Mary and I just got back from New York.  We spent the past three days visiting friends in New Jersey and New York.  Then On Sunday night, I officiated a wedding for a good college friend.  Here are some pictures.

The bottom pictures were taken from our hotel room of ground zero.  We were directly across the street from it, and we looked down on all the construction activity.  It was cool to see how big the foot print was, and I was captured by the engineering complexity of coordinating the construction of such a massive project.

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I’ve heard a friend say that defining the emerging church is like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall.  It doesn’t have any formal institution or maintain a set of doctrines or membership requirements.  It is, when defined by its adherents something of a conversation that is categorized more by ethos than doctrine.  The people who are a part of the conversation have brought excellent questions about the way we do church to the table whether or not you agree with the solutions then espouse.  I have benefited from the books, blogs, and public forum discussions that have occurred because of people who are a part of the emerging church movement.

Here is a link to a video that is very, very helpful in providing a number of different perspectives on what the emerging church is.  It’s long (90 min), but worth the watch.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2009/04/the_emerging_ch.html

The panel members include: Scott McKnight, Tony Jones, Kevin DeYoung, and Alex & Brett Harris

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Fear is a terrible thing.  It consumes us.  It saps the life from us just like a parasite saps us of energy.  When we’re afraid, everything seems harder.   It makes praying harder.  It makes taking a risk on a new job or relationship nearly impossible.  Fear drives us inward.  We only think about ourselves when we’re afraid, and it becomes difficult to love those around us.  When we are really consumed by fear, it’s hard to even listen to a friend in a conversation because we are so consumed with ourselves.

But this is not the way it’s supposed to be.  The command not to fear shows up all over scripture:

• “Do not fear” shows up 37 times
• “Do no be afraid” shows up 33 times
• “Fear not” shows up 33 times
• The word “Fear” shows up 352 times
• The word “Afraid” shows up 167 times

The subject of fear shows up at least 519 times in Scripture!  Clearly we are a terrified species.  We are afraid of not having enough stuff.  We are afraid of not being loved.  We are afraid of being alone.  We are afraid of failing.  We are afraid that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.  We are plagued by fear.

Whatever faculty in our brains produces the fear emotion seems to be 10 sizes too big in me.  If we as humans are generally a fearful people, then I’m exceptionally good at being afraid.  I’m afraid of failure.  I’m afraid that I’ll amount to nothing.  I’m afraid that I’ll step out and take a risk for God only to fall flat on my face.  How embarrassing that would be!

I don’t want to be controlled by my fear.  I don’t want to make decisions that are driven by my fear.  But just wanting fear to go away doesn’t actually make it go away.   I have to be honest about who I am.  So, I engage in practices that help me minimize the power of fear in my life.  Here are a few:

1. Prayer: God says that we can cast our anxieties on him.  I do.  When I’m worrying, I pray with my imagination.  I imagine picking up the heavy burdens that are my fears and heaving them upward onto the shoulders of Jesus.  I visualize myself literally casting my bundle of anxieties onto him.  This helps a lot.
2. Liturgy: In a previous post, I mentioned the benefit of praying the Divine Hours.  This helps me stay connected to God, which helps me fight against fear.
3. Mentors: I meet or talk on the phone with a few people who know me well and with whom I feel safe sharing some of the scary stuff in my life.  When I share honestly what is going on in my life, and then they respond with love and encouragement, my fear melts away.

Theses are three of the more effective ways that I fight fear.  If you feel God is moving you in a direction that is scary, I encourage you to try one of these practices or make a new one up that will help you fight fear.

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Every morning I get in the pool for a swimming workout, and I wish I felt as good as I did when I was still in college.  Now, my splits are just a shadow of my former self.  If I used to be able to swim 100s on the 1:05, now I struggle to make 1:10.  It seems that my glory days in the pool are behind me, and that I’ll never be quite as good as I once was.

This seems to be the trajectory with much of our lives.  In categories of beauty, joint pain, hair lines, posture, and many other things, we decay.   Our default trajectory is one of degradation not enhancement.  Entropy, like in all of creation, rules our bodies, and that is why swimming is just a little bit harder now than it was a decade ago.  I am a shadow of my former self.

