TED is a conference on Technology, Entertainment and Design. I’ve had several friends recommend the TED website over the past few years. I’ve even watched bits of some of the talks that are posted there, but I never really dug into what was available until a few weeks ago.

Oops. I’ve been missing out.

I subscribed to the TED podcast to start working through some of the old talks. The variety of subject matter helps stir my thinking in different areas. But, what I like best is that most of the talks are around 15 minutes or less. It is easy to work through an entire talk while running a few errands or going to the coffee shop.

And it all reminds me why we preachers feel like we need 30-45 minutes (or more) to say something worthwhile. Each of these TED talks has had something valuable to say that has stirred further thinking in about a third of the time of most sermons. Okay…I’m off my pulpit, er, soapbox now.

“The goal of our missional life is not to grow churches. The goal of church is to grow missionaries. The goal of the gospel is not to get people to church. The result of the gospel is that people will find each other and gather because of the deep meaning of a common experience.” (pg 168)

While reviewing some of my underlines after reading The Tangible Kingdom, the quote above stood out. It seemed to capture the main ideas of the book so well.

For anyone who appreciates the writings of Michael Frost or Alan Hirsch (The Shaping of Things to Come, The Forgotten Ways, Exiles), I’d recommend The Tangible Kingdom. As I’ve described it to a few friends, it is a book written from the firsthand of experience who has started a faith community here in the United States holding on to many of the concepts that Frost and Hirsch offer in their writings. However, it isn’t written as a prescription. Though he offers lots of personal illustrations, Hugh Halter does a good job of emphasizing practically how things might shape without creating a model to be followed.

On the crest of a starting a new church community, the arrival of this book was beautifully timed for me because it expresses so well a lot of things I’ve been thinking about … and develops some thinking beyond where I’ve been able to take it. It will be a book I will ask our board and our core group to read as we dream forward.

Oh yeah, and it’s endorsed on the back cover by both Mark Driscoll and Brian McLaren. How many books can you say that about?

While on my very very very very long drive from Seattle to Austin last week, I was reminded of the first time I went rappelling…

Early in the morning, we parked our church vans full of students near the base of the cliffs. After our guides went over some safety precautions and got it all set up, we got started. From the ground below, it didn’t look so bad. We could make out the faces and expressions of each person as they stepped up to the edge. Some descents were quick and confident, others were slow and cautious. No one died.

I watched several others go. I had a mid-morning snack. I watched some others go. I had lunch. I watched some others go. For the second and third time.

Truthfully, I wasn’t that nervous. Until I climbed up for my turn. All those people who seemed to be normal sized when I had been gazing up now looked horrifically small as I peered down. Most unnerving was the ground below, or lack thereof. Standing above, you can’t see it. Knowing that it had been there before I went up provided little comfort as I backed over the edge.

It seems that I survived.

As our family moves to a new city with dreams of starting a new church movement in Austin, it’s kind of like that. We’ve seen others do this. But now, we stand at the edge, wondering what’s below. It would be nice to know what it looks like down there, but the only way to find out is go over the edge.

GULP!

One of these days, we might once again have a place we can call our own.

Last week, the same day we left Seattle, someone looked at our house. They liked it enough to put an offer on it. After a few shenanigans, we reached an agreement at the end of the week. Monday, we found out that he lost his job, and the deal is back off again. So, our house has flirted with the idea of being sold, but has proved to be just a tease.

As far as houses in Austin go…sheesh. Yesterday, we applied to lease a house in Central Austin that would be perfect. Unfortunately, they received two other applications yesterday, one of which got there about 20 minutes before ours. We had already let them know ours was on the way, so now we are just waiting for an answer.

It’s been a challenge for us to try to merge our sense of mission and calling to the city into the reality of place that might work for our family. Central Austin is still where we think we need to be, but the selection there, especially in our price range is a lot more limited. There are plenty of homes that are vacant and available today if we decide to move a little further from the city center. But, our stuff isn’t arriving until early next week, thanks to the holiday, to that has bought us a little bit of time.

