Pretty darn excited about this week

I’m headed to Paris, KY tonight.  The kiddos and I are going down this afternoon and the plan is for them to hang with the Grandparents while I go visit The Rock and Aaron Mansfield tonight.  Then tomorrow (I’m really excited about this) DG and I are meeting with and interviewing some folks for the Praxis Podcast:

- Ryan Koch (at Third Street Stuff, favorite coffeeshop in Lex) – he’s the Executive Director of SeedLeaf – “The purpose of Seedleaf is to increase the amount, affordability, nutritional value, and sustainability of food available to people at risk of hunger in central Kentucky.”  And he’s part of the Communality community.

- Will & Lisa Samson – also part of Communality and both authors.  They co-wrote Justice in the Burbs (could be good book study in PRidge, NKU, or Asbury Church) and Will just came out with Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess.

- Nancy & Matthew Sleeth – authors and Wilmorians.  Matthew wrote Serve God, Save the Planet and is a former ER chief of staff from New England.  They got all Jesusy, downsized to Wilmore, and are Green advocates for the Church.  Nancy has a new book coming out Go Green, Save Green.  I’m pretty excited that we get to have dinner at their house and see how they live green in Wilmore.

Later this week I’m looking forward to meeting with Devin Schenk and Chris Curran, both faculty at NKU and involved with living ecologically sound lives and environmental sustainability and preservation.  Likewise, I’m eager to meet Edward Goode, new pastor here in Cincy with Presbyterian Church of Wyoming (suburb of Cincy).  I’m headed downtown in few minutes (noon on Monday) to have lunch with a couple prophets….

Actually, this exciting week started yesterday.  I had the honor and privelege to speaking at Asbury Church in Northern Kentucky.  We talked about Matthew 13 and some of the seed parables there.  The mp3 will be up on here soon (I’ll post it on this blog and Facebook when it is).

Here are a few links, including the videos I used, from the sermonizing that may be helpful for those who heard/hear it:

Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living, by Rueben Job – book

1. Do No Harm
2. Do Good
3. Stay in Love with God

Swarm Theory, article in National Geographic by Peter Miller

“how swarm intelligence works: simple creatures following simple rules, each one acting on local information. No ant sees the big picture. No ant tells any other ant what to do. Some ant species may go about this with more sophistication than others. (Temnothorax albipennis, for example, can rate the quality of a potential nest site using multiple criteria.) But the bottom line, says Iain Couzin, a biologist at Oxford and Princeton Universities, is that no leadership is required. “Even complex behavior may be coordinated by relatively simple interactions,” he says.”

YouTube – 300,000 Starlings in motion

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIzlcH2q6Vo]

YouTube – Timelapse film of growing cress

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky1kBLwCBHg]

Scriptures:

Matthew 13:3-9

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Mark 4:26-29

John 12:20-26

and, for those who were there, don’t forget to plant those wildflowers!

Four Areas of Ministry Focus – UMC.org

What do you think of these 4 areas of focus?  Are they too broad?  Too specific?  Is it possible to focus on 4 things at once?  Can a large institution initiate focus for the whole machine from the top down?  If so, how would it go about doing it (i.e. saying so doesn’t make it so)?  Are these even the right things to focus on?  Comment your thoughts, if you please.

Four Areas of Ministry Focus – UMC.org

The Four Areas of Focus express the vision and yearnings of the people of The United Methodist Church. Over the next quadrennium, the church will seek to focus the work of making disciples for Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world around these areas of ministry:

• Combating the diseases of poverty by improving health globally.
• Creating new places for new people and revitalizing existing congregations.
• Developing principled Christian leaders for the church and the world.
• Engaging in ministry with the poor.

Beyond Organic: The Story of Polyface Farm

UC Berkeley Journalism – Events – Beyond Organic: The Story of Polyface Farm

Click that link to watch a great video seminar by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm (you won’t be sorry).

Church, Money, and the Future – a series of blog posts exploring the intersections of such

My del.icio.us bookmarks tagged with “churchmoneyfuture”
In reference to the aforementioned blogged conversation about Church, Money, and the Future I created a tag on Del.icio.us to keep track of the series of posts.

Reformed Theology Quiz

So, I took this quiz on Facebook and it tells me that I’m…

Very Reformed

You are strongly committed to the doctrines of God’s grace and the exclusive supremacy of God’s word in matters of faith and practice. Your reformed distinctives are impressive, but you must be careful never to let your love for Christ and the simple gospel fall by the wayside. Keep reading the Puritans and all will come into focus.

House Church Lenten Study 2008

Our House Church (Ashwood House Church in Pleasant Ridge) is looking to start a new study series, probably based on Lent in preparation for Easter.

Jamie found this resource:

From Jamie: “Lutheran Hour Ministries is providing free of charge, to any church, the permission to print a booklet of Lenten devotions (www.lentendevotions.net). I like the one titled Writings from the Wilderness that is written by a pastor who is planting a church in Denver. In addition to providing reflections for Lent, it encourages readers to reflect on their own life stories within God’s larger narrative. The daily meditations are appropriate for believers and the curious – thus I think it would be a way to encourage people outside the church to join us during this time. Each Wednesday someone could offer a reflection/teaching that digs a little deeper into the theme and scriptures for the week. In addition, the weekly themes would lend themselves to creating a community-built altar. Whatever resources we decide to use during Lent, I would like to see us regularly sing some of the traditional hymns of the season.”

