» Reading (online): Mars Hill sermon guides for their Sermon on the Mount series

» Reading (offline): "Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith" by Shane Hipps

» Fixin' to Read (offline): "Messy Faith" by AJ Gregory

» Listening: Catching up on sermons by Greg Boyd and Rob Bell

» Singing Along To: ... a little bit of everything

» Working: See below.

First things first (in this case, I suppose ... second). Last week was a curious tale of a lost weekend. Saturday started off fairly well, but two things happened to throw a monkey wrench into that day. First, I had a massive case of cell phone fail. It seems that G1s get a bit clunky after a year or so of actively confusing the memory indexing. So my phone was stuck in boot mode for most of the time I was supposed to be enjoying the service. So, naturally, what follows made perfectly clear sense: the Loft was graced with the presence of a particularly chatty individual. Maybe it's because I'm just an introvert, but I really do not see how it is humanly possible to talk for two hours straight. Just my opinion, but I think that at some point, it helps to breathe. OK, enough with the ranting.

Due to the phone thing, there's no alarm to wake me up on Sunday. So biology takes over and wakes me up in the early afternoon. So no Sunday services online, no heading to the office to catch up on work. I opt to sulk my worries in a bit of catch-up reading, an ounce or two of work from home, and a relaxing dinner. At this point, I'm finding it much easier to be grateful than I was 24 hours ago.

Now, to add to all of this, the rather simple list from last week - which looked so easy to accomplish - mocks me. There's no mobile site for the blog because by the time I looked at the new code for updating the machine that runs this show, I have to say I wasn't impressed with it. So I'm taking the technologically heretical notion of switching software for the blog. This should mean absolutely nothing to a normal person, but it's enough for me to break out in hives. Short version of this very boring, techie story is that there's no point in going through the hassle of doing a mobile site design for the blog if I switch to the new code since that one comes with a ready-made plug-in for mobile layout. So I'm giving the decision another day or two. For now, though, nothing changes.

In more upbeat news, I've balanced my proverbial checkbook and have nothing but good things to sing about the personal finances this year. What better way to reward that situation than to go shopping for a guitar. I did this last year with some bonus money egging me on. But last year's endeavor was to shop for a starter guitar that would just make practicing a bit easier than my clunky, cheap pawn shop guitar that I really dislike. Bottom line: I can shop around for a better guitar than I could last year and given the options available ... I don't think there's an excuse to talk myself out of one this time around.

Last year, I was pretty finicky about what I wanted: a Kramer Striker 110. It's the mass-produced version of the Eddie Van Halen guitar from the mid-80s. They sell for a reasonable price on eBay, but you have to look long and hard to find one that's been maintained well for 25+ years. Add on the fact that I'm very well skilled at talking myself out of buying things, and you'd find me guitar-less one year later.

This time around, I'm eyeing a Charvel San Dimas model if I can get one for the right price. If not, then there's a few Ibanez and Jackson models that intrigue me. Yes, I'm heavily influenced by the musical culture of the 80s. Such is my cross to bear.

So that's the stuff I'm really excited about this week. With any luck, before the year is out, I'll be adding my "joyful noise" to the blog if I can regain any of my chops. If not ... well, the neighbors will have to tell you all about it ;-)

Elsewhere, reading through Shane Hipp's "Flickering Pixels" is a real treat. I'd recommend it even for someone not interested in how technology and different mediums pertain to faith since much of the book is about how those things impact the broader culture around us as well. Expect an outtake or two, as well as some more extended observations about this book. It's really good stuff. I dived into it at the same time I cracked open my first AJ Gregory book and it now occupies a more focused place on my reading list for the week.

I'm hoping to pick up AJ Gregory again tomorrow and maybe have her two books finished by the end of the week. They're both very accessibly written, quick reads, and incredibly encouraging books. "Messy Faith" might mean more to the female set than the male set, but I don't necessarily consider it to be exclusive to demography. She's definitely coming from a place that a lot of other writers aren't and that makes it a refreshing read.

Alrighty now ... back to work. More this week, hopefully.

» Reading (online): 6 ways technology has changed religion

» Reading (offline): "The Seekers" by Daniel Boorstin

» Fixin' to Read (offline): "Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith" by Shane Hipps

» Listening: Jesse Rice interviewed by Steve Brown

» Singing Along To: Jonathan Salas

» Working: Developing a mobile version of this blog.

