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2 05 2004 05 13 00 pm thursday february 05 2004 the un church phenomenon thanks to my fellow ecclesial dreamer tre cates for bringing this article to my attention as i continue trying to find my way through these confusing times i found the lexicon alone worth the read posted by ecclesial dreamer 2 04 2004 12 33 00 pm wednesday february 04 2004 more volf i realize i have not commented on volf s book in a while i have been trying to finish it so i can give it back to scott i have covered too much ground in the book since the last post on it to comment fully i can say that this book just continues to get better the further you get into it it is getting slightly more technical as well but i think it is still pretty readable for those who are used to reading theology he introduced me to a new word perichoretic which refers to the reciprocal interiority of the trinitarian person and is bringing some depth to many scriptures that i had not seen in a full trinitarian sense before one of the things that hits me about this topic is how truly generous the orthodox christian faith can be there are several views of how the trinitarian persons relate to each other that get into some pretty deep philosophical theological waters some of these views are stronger than others but there is room for all of them with in the generous orthodoxy of our faith so one might ask why bother trying to articulate a holistic doctrine on this ultimately volf is showing how connected all of our various branches of theology soteriology and ecclesialogy in particular are rooted in how we understand the trinity and the relationships that make it up by exploring hard questions how is salvation mediated to human persons how are we to relate to individuals our community of faith and god what does it mean to have ecclesial unity i witnessed this first hand on sunday while i was at my former church sitting in for their missing bass player and the sermon just so happened to be on the trinity after reading most of volf s book i was able to make connections with the pastors understanding of the trinity and why that church is structured the way it is it is a very interesting observation when you are conciously aware of it at any rate it also has made me accutely aware of just how hard it will be to participate in a community of faith that has a perichoretic understanding of the trinity it will require a new understanding of ecclesial leadership and structure to which volf will turn in the next chapter pastoring a trinitarian church in this model will prove to be very difficult if it is not communicated clearly and held to by the community here is a short quote from the last chapter i read titled trinity and church if one starts form the trinitarian model i have suggested then the structure of ecclesial unity cannot be conceived by way of one be it the pope the patriarch or the bishop every ecclesial unity held together by a mon archy by a one man rule is monistic and thus also un trinitarian more to come posted by ecclesial dreamer 2 04 2004 10 40 00 am the propaganda of the christ i have been looking forward to mel gibson s film the passion of the christ ever since i heard about it many months ago i know many people who have already seen it and say it is a very powerful work of art i have heard many say that it is so honest in its portrayal that it makes them uncomfortable i have heard others say it is very important not to take young children due to the graphic nature of the execution i guess the flannel board version of the wholesome family friendly crucifixion is not as accurate as it could be i have followed the news of the controversies the trouble in finding a distributor due to the questions of language and subtitles i would guess based on the trailers i have seen and the things i have heard that watching this film is going to be a very powerful experience but what i did not know was that this is not just a film about the last 12 hours of christ s life made by many gifted actors actresses writers producers editors and director all exercising their talents to produce a work of art it is in fact becoming propaganda for evangelicals who do not know enough about the story the film is based on to embody it in their own life apparently we have forgotten that our job as the church was to be a witness to this christ to the entire world we should all be thankful to mr gibson for giving us a way out of our responsibility to be the body of christ according to the passion outreach project mailer i got today this film is perhaps the best outreach opportunity in 2000 years and if you purchase the direct mailers banners door hangers invitations church bulletins and more you could participate in an unprecedented youth outreach opportunity prices for a neighborhood bundle start at just 1395 00 now i have no problem with using all of our means to creatively tell the story of christ i am only troubled that we have reduced this work of artistic filmmaking and reduced it to a form of propaganda that diminishes both the message and the medium it is hard for me to swallow quotes like this movie gives us an incredible opportunity to transform youth culture if we seize this moment a phenomenal awakening will be unleashed on this nation and the world we cannot let this opportunity pass us by ron luce from the passion outreach website i believe the passion of the christ may well be one of the most powerful evangelistic tools of the last 100 years because you have never seen the story of jesus portrayed this vividly before greg laurie from the packet i received in the mail today if our commission as the church is to embody this story to be christ s witnesses than how can we be proud to say that we have never seen the story of jesus portrayed this vividly before and why does it take a film to give us an incredible opportunity to transform youth culture this nation and the world and why do we act as if the story is only one of antiquity that we must recapture in our day don t we have amazing opportunities every day to be ambassadors of reconciliation is it that we have no poor people or widows today that need good news so we have to keep talking about the ones who lived 2000 years ago maybe if we took the story more seriously and played our part in it more faithfully we would not need to steal every piece of art that does a better job than we do and use it for a distorted purpose maybe we know that being the church is hard and we would rather just leave it to someone else christy convicted me with a great post on an unrelated topic containing this extremely relevant quote which i am taking out of context and using as propaganda for my own post i ve found that jumping into the fray of hot button issues generally isn t healthy for me as such discussions tend to generate a lot of talking and not much listening i d rather talk about the stuff that doesn t get much mainstream press like pain and the church s racism and people doing great stuff as they work for social justice today maybe i m tempted by my rock star aspirations to jump in and add my thoughts i find it interesting that my post on dating tips got more hits than any other post by a wide margin for some reason writing about pain and brokenness and social justice and racial equality doesn t seem to bring in the crowds hmmm what s that say about what we think is important i ll leave it to you to interpret maybe instead of paying 1395 00 for a