Do You Hear What You Want To Hear?

by The RevNo Comments
Pew Research posted a recent study looking at how people’s religion effects their understanding of various social issues. What I found interesting is that on many issues even though people hear their pastor speak on issues it does not effect the way they think about them.I think this study highlights a significant shift within the religious community. This shift points to the reality that people are looking elsewhere for wisdom. This is especially highlighted in issues where television political pundits have the loudest voices. The leaders of religious communities cannot compete with the 24 hour news cycle and the reruns of hour long editorial commentary that is played off as “fact”.Continually, pastor friends of mine, are finding that people hear what they want. They don’t take into account the full picture. The Bible or the pastor are minor voices in a large conversation. I think that in many ways we could say that our politics are shaping our theology.When this...
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Wednesdays are Wright (and sometimes Thursday): Authority

by The RevNo Comments
As I read this text, I am writing and responding. You are getting my fresh thoughts, ones which are rather raw. So, hopefully, this means that we will end up in conversation where we can interact over them and flesh it out a bit. Up to this point I have been wrestling with how Wright was going to answer the Authority question.He does so by arguing for the necessity of theology in understanding the New Testament (and really any historical work) due to theology’s central role in world view. This then leads him into the question of authority which he answers this way: “I am proposing a notion of ‘authority’…vested…in the creator god himself, and this god’s story with the world, seen as focused on the story of Israel and thence on the story of Jesus, as told and retold in the Old and New Testaments, and as still requiring completion. (143)” Now that is a statement. I am not sure if...
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Wednesdays are Wright: Narrative, Story, History

by The RevNo Comments
As I continue to work through The New Testament and the People of God by N.T. Wright, I was struck by this statement: “history…is rather the meaningful narrative of events and intentions.(82)” Wright is arguing that history is not simply the subjective interpretation of events and ideas. It is however, connected to a reality outside itself and is a process by which those events are placed within a grander meta-narrative. He argues against the postmodern emphasis and focus on the centrality of the reader that disconnects texts from their historical setting.This I think is very helpful. Primarily because he draws out the fundamental flaw in our current cultural milieu. Which is this disconnect from the fact that things do actually happen apart from someone writing them down.The other thing that I think is key in his definition is that it points to “intentions”. The intention of an author is something that many in our world today argue against being a...
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Lead, lead, lead…

by The RevNo Comments
Yesterday I committed myself to watching The NINES leadership conference. I set up the laptop with the projector and big screen and kicked back in our youth room. I was impressed with the variety of speakers and the depth of insight that was being presented. I was less than surprised by some of the poor exegesis. I was able to invest in about half the conference. For those of you who don’t know how the The NINES works it’s a single day web conference where speakers discuss a single topic. This year they got 6 minutes. So, over the course of the nine hours there were over 100 videos. The pace is fast and a couple fo hours disappear before you know it. This year’s topic was “Game Changers”. There were two highlights for me as a developing leader that I am going to continue chewing on. The first was from Mike Slaughter. He discussed the centrality of discipleship in his ministry....
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Where do we go?

by The RevNo Comments
My good friend Damon Reiss and I will be spending some time reading and writing together on the issues raised in N.T. Wright’s New Testament and the People of God. This text is the first in a five part series that Wright is doing on “Christian Origins and the Question of God”. Wright is understood to be the leading spokesman for the “New Perspective on Paul” and is embraced by many in the “emerging church” as their key theologian (oddly enough he does not really fit there). He has recently stepped out of pastoral ministry to engage full-time in the academy.I think my hope for these series of posts is to: Stimulate our own thinking about root theological issues. To encourage one another. To challenge you, the reader, to grab a text, follow along, and engage in the conversation. The majority of the opening sections are filled with methodology. For some this is dense and feels somewhat pointless. However, let me suggest a couple...
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We love Detroit. An Open Letter to Dan Shaugnessy

by The RevNo Comments
Dear Dan,In a recent edition of the Boston Globe you had this to say about Detroit: Think about it: For the next five weeks, you could live in downtown Boston and your wife could shop on Newbury Street. Or you could live in downtown Detroit, amid the boarded-up buildings and the proverbial skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets. Is this really a tough call? I would like to commend you on your lack of research. You seem to be looking at pictures from 1968 in the immediate after math of the riots. Do you still think there is a gunman on the campus of Kent State University? Or maybe you believe that the “British are Coming”?Of course maybe you are upset that President John F. Kennedy had this to say about Detroit:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Di6YmCLZgc&w=425&h=350]I don’t know what your issue is. I don’t really know why you feel like you have to chastise a proud city. I would invite you to come and see what Detroit...
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I am Proud to Be an American…

by The RevNo Comments
…where atleast I know I can buy, whatever I want, when I want it, and nobody can stop me.There are few lasting images in my mind like that of September 11, 2001 and the days that followed. I remember where I was when I found out the World Trade Center had been attacked. I remember sitting and praying with a team of missionaries in my home for the families, the world, and our country. I remember looking at my son who was a few months old thinking what was his life going to be like?Then it happened, the President of the United States finally spoke. He told us that the terrorists would not win. He told us that we can stand up to these people and fight! He told us to do that we must…we must…GO SHOPPING! Fill the malls and buy stuff, show them that they can’t take away your lives!In that moment, I thought, “Yes! That’s right we...
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I believe in the Spirit! Well sort of.

by The RevNo Comments
In my experience the evangelical church has a bit of an integrity problem. No, I am not talking about the issues that just popped in your head. I am talking about the Holy Spirit. The last time I checked he was still part of the Godhead, you know the Triune God we Christians believe in? Yeah that guy. Our creeds give him second billing. In seminary our professors tack him on at the end of a course and seemingly never get to him. Yet, it is because of him that Jesus said it was better for us that he return to heaven and be with the Father.It is to the person of the Holy Spirit that we now turn in our quest for missional discipleship as outlined for us in “Untamed” by Alan and Debra Hirsch.The Hirsch’s spend much time discussing the abuses and problems surrounding our understanding of the Spirit and for that discussion I encourage you to read...
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Your image or mine?

by The RevNo Comments
“If God is not the defining center of our faith, life, and identity, then who or what is? (58)” Now there is a question. The Hirsch’s continue to challenge our thinking in relation to the center of our faith in chapter 2 of “Untamed”. There is nothing more central to who we are than what we worship.Missional Discipleship, at its core, is about worship.Worship at its core is about the person or object worshiped.If we get this wrong then we get it all wrong. The Crusader, the jihadist, the cult leader all do evil because their worship is wrongly placed.So, how do we know if we are worshiping rightly? The answer, Israel’s Shema:““Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”(Deuteronomy 6:4–5 ESV)This is the compass by which we set our heading in discipleship because it points us...
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Is your Jebus ‘Untamed’?

by The RevNo Comments
Last week I spent some time reading Alan and Debra Hirsch’s newest offering, Untamed. It was so worthwhile that I thought I would take a few days to post a summary of each chapter. While there is nothing necessarily “new” in the book it is a really well done text that brings classic missional discipleship into an updated and fresh rendering.We begin with our view of Jesus. The argument that is posited is simple, “Show us your Jesus and we will show you who you are (38).” This is key to our understanding who God is. This is why the Hirsches argue that the foundation of discipleship is Jesus. To know God is to know Jesus. In any way that our picture of Jesus fails so too does our image of God.I think that Alan and Deb illustrate this well by asking this simple and yet profound question, “If we had a properly Jewish picture of Jesus would the holocaust...
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