Unleashing Creativity – A Podcast with Teel Montague

Do you get the Oozeletter? If not, you really should. Each month, you get a fresh serving of all that is Ooze-y around the globe.

This month, TheOOZE features a podcast interview of Teel Montague conducted by yours truly and Brittian Bullock. Here’s what Brittian has to say after our time with Teel:

Creativity, artistry, imagination, experiment have been powerful metaphors in my life lately. While I’ve always been one of those people who have been encouraged to pursue my passions by my family or others around me, I’ve also gone through phases in my life where my environment squelched all practical expression of creativity. I think of the 6 years I worked at UPS, crunching numbers, sifting through the mindless mundane, hearing corporate mantras. It’s not so surprising that those were the least experimental and most fundamentalist years of my life. In my present primary work at a local college, I’m surrounded by people who encourage expanding horizons and exploring new opportunities. I’m hardly surprised that a more generative season of life has set in.

Still, as one reader recently commented on my Church as Art, Community, and Transformation article, there are always those rare folks who can weather incredibly repressive external situations that should squelch creativity, but end up simply unleashing it. Those are the people who I admire at the end of the day.

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Mike Morrell and I had the opportunity to interview just such a hero recently for TheOOZE community — her name is Teel Montagque. Teel is an image creator (painter/drawer), musician, designer and inventor. She extends her craft to children that have emotional and behavioral disorders, and she’s a single mother of teenagers.

As she describes on the podcast, she’s gone through a divorce, ending a long-term marriage. She’s a business owner, trying to ride out a plummeting economy. Needless to say, she’s facing some incredibly stifling life circumstances. But somehow…somehow…it’s producing a deep sense of creativity and renewal. She’d never recorded an album before, but felt it was time. She took a collection of songs that had been rumbling around for decades, added some new ones that had emerged in the recent turmoil, and opened up her heart. She also invented a sleek protective skin for iPods called the Eye Ghost…she designed it, created some crazy space age material for it, and put it on the market. It’s doing very well in Atlanta, and now other markets. This is incredible to me!

So please – join Mike and I in conversation with this remarkable woman, and let your own creativity be stirred. It’s never too late to allow Spirit to channel something new in you. The only time we have is now.

DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST BY CLICKING HERE

Is It Just Me, Or Is This Thing Getting Harder?

So in the beginning, hopping on my ROM was a piece of cake. Well not quite; it was difficult but in a ‘tolerable’ way.

Not anymore.

I frequently feel like I’m hyperventilating, every muscle in my body screaming for mercy after just 90 seconds. ROM, our honeymoon is over. Used to be at the gym, when I’d do an exercise for awhile I’d get ‘better’ at it. Y’know, it’d get easier over time and it was up to me use more weight, do more reps, etc. Not so the ROM: It’s getting harder and harder. I emailed one of my ROM coaches to ask: Am I a failure? Is this normal? This is what she said…

Yes, the machine DOES get harder the stronger you get, because you are able to create more resistance, because you are spinning the flywheel faster. You have to imagine a little old lady getting on the machine, and pushing and pulling to her ability, and then a highly trained athlete: one is just barely going to get the flywheel spinning, so not much resistance is created, and the other is going to really get the flywheel going, so the centrifugal brake will be engaging more: so the workout will be harder. So guess what? It means that you have moved over in the spectrum further away from the little old lady and closer to the highly trained athlete… 😉

I plan to test this theory out with my mother or grandmother in the next few months. Should be interesting, eh?

A complete index of ROM Fitness Challange posts can be found here.

Bread Gathering 2009

From my friends at Bread for the World…

Please join us in Washington, D.C. June 14-16 for Bread for the World’s Gathering 2009.

Join us as we Rejoice in 35 years of victories for poor and hungry people…in the Hope that God is moving to end hunger in our time…and as we Act to urge our nation’s leaders to reform foreign assistance so it is more effective in reducing hunger and poverty.

Gathering 2009 will be held at American University—with exciting speakers, practical workshops, and inspiring worship. We will celebrate Bread for the World’s 35th anniversary with a festive dinner on June 15 and conclude our gathering with visits to our representatives in Congress on June 16. Visit www.bread.org/gathering2009 to learn more.

We have kept our costs as economical as possible. Early-bird registration—before April 30—is just $162 (excluding housing). Register today!

