Edited by Dorothy Bass and Susan Briehl, On Our Way is a collection of essays responding to the deep hunger of a rising generation. The writers, 12 pastors, activists, professors, and other thoughtful-types clearly write from their hearts as they plumb the depths of scripture and tradition for good words on our contemporary world. The following summary statement provides the framework for the book:

To embrace a way of life abundant requires us to be attentive. No one can live this way in isolation from others: life abundant depends upon and arises within life together. It does not lead into a fantasy future or purely spiritual realm but into the real world. There, Christian practice these practices not for our own sake but for the good of all, and not by our own power or vision but in response to God, whose own grace and call provide this way of life.

Chapters include essays on Living as Community, Care for Creation, Singing Our Lives to God, Peacemaking and Nonviolence, Knowing and Loving Our Neighbors of Other Faiths, and more. My favorite was a chapter entitled “Making a Good Living” by Douglas Hicks in which he deals with materialism, money, and intentional living. He ends by cautioning, “Do not let anyone tell you that living a relatively simple lifestyle is an easy practice of faith. it is one of the most difficult.”

I began reading On Our Way because I thought it might help me in my work with young adults. It will. Greatly. But, a few chapters into it I realized I wasn’t reading only for work anymore. The book had begun speaking to me personally as well, helping me reflect on my own way of living in the world.

The one regret I have concerning On Our Way regards its cover not its contents. The understated cover doesn’t shout “Read me: I’m an awesome young adult ministry book!” nor are hip words like “missional,” “emergent,” “curate,” or even “vocation” splashed across the cover. Without a blurb from Brian McLaren on the back, I fear it might take its time getting into the hands of church leaders. And that’d be a shame.

That said, I have a high regard for the folks at Practicing Our Faith, and I trust their judgement. And, heck, the book’s quality should speak for itself. I highly recommend it for young adult groups, pastors, educators, and all who ask questions how to live well and live faithfully in our world today.

For video conversations with Dorothy Bass, the authors, and links to a corresponding DVD resources go here. They’re great too!

Many aspects of Bonhoeffer’s remarkable life compelled me. First and foremost, I enjoyed learning about the man whose theology I had only really encountered in snapshots — quotes from Cost of Discipleship, snippets of his Advent and Christmas sermons, prayers, etc. I had a taste of Bonhoeffer’s strong words and generous spirit, but not the context in which to view them. For example, though I constructed an Advent worship service last year around Bonhoeffer’s Advent/Christmas sermons, I didn’t understand that they were written during the Nazi party buildup in Germany, while Bonhoeffer was already plotting with the opposition and organizing the Confessing Church.

Second, I was very intrigued with the window into the holocaust that Metaxas’ gives the reader. I have studied a bit of the history of WWII, but mainly from American perspectives. Certainly I’ve run into many moral components of the holocaust in philosophy, ethics, and religion courses, but it is so difficult to get the full context of what was happening in Germany at the time. Bonhoeffer allows a window into the slow rise of Hitler and the Nazi party that I didn’t previously know much about.

Finally, Bonhoeffer the man is wonderful to read about because he is so damn well-rounded and, well, extraordinary. A skillful pianist, poet, theologian (but even better pastor), preacher, philosopher, historian, son of a brilliant scientist, speaker of many languages, singer, humorist, family man, prophetic Christian, and more, the sheer breadth and depth of Bonhoeffer’s knowledge and skill astounds me. I’m left wondering: do we simply not make women and men that way any more, or was Bonhoeffer truly set apart?

I wholeheartedly recommend Bonhoeffer. At 624 pages, it takes a bit to read, but I always found myself looking forward to picking it up again. (Oh, and by the way, I think Bonhoeffer, were he living today, would definitely be a prodigious blogger. He was constantly writing to hundreds of friends, family members, and colleagues, both individually and in circular letters.)

I’ll close with a quote from the pastor himself:

There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.

Metaxas, Eric; Timothy J. Keller (2010-04-20). Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (p. 241). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

That said, when I heard Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean had come out with a book on theology and youth ministry, I was most interested, for these fine professors know that youth ministry is not some subset of “real ministry,” but true tough theological work. Their book, The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry shows just that.

