Multi-year sea ice being flushed into the Arctic Ocean

Thomas Homer-Dixon has this graphic of years of sea ice just melting into the Arctic Ocean over just six months.

Technorati Tags: Global Warming,Arctic Ocean

Why Bother?

Michael Pollan wonders why bother to care about climate change? 

Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden, turn down the thermostat so low I need the Jimmy Carter signature cardigan, forsake the clothes dryer for a laundry line across the yard, trade in the station wagon for a hybrid, get off the beef, go completely local. I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?

Of course he answers it with a quote by Wendell Berry

“Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.”

There is another reason for caring

You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

Technorati Tags: Michael Pollan

Al Gore's Updated Presentation

Al Gore's new presentation of An Inconvenient Truth that was recently given at TED.

Technorati Tags: Al Gore,An Inconvenient Truth,TED

A Disaster Waiting to Happen

In Leadville, Colorado, people now wake up every morning wondering if they "will be washed away by toxic water that local officials fear could burst from a decaying mine tunnel" on the edge of town.

For years, the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the Environmental Protection Agency have bickered over what to do about the aging tunnel, which stretches 2.1 miles and has become dammed by debris. The debris is holding back more than a billion gallons of water, much of it tainted with toxic levels of cadmium, zinc and manganese.

Here is the background for this "potentially catastrophic release of water":

Abandoned mine shafts honeycomb the surrounding hillsides. The old drainage tunnel, built by the federal government in 1943 to drain hundreds of these shafts, began falling apart in the 1970s, causing water to pool. In 2005, the E.P.A. offered to start pumping the clogged water toward a Bureau of Reclamation plant, which treats the water flowing through the tunnel; but the bureau contended that the additional water was part of the E.P.A.’s Superfund cleanup responsibility.

And so nothing was done. The threat of "release" is now so great that property in the town can no longer be insured.

The Death of Suburbia

This video is from TED and is one of a long series of videos I am downloading off of YouTube and converting to my PSP for viewing again later.  I am a big fan of Kunstler's view of the future (although I think he underestimates the power of capitalism and innovation a bit) but the video is one that you will want to watch.

In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about. Reengineering our cities will involve more radical change than we are prepared for, Kunstler believes, but our hand will be forced by earth crises stemming from our national lifestyle. "Life in the mid-21st century," Kunstler says, "is going to be about living locally."

Technorati tags: James Howard Kunstler, TED, urban, suburbia, energy

Just because you can build it...

Doesn't mean you always should. A good article on the problems caused by the Three Gorges Dam.

But authorities now admit that the dam is generating major problems. It's created a huge — and heavy — reservoir pressing against the mountains along the Yangtze, making them more prone to landslides. The deep reservoir stretches upriver about 370 miles, impeding the natural flushing action of the river and trapping pesticides, fertilizer and raw sewage. Downriver from the dam, water flows cleaner and faster, adversely affecting aquatic species adapted to sediment in the river.

Authorities are finally letting reports of the dam's problems reach the public in an apparent bid to pre-empt criticism should disaster unfold. And it's disaster that the official Xinhua news agency forewarned of in an unusually blunt report two weeks ago during a forum on the environmental consequences of the project.

"If no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe," the Sept. 26 Xinhua report said, paraphrasing unnamed "officials."

The report cited Tan Qiwei, the vice mayor of Chongqing, a sprawling city at the head of the reservoir, as saying that slopes along the Yangtze had collapsed in 91 places and a total of 22 miles of land along the river had caved in.

"We cannot take the problems too seriously. We should never sacrifice our environment in exchange for a flash of economic prosperity," Wang Xiaofeng, the head of the executive office of the State Council Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, told state media.

Feedback

Lately I have been noticing the increase in negative mail to the worldwide headquarters of Super Dave Osbourne/jordoncooper.com (we sublet the place when Super Dave isn't working). Some of the recent mail is on the low quality links and bias that this blog has. Several are complaining about the sports links, my liberal world view, and how this blog has little to do with the emerging church anymore.

I have replied to many of them individually but I realized, all of them are related as well so here is my bigger explanation.

As many of you know, I work in a homeless shelter/half-way house that is also the emergency after hours for social services. That is all on the website and after that, most of what I do is protected by non-disclosure statements. Some people who work in similar places, blog anonymously or using SixApart's VOX blogging system but for me, I don't talk that much about it and prefer to leave it at work. Even stuff that I see outside of work on the street has been tough to process this week and for that reason, I have been going to a spiritual advisor to talk through some of the frustration of not being able to do more. (at work, part of my evaluation is asking me if I think another job would be a better fit for me -- after thinking though it, I am not sure if even being the Minister of Social Services could tackle the job properly -- so I said, I am fine where I am at)

The evening shift is often a zoo. A booming Saskatoon economy has made work a lot busier and housing harder to find. The other night I watched a guy wander down the street with a knife in his side and didn't even find it that weird (ambulance was following him as well), I am often drained emotionally and to unwind, I enjoy some tea and sit down and watch the news and Sportsnet Connected. I have the web and a paper at work and if I am lucky I can read through some of the New York Times and Google News but when I get home, I am tired and ready to give up the good fight. Watching some highlights takes a lot of the stress of the day away. The other reason I watch and blog about sports is that I love sports. While not a great athlete, I played hockey for years, baseball, rugby, soccer, basketball, high school football and skied a lot growing up. I know that sports have been derided by many in the church in favor of the arts but I appreciate both. My family was a sporting family. I have a catcher's mask that is four generations old. Like a lot of families, sports was a bonding thing growing up and it is the same for Mark. I think it was Pete Ward who wrote this in Liquid Church, sports may be one of the ways the Holy Spirit brings life back into tired people. Unless it is the Edmonton Oilers or the San Diego Chargers, then it is devil's way of destroying people.

