whatever you do.

I found a couple books on Darryl Dash’s blog that it looks like I will want to place in the front of my reading queue.First is a novel called The Shack that I don’t know much about, but sounds quite intriguing based on Darryl’s description.

The second is a book on church history and practice that makes me absolutely salivate. I am a massive believer in constantly looking to the first century church to see where we could in improve in our “Body of Christ-ness” and this book, Pagan Christianity does this like few books dare.

This time of year we get so up in arms about people saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, but the majority of Christians don’t even know why we celebrate Christmas anyway. Well, we know a good reason to celebrate it (Jesus is the Reason for the Season), but we don’t know when or how or why we began this tradition in the first place. Ditto to almost every church practice. These pagan incorporations along with classroom / seminary incorporations have tag teamed, to create a church environment that is faily unsuitable to the mission of community and neighbourly love that we were commissioned with in the first place.

I hear critics of postmodernism saying that deconstruction is bad and eventually we have to start reconstructing. This really comes from a poor understanding of what deconstruction is. It does sound like a negative or destructive venture. Until you disengage yourself from the rewards of your actions. Oh dear. Now this is really straying from my original topic of conversation. I will leave my connections between Jesus and Hinduism for another inflamatory post…

Merry Christmas!

First as a married. It was a lovely morning. Now we are off to the families and the turkeys.

Tags: Christmas

Find out here.

Good heavens… who does Dennis Kucinich think he is? You mean the way to solve conflict with countries may involve actually talking to them? A cup of coffee before the bombs drop? Outrageous! This man has my “if I was an American…” vote!

Why are the rest of the candidates afraid of saying this stuff?

Tags: politics, iraq, syria, kucinich, peace, election

Here is an excerpt from a questionaire I filled out for my friend Tim. The questions dealt with differences and points of conflict between traditional, evangelical Christian beliefs and emerging Christian beliefs. I spoke as someone who had some emerging views and another fellow represented a more traditional stance.

What follows is part of my answer to this question:
How would you classify the predominant Christian thought that stands in contrast to the Emerging Church, as you understand it?

The idea that the Christian’s mission is to get as many people as possible to convert to Christianity by praying a prayer and/or verbally affirming (in the witness of other ’safe’ people) that they subscribe to a set of dogmatic statements so that one day when they die they will go to heaven and be with Jesus is terribly unbiblical and is the single most unhelpful cause we could possibly be a part of. The Christianity that on one hand says that Jesus only saves those who turn to him, but then will try to defend some fluffy belief that babies that die will be in heaven is absurd. It really misses the point of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus never commended anyone for having his or her doctrine right… that was the role the Pharisees wanted to play. He commended those who had an awareness and love for those around them – their enemies and friends alike. He commended those who gave away their belongings to live in balance with the rest of their community. He commended those who practiced love and the Christian ethic of intentional community before they knew anything about the fact that they were supposed to believe Jesus was the one the prophets were pointing toward.

Here is a portion of my summary statements:

Proverbs 3 sums it up. We do not worship our understanding of God… we worship God. We leave it to Him to reveal what he will reveal. We are not called ultimately to understand God and find our eternal security in our knowledge. We are certainly not called to judge the eternal souls of those who do not find the answers we have found. We are called to do justly, to give away the first of our harvests so that no one will go hungry. We are to trust above judging. We are to converse above arguing. And above all we are called to LOVE.

Feedback? Do you connect with these statements? Are there big questions that you are left with? How could I have stated things better?

Tags: emerging, emergent, christianity, god, gospel, religion, church

Photo by acoustic_punk_sound

I think I’m going to go on a Brantford photo session of my own…

[AC] Advent Conspiracy from Jon Collins on Vimeo.

Blogged with Flock

Last month I made my first attempt at making a proper musical recording. While the results are far from proper, I am excited to have contributed to a great little project. Beepcon Christmas is little more than a fundraiser for a musical discussion group I frequent called Bwack’s Forum. The place is the creation of Bwack (Jeremy Bush) who is the drummer for David Crowder* Band. It is a place to talk gear, recording, and computers. Basically, it’s just a place for music geeks to geek.

You can download the project here. If you would like to contribute monetarily you certainly can do so. Paypal any amount you desire to beepcon@gmail.com. Proceeds will go to web hosting for the forum, Beepcon, and future development projects. There was talk of this album getting into the iTunes Music Store, but I don’t know if we are going that route anymore.

I would appreciate any feedback on my track, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. It certainly is not the strongest of the group. There are some fantastic pieces in here! I like the sound of my guitar, but my vocals are rushed and fuzzy – and way to far back in the mix.

Enjoy!

Blogged with Flock

I’m sorry..

I wanted to change to something with a bit more clarity, readability. Maybe I’m getting old. Bigger fonts please…

Also, I wanted a theme where I could upload a more Christmas-y header image.

I’ve just started into Brian McLaren’s most recent book, Everything Must Change. I’ve been trying to avoid reviews by various bloggers. I have peaked at a couple and I am going to read Scot McKnight’s chapter by chapter examination as I go along, staying a couple chapters ahead of him in the process.

I must admit, I do not expect to disagree with Brian. Already a couple chapters in we get a sense of the global frustration with modern gospelizing. I’ve been hearing some critics say that these emerging folks are just pushing Jesus into these new places because they are bored in their rich north american churches, and have grown fat on their freedoms. New Monasticism has a lot to say in response to that idea – but also Brian’s interactions with these African Christians shows us that it is not simply the place of privilege to question our “saving souls from hell” approach.

One other quick mention… So I think I am somewhat of a sucker for one-liners. But this is just fantastic…

“The time had come, we said, to center our lives on the essential message of Jesus, the message of the kingdom of God – not just a message about Jesus that focused on the afterlife, but rather the core message of Jesus that focused on personal, social, and global transformation in this life.” – page 22