Knowtown…

I recently finished reading a biography of one of my favorite historical figures—ALEXANDER HAMILTON, AMERICAN, by Richard Brookhiser. I have wanted to read this book ever since reading Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light. In my ongoing attempts to understand leadership from a more faithful perspective I find that my dreams of leadership pull me towards dissidents and revolutionaries. Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, and yes, Alexander Hamilton. Brookshire makes these observations in the introduction of his book:

…Many of the leaders of the American Revolution were rich, powerful men—Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock. None had come from so far back as Hamilton.

But the Revolution was over. How then could the experience of Greene, or Hamilton, be repeated? What made Hamilton’s rise in the world more than an episode, or a detail in a dramatic life, is that he had thought of ways to bring light to the talents of other men as well as himself: an interlocking system of law, finance, and work that would enable his countrymen to become conscious of their resources. He did not outline his plans to his Fourth of July audience; there were not many details yet to outline. But he had been thinking of the problem for years, and the rest of his life, especially his term as treasury secretary, would be devoted to it. Most men who make it provide for their families, thank fortune, and maybe give to charity. Some raise the drawbridge behind them. Hamilton, who had already come from the Caribbean to the pulpit at St. Paul’s, and would go on to more glittering prizes yet, wanted to generalize his experience. That is why he is a great man, and a great American. Americans like to think of themselves as self-made, even though few of us are. Hamilton was, and wanted to give others the opportunities to become so. (emphasis mine)

I find Hamilton’s biography completely fascinating. He is known for writing the majority of the Federalist Papers, defending and supporting the US Constitution (even though he did not completely agree with it), laying the foundations of the US economic system, and setting many precedents in the US legal system. Many of the events of his life are overshadowed by his unusual and untimely death—killed by the Vice President of the United States in a duel. Ironically, Hamilton was not a very successful politician in spite of the profound influence he had in the forming of our government. The world of politics was not his venue. As the above excerpt points out, he was more willing to share his opportunities with others than he was to accumulate power for himself.

I find it unfortunate that leadership paradigms tend to value those who quest for power more than those who live to give their power away. As an ecclesial dreamer this tendency is puzzling to me. It is so strange to me that Built to Last and Good to Great are consistently recommended as good books for church planters when there are many much better books. Here is another interesting quote from Brookhiser’s book:

There is a statue of Hamilton in front of the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., and millions of tourist pass it on their way to the White House next door. But it is not a destination. Hamilton, we feel, belongs where he is, on the $10 bill, not on Mt. Rushmore.

All things being equal, I will choose Hamilton’s leadership paradigm over Jefferson’s any day. I have to admit I have a hard time understanding why people who give their power away are seen as a threat by those who try to accumulate as much power as possible. Maybe they know intuitively that the first will be last and they are trying their hardest to fight against that.

I have been re-reading Vincent J. Donovan’s great book Christianity Rediscovered. I liked it a lot the first time I read it and I like it even more when I was preaching through some of it at my last church but now I absolutely love it! This book is powerful in several ways. For me it was good to read a “missional” book written from a Catholic perspective. Anyone ecclesial dreamer who hopes to embody church in a new way in their own context needs to read this book. This simple, easy to read story has a ton of good theology hidden in it.

I will be sharing some thoughts from this book over the next few posts as it is one of the books that has had a profound influence on how I view the church, leadership, mission, etc.
I wanted to post a few quotes from the preface to get the ball rolling but the whole preface is so good it is hard to pull out just a few quotes. For example:

“A very interesting response to the book was been the observation that there is in it traces of a movement away from the theology of salvation to a new theological stance, a movement not so much articulated in the book as acted out—something like the melody of a new unwritten song that haunts you, with the notes and the words not yet in place. It is there just out of your reach and the melody haunts you because it is not yet complete, but you will recognize the song when it is complete: a new song that many are trying to sing today in Place of the ancient hymn of salvation.”

or:

“And whether in the mission field or on the home front one cannot rest one’s missionary eyes. Missionaries looking at the church in America would be worried by what they see. Because what they see is a bad missionary situation. Not just the sharp decline in active participation in church community and the draining away of the young, but a church life that is not much more relevant to the human life lived in the neighborhoods surrounding it than the mission compound was to the tribal life of the Africans. The parish church could very well be the mission compound of the American scene, a beleaguered, outpost colony in an alien world.”

and:

“When the gospel reaches a people where they are, their response to that gospel is the church in a new place, the song they will sing is that new song, that unwritten melody that haunts all of us. What we have to be involved in is not the revival of the church or the reform of the church. It has to be nothing less than what Paul and the Fathers of the Council of Jerusalem were involved in for their time—the refounding of the Catholic church for our age.”

more to come…

The Anapapist let me borrow Miroslav Volf’s book, After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity and it is great. As the title indicates, Volf is exploring how the Church is an image of the trinity. Throughout the book he is interacting with a Catholic theologian (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) and an Orthodox Theologian (John D Zizioulas) as he explores the relationships of the church to our triune God and persons to the community of faith. EXCELLLENT!! So far the book has been surprisingly readable even with the deep theological themes. Here is a quote from the introduction to the American edition that hit me as I read it because it speak to issues that have been on my mind a lot lately:

