The Art of the Archive

Elesha Coffman at The Christian History Blog has a great article on archive research. Not for everybody, but there are a few of you out there who, like me, will want to tuck this information away for future reference. Here's is just the beginning:

1. Contact the archivist before you arrive. Archivists are an underappreciated lot. Most of those I’ve worked with are based in university libraries, tucked away somewhere far from any windows that might permit deadly sun rays to strike fragile manuscripts. They know their collections, they know their policies, and they’re generally eager to help any researcher who actually manages to find them, but they need more lead time than your basic librarian

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that time again

it's that time again. summer project update.

i've cleaned out the school room (and cleaned and cleaned), patched the holes in the walls, and started masking. i'll start with painting the ceiling and then move on from there. want to guess the wall color the wee one chose? here's a hint: it's the color of a fruit.

here are a couple of photos. I'll have more on my facebook page for anyone who wants to go there to see them.

almost empty

where it all went

summer

Summer is in full swing here now. I'm preparing for my annual summer paint project- this year it's the school room/study, and will be augmented by the wee one's tastes and choices. (read- it's going to be a bit wild.) But that's okay- it's her room too. It will be fun, once I get all the books and projects and shelves and computers and junk out.

This coming week I have jury duty for the first time. My daughter has violin camp, which Keith will take her to since he'll be working from home due to my aforementioned civic duty, and we will have a house guest. If you see me, don't be surprised to see my head spinning around. It isn't demonism--just confusion.

Here is a photo of our vegetable garden this year. It's doing well. The squash are again affected by mildew/mold but I've learned that spraying with a milk and water mixture is better than fungicide for treating plants with that problem. I haven't yet worked out how often and what concentration of milk is optimal in our garden, but i'm optimistic (er- overuse of "opti" words). We've had a few good squash grow to maturity and that encourages me.

The Great Emergence, Continued

from The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle:

"...when pinned down and forced to answer the question, 'What is Emergent or Emerging Church?' most who are will answer, 'A conversation,' which is not only true but which will always be true. The Great Emergence can not 'be,' and be otherwise..."

Tickle quotes Donald Miller:

"I believe that we are witnessing a new reformation that is transforming the way Christianity will be experienced in the new millennium. This reformation, unlike the one led by Martin Luther, is challenging not only doctrine, but the medium through which the message of Christianity is articulated... these 'new paradigm' churches have discarded many of the attributes of established religion. Appropriating contemporary cultural forms, these churches are creating a new genre of worship music, restructuring the organizational character of institutional religion, and democratizing access to the sacred by radicalizing the Protestant principal of the priesthood of all believers."

Tickle goes on, later:
"The actual nature of the Atonement, for example, or the tenet of an angry God who must be appeased or the question of evil's origins are suddenly all up for reconsideration. If in pursuing this line of exegesis, the Great Emergence really does what most of its observers think it will, it will rewrite Christian theology--and thereby North American culture--into something far more Jewish, more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical than anything the Church has had for the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years...Regardless of what its theology eventually matures into, however, there is no question that the Great Emergence is the configuration of Christianity which is in ascendency.

"What is not nearly so easy to discern just yet is how the Great Emergence will interface with the results and consequences of such realignments; and more than any other of North America's Christians, it is emergents themselves who are going to have to reconsider Emergence Christianity. They must begin now to think with intention about what this new form of the faith is and is to become; because what once was an engaging but innocuous phenomenon no longer is. The cub has brown into the young lion; and now is the hour of his roaring."

I don't know whether or not to agree with this last statement of Tickle's, but I seem, nonetheless, to be experiencing it. I no longer find that I can easily push aside my disparate thoughts about church, God, and our relationship with Him. These thoughts (or the children of them) keep coming out- not oozing quietly- but plopping out at inopportune moments. Usually when surrounded by people who can't fathom what is going on in my mind, nor do they seem to want to. I regret this on several levels, yet I'm still a bit confounded about how to manage it.

The Great Emergence

As I've been given time off from cooking and other chores today (yea!) I thought I'd tell you about The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle.

