zoecarnate

Mike: I totally get the idea of redeeming drug culture for Jesus and ministering to those within it with a ‘tokin’ the Ghost’ motif. And I’m *also* fine with consenting adults - whether they have such a drug background or not - participating in worship celebrations where Jehovah-juana and Godka are in fresh supply. We’re free in Christ, y’know? But I have a question: What about the children? On the YouTube videos I see kids participating in your meetings, which is great as far as it goes - as we’vd discussed. But when you pass spiritual joints to little kids (like I saw on one of Ben’s India videos), don’t you think that *could* be sending them the wrong messages, like that it’s a good idea to start smoking stuff?

John: This is a valid question, Mike, and has been asked before. I think the example you gave (re: Ben in India) is a bit moot though: the person in the video simply looked like a child, but it was actually a crippled person with no legs, who really did need a toke of the Ghost considering the circumstances!

Mike: I’m not sure we’re talking about the same video, John. I mean this one, at around 5 minutes in. It sure looks like a little girl to me [Note: I just noticed this, so John hasn't had the opportunity to respond yet. I'll get the right/additional YouTube on here if he does.]:

John: You first have to understand something about what we are doing here before we tackle the subject of children. To the pure all things are pure. I am not “pretending” to smoke marijuana, I am REALLY getting blasted on the Holy Spirit by faith. I am not “pretending” to inject heroine, I am REALLY being infused by God’s presence. Obviously, I know the package is offensive, and to say this is not entirely intentional would be a lie. But you see, we are not trying to copy a worldly experience. We are offering the “real thing” which are the supernatural pleasures of Jesus Christ. Joy unspeakable (not humanly utterable).

Continue reading ‘Crowder & Morrell: Kids & Cocaine Jesus?’

Over the next several days, John and I will have a 3-4 part dialogue about some questions and concerns that occurred to me about their lives and ministry. Some are specific for them in their unique ministry, and others are general questions I’d have if I was talking to any itinerant prophetic minister or revivalist in this Spirit-saturated stream of faith. I learned a ton; read on…

Mike: So John, what do you’re your and Ben’s wives think about all this recent ministry? Particularly yours, John! I mean, with four kids and all, being out all the time at Holy Ghost House Parties with beautiful sisters in Christ all around…itinerant ministry of any kind can be tough, but poured out in this fun ‘party’ manifestation, I’ll bet it’s extra challenging. Too often we only hear from the ‘alpha-male’ front-line ministers (when the ministers happen to be male)…what do the wimmin think??

John: Not sure why you ask this, but I have a hunch … Of course, my wife can speak for herself [Ooh! Can we have her do a guest blog?], but she loves the wildness of God. She often gets more plastered in the love of God than I do. She has seen me dry, bored and performance oriented. And she very much prefers the joyful, whacked, spiritually inebriated John much better. It does wonders for a marriage when the two of you are actually happy all the time (not just pretending to be so). Understand for starters that we are NOT Pentecostal, just because we interact with Holy Spirit. So you have to do away with all those old AG/holy roller mindsets of dominating women and forcing them to play the part of pastor’s wife (Pentecostal churches on the whole don’t like us very much, by the way). By this, I mean we are not chauvinistic abusers who keep our wives’ heads covered, barefoot and pregnant. We do not take the Mars Hill approach at all in this regard. The first person I ever ordained was a woman. We think the entire family needs to be integrated into the things of the Spirit.

Continue reading ‘Crowder & Morrell Dialogue: What About the Fam? (Or, ‘Sex-Crazed Charismatics?’)’

What a week. First the mass-deadly Myanmar cyclone and their government’s bizarre response; now this: tens of thousands are feared dead in a China 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

I don’t know what to make of all this. Of course, nearly 150,000 people on this planet make the Great Transition daily; this in itself is nothing extraordinary. But suffering is different than ‘mere death;’ it is more, and it is right that it elicits a different - pained - response in us.

