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o be able to enter into it in an authentic manner i think that several things help me us to do this liturgy because within set forms and prayers we are released from our perpetual self consciousness conscious openness to the holy spirit engaging different parts of our selves i am drawn into worship through words while others might be drawn in through incense icons or music the eucharist because it was instituted by christ has been present since the church s inception and unites us with communion of saints past and present and preaching rooted in scripture at this point i often encounter my first problem most evangelical theologically orthodox churches consist of a whitewashed church or warehouse a few worship songs with loud guitars and drums extemporaneous prayer lord i just want and a sermon by a charismatic preacher in jeans with a powerpoint there is nothing wrong with this in terms of the gospel still being preached and people praising god but i feel a longing for something deeper and more substantive that is connected with the rich history of the church universal i often feel that this leaves me with two options i am aware of non denominational and emergent churches trying to create church from the best of all traditions but i think this picking and choosing can be a bit dangerous as i do believe in the necessity of denominational structures anglican or presbyterian this subsequently gives rise to new problems specifically the conservative vs mainline issue right now this issue is thought of as a code for the gay thing which is tragic because i think that this caricatures the very real and very complex questions at hand and focuses the entire conversation around the fate of a particular group many of the mainline churches have for various reasons adopted a kind of gospel of niceness and inclusivity for the gospel to be nice and inclusive though this involves a lot of watering down of belief and for me this has always begged the question wrong use of phrase i know what s the point if jesus didn t really die for us and was not raised as the first fruit of what is to come we are basically finding artificial ways to give meaning to our lives which to me is a waste of time why not be honest and join a humanist community center or something there are ways to create meaning in life without pretending it is based upon something that you have watered down so much that there is nothing to actually believe in my point is in aiming to become a socially acceptable influential civil institution the mainline churches mostly focus on doing good work in society not a bad thing at all while being vaguely spiritual and trying not to offend anyone by claiming exclusivity of doctrine or belief system or anything else there are exceptions of course west side presbyterian christ church of hamilton wenham church of the advent university presbyterian to name a few and these churches make a strong argument for continuing as witnesses in their denominations this is a good thing but these churches are tough to find so because i get frustrated with not being able to at least start on the same page with the basics i e who jesus was i move to the more theologically conservative forms of these two denominations and here we run into the other two problems read the rest of this entry filed under uncategorized august 18 2009 1 59 pm 3 settlers of catan and a funny facebook thread including mild ripping off of stuff ____ people like concept brian buell i think someone should write an article about settler s of catan and its role in christian culture scott hwang like how it keeps people from graduating from christian colleges or 3 hours ago brian buell scottie get up here 7 2 hours ago paul fombelle well your negative influence of settler s has spread to az you are slowly going to cripple our economy i better warn obama you might get some sort of funding to stop playing it 2 hours ago catie porter speaking of lost time have you tried http www sporcle com 2 hours ago alanna linden you can also buy settlers of canaan if you want a more spiritualized version to justify the time eaten up by the game 2 hours ago anna scott hahahaha there are certain things that catch on in christian culture for no apparent reason and christians seem totally unaware that this is the case or that they are the only ones who are obsessed with _____ settlers is definitely one of these things when i was in china with a christian org everybody loved settlers and played it constantly it was a social staple when teams got together in mass all gordon graduates love settlers at regent they play settlers it has always boggled the mind esp as i ve never played it so i don t understand the allure i am going to make a list of similar phenomena and will get back to you about an hour ago delete nicholas stephen munn that and the princess bride perhaps comparing the two to see how christian trends develop about an hour ago nick addivinola not sure of the christian connection s but certainly appreciate it as an interesting game who knew that my friends and i were playing such a religious game all this time 58 minutes ago anna scott ok am still working on it thanks nicholas stephen munn for adding an important one 1 settlers of catan 2 princess bride 3 the brothers k david james duncan 4 smoking pipe s 5 u2 bono 6 damien jurado david bazan sufjan stevens pedro the lion rosie thomas 7 xkcd 8 the game mafia 9 paste magazine 10 flannery o connor 11 lord of the rings narnia 12 franny and zooey and other non catcher salinger 13 swing dancing 90s and or salsa dancing 2000s 14 harry potter 15 conner oberst 16 lost 17 post modernism i am sure that there are more of these but basically this list is secular things that christians think they are cool and original for liking but are not think are not christian things to like but actually are if that makes sense 36 minutes ago delete nicholas stephen munn pipe houkah 36 minutes ago brian buell oh geez i just suggested the brothers k to someone this afternoon 33 minutes ago brian buell have you ever met my friend fitz 32 minutes ago brian buell i gotta think lost is more universal 29 minutes ago anna scott i know that s what george says he also says post modernism shouldn t be on there but here were a couple of my criteria what is something that christians from gordon elic my china org and regent unfailingly get together to do watch lost play settlers or what is something christians think they are edgy or culturally relevant or intellectual for talking about postmodernism xkcd etc 25 minutes ago delete filed under uncategorized august 10 2009 1 52 pm 3 thoughts on distraction there are several things that i have been wanting to write about but have been unable to shake a recent bout of laziness here are some things that i have wanted to write about so i make sure that i don t forget when the time comes which hopefully is soon the ideal church issues of exclusion and who is in or out in our churches marriage and various books about it youth in china etc so expect some posts about these things soon and feel free to remind me if necessary tonight however i was especially moved by a sermon that i heard at st john s shaugnessy i know it s a somewhat controversial church but it s where i ve felt the most at home since starting at regent the text was matthew 6 5 14 and the sermon was on the second line in the lord s prayer hallowed be your thy name i thought that aaron roberts