Doug Pagitt to visit Potentially

We are looking into bringing Doug Pagitt, pastor of Solomon’s Porch in Minnesota out to visit with our cohort. Doug is one of the leaders of the emergent village group and likes to visit cohorts from time to time. We are looking into some other potential speaking engagements to help us with costs of flights and lodging. More will be coming about this.

We had a smaller group meet last night to begin our discussion of Peter Rollins’ book Orthodox Heretic. We had a good discussion and I think we are all looking forward to the next section of the book. These parables are great and challenging. We would love to invite any who would like to come join us next month to pick up the book and plan to be there.

Wesley Conference at NNU

The annual Wesley Conference is coming up soon.  This year’s conference is geared to pastors and laypersons and will be held on Thursday-Saturday 4-6 February at College Church of the Nazarene, which is located adjacent to our campus. A variety of workshop tracks related to writing, preaching, leadership, art, and music are also planned for the conference. If you don’t think it is appropriate for you to forward an announcement on to everyone, no sweat. But if you do, it could be helpful for those who want to take advantage of our early bird registration rate of just $59 by 15 December.

Follow the link on the right of the page to the official website for more information

New Book Chosen

The Cohort met last night (Nov.19) and we had a great discussion over the remaining chapters of Todd Hunter’s book. The next book we are reading is Peter Rollin’s book Orthodox Heretic. There are 33 tales (or parables if they prove to be transformative) in the book. The the book is broken up into three sections and we will read one section each month over the next three months.

Our next meeting will be December 17th at the normal time (7-9 PM) at the Sockeye. We hope that you find time to join us and engage over these interesting but provoking stories.

If you have any questions you can email Kelley Mata or Cody Stauffer.

Possible change of Meeting day, what do you think?

Hello everyone, there have been several requests that we consider changing the day we meet.  Typically we meet the first Thursday of each month at the Sockeye Brew Pub in Boise from 7:00 to 9:00 pm.  That particular Thursday does not work for several members of our cohort, whom want to be more regular but, due to scheduling, have to miss most of our gatherings.  We asked Sockeye what other Thursdays were open and discovered that there is another group with a standing reservation on the Second Thursday.

If you wouldn’t mind responding to the following Questions and when you respond please reply to all:

• Does changing to either the 3rd or 4th Thursdays of the month create a scheduling conflict for anyone?
• For those of you whom the First Thursday has been conflictive, does moving it to the 3rd or 4th Thursdays, remedy your scheduling conflict?
• Would anyone prefer changing the time we meet to say 6:00 or 6:30 pm, instead of our regular 7:00 pm?

September’s meeting will remain on the third day of September for now because our newer members may not yet be on our email listing.  How would you all feel about two meetings in September?

SPECIAL GUEST TODD HUNTER @ EMERGENT COHORT MEETING ON THURSDAY, JULY 2nd

Emergenteers,

This Thursday’s meeting is going to be a special one as we are privileged to have a very special guest. As always, our meeting time is 7:00 pm and we’ll be at our regular place at the Sockeye Grill.

Todd Hunter, Bishop-elect of the Anglican Mission in America will be with us. Todd has been long-time friends with the founders of Emergent Village, like Tony Jones and Brian McLaren, since the beginning of Emergent and has been a speaker at most of the Emergent conventions and conferences.

Just last month I was able to meet with Todd personally and think he has a wealth of experience that will be fun and interesting for all of us to engage.

His current book, Christianity Beyond Belief, is a good read and one that should belong on our group’s reading list.

Todd’s bio is listed below for those of you interested in knowing more.

Peace, Love and Happiness,
Mark

Todd Hunter

Bio

June 27, 2009

Todd Hunter, bishop-elect for The Anglican Mission in the Americas, is the founding pastor of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Costa Mesa, CA. Author of Christianity Beyond Belief, Todd is also the founding director of Churches for the Sake of Others, the West Coast church planting initiative for The Anglican Mission in the Americas. Todd also founded Three is Enough, a small group movement that makes spiritual formation doable.

Dr. Hunter is an adjunct professor of evangelism and postmodern ministry at George Fox University, Fuller Seminary, Western Seminary and Wheaton College. Earlier in his career Todd was President of Alpha USA, Church Planting coach for Allelon Ministries and the National Director for the Association of Vineyard Churches.

Todd collaborates with organizations who desire to shape their ministries around Kingdom-based, missional encounters with contemporary culture. He began his ministry 30 years ago as a church planter and church planting consultant. Those strengths have found new life in his work with The Anglican Mission in the Americas.

