In his post, Shirky summarizes his consultation to TV executives about the future of their industry in the internet age. Below, I’ve taken the last several paragraphs of his post and altered some phrasing here and there to make it read like he’s answering church leaders about the future of the Church in an internet/postmodern/late-modern world. Any changed I’ve made are italicized (I mostly changed “video” to “church”).

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In the future, at least some methods of being the church will become as complex [think denominational organization], with as many details to attend to, as church has today, and people will doubtless make pots of money on those forms of church. It’s tempting, at least for the people benefitting from the old complexity, to imagine that if things used to be complex, and they’re going to be complex, then everything can just stay complex in the meantime. That’s not how it works, however.

Some church organizations still have to be complex to be valuable, but the logic of the old church ecoystem, where the church had to be complex simply to be the church, is broken. Expensive and expansive things made in complex ways now compete with cheap things made in simple ways. For example, the YouTube video Charlie Bit My Finger was made by amateurs, in one take, with a lousy camera. No professionals were involved in selecting or editing or distributing it. Not one dime changed hands anywhere between creator, host, and viewers. A world where that is the kind of thing that just happens from time to time is a world where complexity is neither an absolute requirement nor an automatic advantage.

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

Kester Brewin (@kesterbrewin), provocative thinker and author of Signs of Emergence: A Vision for Church That Is Always Organic/Networked/Decentralized/Bottom-Up/Communal/Flexible/Always Evolving, is currently writing a series of blog posts that falls flawlessly in line with much of my recent thinking and research. The series, called Theology and the New Physics has two posts thus far: Uncertainty and Dimensions, with more forthcoming. UPDATE: The third post, Engaging The Maze, is now available.

If theology is even a casual pursuit for you, this is a series you must read. Here’s a snippet of what Brewin says in the first post:

What are the implications [of the new physics] for theology? Primarily, I think the argument between classical and quantum physics parallels quite nicely with the interaction between ‘classic’ and ‘emerging’ church. My experience in the 90’s, with Toronto etc. was that people in the charismatic, evangelical wing of the church really believed that they would soon achieve total immanence with God. God was almost touchable. If only we could sing that bit harder and be zapped that tiny bit more we would actually achieve full communion. When this didn’t happen, it precipitated a crisis among many of those of my generation. We felt cheated, and retreated into ‘alt.worship’ where we explored a ‘quantum theology’ where God was pure equations, transcendent and immensurable.

It seems now that both positions are wrong. While Einstein is yet to be vindicated, most physicists are skeptical about the ‘hard’ quantum model, and feel that some new theory will supersede it, even though Heisenberg’s principle is unbreachable. God, I think we are learning again, is both immanent and transcendent, but never entirely one or the other. Uncertainty remains.

In the second post, he talks about Flatland, which Rob Bell discusses in his Everything Is Spiritual lecture; but think of this blog series as Everything Is Spiritual with balls (to borrow from Stephen Colbert).

Anyway, if you’re eccentric like me and you think this stuff is really kinky (to borrow from a beloved college professor), I also recommend John Polkinghorne’s brief and relatively easy-to-read Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship. Happy reading!

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.

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 following is Part 2 (Part 1) of an interview with Mike Crawford about his album Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings present Songs from Jacob’s Well, Volumes I & II: Even the Darkness Will Not Be Dark To You. You can read my review of the album here. Mike is the Worship/Arts Pastor at Jacob’s Well, an emerging church in Kansas City, MO. For more information about Jacob’s Well, visit their website or check out this article from the Christian Century.

For the record, all hyperlinks in this interview were provided by Mike, not myself.

JAKE BOUMA: Is the sound on the album the same sound the worshipers hear on Sundays? What’s standard setup of musicians for a “regular” worship service?

MIKE CRAWFORD: I would say the sound on the album is a bit heavier or edgier than what people would hear on a Sunday. The album is also probably more intricate in a “parts” sort of way. We took the time to hone in on specific parts for the album, whereas on Sundays it’s really more free-flowing. Sundays are definitely more improv, as opposed to the record, which is all very meticulously arranged.

It took me a year to record all the parts with everyone that was involved. It was a great process though. I’d send the musician into the tracking room and have them play along with my basic tracks, just doing what they do on a Sunday. Then we’d both sit and listen to the playback and find the really great parts and follow where they were leading, sometimes with me singing parts to the musicians to help get their parts mapped out, and sometimes with me jumping around to create some energy or excitement or laughter. I especially love the laughter on the record.

We have around 40 people on the worship team. The band is different every week, which keeps the music really fresh. The most common setup is bass, drum kit, electric guitar, piano, female singer and me on acoustic and electric. Sometimes we have violin, sometimes trumpet, sometimes flute. We usually have just one “auxiliary” melody instrument per week. Sometimes the pianists will play glockenspiel too, which I love. We also do more acoustic weeks with dobro, acoustic guitars, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, hand percussion, fiddle.

JAKE: When we spoke in person, you told a story about CCLI rejecting one of your songs. Could you tell that story again, while elaborating on the Scriptural basis for much of the lyrics on “Songs from Jacob’s Well”?

MIKE: When I submitted the song The Magnificat, CCLI told me I couldn’t register the song because it was straight from scripture, and that Zondervan or someone had the rights to those words. I didn’t argue the point, but we’ve continued to sing the song and to record the song. The words are so powerful how they are laid out, I just wanted to sing them straight from scripture… Hopefully Mary won’t sue us…

I do access scripture a ton when writing worship music. I just think singing those hymns and psalms that the early church might have sung is a powerful thing. Several of the songs from the record are like this, which I think is why people connect with them. It’s certainly why I connect with them. It also keeps me out of too much doctrinal trouble if I’m staying really close to what the Bible is saying.

One of my favorite “scripture songs” on the record is Horse and Rider. I got this song after reading Walter Brueggemann’s book The Prophetic Imagination. In it, he talks about the first worship song in scripture as being Miriam and Moses’ song after the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 15). In one powerful chapter, he paints with painstaking beauty an utterly free God, controlled by nothing, whose character and task is to release the oppressed… release them from an oppressive royal regime that has co-opted and domesticated its gods to control and oppress and support the affluence of the status quo. To then re-read that passage from Exodus 15 in his context (God vs. status quo of empire) made me think, “We really need to be singing things like this.” When we do, we are singing theology. I love how Brueggemann explains the line from verse 18, “The Lord will reign forever and ever”: He says that implicit in that line are the words “…and not Pharoah…” The Lord will reign forever and ever… and not Pharoah! So when when we’re singing “Lord You will reign, Lord You will reign… forever, forever, forever, amen,” it really feels like we’re singing so much more than just “God is so good, He’s so good to me…”

JAKE: Everyone I asked from Jacob’s Well said the best song on the album — if they had to choose just one — is Words to Build A Life On. Admittedly, it’s a favorite of mine. What’s the story behind the song? How did it come to be? Does it have special significance to you?

MIKE: Ah yes, Words To Build A Life On… that song. That song is an enigma to me. I love it and am artistically frustrated by it. It seems to have a life of it’s own. It travels around the country and sends emails to me from places I’ve never been or seen. It tells me of all the people who relate to it and who cry the first time they hear it. It really is a strange one! I also know it will be nearly impossible for me to write another song that impacts people the way that one does, so it frustrates me a bit.

Seriously, I don’t know that I had too much to do with that song. It sprang from a sermon Tim was giving where he was talking about the beatitudes and he wrapped up the message by quoting the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. He was using Eugene Peterson’s translation (The Message) and it reads, “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on.” I thought to myself, “That sounds like a song if I’ve ever heard a song.”

So I was up in my office the next week singing the chorus, asking God how he could make His words “mine”, how I could incorporate them into my life. Then I started singing the beatitudes and adding things that seemed counter intuitive to how we, as people, feel “blessed”. A woman named Deanne Pearson was our administrator at that time and she was in the office next to me. She came to my door and said, “What’s that song you’re singing?” I said, “I don’t know, I’m just messing around with a new one.” She said, “Well, you should keep doing whatever you’re doing, because I’m over in my office crying listening to you.” I guess that was the beginning of the tears… Thanks Deanne for encouraging me to continue on.

I just continued to write and write, piling up words like I was a Bob Dylan impersonator or something. It became very unwieldy — much too long for a proper song. Anyway, we didn’t sing it at church for a long while because I wanted to edit it down, get it to a more manageable length, something that made more sense. A friend of Tim’s, Jason Clark, came to speak at Jacob’s Well one Sunday. We had two services at that time. After the morning gathering, based on his sermon, I knew we had to sing “Words” that night. I didn’t really have time to edit it, so we just sang all the words. The rest, as they say, is history, at least it’s Jacob’s Well history. That song seems to really be important for our community. I’m just glad to have had the time to be in my office dinking around on my guitar when it came.

Stay tuned for part three of the Mike Crawford interview… it’ll be right here on JakeBouma.com in the next several days!

The following is Part 1 (Part 2) of an interview with Mike Crawford about his album Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings present Songs from Jacob’s Well, Volumes I & II: Even the Darkness Will Not Be Dark To You. You can read my review of the album here. Mike is the Worship/Arts Pastor at Jacob’s Well, an emerging church in Kansas City, MO. For more information about Jacob’s Well, visit their website or check out this article from the Christian Century.

For the record, all hyperlinks in this interview were provided by Mike, not myself.

JAKE BOUMA: First, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Let’s begin by getting to know you a bit. How did you get into music?

MIKE CRAWFORD: I got into music pretty early. It was probably a combination of a few things that culminated in my playing guitar. My parents were really into Texas Blues… they used to have friends over every Friday night to play dominos, drink wine and then dance till midnight to the “three Kings” — Freddie, Albert & B.B. In addition to my parents’ blues influence, I became obsessed with Elvis the year he died. I had just turned 10 that year. Somehow I got completely obsessed with his music and then all other late 50’s/early 60’s music. My parents took me to a Chuck Berry concert that fall and we sat in the front row — and that was “it” for me; somehow something clicked that night, I knew I had to play guitar. I saved up my allowance and bought an old Silvertone acoustic at a pawn shop and went to the library and got a Mel Bay book of chords. I proceeded to teach myself to play. After a year of persistence, my parents gave me a year or two of guitar lessons.

My sixth grade year, my Aunt Donna gave me The Beatles “White Album” and I was done for again. I fully entered the world of music — most of it through her and my uncle’s record collection — Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison, The Beatles, Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, Elvis Costello, Devo, Tom Petty, B-52s… they were hippies who were also into new wave! Oh yeah, the first “album” I bought was KISS’ Alive II… I joined the KISS army in 5th grade… it was all happening around that period for me… 10, 11, 12. I joined my first “band” in 7th grade — we were called Savage! I have played in some sort of band (mostly) ever since then. I played in a band called The Spin at Baylor University in the late 80’s and then ended up touring the country with that band for 3 years after college.

JAKE: So how did you get involved with Jacob’s Well?

MIKE: After that college/post-college phase, I really didn’t play too much music for about seven years. I entered a “desert” period during my late 20’s — doing a job I didn’t enjoy (computer programming) and not really playing much music. I had been living in Kansas City for a couple of years and was discipling a group of guys. Most of them were part of the core group that helped launch Jacob’s Well. They would always bug me about leading worship at Jacob’s, but I was pretty involved at another church, and honestly, had never led worship before. After singing at one of those guy’s wedding, I met Tim Keel. We struck up a fast friendship and a year later I found myself unemployed and seeking a new direction in life. Tim told me he and a few others had been praying for 6 months about asking me to lead worship at Jacob’s Well on a part-time basis. I had been praying for about 7 years for God to move me out of the corporate world and into a vocation involving “music and ministry”. I had no idea what that would be. I also talked to Tim about some ideas I had about starting a recording studio. I also told him about a new band I had formed called Builder. We talked at great length about the reality of the shifts into post-modernity, a new thinking of missional living, a new way of thinking of evangelism, a new way of thinking about lot’s of things! We decided pretty quickly to try to incorporate all of this (worship leading, studio, rock band playing in the local scene) into a full-time position at the church.

