Ferndale

Saw the famous Ferndale Institution where former Saskatchewan cabinet minister and convicted murderer Colin Thatcher is spending his 25 year murder sentence. There are no fences and there is a private 18 hole golf course for the inmates. He livines in a town house that is larger than my house. There is an episode of The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob is in jail and the jail has a rowing team. That isn't parody in this case, it is reality. I don't believe in capital punishment but at the same time I am not sure I believe in townhouses and golf courses either.

I know institutions like this provide incentive for good behaviour and I assume they are designed to be an incentive to inmates who have no other incentive to behave otherside but it seems more than a little weird... in a Simpsons kind of way.

Post-Modern Onramps

Rudy is asking over at his blog, Urban Onramp, is nothing new in postmodernity over here. Reading some Hans Kung this week and he is talking about some of the same questions that we asked except he was wrestling with a premodern Roman Catholic Church moving into modernity (pre-Vatican II). While some of his answers are different, he was doing the same kind of deconstruction/reconstruction we are trying to do. I think we are all trying to do what Karl Barth called us to do, everyday and every hour we are to start again at the beginning.

Comments are back

for now. Still thinking them through.

Church doesn't care about the poor

thoughts by Scott Williams

Why Are You Such a Loser, Dennis Kucinich? Wolf Blitzer

Note: The original post had me attributing the second quote to Jay Rosen. It was actually by someone leaving a comment. (doh!) The corrected version is below...

That's what CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked the candidate after the votes from New Hampshire were in. How would you answer it? This is what Jay Rosen thought of Wolf Blitzer's question

When the press looks for its credibility problems today, it ought to look more at moments like these. To me, it's in-credible, Blitzer's question. The public serice validity I assign it is zero. Most of the audience, most of the time, senses the bad faith in it, whether we "like" Kucinich or not. In a catalogue of low points for the campaign press (which, done well, is an idea for a kick-ass weblog... ) this was one.

Correction: One of the commentors (not Jay) goes on to say this

As a psychologist I recall my training in doing psychotherapy. And one supervisor would often ask us if our question was for the benefit of the patient or just out of curiosity. We had to learn to analyze the question before we asked it, to consider it's effect upon the listener, to keep in mind the purpose of the interview, and to restrain certain impulses in view of our task on behalf of the patient.

Has journalism lost its mission? It sounds like there needs to be a process where reporters are subjected to the same critique process we would use to evaluate teachers, therapists, physicians, and other service personnel. We're not going to return to a restaurant if our choice of entree is belittled. We won't return to a physician or dentist if our physical ailment is belittled.

Sadly, much of what appears on a news program seems to be appealing to the same audience and using the same tactics as the talk-shows and reality shows, where people are deliberately humiliated or exposed as "entertainment." I have long been bothered by the type of comedy on TV as well, but at least in this case there is a script and the people are actors.

To me the humiliation of people in an interview is another example of a civilization in decline. Rome provided entertainments where people were thrown to lions. We moderns just throw them to the media!

ABC News :: Reconsidering their coverage of the Dean Scream

by Diane Sawyer

After my interview with Dean and his wife in which I played the tape again -- in fact played it to them -- I noticed that on that tape he's holding a hand-held microphone. One designed to filter out the background noise. It isolates your voice, just like it does to Charlie Gibson and me when we have big crowds in the morning. The crowds are deafening to us standing there

So, we collected some other tapes from Dean's speech including one from a documentary filmmaker, tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd, not just the microphone he held on stage. We also asked the reporters who were there to help us replicate what they experienced in the room.

Reena Singh, ABC News Dean campaign reporter: "What the cameras didn't capture was the crowd."

Garance Franke-Ruta, Senior Editor, American Prospect: "As he spoke, the audience got louder and louder and I found it somewhat difficult to hear him."

Dean's boisterous countdown of the upcoming primaries as we all heard it on TV was isolated, when in fact he was shouting over the roaring crowd.

And what about the scream as we all heard it? In the room, the so-called scream couldn't really be heard at all. Again, he was yelling along with the crowd.

Neal Gabler, Senior Fellow, Lear Center USA: "When you're talking about visuals, context is everything. So, you've got a situation in which you have what I'd call the televised version of reality, which is not the same as the actual reality in room. You know in a situation like this, no one takes responsibility."

