Happy Birthday Gabe! You are one of the greatest people I know with a B-day today!

Chris

Well, I'm trying to deliver on my promise. I gues a couple of episodes of Laguna Beach is enough to make me want to be a deep and whole person again. It makes me laugh sometimes, though, so it's worth a show now and then.
Gabe, you've really got some important stuff to say. Seriously. You tossed up that thing about selfishness, and that's dead on. I want to defend myself, and I will point out some things I think that we can admit are situationally different in our lives, but no one can defend themselves against the charge of selfishness because there is only one source. It seems to be the standard plague of humanity, but it is very obvious, even with us, or at least, with me. The thought's been rolling in my head ever since you wrote about it. How selfish am I? The thought itself shows the state I'm in. Let's just look at one another, though, circumstantially, and see if we notice some leverage behind our states of mind.
Gabe, you and I are, for all practical purposes, the same age, with the same educational background. You have three forces I can see from the get go that offer you the opportunity to be selfless or selfish in very evident ways: First, you are married. Plenty of selfish people are married, in fact, most married people are probably very selfish. It can't work very well, but our base nature wins by ease and comfort and who knows what else. You can offer insight here that I cannot. I just know, you have a blatant choice as a husband to act with only your interests in mind, and then anywhere along a gradiant towards being selfless.
To the contrary of your position, I have no significant other. I have been in two months of dating relationship time in the last eight years of my life, so I have no other person's gravity truly pulling my wants, needs, or time in any significant way.
Second, you are a father, which must be mind-blowing. To be a parent and to be selfish really are two opposite ideas. I guess I mean to be a good parent.
I, on the other hand, get scared at the thought of actually having offspring. I see other people with their children, and it terrorizes me. You can't choose your childrens' lives for them. They can be awful on their own volition, or they can be awful because you screwed them up. The closest thing I have to responsibility over another being's life is working itself at present: I am dog-sitting. That is slightly annoying. I have to stay home here with a fuzzy dog when I had originally wanted to catch another dance tonight. His well-being over my desires. And Gabe, you must live your life like that. It's shocking.
Third, you are a pastor, and so to be a good one which I just assume you are, you have to be selfless. There's no such thing as a good selfish pastor. I think I've known selfish pastors before. Your job envokes the imagery of giving up your life to spend with lesser creatures for their greater good. So you have one more part of your life where you get the up front, obvious choice of being selfish or not.
In my job, I can't say I'm selfless, but I've known other people in my work, and their level of selfishness far exceeds mine. Isn't that the best way to know you're a good person- by all the bad people around you? In the "business world", if there be such a thing, where I work against my better judgment or desire, looking out for your own interests are the main goal. Actually I feel like an outsider while working at the business level. We do things for the sake of profit, profit pays my wages, so why would I complain about how we make money? But that's the goal, despite mission statements (hideous things that infiltrated churches and our mater) and anything else. The business world seeks to endlessly make a greater profit, does it not? It's not feeding people that are hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless - business are not made doing those things. I'm off topic.
My point was, I have all these things, singleness, childlessness, independence, ect. to give me opportunity to be selfish. I am applauded by my culture for making it on my own, for taking up space and paying taxes and letting other people do the same without my interference. Well, I think I'm applauded. Maybe I'm just making that up. As I said, I can't excuse my bad choice(s), just explain the things that surround it and wonder why it isn't differnt ( me and them). I wonder who else out there feels and lives the same way. It was just good catching your words on the matter, though I think your position makes it less murky about making those choices.
Onto the other matters, which you and Kurbis have been chatting about so brazenly the last few days. You said well that we should enjoy this discussion and try not to let emotions trouble our friendships and care for each other. Your are a wise man, Gabe.
