Cloey the Clown

Cloey the Clown
Originally uploaded by aaronklinefelter.

Good times tonight trick-or-treating. Cloey wasn’t so sure about the ordeal, but enjoyed her bag that she got to put candy in!

Via Crucis Pictures

Via Crucis 039
Originally uploaded by aaronklinefelter.

I uploaded a bunch of Via Crucis pics from 2 years ago. We’re going to do it again this year, in partnership with a several other communities of faith. I’m already getting very excited.

Holy Week 2006
Via Crucis
an experiential stations of the cross
St. Elizabeth’s in Norwood, Ohio

How Much Is My Blog Worth?

Learning Curve

“The concept of the learning curve was introduced to the aircraft industry in 1936 when T. P. Wright published an article in the February 1936 Journal of the Aeronautical Science. Wright described a basic theory for obtaining cost estimates based on repetitive production of airplane assemblies. Since then, learning curves (also known as progress functions) have been applied to all types of work from simple tasks to complex jobs like manufacturing a Space Shuttle.

The theory of learning is simple. It is recognized that repetition of the same operation results in less time or effort expended on that operation. For the Wright learning curve, the underlying hypothesis is that the direct labor man-hours necessary to complete a unit of production will decrease by a constant percentage each time the production quantity is doubled. If the rate of improvement is 20% between doubled quantities, then the learning percent would be 80% (100-20=80).”

Hum… that’s interesting… Basically, I’m feeling particularly steep in the learning curve this morning. Hanging on the side of a sheer cliff looking up dauntingly. Learning leadership. Learning computer networking. Learning IT. Learning, learning, learning, learning….

so much.

New Podcasts!!

Alan’s got one: alancreech podcast

Conversatio Fide’s got two: www.conversatio.com

Happy Listening.

Learning

Today (and tomorrow) I’m at a workshop – CompMaster Seminars – Supporting, Troubleshooting and Optimizing Windows™ Server 2003. Its good, about half of which I understand… the other half I’m moving into understanding. We use 2003 at CCS and I need to know it so I can support it and the network better. I like learning…. it stretches me to open up new avenues and pathways in my brain. Regardless of what I’m learning – be it theology, technology, or music theory (which is something that I miss).

I’m also learning about eating, money, and new ways of leading. These are each blog posts in their own right, but all three are growing edges for me. Eating – not being controlled by food, not having to eat something just because its there, and being in control of what I eat and how it effects me. Money – spending and making wise choices, being a good steward – which includes giving and not spending money on stupid stuff, paying off debt. New ways of leading – learning what it could mean to be a corporate/communal Spiritual Director. All good things… all struggles.

Thanks to the Body of Christ (I really mean that) we are going to Seattle. Thank you thank you thank you to all those who helped out. I sense God’s movment in this Seattle trip. Something in this for me and for us as a family and our network/community.

Break is almost over… back to learning.

Peace to you.

Frustrated

I am very frustrated. Sarah, Cloey, and I are planning to go to Seattle in a couple weeks for the next Generous Orthodoxy conf. I’ll be helping out with tech stuff and Sarah will attend some of the conf. My deal with my Sarah was that I could go to Seattle if she and Cloey could come too. I thought that would work out fine as we have enough skymiles for a ticket for her… assuming that Cloey would be free as she’s under two. But, Cloey turns two next week and while it would be convenient to lie about her age, I can’t. And I just found out that she’d be full price for a seat.

In addition to all that, the seats available for skymiles are severly limited.

The net result is that in order for me/us to come I would need to use the Skymiles to get my tix (flying out weds. and returning monday). And we would need to purchase two tix for Sarah and Cloey – $419 per person. I’m sure there are various variations that would work too… but so far all of them that I can see would cost us money that we don’t have.

So, I’ll make a request… is there anyone out there in the great blog-o-sphere that could help us out? Skymiles are probably not going to help as there are no Skymile seats available on Sunday when Sarah needs to return. Basically… we’d need funds, $838, in order to make this happen. Obviously there are many many more worthy causes for you to give money too. But I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask…

The next officially unofficial gathering for the ever expanding and not so mid west Midwest posse of the quasi emerging-psuedo monastic-organically pr

Via Kevin Rains:

“Novemeber 17-18th It falls on a really special weekend for VC-ites. We’ll be having the official re-opening of Old St. E’s building with a an art show by local photographer Jon Willis who has taken some stunning photos of the building over the past couple of years combined with a neighborhood grille out on Maximus (Maxi for short, it’s the grille’s new nick name — thanks Charlie!) Oh and even more critical: it’s Tracy’s birthday and the official feast day of St Elizabeth!!!! Not a bad weekend at all…”

It is ON!!!

