Brian McLaren Talks to Richard Land

A long-distance videochat between Brian McLaren and Southern Baptist leader Richard Land has been posted on Beliefnet’s Progressive Revival blog. The 43-minute “diavlog” covers political parties trolling in an election cycle, religion’s real role in public policy, media’s role in religion and politics, the complexities of “conservative”/”liberal”/”progressive” in a discussion of how to be followers of Jesus, and bridging the ignorance gap.

Here is the full discussion:

Steve Knight is local organizer for the Charlotte Emergent Cohort and a member of the Coordinating Group for Emergent Village.

Now Playing on Facebook: New NOOMA "She"

For one day only, watch the premiere of “She,” the new NOOMA video featuring Rob Bell over on Facebook.

According to the video description: “We didn’t have anything to do with our birth. We are all here because some woman somewhere gave us life. Her pain, her effort, for our life. And when a mother gives like that to a child, she is showing us what God is like. But sometimes this part of God’s nature is overlooked. A lot of us are comfortable with male imagery for God. But what about female imagery for God? Is God limited to a gender? Or does God transcend and yet include what we know as male and female? Maybe if we were more aware of the feminine imagery for God we would have a better understanding of who God is and what God is like.”

Watch it on Facebook now

Steve Knight is local organizer for the Charlotte Emergent Cohort and a member of the Coordinating Group for Emergent Village.

To Fear or Not to Fear

By Jay Voorhees, re-posted from Only Wonder Understands:

I live in a community paralyzed with fear.

Well that’s not completely true, but the fact is that our community, this place called Antioch, a suburb of Nashville, finds itself at a crossroads driven primarily by fear.

The fears are many: the fear of crime, the fear of others who aren’t like us, the fear of economic downturn, the fear that we are being left behind. These fears lead some to leave the community, to contribute to urban sprawl as the move further out only to take the problems with them rather than addressing the fear that led them to leave. The voices of fear are many, misusing statistics and anecdotes in their narrative of negativity. In fact, many of the fears are based in the world of perception and not reality, images and stories that are much more myths than fact. Certainly, there are issues of concern in our community, but these issues are not always as rampant as some might think.

The question for people of faith is what do we do with our fear.

After all, the scriptures seem to suggest that fear is not a part of the life of faith. Paul said it clearly that love casts out fear, and he lived that example in his willingness to be imprisoned and tortured for the gospel. Likewise, the early Christian martyrs lived a radical faith which allowed them to face persecution and death boldly.

But somewhere along the way, Christians, especially those of us in places of safety and security, lost our boldness. We often find ourselves living and hiding in fear, enclaves unto our selves where we maintain our sense of well being. Very rarely are we willing to take radical risks for the sharing of God’s love with the world, and when we do, those risks are often seen as aberrant behavior.

Of course, fear is a normal human emotion. We are programmed through both nature and nurture to fear harmful things as a mechanism for our own protection. Fear at many levels is an important thing to listen to, for to lack fear entirely is to fall into recklessness.

Yet, fear seems to get away from us. It runs out of control, being amplified to the point where it can overcome our lives and lead us to inaction. Uncontrolled fear makes us forget the power and love of God which helps to overcome that fear. And, fear quickly moves into paranoia and mistrust, separating us from others which ultimately harms our relationship with the Creator.

Don’t get me wrong, for I am not trying to suggest that we all don’t get scared from time to time. Those scares are warning signs to watch out and be on our guard.

But fear is something different entirely, for is separates us from one another.

So, to live in fear or not to live in fear.

I guess that is the question.

Photo courtesy of MikeLao26

Jay Voorhees is the overweight pastor of the Antioch United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and blogs at www.onlywonder.com.

Emerging Leadership and Cross-Gender Friendships

By Dan Brennan, re-posted from Faith Dance:

Almost exactly two years ago, Sheila and I began attending an emerging community. We felt that support from a church was important as I wrote a book on cross-gender friendship (cgf). We had no idea when we came to Life on the Vine what that would look like. We were hoping leaders would at least be “open” to rethinking traditional evangelical social constructs of male-female relationships. More and more Christians are doing so. During a recent stop in Seattle, Brian McLaren specifically encouraged local Christian leaders to pursue close friendships with the other gender in their community, according to my friend Jennifer’s first-hand report. However, this is not a post about the most popular voices in the emerging movement, but a reflection on the local community. It is to be expected, because of the diversity within the emerging conversation, that there would be diverse reactions on cross-gender friendship in local communities.

After two years in an emerging community, I share some thoughts …

I don’t think I would be where I am today without the rich encouragement of the leadership in my local community. I am quite sure, out of all the stories David Fitch has heard from newcomers checking out a church, I hold the unique distinction of being the first person to probe David for a sense of where he stood on the issue of cross-gender friendships before I even started attending. It could be one of the rare times such a thing has ever happened, but, as my regular blog readers know, Sheila and I were looking for a community that could support my desire to write a provocative book on cgfs. Since David had just finished writing his own provocative critique on evangelicalism, I figured I had a halfway decent chance of at least getting an open ear.

