the church geek

I’m afraid today’s photo doesn’t hold a lot of artistic merit, but it does describe my day sitting through a lot of talks about the ‘emergent church.’ While not stimulating for my rear, it’s been very engaging for my mind.

It’s been a good day. Diane Butler Bassgave the best talk by far that I have heard in a long, long time. She is a real star in the mainline. I got to meet some fellow blogging folks Adam Walker Cleaveland and Jan Edmiston. I hope to run into a few more folks this evening and have some deeper conversations.

All in all its been a great conference. I’ll say more here later.

Oh by the way, today marks a full months of photos. Woohoo!! Here’s to twelve more!

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When I started thinking about emergent and our mainline denomination, the PC(USA), I thought something along the lines of “We’ve been emergent far longer than many of those evangelicals.” Meaning in my mind, at least, there was already room for and a breadth of theological expression under our big umbrella.

Over the last year or so, I personally connected with emergent more as a theological movement helping give expression to my own struggle to come out of evangelicalism without falling prey to liberalism. For me, there is an essential core of the gospel that I never want to lose, but I also no longer buy into all the baggage that comes with modern evangelicalism.

Today’s talks at the Mainline Emergent Conference have helped me to see that a whole lot more than issues of theology are at stake. We’re talking about how that theology finds its expression in practice. But more importantly, we’re talking about the very existence of the institutional church as we know it.

I don’t think its too extreme to say that our denomination has got to change its practice or it will die a slow, excruciating death in this culture. Oh wait a minute, it’s already doing that…

Today, as I listened in, the questions that popped into my mind were things like:

1) Can we (I) brave enough to try to do something new in our (my) practice in the church?

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This photo represents a blessed moment of quiet in the midst of one insane day. Woke up at 3:30 to catch a 5:00 flight, that ended up not getting off the ground until 6:00. I nearly misssed my connecting flight, but did make it to the conference just as the 1st session was getting underway.

Hungry and cranky, I skipped the last part of one of the sessions just so I could sit in some solitude and regroup.

I had actually hoped my picture of the day would be my being re-united with my suitcase, which is supposed to arrive here soon, but no such luck as of yet. By the way, I’m in Atlanta at Columbia Seminary attending the Mainline Emergent Conference. I intend to say more, but not until I have a good meal in my belly.

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It’s great to see Vandy back in the AP rankings after a few years hiatus. It’s even better to see that they are one of only three currently ranked SEC teams; their wins at Kentucky, at LSU, and at home against Tennessee helping to knock those teams out of the rankings. The biggest test of the year, however, comes on Wednesday when they travel to #1 Florida….can they do it? I’d give them a chance in Memorial but I’m not so sure about on the road.

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I decided that I needed to capture the beauty of our amaryllis (on loan from my in-laws). Lighting is very tricky in our bedroom, but I really wanted to capture the wall color and the shadow as a backdrop. This required using a tripod.

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Today more than usual there are some interesting discussions around the web:

1.) Neil asks, What’s in a missions budget? In our church’s annual report yesterday, I lumped together figures into a report called ‘mission support.’ I did this for a couple of specific reasons. Is it wrong thinking to ask how much of a church’s budget supports ‘missions’?

2.) Are you an introverted blogger? I started blogging primarily because I AM an introvert and it was an easy way for me to express my thoughts and get myself out there. Follow the link through to the primary article.

3.) As a pastor, what day do you take off? I currently take Friday off, but I have a few problems with that practice like sermons and other things that aren’t completed by Thursday evening.

4.) Mainline Emergent(s) Early tomorrow I’m off to Atlanta to the Mainline Emergents conference. Some folks will be live blogging the event. (I’ll try to post a few things too.) Find out who by clicking here.

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After a busy morning at church, I left my camera there. I had to run back and get it so I could take my photo of the day. This was taken on my way back home. I love the texture and colors of the winter sky.

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Just sending out a little link love to the new Presbymergent site, a cyberplace to gather for those PC(USA)ers who are also involved in the emergent conversation. Go check it out.

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Since we try to take Fridays off, Saturday often finds me at home finishing up work for Sunday. This is where that generally gets done.

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Here is a fascinating look at all the social connections in the New Testament. Surprisingly Jesus is right in the middle of it all…Interestingly some Old Testament characters also are featured quite prominently in this map. Click here for more analysis and information. (HT: boing boing)

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This is NOT the picture I had intended for today, but as I was out taking photographs of some other subjects around town, I was flown over by this gaggle of geese. You can see the three very fine, but rejected photos I thought might land on this page by clicking here, here, and here.

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I’m a bit surprised that this turned out to be my favorite of the various pictures I took today. I’m not entirely sure why, but the texture of these snow covered evergreen trees is quite compelling to me. There wasn’t a lot of light out when I took the shot, as it was kind of an overcast morning, so the color photo didn’t come out very brilliant. It sure makes a wonderful black and white though.

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This photo is from yesterday. I have just returned from a 24 hour retreat with a group of eight pastors at our presbytery’s retreat center. The third iteration of a group called “Reversing the Arrow,” we are meeting together five times this year for the sole purpose of learning how to lead congregations through the seismic shift away from the membership model to the discipleship model. It was a wonderful time of study, prayer, and fellowship.

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I’m endlessly fascinated by trees in winter, and I especially love the sun light being filtered through them. There is one thing I’ve finally come to appreciate about winter: sunrises that are late enough that I can fully experience and enjoy them!

I took almost 30 pictures today; the 2nd one ending up being my favorite. Today, I found out how difficult icicles are to photograph, they’re hard for the auto-focus camera to lock in on, and the ones I had to work with were pretty high up making for some less than ideal perspectives.

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This morning, I dropped my wife off at the airport, so I’ll be eking out a living all alone at home for the next five days.

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