“Put most broadly, my topic is the relation between persons and community in Christian theology. The focus is the community of grace, the Christian church. The point of departure is the thought of the first Baptist, John Smyth, and the notion of church as ‘gathered community’ that he shared with Radical Reformers. The purpose of this book is to counter the tendencies toward individualism in Protestant ecclesiology and to suggest a viable understanding of the church in which both person and community are given their proper due. The ultimate goal is to spell out a vision of the church as an image of the triune God. The road that I have taken is that of a sustained critical ecumenical dialogue with Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiology in the persons of their more or less official representatives.

A major strand of my argument stands in close affinity with this egalitarian agenda of feminist ecclesiology. I argue that the presence of Christ, which constitutes the church, is mediated not simply through the ordained ministers but through the whole congregation, that the whole congregation functions as matter ecclesia to the children engendered by the Holy Spirit, and the whole congregation is called to engage in ministry and make decisions about leadership roles. I do not specifically address the ordination of women; I simply assume it. Everything in my ecclesiology speaks in its favor, and I find none of the biblical, anthropological, Christological, and theological arguments against it persuasive–neither those propounded by fundamentalist Protestant groups nor those offered by the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Obviously I agree with his take on ordination of women and his articulation on the participation of the whole community is intriguing (gets much better as the book goes on, by the way) but that is not what really hit me. The big idea for me was the way he frames “gathered community” as being in opposition to “a community of grace”. I think there are a lot of ecclesial dreamers who think that their gathered communities are communities of grace but Volf is setting these ideas up in opposition to one another. This makes a lot of sense. The concept of gathering seems to assume that those who gather believe the same way, where as a community of grace allows for real, genuine and intimate relationships to form even between people who may not agree with one another. There is no grace needed to share a table with someone who thinks, believes and acts like you do. Grace is only required when you did in the cup with someone who is not like you. This is a BIG idea and one I think we need to wrestle with. Perhaps the reason the “emerging” church is getting identified as primarily white and male is that we have not realized the opposition between “gathered communities” and “communities of grace”.

I vote that we become more intentional about becoming “communities of grace” knowing full well that to say that means that my voice cannot be the voice of the community of faith I am part of. This means things may not turn out like I want them to. When everyone around the table has a voice I may have to eat new foods with flavors I am not used to. Do I have the courage to go there? I hope so.

Gareth Higgins’ How Movies Helped Save My Soul: Finding Spiritual Fingerprints in Culturally Significant Films does much more than review popular movies. If you are looking for a “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” type of resource you may want to look elsewhere. Instead, this book does a great job of training the readers how to find these spiritual fingerprints in films for themselves. Like other titles from Relevant Books, there is no attempt to push a spiritual agenda into an area where one does not really exist. It simply illuminates that these “fingerprints” are everywhere. Gareth shows us that one of the best places available to find these sacraments is in the cinema.

Each chapter in the book is structured around a theme, such as “war”, “brokenness” or “quest”. Its open-ended style reads like a conversation that begs for your interaction. I found myself thinking of films I would want to include in each section. While I appreciated Gareth’s observations of the films he reviews I think his insights into the human conditions he addressed in each chapter were the real strength of this book. Instinctively I know that there is more to a film than what I see on the screen but Gareth made me conscious of new depths, even in movies I thought I understood. He explores some transcendent themes with immanence perhaps only movies can allow for. The author’s great sense of humor is reflected throughout and makes this book that much more enjoyable to read.

With the medium of film being discussed, I would have liked to have seen some pictures from some of the films Gareth mentions. That is a minor complaint, but the only one I can find with this book. This would be a great book to give as a gift to anyone who goes to the movies. After reading it you will find yourself watching films in a new way. I recommend it highly.

As an amateur musician, a fan of various genres of music and a spiritual pilgrim I was very intrigued by the title of the new book from RelavantBooks — Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced 12 Music Icons. Even though I had read a previous book from the publisher (Walk On: The Spiritual Journey Of U2) and liked it very much I approached this book with some reservations. Too often books with this subject matter tend to use the stars of the music industry as propaganda for a not-so-subtle, evangelistic message. However, this book blew me away and left me pleasantly surprised. There are no hidden agendas here. The authors (there are more than one, making the book read like a discussion between friends) claim to show how faith influenced these artist and that is exactly what they do.

So how has faith influenced them? The answers may surprise you. While you expect musicians like Bono to be here, the inclusions of greats like Johnny Cash, Moby, Lenny Kravitz and Lauren Hill make this book instantly multifaceted. The book is well researched digging up rare interviews and supplementary documentation to illustrate what we all intuitively know. Spiritual Journeys are not always clean cut, tourist itineraries put together by AAA. They are more often messy, unpredictable works in progress. I like that the authors did not try to arrive at a spiritual “destination” but let the artist stories unfold as they happened. They are not repackaging the debates about contemporary Christian music artists or trying to label anyone or figure out which side of spiritual fence they are on. They simply tell the stories in a way that illustrates the deep connection with the artists and their sometimes enigmatic faith.

