Camping

So over the weekend, I took seven college students to work at a camp near Tyler, TX. We worked in the kitchen at the Bluffs camp at Pine Cove and did meal set up and tear down. It was pretty cool.

I hadn't been to a camp since high school, and the camps I remember back then don't leave a good taste in my mouth today. What I grew up with were more fundamentalistic/legalistic type camps that I might even blame for my own legalism in the past.

But naturally, this camp was different. Or at least it was different working there rather than being run through the programs. There were various women's groups (usually middle-aged) that we served this weekend. I probably made one too many comments about feeling like I'm still at The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless when some of the older ladies had annoying or involved requests ('Do you have cranberry juice?'). But I enjoyed the weekend, in spite of this small, piddly stuff.

Something I never thought I'd do again is sit around a campfire and sing worship songs. We had some S'mores and then I made some kind of transitional comment to lead into how everyone should use this weekend to reflect a little bit. I asked someone to bring a guitar for the weekend, knowing that this would be part of the camping trip experience. And there I was singing three worship songs around a campfire.

No one threw any rededicational sticks in any recommitmental fires or had any shattering revelations of how sinful they were. We just sang a couple songs. And I think this was good for me. I can look at it and see it as perhaps how worships songs at a campfire can be good. No drama or tears, just a little time to remember why we were serving that weekend. Maybe I've matured past all my cynicism to see the good in all that I think is bad about evangelicalism.

A highlight was getting to ride some horses on Saturday. I did a trail ride on 'Goliad,' a slow and steady horse who was pretty obedient. Later on, we did some trotting practice in an arena. For this, I rode 'Pistol,' a spunky, stubborn horse who would stop moving altogether just to try to show me who's boss. I did a lot of kicking and squeezing to get Pistol to trot a few times and had to turn him in circles just to try to show him who's boss.

Another Round of The Brew; Jogging the Mind and Useless Knowledge

So The Brew is finally back up! We'll be working to repost all past articles over the next few months as well as move into September's Education Issue.

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So I was running today around my expansive apartment complex when running towards me was a guy I was an RA with while at Moody in Chicago. Now, being a Bible school graduate and still running in Christian circles, it's a reality that I'll always run into people who will jog my memory of college. So this was no surprise for me.

This may have been a surprise for this guy, who noticed me but may not have recognized me. Perhaps his mind had been sprinting through his workout and didn't have time to stop for a breather to remember way back when. I didn't become short of breath when I realized that he wouldn't say 'Hey' so I said, "How's it going?" as he ran by.

No response.
No biggie. I wasn't on any marathon to get every person I ever went to school with to remember me.

On a different note, I had some boosts and edits when it comes to my useless movie knowledge.

I went to a midnight showing of Pulp Fiction at a sort of artsy theater near my new store. I figured most of my friends wouldn't have been able to handle going to a midnight movie, much less Pulp Fiction at midnight, so I went with some friends from the Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless.

Before the film, which didn't get over till 2:45 a.m., they had some trivia for free movie passes and for a collector's edition DVD of the movie. While I was debating if I wanted a copy of the film that made Quentin Tarantino famous, they started the trivia.

"Which three Tarantino films feature characters eating Big Kahuna burgers?" People started raising their hands and belting out all of the movies. Four people got the answer wrong and, by this time, seeing that Tarantino only has around six or seven major films out there, someone else figured it out pretty quickly.

I was lost on this, and the next question. "Vincent Vega's character in Pulp Fiction is related to which character in Reservoir Dogs?" I've yet to see Dogs so I had to let someone else get the DVD.

But the next day, I was playing Scene It with the college group from my church and am a little ashamed to say that I dominated there. I picked out a picture of Sigourney Weaver from Ghostbusters and picked the movie Silence of The Lambs from these three clues: Size 16 dress, fava beans, and Clarice.

And now I'm also in a race against two other guys from my college group on Facebook's Never-Ending Movie Quiz.

All this makes me wonder what I would do if I didn't have all this useless movie knowledge.

The Living Conflict; Soup Kitchen; Fellowship Church

I just posted new author Daniel Burnham's "The Living Conflict" on The Brew. It's a look at the continuous conflict for anyone who believes in Christ.

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There’s nothing like serving in a run-down, grimy soup kitchen to get your mind off your own depressed, narcissistic self.