The work is in two parts, the first on “Theological Starting Points” and the second on “Theology Enacted.” Root and Dean go to great lengths to claim their work as a theological task, and boy did they convince me. Root writes,

“If youth ministry is to have a future that avoids these deadly traps of self-justification and isolation, it must move boldly into deep theological construction. What I mean is that we must begin to see ourselves not primarily as youth ministry directors but as theologians who do constructive theology in the context of ministry with the adolescent population.”

This book is perfect for that Senior Pastor who scoffs at youth activities as simply games and lock-ins; this book is perfect for youth directors who know their work is deeper and richer than it’s perceived, but are searching for the theological means to describe it.

That said, perhaps the book’s main flaw is somehow inherent to its purpose: in so proving the theological richness of youth ministry, the book’s sheer complexity would make it a very challenging read for the average youth ministry volunteer. Thankfully, helpful discussion questions conclude each chapter, but the work stands so far above the fluff some expect of youth ministry that for these folks, Theological Turn will be a bit of a shock.

From its opening pages to its close, Theological Turn does good very well to ground youth ministry as it should. Also compelling, however, is the constant reminder that, as is put in the Introduction, “young people are not bored by theology. They are bored by theology that doesn’t matter.”  Those who read Theological Turn will get a wonderful reminder of why theology matters in the first place.

Upsides of iPhone 4S

• form factor – the phone just feels and looks sooo much better. It feels like a honed piece of art, my Android just felt like a manufactured phone.  (Btw, my insurance policy from SquareTrade came with the slickest slim case around. And I can get you 20% off insurance policy. Let me know.)
• App Store options are better and higher quality
• overall slickness of operation — email just works and syncs with Mail on my laptop; it doesn’t crash; no fiddly menu buttons.
• Siri, the “personal assistant” who accepts voice commands like, “make an appointment tomorrow for me at noon with Frank,” or “remind me to call Megan when I leave work.” A tad gimmicky, maybe, but enough of a “I’m in the future” feeling that it’s a big bonus. Also pretty sweet for no hands texting.
• battery life is amazing compared to Android. A – maze – zing!
• camera is very high quality and FAST

Downsides of the iPhone 4S

• the Apple maps program does not give verbal directions, as did my Android. I miss this.
• iCloud syncing is much slower than syncing on Android — e.g. when you put an event in iCal on your laptop or phone, it doesn’t sync to the other device until the phone is plugged in overnight. Same with Address Book. This is silly, and potentially problematic.   One can change this by going to Settings / Mail, Contacts, Calendars / Fetch New Date set to Push / Advanced / iCloud / Fetch
• My old Android linked people’s Facebook profile info — pic, phone number, address — to their Contacts page on phone. I miss this. (I’m told this can be done through the Facebook app. I tried it and it didn’t work, but I’ll give it some time as 1200 folks’ pictures, etc. is a lot of syncing. Update later….)
• no ability to tether to my laptop for internet without paying Verizon big bucks.
• setting the volume all the way down, by pressing the minus key on the side, still leaves it at one level of noise. I wish I could take that to nothing and have the phone simply vibrate.
• screen on my Android was maybe 20% larger than iPhone screen (though the iPhone feels more portable, like I’m less likely to drop it)

Yes, there’s a much longer conversation to have about Apple’s app policies versus Google’s, as well as the fact that Google allows many phone manufacturers to use their operating system while Apple does not. Indeed, Apple is not Jesus. Steve Jobs is not God. But, overall, my iPhone 4S is more magical than my old Android, and not by a little.

My indoctrination into the cult of Apple deepens.

UPDATE: check out the comments for further clarification of several points.

As I’ve planned these events, I’ve organized a complicated assortment of worship practices that “feels right” to me. That’s not to say it’s about worship that makes me feel good—what some friends have called worship as “spiritual masturbation”—rather, I’m getting at the idea that there’s no straightforward guide to worship with a group of “spiritual, not religious” folks who are suspicious of the church. So, instinctually as a pastor and leader, I do what I expect might work. Now that I’ve read, The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader by Mark Pierson, I have some help.