So why so little on the emerging church? I linked to this post by Kester Brewin a couple of weeks ago in which he describes why he is so bored with the emerging church conversation.

For me the 'emerging conversation' has become too much like a whole bunch of people mouthing off... Pretending to listen, by occasionally quoting others, but, for the most part, just yabbering on about their little world regardless of what others are saying. In the book I mention some of the conditions under which a system might become 'emergent', or 'self-organizing', or 'a learning system', to use different syntax. One of the key conditions is an ability to sense and respond to its environment. And this requires careful listening. I think we've lost the art.

I agree with Kester although I am not sure why that is although I am sure I am part of that problem that he is speaking about. I used to find the conversation a lot more interesting although I find it really narrow and in some ways I find it has gotten narrower. Part of my problem is that I have been strongly influenced by Canadian political scientist, Thomas Homer-Dixon who wrote The Ingenuity Gap which makes the powerful case that we wrongly take a very narrow view of the problems of the world and the problems (and the solutions) are often shared and more widely connected.  This idea has influenced me more than people realize and explains why blog moseys from idea to idea at times.

I have always hated the term Godblog, (excused me as I go and wash after typing it) and this site has always been a blog about the liberal arts in which as a part of that because of vocation or passion have blogged about the church but now after several years of it, there isn't a lot of new stuff being said, especially online. Even Mark Driscoll's hate filled rants against Emergent are getting repetitive.

Despite the boredom with posting about this stuff online, there is a bunch of different stuff happening offline that is exciting. Several conversations with friends have reminded me we often get judged by our writing on these things called blogs but they are only a small window of our lives. Church of the Exiles is working with others to create a local alternative seminary in Saskatoon. Resonate is setting up a micro publishing house to help the emerging church in Canada and has two books in development and all of this is happening outside of the 40 hours (although this week it was 60 hours) that is spent at work. On top of that is Soularize and Soularize Feedlive that I am helping with. Don't say I am not engaged with the church. I think I am more engaged now than I was when I was being paid (although I have a lot less meetings).

 

So keep up the feedback coming.  I may or may not take it to heart.  I have some hockey to watch.

 

Technorati tags: emerging church, Emergent, sports, Calgary Flames, Saskatoon, Soularize, Church of the Exiles, Resonate

Another impact of global warming

that we don't hear a lot about. Ocean acidification. The Washington Post on the same topic back in 2006.

Going Green

I have been wondering lately what the impact that jordoncooper.com has on the environment. I went looking around my ISP's website and found that it is carbon neutral after all which made me feel a little better. Now I just need to find out what Google and Yahoo! are doing to keep my data green as well.

There is no green revolution

Tom Friedman argues that whatever gains we are making at home are being lost by the developing world western like economic expansion.

Hey, I’m really glad you switched to long-lasting compact fluorescent light bulbs in your house. But the growth in Doha and Dalian ate all your energy savings for breakfast. I’m glad you bought a hybrid car. But Doha and Dalian devoured that before noon. I am glad that the U.S. Congress is debating whether to bring U.S. auto mileage requirements up to European levels by 2020. Doha and Dalian will have those gains for lunch — maybe just the first course. I’m glad that solar and wind power are “soaring” toward 2 percent of U.S. energy generation, but Doha and Dalian will devour all those gains for dinner. I am thrilled that you are now doing the “20 green things” suggested by your favorite American magazine. Doha and Dalian will snack on them all, like popcorn before bedtime.

But, as I said, this is not just about “them.” It is still very much about us. Peter Bakker is the chief executive of TNT, the biggest express delivery company in Europe. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index 2007 just listed TNT as the No. 1 company in terms of energy and environmental practices. Mr. Bakker, whom I met in China, told me this story:

“We operate 35,000 trucks and 48 aircraft in Europe. We just bought two Boeing 747s, which, when fully operational, will do nine round trips every week between our home base in Liège [Belgium] and Shanghai. They leave Liège only partly full and every day fly back to Europe as full as you can stuff them with iPods and computers. By our calculations, just these two 747s will use as much fuel each week as our 48 other aircraft combined and emit as much CO2.”

That’s why we’re fooling ourselves. There is no green revolution, or, if there is, the counter-revolution is trumping it at every turn. Without a transformational technological breakthrough in the energy space, all of the incremental gains we’re making will be devoured by the exponential growth of all the new and old “Americans.”

The War As We Saw It

A New York Times op-ed by some soon to be returning troops of 82nd Airborne. Here is just part of it but the entire op-ed is worth reading.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Soularize 2007 in the Bahamas

Two Years in the Planning - Less Than 90 Days to Register
Host Spencer Burke has popped the creative cork off Soularize the original /catalytic emerging church gathering

Key Note Line Up of the Decade
N.T. Wright, Brennan Manning, Rita Nakashima Brock, and Fr. Richard Rohr

International Conversation and Venue - Nassau Bahamas
Take advantage of off season rates and ease of travel for our international friends

Five Learning Modes of Engagement
Keynote, Small Groups, Extended Experience, Reflective Time, 24/7 Web Collaboration

Varied Relational Environments
Private Island, Art Studios, Swim w/Sharks, Social Network, Lecture Hall, Limited to 500 attendees

Totally Wired Conference
Free T-1 wireless access, Live Web Interface with polling, chat, webcams, whiteboard

Most Progressive and Diverse Workshop Facilitators
Frank Viola, Becky Garrison, Karen Ward, Mark Scandrette, Kristyn Komarnicki, Michael Dowd, Barry Taylor, Dwight Friesen, Jim Palmer, Gareth Higgins, Ron Martoia...

