:: in a mirror dimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

• The Freehouse | A look back: May 27th :: Mustard Seed vs. McWorld
  Some great resources from Tom Sine, a swell guy and author of Mustard Seed vs. McWorld.
  (tags: justice poverty christianity)
• Theoblogy: Initial Thoughts on Wheaton
  A nice short post with some great thoughts on Orthodoxy, church history, and today’s culture.
  (tags: postmodern christianity theology)
• Theoblogy: More on Wheaton
  Tony makes some remarks at the end of this piece that I have advocated as well on many occasions. We know what doctrines are solid based on the work of the historic church. Read the article and you’ll see what I mean.
  (tags: postmodern theology history)
• toddhiestand » Blog Archive » What Story Are You Living? - reflections on living missionally in suburban america
  Todd asks questions worth confronting, even some of them have been overused at times. I’ve really thought a lot about immersing the church in the story of God and I think he’s hitting it square on the head.
  (tags: theology christianity)

• meremission.org » Blog Archive » The Mission of the Church in the Face of Globalization - Part One - exploring the practical side of missional theology
  An interesting article.
  (tags: missional)
• meremission.org » Blog Archive » The Mission of the Church in the Face of Globalization - Part Two - exploring the practical side of missional theology
  (tags: missional)
• Design That Solves Problems for the World’s Poor - New York Times
  It’s not so much about charity, it’s about giving people the means to earn a living.
  (tags: poverty economics)
• Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria - New York Times
  On May 22nd I linked to an article where Carter said that Bush’ Presidency has had the worst impact on the world. Here’s another reason why I agree with that statement. If you want to be the “Decider,” then you have to take the blame.
  (tags: justice morality)

I’ve been a little rough on the Prez lately. I’m not a fan of political blogs, so I’ll keep this brief and then move on to something else.

From the standpoint of morality and justice I believe that America has committed a grievous wrong against the Iraqis. The regular features on NPR by Iraqis tell the stories of people living as prisoners in their own home. Those who flee as refugees lose everything, are sometimes forced to work in horrible conditions, and are in a position to be exploited.

Whether or not you believe the US was justified in attacking Iraq–we weren’t by the way, but I’ll let others disagree–we can all agree that the Kindergarten rule holds true, “If you make a mess, clean it up.”

America has some repenting and repairing to do. One of the ways I believe the church can repair some of the damage our misguided foreign policy has done is by supporting Iraqi families who are traveling to Israel for open heart surgery. That sort of kills a bunch of birds with one check.

I’ve been supporting Shevet Achim lately and I’m really happy to see all of the good work they do. I encourage you to find out what one group of Christians is doing to bring reconciliation to the world.

In other news, the sudden influx of blogging is due to the sudden influx of internet in my life. Not in my home unfortunately, if you thought satellite internet was slow, you should see how slow the customer service is.

Thankfully Manchester has plenty of internet for the masses. Blogging will be spotty until they fix my wayward dish.

Though my internet connection has thwarted me at every turn, there has been some progress in the “writing” part of my life and I hope to spring some big news in the near future. Until then, my short story “A Bittersweet Land,” a memoirish sort of essay on the Israelis, Palestinians, et. al., is now available in the Southshire Pepperpot.

The cafe is about to close, and so must this blog post. Sigh. It’s been fun while it lasted.

Sometime after college I figured out that scripture memorization is a lost cause for me. It’s quite simply one of the most demoralizing things for me. I’ve fasted for days, prayed for hours, read the Bible, journaled, and done all kinds of other disciplines.

My memory fails me.

So I did a little searching, trying to figure out what was going on. What I found is that I’m a big-picture person, the kind who prefers writing essays instead of multiple choice. After being challenged by another Christian to read five chapters of the Bible every day (trust me, I’m not 100% on that!), I found something.

I call this kind of reading “immersion.” When I read five chapters of the Bible, I dig into a nice chunk of the story and bend my mind into a Biblical framework.

Since I’m reading such a large section at each sitting–at least when compared to my standard “chapter a day” approach in the past–I have to spend a lot more time engaging the verses. In the process I find myself–surprise, surprise–memorizing scripture.

More importantly, when I throw myself into the world of the Bible I am often challenged and God tweaks my fragile world, challenging me with his truth. The Biblical world invades my own and leaves its mark, and part of that residue is scripture memorization, or at least a decent paraphrase.

Immersion is not “the way” to read or memorize the Bible, but for a wordy, narrative-loving guy like myself, it is refreshing to find other ways to deposit the scripture into my mind.

Technorati Tags: Bible - scripture - memorization

Well, it’s actually not all that dangerous, but bear with me and my provocative title . . .