I agree most often with Kurbis in his forceful enutiation of viewing Scripture. You are right to worry that we could leave the Bible, to forsake rather than worship it, and it is good to hear someone be concerned about our connection to it. I was at the point of giving up on all things biblical actually in the last months of school. Things just didn't line up how I thought they should. I realize that's a very self-centered viewpoint, but to right now, I have no other. I was simply raised with this very exact picture of the Bible, the Word of God, the infallible, unalterable, gleaming authority that had never even fluttered in the wind. It was that first crumbling edge of that New York building when I was in Gospel of John, trying to clarify some gospel stories that seemed similar, yet different, yet too similar to be different. I felt my questions about these things were glossed over, and I suddenly realized what I had done for years to other people when they had questions about the Bible. Maybe it was just punishment for what I had done, but it was a frightening feeling of freedom, not one I wanted and not one I would return to for any reason. It was this picture of the Bible that I had, where it answered my questions like a textbook, where I studied it like a textbook (taking notes and looking for clues in words that I didn't even think about the fact that they were translated and not going to be unerringly important), and in the end, it felt like one that I had read and known and then had other things to move on to. I was arrogant enough to think I knew the Bible, and in a simple sense, I did, like a person can know algebra or all the state capitals. It's one thing to know about geography, it's another to be on a journey and feel geography beneath you.
I say all that to point out that my view of the Bible had to change, or I was going to give up ever thinking of it as important. And my view did change, a few times. I think when I stopped trying to get the Bible to save me from myself, and started seeing the lives the Bible talks about, the personality of God that didn't need the Bible but used it anyway, every screwed-up person from cover to cover living real lives, feeling real pain and joy and choosing and choosing again... I understood a little better that I couldn't dissect two words in Ecclesiastes enough times to unlock the Nostradamis-code that would solve my questions. Familiarity was not godliness. Scripture memorization wasn't the way to prove I should be chosen. I don't know, maybe none of you have really done this walk to the edge of the abyss and come back thing, if the abyss is not believing anything in the Bible anymore. Maybe you all have and I'm the only one stupid enough to try and put it into words without getting in trouble with his Bible-college classmates.
I'm going to pause here to point out a philosophical conundrum - what we call our experience. You can be Plato and talk about another real world of the ideal, or you can be Spinoza and raionalize your way to a deity without a feeling or sensation between, but I fail to see what we each have that is not, simply put, our experience. Memory, imagination, sensation, anticipation, constipation (sorry, had to try and be funny). Any way you cut it, unless you can talk with Kant about pure reason, we're running on our experiences, and experiencing our memories of experiencing, ect, ect. Some philosophers, while off the mark on some big things, really hit things well with experience as their base assumption.
And the only thing I'm going to open up at the end here is a little picture of another world happening simultaneously with ours. One of my close friends shared a small Evangelical community experience with a dozen other people in Ireland last year. She just received an e-mail outlining why one of their friends had recently joined the Catholic Church. This should make you feel liking giving each other a hug:
"There is a theology of baptism. Anglicans and Catholics have similar views, Baptists (Evangelicals, for our discussion) reject these views. There is a right answer to 'what does baptism do?, what is it for?' and the rest are pious frauds or even devilish imposters. It is not acceptable to just beignorant. The Spirit is speaking."
And things get hairier:
"The Church is the foundation of the truth, not theBible. Yes the Bible is authoritative but it isn't the final word. (anyone whocan show me where it tells us in the Bible that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, i will happily give a reward) The Church decided doctrine entirely on their own authority in the early Church. Look at Acts 15. Why did they do this? Because Christ had promised them that the Spirit would guide the Church - HIS Church in ALL truth. (John 16:13) Not just some ofthe truth - no ALL OF IT. And that the gates of hell would never prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18) Sounds like Jesus is saying that the Church will never err, doesnt he? Well if the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church like Jesus said he would, then is there any reason to believe that the Church would fall into error?...There is no notion of error, the Church is infallible because it is being led by God the Holy Spirit." Just like Saul and David and the Israelites and Abraham. That's weird, oh, I just started being sarcastic. Anyway, let me know if anybody's gonna be Catholic now and save us all from our failure to be saved through a Church and not through Jesus.
Most of the e-mail outlining the problems of not being Catholic use puctuated Scriptural quotations, and then a fierce tirade against Luther as an anti-semite. It's like we're back in the 14th century and we're excommunicating each other all over again. At least we're not there yet.
I just realized I didn't really talk at all about our main subjects, per se. So, I really am emergent, wanting to tell a story, not so interested in philosophical debate, or at least, not so good at it anymore. Oh well. I just set myself up for a few shots, anyway. Please do not call and try to walk through the bridge illustration with me over the phone. I guess if you are a cute girl and you ask me to dinner afterwards, you can take me to a B'hai temple for all I care! Ha! You guys wish you knew if I was joking or not. Okay, I'm done. Catch you all later.

