The UmBlog

It's a phrase floated in the comments at Andrew Jones blog entry Emerging Church Hammering 1.0 in response to his discussion of an ETS paper. See another review at the A-Team blog. Andrew likes the term Barnanian, as a concept that is bigger than "emergent" but includes "emergent." Home churchers comment. Lots of criticism of traditional church start up costs. Money seemingloy poured down the drain for a church plant in France is an example given; six missionaries, several years, a congregation that can't support itself.

Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: Who Really Needs Church? Coping with the Death of Ecclesiology. The commenters at Leadership Today's blog sound like potential or actual house churchers. Why are they the predominant commenters?

The Alchemist's Tale by John Granger is a good read on the symbolism behind Harry Potter. "John Granger is an Orthodox reader and the author of The Hidden Key to Harry Potter (Zossima Press). His address at the Nimbus 2003 symposium on Harry Potter, held in Orlando in July, was voted best paper by the participants." I think his orthodox viewpoint helps understand HP. He concludes his paper thus..."The great irony in the objections that Rowling’s books undermine or violate the tenets of the Christian faith is that her books offer initiation, not into the occult, but into the symbolist worldview of revealed faiths (and sacramental religions specifically) and the dominant symbols and doctrines of traditional Christianity. Ignorance of alchemy and the larger traditions of English literature—not to mention the Christian understanding of the relations of faith and secular culture—has caused many to turn away a great help, perhaps providential, in the trouble and struggle...

La Shawn Barber’s Corner � Harry Potter Resources and Theories I confess, I enjoyed the books and ths speculation of what happened in book 6 at this blog. Make sure you read the comments too.

Read this story today. I love stuff like this. God bless the Freegans, every one of them.

Alot of what I'm reading at house church advocate sites make a big deal about how the 1st century church did it. I haven't seen a discussion on whether this is descriptive or prescriptive. I think its descriptive. I think there are abundant reasons to consider Simple Churches but Biblical command isn't one of them.

I don't want Andrew Jones' title House Churches Have No *** Appeal on my blog to attract anything weird or get me categorized in some WebSpider's pornography grouping, so I censored his title. Anyway, I'm starting to learn that my proposal for the post-emerging church doesn't look a whole lot different from a regional/monthly gathering of home/simple/organic/micro church. So I'm researching it on the web. Places I am reading or about to read so far include CMA not the Christian Missionary Alliance House2House NT Restoration Foundation DBO Housechurch.org and Christian Home Church Network There is also an Amazon book list called House Church: Essential Books for the Movement If my readers have any feedback for me on these links and these orgs let me know. Thanks. If there are more links i should know about tell me in the comments where they are and why i should know about them and i'll move them up into a new post.

The A-Team Blog: Moreland v. Franke on Non-Foundationalism. This is stuff for big brains, but the ramifications throughout the church affects all sized brains.

An Old Model for the Post-Emerging Church Part 4 Let me make a leap in this discussion regarding authenticity . Since I’m so philosophically unsophisticated, I’m not quite getting the philosophical rejection of Foundationalism and the embrace of the post-mod metanarrative contamination by the story teller blah-blah-blah. So if I want to be part of an authentic Christian community I’m not sure how far it can progress if the authenticity of God’s letter to us is in doubt. In Nehemiah 8 the Levites who assisted Ezra made the Law of God clear and gave meaning so the people could understand what was being read, v.8. A well led small group makes progress with some meandering yet doesn’t drive off the cliff theologically. The small group leader, shepherd, facilitator trusts the Holy Spirit to guide his people, and embraces the Priesthood of all believers, yet always remains on guard for wolves who come to destroy and angels of light who will bring apostasy. To rip Paul out of context, anythin...

An Old Model for the Post-Emerging Church part 3 So how does this tie into the emerging church? I think this model addresses the legitimate concerns without letting go of “that which we have received” (1 Cor. 15:3) nor calling into question the “elementary truths of God’s word all over again.” (Heb. 5:12) What issues are legitimate? Community: Hopefully, this is obvious in the Nehemiah 8 model. But as I’ve complained in very early blog posts, I’m concerned with the health of a church that is mono-generational. It’s ironic that a group can point fingers at a mono-cultural church yet not notice their narrow age range. So cultural elitism needs to be avoided both ethnically as well as generationally. Multiculturalism isn’t realistically achievable in every location,  but multi-generational is in any location. I found this church in Australia… There is CHAOS CHURCH “(kid friendly church) sunday mornings @ 11:00-ish glen and ruth's place” which I want to believe includes the kids...

Thanks to Anonymous for telling me about his or her church. It sounds really cool. I’m more than welcome to hear all the bad things about this idea. Please feel free to anonymously post. I hope Anonymous returns with a website for their church. One concern I see with that church is its size limit. An appealing aspect to me about the “retreat format church” is its scalability. This can “feel” the same with 10 people or a thousand, which was at least the crowd size Ezra was dealing with. No matter how big the crowd, its still you, a dozen others, including a trained table facilitator and the Pastor. Hopefully, new facilitators are being trained to prevent burnout of the others and to provide for growth. I think the expectations on facilitators could be high. Would they be able to care for people at their table in the following week by prayer, calls and visitation? Can a mid-week meeting between Sr. Pastor and facilitators/elders/deacons provide sufficient interaction and encouragement an...

This is a short history of Veterans Day. President Wilson started it in 1919, a year after the Treaty of Versailles finally concluded WWI. I'm currently reading The First World War by John Keegan . I've read alot on the US Civil War and WWII and I figured I needed to close the gap. I was shocked at how similar WWI tactics and weapons were to the Civil War. Then again it's shocking how far they advanced in 4 years. Thank you Veterans.

I am just hoping that I'm the first to coin the phrase " post-emerging church ." The model that many churches employ is a lecturer/class format. This is the format often seen in the Gospels and Acts by Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, and Peter, post-Holy Spirit fall, and Paul, when that poor boy fell asleep and fell out the window. However there were other formats that they employed. Jesus and Paul were recognized as teachers, we don't know how, and were invited by the synogogue rulers to give a reading and share with the congregation. Always they received immediate and sometimes violent feedback from those locations. Dialogue seems to have been normal rather than monologue. No doubt conversation between teacher and students occurs in Pedagogical churches today but I'm sure is inversely proportional to the teacher/student ratio. All of us have been in classrooms with more than 30 students and less than 10 and have appreciated the difference. Sometimes we want the anon...

Certainly, the emerging church crowd brings legitimate issues to the table. The issues however aren't necessarily new, but the solutions haven't been necessarily satisfactory for those seeking new ways to do church. Unfortunately, as any reader of this blog will know, some of the proposed solutions, in my opinion, not only are lacking but can be downright spiritually dangerous. But who is doing it well? If people are producing eternal fruit under different formats then many are doing it well. I have no problem with all the different channels or flavors of church. My blend starts with the one I grew up in the Plymouth Brethren continues into my college exerience at UConn, where I grew spiritually under the influence of Intervarsity ) and the one I chose after graduation, a Vineyard which is charismatic and is now a Calvary Chapel where I am an elder and enjoy sitting under a verse by verse exposition through the entire Bible. I teach classes there and am currently facilitati...