It’s generally assumed among many Christians that one must have a “life verse” or at least pocket an index card with some passage of scripture scribbled out for memorization. Committing a chunk of the Bible to a slab of one’s mind can be a very good thing, but we often overlook the dangers that may arise.

First of all, scripture memorization can become a barometer of one’s relationship with God. Can’t discipline yourself to recall that slim block of text? Then you must not be very zealous for God. It sounds silly to say it, but I know it happens far more often than we would like to admit.

Secondly, some people are not wired along the lines of memorization. I confess, I’m like that. I’m much more concept driven. I had to claw and scratch for B’s in my science classes if I was lucky because I couldn’t unravel the facts I rolled into my head.

Third, it is very easy to hack a small verse of scripture out of context and apply it to any situation that comes down the pike. Come on, I know you have that verse posted somewhere about God supplying all of “your” needs from his “glorious riches.”

Having noted a few of the problems we face when memorizing scripture, I’ll step back and say that memorizing the Bible is wonderful. David–as in King David, the Psalmist–was bonkers about it, commanding Solomon to know the Law of the Lord, not to mention his ongoing chorus throughout the Psalms singing the praises of memorizing the Scripture.

Put in its place, scripture memorization has many benefits for Christians. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that this discipline does not a holy Christian make.

I think Christians often beat themselves up over failing at a discipline. While disciplines are important, I think a broad perspective is important.

There are other ways to deposit the Bible into one’s mind other than straight memorization, and I’ll touch on that next.

Technorati Tags: Bible - scripture - memorization

I found myself in a situation last week in which I was apologizing to a lady for something that someone else had done and wasn’t there to take the responsibility. As a representative of the institution, but someone not directly involved in the wrong done against this woman, I found myself both apologizing and sympathizing.

By the time she left there was little I could do to settle things. She spoke how he felt, let it known she was not pleased, and turned to go away. Things would have been bad enough at that point, but then she wanted to get one last dig in, starting into a hopelessly cheesy, almost hallmark movie like rendition that took shots at more people than the one person involved.

It seemed that at the crucial moment she wanted to drop the blame somewhere. It wasn’t good enough to know the blame hung over another person not present. She wanted to drop it on whoever can be remotely implicated.

Before I dig into this person too much, I can say that I’ve certainly fallen into the same trap. How many times have I been in a poorly run restaurant with overworked staff and blamed my poor service on the nearest person, namely: my waitress?

Having friends with waitressing experience opened my eyes to their plight. I repent. But isn’t it something that when we are wronged we want to drop the blame on someone immediately. It’s not enough to walk away feeling wronged, and we often don’t go through the trouble of finding out who’s really at fault.

Blame is one of those things we give out very easily.

• Dallas Willard ? ARTICLES
  (tags: Theology Discipleship)
• Dr. Willard’s Diagnosis | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction
  (tags: Theology Discipleship)

• Carter says Bush’s presidency ‘worst in history’ for U.S. impact on world - Yahoo! Canada News
  Jimmy slams Bush big time. It’s interesting to see what one Christian president says of another supposedly Christian president, very interesting. God bless you Mr. Carter.
  (tags: politics christianity)
• The Forgotten Ways » Blog Archive » the gospel and the god-4-saken
  My friend Todd’s paper on missional approaches to suburbia draws a lot of comments. It’s all worth a look.
  (tags: mission missional)

For those who weary of cheap answers and simplistic Christianity, I recommend the Psalms. The Psalms never dress up the truth to make it more palatable. Take this line:

“90:8 You are aware of our sins; you even know about our hidden sins” NET Bible

Yikes! God has found us out as the frauds we are. In fact, the gist of Psalm 90 is that life is full of toil and pain and to make matters worse, God is angry with our sins. Not exactly a pretty picture.

Nevertheless, though simple solutions are never proffered, there is usually an upbeat note in the Psalms. In this particular case, after a stint of confessing sins and asking for the Lord’s favor, the latter lines are infused with hope:

“90:14 Satisfy us in the morning with your loyal love! Then we will shout for joy and be happy all our days!”

If two ministries are equally committed to God, both listening for God’s direction, but one flounders and the other floats, what is the difference? One of the key differences will most likely be how each approaches people. Healthy ministry combines a commitment to the Lord with a respectful, caring approach to people.

This is not rocket science, but I’ve started ministries and been a part of ministry plants where it was assumed that the labels “prayer meeting” or “Bible study” would be enough to draw in the flock.

Ministry heavily depends on connecting with people where they are. Understanding people and accommodating to their context is not the same as compromising the message of the Gospel.

There are a series of questions we should ask such as: What are the demands on these people at work, within their families, and in the church community, if any? How much free time do they have? What are their struggles? What is our goal for this ministry or meeting? How can we keep a balance between structure and freedom so that God is able to work, but chaos is not inevitable?