I expected some serious pushback from him initially—and he didn’t disappoint me. :-) The pushback started coming when he began to understand that I wasn’t intending to write a generic book on men and women getting along in cordial friendliness. This was the first time we had ever talked, and I am sure the conversation had David processing things like he had never processed before. But Sheila and I didn’t want to begin to sink roots into a community, and get deep into the book, only to find leadership drawing conventional sex-segregated lines like what had just happened to us. So I expected David to pepper me with questions once it started to sink in, and he did! I could tell he was able to get some inkling of what I wanted to write about by the nature of his questions towards me. I couldn’t tell if he was surprised by my reactions, but I sensed that he knew I had given serious thought and attention to the subject. I thought we had a good conversation. Toward the end, it seemed like he was cautiously open. Even though it was a brief prayer, David offered to pray for me at the end of the conversation, and he prayed a prayer of blessing for me, Sheila, and my book aspirations! I can’t tell you how much this ministered to me after having had this conversation six weeks earlier.

It touched my soul and gave me renewed hope that emerging leadership at a local level could do something much deeper in drawing men and women together than just focusing on equality and justice—even though those are two big issues in the contemporary conversation between the sexes.

Emerging leaders (I am speaking of men here) cannot move the conversation forward if they see women as “dangerous” or “inferior.” Furthermore, they will not be able to advance healing if they themselves are afraid of getting close to women in ministry and friendship. Again, it’s one thing to be friends with a woman blogger who lives 300 or 1,000 miles away from you. Blogging friendships at the grassroots level among emerging Christians are great and much needed, but it’s a whole different animal if you are talking about practicing close cross-gender friendships in a local community.

Within a few weeks of our attending LOTV, once the leaders saw Sheila’s enthusiastic support of my book and my friendships, they have never looked back. They have welcomed me with open arms and have prayed with me and for me. They have encouraged me in my aspirations to get this book published. And, with their encouragement, I’ve had the opportunities to begin forming friendships with men and women in the local community.

One thing I have seen emerging leaders embrace at the grassroots level in local community is organic movement and direction of love, ministry, justice, and reconciliation among “neighbors.” All of that happens when men and women begin to form and sustain trusting friendships of missional and transformational depth.

Dan Brennan has been happily married to his wife, Sheila, for 27 years. He is in management in a Chicago area limousine company and is writing a book on cross-gender friendships.

A Movement of People

By Jonathan Brink:

If Jesus stood in front of you and said, “Come follow me,” would you follow? Would you drop everything in the very face of God and become a fisher of men? I’d like to believe I would. These three words have become, for me, a clarion call for what it means to be a Jesus follower. They suggest action, participation, and movement. Something is happening, and I want to be part of it.

I like the idea of being part of something restorative. I want to be part of a movement that reflects the very face of God. I want to be part of something that people walk away from and say, “God was present here.” We see the change that is emerging and know it is good. This is what attracted me to the emerging church conversation. It is asking the question, “How do we find the soul of what God is already doing yesterday and today?”

But historically movements can quickly divide. Not everyone wanted to follow Jesus, or Gandhi, or MLK, even though in hindsight we could see it was good. Not every movement was about positive restoration (see Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro), even though it looked like that in the beginning. For every positive movement, there is an equally negative one to put everything into question.

The tension this creates is substantial. What if we get it wrong? What if we lead people down what we think is the path towards positive change only to discover that we made significant errors in judgment? What of those who have followed us? Important questions to consider and wrestle with. Finding the true soul of a movement is an important task.

And then I read something that for me brought so much clarity to this question. Jenell Paris wrote in a recent blog post the following quote:

“In movements, ideology quickly becomes more important than individuals.”

And in an instant something became very clear to me. It helped me to understand why I am participating in this movement called the emerging church. From my perspective, the emerging church is the first church movement in my lifetime, or recent past, that is not simply about ideology but about people. It’s about restoring the heart of what it means to follow Jesus. It’s about restoring relationship, humanity, and dignity.

Yes, we have to deal with ideology. But central to the emerging movement is the willingness to be in conversation with those who disagree, to engage a dialog that could easily leave both parties running for the exits, but instead challenges both parties to discover the dignity of each participant, which is the very thing most positive movements are fighting for in the first place.

Because what good is a movement of people whose ideology eventually leaves everyone crushed in its wake? What good is it to win an ideological war when no one is left to enjoy its fruits? The very essence of a good ideology is one that leads its people to restoration, to love.

