My good friend Bill Dahl, in a recent interview with Brian McLaren has been receiving a ton of traffic, and an over loaded e-mail in box. People are really anticipating the very soon release of Brian's new book on February 9th 2010.
Bill has been telling me there have been too many e-mails to count from readers of the interview who want further clarification on the " Friend of Questians " symbol he asked Brian about in the interview in reference to " Question # 10."
Below is an excerpt of the interview question where Bill raised the " Friend of Questians " symbol issues relevance to Brian - and Brian's response.
You can read the conversational exchange between Bill and Brian... here.
I first casually met Brian McLaren in 2003 at the " Shifting Realities Conference ", at Lambrick Park Church.( Yikes, was it that long ago ) I had a great vantage point, I spent most of my time behind the counter in the Cafe Suburbia brewing and serving coffee. It was the ideal space for some great conversations. What captured me then, and still does is Brian's humility, his grace and his hospitality of engaging others, drawing people in to conversation. Just when the conversation seems to be sputtering like a car running out of gas, Brian has that imagination to see something else...to ask that question that brings it back to life.
I'm not ashamed, call me a " McLarenite ", Brian has always stretched me, he has encouraged me...to stretch my limits of what it means to follow Jesus. I wasn’t alone in finding his musings engaging. Many people occupying the virtual spaces of blogs, coffee shops, the fringe of the church were asking similar questions. The conversations that followed have stretched our understanding of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. From The Church On The Other Side , New Kind of Christian , A Generous Orthodoxy and Everything Must Change, Brian's journey has been one of profound re-imagination of what it means to faithfully follow Jesus across the threshold of a new decade and beyond.
Brian over the years has been caught in the cross fire by his critics, feeling he's gone to far in stretching the limits of faith conversation. But, in spite of it, he always responds with gracious humility. One wonders why he keeps going. Is it the money, being a high profile author, speaking and conference tours...I really don't think so. If you've ever talked to Brian you can't miss his passion for the " Church " and for living out faith in the wide open spaces of the world, it's contagious...that's what drives him.
Brian isn’t finished dreaming, imagitating and asking deeper questions. Whether you've never read any of his work, or whether you've read it all , his latest book may be his most important and inspiring yet: A New Kind of Christianity. Brian is sage, a pilgrim who has traveled the globe in search of faith, watching, listening and listening. Out of this lengthy season of exploration and reflection comes not answers, but profound questions. In the book, Brian asks ten questions that attempt to merge our everyday living with our faith, to live faithfully in the intersection of the global communities main street.
The Narrative Question: What Is the Overarching Storyline of the Bible?
The Authority Question: How Should the Bible Be Understood?
The God Question: Is God Violent?
The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus and Why is He Important?
The Gospel Question: What Is the Gospel?
The Church Question: What Do We Do About the Church?
The Sex Question: Can We Find a Way to Address Sexuality Without Fighting About It?
The Future Question: Can We Find a Better Way of View the Future?
The Pluralism Question: How Should Followers of Jesus Relate to People of Other Religions?
The What Do We Do Now Question: How Can We Translate Our Quest into Action?
The OOZE are teaming up with Brian to bring these questions into your churches, coffee shops, pubs and living rooms. In addition to the Think:FWD episode here (go here for show notes BTW), They are going to be launching an entire Brian McLaren channel devoted to exploring these questions starting in February. Stay tuned! A huge huge thanks to Spencer Burke, the busiest man around, always out there in the world measuring, and listening for the pulse of what's going on at the intersection of faith, culture and technology. He seems to be interviewing everyone. I'd love it if someone sat down to interview him. ( hint, hint...Bill Dahl, or Mike Morrell )
Over atBrian McLaren's website, he has been doing a countdown to the release of the book and give us small glimpses in the way of quotes...a clever way of baiting the hook.
I'm hoping to review the book here in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned. And I'm also looking at the possibility of exploring the book in a local coffee shop with a few folks who might be interested. It would have to be an afternoon gathering likely 2:00 til 4:00, because of my work schedule. If you think you might be interested shoot me an e-mail at ( labmanster at gmail dot com )
I received an uncorrected proof of Sara Miles, " Jesus Freak ", soon to be released in early February. With " Missional " being the buzz word in much of the church conversation, and with an increasing number of blogs hanging it like a tag for a boxing day sale. It's refreshing to read a book of such profound simplicity, and clarity around the subject of what it is to be " Missional." Sara Miles voice is timely, passionate...and in a language we can all understand.
Jesus in the gospels, in talking to Nicodemus in the dark of the night at a roof top rendezvous, said the Spirit is like, " You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it
rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or
where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from
above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God."