Comments from network executives:
CBS News: "Individually we may feel okay about our network, but the cumulative effect for viewers with 24-hour cable coverage is -- it may have been overplayed and, in fact, a disservice to Dean and the viewers."
-- Andrew Heyward, President - CBS News

ABC News: "It's always a danger that we'll use good video too much."
-- David Westin, President - ABC News

CNN: "We've all been wrestling with this. If we had it to do over again, we'd probably pull ourselves back."
-- Princell Hair, General Manager - CNN

Fox News: "It got overplayed a bit, and the public clearly thought that, too, and kept him alive for another round."
-- Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO - Fox News

Sadly too late to blunt the damage. I am not saying this is why he lost New Hampshire but it made a large difference to his campaign.

Blogging about blogging

A lot of you have been e-mailing about suggestions for my blog. Before I answer any of those, here is a bit of background.

The day I launched my photoblog and my idea of posting a picture everyday this year, I got some feedback from someone that told me that they were all the wrong size and style for worship graphics. I thought it was a joke. Apparently it wasn't as I got a couple more asking for them to be posted in 800 x 600 and a little less contrast. About the same time, traffic took off but Technorati links didn't. A couple of magazines had listed my site as a place to get resources about postmodernity and a place to discuss theology and such. It brought a bunch of people who had no idea what a blog was into my site that had no idea what postmodernity was (or worse, thought they had it all figured out) didn't know who I was, or what a blog was. They were looking for articles and graphics, and discussion lists and were horribly disappointed... and had no problem letting me know that.

What started as a hobby with less then 10 people a day in 1995 or 1996 on GeoCities (back when it was cool and less than 100,000 users) has grown. As Scott said to me this week, it has become a part time job. The e-mail becomes staggering. Between my address at theooze.com and jordoncooper.com, I downloaded over 1200 messages this morning. Anyone want to process that much e-mail, virii, and spam? I get e-mail asking for to do interviews, write articles, answer theological questions, ask advice on Christian websites, articles asking for pastoral advice, advice on how to get rid or a pastor and in one case a Bishop, and in one horrible case, a pastor who had been sexually assaulted by another pastor. Some of the theological questions run into the pages. There is also the comments, and the Instant Messenger conversations. I was having coffee with Leighton yesterday and I said, there isn't a single person on my IM list that I don't like but I don't have time to talk with people all of the time. What used to be Jeb, Gloria, Dennis, Cathy, and Carrie and I on the Lakeview Church network has grown to almost 100 people on two different IM services. I told LT yesterday that I was thinking of going to AIM just to start again. He just about hit me as that would mean that he would have to have Yahoo! IM, MSN, and AIM all going at one (I wish Trillian was a little bit better built).

Lately I keep reading this phrase, "I am taking today to clear out my inbox". Remember when Saturday's used to be spent playing with your kids or watching hockey. Now it is dedicated to clearing your inbox. I know some people who laugh at that and think it is an overstatement. Well, I have 400 unread e-mail right now in my inbox that has made it past my spam filters and I have already spent and hour working on it. That isn't sustainable. No wonder why people are observing that e-mail is broken.

The obvious solution people suggest is stripping my e-mail off of my website, changing my e-mail address and only give it out to people who I want to give it out too. That would work but then I would be like all of the people who don't post their e-mail address that I pronounce anathemas upon. Many times I have tried to do an interview for TheOOZE only to be frustrated by an author without any contact information. I can totally understand it but I am not sure I want to do it.

When I talk about this site getting lamer, it is because as it has become more popular and more time consuming, it makes me think again about posting many links because of the backlash and time. I think in the end, it causes me to be much more careful in what I post. A lot of people were enraged when I doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Even among Free Methodist pastors in the U.S., the e-mail was scathing and angry. In the end... well, we all saw the stories about David Kay. Funny, not too many e-mail suggesting that the names they called me may have been wrong. In the end, it showed me that there are certain things that one can't talk about without inflaming huge and largely irrational passions. Not all people are like that but quite a few are.

Comments. I really have no idea what to do with them. I have been thinking of bringing them back as they are a great resource for me in that a lot of you post some great follow-up sites and ideas. My favorite Metafilter threads are the ones where they start off with a great link and then someone else posts another great link and by the end of the discussion you have learned a lot of great stuff. Around here I really enjoy the, "if you liked that book, you will enjoy this, this, and this". The other side of the argument not only what Meg wrote but also the idea that comments take away from the blog in that people can hold the conversations on their own pages. Something that we used to see even a year or two ago a lot more than we see now (although what we saw with Jenny Baker's post). I wonder if commenting is taking that away?