I don’t know what to make of all this. But I do know - no, sense is more accurate - a few things:

We are all interconnected - matter, energy, spirit & biosphere. Not one organism or object on this planet or in this galaxy can claim independence from everything else. Christians believe that in Christ–the risen, ascended, cosmic Christ-all things coinhere. God in Christ is the All in all. This idea - God’s integral permeation of all reality - is normally one of great beauty. But from one vantage point at least, it offers cold comfort when contemplating life’s shadow side - rape, murder, enslavement, torture, ecological degradation, ‘natural’ disaster.

Continue reading ‘Disaster & Interconnectivity, Action & Contemplation’

Sez early Emergent Village inspiration Brad Cecil:

“I hear comments like: Defining emergent is like “nailing Jell-O to the wall” and “postmodernism means a hundred different things”, I disagree - it isn’t all that hard to describe if you are listening and reading. Here are the simple basic ideas of what fueled the emergent conversation and friendships:
1. Post modern refers to the period after modernity. It appears to “us” that a significant epistemological shift is occurring - the likes of which we haven’t seen in 400 years.
2. Language is limited
3. Human concepts are limited
4. There is no place of irreducible certainty (foundation)
5. Considering the above it would be very difficult to convey absolute meaning using language and human concepts
6. Christian theology has become enslaved to the 1^st order assumptions of modernity and is far more Cartesian than Christian and has become ashamed of faith
7. A Reformation of recognition and repentance is needed
8. New theological thought is needed to free Christian theology from the enslavement of modernity and enlightenment assumptions and conversation and friendships would be more productive than developing imperatives.
9. This is just the beginning of the transition and a great deal of work and theological thought lay ahead for those who desire to join the conversation.”

Read more in his review of Why We’re Not Emergent. (By the way, I don’t see this as backing down in my vow to Wayne, as I’m just quoting! )

HT: Steve Knight in the EV Weblog

You know you’re doing something worthwhile when all the right people are denouncing you.

A couple of weeks ago Herescope denounced Jay Gary, Diana Butler-Bass, Brian McLaren and myself, who will be hanging out at the World Future Society’s annual conference in D.C. We’ll be talking about “The Future of the Religious Right” and of global Christian faith in general, but the Heroscope team sees our work as promoting “new theologies and practices,” and “disparaging…of biblical prophecy.” Somehow, they suspect that all this winds up “creating an evolutionary convergence” where we all sing Kumbaya and venerate Gaia and Easter bunnies. As if that’s a bad thing!

Moving along: I’ve already told you the kind of flack The Shack has been getting recently with the heresy-hunter websites. Well, as Steve Knight reports at Emergent Village, now our ‘ol pal Mark Driscoll is in on the action too (you can watch his eight-minute YouTube rant on the E.V. link). Apparently he’s mighty uncomfortable with the sacred feminine, anthropomorphic depictions of God, and the idea of the Trinity (and thus, human relatedness) as mutually submissive rather than chain-of-command hierarchical. Sigh. Co-publisher Wayne Jacobsen blogs his response to the question “Is The Shack Heresy?”

Of course Frank Viola has had his share of critique concerning Pagan Christianity–not all from shrill heresy hunters, but certainly enough of it. Well, Tim Dale over at Karis Productions produced this pretty funny spoof response:

I have two observations about all the shelling and attack from this past month: Most of the people above are friends of mine, and for the most part, we can all laugh this off (in the cases of Frank and Team Shack, they can laugh all the way to the bank, as these books have really struck a chord with most readers and have become best-sellers)–even if we don’t know whether to laugh or cry sometimes. Others, though, are not so fortunate–heresy-hunters can cost people their livelihoods.

I don’t have the privilege of knowing Peter Enns, but his story has been all over the blogosphere recently. As Christianity Today reports, Enns has been suspended from his teaching post at Westminster Theological Seminary for writing his 2005 book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, which takes a hard look at the messy, complex, and human aspects of Scripture from an evangelically-informed text criticism point of view. The Board of Trustees said:

“That for the good of the Seminary (Faculty Manual II.4.C.4) Professor Peter Enns be suspended at the close of this school year, that is May 23, 2008 (Constitution Article III, Section 15), and that the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) recommend the appropriate process for the Board to consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary. Further that the IPC present their recommendations to the Board at its meeting in May 2008.”

