kinnon.tv

Rob Bell - the Bar Tour

Steve McKoy pointed to this interesting article from the Houston Chronicle. The paper's take on Rob Bell's Everything is Spiritual tour of parts of the US.

Before an audience of about 350 that ranged from teens to seniors, he just talked. There were no lights, no music, no drama, no special effects.

It's an endeavor — a Michigan pastor spouting forth in a Houston nightclub — that might border on "utter foolishness," Bell said.

"I'm trying to crank up the risk factor," Bell said. "I don't want to rest on 'Hey, the band was good, the guy had nothing to say.' This thing either works or it crash lands."

So far, it has worked well enough that Bell has sold out most of the shows in his 24-city tour dubbed Everything Is Spiritual. Traveling in a tour bus with his wife and two sons, the 35-year-old pastor started June 30 in Chicago and will end July 29 in Indianapolis after a trek including California, Georgia and New York.

Rob's tour appears to be in support of his book, Velvet Elvis  - with his publisher hosting the official website of the tour.

Tags: Rob Bell, Church, Emerging Church, Tour, Steve McKoy

Consuming the Church

Out of Ur and the iMonk have two posts that seem meant for each other. Skye Jethani @ Out of Ur:

...corporate models, marketing strategies, and secular business values are pervasive in American ministry—we are in competition with other churches, and other providers of identity and meaning, for survival. To appeal to religious consumers we must commodify our congregations—slapping our church’s logo on shirts, coffee mugs, and bible covers. And we strive to convince a sustainable segment of the religious marketplace that our church is “relevant,” “comfortable,” or “exciting.”

The iMonk, Michael Spenser, commenting on Paul's admonition to the Corinthian Church regarding partiality being shown to the wealthy:

We are the wealthy members of the global church who have arranged the table to suit ourselves. We use our wealth on our buildings, beach retreats, multiple staffs and recreation centers. We demand the best of everything and see no problem with the conditions in third-world churches that could multiply the usefulness of our wealth over and over. We have “dishonored” the poor as American Christians because we believe God wants us to have a $300k light and sound show every Sunday.

The idols of success are real. Their worship is poisonous. Their sacrifices are wasteful and hurtful. Why can’t we see these idols? How do we imagine that Jesus would not overturn all our tables, and that many from the global church would applaud as he did so?

Read both posts - and let me know what you think.

Tags: Out of Ur, Michael Spenser, iMonk, Church, Consumer Christianity, heresy, Prosperity Gospel

Donald Miller - Out of Ur

Blue Like Jazz is a popular book around the Kinnon household. In fact, our eldest loaned it out to some of the cousins - a number of whom were profoundly impacted by it. Miller is interviewed at Leadership Journal's Out of Ur blog. One of the questions and Miller's answer:

How do you react to ministries that try to present Christianity as being cool and hip?

Miller: There are many problems with trying to market the gospel of Jesus, not the least of which is that, in itself, it is not a cool or fashionable idea. It isn't supposed to be. It is supposed to be revolutionary. It's for people who are tired of trying to be cool, tired of trying to get the world to redeem them.

I attended the Dove Awards and was brokenhearted. I saw all these beautiful Christians, wonderful people, with this wonderful, revolutionary message of Jesus, who, instead of saying, "Look, fashion doesn't matter, hip doesn't matter," were saying "World, please accept us, we can be just as hip as you, just as fashionable, only in a religious way."

I would say we need to choose our God, choose our redeemer.

After you've read the Miller interview, you might want to read the hell out of Brian McLaren's Out of Ur interview, here, here and here. Tony Campolo joins McLaren in Part One. Money quote for me:

Brian, in your book, The Last Word and the Word After That, you focus heavily on “deconstructing” the evangelical view of hell. Some critics think your deconstruction has moved to the point of your embracing a “universalist” position. Are you a Universalist?

McLaren: No, I am not embracing a traditional universalist position, but I am trying to raise the question, When God created the universe, did he have two purposes in mind—one being to create some people who would forever enjoy blessing and mercy, and another to create a group who would forever suffer torment, torture, and punishment? What is our view of God? A God who plans torture? A God who has an essential, eternal quality of hatred? Is God love, or is God love and hate?

It might sound surprising to state it that way, but you’d be surprised at some of the emails I’ve received. For example, someone quoted Scriptures like Psalm 5:5 or Psalm 11:5 and said, “If you don’t believe in a God of hate, you don’t believe in the God of the Bible.” Here’s my concern: if you believe in a god of hate, violence, revenge, and torture, it makes you very susceptible to becoming a person made in that god’s image.