Todd holds a certificate from Calvary Chapel Bible School, a B.S. in Business Administration from Cal Poly Pomona, an M.A. from Regent University and a DMin. from George Fox University. Todd has written for key publications such as Christianity Today, Charisma, Outreach and Ministries Today, as well as contributing to various books and study Bibles. Todd and his wife Debbie live in Eagle, Idaho with their two children, Jonathan (24) and Carol (17).

Conceptual Idolatry

The entry below is a re-posting of something I put on my own blog .

I have been reading, again, a story from Peter Rollins’ new book “Orthodox Heretic“.  My favorite story thus far is the story where the agnostic becomes an atheist.  It is a fascinating story about coming to grips with conceptual idolatry and laying down reliance upon ideas, words and concepts about God, but taking up the lifestyle of Jesus in some fashion.  I am also reading a book from Jean-Luc Marion, entitled “God without being“.  Though I am barely into the book (which is dense and a slow slow read) already Marion has helped with his distinction between idols and icons.  Idols capture our gazing and cease our exploration or any deeper examination…we are entranced so to speak, with what we think is a object worthy of our gaze.  However, the reality is that the idol is merely an invisible mirror, reflecting to us a view of ourselves (which is precisely why I think we are truly so entranced by it).  So our gazing at the object of the idol really displays our own visage (or something of our own thought in the case of conceptual idolatry).  

The Icon, on the other hand, invites our gaze to consider that which is truly invisible and unreducible…it conducts our gazing toward another, toward that which exceeds reducibility into something visible.  Hence the Icon does not limit our view and ideas but opens up our gazing, our thinking, our knowing (with appropriate humility and limits).  

While I have not gotten further into Marion’s argument, it is clear already to me that part of what he is aiming at is the reduction that we impose with our words and the concepts we are attempting to describe.  Even our word “God” is a reduction to the nature of the divine that we are naming.  If we allow the word to represent in an absolute way the one to which it points, we are in real danger of setting up a conceptual idol, not having adequately recognized the function of language, even the language in what we consider holy writ.

In Rollins’ story, the philospher attempting to prove the non-existence of God, is visited by God who tells him “I do not Exist”.  Now for some this story will seem blasphemous, believing that it is intimating that God is not real.  But far from that, the story challenges our conceptual impositions upon the divine one we call “God”…even the assumption that God has “being” in the same way that we do.  The One who is absolutely mysterious, communicates to the philosopher that he doesn’t exist (in the way that we conceive of being).  So the philosopher is atheistic in that he rejects the conceptions of God that have been offered, not the existence of God.  Although I am not certain, but I would be willing to bet that underlying this parable is Marion’s work “God Without Being.”  

In Rollin’s story, the veracity of the encounter is expressed not in words and concepts but in existence.  The aim of the philosopher’s living and work is altered, traveling not further into description but by incarnation. What if  that which an author intends to say is not the point to which one should pay attention, but rather what those who read do in response to what they have read.  Maybe we ought to value  and read the living of those who follow God, rather than their words as a means of perceiving what they claim to believe and  understand about God.

Emergent Worship Experience

We met tonight and planned a worship time for May 14th, at the sockeye brew pub from 7-9 pm.  This is going to be a very meaningful and engaging worship time so I would encourage and invite you to put this time on your calendar.  The theme for the evening will find its genesis in Genesis chapter 25-33 and the story of Jacob and Esau.  You can invite anyone, all are welcome.   You are not going to want to miss this!  For those of you who would like to engage in the creative process of this worship space, you can contact Kelley Mata by email at kelleymata@gmail.com.

On: “This I believe” by Judith Warner

If you haven’t yet read her article that appeared in the New York Times, you can follow this link to the Article: This I Believe.

While this might sound strange, I don’t think she is confused.  I think that the days when one faith system will meet all our needs are diminishing.  Another point to consider is that as we develop, first tolerance, then appreciation (as Janine pointed out in our conversation yesterday) for other faith systems and religions, if we truly come to appreciate what they offer to humanity, I think we may even be tempted to embrace elements of those faith systems and import them into our way of encountering God.  I for example have developed an appreciation for Buddhism and Taoism, as well as Native American spirituality.  I know that some of the elements from those systems of thinking have influenced me and my spirituality, and they continue to: I have a copy of the Tao Te Chi next to my bed on the nightstand.  The Jewish faith is another very natural and familiar faith with great storehouses of insight and very applicable traditions.  Seder meals are great!  