I understand that confessionally Christian schools are not as enamored with “freedom of thought at any cost” like their liberal arts counterparts; I get that evangelical higher learning institutions are trying to maintain a precarious balance between intellectual integrity and nurturing creedal faith commitments. All the same, Enns is not Bishop Spong or something–he’s asking questions about Holy Writ that the rest of the Church (and world at large) have been asking since the 19th century. Like it or not, those who read and love the Bible are going to begin pondering its more troubling aspects with greater honesty and ideological flexibility.

Heresy-hunting is far from the world’s worst problem. (Next time, I’m going to blog about sex trafficking. Please try to refrain from throwing yourself off a building.) Nonetheless, it is a downer. As I mused last year, sometimes I wonder why I even bother participating in this kind of ‘dialogue’–it all seems so insular. Sometimes I just want to throw my blog into the ocean (so to speak) and becoming a wandering hermit…with my wife and child, of course. But for now, I suppose I’ll leave everyone with an easily-rebuttable maxim: If you don’t have something kind to blog, don’t blog anything at all.

Related:

Mike Todd’s The Shack Film casting call

John MacArthur launches Nothing Must Change tour

Heretic Hunter video

Brad Cummings and Wayne J have something constructive to say about all of this in their Doctrine Police podcast at The God Journey

So my friend Wayne Jacobsen of The God Journey podcast (and co-publisher at Windblown Media, which you might’ve heard of ’cause of the runaway best-selling Trinitarian thriller The Shack) treated us with a visit yesterday, and Wayne is calling us to a fast from the ‘e-word’ in order to reach our truest ideals. Here’s what he said:

Mike, I think you missed my point in the questions I posed to you. There’s a difference, in my mind, between expressing your journey in ‘emerging ways’ and isolating that conversation as ‘Emergent.’ This term has moved way past describing emerging thinking on church life and has taken an identity as an organized group of people, identified spokespeople, and specific doctrine and agendas. Emergent is now a label that carries certain connotations and certainly some unfair accusations.

So my friend and former fellow communard, Johnny T commented on yesterday’s Why We’re Not Emergent post:

I dunno man…“Emergent” seems like just another denomination to me. As a group, they have their own “common” (more so than not)way at talking about and looking at things…just like everyone else…and like any denomintaion, they fall into the same traps that they make for themselves. (Just like individuals who place too much importance on why they are different)

While I agree, Johnny, that we all have traps we lay for ourselves (no matter what labels we share or shun), I’m not sure if it’s automatically a bad thing when lots of people (in this case, friends and followers of Jesus) begin thinking similar thoughts and taking similar actions and conversing amongst themselves. And I think the emerging conversation is actually more analogous to the charismatic movement in the 60’s-80’s than a denomination per se. The charismatic movement, interpreted by most participants as a move of the Holy Spirit, by and large touched people in whatever churches they were in. Whereas the early Pentecostal revivals made people leave their established churches (mainly because the ‘mother churches’ ostracized them, but no doubt too because the newly spiritually-gifted and enthused were likely quite fanatical in cases), the charismatic movement renewed already-existing churches for the most part. And a couple of denominations were also founded, like the Vineyard. But many stayed Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, etc…

Similarly today, most of us see ‘emergent’ as the life emerging on the spiritual trees we’re already on–the fresh life budding on Lutheran, Anabaptist, Presbyterian, Quaker, Anglican, house church, etc… trees. The outermost rung of the bark, as it were. Check this directory out to see what I mean. And it’s not just an insular kind of “We’re sticking to our tree” kind of thing. For me, one of the most beautiful and helpful things about the emerging conversation has been its function as a common ‘grammar’ if you will, a way of speaking that’s allowed me to respectfully dialogue with Christians from across the traditions spectrum–and it’s even taught me how to share and converse with people who (gasp!) aren’t even Christians. It’s an open table where nobody’s trying to convert, which was rare in all of the heavily denominated churches where I grew up, where everyone thought they had a corner market on “Truth.”