A People’s History of Christianity

I was privileged to emcee a public conversation between Diana Butler Bass and Brian McLaren at the World Future Society conference last summer on the future of North American Christianity in conjunction with Foresight@Regent. Diana’s in-depth personal, historical, and anthropological knowledge of the Church in her many facets is quite striking  – and, I’m imagining,  what so many local congregations and denominational bodies she consults with find particularly helpful. So imagine my delight when my very own copy of her just-released A People’s History of Christianity arrived in my mailbox! I haven’t read much beyond the introduction yet, but I’ll be taking it on the plane with me to the New Mexico conference tomorrow.

Here’s what others are saying about A People’s History…

“It would be difficult to imagine anyone reading this book without finding some new insight or inspiration, some new and unexpected testimony to the astonishing breadth of Christianity through the centuries.”
—Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of Christianity

“A perfect armchair companion for contemporary Christians. Charmingly written and refreshing to read, yet rich in details and thorough in its mapping of the major themes and events that have shaped the evolution of the Western Church, A People’s History of Christianity is our story re-told with both clear-eyed affection and a scholar’s acumen.”
—Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence

“In this beautifully written history, Diana Butler Bass reveals the living, beating heart of love at the core of Christian faith.”
—Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread

Losin’ It On Video

No, you can’t see the pounds literally melt off on this YouTube clip (though that would be cool to do at the end of all this, eh? Taking a few seconds from each ROM workout, and combining them into four minutes that stretches over a year? Eerie!), but I share a little bit about the changes that have been taking place since ROM-ing it, & then proceed to demonstrate for you one of my most intense upper-body workouts yet, thanks to the sounds of mewithoutYou.

PS: Remember, if you want a ROM but don’t think you can afford it, start a micro-business with it! Your whole community will thank you…I know my neighbors do. And you can keep up with my entire whole-health journey here.

Am I Well-Adjusted?

Before you utter a chorus of unequivocal “no!s,” let me clarify that I’m talking about chiropractic adjustment! Here’s a video of a typical chiropractic maintenence adjustement. What I mean by this is, the best chiropractors (in my opinion anyway) are those who are subluxation-focused and specialize in corrective care. They typically take X-rays to monitor progress objectively. Dr. Joe Harris of North Raleigh Chiropractic is all of the above, which is why my family & I see him. He helped Jasmin have a quick and relatively pain-free pregnancy, we have greatly reduced allergies and overall better well-being. If you’re in the Triangle are, I highly recommend you give him a call at 845-0200.

Now get out the popcorn & enjoy what looks like him breaking my neck. 🙂

Does God Have An ‘Eternal Purpose’? A Review of From Eternity to Here by Frank Viola

It was 2003; I was 23. Finally after all these years, I had scraped up the cash (& credit cards) to undergo that great American rite of passage – the summer trip to Europe. Thanks to the generosity of Andrew Jones & family, a couple of house churches, and many other hospitable friends (including Bea & Andy Marshall) I made my way from London to Bournemouth to the Netherlands to Birmingham and Sheffield. While on one leg of my British journey, I was part of a learning party Andrew & friends put on called Wabi-Sabi. It was there I was having a conversation with a fellow American, a new friend 20 years my senior, who had published a book the year before. He was a pastor and church planter, and ‘coach’ to other pastors and church planters. He was asking me what I was up to, & I told him about a book I was working on. (It’s a book I’m still working on! Could this be the month I finish it..?)

“What’s it about?” He asked.

I proceeded to tell him, noting that in part it attempts to unfold “The eternal purpose of God.”

“Well!” He exclaimed jovially but incredulously. “When you figure that one out, be sure to let the rest of us know!”

Ah, these were the early, heady days of postmodern incredulity to metanarratives – even postmodern Christian suspicion of Christian metanarratives. And why not, after all? We (at least, we evangelical Christians) were weaned on a ‘big story’ of “If you were to die tonight, do you have assurance in your heart that you’d go to heaven?” Or, “Have you heard the four spiritual laws?” Those of us following Jesus with awareness of our post-everything cultural shift were keenly aware of the shortcomings of our blithely-uttered “theories of everything,” and were looking for a humbler approach – even if it ultimately meant affirming a much humbler, more localized, cosmology.