But in regard to my character, I am only a shadow of my future self.  As a Christian, my true identity lies in the future.  Who I am is defined by who I will be.  My character now is only a distant reflection of who I will be one day when I become completely me at the resurrection.  

For now, I continue to struggle with virtue, discipline, faith, and love.  I indulge in sin, and I omit those things I out to do. I fall short in so many ways.  But the good news of the Gospel, the good news of salvation, is that I am who I will be.  I am not who I am now.  

I was reminded of this while listening to a talk by N.T. Wright posted at the Veritas Forum’s site.  They’ve got a lot of great resources on their site.  Here are links to his talk called “Why the Resurrection Matters.”

Part 1

Part 2

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This is a postmodern tale if I’ve ever read one.  For the first hundred pages or so, I wrestled with whether or not this ludicrous story was true.  The author indicates as much in his preface, but slowly I came to see even that as part of “the story.”  The story is not true, as in it happened in time, but it strives to be true in its description of reality, story, and God as we understand them through our lenses of interpretation.

I won’t give any of the plot away, so all I’ll say is this is a crazy story.  Martel writes with vividly descriptive prose that lets you feel like you are right there in the midst of the story with your protagonist.  I enjoyed reading the book, and I found it hard to put down. However, as far as fiction books go, I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend this one.  It’s entertaining to be sure, and it’s even clever.  However, I was left feeling a little bit empty and unsatisfied at the end.  It neither satisfied me with a greater depth understanding about things or left me longing for deeper discussion with others who had read the book.  I enjoyed it, but I just didn’t take that much away from it.  It was brain candy.  Fun to read, but not lastingly rewarding.  

My response may be in part due to the genre of this book.  I prefer historical fiction to this sort of fantasy fiction.  I like reading a book that places me in the past and stretches my imagination as I think about what life was like long ago, rather than a book that places me in another imaginary (and unreal?) world.  I find that understanding the world we live in (seeing things from others point of view, whether in distant cultures or distant times) is already a great challenge to the imagination, and a book that strives towards that goal is the fiction I prefer.

Nonetheless, this was still a good book.  For the short while I was reading it, I found myself thinking about the book constantly.  Its story was repeatedly circling through my head.  It’s a fun read, and it has a message about interpretation, reality, stories and God…but mostly it’s just a fun read.

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This is a helpful book for anyone wanting to grow in their understanding of race and racism in America.  In the book Dr. Tatum defines racism as a “system of advantage based on race”.  She differentiates between racism and bigotry by emphasizing the systemic nature of racism.  She then calls on people to be those who resist the systemic current of racism.  She challenges us to be people who fight against the cultural powers that oppress people of color.

She writes out of a wealth of personal experience.  As a “light-skinned black women,” she shares personally and vulnerably about what her childhood was like as she explored her own racial identity.  She also shares a wealth of information from the many classes on racism she has taught at the college level.  She shares about the struggles students of color and white students experience as they come face-to-face with the ugly realities of racism.

Her primary focus is on the experience of Blacks in America, but she also touches on the experience of other races in America.  In one chapter she highlights some of the experiences of these different groups in America.  She details unjust laws targeted at American Indians.  She recounts stories of interracial marriage bans.  And she talks about the immigration experience of Asian Americans.  She also delves into the topic of multi-racial children and the struggles they may face as they grow up in a culture that desire to racially categorize everyone.  

I enjoyed this book, and it helped me think about race in new ways.  It served as a helpful reminder of the position of privilege white people experience in America.  It also stimulated my thinking on how a Christian community is called to fight against the powers and principalities of this world, of which racism is certainly one.  It also challenged me to talk more openly with my kids about race–both because it’s a primary way to de-tabooize it, and because as children of a mixed race marriage, I want to help them develop a healthy self-image in categories of race.

I encourage anyone wanting to think more deeply about their own race or the reality of systemic racism to read this book.  It’s a thoughtful book that has the potential to generate a lot of good conversation.

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This book/DVD is worth its weight in gold.  It’s about disciplining your children in a way that is both effective and stress-reducing for the family system.  Mary, my wife, checked out the DVD version from our local library and we watched it last week.  We have since put it into practice, and so far we’ve been shocked at how effective it has been.  

