Category: Of Random Interest

As The World’s Number One Speaker On The Subject of Humility…

Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders (J-B Leadership Network Series)As the world’s num­ber one speak­er on the sub­ject of humil­i­ty, I’d like to draw your atten­tion to a book in which I am a recur­ring char­ac­ter.

Earl Creps has just writ­ten Off-Road Dis­ci­plines, a book for church lead­ers try­ing to nav­i­gate all the change our cul­ture keeps throw­ing at us.

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that I am quot­ed many times through­out the book. If you have nev­er read your­self quot­ed in a book before, let me assure that it can be dis­con­cert­ing.

There’s no way I can be objec­tive about this book. It’s writ­ten by a friend and almost all the recur­ring char­ac­ters are friends.

So I will sim­ply say that I enjoyed it and I think I would have enjoyed it whether or not it was by a friend. It’s just filled with fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle snip­pets.

The His­to­ry Chan­nel recent­ly offered me part of the answer in a doc­u­men­tary about the researchers who devote their lives to dis­cov­er­ing Atlantis. These pas­sion­ate and sin­cere peo­ple con­sid­er them­selves con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als in their field. They employ expen­sive, high-tech equip­ment and sac­ri­fice the respect of main­stream sci­ence to live on the per­pet­u­al verge of one of the great­est dis­cov­er­ies of all time. Spurred on by an ancient text (Pla­to, in this case), they spend years sur­vey­ing vast stretch­es of ocean in a quest to assem­ble clues to cat­a­clysmic events in the dis­tant past. The dis­dain of their sci­en­tif­ic peers only increas­es their fer­vor by mak­ing these faith­ful into pro­fes­sion­al mar­tyrs. Some­time before the last com­mer­cial on the TV pro­gram, I grasped the par­al­lel to the post-Chris­t­ian expe­ri­ence of the Church: ancient texts, out­ra­geous the­o­ries, huge expense, per­se­cu­tion com­plex, and a pas­sion­ate devo­tion to things that mat­ter only to insid­ers. (page 21)

I have to believe I would find that grip­ping no mat­ter who wrote it. Or con­sid­er this sim­ple evi­dence that demon­strates a truth I have long believed but been unable to show data for:

…in a sur­vey of mag­a­zine indices I found that the first ref­er­ences to post­mod­ernism in Chris­t­ian peri­od­i­cals did not appear until four to thir­teen years after the first ref­er­ences are indexed in sec­u­lar jour­nals.

That’s the most con­crete, data-based illus­tra­tion I’ve ever seen of the cul­ture lag in which the church is trapped.

Plus he coins two phras­es that I love: “over­churched under­achiev­er” (so busy with church stuff they have no time for real stuff) and “ortho­doxy creep” (a ten­den­cy to doc­tri­nal­ize every opin­ion).

Any­way, on to the impor­tant stuff: me.

My first appear­ance in the book is on page 45:

After hear­ing a talk sup­port­ed by Pow­er­Point, Glen (half my age) said polite­ly, “I thought you had a degree in com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Ouch. The words hurt Earl the first time and me the sec­ond.

I am fea­tured again five pages lat­er: “Glen helps me with tech­nol­o­gy and the Inter­net.”

My best role, how­ev­er, comes in the chap­ter on humil­i­ty.

No, real­ly.

A [min­is­te­r­i­al] life rep­re­sent­ing an atti­tude of “I know!” “You’re wrong!” and “You need me!” serves as what my friend Glen calls a “block­er,” stand­ing in the way of the spir­i­tu­al­ly hun­gry rather than moti­vat­ing them to inves­ti­gate Jesus fur­ther. (page 83)

At last, I am por­trayed as the hum­ble sage I know and love.

So I’ll stop quot­ing from the book before I paint myself in an unflat­ter­ing light again. 😉

Oh, You Have One Of Those…

Dana has been pot­ty train­ing late­ly and she’s get­ting quite good at it. She’ll be play­ing with her toys, mind­ing her own busi­ness, when all of a sud­den she will leap to her feet and sneak/bolt towards the bath­room. After suc­cess­ful­ly deposit­ing sol­id mat­ter she will emit a tri­umphant cry: “I went poop!”

It’s quite charm­ing, real­ly.

Yes­ter­day one of our friends, Jen, vol­un­teered to take Dana in for the day while Paula was on bedrest. Things were going just fine until Dana pooped in her pants with­out show­ing the slight­est inter­est in Jen’s bath­room.