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Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX

Saturday night I went to this church with my friend Trent and his wife, Sarah. We do this periodically to see what all is out in the DFW area. We both have our own smaller churches that we’re committed to but enjoy experiencing other churches and then discussing them.

So we thought we’d tackle the mega-churches, which is why we went to Fellowship, perhaps the largest mega-church in DFW, or possibly Texas. Ed Young is the pastor, but he was on vacation this week. We’re all naturally cynical, having gone to Bible school and having experienced what we would consider to be ‘real’ church at our smaller congregations. We tried to be fair, but we couldn’t get away from being skeptics.

The best way to describe it may be to just write about some glimpses.

I visited the restroom and was treated to “Now is The Time” by Delirious? playing through speakers. I thought, it’d been a while since I heard them.

There were five Grapevine cops in and around the church, watching the crowds or directing traffic.

The kid’s wing of the church was a friggin’ amusement park, with a Sea World-lookin walkway, classrooms entrances that looked like rollercoaster waiting lines. There was a fifty-foot tall enchanted castle with a waterfall flowing down the middle. There was enough sensory overload to hook a kid, and drive them to bug their parents until the parents brought the kid back.

The worship service used only one familiar song, while the others seemed to be just ways for the worship team to perform. And did they ever. It was a slick production and impressive. At the beginning of the set, the worship leader, who looked like a mix between Prince and Seal, said, “Look around you at the beautiful people all around you.” This was the lead in to have everyone greet each other.

The spookiest part was as we were leaving, and had Silversun Pickups playing was we left the parking lot. A song played and the lyrics started off like this:

“So much for the light show
pissing on while pissing off
sucking in a smokescreen
selling of a loose knit dream”

It was hard to not compare the lyrics to what we had just experienced. That was trippy.

Acting on The Brew; A Christian Will Ferrell; So Many Songs, So Many Issues

I posted Shannon Neffendorf's critique of acting, "Acting To Shatter The Soul" on The Brew.

Watch for more this month. There's still plenty to come.

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I watched Winter Passing last night was amazed. Will Ferrel does another restrained turn (like in Stranger Than Fiction), this time playing a bassist from a Christian rock band, Punching Pilate. His character is so nuanced and subtle, but is the most accurate and sympathetic portrayal of a Christian I've ever seen.

The rest of the movie is a pretty good indie drama. There's some great literary one-liners and great acting. Though, some might be disturbed by a scene where a dying kitten is euthanized (nothing graphic).

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So I bought a subscription to a music service (and am quietly proud to not use I-Tunes) and am obtaining music more legally.

I'm amazed to find the most random tracks ("Super Bon Bon" by the defunct Soul Coughing and a spooky piano and distorted guitar track from the 28 Days Later SDTRK). I also can't believe the wealth of music that is out there. I can get just about anything I can think of (though I'm having some trouble finding some older Christian rock songs: Bleach, Silage, etc.).

I'm also reading through Ecclesiastes with some guys I'm in a Bible study with. I'm digesting the expected "Life if meaningless" and "Only God can provide meaning" ideas. And then I'm seeing those idea apply to my music downloading.

I can download all the music that my laptop can hold, but will it really make me happy? And if I do download all that I can think of, God can add meaning to it all and use it for good.

Oh, the joys of having such a dualistic and complicated faith. But I don't think I would have it be any less complicated.

The Brew Goes Across The Pond; Freedom To Fellowship

I posted new author David Wright's "Director Michael Apted's Look At Life, Every 7 Years" on The Brew.
The article explores British director Apted's look at a group of people every 7 years.

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I was journaling the other day (something I’ve started doing less and less).
I wrote a lot about freedom, independence and then on to community and fellowship.

It got me thinking in these big-concept kind of words that seemed like they would make a good one-word-a-line poem. So here is my first attempt at poetry in a long, long time.

Freedom
Independence
Individuality
Interaction
Commonality
Community
Submission
Similarities
Sharing
Fellowship

New Brew; Jesus Camp

I posted Lonnie's article on Isaac Asimov's view of space on The Brew.

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I viewed one of the most disturbing and possibly enraging films of all times: Jesus Camp.

I had the college group from church over for a movie and discussion night to watch it. A friend said he felt sick after watching it. I was left perplexed, but for a different reason than you might think.