I don't mind discussion in the comments. I think they are cool. The problem is the expectation that I take part in them and address all of them. I am posting between five and ten posts a day. That doesn't take long but participating and keeping up with 35 to 70 potential conversations takes a little bit of time. The problem is that I am not the author of 80% of the content here. Despite linking and blockquoting to other posts, some people still think that I am the original author. Those posts are not doctrine or even my opinion. They are just tossed out there. People are always asking my opinion about them but in the end, the result is unless I really get into it, I found it interesting and opinion shaping and that is it.

I think Howard Dean's (you know the guy whose campaign broke many of our hearts) weblog confused a lot of people. It was very focused and written to create a focused movement. Organizational blogs are also like that. The difference between this and a blog like Fast Company or George W. Bush's is that this is a personal weblog. It doesn't have an agenda. A bunch of us laughed and mocked the e-mail I got commenting that they thought this blog should be more "purpose driven" but as a personal weblog, it is anything but. My reading is diverse, my television watching is diverse (am watching a documentry on the Bush White House now), and if you look at my Bloglines feeds, my blog reading is pretty diverse as well. I am not creating a movement but am just posting some thoughts while being part of one. I think there is a huge difference that if often mixed. People are always asking me, "do you have one book or site that can explain postmodernity". No, I haven't found one yet. I have read Len Sweet's stuff, Brian McLaren, Spencer Burke, Stanley Hauerwas, AKMA and stuff from Richard Florida, Dee Hock, Peter Drucker, Jane Goodall, Thomas C. Oden, Michael Moore, Eugene Peterson, Tony Campolo, Hans Kung and about 200 books a year, and 135 weblogs a morning. This is a compilation of all of those sources and many, many more that are creating my theology and worldview. It is a personal space. Not private but a reflection of my journey, not a creation of a movement.

That is part of the problem as the site grows. You can't really turn over your personal site to a collection of moderators and editors like sites like TheOoze and Hockey Pundits. Hockey Pundits can survive without me but it seems a little foolish to keep jordoncooper.com alive without me (but that could just be ego)

The thing I like the most about this blog is that ability to introduce new ideas, posts, and people to a wider conversation. When I look at Scott Williams' blog and see people linking to him through my blog, I think that is very cool. I want to do that more. One of the things that is coming online in a day or two will be a form that will make it easier to fire off a link to a post or a person to me. We have used it on Hockey Pundits and stole the idea from BoingBoing. If you have written a great post, or saw one and want to share it, use this form. Use it to announce the birth of your own blog. Use it to announce a brilliant link. Use it to announce a great book recommendation.

I am taking a couple of steps to allow people figure out what this place is and how to interact here. Those will be coming over the next week or so. We will what happens then.

Christian foot soldiers battle for Bush

Onward Christian/Republican soldiers, marching off to war...

Their strict moral agenda is based on literal interpretation of the bible. They are anti-abortion, against sex before marriage. They are in favour of greater local control, and lower taxes.
The idea of extending marriage licences to gay couples is particularly repugnant to them.
"Gay men do not live for a long time. They have a lot of disease... It's a moral issue, but also a health issue," says Jim, unconcerned that in the secular world, his views reek of homophobia.
Karen is very active in local Republican politics, and she is convinced that George W Bush is their best hope for keeping the deterioration of American society at bay.
"He's the leader of the party that's got the right ideas, particularly for national security, but also for some of these moral issues," she says.

A side note, is it just me or does the BBC see all American Christians as fundementalists?

With a banner like that, who can't resist linking to it. Yeah, okay, most of us but I have the flu so my mind is weak.

Kind of done...

Flying home later this morning. Got this started last night.

Relationships

Randall Friesen articulates some thoughts excellently. He articulates what I have not been saying clearly

Scott's blog

http://scott.newheights.bc.ca :: link now so you can say I linked while it was still cool.

Organizational Learning and Howard Dean

Link

From Sojo Mail

"Already, the Kay report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations."
- President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address.

"I don't think they existed."
- David Kay, former U.S. special adviser leading the hunt for WMDs in Iraq, on the lack of evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal.