Sorry for posting two times in a row. I have another repsonse and our comment section was getting terribly hard to read. Steve, quite dancing and get in the game!

One last note before my response. I hope all reading this do not make me out to be some cranky old foundationalist who needs to pick a fight to feel like I am defending the truth. i am having so much fun with this and hope we can keep it light-hearted and fun.

Kurbis,

Thanks for he reply. I agree wholeheartedly that the church has aligned themselves with a political party that has its holes in it. I think the emergent church has raised a great issue in Evangelical Christianity's blind trust in “a party”. And to that extent it is frustrating to see the atrocities happening while Christians are ignorant to the outcomes. However, saying a political party represents evangelical Christianity is a bit of a generalization. I loved your sentence: "We are not American Christians. Rather we are Christians sojourning in America." The inability of comfortable Christians to see this is to our shame.

I would also agree that evangelicalism is extremely guilty of marrying Bible to culture. I could give you many personal frustrations of cultural tradition infecting the church. My issue with the emergent church is they are simply contemporizing the problem. I am not trying to speak on behalf of the infallibility of evangelical Christianity, because I am well aware that does not exist.

The one area that I still get confused about in your logic is your understanding of the Bible. You state, "Fifth, Jesus promised us the Spirit, not a book." That is a great comment, but it comes from the very book that is being discredited. I agree that there is truth outside the pages of the Bible, but your very argument uses the Bible. How would you know what was promised except through reading the word? Is this not the same example of the atrocities stated in history? Aren’t you taking bits and pieces to make a viewpoint valid?

The reason I say it is more then a simple matter of trust is because I can agree that God can exist in a man's heart without words on a page. But I get concerned when people feel the need to take away the words on the page that are so useful and powerful to explain who the God is that is living in the heart. It is not a matter of trust, but a reaction to the attitude that takes away stock in the Bible. If God works through people who have only partial sections of scripture or none at all, the praise be to God. However, that does not mean we should get rid of the books importance when we have been blessed with it in its entirety.

Well here it goes. I am going to try and respond to some of the Emergent conversation that Steve has raised. First and foremost everyone reading should this should pick up the book called "Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church" by D.A. Carson. His insights are coming from the other side, but I think that they paint a great picture of some of the worries with the emergent church philosophy.

I am in the middle of reading a new kind of Christian and I have yet to read a generous orthodoxy. So my argument is clearly a work in progress.

I am going to respond to quotes from your blog, please take this for the fun debate I am hoping it to be and not any kind of personal attack or intent to show superiority.

Quotes of Steve:
1) "I think Miller intentionally shows that the Bible by itself is not why he knows Jesus or is part of the Christian Church."
Response: I would agree that this is a idea Miller gives, but what I fear is that he has not supported the Bible enough in his writings to have a normal everyday person feel that it is force behind all we know about God. It does contain absolute truth and in a culture that tries to get away from that concept it would have been a helpful reaffirmation. I do not doubt miller's understanding of the Bible, but he leaves the door to open for others to easily dismiss its importance. I feel like this is a area of concern for many churches in the emergent mode. I do not think that this is universal, but there are churches that are shying away from the greatness of God's word.

2) "Miller is also writing to a more general audience than just evangelicals, and so when we reference the Bible as an authority, it is meaningless to most other people. Experience is something everyone can relate to, and that's a good place to start."

Response: This seems to be a very hypocritical argument for the emergent church. Just before this quote you quoted a passage by Mclaren where he talks about the irony of using extrabiblical words to justify our belief in biblical authority. However I think that the emergent church is focusing on peoples experiences in just the same way. The claim would be that it is culturally relevant. It may be a good place to start, but only if it is to form relationships in order to show people the truth about the Bible. Without the Word of God how can we know anything about Christ? If we do not come back to the Bible or we claim that the Bible is not the ultimate authority then Christianity becomes a club to join and a crutch during hard times for people and stops truly being truth that can change lives.

