Beautifully obvious

"It all looks so beautifully obvious--in the rear mirror," wrote the novelist and social philosopher Arthur Koestler. "But there are situations where [one] needs great imaginative power, combined with disrespect for the traditional current of thought, to discover the obvious."

(From Koestler's The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe, quoted in Thomas Homer-Dixon's The Upside of Down.)

via my friend Mike

What an honor!

Erin just tipped me off to a precious gift this morning. One of my blog posts *blushes* has been listed in the "Emerging Women Best of 2008" - thank you Sonja! I am so honored.

Emerging Women - Best of 2008

I Love to Tell the Story

What a wonderful experience Sunday was for me. Other than being sick and hyper from the cold medicine I took I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The picture is of my new storyteller statue that I got for Mother's Day. I used it for the background of the power point slides.

Here's the link to the talk, I'd love any feedback if you do listen to it:

I Love to Tell the Story

That guy burns me up!

That guy burns me up!

Orthodoxy??

Have seen the original map running around the blogosphere - like this one, at blue like elvis WAY better!

ht to scot mcknight for pointing it out.

Emerging politics & hedgehogs

Arianna Huffington's post today encapsulates so succinctly what is happening in today's politics and why:

Macro-trends vs. Micro-trends: Why Obama is Winning

Cracking nutshells

I read this quote from Tony Jones on Adam's blog Pomomusings from a series he is doing on the Kingdom of God. I liked it so much I wanted to remember it:

Making room for the questions is one of the aspects of emergent Christianity that many seekers appreciate. As a result, emergent Christians often get labeled as “slippery.” They’re told they don’t answer questions directly but answer instead with another (often deconstructive) question. But, these questions are actually attempts to get to the assumptions underlying the initial question.

So questioning is not an act of defiance on the emergents’ part. It is a trait of integrity.

When someone asks, “What is the Gospel, in a nutshell?” I often quote my friend, philosopher of religion Jack Caputo, who wrote of the philosophical impulses of “deconstruction”: “Nutshells close and encapsulate, shelter and protect, reduce and simplify, while everything in deconstruction is turned toward opening, exposure, expansion, and complexification, toward releasing unheard of, undreamt of possibilities to come, toward cracking nutshells wherever they appear.”

Quote taken from Tony's new book The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier

Phylis Tickle - The Great Emergence

Phyllis is writing on The Great Emergence and she has begun to share publicly on her thoughts and research. I don't think I've been so excited to get my hands on a book as I've been for this one. She just spoke at NYWC in Atlanta and she was incredible, I can't wait to get the DVD.

I need to mark these and thought here was as good of a place as any:

Marko: Phyllis Tickle @ NYWC Atlanta
Don't Call Me Veronia: Phyllis Tickle - The Great Emergence

;) mark driscoll

;)

doug and bob

The congregation has left the building

UPDATE #2 - Here's one from "the people formerly known as the pastor" - John Frye, at his blog, Jesus The Radical Pastor - one of Peter's (my first and ever only real pastor) good friends, wrote this and it's heartbreaking.

UPDATE: Bill just linked to two other bloggers who have written "part two" and "part three":

Emerging Grace - The Underlying Issues

Jamie Arpin-Ricci at (e)mergent Voyageurs - The Community Coming to be known as Missional

Great, great thoughts!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you ever read your own story in someone else's words?

I just found a link to this article on Mark Peterson's blog - Open Hands - and he quoted part of the blog post of the original author Bill Kinnon - Achievable Ends:

We are the eikons who once sat in the uncomfortable pews or plush theatre seating of your preaching venues. We sat passively while you proof-texted your way through 3, 4, 5 or no point sermons - attempting to tell us how you and your reading of The Bible had a plan for our lives. Perhaps God does have a plan for us - it just doesn’t seem to jive with yours. ….

You offered us a myriad of programs to join - volunteer positions to assuage our desire to be connected. We could be greeters, parking lot attendants, coffee baristas, book store helpers, children’s ministry workers, media ministry drones - whatever you needed to fulfill your dreams of corporate glory. Perhaps you’ve noticed, we aren’t there anymore.

We are The People formerly known as The Congregation. We have not stopped loving the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nor do we avoid “the assembling of the saints.” We just don’t assemble under your supposed leadership. We meet in coffee shops, around dinner tables, in the parks and on the streets. We connect virtually across space and time - engaged in generative conversations - teaching and being taught.

Read the rest of this amazing post here:

The People Formerly Known as the Congregation

More Scot McKnight

Scot has written a balanced treatment of the Emergent Church in Christianity Today, and it would be a great primer for those wondering what all the fuss is about:

Five Streams of the Emerging Church

Again, you can find his blog here: Jesus Creed