Dana need­ed some clean­ing to pre­vent a rash, and when Jen brought Dana to the bath­room Dana stared at the toi­let and then said slow­ly to Jen, “Oh, you have one of those.” 🙂

Assump­tions. As my friend Fras­er used to tell me in high school, the word assume makes an ass out of you and me.

For the record, I am assum­ing the ety­mol­o­gy of that com­ment traces back to don­keys and not to sphinc­ters, oth­er­wise it might be con­strued as a vul­gar­i­ty. My thoughts on curs­ing, vul­gar­i­ties, and exple­tives are a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed, but the bot­tom line is that I try to avoid offend­ing peo­ple with the words I choose with­out becom­ing bound up in sil­ly rules (such as eras­ing the word ass from the dic­tio­nary because one of its uses is a syn­onym for pos­te­ri­or). Plus the ensu­ing pun (result­ing from the jux­ta­po­si­tion of poop and hiney) would be too awful even for me.

Back to assump­tions: Dana assumes Jen has no pot­ty and so she excretes wher­ev­er she hap­pens to be. I assume God has no opin­ion about my deci­sions and so I don’t pray to receive guid­ance.

Bad assump­tions lead to stinky sit­u­a­tions.

Helping Teens Transition To College

I stum­bled upon this quote today:

Every autumn I have a spate of let­ters from fond par­ents, teach­ers, guardians, and mon­i­tors, appeal­ing to me to fol­low up on such and such a young­ster who is away from home at col­lege for the first time, and who has to be hunt­ed, fol­lowed, shad­owed, inter­cept­ed and dri­ven to Chris­t­ian meet­ings. I have scarce­ly ever known this des­per­ate tech­nique to work. I under­stand the pan­ic of par­ents and guardians, but it is too late then to try high pres­sure tac­tics. Prayer, exam­ple and pre­cept, in that order, are the means of bring­ing up chil­dren and young folk in the faith. Nor will high pres­sure tac­tics and brain­wash­ing tech­niques avail when young folk have gone off on their own. Some young folk, alas, will have their fling and sow their wild oats, and come at last to heel, sad­ly, like the prodi­gal son. It is where Chris­tians pathet­i­cal­ly put their trust in exter­nal tech­niques and arti­fi­cial strat­a­gems that young folk go astray. Noth­ing takes the place of the real­ism of holy liv­ing and secret wrestling before God in prayer for our young­sters. We must com­mit them to God so utter­ly that we dare not inter­fere or tam­per with their pre­cious souls.

(William Still, late Pas­tor of Gilcom­ston South Church, Aberdeen, Scot­land)

Well said.

New NET Bible website is awesome

The NET Bible web­site just got an over­haul and it is awe­some. Check it out (be sure to mouse over the foot­notes). And they seem to have renamed the web por­tion of their project NEXT Bible: http://nextbible.org

A Georgetown Suggestion

I found this on GetRe­li­gion and was so tick­led I thought I’d pass it along here:

what would hap­pen if lead­ers of the kicked-off-cam­pus George­town Uni­ver­si­ty chap­ter of Inter­Var­si­ty Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship applied to the lead­er­ship of the Jesuit school for per­mis­sion to hold a pub­lic forum this week in which stu­dents and fac­ul­ty would be asked to read and then peace­ful­ly dis­cuss the text of Pope Bene­dict XVI’s actu­al speech text on faith, rea­son and jihad?

Per­haps the event could be held at the well-endowed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Cen­ter for Mus­lim-Chris­t­ian Under­stand­ing on the cam­pus?

Just think­ing out loud, you know. I am sure the cam­pus admin­is­tra­tion would wel­come such a request by the oust­ed Protes­tant groups to orga­nize an ecu­meni­cal and even inter­faith event focus­ing on the intel­lec­tu­al thought of a man that George­town must real­ize is in the main­stream of Catholic intel­lec­tu­al life.

🙂

I don’t think it’s going to hap­pen, but it’s fun to fan­ta­size about.

Also see my pre­vi­ous thoughts on the evan­gel­i­cal evic­tion from George­town.

Worst Places To Be When The Big One Strikes

Liv­ing in the Cal­i­for­nia Bay Area, my thoughts turn peri­od­i­cal­ly to the Big One.

Recent­ly I was won­der­ing where the worst places to be in an earth­quake would be (oth­er than in open-heart surgery or some­thing else that is already life-or-death).