I Find Myself

From my good friend Doc:

“I am finding that I am changing. I no longer hold as tightly to some old and deeply rooted beliefs that in recent weeks have become less significant. I find myself having found a connection to stuff from my Catholic upbringing – stuff that some of the Protestant world would say is heretical – and in that connection their is healing and reconciliation and peace. I find myself with a fresh and growing passion for chasing my Jesus and sharing him in relational ways with others. I find myself having, at the same time, a renewed appreciation for things liturgical and a renewed dislike for “playing church”. I find myself hungering for God’s Word, and for what He wants to say to me.”

First, Doc (Kevin Savage – pronounced Saw-vaw-gaw) has become a good friend since starting at CCS in August. I am honored to count him a friend and more honored that he counts me as one. He is a deeply passionate man and thorough-going apprentice to Jesus.

Second, what I find in his words is something deeply significant and profoundly different than what I think I hear in others. Here’s what I mean… yesterday I was listening to NT Wright who was talking about how Gnosticism has invaded the Church. This all too pervasive idea that being a Christian or knowing Jesus is about him helping us “find our true identity”. This is way more important than I can grasp and I am very aware that I am born into this understanding…. I am guilty of being a purveyor of a false gospel. I’m just barely beginning to understand what this might mean. Basically, that we’ve exchanged following Jesus and find our stories in the context of The (larger) Story for Jesus helping us “be all that we can be” and discover my true, unique, spiritual self that has been buried by the evil World.

What I see in Doc’s writing is markedly different… it is he finding himself drawn out of himself into a larger reality that spirals back around to give meaning and life to his own. It is him being drawn out of himself into the Larger Story of God’s Reign. It is him being re-shaped and transformed into a likeness of Another.

May it be said the same of me.

The Therapeutic and The Emerging Church

I wrote the following email this morning:

Dr. Lee,

Not sure if you remember me, but I took your class with Dr. Balswick a couple years back…. my wife, Sarah, was the receptionist at SOP for about a year when we were in Pasadena.

Anyway, we’re now in Cincinnati, OH and are part of the leadership of Vineyard Central (www.vineyardcentral.com). We’re a network of house churches… more or less an “emerging church” by the current definition (at least according to Ryan Bolger’s/Eddie Gibbs’ upcoming book).

On my way to work this morning I was thinking about some of the leadership struggles we have in our church and my mind landed on the discussions from our class and your book, Beyond Family Values. Even as our community is counter-cultural to much of typical American Evangelicalism and while we value (and practice) things like a holistic life, simple living, and community – I still find that we have deep undercurrents of the therapeutic (and consumerism and individualism, but therapeutic comes to mind the most prominent at present).

I plan to go back and re-read your book, but I wanted to send an email to say thanks for this insight and for what you teach. And to ask a question – how do you perceive these three factors playing themselves out uniquely in the emerging church scene – in as much as it is different from other expressions of church in the US? And (this is the real kicker for me) how do we in this emerging context move beyond the prisons of assumptions that these three dynamics seem to hold us in?

If you have time to engage in dialogue about this I would very grateful.

Many Blessings
Aaron
—————————–
I hope he is able to respond and offer some insight (I’ll share it if he does). I think this stuff is pandemic – deeply effecting and infecting all that we do as a church, both locally and more broadly.

Here’s the book – Beyond Family Values: A Call to Christian Virtue, by Cameron Lee. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998.)

Here’s a quote:
“I suggest that our contemporary American culture is dominated by three types of moral discourse, each imposing its own inherent logic: the language of individual rights, the language of the consumer market-place and the language of psychotherapy. Such is the case both inside and outside the church: the three languages become mingled in practice and in some case replace the biblical narratives as the functional moral logic of today’s Christians.” (pp. 12-13) (pulled from a review of the book – here)

I’m beginning to become convinced that much of our underlying problems in our church stem from these three prevailing issues. We have deeply come to expect the church to be our therapist, our provider of religious/spiritual goods and services, and the great defender of our Ultimate Right to be an autonomous individual, a “beautiful or unique snowflake” (thank Tyler Durden). We are in desperate need for a Narrative Intervention of the Biblical variety and scale.

In the words of Father Creech, “We are parts of one another. That should say it all. Know at all times that you were not created to be alone, to act alone or to exist only for yourself. Recognize the Body. Always consciously see yourself as a part of that whole. This community is the every-day tangible expression of that Body for us. It is where we live out our union with Christ.”