Mark Pierson’s book describes his curating philosophy as a worship leader in the Baptist Church in New Zealand. Those aware of the experiential worship movement towards interactive prayer stations, Open Space, guerrilla worship, etc. will not be bowled-over with surprise. If anything, the book could be strengthened by shortening and adding some pictures (for real!). But overall, it’s a good, thoughtful foray into the new world of experimental worship practices.

Pierson lays it out clearly in the introduction:

I’m concerned that too few church leaders and so-called worship leaders have more than a single, narrow model for what they do in public, corporate worship. I’m concerned that they seem unaware they are boring their communities to death with shallow, bland worship. I’m concerned that many of these people have spend several years in theological institutions that haven’t prepared them for the realities of worship and spiritual formation with a congregation. I’m concerned that my young grandsons won’t be able to find communities that will nurture their faith without them having to undergo cultural circumcision. All this grieves me greatly.

I take it he’s one of those tell-it-like-you-see-it people! Basically, Pierson loves the church, but also really strives to bring fresh art and culture into worship. He thinks—and shares stories of when—this sustains people in their faith in ways traditional worship does not. The book is a very postmodern, let’s-give-it-a-try, questions-are-good, Jesus-messes-with-our-assumptions type of work. It should definitely be required seminary reading.

Much of the book consists of stories from Pierson’s personal experiences curating worship. While those are helpful, I would have appreciated a broader perspective. Also, the book has little scholarly work to show for it, leaving it open to an all too-common (and worthy) critique with emerging literature: it shows little appreciation for what has come before. That said, a short book can only do so much, and Pierson showed no flippancy towards liturgical studies, he just decides that’s not his turf.

Despite it’s flaws, I’m aware of no better book to really get folks asking questions about how to worship differently. For those in traditional worship settings, The Art of Curating Worship might be a help for folks seeking to claim what about their traditional worship practices they cherish.

A few weeks after finishing the book, I’m left with more questions than answers, which would be good news to Pierson. He writes, “Don’t be afraid to ask and not be able to answer, even during a worship event…Jesus was asked 180 questions in the gospels. He answered only three directly.” Have questions about how one curator of alternative worship practices his craft? This book’s for you.

I understand Daniel’s piece was perhaps adapted from her long-form work on the subject, so I don’t want to be too harsh regarding just a few hundred words. I read Daniel’s fine book (and reviewed it here). She’s a fab pastor, I have no doubt.

That said, I found devotional column’s tone totally unhelpful — even out-of-touch — as it addressed God’s children who search for language to describe how the church has abandoned them. I feel called, when someone call oneself “spiritual but not religious” to respond with kind curiosity rather then righteous indignation.

Specific comments relating to Daniel’s “spiritual but not religious” assumptions:

1. Really? An airplane? Would that be first-class or coach? I meet with people (young adults, mostly) every week who call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” They tend to be underemployed, live month-to-month, and are doing their best to find meaning in their tumultuous lives. Sure, the phrase “spiritual but not religious” needs some unpacking for pastors whose livelihoods depend on people’s public religiosity, but I’ve never heard it as “rebellion against the religious status quo.” Rather, the phrase is more a humble testimony that they just don’t seem to connect with fancy churches. And who can blame them?
2. As opposed to what Daniel suggests, the “spiritual but not religious” folks I talk to yearn for community. I have not found one who wants simply to have “deep thoughts all by oneself” as Daniel accuses. What might be true, however, is that the community they seek isn’t offered at most mainline churches with our endowment funds and dress codes and judgmental matriarchs and patriarchs. You see, some “spiritual but not religious” folks sense a certain righteous attitude from these institutions (go figure?). Many were once burned by hugely negative experiences with the church and it’ll take the church reaching out — in love, not in snark — for healing to begin.
3. God is working in the lives of the “spiritual but not religious.” I happen to believe they have a huge amount to teach the church about connecting to God, supporting true community, sustaining spiritual practices, and living out St. Augustine’s call for a “faith seeking understanding.” Daniel asks, “Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community?” I say, Yes, feel free to do that in your church. But also be brave enough to listen to those encountering God in ways you don’t fully understand. Learn from them.