For now, we are still staying with my parents. It really is working out okay, all things considered. It’s a little tight, but they are gracious hosts, and we aren’t feeling the pressure to find something soon. They are supportive of us finding just the right place.

Our realtor is leaving town for the 4th so we won’t be looking for anything for a few days if this house doesn’t work out. We are exhausted and glad to have a few days to just relax, and maybe even play a little.

The call of community isn’t about finding people just like us, or at the exclusion of any people. Community in the biblical sense is clearly about unlike people finding Christ at the center of their inclusive life together. — Hugh Halter & Matt Smay, The Tangible Kingdom

A few months ago, my friend Doug Paul posted this prayer of Thomas Merton. It grabbed a hold of me when I first read it. It seems ever more suitable this week as we are packing up our life to move into a foggy future:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Below is my first go at writing some values that will help shape a new church community in Austin. I think they still need some molding, but I’m excited about the potential of these, and have a number of ideas about how we can shape the life of the community around them:

Story
At the heart of our faith is a story. It is the story of how God’s kingdom has unfolded through history. But each of us has a story as well. Just as we look to see how God has been at work through history, we also reflect on how God has been at work in our life. Faith happens when we see the intersection of God’s story with our own. Our community longs to join God in the writing of how this story will continue to unfold.

Wholeness
While we see the work of God in this world, we also hold a deep understanding that not everything is as it should be. God is not finished with the story. In the structures of our world and in our own lives, we see brokenness. But we hope. We long for the final redemption when God will join a new heaven and a new earth together in the ultimate act of restoration. Until then, we choose to live in the Way of Jesus because we believe that is how we will see life flourish in our souls, our homes, our community, our world and in creation.

Presence
As a church community, we are the presence of God in the world today. God is continually moving into the brokenness of this created world, and so do we. Compelled by God’s love, we partner with the resurrected Christ to recover the beauty, renewal, and justice that our broken world longs to see. We pray that we will be able to help God’s will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

There is all sorts of talk about the need for churches to be creative. While I agree, I think the assumption is usually that this creativity happens in the form of programmed expressions from the stage in a Sunday service. This quote reminds us why creativity should be so much more that that:

The reality is that creatives walk into our communities, systems, and structures all the time, and when they do, they intuit the environment we have created and know immediately whether there is space for them. Most often, they discover there is not. If we are going to have systems and structures that allow our communities to respond to the context of our world and what God is doing in such contexts, we must be allowed to create systems and structures that are organic to this emerging world. In order to do this we must be creative! We must allow our imaginations to be funded in news ways from new sources across multiple disciplines, ideas and metaphors. We must allow emergence to happen in our midst by fostering the environments that will allow us to hear God through engaging each other. — Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership

Today, a package came in the mail. It has been a long time coming, and it is a result of the Rob Bell effect. Be patient. I will explain.

As Rob Bell has become a national figure over the last five years or so, the Rob Bell effect has grown. He has recommended many books through his teaching and speaking. This is especially of interest for those of us who like some of the history he digs up. The problem is, some of these books are out of print. Low supply and growing demand means these books get expensive. Really expensive.

That’s when it becomes fun for me. Some odd part of me loves to hunt these books down to find a price I can afford. Each of the books below suffers from the the Rob Bell effect. They are selling for $150 and up around the internet. But I’m now happy to have each in my library, having paid less than $30 for each:

• The Seven Cities of the Apocalypse in Greco-Asian Culture, by Roland Worth - This is the one that arrived today. I found it used on Amazon for for $25 last week. It looks brand new and I can’t wait to dive in. Rob mentioned it in the endnotes of Velvet Elvis. It was only published in 1999, so I’m not sure why it has gone out of print.
• The Seven Cities of the Apocalypse in Roman Culture, by Roland Worth - This is the counterpart volume to the above book. It was not directly cited by Rob, but it is still hard to find. I was able to find it on Eisenbrauns brand new a year ago. Unfortunately, they don’t have it any more.
• Christ and the Caesars, by Ethelbert Stauffer - I heard about this one from Rob several years ago. I think it was already hard to find because it was on Ray Vander Laan’s suggested reading list. I found it in the online inventory of a used bookstore in the UK for under $15. (No, not the bookstore on Notting Hill.) I was a tad delighted.

