Ski Trip Pictures

A couple of weeks back, Kinsey and I went out to Colorado with my sister and her daughter and my mom and dad to do some skiing and snowboarding. And we had a blast.

Kinsey and Katy on board the plane.

Kinsey getting ready to go out.

Kinsey coming down the slope. With poles this year.

Kinsey, my mom, and sister coming up the lift.

Me on the lift.

Kinsey and I at the top of one of the mountains.

My mom and dad with Kinsey at the top of the mountain.

Kinsey riding with me up the lift.

At the top of the slope before our last run.

Kinsey and Katy at the top of the same slope before we did our last run.

In the village on the day we left.

Back Among the Blogging

Well, I gave all of you a break, but now I'm back. In the two weeks that I've been gone, I did some snowboarding in Colorado and some serious work on some projects at work. So as I ease back into blogging, I'll have some pictures and some thoughts about things in general, as per usual.

Off the Grid

Going to be off the blogging grid for a while. I'll be back when I get back (a couple of weeks probably...)

YouTube Thursday: U2 - Magnificent

Last week, super-mega band U2 played every night on the Late Show with David Letterman. I would say, "To promote their recently released CD 'No Line on the Horizon,'" but seriously, did they really need to promote it? It was going to sell a million or 15 copies anyway.

At any rate, here's the band doing one of my favorite songs on the new CD, Magnificent. And as you listen, ask yourself this question... who are they singing about?

The Designer's Dilemma

So let's say you're a designer. And you come up with a really cool idea for a design. Things expand and collapse as you click on them. You can move effortlessly from page to page. If there's further information needed on a question, you only see that if you click on a particular answer. It's pretty awesome.

Then let's pretend you get really excited about that design. And you want to show it off, because frankly it's the most excited you've been about a design in quite a while. So you show it off to your team members and they act appropriately impressed.

Then you decide, "I want to show the client for whom I'm designing this that I have initiative and I'm thinking in different ways about the application. So you show it to them and they really like it a lot.

So you're getting jazzed up about it. Getting excited. You're breaking new ground with the designs.

Until you show them to Development. And based on the timeline from the client, there's no way that they can do what you designed. And you like the Development team. You don't like putting them over a barrel where they have to say No to a client. And it's at that point that you realize your mistake. You got so excited about your design that you forgot to properly vet it with Development before showing it to the clients.

And now it's you who has to fall on his sword and tell the clients that you can't really do all the cool things you wanted and that they liked. And you can still do some really cool stuff, but just not AS cool as what you had before.

Not that anything like that has happened to me in the last 7 days or anything...

gah!!!

Ever been so busy that you couldn't even blog about your kids? Yeah, that's me today...

The Humor in Leadership

Friday, I talked about having transparency or at least translucency in church leadership. Another important aspect that was displayed to me this weekend was the ability to have a sense of humor.

Last Sunday, the elders at Otter Creek presented their ideas for the vision and priorities for the church, which you can read here. They taught a combined adult class, then three of the elders presented the sermon.

One of the opinions that came from those presentations is that while the information was good and most people were on board, how it was presented was not the most... exuberant. And recognizing this and having a sense of humor about it, the elders together with David Rubio produced the following video.



It's very, very good to serve under elders who know 1) when things have not gone over exactly as they might have liked and 2) who know how to use humor and poke fun at themselves.

Translucent Church Leadership

One of the things I like best about Churches of Christ is our denominational leadership structure.

We don't have one.

Each church is autonomous (pretty much) and has the ability to make decisions within itself. We're not bound to denominational strictures or fiats. Within a fairly loose set of doctrines, the individual congregations are not governed by a larger denominational body, but by elderships within each individual church. Which is where the fun comes in.

Through the latter part of the 20th Century, elderships were viewed almost as a board of directors. They were appointed for life (typically chosen by the other elders) and had basically unquestioned power of the church and its direction. This is still pretty much the case in more of the traditional churches of Christ. The shift that was happening in more progressive churches was from a director to a shepherd. And I think this is a very, very helpful shift.