I might be into fulfilled covenant eschatology, but I still don’t see how Jesus’ prayer in John 17 has been realized with any kind of tangible fullness. “That we all be one” has been my heart’s longing for 15 years now, ever since I first found that passage as a teenager. On its best days (when we aren’t spending all of our energy trying to defend ourselves to a tiny-but-vocal group of online critics that we have zero actual relationship with), the emerging conversation is a stunning example of grassroots ecumenicism and unity-building in our shared living amidst God’s kingdom. And of course on its worst, we can be as prideful, cantankerous, quarrelsome and unhelpful as anyone else out there.

Here is Josh Brown’s take on whether emergent faith is ‘becoming another denomination.’ His whole series on this is worth reading–see

1 - An Introduction, 2 - A White Man’s World, 4- A Public Service Announcement on Friendship, 5 - We Hate Scripture

6 - The Bastard Child of Evangelicalism

Anyway, here’s the thing: I consider myself an emerging contributor and an emerging beneficiary. I think that the emerging conversation (and Emergent Village in particular) often get an undeserved bad rap among those for whom the conversation is not helpful. But all the same–unlike Michael Vick–I don’t feel like I have any particular dogs in any particular fights. I can let all this go tomorrow; it’d be sad, but my guess is it’ll eventually happen–whether next year or in 10 years. Addiction to permanence is not my goal. Like I said yesterday, “I’ve been on a journey in, through, and toward a Christ-transformed reality before I began naming it in this way, and will likely be if and when this way of articulating things ceases to be helpful. But right now, that I do find it helpful.”

Pete Rollins has a new website up and running, courtesy the way-cool-I-hope-to-work-with-them-sometime folks at Paraclete Press.

(HT: TJ)

I’m looking forward to The Fidelity of Betrayal, Pete!

Gareth, when are you gonna get a redesigned site?

Two years ago today, my life-long friend & love Jasmin and I tied the knot. It was a grand affair: Around 180 friends, family, and raconteurs. Our ceremony was eclectic, blending the best from our open and participatory house church tradition with certain timeless elements for accessibility’s sake. Our wedding was co-officiated by Destiny Image Publishers‘ Vice President Don Milam, and international man of mystery Patrick Burke. Music was provided by the late, lamented Josh Irby Band, and his brother (my best friend and Best Man) Seth Irby, as well as his sister Bethany (…sense a trend here?) We had zillions of friends ushering, bartending, catering, and the whole nine yards. We ate a sumptuous feast in the same space, as friends toasted. We danced, we laughed, we photographed…a good time was had by all. The wedding had a real DIY feel to it, and as a result it had a lot of heart.

Since we’ve been married a ton has happened; we’ve learned a lot about life and love and loss and compromise. We moved from our beloved Atlanta to help start something new in Raleigh; we’ve gotten involved in several fascinating business and non-profit initiatives; we’ve grown as authors; I’ve started grad school, and we’ve had a little girl–Miss Jubilee Grace! Whew.

Thanks everyone who made not only our wedding but our marriage possible–all the friends we’ve left behind, the new ones we’ve made, and the ones we stay in touch with globally. And thank you, Jasmin Elish Morrell, for marrying me. It means a lot to me, it really does. I love you!

Coming tomorrow: My blogging about my as-of-yet über top-secret anniversary plans.

My friend Kevin Beck, co-creative at eschatological thinktank/activist cell Presence International, has written a thought-provoking piece for the new year. I encourage you to read it in its entirety and comment below. With any luck, Mr. Beck himself will join us.