Now, naturally, people wanting to make a documentary about a fiery, flamboyant, and fundamentalist church camp don’t have to look too far for material. There is plenty of naturally disturbing footage that needs nothing added to shock.

But I was a little more distracted by the style and other technical details. The documentary follows three kids who attend camp leader Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire Summer Camp.” Though one of the three, a little girl who likes to dance to Christian hardcore music, disappears more as the film progresses. I wondered if she wasn’t vibrant or dramatic enough to merit further inclusion.

The last half of the film follows the other two kids as they listen to a sermon by Ted Haggard at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and then later protest in Washington, D.C. (The filmmakers surely had no idea how damning or ironic their footage of Haggard would become. There is a very interesting response here by the filmmakers to Haggard’s accusation that they had an agenda). At this point, the film seemed to be more about the fundamentalist movement rather than about the camp or Becky Fischer. The praying, singing and protesting in our capital seemed to be the climax rather than kids returning home from camp.

Other segments in the film also rubbed me the wrong way for how they seemed staged. (For an example of documentary staging, watch anything by Michael Moore). A radio talk show featured throughout the film seemed ultra-staged, especially when Fischer called in to try to defend herself.

The first half-hour of the film is sufficient to disturb everyone and also accomplishes what the filmmakers wanted to communicate. The remaining 50 minutes seems to take on a different purpose, or, dare I say, agenda.

I wondered more after watching Camp if any kind of documentary could truly be unbiased. Conceptually, a documentary’s aim is usually just to tape reality as it is, with no agenda. But then, you can’t show an entire fundamentalist church service and would have to do some editing. And it seems that in the editing, the temptation to stage some great shots that would so compliment the service would creep in. And then you get to thinking how you could add in some voice-overs from a different interview or some other clip that might realistically fit in with the original church service. And then you could re-shoot some altar call and tell some little girl to hold out letting go of those tears just a little longer.
Hmmmmmmmm. Stuff to think about.

New Brew; Movie Quickies; Disturbing 70s Evangelical Video

I just posted part 2 of Kevin Davis' "The Truth in Words and Spaces" on The Brew.

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Here's some quick reviews on some movies I saw recently.

Spiderman 3 (as can be expected): Good effects. Nutin' else.

Zodiac: Great movie that's more about obsessive people following the case than about the serial killer.

Breach: The most thrilling movie with the least amount of action.

Hot Fuzz: Genius send-up of action movies by the Brits who made Shaun Of The Dead. A must see if only to see Timothy Dalton ( a former Bond) as a grocery store owner.

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Scary evangelical video from some 70s fundamentalist preacher. Be warned: It is disturbing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1paYhEDFQIw

New Brew; A Great Satirist

The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless gets creative in where to place 20,000 more stores in the U.S. on The Brew.

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Since the month of satire on The Brew is coming to a close, I thought I'd post a little something by a great satirist that maybe not be as widely known: Kierkegaard.
Here's some great quips on preaching and proclamation.

"Pastor: You must die to the world -- that will be ten dollars.

Novice: Well, if I must die to the world, renounce all the things of this world, I certainly understand that I will have to put out more than ten dollars for the sake of the cause, but there is just one question: Who gets the ten dollars?

Pastor: I do, of course; it is my wages. After all, I and my family have to make a living you know. It is a very cheap price, and very soon much more will have to be charged. If you are fair, you yourself will understand that it takes a lot out of a man to proclaim that one must die to the world if the proclamation is made with earnestness and zeal. And that is also why it is very necessary for me and my family to spend the summer in the country in order to recuperate."

"The punishment I should like the clergy to have is a tenfold increase in salary. I am afraid that neither the world nor the clergy would understand this punishment."

"A speech expert is just a suitable for proclaiming Christianity as a deaf-mute for being a musician."

Stuff Worth Reading....

I've found some interesting stuff in the news over the last few weeks.

This is an article suggesting, stock- and business-wise, why The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless should swallow up Caribou Coffee.

Here's an article looking into that Coffee Chain's current promotions and how it's founder wants to save the company's soul, all the while opening more stores and tripling the store's profits.

Then I found some other news about Christianity's messy relationship with the public, the legal system and prisons.

The Dallas Observer had an article this week about an evangelical prison, somewhat based on Chuck Colson's PFM,in Houston that may be in legal trouble if an Iowa lawsuit goes through.