She begins with the supposition that, according to Rev. Mark Dyer, "about every five hundred years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale. And, he goes on to say, we are living in and through one of those five-hundred-year sales."

The five hundred year points are typically referred to in terms that begin with, or are associate with the word "great," hence, "The Great Emergence."

• There was the beginning of the church in the 1st century.
  
  
• Then around 500 years later there came Gregory the Great and the beginning of the monastic movement following the fall of the Roman Empire.
  
  
• Next, around the 11th century came the Great Schism, the divide between the Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Constantinople) and the Western Church (Rome.)
  
  
• The most easily recognized "great" is the 16th century Great Reformation with Martin Luther and his 95 theses nailed to the door at Wittenberg church-- thus laying the foundations for Protestantism.
  
  
• That bring us to the 21st century and what Tickle is calling the Great Emergence.

I'm with her on this. The majority of the book is a well researched explanation of these events in the life of the Church, bringing us to many observations about the changes in Protestantism in the 20th century which got us to the state of flux we are in today. I think she does a good and thorough job of this, without crossing over into tedium.

The point being made that the Church was ripe for a rebirth, the author goes on to explain the emerging church as she sees it. I'll write a little about that explanation in a follow up post.

10 survival tips

David at nakedpastor has some in depth food for thought:

"I think all religious communities, like our earth, are on a collision course with their demise. And it’s our own fault, not the “world’s”. I’ve been mulling some thoughts around. If we are going to survive into the future, our communities need to:

1. get and stay small (like the best farms);
2. be autonomous but accountable to other communities (like tribes);
3. be indigenous in expression (local creativity and freedom of expression);
4. see love as the new hermeneutic of our books (instead of obedience, justification, salvation, etc.);
5. reject even the subtlest forms of coercion (no imposed agendas);
6. abandon visionary thinking (love without the oppression of expectations);
7. cultivate thinkers who explore the reconciliation of all things (global intelligence);
8. commit to long-term or even life-long oversight (relationship);
9. build an attitude of resistance to success-story thinking (anti-pop);
10. engage all sciences, religions and philosophies with an open, compassionate and humble mind (dialogue)."

counting heads

Dan has stopped counting heads at church. More power to him! I wish all our denominational pastors would be so courageous.

scot on church plants

Why Me?, Scot Williams

"i have been asked to give my reasons why i no longer go to real church anymore, why i handed in my ordination and though repeatedly asked, why i refuse to take it back, and why i no longer advocate planting churches for the vast majority of evangelicals. how could i, a career planter, bite the hand that has almost fed me for so long? i hope that it is because of this longevity in a field with few lifers that i have at least a smattering of some credibility. here's an excerpt...

"I was getting my passport this week. You know how it is… you sit and wait and then someone calls you up and asks you a bunch of questions. So she asked me, 'why are you going to Orlando?' I wanted to say something like, 'I’m starring in a Body Building Movie', but instead I confessed, 'I’m going to a conference about starting new churches'. Then she asked me a question, and it’s the only question I’m going to address. She said this, "well then maybe you could answer this for me… 'why would anyone want to go to church?'"

It's worth reading scot's entire post. I'm anxious to hear how this speaking engagement goes for him.

paradox

Jamie at Our Missional Pilgrimage writes on The Community Longing to be the Church, out of his church planting experiences of late. He also beautifully summarizes the truth of the life of the believer as part of the body of Christ.

Here is just the last paragraph. I want you to go to his site to get the rest.

"We are The Community Longing To Be The Church. We live in the paradox of longing to become while already being. We are the Church. We are the Body. And yet we are so far from it. In this tension- in our sin and selfishness- we discover our desperate need for God and even, often grudgingly, for each other. We love God with all our hearts, but those hearts are divided. So we come together, through His Spirit to seek the love of the Father as we seek to become more like the Son. And we see that this is achieved in the chaos and brokenness of the Cross. Our hope is that, as we are poured out by and for Him, we can become the community He has created us to be. It is here that we discover the deeper truth:

"We are The Community Longing To Become Christ."

twit

Why I won't be twittering.

thanks to Glenn.