In culture that is transitioning to the openness the postmodern view point,  the lines of demarcation can blur.  This is part of what I hear Rollins speaking to in the next two chapters.  That doesn’t mean that I am not a Christian, that I do not find my identity in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  It rather means that I see similarities of contribution from all the worlds religions  with what I know of Jesus and that I can appreciate them and benefit from them in my own spirituality.  

Third Way

I’m reposting from Scot McKnight’s blog again. I thought this was such a great example of “third way” thinking and to me this is really at the core of emergent faith. If we assume that being emergent is mainly about agreeing or disagreeing with a certain theological/idealogical set then we are missing the point completely. Here’s the blog post…

Every discussion about homosexuality is fraught with a singular challenge. It is the challenge of civility. I believe civility is the Third Way in this moral debate. On this blog last week we published “A Letter” and then Andrew Marin, a Christian friend and advocate for Christian civility, posted a response (we will be posting about his new book Love Is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation With the Gay Community soon). Today I’d like to post my own challenge to all of us.

How can we learn to be more civil with each other in this discussion/debate? What can each ask of the other?

I want to begin with something I read in Richard Mouw’s book, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World : referring to something said by Martin Marty, Mouw says “one of the real problems in modern life is that the people who are good at being civil often lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions often lack civility.”

Right here is where we need to begin: I cannot understand why strong-convicted Christians, on either side of this debate by the way, refuse to act with civility. Perhaps it is because they are so passionate about this issue, so convinced it is a matter of ultimate justice or ultimate fidelity, that they think they must become strident and fight this issue to the ground until it gives up the ghost. Perhaps it is because they think they are called to play the role of prophet, and that means for some the use of prophetic, denunciatory rhetoric. Plenty of examples are available; I see no need to point fingers. We need to move on.

Mouw is right, civil folks often lack conviction and conviction folks often lack civility. He’s right about something else:

What we are in most need of today is “convicted civility” (p. 12) or what we might call compassionate conviction or principled passion. It is the rare combination of civility and conviction, tempered as it must be by anyone who lives the Jesus Creed, by faithful compassion. This is the Third Way and we need it today. One who is fully dedicated to this today is Andrew Marin, and his new book from IVP is an exceptional attempt to foster civility with a traditionalist viewpoint on homosexuality. His book is just now available. Buy it now because we’ll be discussing it in the month of May (Love Is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation With the Gay Community ).

Today I’d like to speak to two issues: the bottom line in civility and the intent of our convictions.

The bottom line in civility issue is this: For pro-gay-as-Christian or pro-gay marriage/civil union folks: Christians who differ from you are entitled to take their stand on what they think the Bible says and say they think such views are contrary to God’s order as revealed in the Bible and as taught in the history of the Church. They deserve, even must, be respected for that view. If you label such persons as dinosaurs or bigots in order to brand them and exclude them, you fail in love and you fail our society.

For anti-gay-as-Christian or anti-gay marriage/civil union folks: Those who affirm civil unions, gay marriage, etc, are entitled to form their own viewpoint in believing that they think these relations are justifiable for Christians and they must be respected for their viewpoint. If you label such persons as morally bankrupt in order to brand and exclude them, you fail in love and you fail our society.

The issue here is entitlement. I contend that folks must be given the freedom to believe what they want. When we refuse to let others think what they want, we break down a civil society. This has nothing to do with whether we think the other person is right. We may well think they are not.

Until we get to positions of mutual respect, we cannot have a conversation and cannot make progress. Until we let the other person say “I think you are wrong and I have legitimate grounds for thinking so” we cannot genuinely sit at the table. When the other person’s viewpoint is grounds for exclusion — and I see this from both sides of this debate — we haven’t even achieved a tolerant society. In fact, we strain the tethers of a tolerant society. And this doesn’t even bring up the Christian virtue of charity or love: those who love others will never exclude from the table those who differ from them simply because they have a view that they think wrong.

And, yes, this must be done while holding to what Mouw calls convicted civility or what can be called principled passion. Hold your views with clarity and with conviction, but we dare not let ourselves become so committed to our views that we cannot engage the person as a person. It is too easy to convert the Bible into a lawbook or into irrelevant antiquity. We hope for a Third Way in reading the Bible, too (see my The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible ).

