Knowtown…

This morning I am going on yet another job interview. These past several months of seeking new employment in the Information Systems field has been very hard on me. I feel fortunate that I have been able to make it to several interviews but it is really hard not to internalize not getting the job as a personal rejection. But the timing is right for me to jump to something else if the opportunity comes along so I keep trying. I am a glutton for punishment.

Meanwhile, way on the back burner I have some thoughts rumbling around that may eventually turn out to be blogworthy for an ecclesial dreamer. At the moment I still feel like I don’t have anything worth saying in that regard. I am starting to realize that I have spent too much time envying the cards in other people’s hands instead of just playing the best game I can with the cards that were dealt to me. I have waited long enough for a validation that will never come and puored too much energy into trying to move forward. I feel very much in need of an introvert vacation to refuel and reorganize my cards. It is time for me to lay things down and let things go. The problem is that I am not really sure which things are worth holding on to anymore. And in deep places of my soul there is still the reverberating echo of my mantra (”We must not be afraid to dream the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.”) that makes me wonder if maybe there is more for me…

Well, I rambled more than I should have. I am off to my job interview and then possibly plunging deep into the introverted, refueling cycle. Wish me well.

I think this new song from Mindy Smith is my favorite song on the radio right now. Listening to stuff like this makes me wish I was still playing in the band. Check it out if you have broadband and let me know what you think.

Finally. After a week of wrestling with my “new” laptop computer I have got sound working in SUSE Linux. It took me several attempts at rebuilding the Linux Kernel, one complete system crash, and trying different sound drivers but I finally got it. I got some very valuable assistance from several sources. It is nice to feel a little bit of success at something. All in all, it was a pretty good learnign experience. At least I feel pretty comfortable with compiling a Linux kernel now.

Now I will get my networking and internet connection going…

By the way, I got my hard drive and now have a laptop that was as close to free as you can get. It is not the greatest but to me it is pretty exciting. I am having a lot of fun learning SUSE Linux. Last night I compiled my first Kernel. I will probably do another one over the weekend because I am not totally happy with my first attempt. Based on my early experience with Linux I think I am going to like this project very much. I am still having some trouble with my sound card, my internet connection and getting familiar with the Unix commands. I am looking forward to making my first blog post from the laptop but I need to get everything working to do that. If anyone out there knows of any good Linux resources for n00b’s like me leave a comment or shoot me an email.

I was going to continue that last post and flesh out some things I am experiencing at the moment and then conclude with some follow up thoughts on “launching” Missio Dei but I am not much in the mood for blogging these days. I guess I just don’t have anything to say that is worth saying at the moment. If you are looking for some substance worth reading I would recommend this post from Christy.

In the opening essay (titled, “Seeking Justice In Hope”) of the second section of The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition Amid Modernity and Postmodernity, Nicholas Wolterstorff points out something that I have been feeling intuitively but not quite able to articulate. The “great commission” is not about evangelism, it is about power. Here is how he puts it:

bq. In the Gospel of Matthew we read that the last words spoken on earth to his disciples began, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (28:18). This theme, of all authority now belonging to Christ, is picked up at various points in the Pauline letters–most extensively in First Corinthians 15. Let me quote:

bq. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet… When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone.”

bq. What does this mean–that upon his resurrection, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Christ, to be retained by him until such a time as he has defeated all competing rule, authority, and power, at which time he will deliver the kingship to the Father?

I think that much of the activity that falls under the heading of “church planting” is really an attempt to embody this great commission. As I read Wolterstorff I begin to realize that in my attempts to identify myself as an ecclesial dreamer I have made a faulty assumption. I can only speak for myself—though I fear I am not alone—when I confess that I have warped this commission in my mind by overlooking the context of power and reading it only in a context of evangelism.

When I attempt to identify with a character in the great commission narrative I have to create a new category to make my understanding fit. In the commission there are two characters—Christ and disciples of Christ. There is really no distinction of kind made between Christ’s own disciples and those future disciples. No where are the disciples encouraged to make disciples of themselves. It seems that Christ goes out of his way to indicate that both those who are sent and those being sent to are invited to be disciples of Christ. Christ levels the field of discipleship in the commission by showing that both stand in the same place of needing to submit to the authority given to Christ.