Ironic that after I've spelled out a fairly ambitious reading list for the first quarter of the year, I'm adding to it with the Shane Hipps book already. Actually, I'm ordering it along with the two books by AJ Gregory mentioned previously.

I've heard Shane Hipps preaching before via an appearance or two at Rob Bell's Mars Hill Church. It took me a while to click with what he was saying. But I seem to enjoy it more as I read what he has to say. One of the goals of kick-starting the blogging habit here is to enhance it as a community for whoever the heck stops by for a read. While I hope to always be at some point on the path where I have no idea what I'm doing in that regard, I'm obviously hopeful that Shane has a few words of wisdom to impart along the way.

Among the topics I'm really looking forward to diving deeper into this year is how different churches are using their websites. So, in addition to seeing how much I can improve this little blog, I'm likely to dig around and seek out some best practices around the world and see if this little pixel factory can assist a church or two out there looking to reach out a bit more. I've been in the web business for slightly over a decade and there are periods where changes look appealing and unappealing to me. The current move to more mobile web use and using richer media and content along the way ... all very appealing to me.

In other matters of "starting the new year off right," I've gone through the usual ritual of filling in a new notebook to track sermons with, note whatever scripture is screaming most loudly to me, or drop whatever thoughts are in need of writing down. I've written before on my challenges & struggles of maintaining this habit and it's probably a huge enough surprise to me that it persists as a habit no matter how poorly executed.

This year's game plan is to simplify my commitment list to tracking the four churches I listen to the most: Lakewood, Woodland Hills (Greg Boyd), Mars Hill (Rob Bell), and Northland (Joel Hunter). As much as I love the others, I'm going to have to be a bit more honest in how I get around to listening to them. These four will probably happen on a quasi-religious weekly basis. The others ... might or might not be playing on a regular basis. I do tend to catch up, but it sometimes means listening to 4-5 sermons in a row on a quiet evening at home (which is not half-bad, I maintain). I think I spent more time feeling miserable that I was falling behind in my routine of listening to about 7 services over the course of a busier-than-average week in the past year.

Anyways ... it's Monday. Off to work I go. Look for the mobile version of this site on your iPhone or other smartphone sometime later this week.

As far as "resolutions" go, I'm not a big fan of them. But with the chance to start a clean slate, I'm putting last year's reading glut behind me and looking eagerly toward finding a steady stream of reading material to keep some of my brain cells functioning in the new year.

I've already put to rest one highly recommended book: "The Fourth Part of the World," by Toby Lester. Nothing overly spiritual about it, though. It's about the history of world exploration that led up to the making of the 1507 Waldseemuller map, which is the first to explicitly name America. A copy of the map itself was procured by the Library of Congress for an enormous sum and the history that builds up to it's creation is fascinating (at least to me).

To the extent that there is a connection to anything Christian, I suppose I could elaborate on the tangent of what set off a lot of the exploration. Among the motives of the explorers was the opportunity to spread the Good News. In several cases, this was accomplished by taking slaves, imprisoning native populations, and exploiting the resources of their land. Considerate, no?

The book itself doesn't dwell on the topic all that much. But it struck me as yet another amazing indicator of how God uses even the faultiest of ministries. Of the areas explored in this manner, there are still numerous traces of Christian communities that remain. It's perhaps not dissimilar to how strong Christian communities exist in African-American communities here in America, as the faith was initially spread during slavery. In both cases, there's a welcome absence of people who would openly suggest spreading the Gospel in either manner. But there's a curious ray of hope that's worth noting here: that even in the harshest circumstances where God's word is being advocated by the most impure of means ... that the Good News of God's word actually shines through even that. We may not have such visibly dire circumstances clouding God's word today, but I don't doubt that we'll look back on some of the ways that aren't obvious to us today. Fortunately, it's not enough to keep God from being seen and heard.

As for some other reading material on the short-term agenda, I'm sticking fairly close to the topic of Lester's book, by reading Daniel Boorstin's "The Seekers." In true trilogy form, I'm once more reading the last book of the trilogy first. In this case, it's because I'm tempted to commit to the other books in this series, but a bit wary that I'll really like Boorstin's style. We'll see how it goes. Trilogies have not exactly been a strong suit of mine, but I'm sure that I'll enjoy getting through at least one Boorstin book in my lifetime.