neighborhood bundle to spread propaganda we could find those in our neighborhoods who are working with the poor or the homeless and help them continue telling a powerful story of our own thanks to robbymac for kindly pointing out i was missing a link i have included it above as well posted by ecclesial dreamer 2 02 2004 07 32 00 pm monday february 02 2004 dennis miller on cnbc dennis miller has a new show weeknights on cnbc i was a huge fan of his old show on hbo but not sure yet about this new one seems to me like he is half stepping but i have only seen it 2 times so far anyone have any opinions on the new show posted by ecclesial dreamer 2 01 2004 07 52 00 pm sunday february 01 2004 emergent group blog there is a fairly new emergent group blog initiated by jason clark fellow ecclesial dreamer jason smith gets the ball rolling posted by ecclesial dreamer 1 30 2004 10 45 00 pm friday january 30 2004 pony express y2k4 my twin sister was able to get me an older used laptop for one of the backyard missionaries who needed one it was nothing fancy but it worked and the price was right i shipped it off at the end of october via usps being that it was an older laptop it would have cost more to ship it to oz via fedex than the laptop is probably worth so i though i would save a few bucks i sent it the cheapest parcel post available and was told it would be 4 weeks i thought that would be acceptable and he would have it maybe by thanksgiving well turns out it just turned up last week i thought the pony express was put to pasture with the emergence of the automobile but it appears they may still be in use if you send things cheap parcel post through the usps that poor pony was probably very tired by the time he swam down under moral of the story use fed ex you get what you pay for posted by ecclesial dreamer 1 29 2004 09 36 00 pm thursday january 29 2004 faith person and church that is the title of the last chapter i read in volf s book he is continuing his argument that the church is an image of the trinity and exploring how we relate to the church and each other and how our ecclesiology effects our soteriology etc he begins this chapter like this as is well knownm friedrich schleiermacher distinguished between two opposing forms of christian communion protestantism he maintained makes the individual s relation to the church dependent on his relation to christ while catholicism makes the individual s relation to christ dependent on his relation to the church similar to the social models customarily called individualism and holism or colectivism these two basic ecclesial models seem to be imcompatible one comes either by way of christ to the church or by way of the church to christ yet appearances are misleading here only a simplistic theory contains the alternative person christ church or person church christ in the compex ecclesial reality of all churches the relation of individuals to the church depends on their relation to christ just as their relation to christ depends on their relation to the church the two relations are mutually determinative he works this out in great detail in the rest of the chapter i like what he is saying here because i think it is very important we not only form churches by confessing together our faith in christ but the church forms us as well i think we at least i know i am guilty of this sometimes forget that the church is designed to be a formative assembly it ought to shape us change us and mature us in deep and tangible ways as i read through this chapter i wondered how much of my ecclesial dreaming is an attempt to deny this i wonder if emergent dreamers are so focused on what the church is becoming in this post modern post christian society that we forget to look at the fact that the church also needs to be changing us maybe if we would shift our focus we would make more progress maybe we need to assemble confess our faith before each other and the world and focus on how god wants each of us as persons to emerge to be more like christ and then we will see the church emerge in a wonderful new way i don t know if i said that right because i m still thinking this through posted by ecclesial dreamer 1 29 2004 07 45 00 pm volf continued did i say already that this book is incredible i hesitate to post too many comments about this book because i will not do it justice this should be required reading for all ecclesial dreamers i should also state clearly that this book is designed to be a complete argument it is probably not appropriate for me to pull out small portions of it because you really need to read the work in totality to appreciate it having said that i am going to post more on it anyway because 1 its really really good and 2 i know many of you will not be able to get it just remember that these reflections are only my warped observations of a much larger and well articulated argument volf had some interesting insights into the church as bride or body of christ and how that relates to the one flesh of the marriage relationship it would be a mistake to say that christ is the church just like it would be a mistake to say that the husband is the wife it is possible to keep your identity as a person and be one flesh he suggests that we need to have this non organic understanding of body of christ if we are to understand our relationships to the church each other and the world also he has some great thoughts that i do not have time space to get into here about gathering in the name of christ and the name of christ being immanuel god with us fascinating he does a great job of showing the difference between merely preaching and the act of proclamation every genuinely christian speech act is at least formally and implicitly an act of confession thus for example a preacher can proclaim christ as lord only if the activity of proclamation is accompanied at least formally by the activity of confessing faith in him without this confession accompanying and supporting the proclamation there is no proclamation by confessing faith in christ through celebration of the sacraments sermons prayer hymns witnessing and daily life those gathered in the name of christ speak the word of god both to each other and to the world this public confession of faith in christ through the pluriform speaking of the word is the central constitutive mark of the church it is through this that the church lives as church and manifests itself externally as church although such confession is admittedly always a result or effect of the word just as faith too is a result of effect of the word see rom 10 8 10 the word is proclaimed in no other way than in this pluriform confessing the confession of faith of one person leads to that of others thereby constituting the church this has huge implications for the leadership questions that keep cropping up in the protestant traditions volf explains that he is going to speak about ordination in more detail later in the book so this thought is a little incomplete but i loved this quote if one takes the communal confession of faith as the basis of ecclesiality what then is the significance of office and of the sacraments for the being of the church since the only necessary intraecclesial condition of the constitutive presence of christ for the church consists in people gathering in the name of christ to profess faith in christ before one another and before the world the presence of christ does not enter the church through the narrow portals of ordained office ...