Just came across this article by Mark Buchanan. How do Christians model their sexual ethic in a corrupted an impure society? Two dangers: the conservative church can be like Jonah, only interested in angry denunciation and taking no pleasure in repentance. Or the liberal church can be like Esther before her awakening, fitting in with the culture, not realising it is about to ambush. A better model is Daniel. He had clarity and integrity in working out which aspects of pagan culture weren’t a problem, and which were the places to say ‘no’ at all costs.
Gospel, Culture And Purity
Just came across this article by Mark Buchanan. How do Christians model their sexual ethic in a corrupted an impure society? Two dangers: the conservative church can be like Jonah, only interested in angry denunciation and taking no pleasure in repentance. Or the liberal church can be like Esther before her awakening, fitting in with the culture, not realising it is about to ambush. A better model is Daniel. He had clarity and integrity in working out which aspects of pagan culture weren’t a problem, and which were the places to say ‘no’ at all costs.
Church As Mission
Brilliant three-part series on being a Mission(al) Church in postmodern culture starts here:
Eternal Perspectives » Becoming a Missional Mission Church
Technorati Tags: church, mission, postmodern
T-Bone Burnett Between Heaven And Earth
Further to my previous post on Thursday, I got an email this morning from Joe Rhodes of the Los Angeles Magazine. He has interviewed Burnett for the July issue. The piece is not available online, but he kindly sent me a PDF of it. If you’re anywhere near LA I highly recommend you buy it and read it. There is so much about his history, music, art and spirituality.
With Joe’s permission I quote the final paragraph of the interview, because it restates and develops the quote I gave in Thursday’s blog:
“I am interested in getting away from the world of ideas and more into the world where science and religion and art are all the same thing,” he says. “I’m interested in what all those things say about life, about something outside of you and inside of you at the same time. Getting to that place between heaven and earth where, you know, it’s neither one.”
Seems to me like a healthy belief that all truth is God’s truth, leading to an openness about when and where God may speak, rather than thinking God is constricted within a religious straitjacket of our making. And of course we are called to live somewhere between heaven and earth now, in that time of overlap between the kingdom of God that is breaking in and the kingdom of darkness.
Technorati Tags: T-Bone+Burnett, Joe+Rhodes, Los+Angeles+Magazine, music, God, spirituality, science, art
T-Bone Burnett And Christian Art
After fourteen years without releasing any of his own music T-Bone Burnett is back. He even now has his own website and a MySpace page. (Fans will previously have known how difficult it was to track down anything close to first hand online.) Last month he released both a wonderful 2-CD compilation entitled Twenty Twenty and a CD of new recordings, The True False Identity.
Burnett is well known in Christian art circles for his famous quote,
“You can sing about the Light, or you can sing about what you see because of the Light. I prefer the latter.” (Credit: JesusJournal.com)
In an interview to promote the new releases he comes up with another thought-provoking insight for Christians in the creative arts:
“Where I want to go with my work and with my life is that place
that’s between heaven and earth. It’s neither; it’s ether,” Burnett
says. “That’s the place I feel comfortable — that’s where I feel alive.”
Technorati Tags: T-Bone+Burnett, Christian, music, art, Twenty+Twenty, The+True+False+Identity
Revising The Lectionary?