And So it was for Sara Miles, carried by the mysterious wind through the door of a church. Invited to the table, she meets Jesus in that profound meal the church calls the Eucharist. In " Take this Bread ", she discovers the living reality of the Bread of Life.
In her new book, it is a continuation of the journey. As you cross the threshold in the the opening pages of the book, it becomes apparent that faith is a journey of discovery. It is walking through the gospel narrative, in which Sara says, " Come and See." Sara reveals to truth of Jesus words, his announcement that the Kingdom is near. Jesus revealed through radical scandalous stories of redemption that captured human imagination of a Kingdom which miraculously could be here now. But Jesus not only talked the talk of the Kingdom, people saw it open up right before their eyes in acts of feeding, healing and raising the dead.
What does it mean to be a Jesus Freak? Or, more to the point, what would it mean to live as if you ____and everyone around you ___ were Jesus, and filled with his power? To just take his teachings literally, go out the front door of you home, and act on them? ( Jesus Freak; page xi )
Through the book Sara weaves three strands of profound truth of the Kingdom...of feeding, healing and raising the dead. The beauty of the book, it is not a truth of disconnect, through out she weaves gospel stories along with stories of everyday living. Each one of us has access to the Kingdom, in revealing it...and, also in building it.
Out of Sara's experience of discovering the mysterious truth of what the bread of life is, the altar at St. Gregory's of Nyssa Episcopal church becomes the center of a food pantry. Out of this place flows the redemptive imaginative power and stories like that of the gospel. As Sara says...
because where ever there is food, spirit and matter intersect. And the power to feed___ and particularly food to share with outside your tribe___ always has the potential to transform lives. ( Jesus Freak; page 21 )
The gospel is filled with profound stories of the table hospitality of Jesus. These become spaces of redemption. Where ever Jesus, food and strangers came to the table, it was like a reaction in a test tube. Out of the process, there was always the potential of a new creation happening. Sara makes it absolutely clear this is not a historical truth, we all have the power to do the same thing today. In the power Jesus has given each one of us, we step into everyday life...and simply live it out. The kingdom becomes glaringly present. Through real stories, in real time, Sara Miles shares stories of the power of feeding.
In Jesus Freak, Sara shares stories of healing in the midst of the community, and on the fringe. Stories of alcoholics, drug addicts, the sick and the mentally ill. Stories of healing that baffled the medical community. Stories that defied reason and logic. And there were stories of ordinary people becoming healers. She tells the story of a woman named Martha, on a trip in South America traveling a country road, they come across a man, the victim of an accident, covered in blood. You can't help reading Sara's story, and see the gospel story of the Good Samaritan cast it's shadow. Martha, thinking the man is dying places her hand on his chest. She says, " If he is dying. I want to make sure the last thing he remembers is the hand of someone caring for him." I'll tell you no more. I'll let you read the rest of Martha's remarkable story.
Sara conveys, a profound truth in her healing stories...relationship.
All prayer can do is heal, because healing comes embedded in relationship, and prayer is one of the deepest forms of relationship___with God, and with other people. And through relationship, there can be healing in the absence of cure. ( Jesus Freaks; page 85 )
In the section titled raising the dead, Sara tells an incredible beautiful story of Laura. A woman dying of advanced lung cancer who phones the church inquiring about a program called, " Scared Dying." Ironically, the real name, was a hospice program called, " Sacred Death." Again, that's all I'm telling you, other than, in it you'll discover the resurrection all over gain. The truth that the resurrection can happen today, and you can be apart of it. Yet, is it impossible...what could it possibly mean to raise the dead?
Jesus Freak, was a breath of fresh air. For those stuck in their pew, like a spare player, a substitute waiting to get onto the field a play...this is the book. And for pastors, and churches wanting to make mission more than a program...to move it into the realm of everyday life...this is the book. In Sara Miles book we once again discover Jesus' truth that I have not left you alone, and empty. That Jesus has given us his words, and his power. That we would do greater things.
Places where you can purchase the book, you can connect here at the following (Links ). I highly recommend you put this on the top of your " To Read " list. Sara Miles, Jesus Freak, will inspire, and encourage you to live your faith boldly in the wide open spaces of everyday life.
“…People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one are dangerous. Such conviction is the essence not only dogmatism, but of its more destructive cousin, fanaticism. It blocks the user from learning new truth, and is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt…”
“The person then has to double his or her protests in order to quiet not only the opposition but his or her own unconscious doubts as well.”
“…The person with the courage to believe and at the same time to admit his doubts is flexible and open to new learning”, and I’d add, open to new depths of meaning and new vantage points from which to gain new or different perspectives.
