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Kester Brewin on theology and the new physics

June 5th, 2009 | Comments (0)

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!

Emerging Church, Faith/Theology |

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Following in the footsteps of The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture and The Wall Street Journal’s Photo Journal, Christianity Today has launched Imago Fidei, a photoblog that bills itself as “a daily view of Christian life.” While not strictly photos, there are some gems in the archives. 05/15/2009

Bonhoeffer on youth ministry

May 7th, 2009 | Comments (2)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes these words on Christian community, which are rather applicable to smaller youth ministries:

In the Christian community thankfulness is just what it is anywhere else in the Christian life. Only he who gives thanks for the little things receives the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good. Then we deplore the fact that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experience that God has given to others, and we consider this lament to be pious. We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things? If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978. 29.

Words that are just as convicting as when they were penned 71 years ago.

May we have the courage and humility to give thanks daily for the ministries we find ourselves in, however modest.

Faith/Theology, Youth Ministry |

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C. Wess Daniels, a Quaker, discusses Denominations and Traditions: Thoughts on Differences. Just for the fun of it, I’ll replace the word ‘Quaker’ in a section of his post with ‘Lutheran’: “I have very little interest in Lutheranism, in as much as it is an ism. These things that are the “way we’ve always done them” can actually becomes obstacles to our believing in the power of God’s Spirit. The denominational nitty gritty, when it is left to its own devices and not rooted within the life of the tradition, only sustains structures often reinforcing the church’s role as a placeholder for our belief rather than a bottom-up community of people following God’s mission in the world. I want to be a part of a community that not only tells but also lives into the stories of those we call Lutheran.” 04/30/2009
Nate Phelps, the son of faux-Christian hate peddler Fred Phelps, recently presented a paper at the American Atheists Convention titled The Uncomfortable Grayness of Life. There is simply too much good stuff to quote here, so just go read it for yourself (it’s lengthy, but totally worthwhile). Oh, heck, here’s a tasty morsel:
His desire to get back in shape was, in and of itself, a good and even necessary thing. However, true to his character, my father took a personal desire to improve his health and turned it into an obsession that impacted the entire family. Soon, we would arrive home from selling candies, only to get back in the cars and head over to the high school to run 5 or 10 miles around the track. Charts were hung up all around the house, tracking progress and setting new distance goals. Running the marathon became my father’s Holy Grail; learning of a marathon that was coming up nearby, he stepped up our training to run 15 and then 20 miles. As grueling as this regiment was, none of the children dared complain.
Related: The Church of Hate and Westboro Baptist Lawsuit 04/28/2009

A Holy Week parable from Peter Rollins

April 8th, 2009 | Comments (0)

The Last Supper

It is evening, and you are gathered together with the other disciples in a small room for Passover. All the time you are watching Jesus, while he sits quietly in the shadows listening to the idle chatter, watching over those who sit around him, and, from time to time, telling stories about the kingdom of God.

As night descends, a meal of bread and wine is brought into the room. It is only at this moment that Jesus sits forward so that the shadows no longer cover his face. He quietly brings the conversation to an end by capturing each one with his intense gaze. Then he begins to speak:

“My friends, take this bread, for it is my very body, broken for you.”

Every eye is fixed on the bread that is laid on the table. While these words seem obscure and unintelligible, everyone picks up on their gravity.

Then Jesus carefully pours wine into the cup of each disciple until it overflows onto the table.

“Take this wine and drink of it, for it is my very blood, shed for you.”

With these words an ominous shadow seems to descend upon the room – a chilling darkness that makes everyone shudder uneasily. Jesus continues:

“As you do this, remember me.”

Most of the gathered disciples begin to slowly eat the bread and drink the wine, lost in their thoughts. You, however, cannot bring yourself to lift your hand at all, for his words have cut into your soul like a knife.

Jesus does not fail to notice your hesitation and approaches, lifting up your head with his hand so that your eyes are level with his. Your eyes meet for only a moment, but before you are able to turn away, you are caught up in a terrifying revelation. At that instant you experience the loneliness, the pain, and sorrow that Jesus is carrying. You see nails being driven through skin and bone; you hear the crowds jeering and the cries of pain as iron cuts against flesh. At that moment you see the sweat that flows from Jesus like blood, and experience the suffocation, madness, and pain that will soon envelop him. More than all of this, however, you feel a trace of the separation he will soon feel in his own being.

In that little room, which occupies no significant space in the universe, you have caught a glimpse of a divine vision that should never have been disclosed. Yet it is indelibly etched into the eyes of Christ for anyone brave enough to look.

You turn to leave – to run from that place. You long for death to wrap around you. But Jesus grips you with his gaze and smiles compassionately. Then he holds you tight in his arms like no one has held you before. He understands that the weight you now carry is so great that it would have been better had you never been born. After a few moments, he releases his embrace and lifts the wine that sits before you, whispering,

“Take this wine, my dear friend, and drink it up, for it is my very blood, and it is shed for you.”

