TheBolgBlog

DailyKos meets Jesus?

For those of you who haven't switched your RSS feeds yet, I began a series of mashups of Taking On the System by Markos Zuniga and the social life of Jesus -- looking to see what the church might learn about its social witness. The post is here:

Seth Godin, Tribes and Church

For those of you who haven't changed your RSS yet to my new website, I posted the beginning of a series of reflections on Seth Godin's new book Tribes. Here is the post:

Evangelicalism: An Americanized Christianity -- Book Review

Here is a book review I recently completed...Some of the details: Evangelicalism: An Americanized Christianity. By Richard Kyle.  New Brunswick, N.J.:  Transaction Books, 2006. Pp. xiv, 337. $34.95.

Richard Kyle is professor of history and religion at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas. He received theological training at both Baptist and Presbyterian divinity schools. His church membership has been a part of the Mennonite Brethren.

Kyle writes a brief history of popular evangelicalism in the United States, giving two chapters to 18th and 19th century evangelicalism. His main focus, however, is Twentieth-century evangelicalism, writing two chapters dealing with the first half of the century, and three chapters on the second half. 

Kyle’s evaluation of popular American evangelicalism is, with rare exception, entirely negative. “There is only a fine line between being relevant to its surrounding culture and being absorbed by that culture. American evangelicalism has stepped over this line (2).” Much of Kyle’s critique regards the accommodation of evangelical faith to popular culture. He laments the loss of expository sermons, four-part harmony choirs, the organ, and the pastor as shepherd. He decries the use of guitars and drums, personal stories on relevant topics, and big screen monitors in worship. He praises high culture, with its focus on objectivity, the timeless, and the transcendent, and he decries popular culture as trivial, new, and spectacular.

Any missiologist will benefit from Kyle’s close look at the relation between church and culture in America.  However, Kyle sees the relation of church and culture as a zero-sum game – more of one equals less of another – they are always at odds. From Andrew Walls, we know that one cannot have too much of either gospel or culture – just too little. Rather than abandon popular culture and embrace high culture as Kyle prefers, what American evangelicalism needs is more gospel.

Breaking the Missional Code Part II

Yesterday I posted the first part of a review on Ed Stetzer and David Putman's Breaking the Missional Code. I will briefly wrap up that review today. In yesterday's post, I celebrated the large amount of missiology that found its way into a book on church renewal and church planting. I had a couple of critiques yesterday as well -- the conflation of church marketing with cultural exegesis, and two, the whole church/unchurched typology.

Technorati Tags: book review, Ed Stetzer, missional church, David Putman

Breaking the Missional Code by Ed Stetzer and David Putman

Ed Stetzer and David Putman’s Breaking the Missional Code gives church leaders the tools needed to become a missional presence in their community. In down-to-earth style, the authors take complex missiological concepts and translate them into achievable church practices. The book covers a lot of ground, addressing how to overcome the barriers to mission within existing models of church. I consider Stetzer and Putman’s work to be a valuable conversation partner in all things missional. I couldn’t be more pleased that so much contextualization material made it into a North American church- planting book.

Technorati Tags: book review, church growth, David Putman, Ed Stetzer, missional church

From little c to Big C church...

Yesterday I wrote a review of George Barna's Revolution. Many fear that Barna dismisses the need for local churches. I don't know if Barna goes that far. What Barna dismantles are particular sociological expressions of church -- those of American congregationalism, rather than particular gatherings of believers. “Revolutionaries realize --- sometimes very reluctantly – that the core issue isn’t whether or not one is involved in a local church, but whether or not one is connected to the body of believers in the pursuit of godliness and worship." Barna writes that one needs to be connected to a body of believers in the pursuit of God, he doesn't say where and when, and his readers find that worrisome.

Technorati Tags: church, George Barna, globalization, modernity

Revolution by George Barna

I know this book review is a little late out of the starting gate. Revolution is required reading for my students this quarter, and I thought, if they need to review it, then it is only fair that I review it too! So here goes. I begin with an overview of what I see Barna saying followed by some interaction with his thesis.

Overview of Revolution
George Barna, in Revolution, touts a new form of church that recently developed in the United States. Dissatisfied with local churches, twenty-million “revolutionaries” created forms of spirituality outside organized religion. This spiritual revolution came about because of seven trends in society: the increase of Busters and Mosaics, moral relativism, dismissal of the irrelevant, advent of technology, priority of relationship, participation, desire for meaning.