“Commitment”, May writes, “is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt. To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: [rather] it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment…”
It's interesting after many years into this journey of faith, that this is where I find myself. I fully believe, as much, as if not more than when I first started. But, I do have doubts. But, my belief has become an anchoring pin, secure enough that I can explore doubt. I can repell it's depths without fear...it's here we find new dimensions. We are at a time when we must plumb the depths of truth if we are to find a redemptive imagination that speaks hope into a world that seems to have lost all imagination.
We confess you to be text-maker, text-giver, text-worker, and we find ourselves addressed by your making, giving, working.
So now we bid you, re-text us by your spirit. Re-text us away from our shallow loves, into your overwhelming gracefulness. Re-text us away from our thin angers, into your truth-telling freedom. Re-text us away from our lean hopes, into your tidal promises.
Give us attentive ears, responsive hearts, receiving hands;
Re-text us to be your liberated partners in joy and obedience, in risk and gratitude. Re-text us by your word become wind. Amen.
Nathan Schneider interviews Terry Eagleton on his new book, " Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate." Eagleton enters in the midst of the noise from both sides with what he calls, " a version of the Christian Gospel relevant to radicals and humanists. In a part of the interview Nathan asks Terry...
Rather than focusing on “believers” or “atheists,” which are typically the categories that we hear about in the new atheist debates, you write about “a version of the Christian gospel relevant to radicals and humanists.” Who are these people? Why do you choose to address them?
Terry: I wanted to move the arguments beyond the usual, rather narrow circuits in order to bring out the political implications of these arguments about God, which hasn’t been done enough. We need to put these arguments in a much wider context. To that extent, in my view, radicals and humanists certainly should be in on the arguments, regardless of what they think about God. The arguments aren’t just about God or just about religion.
Are you urging people to go to church, or to read the Bible, or simply to acknowledge the historical connections between, say, Marxism and Christianity?
Terry: I’m certainly not urging them to go to church. I’m urging them, I suppose, to read the Bible because it’s very relevant to radical political concerns. In many ways, I agree with someone like Christopher Hitchens that most religion is fairly hideous and purely ideological. But I think that Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are gravely one-sided about the issue. There are other potentials in the gospel and in the Christian tradition which are, or should be, of great interest to radicals, and radicals haven’t sufficiently recognized that. I’m not trying to convert anybody, but I am trying to show them that there is something here which is in a certain interpretation far more radical than most of the mainstream political discourses that we hear at the moment.
You can read the transcript of the interview ( HERE ), all very interesting, but I don't think he has the weight to knock Hitchens or Dawkins out of the ring. Fascinating he brings the gospel into the conversation as a bridge...very interesting.
“The name of ‘Jesus’ is too often a mirror in which we behold our own image, and it has always been easy to spot the sliver in the eye of the other and miss the two-by-four in our own. The question presupposes the inescapable reality of history and of historical distance, and it asks how that distance can be crossed. Or better, conceding that this distance cannot be crossed, the question resorts to the subjunctive and asks how that irreducible distance could be made creative. How does our distance from Jesus illuminate what he said and did in a different time and place and under different historical circumstances? And how does Jesus’ distance from us illuminate what we must say and do in the importantly different situation in which we find ourselves today? The task of the church is to submit itself to this question, rather than using it like a club to punish others. The church, the archive of Jesus, in a very real sense is this question. It has no other duty and no other privilege than to bear this memory of Jesus and ask itself this question. The church is not the answer. The church is the question, this question, the gathering of people who are called together by the memory of Jesus and who ask this question, who are called together and are put into question by this question, who stand accused under the call, interrogated and unable to rescue themselves from this question, and who come to understand that there are no easy, ready-made, prepackaged answers.”
One of the podcasts I subscribe to is Radio National Australia's " Encounters. Always, great content, guests and interviews. Recently, they had on the renouned Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor as a guest, talking about is book " A Secular Age." Guests in the conversation include, Ruth Abbey is a political scientist who runs an ever-growing web-based bibliography of Taylor related material, and James McEvoy is a theologian who appreciates the way Taylor's analysis of our age opens up possibilities for dialogue and for religious faith.
For those of us really trying to understand post-modernity, and engage it, this is an absolutely fascinating interview. The thing I like about Charles Taylor is, he's a man of faith. He comes from a catholic background, and is able to bridge religion, faith and philosophy into his writing and conversation. In this podcast, Charles shows us the challenge of this age. He doesn't leave us tangling there in dispair, he also shows us hope. Below I've included some sound bytes from the conversation, but, do yourself a favor...listen to the whole interview.