But as soon as we strip the concept of power from the commission and make it solely about “evangelism” we rationalize that those who are already disciples of Christ have certain knowledge or status that grants them authority over those poor lost souls who don’t know Him yet. In a subtle attempt to reclaim power we begin to see evangelism and discipleship as a one way process flowing from God, through us to the unredeemed. No longer standing on the level field we expect nothing from the unredeemed but for them to gladly receive the great stuff we have to give them. We certainly don’t expect to get anything from them. The first step in this process for them, ironically enough, is to confess that “we” are right and “they” are wrong. Once we reach this step our role in the process becomes necessary. Somewhere along this line of reasoning we become convinced of our own importance. We take it upon ourselves to perfect our special knowledge and “share” it with others not to make them disciples of Christ but disciples of ourselves. We become doctrine and morality police.

Now I am not saying that there is no role for exercising gifts such as teaching and preaching nor am I denying that there is inherent in those gifts a certain measure of authority. The point I am trying to make is that when we misunderstand what the great commission teaches us about power we will undoubtedly corrupt the nature of rule that makes the gifts of teaching and preaching tools for building people up rather than tearing them down. For me, this understanding of the great commission is shaping my ecclesial dreams in ways that are easier done than said. The first place I really feel the effects of this reshaping is in my understanding of “conversion” but I will try to explain that in a future post.

I have been reading The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition Amid Modernity and Postmodernity and thought it was time to comment a little about this great book. It is a collection of essays from various ecclesial thinkers. I ordered it because one of the editors is one of my new favorite theologians, Miroslav Volf.

The first section of the book falls under the heading of “Hope Amid History and Late Modern Culture”. These essays look at how hope is articulated through our ecclesial structures. There are a lot of eye-opening observations. One theme that emerges in the three essays is that Evangelicals have a hard time expressing hope for a future in history. As evidenced by the popularity of the Left Behind novels, we prefer to focus on a hope beyond or after history. The authors do a good job of reminding us that Gospel is not just “good news” of a hope beyond history but “good news” for our future in history. It is hard to explain that in more detail in a short blog post. The “practical” application of this understanding of hope in history, of course, is to realize that the way we live our lives today is important. We have the ability, as followers of God, to participate in the ongoing redemptive work that is taking place in our history.

The first essay is “Progress and Abyss” by Jurgen Moltmann. It is a brilliantly written look at history critiquing the false hope for the future given to us by the Enlightenment. There were numerous quotes in the essay that are worth commenting about but one in particular hit me as I read it.

Bq. America was neither discovered nor perceived as such. It was appropriated and molded according to the will of its conquerors.

For some reason, when I read this it took on a different meaning for me. Substitute “Emerging Church” for “America” and it presents, at least to me, an interesting question. In our search to “discover” what the church will look like in post-modern contexts are we really just appropriating and molding something according to the will of the conquerors? Are we younger evangelicals who are fighting so hard to acquire the power of our young evangelical predecessors, going to learn to hand off that power to future evangelicals or will we glory in our conquests as though God is on our side and dismiss them as “angry” and “burned out”? History has a way of repeating itself when we think that all of our hope lies in the past or the present. Maybe it’s time we begin to start believing in a future of hope.

The next two essays are “Contrary Hopes: Evangelical Christianity and the Decline Narrative”, by Daniel Johnson and “History, Hope and the Redemption of Time” by William Katterberg. Katterberg’s essay is very well written and deals with the topic of carrying on a dialogue with the voices of the past. He argues that sometimes when we attempt to “know” history objectively we end up killing it because we cannot really “know” it objectively. But when we attempt to listen to the voices, carry on dialogue with them and allow them to shape us we can begin to redeem time. He does a better job of explaining that then I can and creates a nice segue to the second section of the book which falls under the heading of “Early Christianity in Conversation with Contemporary Thought”. I read the first essay yesterday and it was very, very good but I will have to comment on that in a future post.

