Podcast: Aaron thinks about Leadership

Download audio here – Aaron’s (unformed) Thoughts on Leadership (mp3, 16mb)

Lots has been percolating in my head around this topic this week and I try (somewhat successfully, you decide) to get some of them out and recorded. Here are some of the links from my rambling:

Fr. Richard Rohr, “Sadness”
Chris Erdman and Alan Roxburgh
Paul Fromont
Dwight Friesen

The music underneath is from CC Mixter (an awesome site!). Specifically:

Vlog: Alan Pontificates on Preaching

Alan Creech at it again….

Vlog: Reflections on WALP

Eric Herron, Peter White, Jeana Clark, Jason, and Jackie share thoughts on WALP at dinner.

Vlog: Cloey Walking

Vlog: Cloey and her FAVORITE Toy

Apophatic & Cataphatic

Lots of discussion of leadership and expectations and assumptions afoot of late. I think this ties in on a deep level. Though, I admit, I’m not sure how to articulate it (that may be part of the point…).

Fr. Richard Rohr, “Sadness”

“The mystics call it the apophatic tradition, the tradition that has to accompany the cataphatic tradition. The spiritual life has a way of light and a way of darkness. The cataphatic is the way of light. The apophatic is the way of darkness. Since the Enlightenment period, most Western Christians have not been trained much in the apaphatic tradition. But the tradition of darkness is the greater teacher, the necessary teacher, really the teacher that breaks a person down through and into this realm that our biblical tradition, our Judeo-Christian tradition calls faith. At its depths, our tradition acknowledges the primacy of darkness as the greater teacher, as the greater expander of the soul, as the greater opener-up of the eyes. This seems to be the wisdom that we should be bringing to the West today, but that certainly hasn’t been where most Catholic Christian theology has been for the last 300 years. We’ve wanted answers, we’ve wanted clarity, we want closure, we want solutions which tells me we’ve been far more influenced by the ascendant western civilization than what I will call as a Christian, the decent language of Jesus or Job or the Jewish prophets who are talking much more about this way of tears, this way about going into the shadow, into the pain, into the dark side if you will and that being where we would find wisdom. I think we are at a very difficult position in terms of western spirituality because it often feels, in many established church groups that I talk to, that we’re on a course that needs to be turned around 180 degrees. We will never find wisdom in this search for closure, answers, certitude, fixing and explanation. It simply isn’t the path of wisdom.”

Emerging Conclave

This week in the not-so-sunny Southern California is a gathering of cardinals… er… i mean emerging church leaders. Its a super secret, invitation only meetin’ and the guest list is a closely guarded secret. (naturally I’m being facetious) But from what I can tell here is a blogger list of the luminaries gathered at Fuller/Allelon for the Conclave… er… “Forming Leaders for the missional/emerging church”:

Kevin Rains
Mark Palmer
Andrew Jones
Doug Paggitt
Jason Evans
Ian Mobsby
Karen Ward
Rachelle Mee-Chapman
Malcolm Hawker
Steve Taylor
Ben Edson
Al Roxburgh
Dwight Friesen

From what I gather this is a tag-team event with Allelon and Fuller. I’m guessing Mark Priddy is there representin’ Allelon and that Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger are the Fullerites. Speaking of which Ryan and Eddie have a book coming out soon in which it appears that most of the people at this present event have been interviewed and quoted. The book (which I’ve been priveleged to preview, but can’t tell you more or I’d have to kill you) looks good and I’m curious how the content of their conversation this week ties in with what Ryan and Eddie discuss in the book. BTW – the book (“Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures“) is already listed on Amazon.com, but naturally you’ll buy it from Bill of Beanbooks when the time comes.

So, if you know of others at the Emerging Conclave (or are there yourself!) let me know. I look forward to hearing about and reading notes from the conversations.

Oh MY!!!!

Numa Numa. Click. Laugh.

The words of the prophets are written…

in rap songs. With apologies to Paul Simon. Brian Turner’s new Next-Wave article about Will Smith is worth the read. I’ve always been a Will Smith fan (I have his greatest hits CD in my car presently… looking forward to cranking “Summertime” in the summertime).

From the article:

“I think we should heed the words of Will Smith and Donald Miller. We should realize it is our responsiblity to love people as we share the gospel with them. We should never browbeat or give the message of Christ with arrogance. We should be careful to live the gospel as well as speak it.”

Good words to remember. Check the tape… er article.

next-wave > church & culture: “Ms. Holy Roller” by Brian Turner

conversatio fide :: a podcast

www.conversatio.com will now redirect you to: http://conversatio.blogspot.com/. This is a change from the former address due to some odd posting issues. The RSS feed is still the same – http://feeds.feedburner.com/conversatio. Please subscribe.

I’m really thinking of switching to Word Press or something. I would really like a system that I could do my personal blog, conversatio podcast, and any other podcast (lectionary readings, daily office) ALL from. With Word Press would I be able to set up independent urls? Like would I be able to use the same server to host www.aaronklinefelter.com, www.conversatio.com, and www.audiolectionary.com (for instance)?