Happy New Year, and welcome to a perfect 2008! Perfect? How can anything be perfect? There is disease, sadness, and poverty. Political upheaval in Pakistan and Kenya threaten what little global stability there is. Maybe only a fool would try to suggest things are perfect. Just look out the window. At best we can only hope things might become perfect sometime down the line - and only if God miraculously intervenes and destroys a lot of people and establishes a top-down enlightened dictatorship forcing everyone into compliance with his wishes.That’s the story seeping out of popular religious and political circles. Just this past week, one well-known televangelist released the contents of his annual “message from God.” According to him, God has several disasters in store for us. How shocking! Not all religious voices make such exact predictions, and certainly not all agree on the specific solutions. One anticipates all “true believers” to be levitated off the planet, leaving all others behind to suffer intolerable disasters due to their hardened unbelief. A more “scholarly” approach dismisses rapturism, opting instead for God remake the space-time universe, thereby undoing all manner of distress.While these schools of thought are separated in the way they see the “solution,” they understand the “problem” exactly the same. According to that version of the story, humanity is corrupt to the core. We supposedly fell from a state of perfection, and we now wander in the wasteland of flaws, defects, and deficiencies. As wretchedly sinful creatures filled with rebellion against God and disdain for all things holy, we can only hope to escape this miserable existence.In this way of thinking, we end up living on a treadmill of what we sadly call hope. We hope for the God to make renovations to or destruction of the planet - as if that will “fix all of our problems.” I’ve always wondered: if humanity could mess up an ideal world in the first place, what would keep us from doing the same after God remade things? Meanwhile as the song says, we keep on waitin’, waitin’ on the world to change. Paradoxically, our “theology of hope” leaves the majority of humanity desperate, left on the outside, without God, and without hope in the world.

Perhaps, we’ve misplaced our hope and abdicated our role as divine partners in creating our world. The wisdom writer noted that hope deferred makes the heart grow sick. After millennia of practicing deferred hope, religion has done a marvelous job of fostering sick hearts.

But what if there is a different way of telling the Biblical story? A fresh way of reading the Bible? A new way of understanding the work of God in the world? What if this way remained true to the scriptural witness? It didn’t gloss over, ignore, or dismiss the more disturbing sections, yet it didn’t descend into crass fundamentalism? What if this way accepted the integrity of Jesus and his initial followers who announced their expectation of the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God in their day? What if this way of reading the Biblical story casts out all fear - not just some fear, but all of it? What if this way allowed you to see the end as just the beginning?

This is what we at Presence International are dedicated to helping people see and experience in their own lives. We call this approach Transmillennial because it cuts across the millennia, reaching back from Jesus’ day to translate his first-century message of world-transformation into meaningful life practice for our twenty-first century world.

We explore these dynamics in the 6-week Transformations course. [Note from Mike: this is an excellent course! I encourage anyone to take it] In this online class, we discuss the four quadrants of transformation: Covenantal, Personal, Organizational, and Societal. Each week takes a particular aspect of these quadrants and offers real-life instruction on understanding the process of creative transformation. The way in which Jesus envisioned and enacted covenantal transformation can change the way you live. It can revolutionize the way your family, faith community, and workplace functions. It can transfigure our society and your world.

One of the fist steps is simply becoming aware of what exactly Jesus was working toward. Jesus rejected the mainstream conformist way of his day. At the same time, he refused to get caught up in the blame game of political revolution. He found a third way, a creative path that transformed everything once for all.

Of course, it’s easy to become enamored with studying the past. We can talk forever about what Jesus did without ever comprehending its value and meaning for our lives and world. This is why we at Presence International are actively engaging people from all walks of life with this transformative message. If God transformed all things from death into life through self-emptying love, then we can begin to see that God truly has reconciled the world to himself. We can do more than criticize popular theologies that predict a catastrophic end. We can go beyond seeking political solutions for the world’s issues. Instead, we can love our neighbors as ourselves. We can love our enemies and in so doing be perfect as God is perfect.

See, while awareness is a necessary first step in transformation, it is not the last one. Awareness is followed by acceptance. Acceptance of what is. Acceptance of ourselves. Acceptance of others. Acceptance of God. Acceptance of the forgiveness that you have already been granted. Acceptance of God’s acceptance of you.