Instead of being viewed from "on high," the elders lowered themselves into a position of guidance and counseling, while still acting as leaders. And the leadership styles went from being opaque into more of a translucent. As opposed to just giving directives, elders talked about why decisions were being made.

This is a style that I think really functions well, especially in the 21st Century. People like me (whether of my mindset or generation) don't want opacity from our leaders, we want to know why decisions are being made and that they've been thought through. We also want our opinions to be considered and heard, whether or not they're adopted or not. I think we would love complete transparency from our leaders, but recognizing that that's not always a possibility, we'll settle for translucency. We want to be assured that we're being led by people who love Jesus and want to be like him in their leadership, and will guide people to be disciples. I feel like I'm at a church where we have that, even if I don't always agree on how to do that.

I know our elders at Otter Creek are pursuing that and I am grateful for their leadership. I hope they continue be as transparent as they can be, guiding the congregation to look more like Jesus, both on a corporate and individual member levels.

The PostRestoration Podcast

Back in January of 2006, my friend Adam Ellis got it into our heads that we would do a podcast together, talking about issues related to faith, Christianity, and postmodernism (a fancy catchphrase back then). We call ourselves the PostRestorationists.

What's a "postrestorationist," you ask? Well, the name was kind of ripped off from Dallas Willard. Here's what I said 3 years ago...

The term "Post Restorationist" is pretty much stolen from an idea by Dallas Willard, but he uses the term "Post Evangelical" and defines it thusly: "Post-evangelicalism is by no means ex-evangelicalism... post-evangelicals are evangelicals, perhaps tenaciously so. However, post-evangelicals have also been driven to the margins by some aspects of evangelical church culture with which they cannot honestly identify."

Remove Evangelical and insert Restorationist and that's me and Adam. We love the Church of Christ and desire to see the Kingdom work through her. So we identify as participants in the Restoration Movement, but know that it is being shaped and evolving. We recognize a certain futility to trying to revive the 1st Century Church in Palestine and elsewhere as related in Acts and the Epistles in 21st Century America, but we recognize that there was a spirit/Spirit about those men and women that we can take inspiration from, as there has been in saints throughout the history of Christianity.

So that's what we consider a postrestorationist to be, and so we write from that perspective and we've now started recording the podcast again. I uploaded our first one back last night, and you can listen to it here: http://postrestorationist.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2009-03-04T22_01_43-08_00 In this episode, we discuss some of thoughts based on the Christian Chronicle article about Churches of Christ in Decline, found here http://www.christianchronicle.org/article2158685~Church_in_America_marked_by_decline.

If you listen to it, let us know what you think. You can also comment at the Post-Restoration Perspectives blog, where we have many other writers commenting and thinking about things along these lines.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss?

Just goes to show that the leaders may change, but a lot of the words can remain the same. Once again, the Daily Show plays court jester, showing the similarity of language between Bush and Obama on Iraq.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mess O'Potamia - The Iraq War Is Over

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Reading to the Class: In Praise of Kinsey

Friday, I went to Kinsey's school as a part of Read-To-Me week to eat lunch with her and read to her class. It's always interesting to me to go do that because school is one part of her life that I'm not really a part of. Sheryl takes her there almost everyday and picks her up, she goes and helps in the class once a week and is the president of the PTA (no comment about vice-presidential aspirations). I will help Kinsey with her homework when she needs it (which isn't that often, except in Math stuff), but except for that, I'm pretty separated from school, so when I had this opportunity to go and read, I jumped at it. I read Dr. Suess' The Lorax to the class, which was fun because I got them to do sound effects for it as I was reading and that involved them quite a bit.