I saw my roommate reading this article from last year about Dallas mega-church Watermark in legal trouble over a church discipline matter. Here is the most recent update I could find on it.

New Brew Link; Coffee Master Threatens Church

I posted a YouTube video of Mark Driscoll speaking on the Emerging/Emergent movements for Desiring God Ministries (which Driscoll classifies as Emerging) on the Culture Tab of The Brew.
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Coffee Master Threatens Church


For the past three months, I have blessed the college class at my church with some potent nourishment to enhance their spiritual lives: a tasty brew from the coffee chain that shall remain nameless. The caffeine and taste of the coffee quickens their minds to better soak in the teachings each week.

However, two deacons from the church are unhappy that out of the many pots of Folgers made each week for the entire congregation’s coffee break, a different kind of coffee is made. When a certain Coffee Master enters the kitchen and asks if he can make a batch from coffee that he brought for the college class, looks of distrust and hissing are thrown his way. This sort of behavior baffles, especially since the lover of coffee leaves his Coffee Master black apron at home, so as not to brag.

In more recent times, other congregants, under the guise of introducing themselves to the Coffee Master (who is about to take his pot of Arabica-based bliss to his college class), have dipped into the blessings meant for the elect. That week, the Coffee Master (CM) had to brew another batch, for the college students were wringing and shaking the coffee pot to the last drop for nourishment.

Vexed CM was speechless another week when a deacon, who goes by the name “Lurch,” attempted to pull a bait and switch with two coffee pots. One contained the liquid that can truly quench the thirst and another contained merely stale, Folgers-smelling air. “Your coffee is ready,” stated Lurch, handing off the odorous coffee pot. CM, noticing the lightness of the pot, looked at Lurch, who, unable to hide his sin, confessed: “I’m just kidding. Here’s the ‘special’ stuff.”

The saga continued this week when CM brought a pound and a half of blessed beans to be used for the entire church. Lurch was in the kitchen when CM dropped off the ground beans. “I brought some beans so everybody can have the ‘special stuff.’

Lurch: (with an insulted and offended look) Starbucks?!

CM: (in the most gracious and forgiving spirit that overlooks any kind of brewing transgression) Yeah. You can use it if you want.

The conversation continued when CM returned to the kitchen during the coffee break between services.

Lurch: People don’t like your stuff.

CM: What are you talking about?

Lurch: I got complaints about your stuff. People say they can see all the way through the coffee. They say it’s like tea. They might as well be drinking tea.

CM: Really?

Lurch: It was just one person that complained. I put one Styrofoam cup full of your stuff in for a full batch (which equals around 15 cups of coffee) and it looks like tea. (Turning to someone currently taking from the wasted batch of flavored water) Do you get any taste out of that? It’s…Starbucks.

Unfortunate Congregate Duped Into Drinking The Dreadful Attempt At Coffee: It’s almost like tea.

CM: (Again, putting on the gracious, forgiving air and not saying how Lurch sabatoged the ‘special stuff’ on purpose because he doesn’t like some young punk kid with a wicked gotee trying to force some non-fair trade coffee into the mist of the chosen) Oh, okay.

Lurch: No one likes the ‘special stuff’ so I’m going back to the good stuff (pointing to the plastic gallon bucket holding the silly robusta-based Folgers).

CM: (Seeing that some indecipherable foreign mixture known as Breakfast Blend was too much of a change for Lurch) Is there a pot ready for me to make some for the college class?

Guac-queso; New Brew; Chicago v. Dallas

Went to a tex-mex restaurant and had some queso made with quacamole. Holy mole! I can't believe I've never thought of doing this.
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I posted another new author on The Brew. Kennedy Lewis writes with some bite on Truth and Emergents.
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So I started comparing the churches I went to in Chicago and Dallas the other day.

Chicago: Holy Trinity Church(HTC). Dallas: Trinity Fellowship Church(TFC).

HTC: Weekly Texas Hold 'Em nights beginning at 10 p.m. with monthly take-all tournaments (and 10% of the winnings were given to HTC). I'm still in the hole for $5 there.
TFC: Bi-weekly Texas Hold 'Em nights beginning at 8 p.m. (has a more 'mature' crowd). When a pastor attends, no one worries about having to tithe if the pastor wins anything.