If you are hunting for out of print books, Alibris or BookFinder are useful. But, I’ve probably had the most luck just using Google to search for the title and author. Once again, be patient.

Persistence bordering on psychosis helps too.

A few months ago, I blogged about mustard plants. (Never mind that that post was supposed to be the intro to a series. The ideas have continued to flow, they just never made it to the blog!)

Some of that thinking has really helped form some ideas about the initial stages of what our church community might look like. I was able to develop the ideas in a paper for a class. While at a church planting boot camp a few weeks ago, I reworked that paper to form a general strategy for developing a multiplying church model. It is linked below for those who are willing to take the time to read it. I’d be thankful and honored if you would share the thoughts and questions that it stirs for you.

A Mustard Seed Church (pdf)

God did not create a divine subculture and then wait for humanity to wise up and join in. God joined a story. God got dirty. God entered. God engaged. And this is the calling of the church as well–to join in and participate in God’s story at work in the world. In that sense to be incarnational is to live in the world the way God lived in the world. — Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership

A few weeks ago, I was sent a copy of My Beautiful Idol, by Pete Gall, for review. A long plane trip earlier this week gave me the chance to really dig in to the book. Once I did, it was easy to stick with it.

Much like Blue Like Jazz, My Beautiful Idol is a spiritual memoir of a young man trying to make sense of life in his early 20s. I’ve even seen the two books compared in this way on a few occasions. The similarity should end there, because otherwise it will distort the way one reads My Beautiful Idol.

About a third of the way through the book, I was struggling with whether I wanted to continue. Spending some time reflecting on it helped me to see why — I didn’t really like Pete Gall. But as I continued to read, I realized that that is kind of the point. Pete Gall writes of his journey as a young man to fully devote himself to God. He offers a great deal of transparency as he shows his own immaturity in that season. And as he does, I was invited to watch how he gradually becomes aware of that himself. And I respect him for showing us so much.

So, don’t confuse My Beautiful Idol with Blue Like Jazz — it’s written from a different stance and should be read as such. But do consider reading it if you want to be refreshed by the honest reflections of one man’s journey through the Christian faith. You might even see some of your own self along the way.

I have tagged a number of blog posts in the last few weeks that my heart was in tune with. Each of these somehow captures pieces of what I am hoping for in a new church community:

• The Consuming Christian and the Consuming Church (Todd Hiestand) - Todd is a good friend, and my initial connection into the Ecclesia Network. I look forward to sharing more time together in the coming years.
• Things They Tell Church Planters That Are Simply Wrong (Pat Loughery) - Much like Todd, Pat is on a short list of friends whose last name I’m not sure how to actually pronounce. Pat has become a Seattle friend who I haven’t gotten to spend enough time with.
• Pastoral Recovery (Hugh Halter) - I’ve only had a chance to speak with Hugh once or twice on the phone, but really appreciate what he is helping to develop with Missio. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of the new book he co-authored: The Tangible Kingdom.

Done…but not finished.

These are words my friend Blaine offered yesterday about graduation. They couldn’t feel more true.

Yesterday, I walked. It’s official. I have a long black robe and the fancy cap made famous by the gentleman on the Yahtzee box. I have a diploma (or at least a piece of paper promising me that I’ll get one if I passed my spring classes). I have a beautiful black, red and white hood. I have photographic evidence that I walked across the stage.

I am done. And it feels ridiculous to say so.

One of my favorite times of the day is when I get to climb on the bed with my two older kids for storytime. (Sometimes Max joins us too, but his newfound urge to grab whatever is in front of him can get a bit distracting.)

I have discovered that there are some completely uninspired children’s stories out there. But, there are also some fantastic ones that I think I enjoy even more than my kids. Here are a few of my favorites:

Truthfully, a lot of Dr. Seuss could make the list, but those two are my favorites. Bonus points for The Sneetches for including the short but delightful Too Many Daves. I will never get tired of saying “Oliver Boliver Butt.”