When I look at the words of Jesus, I see a movement of people. And the ideology, the core essence of what that movement believes, must not just be pondered but practiced. Do we really, really love our neighbor as ourselves? When it matters most, in the heat of debate and conversation, will we choose to love first? Will we reveal to those we are in conversation with that they too are just as valuable as we are? And most importantly will we, when called upon, lay down our lives for the other instead of taking one?

When we do that, when we lay down our lives for others, we are a movement whose very ideology is about people. And that’s a movement I want to be a part of.

Jonathan Brink is Managing Director of Thrive Ministries, a missional discipleship agency. He lives in California with his wife and three kids.

A Blessing and Commission for Students

Editor’s Note: This commissioning was given recently at Disciples’ Fellowship in Birmingham, Alabama, to the high school graduates who are going on to college this fall.

By Tyler Priest, re-posted from the priesthood:

as you start this new year of school, we send you out with our blessings. we want you to know that along with God, we are walking with you. you are not alone. you belong to God, and we belong to each other.

when you walk down the halls, remember that we are on mission together with Jesus. in the midst of friendships, classes, games, performances, and events, may you remember that we are sent to bring heaven to earth, to be salt that heals and light that pierces darkness.

so go out, befriend the lonely and hurting, give hope to the hopeless, rise above the popularity contests that have trapped so many. give your best effort in the classroom, always seek the truth, ask hard questions, and never settle for easy answers. take every thought captive and make it obedient to the way of Christ.

go and have fun. live lightly and enjoy this year. don’t spend too much time looking forward to next semester or next year or even next week. live in the now. do not worry. because of Christ, you are free to be your true self, the self you were created to be.

when you’re tempted, remember that there is always a way out. don’t crumble to peer pressure. instead, may you find that nothing will satisfy you—absolutely nothing will satisfy you—unless it is a gift from God. so may you have the wisdom to discern that which is from God and that which is not. and may you have the courage to live out that wisdom.

we send you out with the prayer that as you move about campus, you will carry deep in your heart the undying fire for our King and his kingdom. in this school year, may it be the kingdom that you seek first, that you hope for, and work for, above everything else. amen.

Tyler Priest is a non-member of Disciples’ Fellowship, an emerging tribe in Birmingham, Alabama, and enjoys hanging out with the local emergent cohort.

Shane Hipps on the "Hidden Power" (of Electronic Culture)

The Catalyst Blog has a new interview with Shane Hipps, Lead Pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church in Phoenix, Arizona. Here’s a short excerpt:

CATALYST: Your book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture, obviously suggests in the title that there is something deeper about modern technologies than what we see and that all of our techno-gadgets are affecting us in some way. What is this “hidden power” you speak of?

SHANE: The “hidden power” simply refers to the way a medium or technology, regardless of its content or message, shapes us. This power of a medium is often hidden from our view because we are distracted by the content. For example, the content of the TV show Desperate Housewives might cause us to be offended or entertained, but in either case we miss the way TV’s flickering mosaic of pixels actually reduces our ability to think in logical ways and intensifies emotionality regardless of the content. When we miss the power of our media, it is like being distracted by a magician’s sleight-of-hand, just when he slips our watch from our wrist. Unfortunately, this is the condition the church finds itself in. I hope to awaken us to these hidden realities so we can use our media rather than be used by them.

CATALYST: You often make reference to the famous quote by Marshall McLuhan, “the medium is the message.” Can you explain that quote and what it means?

SHANE: McLuhan believed that the message or content of a particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the case of an atomic bomb. In other words, the real impact is always made by the medium. That applies to everything, including people. Just look at how we communicate with each other. I am the medium and I have a message. If I say “I love you,” but my tone of voice is sarcastic, what message does that send? My content is positive, but my medium was negative. The medium always wins out. The same is true with our technologies, everything from clothing and cars, to cell phones and the Internet. They all have a message and a bias that shapes us regardless of their content.

Read the rest of the interview with Shane Hipps

Steve Knight is local organizer for the Charlotte Emergent Cohort and a member of the Coordinating Group for Emergent Village.

The Church: Born Again, Again, Again & Again ...

