Check out this very provacative e-zine called killing the buddha. It describes itself as follows:

Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the "spirituality" section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be. Killing the Buddha is it.

I put a link to it in my blogroll, and I hope to keep up with it. One more link in the chain of those trying to figuring out how to be authentic people of faith.

I came across a pretty cool website called method x, it's focus is spiritual formation and is sponsored by Upper Room Ministries. They have an interesting on-line test you can take to determine your spiritual "type". I came out as a "Sage". Others famous sages include:

Mr. Spock | Dilbert | Elrond
Dietrich Bonhoeffer | Maya Angelou | Linus (Peanuts)
Yoda (Star Wars) | Andy Griffith | Mr. Miyagi
The Buddha | Rodin's The Thinker | Moses
Ross Geller | Matthew (the Gospel writer) | Tiger Woods

I fell pretty flattered.

I haven't been posting for the past few days becaue I have been busy at work updating sonrise's website. I am pretty happy with how it is developing. In addition to the site, I have a created an online community at ez-board so people can interact with the stuff that is published on our site and also post prayer requests.

We are having a board meeting tonight. I hate board meetings. Partly because I feel somewhat incompatent as a manager/administrator type, and partly because I was traumatized by board meetings at my first three churches and cannot believe the peace and joy that we experience at our meetings is really real. I expect I am going to wake up any minute and discover the last 6 years have been just a dream. When I get back, if I have survived, I hope to post a little more here.

I received a very sad e-mail from our district office today informing us that my friend and colleague Pat Conolly died. He was only 37 years old. I am going to the viewing tomorrow. I am so sad for his wife and his church. (He is one of the founding pastors of New Life Fellowship in Little Falls, NJ. Sometimes God's ways are very strange to me.

On a happier note, I am really happy I joined the Ocean County Chorus. We are doing some beautiful pieces including the Testament of Freedom by Randell Thomson and the John Rutter patriotic piece. The concert is going to be really great.

Recovering a Translatable Church

There are many groups today trying to "design," "produce," even "reinvent" a "postmodern church." But is the idea of a "postmodern church" any better than a "modern church"? Do we really want to start another millennium-and-a-half cycle of culture dominating the church? Trying to be "postmodern" is sure to be self-defeating. We must move beyond postmodern mission and postmodern church. 

So says Jonathan Campbell in an article entitled postmodernism: ripe for a global harvest—
but is the church ready? in the Evagelicla Missions Quarterly. This is another article that supports my reticence about the "pomo" church movement.

Came across a great article by one of my favorites, John Piper, entitled, "brothers we are not professionals" . It is an exerpt from the book by the same name. Here is a sample:

"We are fools for Christ's sake. But professionals are wise. We are weak. But professionals are strong. Professionals are held in honor. We are in disrepute. We do not try to secure a professional lifestyle, but we are ready to hunger and thirst and be ill-clad and homeless.
JOHN PIPER"

It is a passionate appeal to clergy to abandon the professionalization of the ministry that is one step along the path that has lead us to the discouraged, discontent and ineffective state the church in North America finds itself in. Read and let me know what you think.

I'm in the midst of a 3 part semon on called the "Church on Mission". It's my attempt to rearticulate for the many newcomers at SonRise the orginal vision of our church--that we will stive to be a "church on mission with God", (a.k.a. a missional church). We have talked from the beginning of our church about the need to avoid what I call "better burger christianity and the need to be mission driven rather than market driven. In my research I came across a great newletter on the gospel and our culture network website. It outlines the move of a typical modern evangelical church from the "seeker model" to a "missional model". It is well worth a read, expecially the narrative by the pastor who seeking to lead his congregation in this shift.