What was most interesting to me was watching Kinsey interact with her friends and classmates. Like any 2nd grader, well, any child, Kinsey can get pretty hyped up and excited around her friends. But what I also noticed is that there are some kids in the class who act out some. There had apparently been some kind of altercation in a bathroom with some boys before lunch. But what I noticed while there and Sheryl has confirmed this from her visits that even as a 2nd grader, Kinsey has managed to maintain a sense of herself and what she'll allow herself to get into and to be and not cross that line and I think that's wonderful to see from her. I know she's going to meet some challenges to that and constantly be redefining herself over the course of her maturity, but for now, I'm very proud of her and how she's able stay true to herself and to trying to be like Jesus.

And when I told her this Friday when I picked her up from school, she got the sweetest little smile on her face and I hope that even with the frustration that she and I can have with each other, that that will be something that sticks with her.

John 15:18-25

So I thought I would start a new feature on Fridays when I talk about faith issues: troubling Bible verses. Of course, this opens a whole can of worms and even issues within the Old Testament, but we won't get into that now.

So here's the passage for today, John 15:18-25

¹⁸"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. ¹⁹If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. ²⁰Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. ²¹They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. ²²If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. ²³He who hates me hates my Father as well. ²⁴If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without reason.'

I bolded the passage that I'm really thinking about here, which would seem to indicate that those who opposed Jesus would not be guilty of sin if he hadn't come. So, here's the question I get out of this: If someone never hears the name of Jesus, are they not guilty of sin? And would that correlate to a legal term where being "not guilty" is NOT the same as being "innocent"?

Just some random thoughts that I'm curious to hear others' perspectives on too.

YouTube Thursday: Tokens Show

Last December, Sheryl and I got to go out and see the Tokens Show at Lipscomb University, directed by Lee Camp, of whom I've spoken fondly before. We really had a great time at this Prairie Home Companion meets theology discussion. Here are a couple of videos from it, and one from a previous show.

Joy To the World


Closing Monologue: Silent Night


Class and Grass


Tuesday, March 3, at 7pm, is the next Tokens Show, and it will feature will feature musicians Vince Gill, Sonya Isaacs, Odessa Settles, and Buddy Greene; interviews with Will Campbell (author of Brother to a Dragonfly) and Brad MacLean (on his work on death-row), and much more. Sheryl and I had an absolute blast at it and if you're in the Nashville area and can make it, I can almost guarantee that you won't be disappointed. Tickets are on sale at http://www.ticketmaster.com

PostModernism and the Financial Crisis

I was having a chat with a friend the other night and we got started talking about the differences in generations and especially my generation's tendencies toward cynicism. Tiffany made the point that our generation does not have the same loyalty to concepts that previous generations seem to have and that extends to the idea of American exceptionalism and perhaps even Christian exceptionalism (more on those another day though). We are prone to deconstruction, breaking down ideas an concepts to an almost ridiculous level.

But one of the issues in not having those beliefs is that we tend to focus on the negative, probably partially fueled by media coverage which tends to focus on the negative. And we can tend to get disillusioned easily. We focus on the corruption and the problems without thinking as much about the solutions. Deconstruction without the reconstruction.

And as Tiffany pointed out in our conversation, this is going to be one of the biggest problems in getting the economy back on track. Because we might not necessarily hold to the ideas that an unfettered free market and capitalism are the best ways to run an economy (as the last 8 years seem to have indicated), we deconstruct those ideas and in the best cases, reconstruct around them. And that seems to be what Obama is looking at doing. Now, obviously people with ties to the older systems are going to be put off by this, and more "postmodern" observers will be suspicious about just about anything, perhaps even especially something coming from the government, because even with all the talk about hope and change, Obama is still a politician and on the trust level, politicians are about on the level of pond algae these days.

Ok, I think I've rambled enough.

Fun Pictures

Friday night, Sheryl and Kinsey headed out for a girls night together and Connor and I hung out at home and watched Cars. But Sheryl snapped a couple of pictures before they left.

I thought when we had Kinsey that I'd never really be able to love a child as much as her, but I was so, so wrong. Love gets multiplied as we've had kids, not divided. Attention? That can get divided, but not love.

Sunday, we put Connor in an outfit, that my mom made. Now, I'll brag. My mom is quite the seamstress. There are pictures of me around somewhere in clothes that she made back when I was a kid and Kinsey wore dresses that Mom made all the time.