We ended up, with the grace of God’s help, fundraising a big chunk of my salary and all the funds necessary to begin work on building and equipping a recording studio. At that time, I was 34 years old, married, with two kids and a third on the way. It really didn’t make much sense to many people as a realistic career move. I mean, most worship leaders are in their twenties and don’t need much to survive. This was going to have to be something very different. I think the church was about 75 people strong when I started. It was definitely a stretch and a risk, both on my part and on the church’s part. I’m so thankful that it’s ended up working out. I can’t think of a better job!

JAKE: “Songs from Jacob’s Well” is unlike any other worship music on the market today. How would you describe the sound of the album? What kind of sound were you aiming to create?

MIKE: I knew I wanted to create something that sounded different than the “Nashville-machine” music that dominates most worship records. Even the best worship records tend to have a sound that is same-ish. I’m not saying those records sound “bad”, in fact most of them have great sounds — huge drums, giant guitars, amazing vocal sounds. They just sort of strike me as being on the dull side.

The music that moves me is more creative, earthy, noisy, old or even more grandiose than what I’d experienced when listening to worship music. I wanted to make a record that I enjoyed listening to.

My reference points for the album were The Beatles’ White Album and Sigor Ros’ takk record. Those records are quite different, but both have elements that really draw me in as a listener. They are also both quite layered and a bit experimental. I also really love jazz and classical music, and I knew I wanted some elements of those types of music melded in, too. In addition, I listen to lots of field recordings or found-sound kinds of recordings. Some of the work of a guitarist named Steve Tibbets has these elements, also a collective called Set Fire To Flames use these kinds of recording techniques. Brian Eno is also a big influence, especially his ambient recordings – Discreet Music, Thursday Afternoon, those kinds of things. Talk Talk’s The Spirit of Eden is another huge touchstone for me, although the JW cd doesn’t sound anything like that record. Another thing that has influenced me over the past few years is the music of Iceland, especially Sigur Ros and múm.

Click here to continue to Part 2 of the interview »

I dug the list format of the day one post, so I’m going to do it again here.

1) The first workshop I went to yesterday was with John Franke (pictured above), in which he explained the basic themes of his forthcoming book Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth. I actually recorded the whole thing using my phone, but I can’t get the audio from the phone to my computer (yet). I took lots of notes, though. If you’d like them let me know. For now, I’ll just post this juicy quote:

Affirming plurality [of truth] is not an excuse for “anything goes.” There are still things that are wrong. Plurality doesn’t say everything goes, but in the framework of what “goes”, we should expect plurality — so that the body of Christ will fill the earth.

2) During a break I had a great conversation with Mike Crawford about his album, songwriting process, etc. He even gave me a tour of the sound studio in the basement of Jacob’s Well. Just as a teaser, I think his album is one of the best worship albums in the past 5 years, if not the best. Tim Keel, the pastor of Jacob’s Well, has a great writeup about the album here. Anyway, I’ll be reconnecting with Mike soon for an interview on this blog, so stay tuned.

3) The second workshop I attended yesterday was with Tim Keel, author of Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos. He’s a smart dude, and provided a few really good metaphors to aid in thinking about the state and structure of the church and its leaders.

4) Erik and I had an extended dinner at Chili’s, where we engaged in a potentially life-altering conversation. Afterward we met up with Danielle Shroyer and some other folks at Harry’s Country Club.

5) This morning, Kathy Grieb referenced a suh-weet poem that many people found really helpful when thinking about our theologies.

6) I ate lunch today with Troy Bronsink, Mike Stavlund, and others at Jack Stack BBQ. Good food and good people. It’s impossible to overstate the greatness of the conversations I had with these and other people over the course of the last three days.

7) After publishing this post, I’m heading back to Des Moines. If I had to sum up my experience during the last three days in two words: So good.