Knowing that all have limited budgets to invest in annual learning opportunities, we hope you take opportunity to compare the Soularize learning experience with a few of the other national learning opportunities happening this coming year. Perhaps you'll be as surprised as we were that an event in the Bahamas is actually cheaper than attending an event in San Diego (see comparison chart) . So if you're looking for a more progressive, independent, and cost-effective learning experience in a tropical setting, perhaps you should consider joining us for the Soularize learning experience.

What makes Soularize unique is the learning environment. We create a casual, safe and interactive place where you can wrestle with issues your church and faith are facing today. You'll engage in a wide variety of learning experiences like facilitated groups of less than 50 people, hands-on learning experiences, main sessions with keynote speakers, and workshops. Open times in the schedule offer chances for you to reflect and refresh in a hammock overlooking the Caribbean.

Come and lend your voice, your experience, and your dreams as we explore the Evolving Church - rethinking and reinventing what the Church could be in years ahead. Learn more - http://www.soularize.net/

Update: Passport Application Required for travel to the Bahamas!

Register Today

Here are some of my photos from the Soularize 2007 planning gathering and some photos from Boston in 2003.

Signs of Emergence is now available in North America

Sings of Emergence is now out in Canada and the United States. I reviewed the U.K. version of the book on my blog but with the American release of the book, I thought it was worth a repost. I also submitted a review into TheOoze for the book but I think it is still in the publishing backlog.

I got the North American release of the book the other day and I was blown away to see an endorsement by me for the book. It wasn't shocking that I endorsed it but for the first time in print, my name was spelled correctly :-)

If you don't own the book, go out and get it.

A couple of years ago when The Complex Christ came out, I plopped down some puny Canadian dollars, exchanged them for British pounds and bought the book from Amazon UK and eagerly waited for it to be shipped across the Atlantic. When it did arrive in Canada, I had to plop down some more Canadian dollars, this time to the Canadian Borders Services Agency to free it from them. After paying three times what the book cost in shipping and duties, I sat down and started reading. The book was worth the cost and the wait.

The good news is that the book is being released in North America by Baker Publishing under the name Signs of Emergence with the easy to remember subtitle, A Vision for Church That Is Always Organic/Networked/Decentralized/Bottom-Up/Communal/Flexible/Always Evolving which means no more British pounds, no more voyages across the Atlantic, and no more donations to the Canadian treasury. The author, Kester Brewin is blogging at the official Signs of Emergence weblog so you can get a feel for his thinking and writing while you are waiting for your book to arrive (it doesn't ship in North America until July 1st). Since my copy is still The Complex Christ, I am going to refer to it as Signs of Emergence in this review but when I quote from it, it will be from The Complex Christ and use those page numbers.

The book is as complex as the topic he covers and each time I have read the book, different things have hit me. Because of my context of involvement with Resonate and Church of the Exiles right now, I'll concentrate on the ideas that from those perspectives.

Revolution vs. Evolution

What I was younger, I loved the idea of the revolution. One of my favorite books still is Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki and Gary Hamel's book Leading the Revolution had an early impact on me (for good and for bad). My own neighborhood has seen church closings and no new church plants coming in to replace them so it seems like a perfect time for a revolution to me. However Signs of Emergence reminds me that there is a different way to go and that is the path of evolution. It reminds me that we need to take a closer look at what kind of change we are asking for. Revolution brings about change but they also seed havoc, pain, and suffering as well. Is that the kind of change that the church needs to be looking at? Brewin says no and starting on page 25, he makes a powerful cause for evolution.

Our history, both ancient and modern, has been transfixed by the idea of revolution, of radical change precipitated quickly, requiring an uprising, an insurgence, a head of pressure and a focusing of force; demonstrations, coups d'etat, armed struggles, wars and regime changes. Warriors, dictators and their critics have been clear about it for centuries. Chairman Mao Zedong wrote that 'a revolution is not a dinner party. It cannot be so leisurely and gentle... It is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another'; Paul Virilio in Speed and Politics that 'revolution will soon be entirely reduced to a permanent assault on time. The man on the battlefield has no safety other than in suicidal entrance into the very trajectory of the speed of [the guns]'; and Napoleon that 'the strength of a revolutionary army should be evaluated as in mechanics, by its mass multiplied by its speed'. Through all their blood and violence many of our politicians seem to believe that these revolutions bring genuine transformation. Yet it is abundantly clear that materially, politically, psychologically and spiritually, violent change tends to shear, to break the whole as one surface part moves and leaves the rest of the body behind unaltered.

In his seminal work Future Shock, Alvin Toffler describes the psychological damage that occurs to people when they are overwhelmed by intense change. He talks about 'future shock' being a disease of change, a sickness that people suffer that not so much about the direction of change as the rate of it. Future shock, he says, 'grows out of the increasing lag between ... the pace of environmental change and limited pace of human response'. In other words, for our own health, we need change to occur not at revolutionary speeds demanded by power-wielding dictators or company board rooms, but at the evolutionary speeds of the empowered human body.

Party in response to Toffler's concerns, people have begun to see that the nature of change has been itself been required to change. If we are to transform the whole, and truly alter the very nature of things for good, then the mode of change cannot be revolution but evolution. A gradual development over a long period of time. As Robert Warren notes, 'A good case can be made for evolution being the best single word summary of an Anglican approach to change. It suggests creativity [and] responsiveness to present environment'.