3) "My experience"

Response: This may be the scariest statement that I continue to hear from the emergent church. Carson gives a great idea about this in his book. According to Carson modernism started with the famous philosophy from Descartes: "I think therefore I am." Carson talks about how this changed the landscape of Christianity and philosophy because it took the focus off of God and put it onto man. We became the beginning in our philosophies and not God. This infiltrated Christianity and continues to bear witness in our local church. Carson therefore calls postmodernism Ultra -modernism because he says it is a continuation of the belief in self as the determinator of our worldview. In essence the weakness of Modernism is the weakness of postmodern culture. We are too self focused. I know that the emergent church is much better at meeting the needs of the needy, but do they do it because God wants them to or because it makes them feel good? Don Miller talked about getting past this, but then he encourages you to find a church where You feel at home. Does this seem contradictory to anybody else?

Final comment:
Steve, when I read about your experiences in the local church it breaks my heart. I hate to hear about how self absorbed the church is today. I could not agree with you or McLaren more in the fact that many churches are covering over for their lack of true faith. I loved your idea about people on a ship covering holes. I have felt that way many times . The difference for me is in the reaction to the news. I want desperately to fix the holes without jumping ship. I get concern that the emergent church as a whole is not truly fixing the holes in a ship. To me the greatest hole in the local church is the problem with our self-absorbed attitudes. I do not see this corrected in the emergent philosophy.

A few thoughts .