My own experiences in the nonprofit world have demonstrated that structure cannot be imposed on a group. It must grow and adapt within a group. When a non-contextual structure is imposed, the group feels trapped, resulting in a loss of momentum and interest.

The group I speak of flourishes with a very informal leadership structure, loose mission statement (in fact, it’s not necessarily needed in a formal sense since everyone knows why we meet), and open participation within the group.  That format was planned based on the situation of the members and the longevity and health of the group illustrates the success of such an approach.

It’s not enough to just plan a Bible study or a prayer group. Whenever there are people involved–and unless your Saint Francis, that will be the case–our ministries face the challenge of meeting people where they are.

I can’t apologize for the silence on this blog lately. I’m a victim of circumstances. The chief of which is the malfunction of my Wild Blue satellite internet connection on the home front.

Add to that a long list of home renovations that gobble up free time, and the result is a relatively quiet blog. I’ve been limited to e-mailing during free moments while at work. That’s it.

It’s amazing how dependent I’ve become on the internet. I have no idea what the weather is going to be from day to day, know little of current events, find myself lost when I come home since I used to read online articles after dinner, and am much less likely to spend time writing, even if it doesn’t require the internet. Oh, and I still don’t like using phone books instead of Google searches.

There are some positives and negatives here. Without internet I’ve been able to work on our house a lot and have been prodded to read books a bit more than usual. Nevertheless, blogging is a major source of writing inspiration and simply keeps me in the writing mind set, thereby increasing my output in other, non-blogging areas. Without the ability to blog I feel a bit lost.

So now I’m waiting for a clear day so that Wild Blue can send a little signal to confirm my internet is not working, something I could have told them a week ago, but procedures are procedures.

It may be at least another week before I’m back online at home. I’m really not looking forward to the first bill for internet service I have not received. Booo!

• Of Course It Matters that Mitt Romney Is a Mormon « Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog
  Without fixating on Romney’s Mormonism, Stackhouse makes a good point that we should care about what drives people.
  (tags: politics theology)
• Mike King: Postcolonial Theology
  From the article: It is Western arrogance that describes “Pure Theology” as coming from Calvin, Luther and perhaps Wesley and theology you do in Africa and other places as “Contextualized Theology.”
  (tags: theology culture)
• A new kind of Conversation: Postmodernism and Postcolonialism
  A short article packed with some good thoughts.
  (tags: postmodern theology)
• jordoncooper.com: The Present Church
  A long but very good article on the church today.
  (tags: emergingchurch church theology culture)
• Emergent Africa | A safe place to talk about theology
  A great place to learn more about the global theology conversation.
  (tags: christian emergent theology)
• My Vision is to Have No Vision | nakedpastor
  A strong article that every church needs to read. Here’s a quote: “As a father of a family, I don’t have any vision other than that we love one another. I don’t set any long term goals as a father of my children or as a husband of my wife. Simply love
  (tags: church)

• AKMA’s Random Thoughts: Letter to Incoming Students
  The truth will set you free . . .
  (tags: church theology)

Last weekend a tragedy struck the small Vermont town of Manchester: a young man who grew up in the town drowned in a canoe accident while away at college. This was the first time I’ve seen how a small town works through an event of that magnitude.

First of all, within two to three days, just about everyone knew. I needed to only provide a few reference points and every person I talked with knew exactly what I was referring to. Secondly, there was a tremendous outpouring of sympathy and support. I have never seen anything like it.

The funeral took place yesterday and Manchester was absolutely swamped with people: men sporting ties and women in beautiful dresses. Without divulging details of the funeral itself, I will say that I have never seen so many cars show up for a funeral.

As I’m processing all of this, I keep thinking about the ways everyone in a small town is interconnected. Not necessarily dependent on one another, but connected. The degrees of separation are small, we know people who know people, and so we have a very quick connection to each tragedy and triumph in the community.

When this tragedy hit Manchester, there was a common bond I experienced with many. We’re all in this mess called life together. We’re all struggling with similar losses, fears, and weaknesses.

In a moment we could agree that all is not well and good with the world; life can be as wonderful as it is painful. And in that moment, I remember that all creation longs for God’s coming redemption.

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• The Religion Test | Romney and Mormonism
  How will Romney’s Mormon Faith affect the election? Secularists may feel uncomfortable with someone who comes from a strong proselytizing faith, while Evangelicals may not like electing someone whom they believe to be “duped” by a heretical religion.

  (tags: religion politics)
• mymessylife.tv
  This is a place to confess and share struggles. I think it’s great to have a place where people can take the first step of airing out a personal “mess.” We’re all broken in one way or another and we all need to continue praying for one another.
  (tags: prayer)
• The Dialogue Blog - The Buzz Questions
  A great discussion about important topics from a Christian perspective.
  (tags: church christianity theology)