'I must be an acrobat, to talk like this and act like that...' -Actung Baby,U2
I am Jacob Bailey. I have been writing here for a while now. I am 27 years old, on the brink of moving to Spain. I love my wife and two beautiful children. Glad you stopped by - please let me know you were here by posting a comment.
leading with QUESTIONS
Monday, April 25, 2005
Thursday, April 21, 2005
speaking of the blog community...
I found my printed copy of Dwight's eight pages of questions today and it made me laugh. I love it though. If we really engaged even a few of these questions we (the church/the Christ-followers) would find ourselves in a better place.
Here is the essay/questions: I have to ask - by Dwight Friesen
heating up
As things heat up with DA Carson's new book BECOMING CONVERSANT/EMERGING CHURCH : Understanding a Movement and Its Implications and Andrew Jones leads the emergent bloggers response I am totally tuned in.
It is so crazy to be in Kentucky right now. Within days two very high profile events are playing out. The first is the Worship-Art-Liturgy-Preaching Conference and the second is this:
James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Prison Fellowship's Chuck Colson, and Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler are hosting "Justice Sunday," a telecast this weekend from a mega-church in Louisville, Kentucky. Their message is that those who don't support President Bush's judicial nominees are hostile to "people of faith."
For more on this see Jim Wallis, author of God’s Politics, at www.sojo.net.
Things are boiling over. It's a wonderful time to live. New things are coming to life and old things are passing away. That's a bit in code. But basically I am find myself in the emergent camp trying to carefully navigate in new territory. But it is exciting and promising for the church. There's no way back. I see no other options. It's risky, but it is the only way forward. Others may try and hunker down and pull back, and hold onto "sacred structures" and ways of understanding the faith. But intutively I see those groups unable to survive tomorrow and unable to speak to anyone today. I am proud of what is taking place in the public forum through emergent blogs. They are open, engaging, honest, incarnational - they take on the criticism and engage with it rather than just fight it! May the Spirit lead the church toward love and mission - unity and justice. We owe it to the world He loves so much and came to save.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
back in 2000 sometime...
Back in 2000 sometime I wrote out this dark prayer...I just rediscovered it today. It kind of surprized me. I mean...I didn't know that back then (5 years ago) I was asking these questions...anyway. I think today my questions are more open and I let them come out...back then I would have never shared this with anyone. But I thought I should capture it here in it's raw, unfriendly state. I hope you can get beyond some of the churchy phrases and references and hear me in my context back then:
What do I have to say to you
It could be this it could be that
How am I supposed to know?
I don't feel this is working
It's just a conversation with myself
an empty echo of my brain.
There is nothing in it - where are you?
My God, my Savior, my sanctifieing king
Of whom and in whom I claim to live
Where do you hide?
Is it in my heart so hard to feel?
So illusive is the voice that speaks
From there. I say I know
But do I know you Lord? Why is it
That I do so toil to end up without you?
Do I simply lack the prayers
The answers, the actions too?
The place, the place you met there
But now I seem to've lost the map.
Stillness and quiet is where you lie
beneath life's business. I found you
there that once. You spoke. I broke.
We wept. But why not daily oh Lord?
It's my desire --> I can't find the way...
Does it come from you or me
I don't know...
Monday, April 18, 2005
Frisbee
What do you do when the Jesus freak who
started your church dies from AIDS?
Simple. Erase him from history.
I will see this film...when it becomes available after the festival. Will you?
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Rahab
Thinking about Rahab today. I found a link to here story in James 2:24ff...but anyway. Who is this lady who goes down with the cloud of witnesses in the biblical text (Heb. 11) as one of the "faithful." I mean I thought she held out on her own people, was a traitor, and not to mention a whore, not to mention a liar, and not to mention she made a deal with God's people that worked out in her favor (see Joshua 2:1-3ff and Josh 6:23ff). Who is this lady who does "it all wrong" or at least shows serious sign of "moral failure"? Who is this "faithful" prositute, rule bender, and liar?Yet she is part of our sacred story. And not just a small scale player. Sometimes things aren't as they seem. This makes me wonder what does it really mean to be a man or woman of faith?
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Tuesday with "Shapers"
Lou Nemeth and I spent all of yesterday with Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost at a their "Shaping of Things to Come" conference in Tacoma.This conference was inspired by their book on Missional Communities/Missional Church. Below are some their thoughts (bold) and my reponse (italics) to those ideas.The four pillars around which a missional community circles (Frost AM):
1) Proximity - to the people whom they feel called - a subculture, a particular tribe or people group. Involves frequent spontaneous rubbing up against others. "Life rubbing up against life." Yes. The community I am currently a part of suffer for lack this kind of closeness. We live in suburbia and our lives are fragmented and spread out in different places. I feel pulled toward a "neighborhood" context where people live closer, shop closer, work closer and do life in general in closer proximity to one another.
2) Presence - practicing the presence of Christ if he were living in that place, with frequency and spontanuity. Easy to say, more difficult to live out. How would he live? What would he do or not do? Loving your neighbor as yourself? Loving the "least of these?"
3) Powlessness - letting go of the power(s) of the institution, and power structures associated with it. I am reminded of the "self serving will to power" as so clearly illustrated by Rick Richardson here (the perceptions we face). Let me tell you, I can appreciate this aspect of a missional community.