For generations, humanity has told itself that we are nothing but filthy, rotten sinners. We’ve believed that we are full of failure, weakness, and fault. We’ve been telling ourselves that we are sinners in the hands of an angry God, and that we are locked in spiritual battles with demonic forces, which - naturally - means that anyone who disagrees with “us” is in league with malevolent supernatural forces and must be dealt with decisively one way or another.

This takes us back to where we began. We’ve told ourselves that the only way out of this mess is for God to take all of the good people into heaven, destroy the earth, or magically start all over.

The Transmillennial approach offers an alternative to these doom and gloom outlooks. We at Presence believe that God has made all things new, and that we all have been given the divine gift of being able to shape our world. Again, the wisdom writer affirms that death and life are in the power of the tongue. Instead of speaking words of death as we have for so long, it is time to speak words of life. Words such as, “You are forgiven. You are loved. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. I and my Father are one. God’s mercies are new every morning. I am free. God is love. With God all things are possible.”

When we change our way of speaking and thinking, we will begin to see things anew. More than an optical illusion, all things will become new. We will forge new deep structures in our individual and collective psyches that will manifest themselves outwardly. At Presence, we call this Agapeology - loving God by loving others.

As you know, the Biblical story begins with two trees in a garden. One is the Tree of Life. The other is the Tree of the knowledge of God and Evil. As Doug King eloquently illustrates in his talks at Transmillennial 2007, the tree of the Knowledge of God and Evil is so deceptive because it promises what it can’t deliver. In the hope of knowing God by knowing what is good, that tree sows the seeds of judgment. In an amazing realization, Paul announces that he actually experienced “death through that which is good” (Romans 7:13). How astounding! Through the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Paul could not achieve what he sought.

However, Paul sees Christ delivering him and all humanity from the fruitless cycle of attempting to live according to the Knowledge of God and Evil. When we read John’s vision of the New Creation - the New Order - we find only one tree. There is simply the Tree of Life. It blossoms year round, providing healing fruit for all.

Today, we have the God-given gift of taking that fruit and eating it. But more than that, we have the blessing of planting the seeds of the fruit from the Tree of Life in our own gardens. We can tend and keep the garden that brings forth a harvest of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Gentleness, Kindness, Faith, Meekness, and Temperance.

As you plant and cultivate the seeds of the Tree of Life, you will find the fruit to heal. The more of us that plant, the more healing we will experience in our shared experience. Of course, this is a lifelong process, a spiritual practice that comes not through engaging in some esoteric rituals. Instead, it happens in the everyday relationships with ourselves and one another. Conscious, intentional, and deliberate thinking and living will bring about vibrant results - individually, locally, and globally.

This is why 2008 is perfect. It is already saturated with God’s presence, in fulfillment of his promises to create humanity in the divine likeness. Jesus does not have to physically return to earth on a cloud of water vapor to achieve that. Instead, Jesus was convinced that in recognizing God’s fellowship with us we would share his joy completely, perfectly (John 17:13).
The point of perfection, then, is not the cessation of what we normally call disasters. Even Jesus experienced loneliness, misunderstanding, hunger, sorrow, and death. Yet, through it all he remained confident that “as the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father.” More than that, he believed that we “may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us.” Today, we participate in the joy of his fulfilled confidence knowing that because he has appeared we are like him; for we see him as he is. Face to face. Right where you are, now and forever more.

Enjoy a perfect 2008!

And so…I might as well come out and say, kicking off this new year, that I’m with Presence, and other voices of change like Shane Claiborne, Rob Bell and Brian McLaren–there are different, more hope-filled, and just as ‘biblical’ ways of mixing and framing the Christian story–ways that empower rather than sour, that give credible spiritual energies rather than fatalistic schemes. I have questions about semantics and application, but I am excited that the Spirit seems to be speaking in our midst, and leading the way forward.

What thinkest thou?