Source: Newsweek

Hear that? That was my idealism getting run over by a truck

I can't believe this via Instapundit

Turned off the comments

Megnut explains the motivation. The other reason is that I hope to be as cool as Dan Hughes. Don't read too much into it. I have been thinking of it for a long time. Don't know if it is a long term thing but they have been too time consuming lately. People come from a lot of theological traditions, backgrounds, ideologies, and have a lot of different baggage. To answer all of their e-mail, instant messages, and comments takes a lot of time and not everyone understands I have a lot of other projects on the go right now. This was supposed to be a working vacation and I spent more time working on this stupid blog then doing what I wanted to do. By the time I touched down on Monday night I had all of these people e-mailing me and as soon as I sat down, my IM lit up like it had been set on fire. I am just about through the e-mail now and already I am getting the "so you are too important to answer my e-mail" e-mail. C'mon. Give me a break, at least once in a while. The site is too large in terms of people for me to delete spam, moderate discussions, or provide much thought with anymore. My problem is that I get frustrated with the site and the community rather than 3 or 4% of the people who drive me insane. The problem is that as the site grows, they grow.

I have already been reading that I am stiffling conversation but that was never the intent of the site in the first place. I think there is places like TheOoze message boards, Emergent/C (What does the C stand for? Oh never mind, you can't leave a comment anyways). Message boards do a much better job of facilitating discussion with moderators and so on but even then, they are hard to run. As far as blogs go, MetaFilter does it the best but it is a place designed for commenting. Of course my site is no Metafilter but I still don't have the time.

The idea of blogs as a conversation is lost I think. Instead of carrying on a conversation across sites as it was a couple of years ago, now the features have created more and more self-contained communities which is a big time challenge for me anyways.

I think people forget what this site is. It is an information clearing house. Most blogs are. Mine is generally externally focused which means a lot of external links. It is the presentation of ideas. The thing is that I don't write them. I don't know the research that went into them, the assumptions behind them. I find them worth thinking through but that doesn't mean that I agree with them. E-mailing me and getting mad at me for what? For finding something thought provoking? The thing is that I don't really have the time anymore to nurse those discussions.

I don't know care what you think but I am enjoying the peace and quiet... for now. I may become lonely later on. If you have any thoughts, leave me a comment below...

Conservatives Deconstructed

Daniel Miller posted this.

Conservative and liberalism

I was talking with Scott over breakfast about liberalism, conservatism, and sex roles. He thinks I am wrong. As a libertarian, I tend to think give people a choice and the fact and they will make the right choice. As the last Saskatoon election showed, people given the facts about a candidate that doesn't live in the city and making bizarre claims about taxation and 25% of them will still vote for them. Pastors rationally know that committing adultery will destory their career, hurt their family, and alientate people from their church and yet some still do it. It doesn't make sense to me. Why do people do stupid crimes? Why did I eat at Rocco's Roadhouse knowing it would hurt me all day and take 13 years off my life?

People do stupid things. The percentage changes from stupid thing to stupid thing. It ranges from heroin to adultery to eating at Rocco's (I think I am going to die today) but look around, people do sinful, stupid things. Dallas Williard reminds us of the brokeness of the church and the people in it. Peterson talks of the unhealth of the people that are constantly called to be God's people. Peterson talks about the Biblical church and how he keeps finding them where ever he goes. The gossips, the glamourizers, the moralizers... you get the point.

The question is how do we interact as a group of people who make bad decisions. One approach has been to accept the situation as it happens. The one example that comes to mind is pornography in the church. Something like 40% of church leaders admit to reading it regularily. Some blame the internet and so filters are used. I have suggested to many people who have been worried about it to move their computer in the living room or kitchen, a tip that came from Kim Komando and I think it is good advice in many cases. It doesn't deal with the real issues of how women are seen and the objectivication of women but that is not something that I ever hear anyone talk about. I don't think it takes a rocket surgeon (I know) to realize that one that is looking at a lot of porn is going to have trouble relating healthily with women. Those things aren't ever talked about... or at least in my circles.

In all of our deconstruction of the church, I wonder if we need to relook at much more than that. We talk about how modernity has influenced our church, but how about our relationships and ideas of community. Of course this is kind of like driving in Saskatoon during the winter. I know I know how to drive but I am not sure the people around me know how to drive. I think it was Fast Company that talked about the idea that one person can destroy the trust and ethos in an entire organization. So do we organize community life based on the assumption that people can't be trusted and will fail? There are large portions of the church that does that and make the assumption that people will fail. Maybe that it is the bigger debate.

World Liscense Plates

Link :: you never know when you have to know this stuff.

Music practice

Pictures from Scott's living room and practice last night.

Meetup Jobs

Meetup is hiring

This blog...

