Blogging: I guess I have just been in a slump this week a bit. I’ve realized that I’ve become “just another blog” – which is bound to happen. Where are the new blogs? Why are all of our blogs identical? [Warning: sweeping generalizations ahead!] Not only do we all use the same templates for our blogs, but we all want to have the same blogrolls of links to all the same bloggers. I have read Jordon Cooper’s blog, and I enjoy it. But a friend of mine told me that I had “sold out” when I included Jordon’s blog on my list on the left – and I did it because I felt like I had to – I mean, everyone has Jordon’s blog. [Same goes for Rachel Cunliffe, Andrew Jones, The Living Room, Real Live Preacher…all blogs I enjoy, but…] So, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been posting recently. Andrew Jones said it best on his blog when he wrote: “In the meantime, i remain silent, non-blogging, but feel good that i am not clogging up the internet with unnecessary words. Something i would like to see – is that blogs become less self-referential. Blogging about blogging is boring and blogs that link to blogs and bloggers talking about bloggers. LAME! And yet i am probably guilty also of this.”
The Church in Emerging Culture: I am halfway through this book (just received it in the mail Wednesday) and am getting ready to start Frederica Mathewes-Green’s chapter. Is anyone else reading this book? Is anyone thoroughly annoyed by both Andy Crouch and Michael Horton’s chapters and their definitions of postmodernism (Crouch=ultramodernity, Horton=most-modernity). I think McLaren’s comments in their chapters are both gracious and they get at some of what I’m thinking while I’m reading. I’m looking forward to McLaren’s chapter as a breath of fresh air (along with, probably, Erwin Rapahel McManus’ chapter). One of Horton’s quotes that I didn’t agree with was: “We may send taped sermons through the mail rather than write them on parchment, but we can never replace the preaching of the Word with an alternative medium” (128).
The Joy of Friendship/Community: I love friendships. I made a new friend back in September, an Orthodox priest who spends every other week here in Twin Falls. We’ve gotten together 3 times now on Fridays. He has a rich and eclectic history (Catholic, Foursquare, Methodist, taught at Fuller, now Orthodox) and we have been sharing and learning much from one another. This past week, he gave a church history lecture in Twin and myself and a friend attended. I met a counselor that evening, who graduated from Western Seminary (what is now Mars Hill Graduate School). Yesterday, when Fr Patrick and I were at JAVA, we ran into this counselor and a pastor from Twin Falls Reformed Church. We’re talking about all getting together sometime soon (Presbyterian, Orthodox, Reformed, Lutheran). It seems that this is what community is about. People from diverse backgrounds and life experiences and theological perspectives, spending time with one another. Loving one another. Sure, we’re going to disagree on some theology, some specific doctrines, baptism, the Eucharist. But what in the hell is the point of building up walls?