Quick thoughts that I had:

  • Get­ting a hair­cut
  • Walk­ing among the stacks of a library
  • In a port-a-pot­ty

I’m sure there are lots of more hor­ri­ble places to be in an earth­quake, but these are the ones that strike par­tic­u­lar fear into my heart.

Who Will Let The Dog Out?

Duane Chap­man, aka Dog the Boun­ty Hunter, was arrest­ed ear­li­er today for vio­lat­ing Mex­i­can law while track­ing down a wealthy ser­i­al rapist.

I have to con­fess that I’m bummed. Boun­ty hunt­ing is a noble pro­fes­sion that helps our legal sys­tem func­tion more effec­tive­ly, and Dog was always enter­tain­ing. Plus I just learned that he’s the kid of an Assem­blies of God mis­sion­ary (Bar­bara Chap­man, whom I nev­er met and who is now deceased) which gives me a cer­tain kin­dred affec­tion for him.

I under­stand that he broke Mex­i­can law, but sure­ly there are high­er pri­or­i­ties for the Mex­i­can legal sys­tem than arrest­ing some­one who helps catch fugi­tives. Almost any­thing rather than devot­ing effort to extra­dit­ing an Amer­i­can boun­ty hunter for catch­ing a vile man who had done despi­ca­ble things.

The one thing about the reports so far that real­ly puz­zles me is that the Chap­mans evi­dent­ly broke bail them­selves. Maybe they know some­thing about the Mex­i­can legal sys­tem that I don’t, but giv­en their line of work that seems pret­ty stu­pid.

Life Church Down The Road

I’ve been think­ing about LifeChurch.tv late­ly (check the Wikipedia arti­cle on them).

In case you’re not famil­iar with the church, it’s one of the best-known exam­ples of the mul­ti-site church move­ment. At present, Life Church uses live video feeds to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly have the same ser­vice in Okla­homa, Ari­zona, Texas, and Ten­nessee. They also stream the ser­vice over the inter­net.

They both start new church­es and acquire exist­ing church­es (that’s their lan­guage, not mine. They are very clear that they are not propos­ing merg­ers — they are propos­ing acqui­si­tions — lis­ten to Kevin Pen­ry). If you’d like to be acquired you can sign up online ask the dust divx movie online .

One thing I want to praise them for: they make their resources avail­able online for free. They’re clear­ly very King­dom-mind­ed.

But some­thing about LifeChurch’s approach wor­ries me.

I’ll explain what it is after some nec­es­sary dis­claimers:

  1. I have no fun­da­men­tal the­o­log­i­cal prob­lem with mul­ti-site church­es. If you think it’s okay for a sin­gle-site church to have two ser­vices on a Sun­day morn­ing then you’re incon­sis­tent to oppose mul­ti­ple-site church­es. Once you cede the split­ting of the con­gre­ga­tion it’s all just a mat­ter of degree (if this is not clear to you then spend some time think­ing through your prob­lems with mul­ti-site church­es and how they are also applic­a­ble to a church that has an 8:00am ser­vice and an 11am ser­vice).
  2. There are a lot of ways to do mul­ti-site church and there is cer­tain­ly diver­si­ty with­in the move­ment. My con­cerns about LifeChurch’s approach don’t apply to all the ways mul­ti-site is done.

Here’s my con­cern: if LifeChurch’s phi­los­o­phy becomes the norm (an excel­lent test of the sound­ness of a phi­los­o­phy) then we lose some­thing vital to the health of the church.

Let’s say LifeChurch con­tin­ues to grow and spreads into 10 or 15 states. They reach 100,000 in aggre­gate atten­dance. 200,000. 500,000. 1,000,000. These num­bers are not unrea­son­able — mul­ti-site church­es seem to be scale-free net­works and thus will exhib­it the win­ner-take-all phe­nom­e­non. The largest mul­ti-site will be about twice as large as its next-great­est neigh­bor and so on down the line.

In effect, LifeChurch (or some­one like it) will become the Wal-Mart of church­es soon, and just like Wal-Mart the over­whelm­ing nature of their dom­i­nance will be sur­pris­ing and will take a while to sink in. And just like Wal-Mart, that will bring some good and some bad along with it.

What hap­pens when the pri­ma­ry leader of the Amer­i­can gigachurch laps­es into stu­pid­i­ty, heresy, or moral fail­ure? How does that affect Chris­tian­i­ty in Amer­i­ca?