The slowness of evolution certainly has a divine beauty about it with its gentle, unseen transformation so hard to plot yet so undeniable in its force. We would like change immediate effect -- we want revolution -- but God's ways are not our ways and God's thoughts are higher than our. Despite this, as we will see in the next chapter, we have projected our revolutionary tendencies onto God, and it is only as revelation has become clearer over time that we have seen that ours is not a God of violent uprising, but of slow, slow evolution. So since forever, and until whenever, those that have sought to change God's way have had to endure a prefix of...

Waiting [from the Vaux website]

As Sarah waited: Ninety years for a son to fulfill God's promise.We wait in hope for what we thought had been spoken to us.

As Moses waited: 40 years in the desert, being prepared by God to lead his people.We wait for emptiness and humility; for bravado to wither.

As Israel waited: 40 years of wandering, hungry, depressed, thirsting, unsure.We wait for the right time to act

As the Prophets waited: 1000 years of promises that God would raise up a Saviour.We wait for the signs that God has not forgotten.

As Mary waited: 9 months of her 14 years for the child of God.We feel the birth-pains, yet fear for the child.

As John the Baptist waited: Scanning the crowds for the one whose sandals he would not be worthy to untie.We long for an experience of the Divine

As Jesus waited: 30 years of creeping time.40 days in the desert of temptation.3 years of misunderstanding.3 days in the depths of hell.So we wait for God's time. Preparing the way.

Our turn to toil on leveling mountains and straightening paths.Our turn to watch the horizon.

Our turn to pass on the hope that He who promised is faithful and will come back.

What do we do as we wait. Signs points us to Walter Brueggemann's reminder that the first stage in this is grief which is not often popular in today's church culture where assurance and vision outweighs the acceptance that society no longer cares what is happening in most churches. Brewin asks and answers the question of where are the Jeremiah's of today, those to help us confront our grief in today's church. The answer is those are found on the fringes of the church culture.

Signs asks us another hard question and that is what if God no longer is interested in what we are doing? From pg 35 and 36.

Once we have grieved, our tear-washed eyes can then properly open to the shocking fact that God allowed this to happen. God allowed us to climb this little peak. The denial may be over, and the cover-ups exposed, but a deeper resistance still remains. How could God do this? In the midst of our waiting for the news, we meet this intractable issue: if we are seeking the new, then what we practicing was the old, and therefore God was not in what we were doing any more. God has moved on back down the mountain while we stayed up our comfortable hillock.

Such a divine departure is rightly shocking to us. We see an example of it described in Ezekial 10: God ups and leaves the temple. To a people that had become over-familiar and blase about God's presence with them in the temple, to a people who had become complacent about their special status as The Chosen, God showed God's holiness. God got us and left. Bored by our ramblings, navel gazing conversation about internal tinkering, God hung up. God walked off, displacing a true, holy freedom that shouts clearly over its shoulder that no temple, no place, no people, no box, no church, no agenda, no theological position will ever require me to stay where I don't want, be co-opted into something I only half agree with, be pressed into the service of some cause you made up because I AM who I AM. And SLAM, the door shuts and we left alone to wonder about God's holiness, God's transcendence, God's otherness, God's separateness, God's difference.

As we enter this dangerous place of stopping and waiting we must face the possibility of experiencing God's disinterest. Where we have proclaimed "God is in this" we must be prepared that God can and does leave. One need only consider for a second the other point where God was unable to leave any ministry, any place, any attempt at work, and we see that it would quickly draw us down the same path to the god who, not being allowed to permit suffering, intervened every time a child stepped toward a sharp object.

God will not be co-opted into our programs. And this actually turns out to be the foundation of huge hope. For if God could no leave, then we would be bound and trapped for ever inside structures that God "might just be blessing".

Power and the City

Power and influence is a huge part of the evangelical church. Robert Webber said in an interview with Vineyard's Cutting Edge magazine years ago that evangelicalism was about two things. Big buildings and influential pastors. A couple of weeks ago, I read this Washington Post story on Baltimore Raven's head coach Brian Billick. Here is the quote that stuck out in my mind, "But for generations, the mandate of the NFL coach had remained unchanged: Get as much power as you can and don't let go."

Brewin is calling us to do it differently. How do we walk away from power and re-orientate ourselves as the church in the world. On page 45 Kester's call is for us to become born again.

The Church now seems to stand in the same place as God stood 2500 years ago: misrepresented, accused of bigotry, portrayed as narrow minded and in love with power, only interested in buildings, ready to smite the dirty and sinful, over-occupied with sex, and ready to lend support to unjust wars... And so we must do as God did, as Christ commanded and exemplified: we must be born again. Become nothing, removed of strength and power and voice and means and language...

We must re-emerge and grow up again in the place we are meant to serve. Understand it, learn from it, be in it, love it, listen to it, wait 30 years before speaking to it. We must, like God, discard any thoughts that revolution is going to effect change in the Church or our world, and become dedicated to change by evolution.

Brewin's advice to the church is to leave power behind and take a different path forward. In that he is calling those in North America anyway, to take the path less followed. How do we do that? According to Kester, one of the ways is to engage in an urban theology. He reminds us that over half of us in the world live in the cities, our theology remains quite rural as it was developed largely before urbanization. My own tradition of Methodism early history was dominated by John Wesley and his horse as they traveled from town to town across England and most of my current tribe's congregations are located in small cities and towns across Canada (well from Quebec west). It is going to take a major rethinking of what urban theology is going to look like.