I am the only one I know who has been in the IT field for as long as I have been who does not own a laptop. I have wanted one for a long time but I have never been able to afford one. I have accumulated a ton of IT stuff over the years but never a laptop. Well, recently my sister gave me an old HP Omnibook 4150. The only problem was it did not have a hard drive and the video display was not working. Thanks to EBAY I was able to purchase a new motherboard for it for a reasonable price. I had an old 8 GB laptop hard drive and a copy of SUSE Linux 9.1 professional waiting in the wings. This past Monday the new mother board arrived and I was thinking by Tuesday morning I would be the proud owner of a used laptop. I put the new motherboard in upgraded the RAM and fired it up. The Video display problem was resolved and it took a lot less time than I thought to put it all back together. All that was left was to put in the Hard drive and install the OS.

DOH!!

The hard drive I have is too thick to fit into the notebook! So now I am on the hunt for a cheap slimline notebook hard drive. I will have to wait a few weeks to save some nickles. It is so frustrating to be so close and yet so far away. This seems to be the story of my life. But I am not complaining. When all is said and done I should have a pretty good used laptop that is as close as you can get to free.

bq. Blessed are the poor, for they shall use Linux…”

There is an interesting article on MSNBC that talks about how America is not as divided as the media leads us to believe. Rather than being polarized about issues, Americans simply hold a wide range of diverse opinions that are surprisingly close to one another–the notable exception being abortion. I like a lot of what the article has to say but if it is true I wonder why someone like Ralph Nader is not more in the hunt. Seems like he is the one candidate who is not polarizing issues that the two primary parties are but he is not even visible. Strange.

One interesting conclusion the author makes is that it is the workplace that makes it possible to be “diverse, but not divided.” Could it be that the drive to make money is the only thing that is strong enough to keep diversity in check? Here is one excerpt:

bq. Why the widespread agreement on so many supposedly divisive issues? Look around your office or factory floor, and there’s your answer. The workplace, the most powerful institution in a modern capitalist economy, is the great melting pot in America today. Many of us spend more time with colleagues than with family or friends. And what matters at work is whether you are a competent, trustworthy colleague, not your sexual orientation or gender. The bias toward meritocracy, the belief that equality of opportunity improves the bottom line, shapes the daily rhythms and strategic initiatives of companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations.

I wonder how our (Evangelical, Protestant) ecclesial structures will be a witness to Gospel against the “most powerful institution in a modern capitalist economy” when we have pretty much adopted that paradigm as our own (exceptions of course to the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some of the more sacramental/liturgical churches). We have made it easy to quote the verse that Christ is building his church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it while all the while we are bowing at the altars of American Capitalism. But on the other hand, we have not created the same atmospheres of generous diversity that seems to exist in the corporate world. To me this article is puzzling. I must be missing something.

I got the email this morning that another great issue of the New Pantagruel is now available for your reading (dis)pleasure. Dig in at www.newpantagruel.com.

A few highlights include:

An excerpt from the new English translation of French philosopher
Phillipe Beneton’s work Equality by Default:

bq. The McDonald’s system is a triumph of instrumental rationality. Nothing
escapes calculations of profit, always subject to refinement: the size
of hamburgers, the restaurant’s architecture, the number of fries, the
speed of service, the arrangement of parking lots, the affability of
the personnel, the interior design, the dimensions of the trays. The
system offers standardized products, trains standardized employees, and
tends to forge standardized consumers (by the rationalization of margins
of choice, the uncomfortable seating, the interior colors). This would
be the ideal: robots for employees, a Big Mac for everyone, and
consumers in uniform. More here.

Also, Eric Miller’s essay “Realism Against Reality”

Jack Heller fails several online worldview tests

Peter Leithart offers a lighthearted antidote to flabby ecumenicism in “The Accidental Ecumenist”

There’s a lot more so spread the word to your friends!