But I had a problem – one I still have, at least in part, today. But it’s one I think From Eternity to Here by Frank Viola speaks into. My problem, sitting in Europe circa 2003 – and in the Southeast US of A circa 2009 – is that, since 1998 or so, I was arrested by a grand story – a tale of a God in love, a God who is love, a God who is Community, creating matter and physicality and embodiment as an expression of that love to pour Godself into. If this Story doesn’t do away with the Fall-Rescue-Restoration narrative so common to Christendom, it certainly reframes it, going back further and then permeating the present, to the point (for me at least) that some eschatological tensions are less pronounced. And further still, proponents of this Story have the audacity to believe it’s hiding in plain sight right in our bibles:

Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Paul’s letter known as Ephesians, 3:8-11, TNIV – emphasis mine, as ancient Hebrews & Greeks did not have italic fonts yet.)

So this story’s sexy – it has grace, and the overseeing of an age-old ‘mystery,’ in the same sense as ‘mystical’ or Babylonian mystery religion (only better). A message, a power, hidden by God in Christ that would be as revelatory to heavenly principalities and powers as it would be for mere mortals, a divine purpose that’s not only age-old but eternal.

WTF??

By which I mean Where to, Frank?? It is this impenetrable enigma that Viola turns his pen to unfolding for us – and it’s a good thing, too: If folks in the first century CE barely grasped what the apostle Paul (and, Frank contends, Jesus – and others) were talking about, we certainly don’t talk much about this stuff 20+ centuries later.

Except, interestingly, there is a stream of the Christian family who has dared speak about such things: Plymouth Brethren, Christian Missionary Alliance, Keswick Higher Life movement folks, and their descendents. I can’t do justice to their whole story here – that’d be a post in itself, or a series – so I’ll just do a genealogy. Ruth Paxson begat Mary McDonough begat Watchman Nee and T. Austin-Sparks (I’m talkin’ spiritually, now) begat Stephen Kaung and Devern Fromke. Hudson Taylor and AW Tozer run around in this family tree too, somewhere. All of these folks had teaching ministries, or churches, or publishing outreaches, the emphasized the the exchange that happens when those who trust in Christ spiritually ‘die’ with Christ and have his resurrected life take the place of your own – and how this all fits into a larger, more cosmic plan of God’s original purpose – or as Fromke calls it, ‘The Ultimate Intention.’

Frank brings these teachers’ core messages into the 21st century, connecting them in dialogue with other branches of the Christian family, including neo-orthodox folks like Karl Barth & Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who explore radically Christ-centered spirituality as the ground of all being and escape from religion and conventional categories of knowledge), and more recently still post-evangelical luminaries like Stan Grenz and Miroslav Volf who explore the social habits of the Trinity and how these might be reflected in the Church.

So where to, Frank? Frank wants us to begin in the Godhead:

In “the agelessness of eternity,” God had an incredible dream: He wished to expand the “infinite communion” that He had with His beloved Son. He wanted other beings to participate in the interior mystery of the Trinity, to share in the sacred exchange of fellowship, love, and life that flows…between the Father and His Son. He wanted others to participate in “the amiable society” of the Godhead.

But he doesn’t end there. In order to “participate” in the Godhead, the Church in Frank’s depiction lives out four values (see chapter 27):

Communion with God:

As the bride of Christ, the church is called to commune with, love, enthrone, and intimately know the heavenly Bridegroom who indwells her.
Churches that excel in the bridal dimension give time and attention to spiritual fellowship with the Lord. Worship is a priority. Seeking the Lord, loving Him, communing with Him, and encountering Him are central.

Corporate display of the church in an atmosphere of ever-member freedom:

The church is called to gather together regularly to display God’s life through the ministry of every Christian. How? …In open-participatory meetings where every member of the believing priesthood functions, ministers, and expresses the living God in an open-participatory atmosphere (see 1 Cor. 14:26; 1 Pet. 2:5; Heb. 10:24–25, etc).

God dwells in every Christian and can inspire any of us to share something that comes from Him with the church. In the first century, every Christian had both the right and the privilege of speaking to the community. This is the practical expression of the New Testament doctrine of the priesthood all believers.
The open-participatory church meeting was the common gathering of the early church. It’s purpose? To edify the entire church and to display, express, and reveal the Lord through the members of the body to principalities and powers in heavenly places (Eph. 3:8–11).

Community life where practical reconciliation takes place:

The church’s allegiance was exclusively given to the new Caesar, the Lord Jesus, and she lived by His rule. As a result, the response by her pagan neighbors was, “Behold, how they love one another!”

God’s ultimate purpose is to reconcile the universe under the lordship of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:20; Eph. 1:10). As the community of the King, the church stands in the earth as the masterpiece of that reconciliation and the pilot project of the reconciled universe. In the church, therefore, the Jewish-Gentile barrier has been demolished as well as all barriers of race, culture, sex, etc. (Gal. 3:28; Eph. 2:16). The church lives and acts as the new humanity on earth that reflects the community of the Godhead.

Thus when those in the world see a group of Christians from different cultures and races loving one another, caring for one another, meeting one another’s needs, living against the current trends of this world that give allegiance to other gods instead of to the world’s true Lord, Jesus Christ, it is watching the life of the future kingdom lived out on earth in the present. As Stanley Grenz once put it, “The church is the pioneer community. It points toward the future God has in store for His creation.”

It is this “kingdom community” that turned the Roman Empire on its ear. Here was a people who possessed joy, who loved one another deeply, who made decisions by consensus, who handled their own problems, who married each other, who met one another’s financial needs, and who buried one another.

Commission where we love the world as God does:

As we have already seen, when Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, He chose to express Himself through a body to continue His ministry on earth. As the body of Christ, the church not only cares for its own, but it also cares for the world that surrounds it. Just as Jesus did while He was on earth.

The pages of history are filled with stories of how the early Christians took care of the poor, stood for those who suffered injustice, and met the needs of those who were dying by famine or plague. In other words, the early Christian communities cared for their non-Christian neighbors who were suffering.
Not a few times a plague would sweep through a city, and all the pagans left town immediately, leaving their loved ones to die. That included the physicians. But it was the Christians who stayed behind and tended to their needs, sometimes even dying in the process…the early church understood that she was carrying on the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. She well understood that He was the same today, yesterday, and forever (Heb. 13:8).

So there you have it. I’m still not sure if we contingent humans can dare speak in plain prose about something as ineffable as an “eternal purpose of God.” And yet, if I saw my American church planter friend again today, I’d echo Pete Rollins (or is that Caputo? Or is that Derrida?) in saying that while language definitely fails at such a sublime provocation, we cannot help but speak about eternity and ultimate meaning. Some of the best conversations, orations, letters and books have been penned exploring this very idea, and From Eternity to Here is no exception. What I appreciate about it is its desire to marry the contemplative with the active, the mystical (if you will) with the missional. As I said in my inside-cover endorsement of the book,

Frank Viola is the heir apparent to classic Deeper Christian Life teachers, faithfully bringing their core ideas into the 21st century with his own fresh insight. Visio Dei meets Missio Dei in this passionate examination of what motivates the very heart of God!

Check it out. I’d love to hear your thoughts. And for a list of reviews and endorsements, check out the booksite.

Creative ROM Funding Idea

So folks have been following my whole-health journey this year, and my recent report of losing 13 pounds of fat since beginning with the ROM. One refrain I’m hearing from some friends is “The ROM is clearly amazing, but it’s so [insert expletive] expensive!” And I hear you: Nearly $14,615 ain’t cheap. But what if there could be a way to enjoy ROMulicious personal results, and have a recession-busting turnkey small business to boot? It seems that there is.

Enter the QuickGym. I’d heard about these since first investigating the ROM, from the man himself. These are gyms whose sole equipment is the ROM – sometimes one, sometimes a few. They’re usually located near high-traffic areas, like grocery stores, where people are anyway. QuickGym owners offer complimentary one-week workout specials, confident that properly-coached users will appreciate the efficiency of a four-minute workout. Looking at different QuickGyms areound the country, it seems that they then charge between $20 and $70 monthly membership – paying off that ROM and making a profit to boot.

They’re all over the place – in Salt Lake City, Mansfield, MA,  California in places like Pasadena (of course) – three in Albuquerque, even one in Alaska! Not to mention Colorado, Kansas, Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio, Tennessee and Virgina. (Check ’em out.) They’re also being set up in workplaces as a way to cut down on health insurance claims (and increasing premiums).

The question is, is there one in your area? If not, what are you waiting for? Inquire about franchise opportunities here or here. ROM on!

Related: Business spotlight: Quick gym of West Knoxville

I’m Losing It…

Body fat, that is! I went back to Dr. Joe at North Raleigh Chiropractic to get my latest body fat numbers,  9 weeks after beginning the ROM. Dr. Joe uses a body fat metric developed by the Marines; when I was re-measured, nearly every single part (legs, arms, even hips) had lost some inchage.

The results? “Body Fat is now 28. 6 % with 184.2 pounds of lean muscle tissue and 73.8 pounds of fat. Definitely getting better!”

I’ll say! Compare this to “33.2% body fat…86.6 pounds of fat and 174.4 pounds of lean mass to include muscle, water and bone.”

Basically what this means is, 2+ months of four-minute workouts has caused me to lose weight and fat. I’ve only lost about 3 pounds or so *total* weight, but I’ve lost 13 pounds of fat! And gained 10 pounds in muscle!

All in 4 minutes a day. It’s crazy, because I don’t feel like I’ve made a huge lifestyle change, but apparently I have. I look forward to seeing how this continues to unfold…

…catch up on the whole-health saga here.

Further Atonement Thoughts: Late to the Party

Earlier this week, kicking off Lent, Tony Jones pointed his readers to some reflections on Jesus atonement, including my recent pieces “Beyond Liberal and Conservative” and “Possible Reconstructions.” The resultant comment-conversation is largely quite encouraging, and worth reading. One of the highlights from me was this helpful summary of atonement models by Brian:

(1) Substitutionary atonement (Calvin) – Christ’s voluntarily suffers and dies on the cross as our substitute. In other words, Jesus takes the punishment of God for sinners by representing us.

(2) Satisfaction (Anselm) – Christ’s voluntary sacrifice of his innocent life pays our debt to God so God’s justice can be satisfied. In short, Jesus makes restitution for us.

(3) Ransom (Origen) – Adam and Eve sold humanity out to the devil, so God had to trick the devil into accepting Christ’s death as a ransom so we can be free. In the end, the devil is tricked because Jesus got resurrected after we are freed.

(4) Moral influence (Abelard) – Jesus’ life and death are characterized by his exemplary obedience to God’s love, therefore demonstrating to humanity the love of God. So, Jesus should awaken sinners to God’s reality and inspire us to be obedient to God.

(5) Governmental (Grotius) – God demonstrates God’s anger toward sin by punishing Christ. Here, God is understood as a judge who demands divine justice for sinners. In the end, Jesus suffers in order that humans can be forgiven and God’s justice can be upheld.

(6) Liberation (Boff) – Jesus’ life and death demonstrate God’s solidarity with people who are poor and oppressed. So, Jesus lives a life of care and compassion – and his crucifixion demonstrates how perverse and violent human injustice can be. In other words, Jesus lived obediently to God’s care for the poor, which brought him into conflict with an oppressive empire that killed Jesus. In the end, Jesus was unjustly executed through crucifixion by the Roman Empire. Therefore, the oppressive and violent people in the world were exposed as ungodly and immoral. In this theology, Jesus died because of sin, but not for sins. Therefore, in imitation of Jesus, ministry is about empowering the oppressed and helping the poor.

(7) Decisive Revelation (Riggs) – Jesus is the widow through which we see God. Through Jesus’ life and teachings we learn about God and what God values. Some people experienced God-in-Christ and became faithful to God. But other people were offended and threatened by Jesus and wanted to kill him. In the end, Jesus was murdered by people who hated the values and influence of God. Despite his crucifixion, the presence and ministry of Jesus continues through the lives of Christians. God is still beckoning us into faith and faithfulness. In this theology, the purpose of ministry is to share the good news of God’s love that was decisively revealed through Christ, so more people can develop a relationship with God.

(8) State Execution (Crossan) – Jesus and his disciples invited people into the Kingdom of God and out of the Kingdom of Rome. The Empire of God was about God’s love, justice, and mutuality. The Empire of Rome was about humanity’s individuality, greed, and brutality. Jesus and his disciples were rebels against Rome by living out the values of God. Romans became angry that Jesus was undermining their way of life. So, the brutal Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, hung Jesus on a cross to humiliate Jesus and terrorize his followers. Despite Jesus’ traumatic and unjust execution by the state, Christ’s presence and God’s Kingdom continues to invite people to live by God’s values – and be assured of God love. In this theology, Christians are empowered by God’s love to live out God’s values of love, justice, and mutuality.

Brian’s series on Lent & Crucifixion is well-worth reading too:
Journey of Lent (#1): “Crucifixion of Jesus as Unresolved Grief and Trauma”
Journey of Lent (#2): “Grieving the Crucifixion to Heal Our Memories of Jesus”
Darrell Grizzle’s Atonement and Emergents is great too along this theme. And finally, The Contemporary Calvinist & Friends think we’re taking a blowtorch to the Bible – alas.