• Welcome to the Table: The Green Evangelical Movement. “If these green evangelicals are beginning to embrace terms like ’sustainable,’ ‘green,’ and even ‘carbon neutral,’ but still shudder at the sound of ‘environmentalism,’ are we really all sitting at the same table? Or are we sitting at completely different tables, looking at the same evidence, but pretending to ignore each other’s solutions?” 02/28/2008

New spectacles

Spectacle(s), originally uploaded by jakebouma on flickr.

I got a new pair of glasses on Monday. I’m a no-contatcs guy, and I had been wearing the previous pair for five years… so this is quite a change.

But really, this is just my attempt to look more like Rob Bell.

Out of context theology winner

There were over 40 submissions for the Out of context theology contest, so it was pretty hard to pick a winner. I suggest subscribing to the JakeBouma.com RSS feed so you’ll know when the next contest is announced. Anyway, here are few of my favorites (read: honorable mentions):

“It is one giant pile of decomposition that just happens to look like a church.” (Rick McKinley, This Beautiful Mess, p. 13) - Joel Mayward

“The Bible is propaganda.” (Tony Jones, Postmodern Youth Ministry, p. 196) - Dan Mayes

“Most churches know who and what their dogs are but simply lack the courage to pull the trigger and shoot their dogs.” (Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev., p. 34) - James Carmichael

“The emerging church is like junior high students and sex - a lot of people talking about it, but not a lot of people actually doing it - and those that are doing it are messy - and fertile as hell!” (Mark Scandrette, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, p. 22) - Chadwick Walenga

“Now if God chooses to adorn dung, he can do so.” (Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, 34:184) - Brian Spahr

“If you have a penis, I told the group if guys, God has spoken.” (Donald Miller, To Own a Dragon, p. 107) - Nick Fox

“God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog.” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1, p.55) - Shaun

And the now for the totally subjective winner (drumroll, please):

“I say I’m a pacifist because I’m a violent son of a bitch.” (Stanly Hauerwas, quoted in A profile of Stanley Hauerwas by Colman McCarthy, The Progressive, April 2003) - Scott Lenger

Scott has been contacted and will receive his copy of Tony Jones’ The New Christians very shortly. Thanks to everyone who submitted entries into the contest!

• GOOD Magazine is presenting a five-part documentary called On Skid Row about the homeless district of the same name in downtown Los Angeles. Here’s Part 1 on YouTube. “Los Angeles’s police chief called Skid Row ‘the worst social disaster in America.’ In LA county there are 80,000 homeless each night. Los Angeles is the first third would city in the United States.” I’m really looking forward to the rest of the series. 02/24/2008

Serendipitous stock image sighting

This is totally geeky, but as I was wandering around Barnes & Noble today, the book Please Stop Laughing at Me caught my eye, and it only took me a second to realize why. As you can see by the image above, it was because the same stock image is also used for the cover of Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry by Andrew Root.

I did a brief search at a couple of stock image sites for the image, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe you’ll have better luck (wink, wink). Has anyone else ever noticed the same stock image used for two different products?

Ben Folds, Undeclared, and ICCA

It’s no secret that I have many unnecessary and un-useful skills. It once prompted my friend Brandon to call me the “king of party tricks”. One of these skills is vocal percussion. I’ve spent a lot of time (too much?) since my freshman year of high school perfecting the art of mimicking a drum set with my mouth.

In college, I sang and did vocal percussion in a group called Undeclared. There’s a competition for college a cappella groups called the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) that’s kind of like the a cappella version of the NCAA basketball tournament. We competed three times while I was there, and this past weekend I had the opportunity to emcee a quarterfinal that was held on the Luther campus. It was an incredibly fun time interacting with the audience inbetween groups and meeting many of the performers. I even got to perform a song with Undeclared during their showcase (they compete this weekend in St. Louis).

Anyway, Ben Folds is performing at Luther on March 3, and Undeclared has the honor of opening for him. I was asked to come up and do vocal percussion with the group, and I’m totally excited. Although it’s unconfirmed right now, I heard Mr. Folds will even be joining us for a song.

Click below to hear Undeclared perform a song called “Florida” in which I do vocal percussion. My friend Mike Lang is singing (he plays bass and sings backup vocals on my album). And if you’re so inclined, check out this video on YouTube of us performing “Over My Head (Cable Car)” which I arranged.

• The Freakonomics blog recently ran a contest asking for a new six-word motto for the U.S., and after receiving 1,200+ comments, they narrowed it down to five finalists: (1) “The Most Gentle Empire So Far” (2) “You Should See the Other Guy” (3) “Caution! Experiment in Progress Since 1776″ (4) “Just Like Canada, With Better Bacon” and (5) “Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay”. Voting is open for 48 hours… I voted for #1. 02/20/2008

JakeBouma.com hits the bigtime! (thanks, Ken Silva)

A while back, my friend Josh Brown pointed out that Ken Silva is a great watchdog. He even presented him with the snazzy image/award at the top of this post. Well, he was absolutely right.