Technorati Tags: book review, George Barna

Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewin

Kester Brewin is one of the sharpest thinkers on the emerging scene. For years, his community, Vaux, created worship spaces that engaged forbidden cultural and theological themes. His upcoming book, due out in July, Signs of Emergence: A Vision for Church That Is Always Organic/Networked/Decentralized/Bottom-Up/Communal/Flexible/Always Evolving, continues in this pattern and doesn’t disappoint. Brewin combines psychology, urban theory, and complexity theory with biblical reflection on church and leadership. The result? Brewin produces a fresh look at the contemporary scene with an innovative approach to leadership in the church.

Technorati Tags: book review, Emerging_Church, Kester Brewin, complexity theory

The Church in Consumer Culture

Pete Ward, author of Liquid Church and senior lecturer at Kings College, London, spoke at Fuller last night on "All Consuming Liquid Culture, Liquid Church". In his talk, he addressed critics who said he was too positive on culture in his book "Liquid Church". Vincent Miller's book, Consuming Religion, served as his conversation partner.

Pete Ward asks if the dislocation of 'stuff' and symbols from the church is necessarily a bad thing? More importantly, we need to look at where these items are re-located in culture. For example, a CD of church music, recorded by a secular musician, and played by someone in their car, re-locates the sacred in new spaces. As another example, we know about Taize because of its products --
we might decry commercialization, but hasn't the re-location of their
music been beneficial? He asks if God can be in that? If the text mediated Christ at church, does it still mediate Christ in the culture? He wanted us to consider that possibility. He describes this movement as the stretching of "ecclesial being".

He talked about 'stuff' - that stuff means things, maybe more than we know. They often reveal or 'represent' the spiritual state of things. These 'representations' circulate, and we share a language talking about them (discourses). Because we buy certain stuff and not others, we become something, i.e. we form identities around the materials of our lives. Both those who oppose culture and those who embrace it form their identities in this way.

Ward discussed God's presence and how it is mediated in our culture. Episodically, God is 'represented' in our communications, in our discourses, provided this mediation gives rise to contemplation. These mediations stretch ecclesial being and relocate our sense of belonging and identity. In the Liquid Church, we might see Christ mediated through networks, brands, and products.

For Ward, the church is faced with two choices -- Pandora's Box or St. Peter's. We can try to keep all the spiritual things hidden and safe (Pandora), or we can re-think what we formerly thought was unclean and open up our faith to those outside our traditional boundaries (St. Peter's option). Pete votes with his namesake...

WARNING: This is my take on what Pete said, and I am not sure I was always tracking with him. Pete, if you read this, please forgive me for where I completely mis-represented what you were saying!! 

Pete is one of the best thinkers on church and culture, and I always love hearing from him. He asks the hard questions and refuses the pat answers. He pushes me to think through the most pressing missiological issues regarding the intersections of church and culture. I found myself in another world after his talk, trying to process all that I heard...

Technorati Tags: consumerism , mission

Booksigning

The booksigning last week was exhilarating. We had 140 in attendance -- many people from outside the Fuller community, which was way cool...Eddie and I told the story behind Emerging Churches -- how we had met, why we decided to write together, how we wrote the book probably four times because of our own starts and stops, how our ideas changed after we saw new communities form in the US in 2001 and 2002, etc. We then put up on the screen our definition of Emerging Churches: 

Emerging Churches are those who take the life of Jesus as a model way to live (one), who transform the secular realm (two), as they live highly communal lives (three). Because of these three activities, they welcome those who are outside (four), they share generously (five), they participate (six),  create (seven), they lead without control (eight), and function together in spiritual activities (nine). 

For the next hour, we opened it up for questions and then wrapped it up to let people get going home...

I love doing these events with Eddie because still, even after six years working together, our perspectives are so different. Eddie is an ordained Anglican, and I am a 'lay' non-denominational mutt. Eddie is English, I'm American; Eddie is retiring from faculty, I've just getting going; Eddie is top-down and organized, I am bottom-up and, er, creative.

I like teaming up with Eddie because If I don't feel I can answer a question adequately, he is there to back me and up, and, hopefully vice-versa. All in all, a great night...