I am sure that there are many faithful who will be disappointed that we can not easily take the artist from this book and make them the next spokespeople for our particular brand of faith. But for those looking for a deeper understanding to the music of these “icons” and how spirituality and art continue to intersect this is a great read.

The dictionary defines:

con•flict n.
1. A state of open, often prolonged fighting; a battle or war.
2. A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash.
3. Psychology. A psychic struggle, often unconscious, resulting from the opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires, or tendencies.
4. Opposition between characters or forces in a work of drama or fiction, especially opposition that motivates or shapes the action of the plot.

This is a strong word. It leads me to believe that forces, people or ideas that are in conflict will not be able to reconcile. The fight needs to continue until one side wins and the other is defeated. So imagine my surprise when I read in Robert E. Webbers book, The Younger Evangelicals the following:

“Right now these two paradigms—the older evangelicalism built around twentieth-cetury culture and the evangelicalism being formed around the twenty-first century—are in conflict. This clash is birthing a new set of leaders—the younger evangelicals.” (page 14)

If you would have asked me even as recently as 6 months ago if I agreed with this assessment I would have been unsure. But now I feel like I am involved in the conflict and so I would answer much differently and more concretely. It is like the difference between being “aware” of conflict in Africa and being “involved” in the conflict in Africa. When you are detached or removed from the conflict, even though we know better, it doesn’t carry as much weight. I long to see a revolutionary (in that it revolves around the center, which is Christ, as He moves through history) church that stewards the faith once and for all delivered to the saints and willingly passes the baton to the next generations. I desire to experience the continuity of the faith in my own history. The idea that this continuity could be broken by conflict with the previous generation of evangelicals breaks my heart.

I consider myself one of these younger evangelicals, as described in Webber’s book. I hang around with younger evangelicals right here in the Denver area. I travel to gather with other younger evangelicals from around the country/world at various conventions or meetings sponsored by organizations like Emergent. I read blogs (listed at the left) and correspond with other younger evangelicals from around the world who fuel my passion to follow Christ in a brave way. These people sharing their lives and thoughts with me are making me a better follower and providing encouragement and accountability to my ecclesial dream. In a very real way they are my community of faith and I belong with them.

But I am currently attending a church that is primarily made up of and led by the “other” paradigm. As I struggle through what that means for my next steps I am beginning to realize that this really is a conflict. (if you are not a younger evangelical stuck in an older paradigm church you may not understand that) The way the “other” paradigm is structured is making it very difficult to follow my calling as a younger evangelical. If I stay there it will most certainly lead to conflict for the whole community. But leaving does not eliminate the conflict. It feels like no matter how hard I try to follow my calling those from the “other” paradigm see it as “divisive” or interpret my choices in a judgmental way (”right” or “wrong”). From my perspective I want to be encouraged and supported by them as I follow where God is leading me and to stay reconciled to this community. But because of the different ways of thinking about and doing church I am not sure this conflict can or will end that well.

So maybe conflict is too strong a word. As I continue to follow Christ as a younger evangelical I will let you know what I think about that. Meanwhile if anyone out there has some wisdom and/or experience in this, I would love to hear from you. Is this a conflict? Can it end gracefully? Are continuity and reconciliation possible?

While wandering through the halls at work today I discovered a used book sale going on. Hardback books for a dollar and paperback books for 50 cents. I am currently in two books right now with two more on the way from Amazon. Not to mention the next Harry Potter is out this weekend. The last thing I need is another book. But I have an unwritten rule that you cannot go past a used book sale and I decided it couldn’t hurt to look. So I browse through the cheesy romance novels and the various outdated business books certain that there will be nothing good here. But then I spied an interesting title: The Serpent Was Wiser: A New Look At Genesis 1-11, by Richard S Hanson. I have been looking for books on the creation narrative for about two months anyway. I picked it up and read the back cover… “Neither a commentary nor an introduction to genesis 1-11. Rather it attempts to reclaim this significant part of the Bible for the ‘person who likes to read for insight and entertainment and for the preacher who would like to preach on the ancient motifs and stories.’ Richard S. Hanson is an Old testament scholar who displays a joyful sense of humor and a deep human understanding of his material and his readers. His fresh, imaginative engagement with the text lets the mind roam through the creation stories and the accounts of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Tower of Babel, leading the reader to see things he never knew were there. Ancient tales from Mesopotamian culture and creative, poetic translations of the Bible set the stories into perspective. Finally, Hanson recaptures the mood and importance of the Genesis accounts to spur readers to new observations of their own.”

For 50 cents I had to at least give it a try. I read the first two chapters at lunch and they are wonderfully written. The “poetic translations of the Bible” are great. It was refreshing to read these stories in a genre that they were intended for. So far this book has been worth every penny (all fifty of them). I guess it is true that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure