Transmission

Tony Jones’ Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier March 2, 2008

The word is out. If you want a primer on the “emerging” church, read Tony Jones’ The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. It’s a great overview for posterity and for people today who are wondering what this phenomenon is all about.

Tony is the national coordinator of Emergent Village and has been part of evolution of the “new kind of Christian” conversation for more than a decade. In person, he’s an engaging, passionate, self-proclaimed provocateur – and The New Christians conveys his unique voice. Its super readable and maps out vast expanses of this new frontier, including cultural context, theological markers, and case studies of real-life characters and locales.

I personally found the book quite resonant. There were paragraphs that echoed sentiments I’d written about in seminary and undergraduate religion classes (e.g. Weber and the commodification of religion, the notion that we all interpret the Bible). There were parts that recalled conversations I’ve had and sections that described places I’ve visited (e.g. Church of the Apostles in Seattle, Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis).

If I wanted a family member or friend to understand why I’m part of this movement, I would recommend this book as a roadmap. For those I’ve never met, I commend it too.

Finally, on Tony’s travels through this new frontier, it seems he brought along a sieve and sifted gold nuggets out of flowing streams and muddy riverbanks. He calls these little nuggets his “dispatches” and all twenty are precious. Here are my fave five:

Dispatch 1: Emergents find little importance in the discrete differences between the various flavors of Christianity. Instead, they practice a generous orthodoxy that appreciates the contributions of all Christian movements.

Dispatch 12: Emergents embrace the whole Bible, the glory and the pathos.

Dispatch 16: Emergents believe that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a hierarchy or bureaucracy.

Dispatch 17: Emergents start new churches to save their own faith, not necessarily as an outreach strategy.

Dispatch 20: Emergents believe that church should be just as beautiful and messy as life.

Wallis & Sider Book Giveaway January 11, 2008

Dear friends, I have received free copies of two Jim Wallis and one Ron Sider book through my involvement with CCT. I would be happy to share them with people interested in the important perspectives of these two progressive evangelicals.

If you would like a copy of the books below, please email epiphany.ny@gmail.com with your request and postal address. You do not need to be a regular attendee of Transmission, or even anyone I’ve ever met before.

Blessings, Bowie

Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America
by Ronald J. Sider

God’s Politics: A New Vision for Faith and Politics in America
“Why the Right Gets is Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It”
by Jim Wallis

The Call to Conversion (Revised and Updated)
“Why Faith Is Always Personal but Never Private”
by Jim Wallis

Stand With Sex Workers on Mon. / ‘Lessons & Carols’ on Wed. December 15, 2007

Monday, Dec. 17th - International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Transmission, PONY, $pread, and friends teamed up this April to plan Easter at Avalon, which celebrated the role of Mary Magdalene in Christian and Sex Worker history. This Monday, we’ve been invited to stand together again.

“December 17th is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Join $pread and SWANK (Sex Worker Action New york) on Monday for a candlelight vigil to honor and mourn the sex workers who have died this year and raise awareness of the violence faced by our community. Current and former sex workers, friends and allies all welcome.”

5-7 pm (Bowie will be there at 5). On the steps of Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, New York, NY. Wear red or bring a red umbrella.

Wednesday, Dec 19th - Transmission: Lessons & Carols

Five days before Christmas, come sing carols and listen to lessons that tell us the story of Advent and Christmas! The service of ‘Lessons and Carols’ has been celebrated since the late 1800’s and we will be sure to include some processing around, incense, and a bidding prayer to add extra cheer.

There are nine lessons and nine carols. Please email bowie at epiphany.ny@gmail.com if you would like to read a lesson, re-write a lesson (or do some other creative rendition thereof), accompany a carol, or do a performance of one!

Cookies, treats, dinner items, beverages, plus your friends & loved ones are most welcome! Location TBA

BAZAAR - looking for Christmas gifts? Buy a subscription to $pread Magazine: Illuminating the Sex Industry. Or check out Thistle Farms. Thistle Farms products are made with the most natural products available whenever possible. Magdalene is a recovery community for women with a criminal history of prostitution and addiction. Thistle Farms is a non-profit business. All proceeds go directly to the program and the women.

buy or borrow Kester Brewin’s new book July 23, 2007

signs of Emergence:
A Vision for Church That Is Organic / Networked / Decentralized / Bottom-up / Communal / Flexible
{Always Evolving}

I’m just about to start Part 2, but wanted to share some snippets from the first 100+ pages while they’re freshly percolating in my imagination…

With our eyes suckling from cathode-ray nipples feeding us a skimmed diet of soap opera and home improvements, we have lost the ability and mental space to simply talk and share thoughts and receive wisdom… Part of the prophetic role of the Emergent Church will be to encourage society to recover its memory and have a healthy balance between past, present, and future:

Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again. (108)

Our problem today: the space for imagination to expand and take shape is inversely proportional to the speed at which we live. Yet if we stop and wait, and close our eyes to the “buy now, take me now” images, and rest our weary retinas, we will begin to remember, new worlds will form, new exits will become apparent. (57)

Christ’s incarnation in a specific time and a specific place demands of us, the body of Christ, that we too undergo incarnation and are born somewhere specific, committing to it and putting roots down. We cannot be reborn in first-century Palestine; we need to be incarnate to the place where we are and the place that needs us most. We must learn how to incarnate the church in the city. (73)

This is the extraordinarily consistent truth about our cities, our brains, our ecosystems, and, I am suggesting, our churches: somewhere between these two poles of anarchy and rigidity - a spectrum with death at each end - there exists a place where a system begins to live, to self-organize, to become more than a sum of its parts, to develop a character, a culture, a soul, if you will- as if some breath has entered it and commanded it to live. (82)

Support Magdalene House May 21, 2007

Help sow seeds of hope with natural healing products from Thistle Farms, the cottage business of Magdalene House in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Rev. Becca Stephens, Episcopal chaplain at Vanderbilt University is the founder of Magdalene House. I’ve heard her preach and had the pleasure of visiting her in Nashville a few years ago. Becca is an inspirational woman who helps nurture goodness in this world.

And the Thistle Farms projects are great too! I’ve got a tub of lib balm at home. Be sure to check out Lot’s Wife Salt Scrub, Balm of Gilead (comes in five scents), Lavender Mini-Sachets, and the Moses line for men!

Named for the only wildflower that grows along the roads that Nashville prostitutes frequent, Thistle Farms is the cottage business of Magdalene – a two-year residential community for women with a criminal history of addiction and prostitution. Magdalene was created to provide a sanctuary in Nashville for women in need of a safe, discipline and compassionate community.

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Best Contemporary Theology meme January 16, 2007

Bob Carlton tagged me on this Contemporary Theology meme project. The idea is to list the best “theology” books written in the last 25 years (i.e. since 1981). Here are Ike and my lists:

Isaac’s List

• Liberating Rites by Tom Driver
• Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne
• Sexism and God-Talk by Rosemary Radford Reuther

In terms of “things that might be less recognizable as theology,: Ike says:

• Deeply into the Bone by Ron Grimes
• The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time by Douglas Adams
• The Concubine by Elechi Amadi

Bowie’s List (caveat: I never did like systematic theology all that much, but here are three books that I’d include)

• Liberating Rites by Tom Driver
• Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web by David Weinberger
• The Wedding Dress by Fanny Howe

My three brothers would probably insist that the Ishmael series by Daniel Quinn be included on such a list (in a heartbeat)… so I gotta give them a nod too.

Hey, yo, Transmissioners - what would you list?