan Brothers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, MLK Jr., Oscar Romero, etc. We tell stories of revolutionary saints, people of God who would not bow to the patriotism of their day but sought to be radically obedient to God and work for justice and mercy in their communities. When we think of Jesus we don't think of a "nice" guy who spoke in sound bytes easily turned into daily calendars by Hallmark. We think of the wild-eyed Son of God, on a mission, ready to overturn tables and smash the status quo.

But the beatitude passage from Matthew 5 that Sharon shared with us reveals the kind of people who showed up for Jesus' revolution. To be blunt, nobodies. Jesus' revolution wasn't made up of the steely and hardened Kingdom fighting crew we sometimes wish the church was made from these days. It was the awkward disciples, who didn't always "get" Jesus, the people on the margins of society, the poor, the sick.

And yet how often do we as pastors, or laity groan because our churches are filled with people who just don't "get" Jesus, people with problems, people with crap in their lives. We sometimes wish for the "lean, mean revolutionary force" for the Kingdom of God and are stuck with these embarrassingly human people. Sharon reminds us that the Kingdom being made of these people is the revolution.

Some of us have been a part of churches that really embodied a revolutionary Kingdom of God kind of life. But then we move on and run into these "embarrassingly human" churches that just don't "get" Jesus like we think we do. And this is what I've been mulling over. Because I feel this frustration deeply for both good and bad reasons. I feel this frustration because I long, like many of us, to see the church shed its allegiances to poisonous civil religion, rampant materialism, and the suburbification of the Gospel. But all too often I allow this frustration to be a form of self-righteousness rather than about a longing for God's spirit to take hold of the church. I forget that if the church wasn't made up of losers who don't come close to being the kind of Kingdom revolutionaries like MLK or the Berrigan bros that I wouldn't be a part of this family either. I forget that discipleship is a long road and not a status of those who "get" it.

Labels: Discipleship, Life, Theology

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Today was day one of the 2007 Ekklesia Project gathering. This is my third year attending the annual conference and it really has come to resemble something of an extended family of sorts. I've often been asked to describe what EP is or what EP does and it has been difficult to sum up in a short mission statement what we really are all about... but we know it when we see it. As Phil Kenneson said tonight, we're not quite an academic conference and we're not entirely a "church" conference although those both seem to characterize a lot of what we do. Perhaps, as Phil suggested, we're more like a family reunion. These EP conferences are about friendships between pastors, theologians and laity who share convictions about a few core things. Among these are the conviction that as disciples we are first and foremost a people defined by Jesus (not America, not the Denver Broncos, not our Alma Matter, etc), also that real discipleship must take place within community and we share the conviction that we are a people formed and shaped by many things, so the church must be active in faithfully forming disciples in the way of Jesus. This was just a little bit of an introduction to tonight's talk by Phil.

I'll post more about Sharon Huey's sermon from earlier in the afternoon. I'm posting a link to all three audio recordings from today here as well.


Brent's Opening Comments.mp3

Afternoon Worship.mp3

What Are We Doing Here.mp3

Labels: Discipleship, Life, Theology

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This weekend I flew out to Doylestown, PA to interview at a Methodist church for a youth ministry position. It was a really encouraging experience. I met with several passionate adult leaders and students over the course of two days and had some very exciting conversations about youth ministry and how God is leading youth ministry in some very exciting and creative directions.

On my flights to and from the east-coast I was finally able to read Mike King's book, Presence-Centered Youth Ministry. I met Mike two years ago here in Kansas City and immediately felt a kinship with his vision for youth ministry. He began telling me about his book back then so I've been looking forward to reading it for a few years now. In the mean time I've gotten a big chunk of what was in the book through conversations with Mike at school (we both are attending NTS), church or around town in any of the many places I keep running into Mike. I was surprised that Mike's candid words all made it through the editing process! By that I don't mean that Mike is a loose cannon or offensive, but he is an important prophetic voice in youth ministry and it was just refreshing to know that what is on the page is what comes out of Mike's heart, not a watered-down "easily digestible" youth ministry package.

Mike challenges us youth ministers look past the short-vision goals of increased attendance and into our own souls. Page after page Mike is leading us into a vision of youth ministry that is first and foremost about seeking the face of God. Much of what Mike offers as practical advice in the book he deliberately asks the youth pastor not to try to teach to the youth group next week. This is not a book full of hip postmodern techniques that will wow teens, it is a book about doing ministry out of the abundant overflow of a life lived in intense communion with Christ. What important advice for us to hear! We often are so caught up in "consuming" spiritual practices or techniques so that we can pass them along to youth without ever really letting those practices sink anchors in our own lives. Mike's book will call you to slow down, listen to God and practice youth ministry out of the overflow of love of God.

Highly highly recommended for those involved in any kind of ministry, youth ministry especially.

Labels: Discipleship, Theology, Youth Ministry

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