In his discussion of how the cities have changed into complex, bottom up systems, Brewin says this (pg 63),

There are still those who cry for revolution, for a revival that will change things in a snap, make everything OK as thousands flock to church... But the days for revolution are over. The cry for revival is too often a cry for abdication: you do it all, God. Well God has done God's bit, it is the systems that now need to change. This is the faith we have signed up for: the Church as the body of Christ where we have real parts to play, real responsibilities. We must not act rashly--diving in to this or that. We must do as God did. Stop. Wait. Grieve. Strip away power, might, pretence at knowledge, riches... and be born again. As Einstein famously said, "The same consciousness that created a problem can not solve it."

So will we be the ones to solve the problem? My ego wants me to say yes but deep down I know better. What is the impact of the things like Vaux that have come out of the period of waiting and grieving? Brewin offers an interesting comparison. Punk music. As he says (pg 71), punk was never going to be the future of music but what it did was the give permission to those who did create the future of music. He points out the unsustainable energy needed to create alternative worship (something that I can relate to with the worship.freehouse) but does point out that even if like the Sex Pistols and it does implode and burn out, it has (along with other expressions of the emerging church in the west) clear the way for other things to come along and pick up the torch.

For whatever the future will look like, the book does call us back to the present. For many of us that is in the city. (pg 106).

We must learn to penetrate our communities and penetrate our workplaces. We must learn to penetrate our cities and find God in them, for the cities are our true destiny. They are where it will not be God alone, but god and us and him and her and white and black and rich and poor and illiterate and abused and day and straight and Protestant and Catholic and the whole feast of life. And only in the city can we get that message. It is not an easy message to tune into with so much white noise and hatred and difficulty and screwed up and transport and mugging and division...But with practice, with a commitment to engaging positively with the city and looking to catch it doing good rather than always on the lookout to knock it down, we can begin to see glimpses of why God is committed to the city as our future: because the redeemed city is the final expression of humanity and divinity in co-operation. It is the conjunction of God's creation with our creativity, where we are building something together.

How do we interact in the city? There are a couple of ways we can interact with others around us. Perhaps the most popular is in a market economy. Just a grocer sells you ice cream and vegetables, churches offer you up religious services and goods for a price (tithe). Before one mocks that idea, I worked on a staff where we articulated it in those terms and so do many other churches across the western world. As Brewin points out, the most pernicious part of the market exchange is that every person needs to justify their existence and contribution to the market economy or in the lingo of the church, be aligned around the purpose/vision/mission... There is another way and that is the idea of the gift. His tie of worship to a gift was breath of fresh air for me. For too long the church growth movement has seen worship as a commodity which was to be traded for attendance and tithe. I remember talking to one worship leader who unabashedly would boast that if you gave people the worship style they wanted, the more money they would give. He was probably right in his analysis of the "transaction" but as Kester reminds us, there is another use for worship other then generating revenue and that is the metaphor and idea of the "gift".

Looking back at to the reasons why a number of us started Vaux in the first place, it was because the churches we were part of gave no opportunity for us to give. Sitting a huge church full to the brim with about 600 people, mostly in their early twenties, many of them working as actors, writers, directors, graphic artists, and musicians, it seemed extraordinary that unless they were able to preach or play the guitar, their gifts were not welcome. There was no space within the normal weekly services for any of these other talents, yet it was these talents that were talents that were put to use in the marketplace week in, week out. Perhaps it was not less surprising that people were coming to church with an attitude of getting rather than giving, because there was actually no room in the highly structured, highly dictatorial services fortheir gifts to be given.

Speaking more on the idea of gifts and worship, Brewin captures what I think is a lost truth in the emerging church and our existence in a market driven church economy.

"Alternative worship" is not multimedia worship. It is about allowing people to use their gifts so that they can worship with integrity. It would be folly to pretend that by installing PA systems, video projectors and screens, and shipping in tea-lights by the tonne every church would suddenly be "doing alternative worship". Buying a labyrinth or some ambient music and video loops doesn't get you any closer to the original spirit of the movement, because what Vaux would call "alternative worship" cannot be bought into; it is not about commodity but gift, and gifts must come from those taking part, not be bussed in from outside.

In the Emergent Church, acts of worship will spring from the economy of gift. They will not be products that can be bought or sold, or commodities to be consumed in exchange for some devotion. However, we must not restrict our thoughts on gift to services. Thinking more widely about cities, they are massively dominated by market exchange - economic beats driven by capital and profit in ways that small villages a not. The Church would be foolish to try to play the city at this game and boost its "market share", "reposition itself itself in the market" or "rebrand" its message with modern advertising and marketing methods, for the essence of what we have cannot be bought or sold. It is not to be consumed and is not a lifestyle choice. Its truth will not be fully told by glamorous girls with smiley pearly teeth, and eight out of ten people who express a preference will not express its depth and pain with richness or sorrow. In the face of the saturating and all encompassing urban market, which Hyde rightly associates with empty death that leads nowhere, the church must stand as a beacon of generosity, as a hub for gift exchange and all the relational enrichment that brings.

Of course he does cover the topic of dirt which gained notoriety after Steve Collins wrote about it in a 2002 column in Ship of Fools. I never found that much offense in the service (although back in 2002 when I first posted about it many did find a lot of offense with it). While the chapter was something to reflect on it, it does tie back into all of the other themes and ideas of the book and that is that the church finds itself in a different world and place than it has been for 2000 years and that is a missional movement that is often underground and back in amongst the city. Life is not as black and white as it once was (or perhaps as some in the church saw it then) and the nuances to live in the city are many at times contradictory.