I'm still nickel & diming my way through William Stringfellow's "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land." It's a short enough book and I'm over halfway through it. But it's also a very peculiar book in a lot of ways. I can definitely see this as a book that I might put to rest soon and enjoy it more the second time I flip through it. There's a wealth of insight in the book, but given the context of time that it was written ... it's a bit of work to get through.

Upcoming after all of this, I'm very eager to dive into two books by A.J. Gregory - "Messy Faith" and "Silent Savior." I think I had seen "Messy Faith" on the shelves before and I'm not sure what had really kept me browsing past it. Fortunately, the current push to regroup my reading addiction has led me to look at it anew and I have to say that based on the previews of both books, I am really looking forward to them.

Beyond that, I'm hoping for a little bit of luck to finally get around to reading Frank Viola's books and maybe - maybe - regain the urge to pick up Rob Bell's "Jesus Wants to Save Christians." The only thing certain is that I've got new material from Eugene Peterson to look forward to in February.

That strikes me as ambitious enough for the short term.

I'm really liking the book, but it takes some getting used to for two reasons. The first, you'll see in the excerpt below, is his descriptive style of writing. The second has to do with the fact that the book was written in 1973. This is important for a couple of reasons.

The first is that it offers an interesting glimpse into what I suppose would have been the Religious Left of the era. Stringfellow was a friend of Daniel Berrigan for those of you who are know the reference. This was a time when the Religious Left possessed a very vocal critique of the federal government's actions as they pertained to the Vietnam War and other facets of the Nixon administration's exercise of power.

The second is that the book predates much of the more culturally conservative Christian understanding of Revelations, going so far as to describe the book as woefully understudied at the time. This would be the same year that Hal Lindsay's "The Late, Great Planet Earth" was published on the mass market and even more years before the "Left Behind" franchise of books, movies, sermon series, etc....

All this to say that Stringfellow is writing from a very different time and place than we're accustomed to today. For a starter, this ought to be enough to raise a few hackles:

(pages 50-53)

I am not implying that there is a neat parallelism in the manner in which Babylon on the one hand and Jerusalem on the other relate to the nations and institutions of tot the practical situation of any particular principality The interplay of Babylon and Jerusalem is dynamic and ironic and poignant, and it is specific as to each and every nation and power. Any description is inevitably too simplified, and analytical statement is insufficient. But, at least for now, it is enlightening to notice the paradoxical and the dialectical aspect of this interplay. The elementary truth of Babylon's apocalyptic situation is Babylon's radical confusion concerning her own identity and, in turn, her relationship to Jerusalem. The awful ambiguity of Babylon's fallenness is expressed consummately in Babylon's delusion that she is, or is becoming, Jerusalem. This is the same moral confusion which all principalities suffer in one way or another; this is the vocational crisis, really, which every nation in history endured. This is the vanity of every principality - and notably for a nation - that the principality is sovereign in history; which is to say, that it presumes it is the power in relation to which the moral significance of everything and everyone's else is determined. Babylon's profligacy has only most superficially to do with materialism, lust, or the decline of moral values, and Babylon's fall is not particularly a punishment for her greed or vice or aggrandizement, despite what some preachers allege. Babylon's futility is her idolatry - her boast of justifying significance or moral ultimacy in her destiny, her reputation, her capabilities, her authority, her glory as a nation. Tee moral pretenses of Imperial Rome, the millennial clams of Nazism, the arrogance of Marxist dogma, the anxious insistence that America be "number one" among nations are all versions of Babylon's idolatry. All share in this grandiose view of the nation by which the principality assumes the place of God in the world. In the doom of Babylon by the judgment of God this view is confounded and exposed, exhausted and extinguished. A magnificent celebration in heaven extols the triumph of God's sovereignty over principalities as well as human beings (Rev. 18:20; 19:1-2).

