Psalm 137 For The Year 2010

Alan Roxburgh shares this poem that was written by a participant at a conference he was leading a few years ago.

137 For 2010

In the midst of this crazy world I look around and
wonder what has happened.
How do I talk to a kid with a ring in his nose?
Does “The Old Rugged Cross” mean anything to him?
He asks me to sing a song about “my Jesus”.
From what I can tell he is from another planet,
or am I the stranger here?
I think it’s time to sell the wurlitzer.
So how do I tell Martians about Jesus,
when the only language I speak is 1955?
How do I write a headline for them
that doesn’t screw up the Good News?
I kind of wish it were the way it was,
but it’s not. So I need to figure out
how to sing the old lyrics
with a whole new tune.

Missional MapMaking

Alan Roxburgh has a writing project that’s posted on the Allelon website titled Missional MapMaking: The Art of the Missional-Shaped Church.

In chapter one he discusses the assumptions we bring to life - assumptions about what the world is like, who we are, what is of value and importance, how to get along in life, etc. In western cultures we live under the assumptions of what is often called “modernity.” They are assumptions we inherited from the Enlightenment project and the philosophy of René Descartes. You may not know much about the Enlightenment or who René Descartes was, but if you’ve seen a recent job posting (either secular or religious) or if you’ve been to church lately, then you’ve seen the Enlightenment and the philosophy of Descartes in practice.

Does this sound familiar?: Wanted, self-starter who is highly motivated, can multi-task and is seeking to maximize his/her potential in a setting that offers great advancement opportunities. Or have you read “40 Days of Purpose” or “Your Best Life Now”? Whatever you may think of the content of any of those examples, they all share a common way of looking at the questions above and they all answer them from that fundamental understanding of life. Most modern preaching is more of the same, by the way (even those of you who assume you are giving good old fashioned expository/exegetical sermons. No, especially you).

Roxburgh writes:

We’re born into a world and cultures that already have maps. …[F]or us in the West that map has been modernity and that modernity in many ways has profoundly reshaped, even deformed, the Christian imagination in our culture. From birth we’re formed and shaped by the maps of the culture into which we’re born to the point where we assume this map (in our case modernity) simply describes the way the world is. Our cultural map of modernity shapes how we see the world, ourselves, and our relationships. These maps “make sense” because we a live inside their world.

We don’t know how profoundly we have been influenced by the “maps” of the world we’ve been given because this is all we’ve known. As a fish doesn’t notice the water it swims in (until, of course, it is out of it), so we do not fully understand the culture we swim in, the presumptions we make about life. But as Roxburgh says, the map of modernity has, in some cases, deformed our understanding of God, life and the church, even many of the religious expressions of this modern mindset. Roxburgh calls us to become new mapmakers.

[W]e are in a time when the maps of modernity with their promises of management, control, and predictability are no longer sufficient to describe the places where we find ourselves. The rapidity and extent of these changes create disequilibrium, anxiety, confusion and disorientation among people in North American culture, and this means that our maps of modernity again need to be re-imagined. Once more we are required to become mapmakers. In order to move into God’s future, we must assume that the maps we have inherited no longer adequately describe the realities we face. We must release the desire to copy our inherited maps and … learn to listen to the stories of pioneers so that we can make new maps. In this way, we can re-shape the imagination of God’s people.

Check out chapter one of Missional MapMaking here. You can find the Introduction and other chapters here.

Becoming A Flockstar

If you haven’t seen the new Flock web browser (powered by Mozilla, the people who brought you Firefox) you should check it out.  It is a web browser with integrated social networking features.

Are you on Facebook?  Flock integrates with your Facebook account and can add a Facebook sidebar complete with all your Facebook friends and shortcuts to some of your most-used functions.  Got a Flickr account?  Flock will integrate that, too and can open your photos, or your friend’s photos, in a media bar.  Do you blog?  You can set up your blog account in Flock so that you can publish to your blog straight from Flock.  In fact, if there’s an article you find on the web that you want to blog about you can simply right click on it and “Blog this” right from your browser.  It also integrates with webmail accounts like GMail and Yahoo! mail, social networking sites like Twitter and media sites like YouTube.  It automatically opens a My World tab that you can customize to include all of your favorite friends and content.

And because Flock is made by the same people who brought you Firefox many Firefox extensions will also work in Flock.  In addition, there are custom extensions available just for Flock.

I’ve hated Internet Explorer for some time now because it jams everything into one package whether you want or need all of its functionality or not.  I’ve used Firefox for quite some time because it both runs faster and because I can leave out the things that I don’t need (which would only slow it down) and I can add what I do need, or just what I want.

But Flock may become my new favorite browser.  I’m still learning all of the ins and outs, but if you’re in to social networking and/or media content I’d encourage you to check out Flock, the social web browser.

[HT: Todd]

Site News

Welcome to my new blog home. I hope you like the redesign. Hey, at least it’s better than craigslist, huh? Give me your feedback, I’d like to know what you think.

Speaking of feedback, this template works a little differently than what you’re probably used to in a blog. To comment just click on the post title and it will take you to the full blog article. Then, at the bottom you will see the comment form.

I will still be tweaking things for a while, so check back for the changes.