HTC: A reformed congregation began this church as a plant. Pastors are known for writing children's books, helping with the translation of the ESV, running the Chicago Marathon every year, carrying around a large cigars in their mouths in the church office (but not smoking them).
TFC: Sprang from a Brethren church but has a more evangelical bent. Pastor (the one I've gotten to know) known for brewing meade and other ales at home, taking many others to eat Ethiopian food and getting a celebratory allowance clause added to Dallas Theological Seminary's policy on drinking while on DTS's student council.

It's a pure coincidence that both celebrate the Trinity in their names. I don't always base my church decisions on their ranking of the Trinity, but hey, why knock a good thing?

Depression Series # 2

So here's the next in my depression series. This article I wrote for a counseling journal I put together for my senior print media project in school. I called the journal, "Issues", and it was pretty well received. I did a reprint a few years later when it became very relevant at my alma mater.
So this is what I was thinking about depression four years ago.


"Living With Depression"

Is this what Hell will be like?
To not have any connection with God
My memories of Him are all that’s left
But the past is gone
The future can’t be reached
And I’m just here

That’s what goes through my head when I’m depressed. God isn’t real and seems like merely a nice idea that a lot of people have. There’s not really a way to contact Him or see a response because you’re just here with all your thoughts to keep you company. And those thoughts are not usually kind.

Thoughts of regret, sadness and guilt were what consumed me for the longest time. I would drown in a tidal wave of guilt because I didn’t complete some small task on time or to the tee. Perfectionistic tendencies still set up shop in my brain despite my having studied Galatians in depth and marveled over 'grace' my freshman year. Forgetting to ‘do my devos’ was one of the largest initiators of guilt because if God was important, I’d make time for Him.

I’d regret not saying or doing something I ‘should’ have done or I’d just feel sad that I wasn’t connected to God. All of this would just create this cloud of sadness that would wrap around me for long stretches of time. I’d just sit and think about how I wasn’t right with God and how bad I felt about what I did 'wrong'.

I’d try to read my Bible and pray more but all these things were just physical acts that had no meaning. There was no God behind any of it. I could read for 24 hours straight and still not be right with God. Something major was wrong with me and I didn’t know what to do to get better.

I could try to do other spiritual things to fix it but my thoughts were still wrong. I could pray and God might have heard me but I was still consumed by wrong thoughts. These thought patterns had grown into me like ivy around a house and could not be cleared away without extensive work.

I was also numb to most everything. I didn’t really connect with people or to sad events that I heard about. Someone died of cancer, committed suicide, or was raped? “Life goes on,” I might think. It would take something extreme, movies like Magnolia or stories by Flannery O’Conner perhaps, to revive my senses to a low-level working order. Existential philosophers, like Søren Kierkegaard, also became geniuses to me.

I ache to be alive again
I ache to feel what feelings are
I yearn to know the experience of worship
I yearn to have the words truly affect me
Does what I’m singing really mean anything?
Can saying what’s true mean something
Even if it’s just an physical act?


I can’t remember when I first started to be depressed but I do remember when God reminded He was still there. Halfway through this past summer, I had a few thoughts that were pivotal in coping with depression: “This isn’t going to last forever. You won’t always be like this.”

I was pretty sure this was from God because my mind could never have produced this during that time. There were no romantic notions or spiritual revelations going through my mind. If the clouds in the sky spread apart and sunlight broke through to warm my numbed skin, it wouldn’t register. I’d see the scene above and think, “That’s kinda nice.” The two thoughts from God were awesome but they didn’t change how I thought.

I’m not sure how long it took, but I started to realize how huge a role my thoughts played. Even if I just finished some awesome time in the Word, the depressed thoughts could still take over and make me waste another two hours sitting and wallowing. I started to ask God to help me with my thoughts. I didn’t know what or how to do anything but I just needed help.

More time passed and I started to realize quicker when I would be depressed. I could almost figure out a specific time of the day when an episode started so I kept praying and asking for more help. I eventually was able to pin point what events triggered the thoughts of guilt, sadness or regret, but only after more time and stretches of depression had passed.

It was about then that I realized how much I truly needed God. I realized how idiotic was the Schuler-esque, American evangelical idea of changing your thinking through your own will power. A person’s thoughts are more powerful than we realize and any self-help fluff you can buy in a Christian bookstore can’t truly fix them. Only a genuine relationship with God, and perhaps some counseling, can really change negative thought patterns.

As much as I wanted to get help from a counselor, I never did, which was probably to my detriment. After almost a year of suffering, I finally was able to figure out my thought patterns and know what triggered a downward spiral of thoughts. Whenever I realized I was in that state, I could stop and ask God for help again with my thoughts.

Sometimes the episodes last a day, sometimes only a half-hour, but they haven’t gone away completely. I've come to realize that this is not just something you can cut out of your life. Overcoming depression would be awesome if all you had to do would be cut out part of your brain. But things aren't that easy. Depression is something you have to live with, but not give in to. It's almost like this sadness, guilt, or despair has to play with happiness, joy and contentment. Joy plays hopscotch with Sadness and cheers him on so he can figure out that he is Son of God. Despair is given an underdog on the swing set by Contentment and is made to laugh and smile.

Yet whenever I do get depressed, I see, yet again, how much I need God and turn to him. God won’t seem real and there won’t seem to be any reason to even consider getting better. But just asking for help, be it from counselors or God, is the only way anyone will ever get better.

Jesus on Your Arm; What I Really Mean; American Splendor

So a guy walks into my store yesterday with a tatoo of this painting on his forearm. So, thinking I'd be pretty with it, I asked him, "So you got a DiCianni on your arm?" (What I didn't know is that the painting merely looked like a Ron DiCianni painting).
The guy then began telling me about something about what the Bible said about the Gospel. Not wanting to admit my artistic faux pax of mixing up artists, I moved on. (The tat was something to see, though. It was in full color and looked like it took a while to finish).
I then asked him about his t-shirt, which said "Epic Surf Ministries". "Yeah," he said. "We're in California and we run surf summer camps and Bible clubs."
Wow. Didn't know there was such a thing.
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I posted the last ambiguous article on The Brew today, written by none other than yours truly.
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Watched American Splendor yesterday. Great movie about an odd file clerk who drew comics of every day stuff and became semi-famous for it. It's a great mix of film, interviews and comics to tell Harvey Pekar's story.

Other News

Ted Haggart finished a three-week rehab program. Read about it here. What's most interesting are the comments at the end of the article that show the worst of who we are.

In better news, I posted the first ambiguous article on the Brew. It's a great look at G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, by Kevin.

Emergent Church and Christian bookstores interview

I wrote a freelance article for Aspiring Retail magazine on how the Emergent Church's use of art and how Christian retailers can reach out to this demographic.
I got some great responses and the article was beautiful.
Here are the questions and repsonses I emailed to Aaron Lindloff, arts pastor at Life on the Vine, a suburban Chicago emerging church.

-How would you describe the role of art in emerging churches?Many evangelicals are suspicious of the emerging church, perhaps because it's a movement and not a denomination that you can pin down. Here we have a Christian movement that wants to embrace all of the arts, not music alone, but poetry, dance, and the visual arts. The emerging church movement elevates art because it respects the imagination, seeing it as a redeemed part of our life in Christ. Surely our imaginations can be used for evil, but also they can help us understand and experience God. Traditional evangelical churches have typically used art to illustrate a point. They USE art. Emerging churches, such as ours, display art and experience it. One might say that we submit ourselves to it, insofar as the art is a window to heaven. True, sometimes our art makes a point, a rebuke of some kind, but the overriding purpose of our art is devotion. Some evangelicals say that we are depreciating the Word of God. Rather, we are complementing the Word of God with the Image of God. We are affirming that God has fashioned humans as both rational and intuitive. Furthermore, our heavy display of Christian images serves to combat the barrage of perverse images we encounter in our culture.

How and what kind of art is used in your services?In our services we rely heavily on digital images. We project images of photos, paintings, sculptures. Some photos we take ourselves; others we find for free online or we subscribe to a stock photo site. Most of the paintings and sculptures that we project are found for free online, because they are public domain, made prior to 1923. Lining the walls of our sanctuary are a series of framed prints which are changed every month or two, depending on our sermon series. These come from art books. The altar is an important and central image. Besides being dressed with a vestment corresponding to the church calendar, we place on it an Orthodox triptych of Christ's resurrection and a cross. We choose different types of crosses depending on the time of year. For example, September is missions month, so we display a Celtic cross with a circle in the middle, representing the world. A green cross is displayed during the rest of green time. A rusty metal cross is displayed on the altar during Lent, along with a crown of thorns or three spikes. Aside from the children parading around the sanctuary in an orderly fashion every Advent and Easter, we do not dance yet. That's a tricky one to do... artfully.

