Topic

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."

A Brief History of my Life

• Born to San Diegan parents serving with SIL as linguists in Colombia, South America.
• Lived at Lomalinda.
• Put my faith in Jesus Christ at the age of eight, or maybe before.
• Moved to La Mesa, CA at the age of nine; member of San Diego First Church of the Nazarene.
• Attended Parkway Jr. High, Christian High School, where I used my first computer, the Exidy Sorcerer, and Point Loma Nazarene College (which is now a university), obtaining a degree in Computer Science and a Secondary Credential in Math and Computers.
• Married "up" to an amazing woman named Rhoda ;-)
• Lived in south Los Angeles County for 10 years; member of Emmanuel Reformed Church in Paramount, CA. (where I designed my first web site)
• Father of four beautiful daughters.
• Currently living in La Mesa, CA.
• Was a member for a while of Skyline Wesleyan Church.
• Took an offramp from conventional church in 2004 into something people call organic/simple/house/whatever church.
• Are now doing half simple, half conventional church at Foothills Christian Church.

Work History

• Taught mathematics at Griffiths Middle School in Downey, CA for two years.
• Served for two years as literacy workers with SIL with a remote group called the Walsa in Papua New Guinea.
• Director of Communication, Assimilation, and Information Systems at Emmanuel Reformed Church in Paramount,
  CA for five years.
• Director of Information Technology (and a few other things) at Qualistics,Inc. in San Diego for about three years.
• Spent 5 years working for Information Technology Services at Point Loma Nazarene University.
• Currently working as a Managing Technical Consultant for Jenzabar, Inc..

What Makes Me Tick

• All my life I have been questioning everything and inventing.
• My favorite activity is helping someone else have an "aha" moment.
• According to the Keirsey-Bates personality type tests, I am mostly an ENFP, or Champion Style personality, pretty close to the Inventor
  style, a little bit Teacher,
  and a little bit Field Marshal, which means I like coming up with and communicating new ideas and leading people to a better place! (Want to figure
  out what you are right here?)
• According to the PersonalDNA test, I am an Animated Leader:
  
• According to StrengthsQuest, my top five strenths are: Connectedness - Relator - Responsibility - Ideation - Strategic.
• The way I see it, everyone on earth wants a few of the
  same things:
  1. To know others and be known by others
  2. To be loved
  3. To believe that their circumstances are working for their good
  4. To have something worth having
  5. To give something worth giving
• In Jesus Christ I have found not only the answers to the five needs above, but also the most cohesive, realistic view of life ever articulated to my knowledge. My spirit, mind, and heart find ongoing peace & satisfaction.

You can contact me at carey at careymorgan.com.

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.

I learned a great concept from Harold Korver, the pastor of a church we were a part of for ten years. He described how we must practice what he called "rowboat vision" in which we keep our eyes on the landmarks of where we've come from to chart a straight course into new waters. Brian McLaren uses the metaphor of the playground swing to describe the wonderful effect of leaning back and kicking forward at the same time. In both cases, I resonate with the point: the passage into the future will involve change; our task is to

Our society has been saying for a long time that Christians ought to practice what they preach. Now the research is in and it turns out the society was right. In an interview with Christianity Today, Ron Sider talks about his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Baker Books, 2005) and his assessment of the current situation. Being confident that one knows something real and true is no substitute for loving humility. One word of caution in the interview falls on those of us outside the conventional church

The following is a letter from Ross Rohde to a guy named Joe attempting to explain the difference between a housechurch and the other types of churches we hear and know about. A friend named Ric Joline shared it with me.

Oh, I also found it here on Ross' blog.

Dear Joe,

It is exciting to hear your story and see what God is choosing to do through you. I rejoice with you brother.
What an interesting question "What is a housechurch"? I think I want to tackle that one by getting all the confusing terms out on the table so we can discuss them. Do you have a minute? This may take some time.

As I have journeyed to the conclusion that Christians should un-learn much of what we have been doing in recent centuries, few authors have characterized the situation as clearly as Frank Viola does here how crucial it is that we jettison all the bathwater, not just some of it, and pay close attention to the baby, not just to parenting techniques.

Okay, so my personal web site has gone through quite a few phases over the years.

Here we go again! This time with Drupal...

Oh, here are some links from my past sites that might still be interesting or useful:

Parenting Stuff

Reunion Web Site Code

About Carey