Anglican proposals to change the church year to connect with folk religion and commerce in the hope of connecting with people who are interested in spirituality but not organised religion – see Ruth Gledhill’s article:
Time to ditch platitudes and pop, churches told – Britain – Times Online
Technorati Tags: culture, folk+religion, spirituality, organised+religion, Christianity, Ruth+Gledhill, Church+Of+England
Why We Should Not Copy The ‘Successful’ Church
Have a look at this: Seth’s Blog: But I like the sticky floors
Seth Godin reports on McDonald’s redesigning their ‘restaurants’ to look more like Starbuck’s. But as Godin says,
The challenge McDonald’s faces is not to be like Starbucks. Why? Because Starbucks is already like Starbucks. The challenge is to to tell a story to the existing
McDonald’s fan, a story that combines fresh and comfortable with the
stuff they’ve always liked and trusted (the place is cheap, and it
feels cheap, which makes it easier to bring the baseball team…)
And this puts me in mind of church stuff. Apart from the fact that I’m more of a Costa man than a Starbuck’s customer (give me one of Costa’s Fairtrade cappucinos with a lemon and white chocolate muffin soon, please) it’s that danger of copying the ‘successful’ church down the road, or that we’ve read about in the latest trendy Christian paperback (if anyone is still reading books). The largest of the churches I serve, Broomfield Methodist, is in a covenant with our local Anglican church, St Mary’s. St Mary’s is an ancient buildin – even possibly Norman, I think. Its Sunday worship for adults reflects that traditional flavour. They also have a modern church hall in which there is a thriving Junior Church. We, on the other hand, have a 1960s building that has just been refurbished with all mod cons, and yes I can now play with PowerPoint during the sermons. Unlike them, we don’t even have a Sunday School at present. I have maintained since soon after arriving here that our role here is not to ape or copy St Mary’s but to provide something complementary in the locality. Yes, we need to recover children and young people but we may not do it in the same way as our Anglican friends. We have a weekend coming up in September with Mike Bossingham of the Family Friendly Churches Trust and that may lead us in a different direction from the conventional Sunday School. Our worship certainly needs to be different, too, but worshiping the same God and Father through Jesus Christ.
Of course this is the harder way to do things: no ‘off the peg’ suit but something made to measure. Not content creators but context innovators, as Fred Peatross said in a recent Abductive Columns email.
Technorati Tags: Seth+Godin, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Costa, church, Broomfield, Mike+Bossingham, Family+Friendly+Churches+Trust, Sunday+School, PowerPoint, Fred+Peatross, Abductive+Columns
Why We Should Not Copy The ‘Successful’ Church
Have a look at this: Seth’s Blog: But I like the sticky floors
Seth Godin reports on McDonald’s redesigning their ‘restaurants’ to look more like Starbuck’s. But as Godin says,
The challenge McDonald’s faces is not to be like Starbucks. Why? Because Starbucks is already like Starbucks. The challenge is to to tell a story to the existing
McDonald’s fan, a story that combines fresh and comfortable with the
stuff they’ve always liked and trusted (the place is cheap, and it
feels cheap, which makes it easier to bring the baseball team…)
And this puts me in mind of church stuff. Apart from the fact that I’m more of a Costa man than a Starbuck’s customer (give me one of Costa’s Fairtrade cappucinos with a lemon and white chocolate muffin soon, please) it’s that danger of copying the ‘successful’ church down the road, or that we’ve read about in the latest trendy Christian paperback (if anyone is still reading books). The largest of the churches I serve, Broomfield Methodist, is in a covenant with our local Anglican church, St Mary’s. St Mary’s is an ancient buildin – even possibly Norman, I think. Its Sunday worship for adults reflects that traditional flavour. They also have a modern church hall in which there is a thriving Junior Church. We, on the other hand, have a 1960s building that has just been refurbished with all mod cons, and yes I can now play with PowerPoint during the sermons. Unlike them, we don’t even have a Sunday School at present. I have maintained since soon after arriving here that our role here is not to ape or copy St Mary’s but to provide something complementary in the locality. Yes, we need to recover children and young people but we may not do it in the same way as our Anglican friends. We have a weekend coming up in September with Mike Bossingham of the Family Friendly Churches Trust and that may lead us in a different direction from the conventional Sunday School. Our worship certainly needs to be different, too, but worshiping the same God and Father through Jesus Christ.
Of course this is the harder way to do things: no ‘off the peg’ suit but something made to measure. Not content creators but context innovators, as Fred Peatross said in a recent Abductive Columns email.
Technorati Tags: Seth+Godin, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Costa, church, Broomfield, Mike+Bossingham, Family+Friendly+Churches+Trust, Sunday+School, PowerPoint, Fred+Peatross, Abductive+Columns
Grief Expressed Online
Found this article on the New York Times website (you will need to register free of charge to read it). It details how people are expressing the grief of bereavement on websites such as MySpace when users, particularly young people, die.
Rituals of Grief Go Online – New York Times
Thanks to Andrew Welch for the link.
Technorati Tags: grief, bereavement, MySpace
Reaching A New Generation
A parable for the Church here?
MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | BBC reaches out to new generation
Big Circumstance 