Josh’s basic beef was that Ken scours emergent-ish blogs for fodder on his own fundamentalist, anti-emerging “blog” (I use quotes because he doesn’t allow comments), where he warns “believers” of the cancerous effects of all things emergent.

Anyway, this is all to get to the point that Ken recently wrote a post entitled “The Emerging Church Swallowing Youth” (I won’t link to it; he doesn’t deserve the Google juice) in which he links to the interview I did with Tony Jones and then claims that “the Emergent Church has been using your young as spiritual guinea pigs”. Woohoo! I hit the bigtime - a link from Ken Silva!

Oh, and then he gives his warning:

Well, know this: In the eyes of our Lord, by your not speaking up at your local churches, you are responsible for allowing this Emergent rebellion against the Bible to swallow up a whole generation of evangelical young—a kind of spiritual abortion—in their “fertile training ground” for this man-centered emerging church apostasy.

So in the name of full disclosure, I align with many of the theological and philosophical underpinnings of the emerging conversation. Indeed, my spiritual journey has been decidedly enriched by it. However: If you’re reading this — and you go to my church — please, please speak up and do something about my heretical tendencies. All of the 40+ students in my ministry are in grave danger.

Oh yeah, and thanks again for the link, Ken.

• The Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard voted to circumvent traditional (overpriced, under-read) scholarly journals by publishing their scholarly articles on an online open-access repository for free. “The goal of university research is the creation, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge… We have an essential responsibility to distribute the fruits of our scholarship as widely as possible.” This is huge. (More @ NYTimes) 02/15/2008

The 123 book meme

Scott from Transformatum has tagged me in the popular “123″ or “closest book” meme, which has been around for a really long time (I remember seeing it on Marko’s blog in ‘06), even though it’s been spreading like wildfire as of late [UPDATE: Looks like I was tagged by Jeremy a couple weeks ago… whoops]. Anyway, here’s how it works.

(1) Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating! (2) Turn to page 123. (3) Find the first 5 sentences. (4) Post the next 3 sentences. (5) Tag 5 people.

Here goes:

I will revisit the pain of my mother’s forgiveness in chapter 6. My father never talked about how it felt forgiving a person who killed his boy; he never talked much about how anything felt, though he was a deeply sensitive man. But that forgiveness must have cost him a great deal too, possibly no less that it cost my mother.

The passage is from the book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, by Croatian-American theologian Miroslav Volf, which was sitting on my bed (right behind me). Those three sentences actually provide a lot of insight into how Volf does theology - often through anecdotes and achingly honest personal narrative.

I tag b.mick, Bruce, Jonathan, Matt, and Jim. You’re it.

• I’ve been sick the past few days with the flu and bronchitis, but these top 9 unique structures soon to be built were still able to blow my mind. 02/14/2008
• Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War looks at the tight race between (the) Clinton(s) and Obama. “However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.” 02/11/2008

Out of context theology (A contest)

Although taking things out of context is a logical fallacy and generally a bad idea, there’s no doubt that it can be funny. In the realm of theology, things can get particularly amusing.

Take, for example, the following quote from page 116 of James K.A. Smith’s Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Baker Academic, 2006):

“The church would do well by learning to ride whales.”

Here’s the deal. Look through whatever Christian/theological/philosophical books you have (excluding the Bible), and find a quote that looks ludicrous out of context. Post the quote in the comments; you can post as many as you like. Whomever posts the quote I think is funniest will receive a copy of Tony Jones’ The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier when it comes out in March.

There is but one rule: Quotations must be single sentences or paragraphs in their entirety, with no ellipses. For example, although the author surely uses all three of the following words, the quote “I… hate… Jesus Christ” won’t work in this exercise. Unaltered sentences as found in the original text only, please.

Have at it!

UPDATE: The contents ends Monday, February 25 at 12:00pm CST. A winner will be announced/contacted shortly thereafter.

I am Jack Shephard

I laughed when I read the last line about tattoos (I have two). Also, apparently only 3% of people who take this test are Jack Shephard. So, which Lost character are you?

Poll: Amazon Wishlists*

Do you have an Amazon Wishlist? Participate in the poll below and let the world know (RSS readers, you’ll have to visit the site to cast your vote)!

I’ve had my Amazon Wishlist since August 2005 (at least, that’s when my first item was added). I love it - adding books to my Wishlist is almost as thrilling as actually buying them. Anyway, here’s a sampling of books I’ve added in the last couple of weeks:

Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin by Nicholas Ostler

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright

A Theological Miscellany : 160 Pages of Odd, Merry, Essentially Inessential Facts, Figures, and Tidbits about Christianity by T.J. McTavish

Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert B. Reich

Now what are you waiting for? Take the poll! ↴

*My name is Jake Bouma, and I approve this message.

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