I think I have read the book probably 20 times and I will soon retire the book as soon as Signs of Emergence comes out in North America for no other reason to give it's battered binding a must needed break. If I had a list of the ten most important books for the emerging church and for the church in general, I think this one would definitely be on it. You can pre-order your copy from Amazon.com now, you will be glad you did.

Related Links

• Signs of Emergence: Buy from Amazon.com Amazon.ca :: Ships July 1, 2007
• Official website and weblog: kester.typepad.com/signs/. Some of the prayers and liturgies in the book can be found in an earlier form (pre-evolutionary?) at http://www.vaux.net/.
• Steve Collin's visualization of an urban church
• Len Hjarlmason writes on the urbanization of faith here which points to an article written on the topic back in 1973.

Technorati tags: Signs of Emergence, Kester Brewin, urban, church, Christianity, emerging church

The Denial Machine

CBC's The Fifth Estate has posted an amazing 40 minute piece on how the White House and the energy company's are spinning the issue on Global Warming. It also draws some links between how energy companies are using the same tactics (and the same P.R. firm) of when big tobacco was trying to tell us that smoking had no impact on our health. It is also scary to see that the same guy who advises George Bush on environmental spin, is advising Stephen Harper on language (even if he regrets it now). It is well worth your time to watch.

BTW, whoever it is at the CBC who allows CBC content to go on YouTube and Google Video, well done.

Live Earth

Does anyone else find that Live Earth which unlike Live 8 has no grassroots movement to go along with it seems to personify the worst in celebrity activism?  My favorite is the tip on the Live Earth website that suggests you don't fly because of the impact on the planet.  I wonder how all of the musical stars got to the global concerts?   I agree with Bono and Bob Geldorf that it is a wasted even that would have been far more effective if it was used to build a movement to pressure world leaders to set emission caps.

Technorati tags: Live Earth, music, environment, greenhouse gases

2007 Summer Reading List

I have been reading Rebecca Blood's excellent collection of Summer Reading Lists and after putting in a big order to Amazon.ca, I decided to create my own. In no particular order...

• No Future Without Forgiveness by Archbishop Desmond Tutu :: I picked this up this spring and read it again and I forgot what an amazing book this is and a story of living out one's faith in the most troubling of situations.
• Soul Graffiti by Mark Scandrette :: One of the best books I have read this year and it wrestles with the question of how to actually live out the teaching of Jesus in a post-Christian world.
• The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne :: A book of theology and stories of how those that make up the Simple Way have lived among the poor of Philadelphia.
• Organic Community: Creating a Place Where People Naturally Connect by Joe Myers: Community is a fundamental life search and one of the key aspects people look for in a congregation. But community can’t be forced, controlled, or easily created. The problem is that churches are too focused on developing programs instead of concentrating on environments where community will spontaneously emerge.
• An Emergent Manifesto of Hope edited by Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt :: I thought the book had some excellent chapters as well as some weaker ones (all multi-authored books suffer from this) but as a whole, it was worth reading, even for us non-Americans who get a glimpse of how the American emerging church sees itself.
• The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer-Dixon :: The book is about how society will deal with increasing costs to get oil out of ground and the challenges and opportunities that will bring but it could as well be read in light of any context going through any great change. (My review can be found here)
• The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson :: A way of sacrifice. A way of failure. A way on the margins. A way of holiness. All of these ways prepared the "way of the Lord" that became incarnate and complete in Jesus. But somewhere along the line, Peterson reminds us that we have lost the "way".
• Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson :: There has been a lot of books out there criticizing contemporary media for much of societies ills but Johnson makes the contrarian argument quite convincing. Johnson shatters the conventional wisdom about pop culture as pabulum, showing how video games, television shows and movies have become increasingly complex. Furthermore, he says, consumers are drawn specifically to those products that require the most mental engagement.
• How (Not) to Speak of God by Pete Rollins :: Not the easiest book to read but a powerful theological and philosophical treatise on the emerging church.
• Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewin :: It used to be called The Complex Christ but a new continent and publisher have given it a new identity as Signs of Emergence. One of the best books on the emerging church and now new to North America. You can read my review of the book here.

Suggestions or feedback? Leave them in the comments below.

Technorati tags: Summer Reading List, reading, books, theology, church, Christianity

Contextless Links

• Why the world needs and open confident America
• Jonny Baker writes about a missional agency for the emerging church from his experiences with CMS
• The end of cargo crate Christianity?
• The New York city parking shuffle
• A Brief History of Economic Time :: The underlying expectation -- that the present is supposed to be better than the past -- is a new phenomenon in history. No 18th-century politician would have asked "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" because it never would have occurred to anyone that they ought to be better off than they were four years ago.
• Great Lakes under siege :: A recent report by Environment Canada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency paints a mixed picture of the lakes, acknowledging partial success in cleaning up over the last 30 years but also revealing new problems - some of which that likely can't be fixed.  It will be almost impossible to eradicate the 300 non-native species that have invaded the Great Lakes basin, and new chemicals are being identified in the waters all the time, experts say. "Sometimes I'm a little bit concerned that the Great Lakes have slid to the back of environmental concerns," McGuinty said in an interview earlier this week.  "It's really important that we keep the Great Lakes water quality on the national agenda."  McGuinty called on Ottawa to spearhead a meeting of Canadian and American federal, provincial and state officials, which he said would go a long way toward better protecting a resource that's being taken for granted.  "What I'd love the federal government to do is take on the whole idea of a national clean water summit," he said.  "It is a tremendous resource, it is something that people around the world recognize as being a kind of crown jewel of the North American ecosystem and we have to continue to work together to protect it." Canada has been lagging behind its American counterparts in cleaning up the Great Lakes and it's time the federal government stepped up its commitments, said Aaron Freeman, policy director for Environmental Defence.

