Paradoxology

Interview with Liz Babbs, author of "Celtic Treasure"

Here's a portion of my interview with author Liz Babbs about her recently released book, Celtic Treasure: Unearthing the Riches of Celtic Spirituality.

Writing “gift books” seems like such a rare yet creative approach to writing. What led you into the writing of gift books, and why have you stuck with it?

Thanks for describing Celtic Treasure as a ‘rare creative approach to writing’. I enjoy writing gift books because I can reach a much wider and more diverse readership through a gift book and it crosses the sacred/secular divide. Christians can buy any of my gift books for their non-Christian friends and they won’t feel threatened, because many folk are interested in Celtic spirituality and these books are very accessible. A gift book is also given to people for Christmas, Birthdays and to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. I’ve even signed ‘The Celtic Heart’ as gifts for Valentine’s Day! And one pastor bought copies of ‘The Celtic Heart’ for every woman in his congregation, as a Mother’s Day gift! Gift books also give me the freedom to write in a more visual and creative way, weaving in some of my original prayers and poems inspired by my travels to Scotland, Ireland, Lindisfarne (Holy Island) and Iona.

What are YOU Trying to Change?

I've been thinking again about something Shane Claiborne wrote a couple years ago:

New prophets are rising up who try to change the future, not just predict it.  There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of (The Irresistible Revolution, p. 24).

If you see yourself as one of these "new prophets", or as part of the movement that moves beyond cynicism and is committed to pioneering change in the Church, then "fess-up" and tell us what YOU are committed to changing.

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Photo credit: © Chad Anderson, iStockphoto.com

3rd Annual AEF Conference

OH YEAH!!!  The countdown has begun and the anticipation already mounting for this year's Ancient Evangelical Future Conference.

The conference, hosted by the Robert E. Webber Center for an Ancient Evangelical Future, will be held once again at Northern Seminary's Linder Conference Center (NICE!) in Lombard, Illinois (greater Chicago area).

The AEF Conferences are an outflow of The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future -- the pioneering work of Dr. Robert E. Webber (1933-2007) and others, that bring together an amazing diversity of theologians, biblical scholars, church practitioners and lay people -- all interested in how the Church's past should inform and shape her future.  Part of what I really like about the AEF Conferences is how they're filled with people with such a wide spectrum of backgrounds. Progressive traditionalists, emerging church practitioners, mainliners, fundamentalist lookie-loos, and many more.

So, come on, now!  Drop all your past excuses and make it a priority to attend this year's Ancient Evangelical Future Conference.  Come join the conversation, and experience for yourself how the Church's path in the future runs through the past.

Do We REALLY Want Community?

Community. It's practically a mantra these days, especially among reformers and within Emerging Church circles. We say we want authentic community, but we we're not quite sure how to experience it or even what it should really look like.  Some blame decades of institutionalized Christianity, devoid of true community, for getting us into this quandary.  Others point to the evils of individualism which continues to segregate and distance us from one another.

Scripture may offer another perspective:

"The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? Jeremiah 17:9 (NLT)

While doing some reading this morning, I came across these sobering thoughts from Jean Vanier:

Community is a terrible place, a place where our limitations are egoisms are revealed to us.  When we begin to live full time with others we discover our poverty and our weaknesses, our inability to get on with others... our mental and emotional blocks; our affective and sexual disturbances, our frustrations and jealousies... and our hatred and desire to destroy.

If Vanier is right -- and I suspect that's the case -- then I honestly wonder how many of us REALLY want community? Are we truly ready to make the sacrifices and pay the price necessary to live in community as the body of Christ?

What are your thoughts?

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Photo credit: © Nina Shannon, iStockphoto.com

 

Holy Habits: Why the Emerging Generation Embraces Ritual

Maureen Langdoc (M.Div.,Duke Divinity School), one of the sharpest young leaders in the Free Methodist Church, recently addressed a group of Southern California pastors and leaders and gave -- what I believe was -- the most articulate explanation I've ever heard of why younger adults (and younger evangelicals in particular) are increasingly being drawn to ritual and other faith practices long abandoned by evangelical protestants.

Maureen's ability to effectively communicate on this topic to those largely unaware of the sweeping paradigm changes underway in today's culture, is too good not to share!  So... enjoy part 1 of her presentation on "Holy Habits."

Listen to: Maureen_Langdoc_Holy_Habits_1.mp3

And... OF COURSE I'd like for you to share your thoughts and reactions right here!

