Collectively Dubm...I mena dumb,

One of my favorite things about this emerging cultures appetite for ‘power given to the masses’ is that it allows for the masses to control popular thought and opinion. Wikipedia is a great example of the collaborative muscle of our culture working together to create something that is far greater then itself. We love the idea of having control and access to information that has traditionally been behind closed doors, in files marked ‘confidential’, and held by higher ups who can wield and manipulate it to suit their needs and wants. It’s a great idea. The cheese-eating-cigarette-smoking and topless French peasants thought it was a great idea too…that is until they had control and decided that they, like their predecessors, did not want to share. Not too terribly surprising.

At present, our intellectual elite are progressively becoming only side notes in history as psychologically and intellectually we are becoming more and more Marxist-like in our thirst for information. Anyone with a computer and a wifi connection has access to the same information jamming us all into an information and technological middle class. But really, who cares.

Anyhow, my point is this: ‘nobody is smarter then everybody’ is a bit of an ideal way to live and teach. We are deceived by this cute little collection of words because it plays to the thing that we very much want – anti-authority, or, more precisely, our own authority. That said, there are some great times where using this statement and viewpoint in life is very helpful; i.e. in the realm of ideaing, brainstorming problems, collaborative learning, and creativity the more perspectives applied to said problem the better. However, the ‘nobody is smarter then everyone’ cliché breaks down the moment it comes to applying specific skills to specific tasks.

Do we let everyone with a seat on WestJet flight 178 from Abbotsford to Saskatoon to visit the in-laws give advice, suggest flight patterns, and take a crack at flying the jet…or, do we leave it in the hands of the pilots who, after many many hours of skill and knowledge development, fly the jet? We trust the pilot.

Do we let everyone with a seat in a church take a crack at teaching and preaching…or…do we trust the teacher who has spent many hours in study, prayer, and preparation? We very much want to trust a pilot; why not a teacher?

Collectively we can come up with some amazing ideas; collaborations and innovations that come only as a result of people getting together co-creating and co-developing something magnificent. However, collectively we can also become dumb and ignorant in our quest for anti-authority.

Death

Sorry for the lack of posting lately; I've been doing piles of research work lately logging major hours in study filling up coil ring notebooks and piecing together some thoughts on the early church. That, and I've been sick, we've started a new blog, and their has been 100% growth at our young adults in the last three weeks. Anyhow, that is my excuse for not writing here.

My excuse for writing here is a coincidence. In the last couple of months I have had two different books given to me by two unrelated and non-connected people who told me that I really need to read the particular book they were giving me. So, without knowing the content or themes of each of these books, I cracked them open and read them.

The first book was about death.

The second book was...wait for it...about death.

I've never really experienced death before too closely; my grandpa died when I was six years old and I had some friends die when I was in high school. Reading these books I began to realize that I have no feelings that I can remember that are directly related to death...and I suppose this is good. I don't want to experience death in any close proximity but at the same time I guess I need to realize that there is no life without death. And that's scary. It's scary to think of what life would be like without someone you love, its scary to think of how I might respond, its scary to consider how they might respond if it were me. I don't think that death, when it comes, will in itself be scary - I more afraid of pain and spiders, but what about the people around me? I hope these two books were only a coincidence.

New Entry in the BlogRace

New clcc young adults blog that you can feel free to add to your bloglines and check regularly. It is also a space for sermonizing which, if you don't know, is part of our collaborative sermon building process. Would love to have your thoughts and ideas as we teach about Jesus.
Grace and Peace,
-Jer

Home?

Jesse posts a great post here. If you are somehow involved with ministry to young adults or transient type of people it is definitely worth the read and time given to thinking through its implications for your ministry context. Great stuff Jesse!
-Jer

The Death of Sermons?

Communication, as we in the church know it, is under attack.

As a communicator I am constantly trying to learn how to become more effective in preparation, truth telling, story telling, persuasion, stimulating thought, conversation, and delivering compelling anti-conclusions. I genuinely enjoy studying and looking for seemingly unrelated bits and pieces of truth to link together to shape worldviews, beliefs, and lifestyles and I love the challenge of trying to find the language that speaks most relevantly to the people I am communicating to.

One of the aspects of church liturgy that the emergent church has called into question is how we, as communicators, most effectively communicate this life altering story of Jesus Christ to the emerging generation. On one extreme, there has been an almost violent reaction against the didactic “pastor as authority” teaching that has been so prevalent in churches for centuries in favor of conversation, dialogue, and narrative/experiential learning. On the other extreme, we find young pastors deciding against the 20 minute seeker-friendly sermons in favor of much longer and indepth teaching that moves the listener from theology to doxology to biography.

