Beauty isn’t mentioned very often within churches. Beauty is quite often pushed aside as being superficial, effeminate, fleeting, and purely aesthetic (which it can be).
But if you worship the Creator of heaven and earth, then beauty is inescapable. Christ himself is described as the ‘beautiful one’.
The word ‘glory’ is laced throughout the scriptures and carries with it the notion of the weight of beauty. Whenever the angels declare ‘glory’ to God they are proclaiming the overwhelming density and magnitude of the very source of beauty.
The scriptures go as far as saying that ‘the whole earth is filled with his glory’.
Our planet is chalked full of beauty.
If only we had eyes to see.
Coming soon: The next solarcrash event: broken-beautiful – Join our FB page, with details coming out this week. Let me know if you’d like to contribute.
Photo Credit: Runran
by Lon on January 18, 2010
Just to follow up on my last post “Stop donating to Haiti?” which received quite a number of hits – my very general take is to go ahead and exercise your god given wisdom, but don’t let any amount of theorizing stop you from giving when it’s in your heart to do so.
I wanted to dedicate this post to the many Christian organizations that have helped pave the way for the church on issues of justice.
You can argue all you want about administrative costs, or selling-out-to-the-man, or whatever else; but organizations like World Vision, Christian Aid, Compassion, and World Relief have been serving and giving for decades. While much of the church believed that the mandates of these agencies were secondary to the preaching of the gospel, these organizations forged ahead not because it was cool, but because it was right.
Although I’ve never been a huge fan of the ‘Salvation Army‘ name, they’ve managed to transcend the name by their works of charity all over the world. They’ve built a global infrastructure making the gospel tangible to those who are poor and destitute – and now that the rest of the church is beginning to catch on, I think it’s their time to shine.
We owe all of these organizations a great deal. They’ve made it possible for us to mobilize much more rapidly in Haiti today. More importantly, they’ve been in the business of loving and serving people long before heart-wrenching photos were sent out or global emergencies were declared.
Say a prayer of thanks for the work that’s already been done today.
by Lon on September 15, 2009
by Lon on August 22, 2009
Supposedly a tornado went through Minneapolis at the same time the Lutherans were trying to decide whether “practicing homosexuality is a behavior that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry”.
John Piper’s openly declared the tornado a warning from God.
Regardless of your take on the issue itself, what’s your take on the connection? How do you discern the relationship between what you do and the warnings of God?
John Piper’s original post
Greg Boyd’s public response
A couple weeks ago I preached a message working through Van Gogh’s art and the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. It was a really fun one, partly inspired by this book.
My favorite bit was on Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night painting. Van Gogh was really intentional with his colors using blue for mystery and the infinite, and yellow for divine sacred love.
You can see how he had a real sense of earth being a reflection of heaven. The yellow holy light is laced across the fields and echoed in every little home, except one… the church.
It’s as if to say that hints of the divine are everywhere you look in all creation, but ironically Van Gogh didn’t feel that it was in the church (He was a pastor/missionary before seriously painting).
What do you think? Do you see truth in it today? How might the church regain it’s glow?
Peter Rollins has been the latest provoking button pusher for me. He looks and talks like a complete drunk on redbull, but he’s got some profound thoughts. I don’t know if this list of resources will grow as large as my Rob Bell listing, but here we go.
Here’s his wikipedia bio
Peter Rollins (born Belfast, 31st March 1973) is the founder and co-ordinator of the experimental collective Ikon. Ikon describes itself as iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging and failing and engages in what it calls theodrama and ‘transformance art’.
Rollins is also a freelance philosophy lecturer, public speaker and writer who specialises in various aspects of continental philosophy, phenomenology and emerging church theology. He is currently a research associate with Trinity College Dublin.
Notes and Articles
Adam Moore’s notes from Peter Rollins sessions at Poets, Prophets and Preachers part 1 and 2
Best collection of notes from Peter Rollins’ minnekon gathering 2008
Wittenburg door interviews Rollins
Rollins Interview with Christian Century
Audio Messages
A series of clips of Peter Rollins on sermoncloud
Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle, and Pete Rollins Panel Discussion part 1 and part 2
Peter Rollins Advent reflection sermon
4 talks by Peter Rollins at the Emergent mid-atlantic conference
Lecture on How (not) to speak of God by the living room here
Sermon on adult formation at St. Mark’s here
2nd Sermon at St. Mark’s here
Talks at Greenbelt Festival
Lecture at Irish School of Ecumenics
Videos
Videos of Rollins by Work of the People
Peter Rollins at Calvin College explaining the emergent church
Official books and sites
Peter Rollins blog / Twitter
Ikon Community
How (not) to speak of God
Fidelity of Betrayal
Orthodox Heretic
Let me know if you find other good links. Enjoy!
If sharing Christ is a matter of communicating information, then Christians are in a lot of trouble.
It still boggles my mind that pastors can spend 30+ hours preparing for to articulate a half hour message each week.
I’m positive that no one wants to die simply knowing a lot of stuff, yet so many of us (Christians in particular) seem to often live as if we do. * Note the amount of money and time we spend on conferences, books, and other information acquiring vehicles.
Chris Anderson argues in his latest book “Free” that the future of business is free with the costs of a vast array of products rapidly declining to zero. In particular he cites how “information wants to be free”. You can get the book free here.
And information is free today. At least any insight that involves connecting to the Living God. The gospel ‘message’ is a google search away from just about anyone in the west. Whether they care to know is a whole different story.
I think what people desire today is formation, not information. Information is the easier option to deliver and receive. It can also easily deceive us into thinking we’re accumulating building-blocks to a stronger faith and life, when we’re not.
Information is a piece of the puzzle, but we’re doing ourselves, and others, a disservice when we’re fire-hosing data.
I often read the Scriptures scriptures and wonder if the people in ancient times had some other type of DNA allowing them to simply hear and believe, or discover and act. Or, maybe those we could respond the same today as well, if we weren’t so inundated with information.
What would your faith gathering look like if it didn’t center around the transmission of information?
* And speaking of free congratulations to Ryan on the thesis theme giveaway!
I’m all for disrupting the status quo, but what is it in us that seems to need to rebel against those closest to us?
Like the teenager that finds herself powerless to change the system, and lives in defiance to her parents; a new order of Christians seem overly hell-bent on undermining the institutional church… and I’m often one of them.
What conflicts are you involved with today that are completely unnecessary?
