Loud Loft

What I'm reading right now . . .

Picking Cotton by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton with Erin Torneo. The story of a woman who identified the wrong man who raped her, his subsequent release after serving over a decade in prison (DNA evidence exonerated him) his forgiveness of her and their new role as friends and advocates for new methods to identify suspects in crime cases.

They like Jesus but not the church by Dan Kimball. I first saw Dan Kimball about five years ago speaking about this new “emerging” wave of churches and culture. Ummm, read this book or forever have your head in the sand (or elsewhere) about how our society is changing and how we need to understand that it’s not the same old, same old.

Searching for God knows what by Don Miller. This is the third or fourth time I’ve read this book. Go right now to a bookstore or to amazon and buy it. Read it. In six months, read it again. Repeat every year or so. In fact, just read everything Don Miller has every written (Blue Like Jazz and Through Painted Deserts are my faves) including watching his videos on “Let Story Guide You” and “Why You Matter As An Artist”. Just do it and shut up and read. Let me know what you think.

The Survivors Club by Brian Sherwood. Real stories of folks who’ve survived unsurmountable circumstances. When you buy the book you get a code to take a fifteen minute online test to learn what kind of surviver you are and what are the three dominant and least dominant traits that you possess to survive.

I’m working though a couple more right now. I tend to read multiple books at a time on occasion and this is one of those occasions. Otherwise, I tend to read one book at a time in just a few sittings. I don't read anywhere near as much as I want to and having a few days off recently has helped me dive back in. Well, that and I can function better now thanks to drugs :)

Updated Reading List

Just finished adding an updated reading list. I haven't finished all of them yet but I'm working on it. I did pick up The Reason for God and read it thru on vacation this week. It's pretty good but also requires at least one more reading to soak it all up.

My brother in law and two of his kids joined Lisa and I at the condo for the week and all three of them were reading it thru as a family . . . which is pretty amazing given the content and that the kids are just 18 (not that there is anything wrong with that).

It says a lot about all three of them really . . .

Anyway - The Dan Kimball book is a good read for me right now as I consider how to contribute to the ever evolving worship planning process at IBC. I "think" I read this when it came out but I was not as interested in the topic as I am now :)

Everything is Miscellaneous is a must read for anyone who plays or works amongst the digerati - and really who doesn't these days.

Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture is a good book but is suffers from the trait of the author shouting so loud that you can't always hear what he's saying. I've no problem with politically charged rhetoric - hey I was the kid campaigning for McGovern, going door to door for Greenpeace and Amnesty International and advocating stirring the pot whenever possible. What I learned from all that was that hard core, conservative, right wingers didn't have a monopoly on using stereotypes and labels to denigrate entire classes without regard to the individual.

Anyway - amongst the shouting the author makes some excellent points and it's well worth the read.

I also revisited Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell again . . . what a great book. Run don't walk to the nearest copy and either read it for the first time or pick it up and give it a whirl again.

The Millineum Matrix

I like things that go fast - not terrifyingly fast - but fast enough to feel a thrill . . .

So, I read this book a few months ago (I think it was recommended by Russ). It's a dissection of the history (broadly speaking) of the church beginning with the time of Christ and divided into four cultures. It is also interesting that the four listed below represent increasingly shorter periods of time :)

1. Beginning with the Oral Culture - Liturgical Church: The Living Word
2. Print Culture - Reformation Church: Separating the Message from the Messenger
3. Broadcast Culture - Celebration Church: Watching the World Go By
4. Digital Culture - Convergence Church: Reconnecting Word with Spirit

He also proposes that we will see the following three "movements"

1. A shift away from main-event mega-churches.
2. A shift away from spiritual branding.
3. A shift away from fast church growth.

He posits that (and the following is an excerpt from an article from Charisma magazine in August of 2005) "mega-churches, branding and rapid growth are indicative of unsustainable growth and begin to display certain characteristics The downsides are that it is almost impossible to get any one-on-one time with the pastoral staff, who are overworked; the crowds grow along with the programs, and buildings continue to expand or are added; membership turnover is high; when the main church event is over, pockets of believers are left with no overall sense of community."

Some things to be considered as a consequence of the three "shifts" listed above are . . . (again I reference the article mentioned above)

1. A more personal ministry approach versus "celebrity and hyped events"
2. An increasing hunger for reality as the line between staged and real has blurred.
3. A waning of mega-corporations and churches and relying more on relationships
4. A focus on community development to connect in smaller gatherings
5. A healthy environment for discipling as leaders become more comfortable integrating with their congregations and realize that everything doesn't have to revolve around them or their agendas.

