I’ve been involved in discussions, research, thinking about the Emergent Church. I even wrote a paper that was partially on it. I’m not Emergent but I am sympathetic to what many of them want to do. They are trying to engage post-modern people. The typical Evangelical church is not particularly good at this. The cultural differences are just too much for post-moderns. Anyway, here’s how I summarized it in my paper:

Attempting to summarize the Emergent Church can be compared to thumbtacking Jell-O to the wall. As the name implies, it is a movement that is still in process, it is still emerging. Furthermore, one of the movement’s key characteristics causes it to be difficult to define: the Emergent Church is missional. It is my opinion that to understand the Emergent Church, one must understand what it means to be missional. The way ‘missional’ is used in the Emergent Church, the term means doing cross-cultural missions within the Western culture. Tim Keller (PDF) explains ‘missional’ this way:

The British missionary Lesslie Newbigin went to India around 1950. There he was involved with a church living ‘in mission’ in a very non-Christian culture. When he returned to England some 30 years later, he discovered that now the Western church too existed in a non-Christian society, but it had not adapted to its new situation… Some churches certainly did ‘evangelism’ as one ministry among many. But the church in the West had not become completely ‘missional’? adapting and reformulating absolutely everything it did in worship, discipleship, community, and service–so as to be engaged with the non-Christian society around it. It had not developed a ‘missiology of western culture’ the way it had done so for other non-believing cultures.

Generally speaking, the Emergent Church sees itself as the witness to the emerging, post-modern culture in the West. As we get over the (false) scientific surety of modernism, things are changing. The Emergent Church, then, is an attempt to be the Church of that emerging culture. To say that it is a ministry to “post-moderns” would be a gross oversimplification. The difference in approach would be comparable to a church establishing a Chinese ministry by adding a Chinese language service on Sunday morning and what Hudson Taylor did in China. While the church may have a Chinese ministry, Hudson Taylor’s work was to be the Chinese church.

As the Emergent Church reads Western culture, they try to speak with, not to or at, post-modernism. Therefore, the movement embraces eclecticism, intentionally stretching its arms around a wide variety of different thoughts and moods in Christianity. Some Emergent churches include ancient liturgies such as the Stations of the Cross but re-imagine them via modern art and poetry. The goal is to portray truth and beauty in other ways than just propositional
speech.

I’ll be doing more observing and commenting on the Emergent Church in my blog. Again, I’m not completely in to it but I do admire some of what it is trying to do.

I updated to Tiger last night. Update went very smoothly. After the upgrade I tended to get the spinning beach ball a lot so I repaired permissions and rebooted. That didn’t seem to help so I zapped the PRAM and things are now great.

Couldn’t wait to try Dashboard and play with some widgets. The ripple effect doesn’t work on my TiBook. Not enough video memory I guess. Oh well. Safari 2.0 is much faster. Spotlight is what finally turned my head. I thought it would be Dashboard but I already have Konfabulator so that wasn’t such a lure. With Spotlight I can declutter my desktop and still quickly find my stuff. And I really like the new, clean look of Mail!

I also installed iWork. Keynote is just awesome. It looks great. I mean everything is top shelf. Now I can’t wait to do a presentation in order to use it! Pages is good too. It seems to have everything Word has (minus the format painter as far as I can tell). The tools are better organized. I had it open a rather complicated Word document from my Hebrew class and it did it perfectly. Formatting was exactly the same. That is cool. Could this be goodbye to Word and PowerPoint? Still need to keep Excel though I guess.

The Star Wars saga has its ups and downs. One author found something to hang on to.

From TableTalk this morning, reflecting on 1Pt 2:9-10:

The biblical view (which is sometimes mistakenly called “replacement theology”) does not say that the church “replaces” Israel. Rather, it affirms that true Israel always was, always is, and always will be comprise of those who trust in Christ alone for salvation…That the church is the Israel of God does not mean that every church member has authentic faith.

True Israel = true believers /= church ¹By “/=” I mean “does not equal”. Not that A excludes B in “A /= B” but that A and B are not exactly the same thing. A may include B but there is not parity.. I guess this could also be expressed “Israel /= true Israel = true believers /= church”. But is this good and necessary consequence of what the Scriptures say? Sure, Rom 9:6-7 affirms the first part of that equation, but where do you get the second?

I suppose you could get it from John 6:60&66 where people called Jesus’ disciples grumble at his teaching and then stop following him. One could say that here were Jews, members of Israel who followed Jesus and then stopped following him. Thus they proved that they were not part of the true Israel. But that doesn’t answer it does it? Didn’t we already establish that Israel /= true Israel from Rom 9? Were these disciples part of the church? Had they been baptized? See, this is at a transitional time in redemptive history and is really not a good place to make one’s case for this.