Evan Williams and Joi Ito both talked about this

Mena often talks about how blogs are more about normal people blogging with their friends than about pundits competing against the media. I would agree and think this may be more rewarding at an emotional level than taking your blog to the political level. What you have to be careful of is that you never know when you might suddenly become popular or when your mom might drop into your blog and your context will collapse around you. Managing your audience and the facets of your identity is a very difficult thing and navigating this has and always will be one of our biggest challenges both in the real world and online.

Joi hits on why at times I don't enjoy blogging. It isn't that I don't have anything to write, it is with the growth of the blog, I know that one audience of it will misinterpret it and take it for what it isn't.

One of the comments I hate are the ones that associate me with somehow speaking for the entire emerging movement. First of all, if you want a spokesman for postmodernity, go here or here. They know far more than I do. All I am is a pastor of a traditional rural church in a town of 1000 people. According to some who have authority over me, I am not a very good one at that (always nice to hear) I speak for no one. Not even me sometimes. Many things here are just things to think about, not a part of a systematic theology.

When this blog was cool and far less popular, it used to be my place to post ideas and thoughts. It was kind of a coffee shop where I could just think aloud with my friends. A lot of your blogs are like that which I think makes blogging very cool. As it grew, more people started to bring much different worldviews. That was cool but more and more people knew me and were often confused and to avoid some controversy, I stopped posting the cool stuff in favor of the lame stuff and the blog kept getting lamer and lamer. Then some family started reading. Even though I don't really respect or like much of my family that much outside of my brother, I became even more lamer to avoid them reading statements like I just wrote so they don't have to forward them on out of context.

So where does one go now? As Howard Dean shows, you can keep going down but I don't really know. What's the point of doing this if it isn't fun and to be honest, this has been anything but fun the last four months.

The Master Narrative in Politics

postmodern journalism

This may be interesting

in light of our current discussions...

Random today thoughts

New Heights band practice is in Scott's living room tonight. It is like a worship service in the living room. Kind of cool. They make too much noise for their offices so they are right here. In another part of Mission New Neights is out feeding the poor and the homeless. Sunday night they have a place and a service for the homeless. Their photoblog has a bunch of pictures posted that one of their photographers takes of street people and gives a bunch to them to have. The pictures are great.

I had a conversation with someone about how their church had worked so hard to get the business side of the church right at great expense and cost to the spiritual part of the church. I don't know what the business side of New Heights is (not great) but the relational, spiritual, and social justice side are very alive. That being said, most churches only measure (and then care primarily about?) the business sides of their churches.

The conversation about men and women has turned into a lot of talk about one on one time. I don't think that is really the issue that is the problem. It is the expansion and broadening of that to the point where male and female relationships don't or can't happen because of "what if" or some other reason. Closed male networks and even public gatherings are the norm from the e-mail that I get. I am kind of confused too about some of the ideas that men naturally assume they are going to have an affair if alone with women. That seems to scream out to me as something as seriously wrong. I am ALWAYS accused by EVERYONE who has ever meant me as being aloof initially so maybe it is just me (it bugs me that people think that although I am not the warmest person at times). Maybe it is my past that is always aware of the collateral damage stupid things cause. Or I am just stupid. Most people default to the stupid thing.

As a friend of mine said to me, "Jordon you are such an idealist, of course in your world, people make the right choices. That's why you are liberal." They could be right. It explains my cynicism some days as well.

There is an idea of this idea splitting the emerging church movement. Umm, I don't think it is unified enough to be split. I am just talking aloud but I am Wesleyan in my theology. While I share similar values to my friends, I don't agree with a lot of what they write and think about theologically or a-theologically (wonderful legacy of modernity). I am not talking theologically or worldview but also internet grassroots wise but it is a movement without structure and people wonder in and out all the time. In someways it is a movement like the old EDS herding cats commercial. Most of us put a lot of value in old networks (denominations) as well as the the new. I don't know how unified we are.

For no apparent reason

Goofing off with Scott today.

people of color & the emerging church

a discussion over at Emergent Village.

Scoble on DRM

It's interesting the religiousness of the debates. Brings me back to when I was a Macintosh fanatic back in the late 1980s. Oh, if only religious support won markets. Course if that were the case, I'd be working for Steve Jobs now in Cupertino, huh?

Link

Joe Trippi Gets Fired

As Dave WIner puts it

Dean hired Al Gore's former chief of staff, Roy Neel, to run the campaign. So we got our answer. Dean wants to catch Kerry, and the Internet will have to wait. The new manager is a long-time lobbyist, a "special interest," influence seller, canonical insider. This is an okay outcome, not the best one, but okay. It's safe to support either Dean or Kerry, and we'll get a traditional Democrat administration either way. The CNN guys will treat him well now

Loose Democracy

David Weinberger has a new blog about how the Net is changing politics and governance. He takes on Clay Shirkly's thoughts on Howard Dean and social software.

