Thursday, May 17th is my last day in Orlando. I’m on my way to Estes Park, CO by Sunday. Want to know where I am? Perfect:
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I’m happy to confirm that the rumors (and they are many) are completely true. I’ve been in central Florida nearly 2.5 years, and but now I’m making a big change. I’m returning to Illinois.
The change has been long in coming. I originally moved to Florida to contribute to the leadership of Great Commission Ministries–helping oversee their staff program for church planters and campus missionaries, with an emphasis on fundraising training. It’s been an amazing 2.5 years in this role. My favorite part has been helping new missionaries learn to tell their stories to donors in a clear, concise, and compelling way. I’ve had the privilege to serve help train truckloads of new missionaries for the kingdom: 59 in 2010, and whopping 72 in 2011. For a missions agency that has focused in the past on family-closeness and high-touch ministry, it’s been very cool to be part of the increasing growth of GCM. In 2011 we trained more people than any time in the history of the ministry.
But with all that, I’m making a change.
After much prayer and discernment (with dear friends across the country), I realized that my future roll is likely not in helping manage a non-profit ministry. I miss some of the “frontline” missionary work I’ve invested over a decade prior in. I have dear friendships up north that this trip down south has distanced me from. And I think there may be further places to explore in study and teaching.
So, at least for a time, I am returning to Champaign, IL. My movers arrive here on May 10th.
I’m not leaving Great Commission Ministries. Instead, because the increasing pace of our digital and social media world, GCM has created a new role: Communications Strategist. I’ll be executing that role from Illinois, where I will dive into new ministry projects in web, e-mail, social media, and mobile for GCM and the missionaries she serves. It’s stuff I’m passionate about and believe I can do well.
In transition, I plan on being out at Colorado LT (Leadership Training) program this year for a month (20 May to 20 June), helping engage college students and campus missionaries alike in the continuing work of the gospel.
More soon, but I’m grateful for your prayers.
This holy week I’ve been reading each of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ final days before death and resurrection. The Passover meal and bread-dipped betrayal, the disciples alternately asleep or swinging swords in all the wrong places, the backhanded slaps to Jesus’ face from so many.
On the PBS Newshour last night they showed scenes from Good Friday celebrations all around the world. In the Philippines, young men traversed the streets, flagellating their backs with bamboo whips, coating their chest and back in vividly red blood.
Yesterday at the Good Friday service at my church, we recounted the wounds of Jesus: the crown of thorns, the whipping, the heavy cross, the nails.
This is the stuff of Good Friday: the real and painful and violent accounts of what Jesus endured. It’s painful to watch.
But I’ve been reflecting on this, and, I hope I am not too shocking here, but:
I don’t feel sorry for Jesus.
To be sure, I would meditate on his wounds. But as my mind’s eye walks through the story, from the washed feet to the courtyard fires and clamoring crowds…
I feel sorry for us.
These aren’t the ones bleeding on the outside. Their clothing is not torn. They don’t appear to be crushed or bruised. These are the very people who are overstuffed with hubris: The high priest as he arranges lying witnesses. The Roman guards who spit on Jesus’ face. Herod who hopes for something entertaining, and is bored.
Bored in the presence of the King.
Spitting in the face of God.
Lying within earshot of the Truth.
My sympathies are with these sinners, these transgressors unware, who in their unfettered pride and rage, literally “do not know what they do.”
This is not to excuse them, but to condemn them, and identity with them in that condemnation. They are dying under the lacerations of their own tragic sin. And I benefit from the distance of narration where I know that they are scoffing at the God who, by his resolute Choice, has become the very picture of Power Restrained. Of Forgiveness Defined.
His blood is real and difficult. But their—our—deceit and apathy and self-righteousness?
It’s painful to watch.
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I’m blogging through James Gleick's The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood.
Media historians and media ecologists often point to the telegraph as a threshold technology: the first time that communications technology became un-fused from transportation technology. That is, messages could move faster than a human.
James Gleick tells the story of the telegraph and electric telegraph in Chapter 5 of The Information. What’s fascinating to me is how quickly analyists of the mid-1800s started to draw organic and macro-cohesive analogies for what electricity could do.
The time is close at hand,” declared Scientific American in 1880, “when the scattered members of civilized communites will be as closely united, so far as instant telephonic communication is concerned, as the various members of the body now are by the nervous system.
And Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1851:
Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence! Or, shall we say, it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we deemed it!
The comments sound incredibly apt to a Facebook world, yes? What’s curious is in the raging modernist world of the mid-19th century, the organic analogies of nerves and brain and body were top of mind. They placing the new inventions in the context of the whole.
For such an inter-connected world, questions like “how does this Brain make decisions?” are real questions. Especially if we turn the corner into US politics, primary elections, health care legislation, and 100% gridlocked Congress. We are concomitantly united and divided. What does it mean that individuals have votes in the Brain? What if we are “no longer the substance we thought we were?”