RIP Lawnmower: 1991-2007

In 1988 my mom and I drove over to CO-OP and bought our a lawnmower. It outlived my mom but couldn't outlive the One Tonne Challenge which mortally wounded it as I tried to be more environmentally caring and installed a universal mulching blade on it. I never knew that you should actually replace the whole hub (it never said that on the package) which tossed out the balance for the mower, cracking the gas tank. Epoxy worked for a while but the crack spread to the point where I couldn't fix it and it was time to replace it (the engine still purrs) after 16 years of abuse (Maggi hates it and actually bites it whenever it is started and actually has to be chained up for her and the mowers safety). After looking at a push mower (good for the environment but bad for cutting really large lawns), I went to Wal-Mart and bought a mulching rear bag mower they had for cheap. I know some of you are going to hate me for shopping at Wal-Mart but it was over $100 (or a third) cheaper which is crazy and I am not sure how anyone competes with that on the low end mowers. They were cheaper than most other places electric mowers let alone side discharge ones.

Before you assault me for getting a gas mower instead of a push mower, we did take a long look at them and talked to some friends of ours who have smaller lawns than ours who all said not to bother with one on our lawn. While everyone is advertising electric mowers as eco-friendly, some of what I read pointed out that if your province or state used a lot of dirty coal plants to produce electricity and you have a big yard, you undermine a lot of what you have done by switching to low wattage bulbs. Also, in the proud Canadian tradition of talking about the environment but taking no action, we are naming my new mower, Kyoto.

In the long run I think it may just be easier to keep a herd of sheep.

Contextless Links

• How doctors think from the New Yorker :: The mistake that Croskerry made is called a “representativeness” error. Doctors make such errors when their thinking is overly influenced by what is typically true; they fail to consider possibilities that contradict their mental templates of a disease, and thus attribute symptoms to the wrong cause.
• In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison.
• How Southwest (and others) out innovated their competitors :: Southwest pioneered the change from the hub-and-spoke model, which made sense in a highly regulated environment, to a point-to-point model which highly utilizes the expensive aircraft. Its not that the incumbents didn't understand how Southwest was doing it, its just that for a number of reasons, from their inflexible labor policies to their addiction to long-haul revenue, they couldn't match the Southwest model. As a result, Southwest has been able to generate more profits over the last 30 years than all of its incumbent competitors combined.
• Fired US Attorney speaks out :: United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.
• John Edwards to continue campaign despite the recurrance of cancer in his wife Elizabeth :: The couple, married 30 years, have a grown daughter, Cate, and two young children, Emma Claire and Jack. Their teenage son, Wade, died in 1996 when high winds swept his Jeep off a North Carolina highway.  "We've been confronted with these kind of traumas and struggles already in our life," Edwards said. "When this happens you have a choice — you can go and cower in the corner or you can go out there and be tough."

Contextless Links

• Michael Geist is crunching the numbers over the US government's copyright complaints against Canada.
• A loyal GOP supporter.
• Stations of the Cross uploaded to Thinker Labs
• Scott is bitter other church planters are cashing out and he hasn't found any buyers yet :-)  Speaking of cashing out, here are things to think about before you write your book.
• Wikipedia has a new list of important emerging church figures on it.  Some Aussies, Americans, and U.K. on the list.  Thankfully they kept those Canadians off the list.
• Pernell is talking about the shifts that the Freeway is going through as it evolves and grows up.
• Rick Bennett on Dobson and global warming :: It has nothing to do with science, truth or theology. This crowd sees that a refocus on a different agenda will greatly affect their own bottom line. They will no longer be able to send out a scary letter about Liberal Agendas and how the family and nation are being destroyed knowing the dollars will fly in. They know that Evangelicals concerned with the environment and war are bad for business.
• 12 Shocking Facts About Christianity ::  the total cost of Christian outreach averages $330,000 for each and every newly baptised person.
• Emergent Village and Full Communion
• Brian McLaren thanks God for his enemies
• Former Saskatchewan Finance Minister speaks the truth on equalization :: It doesn't sound like
• brandonomics :: The mixed strategy and success of Yahoo! and Google to brand their offerings
• Al Gore has a weblog.
• 11 ways to speed up your Mac
• Attention Amway shoppers, P&G's logo isn't satanist
• Cost of Iraq war?  The 82nd Airborne is no longer operationally ready.  Army officials concede that the unit is not capable of getting at least an initial force of several hundred to a war zone within 18 hours, a standard once considered inviolate.  The declining readiness of the brigade is just one measure of the toll that four years in Iraq — and more than five years in Afghanistan — have taken on the United States military. Since President Bush ordered reinforcements to Iraq and Afghanistan in January, roughly half of the Army’s 43 active-duty combat brigades are now deployed overseas, Army officials said. A brigade has about 3,500 soldiers.  Mapping the violence in Baghdad.
• How does Zimbabwae stay afloat? :: The government estimates the annual inflation rate at 1,700%, but Western economists believe the real figure is closer to 3,500%, and rising fast. For the average citizen, that would mean that a can of coffee today would cost about four times the price paid last week. Today's morning bus ride to work might cost about double tomorrow — that's if the bus company can find enough gas to fill the tank, and the cash with which to buy it. Harare stores now post prices in U.S. dollars, to save their staff the hours of work involved in calculating prices in Zimbabwe dollars that change daily.
• Why does home ownership cause unemployment? :: Wherever people seem particularly keen to own their own homes—as in the United Kingdom, Spain, and some U.S. states—employment suffers as a result. English economist Andrew Oswald has shown that across European countries, and across U.S. states, high levels of home ownership are correlated with high levels of unemployment. More conventional factors such as generous welfare benefits or high levels of unionization don't explain unemployment nearly as well as the tendency to own houses. Renting your home and staying flexible do wonders for your chances of always finding an interesting job to do.