We do have a couple of indisputable facts: Dean came in a poor third in Iowa and a disappointing second in New Hampshire. But this by itself leads to no conclusions about whether social software hurt the campaign. For all we know, Dean would still be in single digits as an ex-governor of the Maple Sugar state if the online connection hadn't happened. And we certainly don't know that, if social software failed, it was because it lulled participants into a sense of "inevitability." That's just Clay's speculation.

But speculation has a political effect. I don't have evidence other than participatory. And I am a partisan, so, I certainly don't trust my own experience. But if I'm embrace Clay's argument, I need more from him than a string of what-if's and a quick gesture at what "we know" about why social software has failed in the past. After all, I have to weigh that against both the campaign's explicit rejection of a masturbatory online approach and my personal interaction with hundreds of people who met on the Net and then hit the streets in some very cold weather.

My e-mail...

Have had a bunch of people today e-mail and IM me about the idea of women in the church. Some don't get what the problem is about. Others are horrified by the same stuff. Some talk of the same stuff in their workplace. I know one person who still hears racial slurs in their workplace all of the time. Of course very few people would admit to being sexist or racist anymore.

A couple of men e-mailed as well. Brought up the point that just as some men don't know how to interact with women, many women they know can't interact with men. I have to agree with them. I hate socializing with some women who can't really understand what is going on in mixed dynamics. Just like men. That being said, I am tiring of the topic and the ADD is moving me onto some other topics.

What is Postmodern Worship

From Phuture

postmodern worship...

1) Worship is planned and led by a team. Various kinds of expertise are represented, including such areas as music, the arts, theology, philosophy literature, poetry, graphic design, and audio and video technology. Ordained persons may or may not be in the team.
2) Continuous feedback critiques and informs planning for each experience. Elements may be used repeatedly, but each worship experience to some degree is unique.
3) The arts, including painting, sculpture, graphics, poetry, drama, dance and movement are used extensively to provide non-discursive, nonlinear expressions of thoughts and feelings.
4) Language is a key issue. Emphasis is given to “real” experiences and words; rote , “churchy” language is meaningless.
5) Worship is not over defined or prescribed. Spontaneity is important. Multiple interpretations are expected. Meanings are found not anticipated by the planners.
6) Although most experiments so far use a rock idiom, other styles of music, such as “Gregorian,” Celtic, or Taize chant and other modes are also used. There are some experiments to create new musical stylse that serve new texts.
7) The worship space and time are usually not traditional. Part of the worship experience includes creating a sacred time and space, sometimes in an intentionally profane setting.
8) Humor is expected and natural.
9) Use of pop culture, including allusions to television commercials and shows from the past and present, is extensive.
10) Suffering-- personal, social, and environmental-- is acknowledged as a critical part of reality.
11) There is a self-conscious awareness that new forms of worship are needed during epochal change. Christians talk of a “second reformation.” Jews seek an expression that is more than survival.
12) A mission statement or statement of faith is usually prominent.
13) There is a sincere appreciation of diversity of age, gender, race, economic status, religious background or lack, sexual orientation, ethnicity. All human experience is valid.
14) “Liberal” and “conservative” categories are regarded as useless and perhaps even destructive.
15) Worship grows out of and creates community.
16) God is experienced as radical transcendence and radical immanence. All three members of the Trinity are given equal importance in Christian worship.
17) Preaching and teaching and texts of songs, hymns and rituals may be classically “orthodox.” An “ancient-future” connection between postmodern and premodern traditions may be felt and explored.
18) There is not a need to judge or condemn other faiths.
19)Worship includes an opportunity to connect personally with the “spiritual” through silent and directed meditation, silence, music, the arts, etc.
20) Real, actual experience -- of the individual and of the group-- is always paramount. Conceptual or theoretical descriptions are suspect.
21) “Postmodern” worship may grow out of “boomer” experiments, but it is a new experience. Gen X and even Gen Y sensibilities emerge.

Kind of outdated but some of you may find it useful.

History of Permalinks

here. Mine aren't working while Scott's are. Doh...

Sex Roles and Community...

Read Gilbert Bilzekian's Community 101 and Beyond Sex Roles for an excellent look at sex roles and community.