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Photo credit: © iStockphoto.com

Pendulums and Anchors, pt.1

Our need for pendulums and anchors - this has captivated a good deal of my attention lately.  I'm not thinking here in literal terms, but metaphorically.  Theologically and eccelsiologically, it seems that the pendulum is always swinging. The seemingly "extreme" positions that are inherent in a pendulum-swing are commonly understood to be helpful and even necessary in dislodging us from the opposite extremes.  Such pendulum swings -- although often enigmatic and sometimes even confusing --  are a normal part of life, and when I think about Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 , this is exactly what I see.

    For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
    a time to be born, and a time to die;
    a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
    a time to kill, and a time to heal;
    a time to break down, and a time to build up;
    a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
    a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
    a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
    a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
    a time to seek, and a time to lose;
    a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
    a time to tear, and a time to sew;
    a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
    a time to love, and a time to hate;
    a time for war, and a time for peace.(NRSV)

As the product of Modern Evangelical Christianity, it has increasingly become important for me to face the pendulum extremes we have embraced, and admit the price we have paid for not having sought a greater sense of balance.  In particular, here are some of the pendulum swings we were previously blind to but which evangelicals are increasingly owning up to:

Overcoming the Fear of Christianity's Past

The path into the future runs through the past.  It's a widely held belief, yet many Evangelicals struggle with the fact that more and more church leaders are re-embracing many of the faith-practices from the ancient church.

The evangelical believers I regularly encounter who have this fear of past practices and outlooks, seem -- above everything else -- to fear a "Catholicizing" of their evangelical faith.  I do no think that the use of the lectionary, the Christian calendar, or ancient liturgies per se, are what the real problem is among these evangelicals.  Rather, it is a fear (and distrust?) that evangelical churches would begin doing "anything" which smacked of Roman Catholicism. Hordes of evangelical Christians have been raised amidst teaching which consistently pigeon-holed Catholicism as succumbing to some sort of "spirit of religion" and at risk of not even being Christian.  In fact, many evangelicals commonly consider Roman Catholicism as a "different religion", something categorically different from denominational protestantism.

That aside, progressive evangelical leaders will undoubtedly find it an increasing challenge to help these fearful members of their flocks to overcome their fear of the past so as to embrace the beauty, the richness, and the mystery that can be found there.

Here is a humble attempt at making suggestions to Evangelical leaders that might help them help the fearful ones:

1. Regularly include some ecclesiastical history in your corporate teachings times.  Help your people see your church/group/denomination in the context of Church history. Periodically remind your people that Roman Catholicism represents roughly 1/3 of Christianity.  Although many of their practices may be quite different from yours, they remain our Christian brothers and sisters.
2. Where possible, publicly praise the missions, outreach, and social justice efforts of Roman Catholics and liturgical Protestants in your community -- not just those in your corner of the kingdom.
3. Forge friendships with Catholic, Orthodox, and liturgical Protestants in your area.
4. Present ancient faith practices as transcending group barriers, and as relevant/needed in today's postmodern world.
5. Make a point to mention the other Protestant groups that embrace any given practice you're in the process of restoring (e.g. Lutherans, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, many Methodists, certain Baptists, etc.). Especially helpful here are any examples you can draw from others within your own denomination or family of faith.
6. Periodically discuss the arrogance and danger of the "modern perspective" -- thinking that somehow we are more advanced and enlightened than those in the primitive/early Church, and that therefore there is little we can learn from them.

Certainly, I see this as a rough-draft list suggestions, and would welcome any additions or revisions that anyone might offer.

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Photo credit: © Lorenzo Pastore, iStockphoto.com

Is the Kingdom Really Larger than The Church?

A popular notion in many circles today -- including the emerging church -- is that the kingdom of God is a far larger entity than the Church (i.e. the universal body of Christ).  The kingdom certainly includes the Church, but is not limited to just the Church.

Some theologians and biblical scholars, however, assert that when Jesus spoke of the Church, he was speaking of the kingdom, and vice versa.  Passages such as Matthew 16:18-19 certainly seem to suggest an equation between Church and Kingdom:

    And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (NRSV)

With the publishing of books such as Alan Jamieson's "A Churchless Faith", I cannot help but wonder what effect modern individualism has had on contemporary views of ecclesiology, including those held by many within the emerging church. Certainly, the deconstruction of institutional Christianity has long been needed, but it feels at times that there are those deconstructionists who would rid the Kingdom of the Church.