My personal response to this has been to take a little bit of the good from each of these to create a method of three part preaching that I don’t actually do very well. The upside is that I have the space and time to be constantly experimenting with how it actually could work. I have begun writing my definitions and ideas for these three parts but, before I post it here, I’d love to read your thoughts on this. Following are three numbers, six pieces of punctuation, and six words that make up the calcium malnourished skeleton of this teaching idea.

1) The Prologue.

2) The Dialogue.

3) The Epilogue.

If I had to get an idea across and these three are the variables of how I accomplish this; how should I do this?

-Jer

The Question We Have All Been Asking

The following question was posed to me by author Chuck Klosterman in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Easily the most interesting question asked of me in the last week and a half. By the way, you can pick up this book here...be warned though, if this book was a movie it may have an NC-17 rating.

Let us a assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with thick rope. He is conscious and standing upright, but completely immobile. And let us assume - for some reason - every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less then twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel-toed boots. Would you attempt to do this?

Happy New Years!
Live from beautiful Comox Valley, BC
-Jer

Merry Christmas

Have you ever had a Christmas present that, in all of its shiny paper, seemed so full of potential; pregnant with possibilities?
And then you open it...
And you find that basically the wrapping paper was more interesting then the actual gift and you find yourself muttering something about "how thoughtful or how handy" the gift might be. There is an old adage that says, "It is better to give then to receive" but it might just be that giving is just less embarrassing.

Anyhow, where ever you are in this great nation, enjoy Christmas this year, be thankful, and remember Jesus.
Live from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
-Jer

Clam Crowder Soup

A friend whose name will only be referred to as Cody from herein found that it would be in Jeremy’s best interest if Cody would set up an account at Relevant Books for Jeremy to choose some books that Cody would then buy for Jeremy. Three books arrived at my door two days ago by a FedEx man in tight jeans and a ripped bluejean jacket…obviously out of uniform...I immediatly, but briefly, admired his vigilante spirit and applauded his complete direspect of social norms. But I suppose that is another post.

To the story at hand. I was obviously giddy like a 13 year-old cheerleader (without all the stereotypes associated with 13 year-old cheerleaders) to get this early Christmas present! I eagerly opened the FedEx packaging and found Everyone Want To Go To Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die, The Relevant Church, and The Relevant Nation.

I quickly grabbed the novel I was reading, finished it, and cracked the cover of Everyone Wants To Go To Heaven written by David Crowder with bandmate Mike Hogan. Maybe one of the best things about this book is that there is a banjo on the front cover that, if you were perceptive enough, you would notice looks remarkably similar to Dave Crowder’s face if you turned his head and mess of hair upside down. That said, the book itself held a few more remarkable insights as it toured around on an often convoluted history, discussion, and story of death, suffering, the soul, and bluegrass music. Interesting, cleverly written*, accompanied by a bookmark, and free! Thanks Cody.

Looking forward to what the other two reads offer.
-Jer

*For example, I learned that the word Presbyterians happens to be an anagram for Britney Spears and that it was, no doubt, predestined for this anagram to happen since the dawn of God’s green earth.

Let's Get Some Link Love

Hey yo
There are a bunch of faithful readers of this blog and I do, maybe more then I care to admit, really appreciate that. There are even some regular comment posters and you, my friends, are my favorite! :)

Anyhow, its been quite some time since I have updated the links on my side bar; if you have a personal blog that you would like to see added to the sidebar just leave the blog address in the comments section so I can get that updated for you.

Also, if you still haven't started using bloglines then I would recomend that you do. It will help you surf through the wide and wonderful world of blog - trust me. It works and it works well. Anyhow, looking forward to adding your links.

Grace and Peace,
-Jer

PS - If you are already linked on the side bar or, if you've left your link and still are feeling frisky, check out this short post by favorite blogger in the entire world.

True or False: v2.0 Proximity

The other day 'sloos and I were sitting in a quiet little coffee shop drinking tea and talking about a true eclection of ideas. One of the statements that was made (with some grimmace) sounded like this:

"Other then Jesus, the most important aspect of leadership and ministry is proximity." Simply, the distance between the leader and the follower has the largest impact on the quality of the leader/follower relationship.

True or False?
tags: leadership