I can’t do the program justice in a short blog review, but if you have children I highly recommend checking this out.  My favorite quote from the DVD was something like this: “Parents make the false assumption of treating their kids like little adults.  We try and reason with them with statements like, ‘how would that make you feel if your sister did that to you’.  Instead we need to change the way we think about our parenting role.  We need to see ourselves as wild animal trainers!”  HA!  Wild Animal Trainers!

He was very funny, and I felt like he thoroughly understood the trials of being a parent.  I’ll try and write an update in a few months after we’ve been practicing this for a while longer.   So far we’ve been amazed…it feels like magic!

His site: 1-2-3 Magic

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This book is about sticky ideas—stories, facts, and anecdotes that are inherently memorable.  In the book, the Heath brothers break down 6 elements of that make stories sticky.  They are:

-Simple: have a core idea that is simple

-Unexpected: If you say something unexpected, it get’s people’s attention and it is more memorable.

-Concrete: talk about specific things.  Don’t talk in abstract concepts.

-Credible: use statistics or personal narratives to lend credibility to your message.

-Emotion: connect to peoples’ emotions so that they feel the importance of your message.

-Stories: tell stories of challenge, connecting, and creativity to inspire people and help them remember your message.

I enjoyed this book because it was both helpful and fun to read.  The authors put their own principles into action.  They write with stickiness.  Their chapters are filled with sticky stories and solid statistics.  It was also very helpful for me both as a preacher and a parent.  I learned new techniques and I was reminded of some I’d previously heard on how to effectively communicate my ideas.  I recommend this book to anyone wanting to improve their communication skills, either for public oration, parental instruction, or friendly discourse.

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When a bad driver almost runs you off the road, how stressed do you get? When a child is repeatedly screaming in your ear while you try and talk to your spouse, how stressed do you get? When you realize you don’t have enough money in the bank to pay the next bill, how stressed do you get?

The answer is: it depends. Stress is subjective say two prominent physicians in a radio program I just heard on NPR. Each of us handles stress differently. A situation that might result in panic attacks for one person might not bother someone else. How we respond to these situations is determined by our past—both the genes we inherited and the way we were raised determine how we handle stress. How we respond to stress is the result of both our nature and our nurture.

The good news is we don’t have to succumb to nature or nurture nihilism. We aren’t stuck for the rest of our life with our current “stress handling” ability. Our past isn’t determinative of our future. If you are like me, and you haven’t handled stress (or anxiety) well in the past, you don’t have to resign yourself to one of the following:

• That’s just the way God made me!
• Those are my genes and I’m stuck with them!
• Why am I so broken!

According to both of the doctors interviewed on the program, our physical identity is much more dynamic. Through healthy eating and an assortment of quieting self-disciplines, we are able to change our genes! Through meditation, yoga, religion and exercise we can effectively turn off bad genes and turn on our good genes. We can shut off the disease producing genes and turn on the good genes that help us deal with stress and anxiety.

This is tremendously hopeful, and I can’t help but think about the implications for Christian living. We can engage in a set of spiritual disciplines that help us to manage stress and anxiety. We can’t realistically eliminate stress out of our lives; every life will always be subject to some stress. However, as Christians I am hopeful about our capacity to deal with stress and anxiety. Jesus showed us how.

In the midst of life-threatening stress, Jesus exhibited peace. He was able to engage in a hectic public ministry. People were constantly crowding around him. They demanded signs and healings. Leaders in his society were always on the look out for ways to arrest and kill him. And yet, he seemed to exude a sort of preternatural calm. He was able to stay focused on God’s mission and respond with love and grace to sinners, indignation and anger at the oppression of the poor, and grief and sorrow at the hardness of peoples’ hearts. At the end of his ministry Jesus offers this peace to us.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
(John 14:27, ESV)

Jesus offers us peace in our stressful world. He offers us a way to stay rooted and connected with God, with others, and with ourselves. Stress is not necessarily a result of our situations. It’s subjective. Stress is inside us. Therefore it is something we can grow better at handling. Jesus invites us to grow into his way of peace-full living regardless of our circumstances.

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1. Go to Google.
2. Type in: Find Church Norris
3. Click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button 
4. Laugh your head off when you see this:

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