It won't come as a surprise that The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future is very much on my mind of late (my prior posts make that pretty obvious).  And, yes, I am thinking about the second article within the Call:

We call Evangelicals to take seriously the visible character of the Church.   We call for a commitment to its mission in the world in fidelity to God's mission (Missio Dei), and for an exploration of the ecumenical implications this has for the unity, holiness catholicity, and apostolicity of the Church.  Thus, we call Evangelicals to turn away from an individualism that makes the Church a mere addendum to God's redemptive plan.  Individualistic Evangelicalism has contributed to the current problems of churchless Christianity, redefinitions of the Church according to business models, separatist ecclesiologies and judgmental attitudes toward the Church.  Therefore, we call Evangelicals to recover their place in the community of the Church catholic.

Assuming that God's kingdom is far broader in scope than the Church is an easy assumption to embrace -- at least that was true in my case.  However, I'm taking a very hard look at all of this again, and invite you to dialog with myself and others about this fascinating and important concept.
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Photo credit: © Sasha Martynchuk, iStockphoto.com

2007 AEF Conference: Scot McNight, part 2

According to McNight, "The biblical narrative as a "Wiki-Story" is, in fact, an approach that is both historical and historic.  It's the way the Church has always read the bible" (including Irenaeus). The ancient-future approach to read the bible is to read the bible as a story.

McNight quoted Abraham J.Heschel : "to believe the bible is to remember, not merely to accept the truth as a set of dogmas."

Here is how the church listened to the story of the bible (McNight's 5-part Thesis):

1. There is a gospel, a message of deep magic -- the story of God's relational saving truth.
2. There are expressions of the gospel's message, or deep magic.  These expressions are stories of the story.
3. The stories unfold in time so that these stories form a plot -- a meta-story.
4. This plot that we discern in scripture contains divine energy -- the communicative action on God's part to engage you and me as communicants in covenantal relation with God and others.
5. The proper relationship of you and I  to the story and its plot is one of listening and discerning well.

McKnight went on to present a comprehensive, scholarly treatise on these ideas.  Of particular interest were his thoughts on "epistemic promiscuity", or... "why a 'wiki-story'?"  Here's an excerpt:

Download McNight_Wiki_Story_short.mp3

As we broke, Scot has encouraged us to discuss the following questions at our tables:

1. Which of the five models best describes how you read the Bible?
2. What can we do to restore "story" to the Church?
3. What are the positives and negatives of reading the Bible as a "Wiki-story"?

Again, jump on in and share your thoughts or reactions to any or all of these.

2007 AEF Conference: Panel Discussion #3

In the third panel discussion, which followed Edith Humphrey's presentation, discussion immediately centered around the role of propositional statements we include in the bible's story.

Humphrey:  The Fall, not only affected our "reason", but also our "imagination."

Vanhoozer: perhaps we should view the bible's narrative as "opera", where various musical forms serve as components of the whole.  Arias are solo material. Choruses are like the church's creeds.

Humphrey: opera is okay... until the opera is hijacked by material that doesn't "fit" into the main story line. Proposition keeps us honest. Story has the potential of seducing us away from the plot.She worries that the primacy of sola scriptura is being replaced by story alone.  She sees this as dangerous.  If narrative theology leads us to the primacy of the biblical "story", rather than to the primacy of "Christ" himself, then there is where we encounter danger.

Here's a clip:

Download MOV01220.MPG

Then, a fascinating exchange took place between Scot and Edith, in response to her earlier narrative exposition of Revelation 12 :

McNight: Is the woman of revelation 12, Mary?

Humphrey: Yes...and she is Israel, and she is the church.

McNight: Queen of heaven?

Humphrey: Yes... in that all of us are called as royalty (e.g.Kings and priests ) in God's kingdom.

McNight: (he yielded pursuing this any further)

The panel then fielded a few final questions from the floor, including a question about Revelation and popular notions of the coming apocalypse...

Humphrey: The Book of Revelation is mostly centered on Jesus, the Christ -- the Lamb.  It's about what God has, is, and will accomplish through the Church, NOT about some sort of coming apocalypse. Those who read Revelation as the description of a liturgy are probably not far off.

Edith also reiterated her concerns over how our understanding of the Trinity is errantly used as a polemic for a variety of issues (e.g. women in ministry, unity in the Church, etc.).