Here are the links/resources I’ve found:

Big V, The Mothership, Tri-County/Springdale/Cincinnati Vineyard, VCC
4 week series beginning this coming week with Joe Boyd:
What It Means to Follow Jesus

“There is no biblical way to follow Jesus or to believe in his message apart from becoming his disciple (student/follower). In this 4-week class, Joe will teach Jesus’s way of discipleship while leading the students to learn how to sustain an ongoing Master/student relationship with Christ. Those who follow Jesus should expect to be continually taught and changed by his presence. This class addresses many of the common barriers to growth and depth in the Christian life.”
Link

Crossroads
Consumed

Bombarded with the promises of savvy marketers and easy credit, we’re offered beauty, significance, security and happiness in just six easy installments and low, low monthly payments. In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, we often feel like we never have enough. But there’s another way. There’s freedom to be had in a more open-handed approach to our time, money and possessions. In that freedom, we can discover what it means to be consumed with the One who designed us to be so much more than a cog in a consumer-driven economy. And that will change everything.
Link

Upper Room
Lenten Study 2008 – The City of God

“This Lent I suggest that small groups allow the daily meditations of The Upper Room to serve as the cobblestones for a journey from Job’s ash hill to the City of God. I choose the image of the city deliberately. Biblically, history will find its fulfillment in the City of God, the New Jerusalem. This should not be surprising. The city, after all, is where all the people are!

I grew up in California, and I enjoyed visiting the missions. The road that ran north and south through Colonial California was called El Camino Real – “the royal road.” The missions were outposts established about a day’s ride apart, places where travelers could find rest, shelter, and sanctuary.

Our Lenten small-group meetings are like mission points along the road to Easter. Each outpost has its own name: Justice, Shalom, Righteousness, Hope, and Healing before we find ourselves in hailing distance of the City of God.”
Link

BBC
Pathways of Prayer

“Reflecting the season, BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship and Daily Service will take up the theme of Pathways of Prayer in partnership with Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) who are providing a study guide and complementary materials on their website.”

Each week the Radio 4 Sunday Worship preacher will focus on a particular Pathway of Prayer. These will be:
• The Path of Holiness
• The Path of Social Justice
• The Devotional Path
• The Sacramental Path
• The Contemplative Path
• The Charismatic Path
Link

Lenten Hymns:
CyberHymnal.org (topic: Lent)
Link

Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Meditations on Lenten Hymns
Link

Oremus Hymnal: Lent
Link

Hymns and Canticles for the Lenten Season
Link

The Lutheran Folk Passion
These are a collection of Lutheran Hymns or Christian hymns relating to the season of Lent and to the week of the Passion of our Lord.
Link

General Resources for Lent and the Christian Year:
The Lectionary Page
Link

Textweek (beginning with Ash Wednesday)
Link

Ash Wednesday, Feb. 6th
Imposition of Ashes

Church of the Redeemer (Episcopal, Hyde Park)
7:00 PM
Link

Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal, Downtown)
6:00 pm
Link

(I’m sure there are many more, but these are the only ones I could find posting on their website)

Pondering yourself…

 From blog one another. Which of these describe you best?

Entrepreneur
- Pioneer, Strategist, Innovator, Visionary
- Groundbreaker who initiates an organization’s mission

Questioner
- Disturber, Agitator
- Upsets the status quo, challenging an organization to move in new directions

Recruiter
- Passionate communicator of organizational message
- Recruits to the cause

Humanizer
- Carer, Social cement
- Provides organization glue by caring for the individuals in it

Systematizer
- Philosopher, Translator
- Organizes the various parts into a working unit and articulates that structure to the other members

linked up – soupablog: Walter Brueggemann's 19 Theses

soupablog: Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses
1. Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or explicit. It may be recognized or unrecognized, but everybody has a script.

2. We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process of nurture and formation and socialization, and it happens to us without our knowing it.

3. The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.

4. That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism) enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us happy.

……. etc…

Linked Up: theVoiz Blog: The New Big. Small's In.

theVoiz Blog: Gritty thoughts by Aaron Flores on Life, Spirituality & Faith: The New Big. Small’s In.

“But I wondered what if churches redefined what it meant to be big. The New Big would purposefully remain smaller, need to sustain very little organizationally, and automate everything else so it could be free to live out its dreams accordingly.”

Can size be an idol?  Big or small?

Linked Up – willzhead: A Response to Bill Easum's Thoughts on the Emerging Church

Link: willzhead: A Response to Bill Easum’s Thoughts on the Emerging Church

This industrial cycle is one that Easum stands at the end of, and one that was largely driven by a scientific epistemological approach to ecclesiology. This epistemology affected the way Christians conceptualized being a follower of Jesus and greatly influenced the kind of congregations we created. Thus, theological orthodoxy became accedence to a set of propositionally constructed truths, as opposed to adherence to belief statements. And, as proof that “form follows function,” a kind of methodological orthodoxy crept in as well, enabling an ongoing conversation about which model is right. Thus was born the need within the Church for firms whose sole purpose is to help churches connect with the right model and grow, with growth generally being measured in economic and consumer terms as more: more people, more buildings, more giving, more small groups, etc.

Good post from Will Samson.  I submit that you may agree or disagree with his assessment of Easum’s assessment, but I think it is a good engagement with the core issues at hand in the shifts taking place in the church.