Extravaganza workshop resources
January 30th, 2009 | This post is for those who attended my workshop at the 2009 Extravaganza, Understanding Postmodernism and its Implications for Youth Ministry.
In the workshop, I mentioned that there would be some additional resources here, and I always (er, usually) deliver on a promise. So here they are. Feel free to ponder, distribute, and remix these materials as you see fit.
Before we get to the goods, though, let’s stay in touch. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and you can chat with me or send me an email at jakebouma[at]gmail[dot]com.
Recommended reading: Books
Below is a list of books that have been beneficial to myself and others in understanding postmodernism and its implications in ecclesiology (how we “do” church).
If you’re really adventurous, you can read my undergraduate thesis, entitled “Toward a Postmodern Youth Ministry: An Examination of Postmodern Youth Culture in Conversation with the Emerging Church”. Download the 17-page PDF here.
You can also download this PDF I made a while back which has a list of additional book recommendations.
Recommended reading: Websites/blogs
Chart: The major paradigms of the Christian era
Download: Microsoft Word format (.docx); Portable Document Format (.pdf)
This chart is based upon and adapted from Paul Soupiset’s original chart, created c. 2004.
- The End of Solitude from The Chronicle of Higher Education. The long quote is worth it: “Loneliness is not the absence of company, it is grief over that absence. The lost sheep is lonely; the shepherd is not lonely. But the Internet is as powerful a machine for the production of loneliness as television is for the manufacture of boredom. If six hours of television a day creates the aptitude for boredom, the inability to sit still, a hundred text messages a day creates the aptitude for loneliness, the inability to be by yourself. Some degree of boredom and loneliness is to be expected, especially among young people, given the way our human environment has been attenuated. But technology amplifies those tendencies. You could call your schoolmates when I was a teenager, but you couldn’t call them 100 times a day. You could get together with your friends when I was in college, but you couldn’t always get together with them when you wanted to, for the simple reason that you couldn’t always find them. If boredom is the great emotion of the TV generation, loneliness is the great emotion of the Web generation. We lost the ability to be still, our capacity for idleness. They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude.” 01/24/2009
- Mysterious ways in which the Lord works. “Always minimizes windows right when you walk up.” 01/22/2009
- A new survey points out that Protestant churchgoers are no more loyal to their church denomination than they are to brands of toothpaste or bathroom tissue. “Just 16% of Protestant churchgoers will only consider attending their current denomination. Fifty-one percent do express preference for one denomination, but would also consider others. Thirty-three percent do not have any preference for one specific denomination. This is little difference between the loyalties of people who attend evangelical Protestant churches and those who attend a mainline Protestant denomination.” By contrast, a whopping 60% of Catholics “would only consider attending a Roman Catholic church”. (HT: Sam Rainer) 01/21/2009
- You know when you say a word over and over and you think to yourself, “That is a weird word”? Yeah, turns out there’s a name for that. It’s called semantic satiation. 01/20/2009
- Stephen Shields wrote a great piece called Ten Years Out: A Retrospective on the Emerging Church in North America. “My biggest concern is that too many don’t care enough about theology and the history of Christian thinking to give both the respect they deserve. We may need to rethink many items, but we can only do so responsibly if we listen attentively to those who have gone ahead of us.” 01/18/2009
- Why Denominations Matter. “Denominations are in a challenging time right now… and I believe things will get worse for denominations before they get better. However, I believe the best denominational partnerships are yet to come when denominations get re-focused on serving churches and helping them fulfill the Great Commission.” 01/18/2009
Are “Celebration of Life” services appropriate?
Before I begin, let me say that what follows may be a touchy subject for some, and my thoughts may seem disorganized and unintelligible — I am fully aware that I am not an “expert” on this topic.
I was watching television the other day when a commercial came on that somehow related to a “Celebration of Life” service. Truth be told, I remember nothing else about the commercial except for its general subject matter, because afterward I was consumed by this thought:
There is something theologically wrong with “Celebration of Life” services.
Celebration of Life services do a great deal of wrong by bypassing or altogether ignoring the need for mourning, particularly mourning in community.
