Advent Blog Tour

We are already halfway through this journey - but the good people responsible for the Common English Bible translation have been sponsoring a blog tour.  Each day from December 1 - December 25, a piece of the Advent/Christmas story is shared and an assigned blogger shares a reflection.

These stops have been absolutely powerful reflections!!!  My Advent journey has deepened just reading them, but also as a result of getting to write one myself - tomorrow's in fact.  I hope you all might catch up with the posts and join us for the rest of the journey!

Next Cohort Meet-Up Set

We had a great meeting last Wednesday. I enjoyed getting together with Chris, Katie, and Jim.  We talked about Doug Pagitt's book, Church in the Inventive Age.  I think we all would recommend it.  It's a good read and is short.

We set out next meeting for January 12, 2011 at 12:00 p.m.  Again, we will meet in Coralville at Fusion coffee shop.  This time we plan to discuss Carol Howard Merritt's book, Reframing Hope!  It looks like a compelling book.  She is also the host of a podcast I listen to often, God Complex Radio.  Looking forward to meeting again.  We welcome your input here on this blog.

EVTC #4

Our final morning's open discussion with the three presenters provided a fascinating opportunity to see three "philosophical" systems interact with, and challenge, one another. Colin Greene's articulate attempt to deconstruct from within much of Western philosophical thought as "intellectually neutral" is challenged by Musa Dube's concern that Western philosophers only "talk to themselves" without taking on board insights of, say, African sages and thinkers. Richard Twiss' Lakota patriarchal, warrior tradition which is just as comfortable calling God "Grandfather" as it is "Creator" or "Great Spirit" is critiqued by Musa's experience of feminist insights being so necessary. A very rich discussion indeed reminding us that, in all our "emergent discussion" having equal representation (rather than isolated "token representation") of such diverse and multicultural voices and perspectives is so important!
Next and final session will be a "where do we go from here" discussion about which I will post later.

EVTC #3

Colin Greene, theologian/missiologist from Durham, presented on his book "Metavistas." If we no longer, in the postmodern age, have an undisputed "meta-narrative" (i.e. the Bible) or an agreed metaphysics (view of the universe), how then shall we proclaim the Gospel? Perhaps by looking forward together into the "metavista,"the open space created by the fact that we are living in the dying of one age and the new birth of another. None of us know what the church (or the world) will really look like in the next decades, but does this not invite us to be open to new possibilities for mission and ministry in the days and years to come?
His book suggests several marks of the church in these days -- (1) the sometimes volatile interplay of scripture (narrative), tradition (knowing where you come from and valuing that history), and culture (rather than "reason" or "experience"); (2) grassroots ecumenism with churches cooperating "on the ground;" (3) an interfaith context (respectful conversation between the world's religions); reform of seminary education (incorporating ecumenical perspectives, cultural studies, political science, truly biblical theology, etc. and eschewing "denominational silos"); (4) understanding the upside and downside of globalization; and (5) really being willing to live into a counter cultural lifestyle and reality.

EVTC #2

Musa Dube -- our presenter this morning -- is a professor of New Testament in Botswana. Her passionate question? 'How do I read the Bible as a woman who has been colonized?' Even in her doctoral training, she was required to learn (in addition to her English, Hebrew, and Greek) German and French but her own language and culture was completely ignored. So many of the texts, from the Exodus narrative to the "Great Commission" are -- or have been used as -- justifications for colonization under the guise of "evangelization."
She told a powerful folk tale of "Princess Africa" as she came under the control of her "colonial masters." The decades-old struggle for African independence as transformed her into "Mama Africa," the strong black woman who was ready for the healing independence was to bring only to find that the new 'sons' of Africa began fighting among themselves. Now came the era of "new colonization" -- international aid, governments, church groups, NGOs -- which goes under name "globalization" and the "global village." This resulted in crushing, unmanageable debt. Along with this came two more blows -- AIDS and climate change. And so today Mama Africa remains sick and bleeding...and perhaps reaching out to touch the hand of the One who once said to a little girl who was already dead, "Talitha cum..."