Ice Storm pics

from this morning. Notice the green grass. Sick. Took a look at Westminster Abbey and the surrounding park and grounds. Gorgeous. Pictures are all there.

Some more random thoughts

Had a greasy breakfast this morning with Scott here in beautiful Mission. We were talking about Jenny Baker's post and some thoughts came up. I don't have access to the book but Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class talks about the radical change in the last fifty years being the role of women in the workplace. Until recently (last fifty years), a women in a supervisory role would be unheard of. Places like IBM has huge initiatives in place to deal with the glass ceiling. Former Saskatchewan Finance Minister Janice McKinnon talks of questions of her being tough enough as a women and several business magazines have asked the question of whether or not Carly Fiona of HP/Compaq would have had the personal criticism she had if she had been a man. While Belinda Stronach's wardrobe has been the issue of some press, I haven't seen anything about Stephen Harper or Paul Martin's wardrobe (although if memory serves me correct, Brian Mulroney's suits were occasionally newsworthy for some reason). In the last federal election Joe Clark's daughter Catherine's appearance and wardrobe was always mentioned. I saw a recent newstory featuring several female Canadian politicians who talked of sexual innuendo and jokes being told around the cabinet table and caucus meetings. So much for being a progressive Canadian culture.

Leighton pointed out that 37% of pastors have been engaged in some sort of inappropiate sexual contact. He doesn't link to it (actually he did, my mistake) and I remember it as 34% (apparently I was wrong) but 3% isn't going to change the point much. Personally I can't believe that stat and I wonder what they mean but inappropriate sexual contact but the number staggers me. Rick Warren did a e-mail poll asking for pastors to respond anonymously who were viewing a lot of porn. The numbers he gave back astounded me as well. There is obviously a problem somewhere. A huge problem and it goes way further than the church but that is the problem we have to deal with. Legalism won't do it because it divides community and doesn't actually deal with the really issue.

A lot of people asked me what was so upseting about some of these comments. The comments by friends of mine and people I read feeling marginalized by the church because of the separation that exists between the sexes. I was disappointed in some on my blog and also in other conversations across the net. Like I said, it isn't a church problem. Megnut has had many posts about women in technology fields feeling the same way. I remember how my Mom felt being in the church as a divorced women. Well meaning people but over and over again they marginalized her and us as a family. It's funny, until you have been there, you have no idea what it is like. Like it or not, men control the agenda in most churches. For them to seek health by putting up barriers, may provide safety but at a tremendous cost. Community becomes fragmented and divided by sex. Women are marginalized and left out of the conversation. I don't think we realize it. It kind of reminds me of the elevated highways that were built in Boston to help the traffic move but in the end they divided and separated the city and through the Big Dig, have had to go through a radical transformation to be taken down.

Adam Cleveland has some good thoughts here

Maybe it's just that I had a lot of experience with the issue of women in ministry during undergrad, but I'm kind of tired of this issue. My freshman year roommate believed women should not be in ministry or leadership [he also had Confederate flags in our room and wrote his thesis in high school on a biblical basis for Slavery in the South] - and I disagreed. So I took Biblical Issues for Women during Jan-term of my freshman year at Whitworth; the course was taught by Gordon-Conwell professor, Dr. Catherine Clark Kroeger. After the course, went back and forth on the issue, and then finally realized...WHO AM I? Who am I to say who can be in leadership and who can't? Don't quote me 1 Tim 2: can you say "cultural context?"

So I was a bit surprised during my weekend with Allelon-folk, that we ended up discussing women in ministry for an entire morning. It seemed to me, for pomo / emergent / missional / whatever-the-heck-you-want-to-be-called Christians - this issue should really be a non-issue. However, people seemed to still be struggling with this issue [and by that statement, I'm not attempting to make a judgment on anyone and where they are on their theological journey, but...] and that is discouraging. Why can't we MEN just get over ourselves and be open for the Spirit of God to work in whomever He/She wants to?

. Jen Lemen has some here.

think this conversation highlights how few spaces we have in our minds for women. sexual partner seems to be the largest context for understanding our relationship to women. maybe more experience with women in other contexts...with women as teachers, sages, prophets, leaders, spiritual parents and sisters, etc. can help bring balance to our relationships. if you want to participate tenatively at first due to your own temptations, that's fine, but please spend some time contemplating why the definitions of relationship have become so narrow in the first place. if we don't do this work, women are the ones who tend to suffer. when are we going to find that more untenable than maintaining our current level of comfort with their marginalization?