How would you describe good art or how does good art function?Rather than defining good art versus bad, let me describe how some of my emerging generation friends and I define ourselves aesthetically. Post-Kinkadian. Referring to Thomas Kinkaid. Referring to the giant dove with Edwardian scripted Bible verses superimposed. Referring to multi-colored calligraphy on a poster. (Calligraphy can be okay, so long as it is faded and scratched onto some water-stained paper.) Kinkaid is a good example of what happens when a Christian artist hasn't any accountability. Life isn't like that. The Christian life isn't lighthouses and sunbeams breaking through the treetops. This generation wants to be real. That's one of our tenets. Be genuine. That doesn't mean we don't have hope or don't want any happy pictures around. It means we don't decorate our homes or churches solely with the bright side of life. We want crosses, crosses with Jesus ON them, cross with Jesus off of them. The suffering of the Christian life. That's real. Emergents also value community, not just with the like-minded brothers and sisters of our church in our town in our time, but with the multitude of saints who've gone before us, in generations and cultures past. This is why the emerging church throws around the term "ancient/future." This is why we like old stuff. Old stuff has lasted and will continue to last. Old stuff reminds us we're a part of something bigger than our immediate selves.

Although I’m sure Emergent churches are more than young people in their 20s, many Christian retailers see the 20something generation as a large part of this movement. They also know that this demographic is not one that frequents their retail locations. This issue of Aspiring Retail is dedicated to exploring the Emergent church. What could be a first step for retailers to better understand the kind of art that is involved with the Emergent church movement?I suppose the first step for retailers in marketing to the Emergent Church--and here I feel somewhat like a traitor to Emergents--is that we are suspicious of marketing. Most ads on TV are lies inspired by greed, concealed with humor. Another step for Christian retailers is to understand our desire to make things ourselves. If we have an artist in our own little church who can make that, we're not going to buy that. We don't want knick-knacks or clutter. Though we do want a lot of candles. I have to drive 25 miles to a Catholic bookstore in Wisconsin to find a set of candles or an Easter candle.

A better interview with arts pastor David O. Taylor of Hope Chapel in Austin, TX, is posted at Son of a Beach. His repsonses were a little more inspiring.

Stuff to Chew On...

Here's a couple articles to contemplate while I get another real post ready.

The first is from Books and Culture magazine on spirituality in the suburbs and the other is the Chicago Sun-Times' religion columnist writing about Rob Bell from Mars Hill.

Suburban Spirituality
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2006/003/15.24.html
Rob Bell-Mars Hill
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-nooma04.html

The Son of a Beach is soon to have some birthday party pics. Check it out.

Afraid of the Dark Pt. 2

I was reminded again of how much a person's dark side can define them and help make them real.

I got an education over Thanksgiving of one of the most unpretentious but popular musicians after viewing Walk the Line. I came to see why Johnny Cash earned the name of the Man in Black. He was a normal man whose journey through the dark side began when he and some buddies tried to cut a record. The studio owner, who listened to Cash and friends play an old gospel song, stopped them halfway through the song.

He told Cash that their song was just another version of a gospel hit that everyone else has already sung. Cash asked if the owner was opposed to them singing a gospel song. The owner tried to explain what he meant but then asked Cash this: "If you were lying in a ditch somewhere with five minutes left to live, what would you say to God and anyone else who would listen?"

Cash paused and then began playing, a slow, dirge-like song called "Cry, Cry, Cry," one of the first hits that launched his career. The record owner knew that sometimes rehashed gospel songs wouldn't connect with any but a small group of listeners because they had the tendency to ring hollow. What gospel songs said about God was great but what they sometimes left out was the humanity, the pain, the darkness that so many people could identify with.

The owner didn't want Cash to be afraid of the dark. And to the benefit of the world, Cash didn't shy away anymore. Walk The Line show Cash's journey into drug abuse early on in his career and Cash's later music completes the portrait of the Man in Black, a man who lived in darkness but was still able to be redeemed. Some of Cash's greatest music were his four American Recordings, which were pointedly dark.

Cash was a better man for having ventured down the darker pathways and even into his own dark soul. He knew sin in his heart like a father knows his son and he was all the better a believer because of it.