Church and society are both in pretty rough places these days. So please let’s lay off the snark and tune-up our Christian love for all — for those who use mainline labels to describe themselves and those who are “spiritual but not religious.”

image by John Nyberg

Room by Emma Donoghue is a page turner like none other I’ve come across in the past year or two. It doesn’t sound like it, for the story is of a child Jack, as he’s raised by his young loving mom in one room. The 11 x 11 room serves as a prison for them, but is also space of amazing creativity, immense feelings, and even beauty. Trapped due to an evil kidnapper, Jack narrates brilliantly as he comes to understand his childhood is unlike any other. It’s intense and affecting, and worth the read for sure.

Burning Bright: Stories by Ron Rash is a wonderful collection of short stories. I came across Rash after reading Serena, and have since enjoyed several of his books. I think of him as sort of an Appalachian Joyce Carol Oates which means the stories are well told, regional, rich, and often utterly depressing.

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is, I suppose, a historical novel but I don’t usually like historical novels and I loved this book, so I want to call it something different: darn good. The books tells the story of two men with dramatically different dreams: Daniel Burnham, the architect behind the near-miraculous construction of the 1898 Chicago World’s Fair, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer responsible for perhaps 200 murders in Chicago around the same time. It’s a gripping tale of pre-automobile Chicago, America, and humanity at its best and worst.

In “Friending: Real Relationships in a Virtual World” Lynne M. Baab thoughtfully explores many aspects of modern friendship. Baab does so, largely, from a Christian perspective with particular consideration for how social media affects friendship these days — for better or for worse. I found the book an enjoyable read and recommend it to individuals and book groups who care to consider our modern friendship predicament.

The book begins with several chapters that consider the challenges of friendship in our virtual world. Baab, a professor in New Zealand with strong ties to the U.S., appreciates how communication technologies allow her to keep up her worldwide friendships relatively easily. Though, she admits, “nothing replaces a hug.”

Baab advocates a complex understanding of how social media affects friendships, longing “for leaders, ministers, writers and observers of culture to stop describing electronic community in black-and-white terms, to stop viewing it all as bad or, as occasionally happens, as all good.” This balance serves Baab well, and allows for folks who come to the book with different perspectives on technology to consider both sides.

Later, the work considers more broadly questions about how to make and keep friends, questions that are not specific to modern friendship. In chapters on friendship with God, and the practices of friendship — sharing, caring, being together, being apart, pacing, choosing, accepting, forgiving — Baab reflects on what makes friendships work (or not) and how to cultivate healthy friendships. Each chapter concludes with half a dozen questions for “reflection, journaling, discussion or action.”

As someone who has moved many times in the last six years, I’ve wrestled with many of the challenges Baab discusses. How and when it is it appropriate to initiate a friendship in a new place? How often should we hang out when we do become friends? How do I balance old friends with new? Though I often discuss such questions with my partner Megan, it is seldom that I read others considering the same conundrums. “Friending” does well to begin a broader conversation.

Perhaps it’s unfair, then, to criticize “Friending” for not going further. I did note, however, that Baab did not directly tackle one modern challenge of friendship in my life, mainly how to make and maintain friendships with people of widely different perspectives. U.S. culture, at least, is becoming more and more stratified and people are tending to associate only with like-minded individuals. A discussion of these challenges would have been helpful for me, especially with an eye to friendships across faith perspectives.

Overall, though, “Friending” is a helpful foray into what friendship looks like these days. At 182 pages, it can only do so much, but its personal and reflective tone reads smoothly and serves as a nice introduction to friendship. Thanks, Lynne Baab. You have a virtual friend in me.

InterVarsity Friending info

Lynne Baab website here

Now, I use Dropbox every day and totally recommend it to you. A few things changed in the meantime. First, I got an iPad and so needed to access files on my laptop from my iPad. Others of you may have a work computer and a home computer and would like to backup files on both, and have full access to all your files at all times. Dropbox enables seamless syncing, and you can even have easy access when not connected to the internet.

Second, I started working on my sermons for the Montreat Youth Conferences and it was very important that they be saved and backed-up. So, I saved them with Dropbox and rested easily.

Third, I started using the Dropbox share feature. If you want to share one of your files with a friend, just move it to your Public folder, right click, and send them the link that pops up. Simple sharing. No special uploading or attachments.