One of the exciting things I did during the snow was walk over to the movie theater and see "Dare Devil". (One of the great things about living in my neighborhood is that I can walk to just about everything.) I thought it was a fun movie, well worth the mantinee price for a couple hours of escape from cabin fever. My son's review was, "it was cool, but not as good a spider man". I am not familiar with "Dare Devil" in the Marvel Comics series, so I didn't have that comparison, and maybe not going into the film with any expectations added to my enjoyment. The movie had a dark look and feel. Most of the action takes place at night in the back alleys of Manhattan. It also has a spiritual element to it. The movie opens in a church, with an interaction between a priest and "dare devil" who appears to be mortally wounded. The charachter's life begins to flash before his eyes and the retelling of his life story up to the point of the encounter in the church makes up the bulk of the film. The charachter's spiritual struggle is about the tension between revenge and justice. In the end he side's with his priest, who tells him that "vengence belongs to the Lord". Of course he comes to this conclusion after an hour and a half or so of exacting vengence on all his various enemies. The film ends with a set-up for the coming sequal(s). Don't walk out at the beginning of the credits, or you'll miss one piece of the set-up. christianity today has exepts from various citics, both pro "Dare Devil" and con. If your interested in what the secular media has to say check out my favorite--rotten tomatoes, who's Tomatoe Meter rating for the film is 47%, putting it in the rotten catagory.

Well, it's been a few days since I posted anything here. We have had a "snowstorm of historic proportions" to quote the emergency notice on the municipal access channel on TV. The snow started on Sunday and continued until Tuesday mid-day. We have had over two feet of snow. I got the car dug out by Tuesday morning and was relieved to get my wheels back. The kids have not gone to school at all this week. We are waiting to see what happens tomorrow. They are worried about the roofs collapsing under the weight of the melting snow, so we will know after 4 PM if there is school.

We finally got our mail today. So much for "neither rain, nor snow, blah, blah, blah will keep the mailman from his appointed rounds". We spend yesterday digging out the mailbox because the mail carrier can't get out of his truck, nor can he back up his truck, according to our local postmaster. Anyway, things are seeming to get back to normal.

The snow storm is here. Blizzard warnings have been issued for our area. I just got back from picking up my son from his girlfriends house. The roads were passable, but you could hardly see. It's good to have a nice warm house.

I went to the release party for the CD my son's band made. It's call "a classical triumph" . I am pretty happy with it (except for the explicit lyrics). It was a pretty calm crowd. Three were about 300 people there. Only a few of them had blue spiked mohawks. One kid got arrested for moshing. It was the most exciting thing that happened the whole evening apart from the music. I was struck by the "tribal" feel of the whole thing---especially when they make a big circle and the boys "skank" in a big line around inside it. They almost look like the lost boys prentending to be indians from the old Disney "Peter Pan" movie. I was also struck with how far removed the church--any church church--not just ours---is removed from these kids. I just found out that the Charile Wear stated his web site and "pomo" ministry in response to the spiritual disconnect he was feeling with his kids.

On another note--I'm watching a cool war movie on DVD, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. I love war movies. I didn't finish it so if we get the twelve inches of snow predicted today, I'll finish it then. 

I'm following an interesting fight that the "cutting edge" people are having about the whole idea of the "pomo" church. CT has an article entitled nomo pomo---a post modern rant by Kevin Miller and Charlie Wear has responded with an article entitled nomo leado . . . I think it's so beautiful when Christians fight . I'm contributing a little mischief of my own by posting to a question raised about whether "emergent" churches are actually adding to the net growth of the church or are they just a hipper way of recirculating the saints here . . .

Well, I have been trying to figure out this blog thing and I think I am getting the hang of it. I'm still having trouble figuring out how to put archive links on this page. Since I am probably lost in cyberspace, will robinson, I don't think anyone will be coming along who can show me the way. Maybe the blog rings i signed up will help someone find me.

I'm so confused. I guess it all started when my kid turned 16 and joined a punk band. I know I am not the only clergy with a kid who is punk. (Hey, I always heard that Alice Cooper's dad was a rev. but maybe that's just an urban legend). Anyway, here I am the pastor of what I think is a hip church that I planted 6 years ago and all of the sudden I am staring out at a congregation sprinkled with kids who seem absolutely bored--bored--bored (including my punk kid). So I have begun thinking . . . how are we supposed to do church anyway? are we all doomed to be one generation churches that thrive for 20 years and then go into decline? are we captives to the sociology of organizations, or can we break out of this bondage to the way things have always been (at least for the last 50 years). So I am going to start thing out loud through this journal about figuring out the future and what it really means to be the church, to be a person who follows Jesus, to bring the kindgom of God to the culture we find ourselves in.