Becky Barkaway has some stuff here and Maggi Dawn has some here.

Inclusivity...

Karen Neudorf sent this to me. I was reading it while I was offline and didn't have the context of the comments to the post to look at. She said I could post them here.

Tried to comment this but it's too long. But I'm getting really tired of pomo folk trying to excuse the inclusive conversation on such weird grounds....thank God Billy Graham had the courage to tear down the color barriers at his crusades or we'd still be using the ole' "we have nothing in common with their culture" excuse:

When I was involved in the pomo conversation, it was rather irritating to be treated as a woman first and as a person second. One of my favorite moments was having two male pastors shake hands across my editor and I at a big pomo conference as if we didn't exist. I was often the only woman on panels at conferences and knew my comments were being passed not through the "frustrated emerging leader filter" but the "angry woman" filter. Such is life. It's humiliating to meet for a panel discussion and having the circle of men turn inward and physically block you out of the circle as they
discuss what the panel conversation was going to be about. Ahh memories.

As a single person, it was doubly irritating to be treated like someone who was a time bomb waiting to go off. I MUST want you because I'm single. It's a little insulting and well, a little congratulatory to the other party to think they must be soooo attractive that we would jump them on the spot.

If you work alongside men long enough, you know the rules. They can put their arms around you on a stage as they introduce you but if you touch them, you're being flirtatious. (This is actually related to social rules of heirarchy...adults pat kids on the heads, bosses reach out and pat employees on the arm but not the other way around.) Men can sit around in a circle at elders' meetings and talk about their butts. You, as the only woman, can sit and smile. You cannot join in.

I have plenty of male friends. I always have. Many of them are married. Some are in the pastorate.I'd say the ones who have become friends are the ones who are good listeners. They don't treat me like an angry woman. They don't think I'm lying when I tell them the outrageous stories we encounter inside the church. They don't get defensive because they feel some strange guilt. They just know this is the way things are, acknowledge it, and we both work to bring about change. And I, hopefully, have listened (am learning to listen) to them...as people first acknowledging them as unique in only the
ways that their gender, environment, perspective, culture, can make them so.

There is a lot of anger in the pomo conversation. People feel marginalized and not heard. It's a normal stage to go through. You can't live there but I know the journey. But imagine being in the shoes of one who is marginalized even more because she is seen as "she" first and person second.Even if you disagree with women in leadership, there's a lot of work everyone could be doing here in regards to the objectifying of woman as things rather than whole and valued people in the Kingdom. It's part of the same work that Jesus started so long ago.

Jonny Baker has summarized the conversation over here.

Women and Ministry

I just noticed the 17 comments on Jenny Baker's post about women and the emerging church. I was shocked by how narrow minded some of the responses were in their ideas about relationships with women outside of marriage. The responses have really disappointed me. Some of the views towards women there remind me of why people reject the church. It is late but many of the responses there make me want to say forget it all. If thes are emerging church values, I want no part of them. I am wasting my time on this blog...

Confessions of a Car Salesman

What really goes on in the back rooms of car dealerships across America?

What does the car salesman do when he leaves you sitting in a sales office and goes to talk with his boss?

What are the tricks salespeople use to increase their profit and how can consumers protect themselves from overpaying?

These were the questions we, the editors at Edmunds.com, wanted to answer for our readers. But how could they really know that our information was accurate and up-to-date? Finally, we came up with the idea of hiring an investigative reporter to work in the industry and experience, firsthand, the life of a car salesman.

News

I was attacked by a chainsaw

The whole story is here.

New Heights Fotoblog

Over here.

One blog down...

I have been pounding on Scott's blog today with him. I think it is nearing completion. It is about 50 degrees warmer here than in Saskatoon. I am not even wearing a jacket while going out.

Hmmm, coffee

link

Travel Day

photos.

About the airport incident

Don't read to much into it. They were bashing postmodernity, Emergent, TheOoze and my site. They were all reading Purpose Driven Life and were mocking what they didn't really understand. Talking about Colson's article and such.

Scott Williams new blog

After heading to New Heights staff meeting and a really greasy breakfast, I re-did Scott's blog. You can find it here. It will be a work in progress all day today.

Virus Me

Head to Grisoft, download the free and most excellent edition of AVG and stop sending me the 1000 of so virii that are downloading to my inbox.

Arrived Safely (obviously)

Flight from Calgary to Abbotsford was full of pastors coming back from Breakforth. Some actually badmouthed jordoncooper.com while I was in earshot.