By Kathy Escobar:

in a covert conversation in the middle of the night, Jesus, in john 3, shares with nicodemus what it means to be born again. i love this imagery—a religious ruler sneaking out of his house so no one would see him because somehow this wild & crazy guy named Jesus had gotten under his skin. Jesus’ response to nicodemus have become pivotal words in the history of evangelical christianity—“no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (v. 3). i remember the day that i was “born again” in Christ. the day will be etched in my brain & heart forever. but it didn’t stop there. it wasn’t a one-time experience where i “sealed the deal and then was done with it.” rather, it was the beginning of many more spirit-led experiences where i knew i needed to shift, change, grow in my relationship with Jesus. i believe a huge piece of our personal spiritual journey is the ability to continually be born again, to be willing to readjust our thinking, our actions, all kinds of things, as the Holy Spirit moves & changes us. life experiences change. cultures shift. we grow up and out and into places we never expected. and with each twist & turn we are required to re-examine our faith, listen for God’s spirit, and be willing to be “born again”.

the same thing applies corporately to “the church”, the messy & beautiful body of Christ. i believe the church is in the midst of a major, history-making “born again” experience that is creating a wide range of responses from its people. some are resistant to change, satisfied with the status quo, and probably can relate to the religious order of Jesus’ time that said “hey, we have got this buttoned down, what do you mean we need to be born again? we’ve been doing this for a long, long time, and it is so working for us, don’t mess with it!” but there was a whole other group of people that got a stirring in their heart they couldn’t ignore, a taste of Jesus’ ways that they were desperate to live out. and who could have imagined that little wacky band of misfits would end up being part of changing the course of history forever? i think a lot of us reading this blog would consider ourselves in this category. a little like nicodemus, many have found ourselves sneaking off to have covert conversations with other people about the stirring in our hearts. our dreams for the kingdom of God keep us up at night & we can’t seem to shake it.

so what will it mean for the church to be “born again”? i know there are opinions all over the place on this one, but here are a few of my essentials of a radical shift in the church’s heart, way of thinking, actions.

• recognize that it’s not really working for a lot of other people (even if it’s still working for us). let’s face it, christianity has a bad reputation. people are tired of our judgmentalism and lack of compassion & care for the poor and marginalized. while some churches are still growing, we need to remember that many many others are dying. people are leaving the “system” by the droves, and the new generation of young people isn’t too keen on joining into the existing monster. the old methods & rules just won’t work anymore.
• continually humble ourselves & admit our mistakes. i think the world is waiting for this. they do not see christianity as a reflection of Christ. they see christianity as a reflection of power & control. something is wrong with that picture. corporately, we have a lot of work to do to demonstrate our humility, our heart for justice, peace, equality & diversity in actions not just words. this will take a long time to shift, but i believe it’s possible if we, as the body of Christ, draw back to the sermon on the mount as guiding texts for our faith.
• be willing to be uncomfortable & let go of what we have always known. Jesus made it oh so clear that the ways of following him would require giving up what we held dear. the only hope for the church, in my opinion, is for its people to be willing to give up what we have conveniently relied on to make us feel comfortable & safe. we will have to shed things that hinder our ability to love our neighbor the way Christ calls us to. we will have to get honest about really tough questions: what is God asking us to consider that we really don’t want to do? what needs to change? what do we need to let go of? what do we have to risk? how can the true heart of Jesus be expressed through us, individually & as communities? what’s holding us back? what are we afraid of?
• practice being more flexible & fluid. the church was always meant to be about relationship, not structure. to survive, i believe the body of Christ has to learn that its strength is in its heart not its skeleton. the more fluid we become, the more we can permeate & penetrate our neighborhoods, our cities, the world, one relationship at a time. we humans have a default mechanism to organize & build. i am not against that, i think some structure can be very helpful & productive, but i think we will have to become more adept at flexibility & fluidity, which means giving up mortgage payments, egos attached to org-chart positions, and programs that perpetuate the status quo & distract us from love.
• learn how to do relationship, relationship & more relationship. this may be the part that is the hardest for us & is the most critical moving ahead. yeah, we talk about loving God & loving our neighbors, but when the rubber meets the road, real relationships are tricky especially when God is asking us to love people we aren’t used to loving. our greatest hope is to learn to love like Jesus loved. sacrificial love. crazy-in-the-trenches love. nonjudgmental love. we won’t hit it right, we are human, not God, but i do believe as we stretch & learn & try, more and more people will be touched by Jesus through us and the “church” will come alive in beautiful & powerful ways.

i realize this is barely scratching the surface, but they were the ones at the top of my head. i’d love to hear your additions & reactions, too.

i have so much hope for the church if we will stay the course & allow ourselves to go through the pains of re-birth over & over & over again so we can become a better reflection of Jesus in a changing world. it will be hard on us personally. it will be hard on us corporately. but i strongly believe it’s possible. God, please help us to be born again. and again. and again.

p.s.: want to be part of intentional, challenging conversations about the church’s re-birth? join off the map live’s “the born again church tour” in seattle, denver, or los angeles this fall, featuring dave kinnaman, author of Unchristian, jim henderson, co-author of Jim & Casper Go to Church, and more. off the map is dedicated to exploring new ways of thinking about and practicing what it means to follow in the ways of Jesus.

Kathy Escobar co-pastors The Refuge, an eclectic faith community in Broomfield, Colorado, deeply committed to those on the margins. She has five kids, loves chaos, and sees beauty in the ugliest of places.