carey's blog

The kids love to visit the tide pools below Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma. Check out the tide prediction and go some time! The park closes before dusk so be sure to plan your visit to coincide not only with low tide but also the hours of operation.

Having grown weary of the enmity between the compassionate, hard-working, generous people I know from all points on the political spectrum, and having watched for a long time the forces at work, I've identified what I believe is the key point of tension and my personal strategy for addressing it.

The two-part key point of tension is this: people are continually tempted to use problematic means to achieve admirable ends; people tend to justify their own means by focusing on their own intentions and criticize the means chosen by others by ignoring their intentions. In short, we are comfortable with our own shortcuts but find fault with those of others. People of all shades of social/political persuasion do this all the time. I'll come back to this in a second, but first let me offer my solution.

CivicSpace and Politics

Is the following a fair characterization?

What this means is that conservatives like to have power concentrated in the hands of a few, trusted “people like us� who give orders to an obedient mass. They like it when things are expensive because they have more money, and they like to keep things expensive by quashing competiton, securing an ever-larger slice of an ever-shrinking pie. Progressives like to empower everyone to send messages to the leadership and value a diverse range of opinions. They like it when things are cheap or free, allowing everyone a sufficient slice of an ever-growing pie.

Jason Evans posts this insightful as.it.is: Interview w/ Jim Henderson who reflects on the challenges faced by young Christian leaders, plus some other stuff. Here's an excerpt:

Young people intuitively know that using people to "fulfill their vision" is bogus and bankrupt but aren't sure what to do in its place. They feel caught in a double bind and think that the only way out is to drop out or sell out. I have a suggestion: Drop the money and the titles (if need be) and go lead anyway.

It looks like one of the key points of stress between the conventional church and the house/simple/organic church movement will center on a disagreement over what the goal and trajectory of the Christian church really is. This disagreement is rooted in diverging views of what Scripture tells us about God, ourselves, and God's purpose.

On the one hand, we have people who say they would really like others to respond to God but live as though they are convinced no more than a few actually will. On the other hand we have people who believe an ever-increasing number of people will respond to the call of God. East San Diego County pastor Mark Hoffman, in his book On Earth as it is in heaven presents from Scripture his view that Jesus' chief mission was to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. It was the center of His teaching and activity. He believes the Kingdom is for now, not later, and that it comes through Christians, not governmental power.

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http://www.arb.ca.gov/enf/vehcmplts/complaints.htm

Although I hadn't heard or read anything of Andrew Strom when my wife and I decided to step out of the conventional church, his online book The Out of Church Christians (2003) characterizes, if somewhat imperfectly, the experience countless followers of Jesus Christ seem to have in common. My own experience and relationships support his suggestion that this is a major trend.

In his 2004 book Secrets of the Early Church he goes on to identify nine of the lies held by too many of the visible Christians today and proposes steps toward the recovery of original patterns of Christian association. In his own words, his book is "designed to deliberately shock and provoke you into looking at why we do things the way we do. It is designed to make you study and study your Bible to find the answers. It is designed to make you hungry for a different kind of Christianity - the kind that was actually invented by Jesus and the apostles in the beginning."

Brian McLaren makes a good point when he suggests that followers of Jesus Christ should prefer not to argue with each other but rather embrace first and address concerns later. It seems Brian is doing a pretty good job of finding the middle ground between the right- and left-wing contentions that seem to characterize too many church leaders. I've been way too guilty of preferring to argue in the past. His message was for me, though I'm glad I could hear it.

Over several years, I've watched Skeptic Magazine pursue and defend its contention that science is the ultimate measure of reality. Editor in Chief Michael Shermer distinguishes himself both with his objective analysis and with his inability to concieve of believing anything without total proof. In this review of Alister McGrath's Dawkins' God, Shermer almost leaves the impression that he wants someone to explain to him how to believe in God, or at least provide a plausible explanation for why the author believes.

More of Ross Rohde's writings on the organic/simple/house/emergent church can be found Right Here on another of his blogs.