Gabe, I said I'd give you a good reply, and so I've got a few hours, so I'll give it a try. Cute, I know. Didn't mean that to be so corny.
Your concerns are very interesting to hear since my connections have most often been with people either finding themselves connected with emergent thought or even further past that, so to hear an "in-the-church", traditional view is good. I can only speak for myself on these things, but you probably wouldn't be suprised to find how many people pop up and say the same things. That's how I felt when I read Miller and McLaren. What I had been thinking about for years, completely unable to solidify and verbalize, they wrote down and went even further. I was part of the same church all four years of school, and as far as emergent existed back then, the River was at least on the edge of Canaan. It had the most basic direction and interest as I would later discover in Miller and McLaren, but even so, I spent my last years at Crown very... unsatisified. Much of that had and still has to do with me. That's fine. But there were too many things in our culture, in the basic social and religious culture I grew up in, that really bothered me to just shrug and go along with quietly.
By the time I was quitting grad school, I was on the verge of quitting church, for good as far as I could see. I wasn't okay with the systems, the norms, the necessities and the surface treatments that I encountered in a lot of churches. Nobody seemed interested in the whole thing, either in terms of fixing or even just questioning. It was like people knew there were leaks in the ship, but we were almost told to just stand on a leak if we saw it and then just stay there rather than ask the question if the ship was more important than the voyage. I'm being purposefully vague. But, amid my preparations to part with the formal church structures that I knew about, I happened to hear about a book from Kyle that he said I would love.
Kyle was one of the few reasons I kept with things as long as I did. You know him as well as I do, and the kid has no streak of perfection or some undeniable, superhuman ability that should push him across the universe ahead of the rest of us. But there he was, in a little church plant, with a bunch of people that didn't know about how to get dressed up for church or how to argue about music or how to set mission trip fundraising goals. Or at least, that's how I imagined it from the stories he told. And so we'd talk about church, about the Bible, and about how these people were actually getting to know Jesus, most of them emerging from AA meetings and still not prepared for a Sunday morning gathering so formal and rigid. And so I still had a glimmer of hope in me concerning the Church.
I read BLJ. I felt like I was writing it as I was reading it. Then my girlfriend gave me A New Kind of Christian, and it went deeper. Then we broke up, but that didn't change anything, not in this realm. I actually got to watch her from a distance, to see how these ideas affected her life (she had grown up in a very conservative, southern Baptist church, and to hear the biases and traditions given to her by this very specific culture were frightening). Then I left Montana and only just recently came to a place where I could talk with her again, and not yet about things so personal as this.
I showed up here in Washington over a year ago, and for six months I attended a church, bustling and bright, thousands of people strong, polished and shiny new in their recently errected church building out on the edge of town. The lead pastor was young enough, encouraging and real. But... it wasn't my church. Not in six months, and I'm pretty sure not ever. Now, the emergent conversation says that I'm supposed to be fine with this, that each church has its purpose, some being more active and living than others, but I am not supposed to be troubled by the ones I can't understand or agree with. So, I won't detail my real troubles with this former church I attended. Let's just say, I tried the programs, the small groups (one for the entire six months with not a single relationship to show from it), the Saturday seminars, and I was back to square one. I was a face in the crowd, and this church couldn't get together without having a crowd.
I went to one last young adult outing, only having a conversation with the leader of the group who was leaving for California, otherwise I spent the night by myself, and I realized that, despite a real effort on my part, I hadn't made a single friend in six months of weekly seeing these same people. They said the right things, they prayed very zealously, and they talked about the Bible a lot, but they couldn't break away from their picture of their little group enough to let in a stranger. I never went back.
I did some church hopping. I've never been the sort that can do it successfully. Actually, it was easier now because I was ready to put up with very little glossy crap in order to find a real fit. I walked in and out over several services, usually before the sermon was over. Everybody was standing on the holes and talking about their kids soccer games and new evangelism classes and the sound mix. I was glad to slip in and out.
One Sunday morning in the beginning of December, I caught sight of a sign on an elementary school about a church with a really weird name: "Renovatus". I told myself I had to try it, but I was scared these people were going to be so corny I wouldn't be able to breathe. I mean, who came up with that name. It was almost like Imago, but just weird. And it looked tiny. I drove into the parking lot, took several deep breaths, and walked in the doorway. There were weird paintings up, Christmas lights on draperies, and a guy wearing a Vote for Pedro shirt. I really did feel at home instantly. The first person that walked up to me used the phrase, "a church for people who don't like church", and he was right. It was awkward. The pastor wasn't smooth, he wasn't unbelievably deep or even someone I could completely relate with, but he certainly was there out of love. I met nearly the whole church that day. I also encountered one of our norms, that being, nothing. Our weeks don't look very similar at all. I can only remember one real sermon in style and length. There are constant glitches and troubles, and nobody cares that things aren't neat and perfectly timed. That night, the first night I went, I was invited to a white elephant gift party. I went with some dollar DVD's from Target, left with candy canes and a pezz dispenser, and a group of people that I knew, and that acted like they wanted to know me. They've faked it this long.
Now that was a really long introduction to my experience reconnecting with the Church through an emergent community. I figure I can go from there and try to reply to Gabe's worries.
BLJ doesn't have a thesis because life doesn't have a thesis. It's an academic idea that has infiltrated Christian thought to a point that the two cannot be distinguished: by that I mean rationalism and Christianity. I think our education pushed us towards finding things that weren't necessarily there a lot of the time, and this thesis search is one of them. Just think of the title (it comes from this passage, page 100): "There is something quite beautiful about the Grand Canyon at night. There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz)..." Find a thesis in jazz, or in the sky, or in humanity, or God. Not very possible. Not very necessary.
Reaction against the present state of most American evangelical churches could be a resistence to authority, a failure to submit. Luther had a reaction against the church of his day. Was he failing to submit? Or was his questioning necessary, the outcomes troublesome, but our place in the world maybe better off because of it? I'm not saying we're on the verge of some great movement. I'm saying that just because any part of the church has been around for a while doesn't give it the right to claim itself as a necessary route to God. A great deal of churches act like the buildings they reside in - once build, maybe added onto once, but unable to grow and change, and unable to die and give room for the next generation to grow up, free from their burden, unable to pass on wisdom and insight without shackling the young with their tendencies, tastes and shortsightedness. We think of the Church as we think of God, and our failure to let the church be a body, where cells die and new ones grow to take their place has given us great cancers that are much worse than young, immature organs.
I think Miller intentionally shows that the Bible by itself is not why he knows Jesus or is part of the Christian Church. Cults actually seem very connected with certain parts of the Bible. Think of Mormonism. I think McLaren gives a very clear exposition of biblical authority in A Generous Orthodoxy.
"The Bible, (Paul) says, is good for equipping people to do good works... Interestingly, when Scripture talks about itself, it doesn't use the language we often use in our explanations of its value. For modern Western Christians, words like authority, inerrancy, infallibility, revelation, objective, absolute, and literal are crucial (his emphasis, not mine). Many churches or denominations won't allow people to become members unless they use these words in tehir description of Scripture. Hardly anyone realizes why these words are important. Hardly anyone knows about the stories of Sir Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, the Enlightenment, David Hume, and Foundationalism- which provide the context in which these words are so important. Hardly anyone notices the irony of resorting to the authority of extrabiblical words and concepts to justify one's belief in the Bible's ultimate authority." (p.164)
Miller is also writing to a more general audience than just evangelicals, and so when we reference the Bible as an authority, it is meaningless to most other people. Experience is something everyone can relate to, and that's a good place to start.
I'm really excited that people are ready to ask serious questions about the whys and hows of church in our culture. If some people break away from a Sunday-morning, steeple and tie-wearing crowd to find a group of Christians who know them and spur them on, I'm up for it. I think it's been time for some change for a while. Do I think the average church out there is wrong or evil? Nope. But the assumption that the old way is the right way cannot help us when it seems quite clear that a whole lot of us have lost the way. Maybe that's not the case. I just see an incongruity between the Church (in the Bible, in history, thinking long term and pulling together many different forms and heritages) and your average American church, and the solution can't be staying the same.
And that was really long. I've got to get ready for work. Hope this gives you the other side, Gabe. We'll see if I stepped out of bounds (but there isn't any for us emergent people, right?). I'm funny. Where's Bob when I need him? Montana, right. I remember.