In the conversation, James McEvoy, says this to Charles Taylor, " Another implication just from a religious perspective is that there is a tendency in many religious thinkers to think of modernity as something that has happened to the churches and if only we could only get back to prior to that we'd get rid ourselves of this godless world, you know, whereas this picture of the effect of reform makes it very clear that secularisation is something that is brought about by the drive to reform itself." And Charles responds;
Yes, the splitting off of a set of unbelieving outlooks on the world from this is a kind of own goal in a certain sense of the Christian drive to reform. You see, when one really successfully managed to, supposedly anyway, integrate the demands of the gospel right though ordinary life, right through the life of people in their families, in their productive lives and so on, you made this what looked like a kind of perfect system, the kind of thing that the Enlightenment eventually referred to, a kind of perfect system of behaviour, the perfect system in which everyone operates as a good citizen and equally with others and so on. Once you create this sense it can go along with the notion that, hey, we can do this. we human beings can do this, we don't necessarily need grace or some power from above—the whole 18th century is full of this, you find among elites the idea that, hey, we can do certain things, for instance we don't need to suffer these regular plagues which kill off I don't know what percentage of the population, we have ways of organising, quarantine. But the sense that we can do this—that human beings can do this alone, can play into a sense that we don't need the church, we don't need God. So in a certain sense as it were the bases for it were laid by the actual reform movements in the church.
Later in the conversation, James McEvoy says, " One sentence that I am very fond of in A Secular Age describes the place of religion in the age of authenticity. You say the religious life or practice that I become part of must not only be my choice but it must speak to me, it must make sense in terms of my spiritual development as I understand this. But it seems to me that it captures the perspective of a wide range of believers. It reminds me of perhaps Augustine's most famous line, 'You've made us for yourself O God and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.' Perhaps the most liberal and the most conservative believer would see their faith as making sense of their spiritual development. Do you see this understanding as a gain?" Charles Taylor responds;
Absolutely. You know, 'cause I mean your quote from Augustine really I think points that up. It touches something very deep in the whole Christian revelation—that it's not about conformity to a single model but it is about communion between people who come to God and to each other through very different paths. This sense of course was always there in the church: you think of all the strange offbeat saints, St Francis, St Ignatius Loyola, and so on who went through extraordinary itinerary including sometimes a very important itinerary in their lives before they became followers of Christ. And you see these itineraries in all their difference converging and somehow these converging but different paths get canonised afterwards. But then the same church that canonises them very often wants to impose total conformity, a single path, on people today. Now, you can open this up in a much more creative way I think if you take the step into an ethic of authenticity—in that sense there is a fuller living of this feature of the Christian tradition. Obviously there are also losses, that lots of people go off in other directions. Now, that's path of the package, but this positive side of the package from a Christian point of view is that this very, very important feature of the whole Christian vision which I try to sum up with the notion of communion of saints, people coming through different itineraries, is finally given its full force, it can finally breath fully in a certain sense in the life of Christians today.
James McEvoy, " You've already said that the age of authenticity has a down side for religious traditions, or at least makes some things difficult. I think in the book you say that it can easily lead to trivial spiritual options. I was presenting this picture of religion in the age of authenticity to a staff of a large Catholic school in the West of Adelaide and in response to your sentence about faith making sense of my spiritual development, one very talented and also very committed teacher said some of my students turn to Madonna for spiritual nourishment and they are not thinking about the mother of Jesus. I wonder how you would respond to her." Charles Taylor ressponds;
I mean I think two thoughts on that question. Number one, there are gains and losses and this gain is very important. But number two, when you have this kind of real civilisational shift, in which the mindset in which everybody lives changes, you just can't go back to the older forms and the creative response of Christians and of the Church to this is to be part of the process of searchers, sharing their search, to show how much Christian faith is a kind of set of paths of search, as against a set of already given answers before you even ask a question, right? What we have to take from this is a way of speaking to this world rather than trying to roll it back to what it was before 1800, which apart from the fact that it would forgo the important gains, is actually utterly impossible.
James McEvoy then remarks to Charles Taylor, " It seems to me an implication of that is that it's not that you are implying that the Gospel is any less important or that we have to shear off different aspects of it, but that we have to find a new way to proclaim it in this age. " Charles reponds;
This is something that again points up what was always there, that is that there are all these different paths. Astonishingly enough in a very early part of the modern period before the West got really arrogant in the 19th century, there were missionaries, Jesuit missionaries for instance Matteo Ricci in China and De'Nobili in India, in China, who had this idea, well, that the faith is not something that belongs to western civilisation, it is something, people come at it from all these different directions, and we have to help the people here find their own very different path. Now in a certain sense that is already multiculturalism and in a certain sense it is the same spirit behind the notion of authenticity. So, a germ that was there has now really flourished in the 20th and 21st century in the west. This is not to say that we are compromising or shearing off parts of the Christian faith but we are finding a way for very different people to come together in it.
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