Connecting the dots

This semester I’ve been connecting dots… and they are beginning to make a shape.

I’m in a group-read of James K. A. Smith’s (Calvin College) Desiring the Kingdom. In another group I’m reading Newberg & Waldman’s How God Changes your Brain. Steve Rennick, pastor of The Church at the Crossing sent me a book on the Holy Spirit, Forgotten God by Frances Chan. I recently read the Emerging Nazarenes White Paper. I heard Charlie Alcock preach this past Sunday. Read stuff by and about Shane Claiborne. I talked to several younger pastors last weekend and also heard Leonard Sweet talk. I heard at lunch today a report from Steve Lennox’s recent strong of local church meetings. I just answered a ton of email that had been piling up in my in-box. These and a dozen other dots have all connected to say a similar thing: “There is something wrong with the level of Christianity as we know it now.”

What do these dots mean? What’s up?

The conversations and writings sound strangely familiar, like echoes from the past. Sometimes they sound like the ancient desert fathers describing conventional Christians. They often sound like medieval monks intent on creating a new monastic order. They sound like the Puritans of the 1600’s. They remind me at times of early radical Protestants complaining about the Roman Catholic church. They sound similar to early Methodists complaining about the Anglican church. They are often reminiscent of the 18th century American holiness movement talking about mainline Methodism. They sound strangely similar to 20th Century Pentecostals describing nominal Christianity. They even sound a lot like radical holiness splinter groups who complained about “mainline holiness denominations.” The issues are different but the language, tone and complaints are similar. The dots are not isolated but they repeat a similar patter and the shape always says, : “There is something wrong with the level of Christianity as we know it now.”

I’m pondering these dots and qondering what’s up...

Downhill side of the semester!

Downhill side of the semester

In a school semester there is a week when you “just feel it.” You know you are now headed in for a landing and Christmas is on the way. Last week was that week for me. Here is how I noticed.

LOCAL CHURCH EUCATION –the students start Monday writing their final three chapters of their Christian Education books—the Spiritual Formation of Children, Youth and Adults. By now they are functioning smoothly as writing teams and the magic has taken over—they have quit doing assignments for me and have become totally absorbed with writing their own books. I could even skip a class and they’d meet on their own, organize the work, assign each other research and writing, and get it done even if I didn’t show up. It is an amazing thing to watch. (I do still go to class—but sometimes go late on purpose just to see this wonder of self-motivation at work.

CURRICULUM THEORY AND WRITING – this is a smaller writing class and we’ve conquered curriculum theory, designed from scratch our own curriculum plan, and are writing furiously to put together a weeklong VBS Missional curriculum focused on the world. Our evening class is set up as a simulation and operates exactly like actual curriculum committees function—outlining, writing, reviewing, debating, assigning, and rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting again). This class is intent on actually publishing their final curriculum with Amazon’s CreateSpace Print-on-demand publishing. I thInk they might actually pull that off but they have LOTS of rewriting to do first ;-)

INTRODUCTION TO PASTORAL MINISTRY
I got this class back this semester and love teaching freshmen—they are wonderful! The church is gonna’ be in good hands in the future! On Monday we are learning about dating, marriage and the ministry. This is the week they do the “Joshua and Caleb” activity of visiting the upper level classes to spy on them and interview upper division students on what these classes are like and how to do well in them. Man these students are hard workers!

PRACTICUMS
And, of course I supervise practicum experiences in two of these courses… I am more convinced than ever that requiring local church experience and exposure is critical in either confirming their call to ministry or reminding those who “Love Jesus but hate the church” that other majors are where they belong.

I love teaching!

Norm Wilson is ecstatic

It is fun for me to work with Norman Wilson. Norm is one of those guys who is so focused on one or two issues that when something breaks loose in his focused area he walks around the building like he is high on something. Today was such a day.

Your Friendship and my Wife

This is where I stand on my friendships and my wife.

1. I can be your friend if you don’t know my wife.
I can be your friend if you have never met my wife. Indeed when I am friends with people who don’t know her, I hope I can introduce them to her because when they meet her I think they will like her and become her friend too. But even if they never meet her, I can still be their friend, though our friendship goes only part way. I am always hoping they will meet and like my wife too because she’s that important to me.