I do have a reply to Gabe the babe, worried about those of us finding ourselves in the emergant conversation, but that's not why I'm writing. This is a follow-up on my apartment situation, a short story of the last two days of my life, aptly entitled "My lease is up by November!"
A bit more than twenty-four hours ago, I was planning how to pack my entire apartment and find a new place to live by Friday because of a single letter left on my doorstep yesterday afternoon. The letter stated that owed rent in the amount of nearly three hundred dollars and was required to pay the amount of move out in three days. I read the letter over and over again, trying to understand where this came from, where the amount came from, anything. My brother was out at a concert last night, so I couldn't get ahold of him to ask if I could bunk at his place for a few weeks while I tried to figure this out. I called my friend Matt. He lives in Portland, and we might move in together when my lease is up, so I asked him about the house we went to check out last week. His offer was accepted and it would be his by the first week in October. He said he thought everything would be fine, and I said I hope so, but I was still really aggrivated and confused.
I guess I need to explain why this seems so unbelievable. My rent is direct debit, so the only month's rent that I've paid myself was for May. I knew that my rent was due at the beginning of the month, but I saw that just the day before, all my rent and utilities were taken out of my account, just like that had in previous months. If I wasn't in control of paying my rent, how could I be short on paying? And the amount they wanted wasn't a round number, like half of my rent or anything like that. I was so out of it that I didn't eat anything and resorted to pencil sketches of Montana mountains to try and calm me down. Around eleven I decided to look back through my account statements to see what had been taken out. I found a glitch. All the way back at the beginning of May, the direct debit amount was $200 short of my total rent amount. So there's that much. Then I figured it could be utilities, but the rest of the total amount was more than a month's worth of utilities. More than two months, even. I was ready to really give them an earful the next day about how this wasn't my fault and how I knew I wasn't going to renew my lease because of crap like this.
I went down to the rental office this morning. I simply asked the worker what this (meaning the letter) was, and she was more confused than I was. I had to actually explain to her where I had found the direct debit that was short two-hundred dollars. Then there was utilities that weren't taken out, and the rest was a late fee. I got a lot of apologies, and I stayed pretty placid. I mean, I still owed money, but the letter shouldn't have showed up, and the whole thing seems to be a crappy mess that makes me glad I signed a six-month lease. I get paid on Friday, so my apartment gets their money and I am not delinquit on rent like I thought I was. Still, if I had been without that much money back in June or July, I wouldn't have bought this computer, and I would have been more careful with my spending. It's kind of a big deal, and I'm still a little annoyed about it. Don't tell somebody they have to pay money or move out in three days with no prior notice or explanation. Not as funny of a story as I thought. Had fun swing dancing tonight. Actually ate two meals today, if you consider a Tony's pizza and cranberrie cocktale juice a meal. My stomach may agree with you here soon enough. Gabe, you'll get a good, thoughtful reply from a foundationless existenialist here soon enough. In the meanwhile, you should pick up the more formal and connected picture of emergent thought in Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian or A Generous Orthodoxy. The man speaks my language. Might be language of a heritic to some, but if they're going down, me too. Gotta go. I actually work tomorrow.