However, it can be hard to make boys' clothes that don't look... girly sometimes. But Mom really pulled it off with this train outfit that she made.







Yep, that's his name on the overalls.

And yes, Kinsey lost her other front tooth on Friday night when out with Sheryl.


Of course we had to get Sheryl into these pictures too.

Doug Sanders

Over the last few years, I've mentioned Doug Sanders a few of times on this blog. He used to be the Vice-President of Ice Cream at Purity Dairies and left that to become a minister on staff at Otter Creek. As a part of that, he began doing a lot of work in benevolence and helping the people who can't help themselves. I think he's done some incredible things for people and for helping Otter Creek see what can and needs to be done.

But the truth is that not many people know about what he does. And so to help with that, Doug's started a blog called A Day in the Life of a Creative Radical. He's going to talk about the people that he works with on a regular basis and how he deals with the situations that come up from dealing with "the least of these." And hopefully, people will see an opportunity where they can help as well.

Take a look. Add it to you bookmarks/favorites and/or your RSS Readers. If you go to Otter Creek, take some time to read and see what Doug does and thank him for the work he does in our community and ask where he needs help. If you don't, take some inspiration from him. He's not perfect but he has been someone who is putting the words of Jesus into action to help bring a little bit more of God's Kingdom to fruition.

Phil's Faith

It's been an interesting week in the life of my faith in the blogoverse and Facebook. From last week's post on the phrase Intellectual Agnostic, Experiential Believer through Facebook/Twitter statuses, I've been questioned a lot on what I believe and why I believe it. It's almost felt like that while my faith hasn't been on trial, the reasons that I give for my faith are on trial and for some, those answers have been lacking in substance or a firm foundation.

I guess I've found it interesting that it seems like if I had said that I experienced a profound moment of God's love and grace in my life and accepted that love and grace, that that might have been a more plausible answer than saying that in the face of no empirical evidence I've made a decision to have faith. So I guess I should explain one of the answers I gave.

Do I believe that my faith is based on where and how I've grown up? To a great extent, yes. Now, does that make my faith greater or less than someone who converts from another religion? I don't think so. I believe that God can use a person's background to bring them to faith whether brought up in another religion or in Christianity. But from a sociological level, I don't think I'm off base to say that a reason that I have faith is because I grew up in the United States into a Christian home to parents that got divorced while attending the church that I have attended for 31 of my 37 years of life. I think God has used all of that to bring me to faith.

Do I believe in Jesus and rest in the Grace provided through Him? Yes. Do I understand it? No. Do I sometimes think it's unfair (at least how grace is typically understood from an orthodox Christian perspective)? Yes. Does that sometimes make me feel like God is unfair? Yes, sometimes it does, and so sometimes I wonder if God will make a special disposition for those "righteous sinners," and to be perfectly honest, I hope God will. Do I KNOW that? No, I don't. Do I KNOW that God has provided for me and other Christians through Christ's sacrificial and victorious death and resurrection? No, I don't know that from any intellectual sense, but I believe it to be true.

Which leads to another question... do I believe that faith and intellect are separate? NO. I do not. I have read too much and listened and studied to people much smarter than I am to believe that I have to turn off my brain to have faith.

BUT...

There are certain leaps of faith that have to be made that cannot be confirmed from a scientific or empirical standpoint in order to believe in a Supernatural being that loves us more than we will ever understand and sent Jesus the Son to be the example of what it truly means to be human and to die and rise again, leaving the Holy Spirit to guide us in paths of truth. That requires a leap of faith and if I have a straight intellectual conversation with an atheist, I don't think I can prove any of that to him or her. It doesn't mean that I don't believe it or try to live my life as though that were true. But as the Hebrews writer astutely pointed out, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen."

But realizing all of that and also recognizing the tenuous nature of my faith at times (like perhaps now), it makes me resonate and identify with a song by Caedmon's Call back in 1999 off their 40 Acres CD.