All this makes you feel painfully uncomfortable, and so you shift in your chair and fumble in your pocket, all the time distracted by the silver that weights heavy in your pouch.

Commentary from Peter Rollins:

This reflection was on outworking of my first interaction with the enigmatic figure of Judas. Here I wanted to play with our tendency to identify with the favorable characters in the Bible. For instance, when reading about the self-righteous Pharisee and the humble tax collector, we find it all too easy to condemn the first and praise the second without asking whether our own actions are closer to the one we have rejected than the one we praise.

Judas is here a symbol of all our failures, and Christ’s action to demonstrate his unconditional acceptance. Judas helps to remind us of Christ’s message that he came for the sick rather than the healthy, and that he loves and accepts us as we are.

Be sure to check out Peter’s forthcoming book, The Orthodox Heretic: and Other Impossible Tales which is available from the publisher at 40% off if purchased before April 15.

Faith/Theology |

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New poll from Gallup: “Despite suggestions that the economic recession might cause religiosity among Americans to increase, there has been no evident change over the past 15 months in either Americans’ self-reported church attendance or the importance of religion in their daily lives.” 03/26/2009
Godless America? Say Hello to the “Apatheists”. “It appears that most of the unaffiliated individuals [in recent surveys] are not atheistic or anti-religious in any activist sense, but are rather apathetic toward organized religion and reluctant to join any particular denomination or sect. Perhaps an appropriate term to describe such individuals is ‘apatheist,’ a person who is not interested in trying to prove or disprove God’s existence or any other religious dogma.” 03/19/2009

Looking for help in planning a spiritual retreat

March 11th, 2009 | Comments (19)

Planning a spiritual retreat

Brandon and I are trying to plan the first of what we hope are many spiritual retreats, and we’re looking for a bit of advice.

Here’s what we have planned so far:

Brandon’s father has a farm about two hours from here, which is where the retreat would be located.

No technology of any kind, except for cell phones in case of emergency (or maybe we just give out the land line number of the house and don’t take cell phones either).

Our diet will consist entirely of bread, water, and coffee.

We will pray the daily office, with each time of prayer followed by silence, and concluding with journaling.

All other time will be filled by reading scripture, reading books, and manual labor (around the farm).

So that’s a rough sketch of what we’ve been working on, but we’re looking for some advice and guidance. If you’ve been on a spiritual retreat and/or have planned them, what are the best resources you can recommend? Do you have any tips? We’re looking for anything at all to help us plan the most nourishing retreat possible.

If you know of anything that would be helpful, please leave a comment!

Faith/Theology |

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According to Brett McCracken, I am a Christian hipster. “They love poetry readings, worshipping with candles, and smoking pipes while talking about God.” 03/06/2009
The Myth of the Institution-less Church. “Often, in reaction, we think that, in having no programmes, no hierarchy, the removal of the institution will solve the problem. After all, if the institution is getting in the way of the purpose, get rid of the institution. This response is increasingly ingrained in us, such that even using the word ‘institution’ is anathema to those seeking new ways of doing and being church. But I think how ever well intentioned, this approach is naive and inadequate to the task of being Church.” 03/02/2009
On the occasion of Darwin’s birthday: Five Things We Can Learn From Creationists. “2) They never tire of pointing out how scientific ideas can be misused by dangerous ideologies, from reckless capitalism, to vanguard communism, to Nazism. We will always need the reminder.” 02/12/2009

How can theology transform the church?

February 6th, 2009 | Comments (3)

Here’s a better question: How couldn’t it?

If you could open my brain, peer inside, and see what has been happening there the past month or so, it would be a loop of this video.

The entire video is fantastic, but here are a couple of money quotes:

“[Pastors] are saying, ‘Theology doesn’t preach. And I only seem to connect with my congregation when when I do psychology, contemporary affairs, aesthetics, novels, comparative religion, lectures on this and that topic.’ So the starting point is just to let folks do theology today.”

“If we then can say every one of us who picks up a Bible, or, for that matter a newspaper, and tries to wrestle with the relevance of the Bible for the contemporary world, or a Christian response to the events on the front page of today’s newspaper — that person is already doing theology.”

“Theology is when Christian folks engage the contemporary world in a vital way; when they ask the hardest questions and then they sit down and try to get some answers.”

I think this is what Tony Jones was getting at when he named a chapter “It’s the theology, stupid.” in his book The New Christians.

Theology alone will not save the church, but if it can be wrestled away from the ivory towers of academia, it will undoubtedly have massive transformative power. And my contention is that the starting point for theological thinking is precisely where it has been avoided — youth ministry.

Extravaganza workshop resources

January 30th, 2009 | Comments (4)

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.