Blue Like Jazz my thoughts:

This book presents itself to the postmodern crowd unlike any book I have ever read. It is witty and entertaining, random and yet connected, and it connected with my life experiences to a point that it became scary. Donald Miller talked about love and showed from his unbelievable life experiences how he has found a new more authentic way to live for Christ. This was a great read, but when I finished I was left with some major concerns.

1) What exactly was he trying to say? People have asked me what the thesis of the book is and I cannot give them an answer. The book is so postmodern that it is almost indefinable. This leaves me with a feeling of emptiness. It is heartfelt and entertaining, but does it truly make a point?

2) I have some real issues with the reactionary attitude that Mr. Miller exhibits towards everything. I feel that he found a new church paradigm more because he could not submit to any that currently existed. I know he makes it out to be this amazing encounter with Christ, but his attitude seems so attacking of everything that he has been around. It leaves me to lack confidence in his experience. (And his experience is all he gives for his authority)

3) Experience seem to be the defining authority in his life. How very postmodern of him. He references the Bible now and again, but he is definitely not trying to show how it has been the reason for his life change. This makes me very uncomfortable because there are a lot of cults in the world that have been started by the same means. (I am in no way calling Donald Miller a cultist or anything like it, but his means of reasoning lack validity in my book)

4) I fear that Mr. Miller has opened up doors and reactions that he did not address or is not prepared to address. I feel that a lot of what the book was written about was great to read, but the attitude and encouragement of getting out of foundational and traditional churches scares me.

I did find this book interesting and the chapter on relationships was excellent for me to hear. I read it because I have heard of so many people who love this book and I wanted to read it very critically in because of Don's affiliation with the emergent church "conversation" as they like to be called. Please feel free to rip me as much as you want for my negative views.

Wakefield, I left you a message hoping we could get together. I would love to hear about your experience in the church plant and how this book has helped you. Gimme a call bro.

I didn't mean to abandon you, I really didn't. I had no idea that I had orphaned you as much as I did, but you have to realize that I have been out of civilization for the last two months. This means I've had no cell phone service and very little internet use. Yes, I've been at camp. And though Silver Lake was in the city, Northwoods is in the middle of nowhere, so I basically dropped out of existence for a short time. It was great, actually. And now that I am back, the adjustment back into normal life has been a bit of a shock. I have way too many voice mail messages waiting for me on my phone, a stack of unread mail, and about a thousand e-mails to respond to. Such is life, I guess. At the last minute I decided to accept an invitation from my bosses at camp to attend a Bible Leadership Institute on a scholarship from them, but it started the day our camp season ended. So after the last camper was gone and the last cabin was cleaned, I loaded my stuff onto a bus (with no AC in 99 degree heat) and sweated my way down to Chicago to spend 10 days studying the Word and decompressing after the summer of camp. Between the craziness of the summer (that will have to be a book someday, no room here) and the leadership camp, my life has of course been completely turned up-side down, and although I don't really know what that means quite yet, I am excited about it. So that's that for now. Thanks for keeping this thing going in my absence. I'll try not to stay away so long in the future, though I'm glad I was missed.

Hubka is back! Now where is everybody else?

So I just finished reading this little book called blue like jazz. It has terrified me. I am very interested to hear what others who have read it think. I have soe ideas that I would like to share, but I want to see read what others thought of it. Why? Cause I'm a jerk like that.

Lynnea...Lynnea...Come back to us!