So, I just noticed we're a mere 3 weeks away from the deadline of being able to pay the standard rate to attend this conference March 20-22, before the price gets jacked up. Are we going to attempt to go as a group to get the group rate? That would save about $40 or so per person. But I imagine EVERYONE in this group would have to commit to attending the conference in order for us to do that (a minimum of 10 people). I still have yet to call the Center for Action and Contemplation to ask about volunteering to work the event, which I assume gets you in free (but would you really be able to participate or would you be busy working?).
Then there's also the issue that I, personally, wouldn't be able to volunteer for Sunday the 22nd as it conflicts with other "home church commitments" in Edgewood.
Just checking in with everyone. Comments?
Thanks,
Troy
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Follow up thoughts from last night
Hi all,
I mentioned an article during the discussion last night. Here is the article:
http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=4607
How about that for keeping one another accountable in the area of giving!
Revisiting the question posted last night about how the church should/can respond to the economic situation, I had this quick thought. We started to address it last night, but stress often comes with financial hardship. So, another way the church can respond is to pay special attention to dealing with stress and providing resources for folks to deal with stress.
I mentioned an article during the discussion last night. Here is the article:
http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=4607
How about that for keeping one another accountable in the area of giving!
Revisiting the question posted last night about how the church should/can respond to the economic situation, I had this quick thought. We started to address it last night, but stress often comes with financial hardship. So, another way the church can respond is to pay special attention to dealing with stress and providing resources for folks to deal with stress.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Meeting on Tuesday!
Don't forget that we're meeting this Tuesday at 5 pm at Brickyard Pizza on Central. I'm looking forward to some great discussion as usual. Hope to see you all there!
Monday, January 12, 2009
Good article on postmodernism from The Reporter
I read this interesting take on Postmodernism and the church.
http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=4662
I love this quote in one of the first paragraphs, " We're and organic community in which relationship is the tie that binds, not doctrine. The more you build relationship across difference, the more difference becomes OK."
Your thoughts?
http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=4662
I love this quote in one of the first paragraphs, " We're and organic community in which relationship is the tie that binds, not doctrine. The more you build relationship across difference, the more difference becomes OK."
Your thoughts?
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Understanding One Another
Recently, I was reading one theologian's critique of another's ideas concerning a very intriguing topic which many postmoderns can readily identify with (I won't mention the topic so as to stay on the point I want to address).
At the beginning of my faith journey, at that point where I became aware of the idea that there could possibly be something going on beyond my own existential purview, I entered the Christian faith with a fairly sizable naivete. I assumed that there was Christianity, period, and not the multifarious religious scene I have now become quite adept to. While it didn't take me too long to figure out that there were many expressions of this faith that could be adopted, I had already fallen into the trap that there was only one valid take on the matter. This produced not only grief in my own spiritual development, but in those of others in my midst as well.
From this newly conceived and appropriated notion, issued a multitude of possibilities. Before I knew it, even though my own particularized conception of faith in Jesus Christ was still in its infant form, I was being challenged to rethink several of the stances I had already assimmilated from the specific tradition of Christianity I was already familiar with. I now realized I had a new problem: what appeared to be true at first glance was now open to serious scrutiny by many others bearing the name of Jesus, along with my own new questions that were popping up within my own mind.
Back to the theologians. I think that because I have now traversed much of the expansive perspectival divide (which seems to be still growing as far as I can tell) in terms of how Christianity is seen and lived out by so many with "competing" views, I can also now better sense when two theologians are discussing opposing points and are doing so without even considering that they may not be speaking the same language in terms of the meanings they are pouring into their words and then, subsequently, attempting to convey their very precise and nuanced ideas. And so they both go back and forth, back and forth, to no discernable or profitable end as best as I can tell (except, perhaps, in their own eyes).
Isn't this something all of us Christians, or, more broadly speaking, humans do on a regular basis with one another? How often do we stop to think about the real likelihood that we are not all as universally or generically situated in light of the many contributing and influencial forces that help in determining, at least in a parial way, what we are becoming like in very discriminate ways? I wanted to, somehow, sit these two people down and offer them what little perspective I might be able to (at least try to help them to see a little more cleary that which their own very specific disciplines wouldn't let them see) on how they might be misunderstanding one another from an outsider's point of view. Then, at least, their arguing might produce more intellegible results for those attempting to take in what they were attempting to communicate to each other.
Through this incident, I find that I myelf need to make more concerted efforts which are necessary in not only trying to communicate more cleary with others, but also to really give them my focused attention while at the same time remembering that there is so much more involved than meets the eye to the persons they already are in themselves. Have you experienced this kind of relational awakening before with the attending humility (or embarrassment) it produces?
At the beginning of my faith journey, at that point where I became aware of the idea that there could possibly be something going on beyond my own existential purview, I entered the Christian faith with a fairly sizable naivete. I assumed that there was Christianity, period, and not the multifarious religious scene I have now become quite adept to. While it didn't take me too long to figure out that there were many expressions of this faith that could be adopted, I had already fallen into the trap that there was only one valid take on the matter. This produced not only grief in my own spiritual development, but in those of others in my midst as well.
From this newly conceived and appropriated notion, issued a multitude of possibilities. Before I knew it, even though my own particularized conception of faith in Jesus Christ was still in its infant form, I was being challenged to rethink several of the stances I had already assimmilated from the specific tradition of Christianity I was already familiar with. I now realized I had a new problem: what appeared to be true at first glance was now open to serious scrutiny by many others bearing the name of Jesus, along with my own new questions that were popping up within my own mind.
Back to the theologians. I think that because I have now traversed much of the expansive perspectival divide (which seems to be still growing as far as I can tell) in terms of how Christianity is seen and lived out by so many with "competing" views, I can also now better sense when two theologians are discussing opposing points and are doing so without even considering that they may not be speaking the same language in terms of the meanings they are pouring into their words and then, subsequently, attempting to convey their very precise and nuanced ideas. And so they both go back and forth, back and forth, to no discernable or profitable end as best as I can tell (except, perhaps, in their own eyes).
Isn't this something all of us Christians, or, more broadly speaking, humans do on a regular basis with one another? How often do we stop to think about the real likelihood that we are not all as universally or generically situated in light of the many contributing and influencial forces that help in determining, at least in a parial way, what we are becoming like in very discriminate ways? I wanted to, somehow, sit these two people down and offer them what little perspective I might be able to (at least try to help them to see a little more cleary that which their own very specific disciplines wouldn't let them see) on how they might be misunderstanding one another from an outsider's point of view. Then, at least, their arguing might produce more intellegible results for those attempting to take in what they were attempting to communicate to each other.
Through this incident, I find that I myelf need to make more concerted efforts which are necessary in not only trying to communicate more cleary with others, but also to really give them my focused attention while at the same time remembering that there is so much more involved than meets the eye to the persons they already are in themselves. Have you experienced this kind of relational awakening before with the attending humility (or embarrassment) it produces?
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