Off the Grid

A little ironic but George W. Bush's Crawford ranch is totally off the grid and extremely environmentally friendly.  Maybe he knows the same thing about his energy policy that the rest of us know... Interesting article on the eco-design of the ranch.  I enjoy his reference to the "whining pool". via

Technorati Tags : environment, George+W+Bush, architecture, Crawford+Texas, energy

An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore

For my birthday, I wanted Al Gore's book and DVD, An Inconvenient Truth. I told Wendy that if she didn't get it for me, we would just go out and purchase it so she got me something else and it was going to be something that we just picked up together. From the Reimers, I was given a gift certificate for McNally Robinson which fit in perfectly with my plans to get the book and DVD. Wendy called over and had the last copy of each set aside and I dropped over and bought them. She also called around town to most of the DVD outlets that sold the DVD and it was sold out all over the city.

 

The DVD is essentially a video of his Apple Keynote  presentation with enhanced video. A couple of times during the DVD he breaks out and offers up some personal reflection.. As dry as the format could be, both Al Gore, the photography, and video make it interesting and worth reading. The wooden Al Gore from the 2000 election has disappeared. Gore hired one of the best design firms out there and the results from a design perspective are stunning as is his presentation.

 

On Sunday night a bunch of us were talking about global warming and it came up that the religious right is against the fight against global warming and we can't figure out why. I know there is a train of thought that says that the more we trash the earth, the sooner that Jesus will come back but I find it hard to believe that it is a wide spread belief. So what is it? Is it because Al Gore is a liberal and the right hates all things liberal? The idea that the world is only 4200 years old (as stated in a funny letter to the editor in Monday's Star Phoenix).  Is it just a vast left wing conspiracy that has sucked in over overwhelming amount of the world's scientists?  Or is the oil lobby just as effective as the cigarette lobby?  Remember these ads?  (More doctors smoke Camels than any other brand )  The odd thing is that I have seen some polls that say that conservative Christians are the most resistent to the idea of climate change which non-Christian conservatives don't have nearly the problem with it.

 

Updated: The Washington Post has an article on this...

Dobson , the founder of Focus on the Family, and two dozen other conservative Christian leaders, including Gary L. Bauer, Tony Perkins and Paul M. Weyrich , sent the board a letter this month denouncing the association's vice president, the Rev. Richard Cizik, for urging attention to global warming.

The letter argued that evangelicals are divided on whether climate change is a real problem, and it said that "Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time," such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

If Cizik "cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals on environmental issues, then we respectfully suggest that he be encouraged to resign his position with the NAE," the letter concluded.

The Rev. Leith Anderson , the association's president, said yesterday that the board did not respond to the letter during a two-day meeting that ended Friday in Minneapolis. But, he said, the board reaffirmed a 2004 position paper, "For the Health of the Nations," that outlined seven areas of civic responsibility for evangelicals, including creation care along with religious freedom, nurturing the family, sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, human rights and restraining violence.

Good for Leith Anderson for standing firm.  I still don't see how environmentalism is a distraction to family values but if you have some ideas, leave a comment below. 

 

Updated: Newsweek has some theories on why Dobson is so upset.

What had Cizik really done? Why would Dobson, arguably the most powerful evangelical in politics, care about the statements of a tree hugger? Beltway evangelicals have a few ideas. First, Cizik has started to publicly embrace solutions to the environmental crisis more commonly associated with the left than the right. In other words, he's thought to be a Democratic sympathizer, and in an election season, displays of evangelical unity are critical. Second, and related, Cizik gives the impression in the press that evangelicals are divided in their priorities, an impression picked up with relish by the national media and disputed by some insiders. "Most evangelicals are concerned with the war on terror and with raising teenagers in an environment saturated with sex and drugs," explains Michael Cromartie, vice president of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center. "It's not so much that evangelicals are anti-green, it's that green is not a priority for them."

Now we know.

 

For more information:

• Al Gore's official website and his personal weblog.
• IMDB entry
• An Inconvenient Truth official website
• The Climate Project website
• Purchase DVD from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca
• Purchase book from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca (the book has many of the amazing images from the DVD in it.)
• An Inconvenient Truth on Wikipedia
• Republican Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have said that we have reached a turning point on global warming. (yes I just called Joe Lieberman a Republican on purpose).
• The Washington Post's David Ignatius is saying the same thing.
• The Evangelical Climate Initiative

So what are we doing about it? Well we replaced all of our lightbulbs with compact flourescent bulbs. We turn down our heat in winter and we don't have an air conditioner in the summer and have low energy ceiling fans to partially cool our house in the summer but mostly we just complain. We have one large compost bin in our backyard and stopped bagging our grass clippings. We are replacing our van this year with a more fuel efficient car. While I am not allowed to walk home from work after a late evening shift, I have been walking when possible. The next couple of years will see some new windows in the house and better insultation upstairs. We aren't there yet but we are getting closer. I have also been harassing my local MPs (those that can read anyways) about the issue.

Anyways, if you haven't seen the movie, make a promise to see it and decide for yourself.  If you are wondering what difference it can make, I think of the tremendous change in the political climate of Canada over global warming in the last year which no one saw.

Here is the trailer for An Inconvenient Truth.