And after 150 years having the ability to think about it, why do I still hear more voices on individualistic analysis of Facebook instead of communal? Particularly theologians: I still hear laments about how much time people spend on Facebook rather than with their family, or worries about privacy, rather than the massive implications of a Church who lives as a Body in a technology atmosphere that breathes this.1
Come on pastor-theologians. We should be able to do this.
I grabbed my my Samsung BD-D6500 Blu-ray player mostly for two things: blu-ray player and Netflix streaming. The latter half of that combo hasn’t worked in months. Not that I can’t load up the Netflix app from the awkward Samsung “hub.” But every movie or tv show spins for not more than 2 minutes, rebuffers a few times, then drops into a
I hit that error 17 in times in a row during one 30 minute episode (that’s determination!).
Of course, you just assume it’s network speed or something. But my laptop and iPad streamed Netflix perfectly. And my network speeds were consistently 10mbps down using www.speedtest.net.
Samsung customer support: awful. Live chatted with a tech who had me reset and reinstall the app (expected), but then told me that it was my firewall, and that I should disable it, leaving my network exposed to the internet. Good plan. So, end of road there.
Netflix customer support: much more helpful. First of all: friendly and quick. And all he wanted to do was deactivate the blue-ray player and reactivate it from his end.
That’s when he told me to pick up my Samsung remote, point it at my blu-ray player and press:
up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, up, up, up, up
I just about laughed aloud. You know what this is?
No A, B or “Select” keys… but this is a solid Nintendo throw-back.
The tech told me it works for most Netflix devices, including Samsung blu-ray and X-Box. Gotta love nerds about my age.
Just returned from a gathering with old and new friends at Ecclesia 2012. Here are my top twitter-quote #ecclesia2012 moments, in no particular order:
I’m not neo-reformed or neo-anabaptist. I’m neo-lumberjack. – @zhoag #ecclesia2012
— Zach Hoag explaining how a beard helps you bring the gospel in Vermont
Righteousness is always a relational issue. Vertical (God) is indistinguishable from Horizontal (others) #ecclesia2012
— Dave Fitch on justice and justification
Hey! Jars for Clay is my favorite rock band. Who’s with me? #ecclesia2012
— Dave Fitch explains cultural relevance.
We wanted to do church with meals, so that no one could say “we’re not getting fed here” @mrajswoboda #ecclesia2012
— AJ Swoboda on starting their new church plant with future hope and past pain and a little bit of wit.
“‘I go to a church that preaches the Bible.’ So what?! Go to a church that DOES the Bible.” Don Coleman #ecclesia2012
— Don Coleman preached the Spirit into the room with humility, strength, and just a little bit of volume.
Christmas morning at #ecclesia2012 = Don Coleman bringing it. He’s a preaching amusement park. #ecclesia2012
— Matt Tebbe has a way with words.
Love a community: Come in low. Let them tell you stories on how it used to be. Eat food you never heard of #nowhitehorse D Coleman #ecclesia2012
— Don Coleman on the photo-reality of humbly bringing the gospel to a neighborhood.
We think of Church as a Pirate Island #ecclesia2012
— Keas Keasler on establishing an insurgency
Joy is being connected with someone who is glad to be with you. #ecclesia2012
— Cyd Holsclaw shares deep stories of understanding God’s unrelenting nearness
Skinny jeans. Chucks. Grandpa sweater. Black glasses and @mrajswoboda It looks like the dream of the 90s is alive in Maryland. #ecclesia2012
— Portlandia put a bird on the Ecclesia National Gathering.
I just returned from Washington DC and my fourth gathering with Eccleisia: a network of missional churches. GCM helps a number of folks here raise ministry funds, but I didn’t just attend for my role. Instead, this community, which has both old and new friends for me, has increasingly been a personal fresh wind in my sails as I struggle with what it means to follow hard after God in the church, and watch others do the same.
Some short reflections:
This year’s gathering was decidedly less academic than past years: Dunn, Barth, Yoder, Haurwass, Wright, Willard—these names were present in passing quotes but did not hold focus. Instead the daily stories seemed more vivid than ever: cooking BBQ ribs for the semi-homeless, speaking Jesus into Republican and Democrat talking points, children contributing to home group discussions. There were laughter and tears about the things people say to church planters. There were moments of high vision and low reality checks.
I would be sad if some of the informed and honest theological dialog faded from Eccleisia’s DNA, but this year seemed a welcome path through the less abstract.
Ecclesia hasn’t ever tried to create a Conference in the Large Video Screens, Sponsors, Christian Buzz sense. And the gathering seemed somewhat smaller than last years. But while size sometimes feels like momentum (or lack), this didn’t feel like the case here. Maybe it was simply the stories of faithfulness and failure, but Momentum seemed to be everywhere.