did a wonderful job of taking four words and unfolding a deeper truth his point was essentially that to ask to request of god that his name would be hallowed or made holy is to ask that he be at the center of the individual s life as he is at the center of the universe holding it together as creator and sustainer and as we were built for him to be in us aaron noted drawing on kierkegaard s sickness unto death that anything else that we might place at the center of our lives will be unable to reciprocate our love or devotion and will be incapable of ever forgiving us to ask that god s name be hallowed is to ask that he hold his rightful place in our lives and in the world aaron gave us a few minutes at the end of his sermon to ask the holy spirit to show us the things that occupy the place of primacy in our hearts and lives he repeated suggested things like spouses marriage money career ambition etc but as i knelt there and as the spirit worked i realized that none of these were quite applicable for me rather than any one defining thing commanding my devotion there is instead a bundle of small and trivial things which i rely on to provide me with a few seconds of relief from challenges thoughts intensity fear etc the incredible irony here is that i came to faith at a very young age 12 because i had suddenly realized with great horror at around age 10 that every adult around me was distracting themselves from the reality of death and dying maybe this is not true there may be plenty of adults that are at peace with their mortality at the same time i looked around me and saw everyone busy trying to give their lives meaning and direction filling every spare minute with hobbies activities plans for the future etc while to them it may have seemed totally innocent and well intentioned i wondered what would happen if they stopped their gardening do gooding reading drinking planning or cause crusading and faced the reality that in decades or days they would die it then struck me that these hobbies activities causes and plans were compulsively undertaken with one thing proceeding immediately after the last so that no one would ever have to stop and look into the great darkness the void interestingly there is a book about this which i have yet to read embarrassingly but that was recommended to me by another student at gordon when i read an essay on this subject to an advanced composition class ernest becker a cultural anthropologist wrote the denial of death in 1974 which similarly asserted that our lives and life choices are largely motivated by our desperate need to avoid thinking about or facing death read the rest of this entry filed under uncategorized july 25 2009 11 54 am 0 here i am still existing hello blogosphere i just wanted to say that i continue to be committed to working through issues telling stories and sharing thoughts here on the internets but i have been on a bit of an unexpected hiatus due to going through a pretty hellish couple of months its personal and this time i am keeping it to myself and now finishing the work for a regent summer course i took 6 weeks ago regent has many wonderful spring and summer courses in which many important things are taught and learned but one thing i ve learned is that you may have 6 weeks to complete the course after the end of actual classes but i and most people i know here will somehow wait until the weekend before to finish the major paper or project unbelievable i m totally depraved how about you sooo just be aware that following the due date monday and a long post due date nap i will return to writing long winded blogs about controversial and or personal subjects already have some ideas in the meantime hope everyone is having a great summer filed under uncategorized june 12 2009 7 05 am 1 mark noll and soong chan rah i am very interested in mark noll s new book about world christianity and soong chan rah s about american christianity with a focus on ethnic churches i am particularly interested because of a the anglican communion issues and b working at a chinese christian org last year with ties to thriving and vibrant chinese churches more on this later also mark noll loves hymns and so do i filed under uncategorized june 11 2009 4 12 pm 5 on disclosure discernment and christian privacy since i ve started blogging again quotes because i still don t accept that this is a real word and certainly not yet a verb i have been thinking about the concept of sharing over sharing appropriate online conduct disclosure concurrently i have been thinking about the christian tendency to talk a lot about vulnerability strength in weakness openness and brokenness while at the same time often ghettoizing condescending to and dismissing those who actually claim these attributes i have been thinking about this because it has always been a challenge for me to walk the fragile line between sharing too much or too little one of the reasons that this is an issue for me is that my life has been fraught with much difficulty which does when spoken of result in judgment on the part of others which often leads to a kind of demotion or dismissal especially in the church particularly the evangelical church thus since i have been doing better and have been more successful in the conventional sense i have been more reticent to let anyone know that there have ever been any problems lest doors are again closed to me and people again see me as one less able to take on responsibility a broken dysfunctional person who needs help no one wants to be looked upon this way and it is only natural to launch a preemptive strike against this possibility by developing total opacity at the same time what is the good of life experience if you are not using it to encourage and minister to others who are going through similar difficulties to let hurting people know they are not alone to let the world know that following jesus does not mean being perfect and so there is a fine balance with an attendant moral obligation to use our lives to serve and love others to be a light as we are called to be further following jesus is supposed to be costly if we are stepping out on a limb because we believe that sharing our trials and how we have learned from them will minister to someone then this may be the priority over and against the priority of ambition or self preservation another facet of the discussion is the extent to which we can repress or alter our identities while we are not defined by our issues past or present dysfunction or failures we are also not persons apart from our personal history our personal histories inform who we are in the present this is an inescapable fact and so to pretend that we have not struggled sinned erred despaired raged etc in the past because we are worried that we will be seen negatively in the present is to repress the self which will always come back to pardon the expression bite you in the ass here i want to address hopefully without over sharing the implications of this challenge as they apply to mental illness in the church and in the world at large i am not even going to address the view that mental illness is a result of sin or if you just prayed hard enough you would be fine or that medication is a weakness un christian etc etc etc these attitudes are both wrong and dangerous what i do want to deal with is what is the role of the mentally ill person whether the illness is clinical or chronic from postpartum depression to schizophrenia in the chur...