Sometimes I believe all the lies
So I can do the things I should despise
And every day I am swayed
By whatever is on my mind

I hear it all depends on my faith
So I'm feeling precarious
The only problem I have with these mysteries
Is they're so mysterious

And like a consumer I've been thinking
If I could just get a bit more
More than my 15 minutes of faith,
Then I'd be secure

(Chorus)
My faith is like shifting sand
Changed by every wave
My faith is like shifting sand
So I stand on grace

I've begged you for some proof
For my Thomas eyes to see
A slithering staff, a leprous hand
And lions resting lazily

A glimpse of your back-side glory
And this soaked altar going ablaze
But you know I've seen so much
I explained it away

Chorus

Waters rose as my doubts reigned
My sand-castle faith, it slipped away
Found myself standing on your grace
It'd been there all the time

(Chorus repeated)

I don't know if any of those answers are going to be satisfying to people. What I will say is that this conversation has caused me to think deeper about my faith than I have in a while and for that, I'm grateful. If you feel my answers don't show enough faith, pray that my faith will be strengthened. If my answers have helped in anyway or you identify with them, I pray that God walks with you and brings you faith.

Peace

A Slight Thursday Departure

Guys don't have as many choices as ladies when it comes to a change in visual style. We typically do our hair the same way for years, mainly because it's harder to change that without a trip to the barber/haircutter/stylist. So one of the few things that we can that women can't is grow facial hair, which I have done. Now typically I haven't been able to keep my facial hair that I've grown because Sheryl didn't like it and let's face it, she has to look at my face a lot more than I do. But for some reason this time, she's liked and so I've kept it.

So here's the before...


And here's the after/Evil Twin/Mirror Universe one...




Both devilishly handsome, of course, just one more hirsute than the other...

Here ends the update on Phil's facial hair.

Random Pic

One quick note for those interested. The conversation from Friday's blogpost has continued in the comments, mainly between myself and Father Thomas McKenzie, although Dr. Lee Camp has made a cameo appearance as well.

Friday night, we went to a wedding. Yes, on Friday the 13th. And the couple was married at 6:13. They are obviously not the superstitious sort.

At any rate, it was on the east side of Nashville and since Connor had had a late nap and a good nap, we decided to go downtown and walk on the pedestrian bridge that crosses the Cumberland River. And I got a couple of pictures with my iPhone (hence the middling quality).

Here is Connor with one of our favorite people, Melody.

Here are the kids on the pedestrian bridge with Nashville in the background.

I thought this was the best one that I got that night. This is a shot of the river with the bottom of the bridge reflected in it. I just thought it was a cool look.

Interesting Posts

Over the last two years or so, I've taken a little of a sabbatical from deep theological reading and some of the engagement of such ideas. Partially because I got a bit burnt out from how deep I got into it in the early 2000s (Aughts? Zeros?), but also because I've been pretty busy. If you've been a regular reader, you might have felt that somewhat in my Friday posts.

I'm starting to get back into it some and doing some thinking so here are a couple of blog posts I read today that got me thinking.

Scot McKnight: Who are the NeoReformed?

This one might need a little explaining. People who subscribe to Reform theology (also called Calvinism [mainly by people who aren't Reformed]) are growing in numbers and in voice in the wider Christendom conversation. Scot McKnight talks about a section of that group that he dubs NeoReformed. I wonder if he's intending the thought bridge between NeoReformed and NeoConservative that I'm seeing the positive and negative associations that can come from that.

Thoughts on Mark Driscoll...While I'm Knitting

Mark Driscoll is someone that I would consider within that NeoReformed movement. He's abrasive, extremely orthodox, and also runs a strong and growing church in Seattle (he's Mark the cussing Pastor in Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz). Richard Beck, head of the Psychology department at Abiliene Christian University, has written some interesting thoughts on Driscoll and what Driscoll calls the "chickifying" of church leaders. It's long (as most of Beck's posts are), but really has some very good thoughts.