This isn’t an unre­al­is­tic con­cern — evan­gel­i­cal­ism has a his­to­ry of each of these blun­ders. And the high­er-pro­file a per­son is the more prone they seem to be to falling into one or more of these.

  • Stu­pid­i­ty: pub­lic dis­plays of igno­rance, par­tic­u­lar­ly on polit­i­cal or sci­en­tif­ic issues
  • Heresy: say­ing things about Jesus or the Bible that just aren’t true
  • Moral Fail­ure: finan­cial impro­pri­ety or sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, for exam­ple

As things stand now, when Joe Preach­er on tele­vi­sion has a moral blowout that church is destroyed but the rest of us rock on, sad­dened but unaf­fect­ed.

Imag­ine a sin­gle church which con­tains 35% of all evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca (and a hand­ful in Eng­land and Aus­tralia) hav­ing the same blowout. It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

That’s bad enough, but what I real­ly wor­ry about is the lack of ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty such an arrange­ment would bring about. Evan­gel­i­cals are already prone to sheep-like behav­ior, but at least we cur­rent­ly hang out in dif­fer­ent flocks.

When we cre­ate an evan­gel­i­cal pope who has far more direct influ­ence over his orga­ni­za­tion than the Pope has over the Catholic church, we will lose some­thing vibrant and vital about evan­gel­i­cal­ism. If we’re not care­ful, we’ll lose a vital part of the gains of the Ref­or­ma­tion.

LifeChurch (and the entire mul­ti-site move­ment) have a lot to offer and are doing some won­der­ful things. On the whole, I have high praise for them.

But it is not unqual­i­fied praise.

Entertainment I Adore

Yes­ter­day I men­tioned some of my least-favorite enter­tain­ment, today is the oppo­site-enter­tain­ment I adore.

Radio: Den­nis Prager is the man. He’s smart, rea­son­able, and thinks out loud in an inter­est­ing way. If your local radio does­n’t car­ry him then it’s your loss. Hon­or­able men­tions: Ira Fla­tow and Hugh Hewitt.

Tele­vi­sion: Myth­busters is clear­ly the best show in the his­to­ry of some­thing. I just can’t decide whether it’s the best show in the his­to­ry of the uni­verse or the best show in the his­to­ry of tele­vi­sion. Hon­or­able men­tions: Dog the Boun­ty Hunter, 24.

Books: Steven Brust is one of the great­est authors of our gen­er­a­tion. If you like nov­els about assas­sins with sar­cas­tic lizards, that is. Hon­or­able men­tions: Ter­ry Pratch­ett, C. S. Fried­man

Music: Rich Mullins rocks the free world. Or rocked the free world. Or what­ev­er. He’s dead but his music con­tin­ues to inspire me. Hon­or­able men­tions: U2, Men With­out Hats

Entertainment I Could Do Without

Social net­work­ing sites like the Face­book often ask you to list your favorite books, movies, and music. I under­stand the rea­son­ing they’re using, but some­times I won­der about what peo­ple real­ly dis­like.

Lest ye won­der the same about me, here’s my list of enter­tain­ment I could do with­out:

  • In radio, I could do with­out Fresh Air with Ter­ry Gross. I just don’t like her inter­views. She’s got a won­der­ful rep­u­ta­tion and so I’m sure she’s great at what she does, but I just don’t con­nect with her. And I LOVE talk radio.
  • On tele­vi­sion, I could do with­out Project Run­way. Paula loves this real­i­ty show, but I just don’t get it. Most fash­ion is ugly any­way — nobody real­ly likes it except for those in the fash­ion indus­try. Even the super­mod­els who demo the out­fits don’t wear that stuff when they don’t have to.
  • In the world of let­ters, I could do with­out the books by Bri­an Her­bert. Frank Her­bert’s son has been writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion nov­els just like his dad did. One prob­lem: he’s not his dad.
  • And in the world of music, I could do with­out hip hop. I know it’s hip (by def­i­n­i­tion — see name) and all the kids are dig­gin’ it, but it just does­n’t do it for me. I can appre­ci­ate the bizarre genius that goes into craft­ing the rhymes and that are rockin’ our times, but Dr. Seuss retired that genre years ago. Every­thing else is pure­ly deriv­a­tive.

So that’s my anti-pro­file. You may now judge me by the things I don’t like.