I look forward to hearing McLaren in greater depth at this Allelon Conference in June. There's nothing like Boise in June, I hear.

Technorati Tags: Brian McLaren, Donald Miller, Hell, Out of Ur, Leadership Journal

Kids Seek Spiritual Experiences...or not

French mathematician and religious philosopher, Blaise Pascal, once said that there is a God-shaped void inside each of us that only God can fill. Someone might want to tell that to the 15-25 year olds interviewed for a Church of England report, Making Sense of Generation Y.

Ruth Gledhill reports in the Times,

A report published by the Church today indicates that young people are quite happy with a life without God and prefer car boot sales to church.

If they think about church at all, the images young people come up with are “cardigans”, “sandals and socks”, “corrupt”, “traditionalist” and “stagnant”.

The report has prompted an “urgent” wake-up call from the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who writes of a large “mismatch” between the Church and the views of those aged 15 to 25. He says: “The research suggests young people are happy with life as it is, that they have felt no need for a transcendent something else and regard the Church as boring and irrelevant.”

And later:
The researchers were also shocked to discover little sense of sin or fear of death. Nor did they find any Freudian guilt as a result of private sensual desires. The young people were, however, afraid of growing old.

Ah, the ubiquitous fear of growing old. Perhaps the Church could come up with a new marketing slogan, "Jesus helps you stay young." Well, he does, doesn't he?

UPDATE: This post from Michael Spencer @ BHT seems apropos:

"...it seems to me that our culture reshapes the Gospel into either 1) being a consumer or 2) being a fan. I am really stunned at the number of serious Christians who can’t see this. The parable shows that if you change the business of a school from producing students/scholars to producing satisfied customers and happily entertained fans, you can be very successful. The key is to play the right word games in the process. But I say this after a lifetime in youth ministry: That stuff doesn’t produce disciples of Jesus. Jesus does, through his Spirit and by his community. If we decide to call fans/consumers “disciples” then we can do all kinds of things.

This is right out of the playbook Southern Baptists and other revivalists wrote around the use of the altar call, evangelism sales techniques, etc. If I get you to pray the prayer or walk forward, you are a Christian. Then the game becomes how to get you to do that. That the actual Gospel makes guest appearances in this approach doesn’t surprise me at all. But the fact that we can’t see what is actually happening is sad."

Please make a point of reading Michael's two year old, Parable for our Seeker-Sensitive, Purpose-Driven, Church Growth Oriented Friends.

Technorati Tags: Christian, church, Church of England, iMonk, Michael Spencer

Together for the Gospel...

...would have been more accurately titled - The Good News for Some. I've refrained from commenting but I mean really....

Read the ongoing comments at BHT. Read Susan's take on it. Read the View from Her. Read this post and the comments at Scot McKnight's blog. And read Ben Witherington's post.

The men from T4G appear to want to draw complementarianism as a line in the sand. Good for them. I'm happy to be on the other side of THAT line. If they think that makes me not their brother in their estimation- then perhaps I agree with them. (Medical Note: I can feel my blood pressure rising as I write this. Time to go to church. NT Wright is preaching this morning next week. Nothing like being a week early for church. The Rev. Anne Crosthwait preached a fabulous and convicting sermon.)

Technorati Tags: Christian, church, not TR, T4G

Good Grief! What if I'm...

...a neocalvinist. Gideon Strauss, Joe Carter & Dr. Al Wolters. (I'm not going to learn Dutch, however.)

Technorati Tags: Christian, neocalvinism, not TR, religion

Sometimes it's embarrassing...

...to profess belief in Christ when these brethern purport to speak for me. (Do a New Testament word search for "battle" or "army" and then do an NT search for "love" if you wonder where I'm coming from.)

Read Susan Arnold's post on God being Still There - in spite of some of our best efforts to disprove Him by our actions ...and atheists by their arguments.

[Steve McCoy's short & eloquent post prompted this one]

Technorati Tags: atheists, Ron Luce, Reformissionary, Susan Arnold

Scientology - No Sense of Humor?

I guess when you're busy battling Thetans you don't have time for a sense of humor.

'Twould seem that Isaac Hayes is leaving, or rather his voice is leaving South Park. After happily voicing the Chef character in episodes that belittle Christians, Mormons, Muslims and Jews, Hayes plays his "civil-rights card" (what might be in this case a "get-out-of-logic free card") and asks to be released from his South Park contract because of the show's religious insensitivity. (Who knew?) Now this wouldn't happen to have anything to do with the South Park episode that poked fun at Scientology, would it?