I sense that IBC (Irving Bible Church - were Lisa and I attend) is dealing with the issues. Or at least is grappling with thinking about having to deal with the issues at some point in time . . . later.

I would suggest that they deal with them sooner rather than later since I think there is, at the very least, a kernel of truth in Rex Miller's thinking on these matters.

We are in, or approaching, an age of unprecedented accelerated change. That's not just the boasting of someone who's in middle of it all. Society is changing - communication is changing - how we interrelate with other is changing at a pace that was not achievable or sustainable in the past. Some of that is related to technology but some is also the accumulated momentum of the industrial and technological revolutions of the last 60 years. I'm certain that those that lived at the turn of the century (not ours - the one before) felt a rush of societal change. For the time - it was a rush - compared to today - not so much. One generation builds on another.

It's not like a relay race where one generation hands off to the next generation and the pace continues one. Here we have a generation running at 20 MPH handing off to a generation that runs at 30 MPH but finds themselves cruising not at 30 MPH but at 50 MPH!!

Right now - the speed of change in our culture gives me a thrill - how about you?

Brian McLaren

Brian McLaren seems to be able to #$*@ off just about everybody - a man after my own heart :)

Seriously, I've heard a lot about this guy but just haven't made it over his way . . . till now. I'm about half way thru and I see why there are folks who don't like him. He's not afraid to examine the pros and cons of just about every subset of the religious culture and call out the bad and applaud the good.

Given that we all "fall short of the glory . . ." - there's plenty of bad to go around and that's always the fun stuff to point out and the most painful to hear - if you're on the receiving end.

I like this guy - as a recovering Southern Baptist :) I get his point. Which seems to be (remember I haven't found out if the butler did it at the end yet) that no one subset has a lock on manifesting the image of God or found the "one best way" to worship/praise our Creator (as if such a way existed).

The major knock against him is that there are folks who feel that he's on a "slippery slope" towards some form of vanilla, beige, politically correct, inoffensive, if it feels right it's ok, sin is relative, why would a loving God judge, feel good, God wants you to be wealthy and healthy form of belief.

Honestly - I don't see it. All I see is someone acknowledging that there are things we can't know/understand/comprehend this side of eternity and that our forms of worship today are a direct result of a specific cultural/social/technological "hook" upon which a hat was hung in the past.

Essentially - Brian McLaren asks the question "Why do we (fill in the blank_________)?". That's always a frightening question to someone who either doesn't know why - or has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are.

I've always wondered "why" about a lot of things and I enjoy the journey of discovery. I strongly believe that there are seasons of things and that our life is composed of chapters - so I'm not that freaked out by change. I am a "roll with it" type of guy.

There are only a few things that I "think" I have the courage to die for - I've never been challenged on that so I don't have a clue if it's real or imagined. I know that Jesus had the courage to die for my sins - I don't think he was dying for the style of the songs I sing, the building I go to on Sunday, the order of the worship service or the clothes that I wear. I don't think Brian McLaren feels that way either - evidently that scares the @#$% out of some people - pity.

Marshall McLuhan

I just posted a list of books that I'm reading this year. I've started a couple of them. The list is way heavy on McLuhan right now. I tend to get on a tear occasionally and scarf up several titles by an author.

McLuhan has a major place at the table of media discussion. I haven't read any of his stuff since the college days - he was a big deal then and still has a significant voice even though he's been dead since 1980. Most of his major work was out of the University of Toronto (though he married a woman from Ft. Worth . . . who knew?) and was appointed to the McDermott Chair at University of Dallas in 1975

His major work was Understanding Media, first published in 1964. He was adopted by the counterculture of the 60's and attained the status of an icon - who missed the irony of giving a man of deep faith that status. McLuhan was a devout Catholic who considered Protestantism heretical. His feelings are quite strong but don't really show up in his work so much as in this book The Medium and the Light, Reflections on Religion.

When asked if he really was a Catholic (usually by non-believing academics and artists) - he would answer "Yes, I am a Catholic - the worst kind, a convert."

His other big addition to our social fabric was the book The Medium is the Massage - which was required reading during my time in college - don't know if it is still.

If you are a student of media - which in many ways we all are whether we intend to or not - give him a read.