Another place that might be appealed to would be the curses of the New Covenant, namely Heb 6:4-12 and Rom 11:17-24. In these passages, it is averred, show that those in the covenant can be excluded from the covenant for failing to believe. So it can be that there are those who are in the church but are not true believers. Indeed, Matt 18 on church discipline seems to affirm this. But are those people really considered as part of the church, or are they “not of us” (1Jn 2:19)? I think that if we want to admit that there are those in the church who are not true believers, then we have a problem with particular redemption. In Acts 20:28 Paul describes it as “the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” I suppose you could do some wiggling by saying that the church is different than the church of God and that the church of God is the true church which consists of all believers. Or you could say that Jesus is reconciling all things through himself (2Co 5:19) and so he did purchase believers and non-believers in the church but not in the same way. But are these things what Paul is saying in Acts 20? He doesn’t seem to be making those kinds of distinctions there.

Well, that little discourse didn’t do much to clear up the curses. Frankly, I’m a bit befuddled by the curses. They seem to be genuine threats but real believers cannot lose their salvation. That means that either a) the threats are theoretical and designed to keep real believers from losing their faith, or b) the people the threats describe are not real believers but they think they are and perhaps convince others that they are. Hebrews 6 sounds like these people have come close to believing, “tasting” the heavenly gift and the goodness, but not quite making it. Romans 11 makes a comparison between the natural branches who were cut off and the wild, ingrafted branches. Were those natural branches who were cut off true believers? If so, why were they cut off?

Okay, exploding frogs? How long are we going to let natural processes destroy the planet? We have to do something. Key quote “toads’ entrails are propelled for up to a metre (3.2ft).” How can we revolt against baby seal clubbing when we sit idly by and allow amphibians to spontaneously erupt? Surely these explosive toads are somehow the victims of the failed Bush second term. There has got to be a link the the Greenhouse Effect. Maybe this is the result of new and undiscovered ozone hole that has opened over Germany. We have to immediately scale back on gas consumption and ban SUVs. The Kyoto Protocol must be enacted now or this horrible plague could spread to other lower life forms. How would you feel if your dog or cat burst like a hamster in a microwave?

This was just so funny that I have to blog it. Windows XP is launching a new campaign to “Start Something.” They are trying to showcase how they can do all those same things that Mac OS X can do. Well, except that the image was produced on a Mac. They figured this out by viewing so of the “metadata” that accompanies these file types.

So go ahead, Start Something! But use a Mac to advertise it. :)

I took my computer to Disneyland.
I got a nice room at the Disneyland Hotel, it faced the park. I could hear the people screaming on the rollercoasters from
my room.
I played Rollercoaster Tycoon a lot. I got a brochure when I checked in and I built a park that was just like
California Adventure. It was a lot of work but I think I did a good job.
I brought food so I could eat in my room. The grocery store didn’t have Mickey Mouse waffles like they sell at
Goofy’s Kitchen but I got something pretty close.
It was really cool, I downloaded all the commercials for Disneyland and watched them on my computer over and over. I would point at the screen and think, “Man! That is where I am right now!” I can even sing most of the songs from them.
I bought some souvenirs at the gift show when I checked out. I got Mickey Mouse ears and a really cool t-shirt so that people will know that I went to Disneyland.

Trinity is in the media spotlight. Three students “of color” received threatening letters via campus mail. When the third letter came in the minority students were moved off campus to a hotel while the investigation is underway. This morning when I came to school there were vans lined up in the parking lot. The media has descended. So far they’ve been pretty fair but I’m watching. They tend to spin things out of proportion to get ratings.

On a related note, the lady who found a fingertip in her Wendy’s chili has been arrested. Has she been tried in the media? Who knows. I know of a local family who reported something extraordinary (no UFOs or anything like that) to the police and within a week the media camped on their front lawn and started questioning whether they made it up to get attention.

Update: As I drove back in after lunch I saw a group of about 15 students in a circle praying in the center of the campus in the cold rain. I did not, however, see any media recording it. That is for the best no doubt.

Mark Dever loves me! He’s written a book and done a lot of speaking about “9 Marks of a Healthy Church”. Today when I got to school I was given a booklet form of the book (which you can download as a PDF if you’re interested) and a CD with an interview with Mark. It was for MDiv students.

It is nice to see that 9Marks is concerned for the church. By giving these resources to current MDiv students (and I assume that TEDS was not the only school that received them) they are seeking to ensure their message gets out, not simply that money comes in. Desiring God does the same thing with their “whatever you can afford” policy. The message is what they want to get out, let God provide the means to get that done. It isn’t reckless finances, it is faith.

Admittedly, it will be a while before I can read the material. I’m way backed up from school as it is, so on to the ‘gonna read some day’ pile it goes. I just thought the intention was nice.

How many brewers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
About one third less than for a regular bulb.

How many real estate agents does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Ten but we’ll accept eight.

How many audience members does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two. One to screw it in and another to say “Rose, he’s screwing in the bulb now.”

How many boring people does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One.