I originally sought out Ecclesia because I was thinking seriously of what it would mean to launch into a new church plant. Who and How and Where? Instead, my path has taken a different route as I help lead GCM, which puts me in an ancillary role: constantly working with church planters, but never doing it myself. How do I feel about that?
There was a moment in the last two days when I felt sad: when Ecclesia did an amazing job of having new church planters stand up front and welcomed them with personal exhortations. Didn’t I have a dream to be up there? For I moment, I was tempted to feel I didn’t belong. But reflection points out the many other minutes where the shared mission and mutual hospitality made me feel right in the center of things, cared for, and excited to help and challenge others.
Plenty more thoughts on ideas, people, and God-work at the conference, but on the whole, I felt encouraged by being in the company of friends on the same mission. Oh, and here are my top 10 twitterquotes of the gathering.
I don’t much follow mainline denominational voices, so I hadn’t heard of Elizabeth Drescher, but my friend Paul Koptak pointed this article out to me. Her “digital ecclesiology,” from this interview seems to have loads of spot-on points. (1 of 2)
The evangelical traditions came up at a time when newspapers, radio and television were developing in America. They were born out of that environment, and so their polity and their spirituality is focused on a charismatic leader with a compelling message that is sent out to the faithful. …
What’s interesting is that broadcast media does tend to replace face-to-face media. We see repeatedly this phenomenon of “believing without belonging,” with people who “go to church” sitting in their living room but never connect their faith in a face-to-face community.
Social media tends not to do that. Evangelicals tend to use social media as though it is a broadcast media. But others are starting to understand what it means for being networked, relational and incarnational.
Many of us who critique evangelicals from just inside the fence lament that Drescher is right that the evangelical gospel has too often been defined as a broadcast message. More, it may be grandiose but plausible to say that the communications technology history, not just the theology, helped shape that.
Now, Drescher seems to claim that Mainliners are the natural heirs of social media’s truth-in-context, and if so the claim may be a bit anachronistic1 as well as not quite realized: I’m not sure I’ve seen today’s surges of United Methodist grassroots engagement.
Is anyone doing it? Well, some evangelicals are figuring out that social media is more than simply a “channel” for a message. And the post-evangelicals are too: that’s where I’d probably place the my friends in the anabaptist missional-incarnational crowd. I mean, this might as well be overheard at a hipster theology bar:
Preaching is built for face-to-face engagement, so sermons generally are not appropriate for social media. A sermon assumes a relationship in community. If you’re a good preacher, you’re speaking to a particular church at a particular time, so sermons shouldn’t be easily translatable across communities.
We should probably stop calling them cyber schools (ugh. mid-90s Internet language!), but online web-based education is apparently increasingly prevalent at the primary education level. This example is a huge public State of Pennsylvania charter school: entirely online. The story predictably fawns over the technology (“raise your hand using a BUTTON!”), and asks some good questions about effectiveness statistics.
But I’m more interested in the how the channel is the pedagogy, that is, how the method of non-linear chat rooms, multi-threaded content, and interactive sandboxes will affect kids later on. In five years, measure these kids against kids who are using lecture-discussion and hardcover science textbooks with desks in rows. Of course, you’d have to use a educational exam that tests ability to sort, filter, analyze and multitask: not sure this exists yet.
By the way, do you notice the key “non-digital” artifact present in this system,?
Watch Cyber Schools Gain Popularity, but Quality Questions Persist on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
The whole question: How do kids who will live in a sea of information learn to make sense of their world? Since so many of our teachers and curriculum are still from the world of the digital immigrant: we really don’t know yet how good people can be in this environment.
Oh, the “non-digital” factor is the idea of “LIVE” video for the lectures starting at a certain time. This sense of “watch-it-now-or-you’ll-miss-it” time is still a holdover from the Broadcast Media age.
Comments rss TrackbackI taught several breakout sessions at IGNITE 2012 conference from December 28-30. The audio has been posted if you’d like to check it out. My audience for this was college students and campus missionaries. IGNITE is sponsored by Great Commission Ministries Churches, which is the original group of campus-focused churches that started GCM as a missions agency, and I have quite a few good friends here, so it’s very informal.
I started the workshop by telling the story of three Polaroids in my head:
I do use the white board a decent amount, so that doesn’t lend itself to audio super well. And this was the first time through this material for me in this arrangement. But disclaimers aside:
Listen Now (at www.gcmcignite.com)
Handout O Come O Come Emmanuel
And if it’s at all helpful, here are my actual raw teaching notes (hopefully nothing embarrassing in here!). For anyone who actually attended, this will have portions of things I cut from the workshop.
Ridgeway Workshop Outline (raw notes) 2012
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