4) Proclamation - of the gospel as "naming the name of Christ in your context." This idea intutively has been a part of my understanding lately of what it means to "share the gospel" - naming the name of Chirst in my context. Real relationships with others naturally and frequently over time communicates Christ. I am certain of it. Christ happens. To be a Christ follower in my context means to share Christ as accurately as i have experienced him up this point in time, as much as I know him in this moment, nothing more or more complex. It that simplicity is something I think deeper than a "clear explanation of the gospel."
Some thoughts that got me thinking...
"Everyone in your context here in the United States already know that Jesus died for their sins! Everyone already knows that. But that phrase has lost all meaning." - Frost
When he said this I was like "Duh!" Why can't we admit this? Why are we still trying say those words at every opportunity as if they really meant anything to people today? (See Franklin Grahm in his interview with Larry King for case in point here.)What does it mean to embody the whole gospel as a community and share it in community and by living it out as salt and light in rotting and dark places? What do we say? How do we recover meaning or reillustrate meaning in new ways?
"When we think of America we think 'home of the mega church'." - Frost
"The best way to transform a society is to tell an alternative story." - Hirsch
"The one another's of scripture are only meaningful when we are on mission." - Hirsch
"The church was meant to be lived out in liminal and communitas kinds of spaces" - Hirsch
"We are exiles in host empire." - Hirsch
"We are called thrive like Danniel and others in the place we live even though we know we don't belong." - Hirsch
"When God is human (in Jesus) he doesn't look as holy as we think he should." - Hirsch
There were many other significant parts of the day's conversation, but sadly I can't remember them right now. We did talk about chaos theory in ecclessiology and how that pattern may deal with "heresey" more effectively than a highly organized institutional church system.
Overall me response was mixed. I am like "yes!" mission! Lets go save the world in new ways creatively offering the hope of Christ in if varying ways. While part of me is like wow - but wait a mininute. How do we engage with 1700 years of Christendom in a more reconciling fashion than abrubtly parting company to do mission? And how can that part of our Christian history inform our mission (beyond just negatively)?
Monday, April 11, 2005
Stanley Grenz (1950-2005)
Rogier: What, in your eyes, are key-essentials for churches that desire to reach postmodern people?
Dr. Grenz: The ultimate key is "community." The best apologetic we have in the postmodern context is the vibrant, local community of disciples who are loyal to Christ, that is, a community in which the power of the Spirit is transforming relationships. As many of my friends in IVCF tell me, postmodern persons are converted to the community before they are converted to Christ.
In addition, I think the church today needs to recapture a profound confidence in the power of the Spirit who remains active in the world today and is active in ways that we might not immediately recognize. Many Christians are tempted to become cynical and despairing along with people around them. In this way the downside of the postmodern ethos invades the church. In a context in which people no longer find a humanly-based reason for hope, we have good news to share, namely, the gospel about the God who does what is humanly impossible–the God who brings life from the dead.
For the rest of the article go hear: Next Wave - Stan Grenz Interview. Dwight Friesen first passed me Stan Grenz's primer a few years ago. Great read.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
others thoughts on Pope.
I am writing from Kelso WA - our hotel room. First entry from wireless! Awesome...plug and play piece of cake thanks to the front desk. Free too! Anyway...we are on the road with some friends talking about Spain at different churches inviting others to join us.
I am enjoying thoughts by Now and Ever on the passing of the pope...and how he connects it to Christ and the war between conservatives and liberals and he think us out of that impass and toward something other...
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Monday, April 04, 2005
Why I love Hummers (April fools!) so much
Hummer hybrid a slightly less socially irresponsible status symbol
With the introduction of its new gas/electric hybrid, Hummer hopes to reach the niche market of motorists who want to appear concerned about the environment, but for whom the popular Toyota Prius just doesn't turn enough heads with its sedan body and measly $20,000 MSRP. The $60,000 Hummer Laverde (a contraction of the Spanish words lava and verde, literally meaning "green-wash") will go three times farther on a single fill-up than previous Hummers - due mostly to a far larger gas tank - while its advanced hybrid technology gets twice the mileage of behemoth SUV competitor Ford Excursion at two miles per gallon highway, zero city. (Because two times zero is still zero.)
Option packages include advanced armor plating unavailable even to U.S. troops in Iraq. Though the armor's weight nullifies the hybrid's added fuel economy, you're assured that in a collision your load of overpriced organic groceries will remain unscathed - unlike the driver of the Mazda Miata you just backed over in the Whole Foods parking lot, who will require reconstructive surgery and lifetime of rehab.
In a limited-time offer intended to boost initial sales, your first tank of gas will come from pristine petroleum drilled in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and your first 100 kilowatt-hours will come from "clean coal" power plants. "We hope the Laverde will be more popular and less of a transparent PR stunt than our hydrogen-powered H2H model" said Elizabeth Lowery, GM Vice President of Environment and Energy. The H2H was unavailable for public sale but given as a gift to actor and muscle-man Arnold Schwarzenegger - who is also governor of California - no kidding.
(this great satire was pulled from www.sojo.net - great site I get there free weekly emailings.)
