« "...together with glad and sincere hearts" - December 9, 2006 | Main | Saint Lamar »
December 13, 2006
On my mind
I feel like I should be writing out a whole ton of stuff here, but I'm REALLY let-down from the semester. Astoundingly let-down. I don't want to do ANYTHING.
So I'm going to leave you with a few things that are running around my mind, and what I really feel like I should be thinking more clearly about if I had the wherewithal to think.
- Jason Woolever has posted about a teaching summit with Diana Butler Bass, the author of The Practicing Congregation (and Bryan, I still think you and I need to book-study this). Bass' key argument seems to be that the "decline of the mainline" because masses of people want to be in more conservative churches is a myth; the churches people are gravitating towards are intentioned churches, not established churches. To expect people to come into a tradition-driven church just because it's been there for a long time and aims to be there for a long time more isn't legit; people want to come into a church that has a clear direction.
- You know, there's nothing about any Methodist church I've EVER been in that has been about "clear direction", save one, and I've done a lousy enough job of keeping up with those folks to know how much has changed there since 1993.
- This Jay Bakker documentary series is making me wish I got the Sundance Channel. If anybody has a spare videocassette they can put in for recording purposes around 9:00 PM tonight, I'd be QUITE grateful. Jay Bakker's story is more than a bit compelling; how anybody can talk unfailingly about God's love after growing up in the environment he grew up in is beyond me. But he does. I wish the dude was a bit deeper theologically, but when you get his message that "my main focus is helping people realize God loves them no matter what", you can understand why he might not give a crap about theology.
- I can't get the old Steve Taylor song "Jesus Is For Losers" out of my head. I wish it was on YouTube. Oh well, I'll just be smug instead. It dates me, I know, but I love the line "we love being politically Koreshed"...
Posted by Chuck at December 13, 2006 11:12 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.chuck-pearson.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/208