2. I can be your friend if you know my wife and accept her.
I can be even better friends with people who know my wife and like her. In fact, my very best friends are people who know both of us and accept and like us both.

3. But I cannot be your friend if you have known my wife and now reject her.
But if you are a friend who knew my wife and were her friend once but then later rejected her, I cannot be your friend. We can be acquaintances and have an occasional contact, but we cannot be friends if you reject my wife. If you reject her you de facto rejecting me. If you say, “Well, can we still be friends, can’t we even though I reject your wife” I will say that I cannot. My relationship with my wife is not that casual. If you reject her, you reject me.

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But, of course I am not talking here about my wife. I am speaking about my God.

My Volunteer Pumpkin is getting fat

Internet Radio discusses "Common Ground"

These Wesleyan guys in South Carolina have a neat Internet radio show that I listen to... it is a cool idea... Recently they discussed my book "Common Ground." Thanks guys!

Finshed the White Pine Trail

I'm so happy...

Boy! I am so happy with how IWU's new seminary is coming along.

Here is a series of YouTube videos explaining the idea. This is really going to be good!

GREAT Cycling trip!

Just returned from a GREAT cycling trip with two friends--biology professor Burt Webb and political science professor Kris Pence. We started in Pittsburg on the Great Alleghany Passage—a rails-to-trails route—to Cumberland Maryland. The GAP is a gravel route that never rises above 1 ½% grade, but it does rise a couple thousand feet to the Laurel Highlands over 50 or so miles. In Cumberland Maryland we got on the C&O canal towpath, a National Park route that is mostly dirt & puddles, and rode that right down into Georgetown-DC, 335 miles in all.

This was a test trip for me—last year I hammered my knees on 500 miles of the Appalachian Trail in may—they never recovered. I tried cycling to see if it would have less stress on my knees. Sure enough my knees are fine, thanks mostly to an awesome bicycle—the “Salsa Fargo” whose designers had a mission of “designing a bike to ride the Continental Divide Route, which is my real dream—and something I’ll probably start to tackle next summer—a route right down the backbone of the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico paralleling the Continental Divide Trail.

I’m returning to the GAP-C&O in July to ride it again, that time with Sharon. Until then I’m looking at re-riding with Sharon some of the off-road trails radiating from Xenia, Ohio and maybe the White Pine Trail in Michigan. I love cycling!


Click here for a video of our recent trip.

Who Reads the Tuesday Column?

I don’t chase after visits to my Tuesday Column site—I know that some online writers monitor their traffic daily and write more of whatever gets them the greatest number of visits. As for me I write whatever I’m thinking about regardless of readership and frankly I have all the readers I need to satisfy me.

However, writing on the web gets one fewer responses than preaching at a church (well most churches at least ;-). When preaching I can see the crowd and know for sure they at least listened to some of what I preached. On the web most folk read but never comment—I have learned to live with that. (Those who DO comment get read by about 350-400 people each week so the commenters have a following too.)

Yet, sometimes I wonder if anyone is reading. That’s when I check the data. Today I had an extra half hour so I looked at the data. Here is what I saw concerning the last two weeks.

-825 of you visited this week’s column on homosexuality--thanks for coming by!
-657 visited the column last week on Grandparenting--thanks (even though it applied to few)

The vast majority of the rest of the readers these last two weeks came directly from a Google search that brought them to one of the past columns. The most popular past columns by the family (besides the weekly Tuesday Column) are invariably the same:

-My own most visited past column was my speed-reading article
-David’s past column on Leadership Movies
-John’s past article on How to Write an Exegesis Paper
-Sharon’s booklet on Leadership Theory for Pastors

In total 13,692 unique visits occurred the past two weeks, which is about the average for the year (900-1000 per day). In the last two weeks readers visited from 92 countries--so it is nice to "see" you guys from other countries too.

Well, I don’t suppose these figures mean anything to anyone but me—but I thought I'd resport them to myself here anyway. ;-)