Finally, these past weeks in Montreat all the planning team members have used Dropbox to send files to the Montreat staff, to get orders of worship synced, and to share files for use in Anderson Auditorium. Dropbox is a simply smooth way to do this, and no more annoying easy-to-lose jump drives.

So, yeah, you should check out Dropbox. You get 2GB of storage for free! That’s been plenty for me. Don’t drop out of tech goodness, drop-in to Dropbox.

(disclosure: if you sign-up for Dropbox from my links I get more storage space. No pressure, I just want to be upfront.)

In my new work as mission developer for The Project F-M, a new faith community in Fargo-Moorhead, I think a lot about what a new worship gathering might look like. I also try to attend a wide variety of worship services in the community so I get a feel of what the worship scene is in these parts. If I’m honest, most of those visits leave me pretty wanting. But reading the book, The Hospitality of God: Emergent Worship for a Missional Church, got me really excited about alternative, creative, and faithful forms of missional and emerging worship.

The authors, Mary Gray-Reeves (serving in California) and Michael Perham (serving in England) are both Bishops in the Anglican tradition. The book is their take — simple reporting and thoughtful analysis — on 14 Anglican-related emerging worship communities in the US and England. The result is a readable comprehensive study that’s chockfull of smart reflections that critique carefully and judge with humility.

Organized according to topic rather than worship community, in each section the authors give a generous snapshot of a worship community or two, and then reflect how this community connects with traditional Anglican principles.

For example, “Authority is a Conversation” explores how the traditional notion of pastoral authority and institutional church authority is often supplanted in emergent/missional communities. Instead of giving authority because a priest wears a collar, emergent communities function with what the authors call, “indigenous authenticity.” The congregations they visited were connected to their ministry context, invested in their communities, and cared for their partners but from their own very intentional terms rather than those dictated from a church hierarchy. Along those lines, sermons in emergent churches the authors experiences “were preached by laity, sermons responded to in conversation during a feedback time, or individuals creating their own reflections by participating in Open Space.”

Though the variety of the faith communities the authors visits is vast — from house churches, to once-a-month worship experiences connected to traditional congregations, to a very traditional Compline service which attracts 500 folks in their 20s and 30s — the one thing the churches seem to have in common, the authors write, is an open communion table with much emphasis on all being welcome regardless of age, baptismal status, or belief.

I also appreciated their description of Open Space worship (which my buddy Adam Walker Cleaveland curates) from a few different settings. The authors conclude the chapter with their assertion: “What is evident here, despite a huge variety of approach, is a deep and reverent commitment to the Bible, serious study of it, and frequent use of it, most of the time in step with the rest of the church.”

As I visit congregations in Fargo-Moorhead, I find myself pretty-much being able to guess what their worship services will be like from their website whether they’re a traditional ELCA congregation or a Baptist new church start. It could be argued this is a good thing for sure. But, in many ways, that seems problematic to me.

For folks who want to go to church there are options — an attractional service with big band and long sermon in an auditorium, a high church liturgical service in an old building with pews, to name two. But what of the woman who says to a bishop, as quoted in the book, “I don’t go in for that church shit, but I need something more, and this [worship experience] is my something more?”

In the closing chapters, the authors make this clarifying — and telling — distinction. “Emergent churches,” they write, “do not hold as their first matter of importance the survival of the church…This distinguishes them from many institutional churches who are primarily concerned with their own survival, and only secondarily with the spirituality hungry, or those otherwise in need.” The authors mean it not as a crack on the institutional church, but merely an observation. For this reader, however, it was both telling and true.

More and more books are being published which look at emergent congregations, but this analysis of Anglican-related emergent and/or missional faith communities is the best I’ve read yet. It has it’s flaws for sure — the authors’ voice is sometimes confused by different use of American or British English, I couldn’t stand the lack of pictures and videos, and the included liturgy just left me questioning more — but I wholeheartedly recommend this little gem.

If you’re a member of a traditional congregation, read this with your Worship Committee. If you’re not, read this book for a glimpse into what creative new faith communities can be, or at least, what the emerging faith communities the authors studied are exploring right now.