Take this, for example, taken from this Squidoo page titled “A Celebration of Life, Not A Mourning of Death”:
A traditional funeral service with black suits and quiet church music and people gathered around a casket or urn, is okay for some, but it is not favorable for many people. Sometimes mourning a life does not feel right. Life should be celebrated. It is a special day when people who loved a person get together and celebrate their life, happily, and remember the person as they were… alive, and vibrant.
The logic makes sense at first: Why would anyone hold a service dedicated to sorrow — to weeping, to unanswerable questions, to pain? Holding a Celebration of Life service instead of a funeral intentionally aims to bypass these things. But it’s not an “either/or” situation as the title of the aforementioned article suggests. It is (and should be) “both/and”.
I’m not familiar with the stages of grief and the respective time frames for dealing with death, but I don’t think the short amount of time between death and memorial service allows sufficient space for the deceased’s loved ones to properly mourn before celebrating their life.
This is not to say that life shouldn’t be celebrated; it is to say that a Celebration of Life has its own time. Ironically, a Celebration of Life service may prevent proper celebration because the mourning hasn’t ceased, hasn’t begun, or has been discouraged altogether. Mourning must be voiced, affirmed by others, and allowed to run its course.
Peter Rollins recently wrote a piece called We need professional mourners. In it, he says,
Contrary to what people often think, the key to easing peoples suffering is not in offering some insidious theodicy but in allowing a place for people to mourn and to meet others who know what it is to have been burned by that black sun. By providing a public, theo-poetic location where we are able to symbolise our mourning we are able to trinagulate our pain (allowing it to be registered by a third) and place it into the symbolic realm. This is not about providing an answer but rather offering a site where we can speak our suffering.
Put simply, to be human is to endure suffering. Yet we are creatures crafted by the hands of God, and in His infinite wisdom we were all created with an inbuilt process for dealing with our unavoidable suffering: mourning. In mourning we join all of creation, past and present, in a collective groaning for redemption (Romans 8:19-22). Celebrations of Life — even with good intentions — largely ignore this theological reality, and at great cost.
I don’t think it’s selfish to assume that upon my death, those who loved me will be in grief. I pray that they will be able to speak their suffering and find a safe place for mourning before a celebration of my life is considered.
What do you think? Leave a comment and join the conversation.
The Columbus Huddle
Those who are committed to the ELCA and are interested in the emerging church conversation may want to make some room in your summer schedules for the Columbus Emerging Huddle:
We invite all friends and neighbors of the Lutheran emerging church conversation to come together for worship, prayer, listening, wondering, comfort, support and consolation to Columbus, OH at Jacob’s Porch from August 11-14, 2009.
The days will begin and end with worship led by many different attendees. In between we gather with a loose agenda for discussion. We leave the time open for the Spirit and conversation to blow where it will.
The cost of the event is free, however you will need to arrange for your own transportation, food, and housing. Jacob’s Porch has a full kitchen and we are seeking local host homes to help assuage the costs incurred.
This is a grassroots gathering so we are depending on those attending to invite their friends interested in such a collective to spread the word to those who would benefit from such a conversation.
I plan on attending the event, as do several other people I know. If you’d like more information, check the event page or ColumbusHuddle.com, which promises to have more information in the near future.
The Monday brief
Highlight of the week: Ireland totally lived up to my expectations. Fun fact: It didn’t rain at all while we were there. No joke. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to editing/uploading the last video from the trip. Bear with me.
Book(s) I’m reading: I read St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography on the plane rides and intermittently throughout the week. Right now I’m reading What Would Jesus Deconstruct? because it’s been sitting on my shelf for a while, but mostly in preparation for my workshop at the Extravaganza in a few weeks.
Music I’m digging: I’ve been trying to get into the album Dynamo (link opens in iTunes) by Faded Paper Figures (think Postal Service), but I’m not sure I like it.
Something(s) that blew my mind: This video from Peter Rollins. It fits it really well with things I’ve been reading/researching/thinking about as of late:
Ministry update: We’re back to a bit of normalcy after the holidays, which is nice. Lots of stuff coming up, though. I’m chipping away at a rather ambitious idea which I hope to flesh out on this blog in time.
Seminary/ordination update: Nothing new to report, but there may be some very exciting things happening in the next several weeks. Stay tuned.
Looking forward to: Getting back into the swing of things at work.
That’s it for the Monday brief. Feel free to leave a comment, and if you’re feeling extra frisky, check out the Monday brief archives.
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