"This has nothing to do with intolerance and bigotry and everything to do with the fact that Isaac Hayes is a Scientologist and that we recently featured Scientology in an episode of 'South Park,' " Matt Stone said. "In 10 years and over 150 episodes of 'South Park,' Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews. He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show. To bring the civil-rights struggle into this is just a non sequitur. Of course we will release Isaac from his contract and we wish him well."

Show co-creator Trey Parker stated in the same article that SP had never gone after Scientology out of fear respect for Mr. Hayes. But they eventually had to tell Mr. Hayes that if they didn't do a Scientology parody their reputations would be hurt,

"Dude, we totally love working with you and this is nothing personal, it's just we're "South Park," and if we don't do this, we're belittling everything else we've ripped on."

Apparently there is no truth to the rumor that Isaac's voice will be joining the cast of that religiously tolerant show, Family Guy.

Parker and Stone hope to convince TD Jakes to become the new voice of Chef.

____________________________________

For more information on what seems to be rather a humor-free religion, check out the Rolling Stone article Inside Scientology - an article Tom, John, Kirstie and Isaac were probably all upset about. Although Tom is capable of some laugh inducing stunts.

[HT: Thunderstruck]

Technorati Tags: humor, Isaac Hayes, humorless, religious intolerance, Scientology, South Park

Walk the Line - 66% Accurate

We watched Walk The Line this past weekend. Enjoyed the flick. Joaquin Phoenix was a great Johnny Cash. Reese Witherspoon, a favorite of mine, was a captivating June Carter. But we all commented on the missing ingredient in the move. Cash's faith.

Sure there was the scene where Cash goes back to church after his battle with his addiction demons - but there wasn't a heck of a lot more. And even the New York Times noticed:

Johnny Cash's three enduring obsessions are summarized in the title of a Cash retrospective released by Sony in 2000: "Love, God, Murder." But "Walk the Line," the film about his life, deals prominently with just two of those three themes: it is a love story about Mr. Cash and June Carter that takes place before they were married, and it shows Mr. Cash onstage ripping through some of his songs about brutality and its consequences.

It makes for a more interesting story to show Mr. Cash as a philandering, addicted musician - carrying the burden of the death of his older brother - the one who was going to be a preacher. It makes for a more interesting story but 2/3rds of the truth is still prevaricating.

...faith had been a vital part of Mr. Cash's life since he answered an altar call as a boy, according to "The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash" by Dave Urbanski, and his beliefs gave a moral weight to his songs about outlaws and outcasts. He performed gospel music all his life and left Sun Records for Columbia in 1958 partly because Mr. Phillips would not allow him to record an album of hymns. At the famous Folsom Prison concert that serves as a framing device for the movie, Mr. Cash is shown performing "Cocaine Blues," but Mr. Black pointed out that the show concluded with "Greystone Chapel," a devotional song written by an inmate in the audience.

"He was a really committed Christian all his life," said Patrick Carr, who co-wrote Mr. Cash's 1997 autobiography. (The film was partly adapted from that book, but Mr. Carr was not part of the deal.) Mr. Cash even saw his drug addiction as his metaphorical years in the wilderness. "As he was going further into addiction, he knew he was traveling away from God; that's how he thought about it," Mr. Carr said. "He was feeling that he was completely separated from God, and that was the worst thing."

Ignoring the huge audience in the fly-over states that identifies itself as Christian, Hollywood decided that that part of the story wasn't cool. And we all know it's more important to be cool than to be accurate. Right?

Technorati Tags: Christian, church, Johnny Cash, NY Times, Walk the Line

Da Vinci Code Questions

This site deals with the historicity of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, due to hit the cinema in May. Sony is apparently sponsoring the site as they prepare to release Ron Howard's movie adaptation - and want to mitigate the Catholic and Evangelical backlash from this anti-Catholic, anti-Christian book and movie.

The book has sold 36 million copies and though it may be a good yarn, it is historical (and somewhat hysterical) nonsense. [HT: Hugh Hewitt]

UPDATE: Poor Rich Dan Brown has some people who'd like a piece of the action - people who claim he "stole" some of the material from their book, The Holy Blood, the Holy Grail.

Technorati Tags: Da Vinci Code, Da Vinci Dialogue, Imagine Entertainment, Sony Columbia Pictures, Ron Howard