This leads me to the issue of intent in conviction. What is the intent, I want to ask, of declaring — and again this is about both sides of this issue — the other person wrong? Is the decision of what is “right” vs. what is “wrong” the final goal? I sense for many it is. Once one has determined one’s views and then declared that view, some folks think the job is done. “There,” they might say as they wash their hands with the conviction of fidelity and purity, “I’ve held my own and taken my stand.”

No, I would argue: the ultimate aim is not to declare one’s view but to live a life of love of God and love of others, with convicted civility, and to live with others in the hope of bringing all to the goal God has in his redemptive designs. Love and convicted civility can co-exist for the Third Way. For one side, this will mean living with those who are gay or lesbian with a view toward transformation. My contention: those persons are entitled to believe that and to hope for that and to work for that. For the other side, this will mean living with those who think gay marriage/civil unions are “contrary to God’s order” with a view to their transformation. Those persons can believe that and hope for that and work for their view, too.

This is hardly compromise; this is convicted civility at work. May God’s grace be at work.

An Unlikely, but Necessary Perspective

A book review on The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University

I know a church pastor who sometimes encourages his staff to pretend they are visitors during a Sunday morning service. “Walk into this place like it is the very first time. Don’t take anything for granted. Look for proper signage, décor and whether or not the bathrooms are clean, consider how the greeters treat you, and observe how difficult it is to find your children’s Sunday School Class.” The goal is to discover the issues that the church is ignoring because of familiarity, to take care of family dysfunctions obvious to outsiders that perhaps the church has grown tolerant, if not strangely comfortable with.

Sometimes it is very helpful to have a new pair of unbiased eyes catch what you may be missing. Organizations and businesses hire people to critique their services or their products. But when a company knows that a consultant is showing up they put their best foot forward. When a restaurant is expecting a food critique for dinner the chef and wait staff perform to a different standard than normal. The best case for unbiased feedback is when you don’t know that it is coming. That is why Liberty University should be so appreciative of Kevin Roose’s book, “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.”

Kevin, on his own (crazy) initiative, took a semester off from college at (liberal) Brown University to experience an extremely different lifestyle than he’d ever known-right at the heart of fundamentalism- Jerry’s Falwell’s flagship megachurch, Thomas Road Baptist, and its accompanying university. Instead of viewing evangelical Christianity from the outside the glass, Kevin decided to jump into the fish bowl himself. He actually found that swimming with the fishes didn’t kill him. He even discovered, with the discipline the Christians called prayer, that he could breathe.

This isn’t to say that Kevin went to Liberty without an agenda. From the beginning this was a writing project- a daring, potentially life altering writing project. Yet I didn’t experience the story as one that had a pre-scripted concept like a Michael Moore documentary. Kevin knew that he would have to act the part of a born-again believer in order to blend into life on campus, yet he didn’t go about this as a cold war spy. He went to Liberty “to learn with an open mind, not to mock Liberty students or the evangelical world.” And learn he did- pouring himself into his classes, clubs, dorm life, church attendance, and real, meaningful relationships with both staff and peers. He even faced his own concepts about God, Jesus, scripture and sin, realizing that he was on a personal quest as well. He is honest with his own journey, and the book is worth reading just with that in mind.

What did he find? It would spoil it to share here in a review. This is a story that is best read cover to cover, from the day that he pulls up to Liberty with a new, silver, Jesus fish on his bumper, to the day that he leaves, right after Reverend Falwell’s funeral. I found myself cheering and hoping, grimacing and pondering throughout.

Who should read, The Unlikely Disciple?
• Any Christian who wonders how the un-indoctrinated view believers and their practices
• Anyone preparing to be an pastor, evangelist, missionary, or Christian educator – especially in a post-modern society
• Anyone planning to go to a Christian university (you’ll understand the pros and cons of these institutions better after reading Kevin’s book)
• Everyone on staff at Liberty University
• Liberals who have made sweeping generalizations about fundamentalist Christianity without honestly investigating it themselves.
• Anyone who wants to read a tremendously thought provoking and highly entertaining story.

Will you agree with it all? Of course not. Will you find many answers? Kevin doesn’t even try to figure them all himself. But if you read his journey with an open heart you will undoubtedly wince a few times, have your feelings rattled, and come to a better, more compassionate understanding of other people, especially those on the other side of the fish bowl from you.

P.S. I can’t wait for the sequel when Kevin becomes part of the Focus on the Family staff in Colorado Springs.