As every nation incarnated Babylon and imitates her idolatry, so each nation strives, vainly, to be or become Jerusalem. But, refuting and undoing that aim of nations, the reality of Jerusalem is not embodied in any nation or other power. Jerusalem is the holy nation; Jerusalem is the holy nation; Jerusalem is a separate nation. In the biblical image of Jerusalem and in the historic manifestations of Jerusalem as the priest of nation, Jerusalem lives within and outside the nations, alongside and over against the nations, coincident with but set apart from the nations. The emphatic tone in the Revelation passages in which the call "Come out [of Babylon], my people" is recited again and again points to this peculiar posture of simultaneous involvement and disassociation (Rev. 18:4-5). It is pertinent to remember the prominence of this matter elsewhere in the New Testament. It was an issue, remember, which caused grave misunderstandings between Jesus and his disciples throughout his ministry. That is evidenced in their persistent bemusement at his parables, by their misapprehension of the Palm Sunday events, by their conduct at his arrest, by their mourning after the Crucifixion, by their surprise and consternation at East. Only when Pentecost happens - where Israel is restored as a visible, viable, historic community and institution, as the holy nation - do the disciples and the others called into this new estate of humanity as society begin to comprehend the whereabouts of Jerusalem and Jerusalem's vocation among the nations (Acts 2:5-11, 36-47).

Babylon is concretely exemplified in the nations and the various other principalities - as in the Roman Empire, as in the USA - but Jerusalem is the parable for the Church of Jesus Christ, for the new or renewed Israel, for the priestly nation living both within and apart from the nations and powers of this world. Jerusalem is visibly exemplified as an embassy among the principalities - sometimes secretly, sometimes openly - or as a pioneer community - sometimes latently, sometimes notoriously - or as a prophetic society - sometimes discreetly, sometimes audaciously. And the life of Jerusalem, institutionalized in Christ's Church (which is never to be uncritically equated with ecclesiastical structures professing the name of the Church) is marvelously dynamic. Constantly changing in her appearances and forms, she is incessantly being rendered new, spontaneous, transcendent, paradoxical, improvised, radical, ecumenical, free.

In beholding some specific society or nation in history - like America - we must recognize the symbolic juxtaposition of the two biblical societies, Babylon and Jerusalem. Their contiguity signifies the convergence of confrontation or, indeed, collision of the apocalyptic and the eschatological events through which the past is consummated and the future is apprehended within the immediate scope and experience of that particular nation. It is in relation to these impending apocalyptic omens and imminent eschatological signs, in a time and in a place, that the body of the Church - and the person who is a Christian - decides and acts.

As far as returning 80s metal bands go, the show was as loud and the guitars as crunchy as you'd imagine. Even better, the mix of new songs off of the latest release mixed in very well with the classic material and there didn't seem to be much of a lull for any of them.

Three things that made this show particularly nice, though:

1. Returning in the height of Christmas season after losing four Texas dates in November.

The show was initially scheduled for November 5th and got cancelled very close to showtime due to a flu bug going around the tour bus. Two of the shows were rescheduled, and two were cancelled. I'm not sure what the pressure is in the band's situation to make up shows out of financial consideration, but it certainly seemed a stretch to expect shows to be scheduled for the 21st (Houston) and 22nd (Dallas).

Lead singer Michael Sweet addressed the issue early in the set, suggesting that because Texas was the very first state that Stryper really "toured," they felt a bit of responsibility to make up some of the lost dates. Whether you chalk that up to typical band bantering to appeal to the locals or not, it at least adds something to what made the show a pleasure to see.

The original plan for the tour had been to have Michael's son's band (Flight Patterns) open for Stryper. This time around, that wasn't the case. I'm not sure if Michael's family made this final leg of the tour with him. But given the recent passing of Michael's wife before the tour, the thought did occur to me that the band might be making a bit of a personal sacrifice in stretching it out this close to the holidays. However much of a sacrifice went into it, it certainly was appreciated.

2. Seeing the band in a nice venue.

This was my first time to see a show in the House of Blues. No disappointment in the show itself. The grunge music playing before Stryper's set might be the only real question mark, but that's fairly minor.

3. Jonathan Salas.

Typically, even if the opening act is good, I'll start to speculate on how much time is left before they wrap up. This is especially true when the band is completely unknown going in. I hadn't even made time to preview a few tunes by Salas prior to the show this time. But they could have let him play for a good while longer and I wouldn't have had a complaint. The kid is good and I hope there's a lot more opportunities to catch him around Houston. I've since ordered a couple of his CDs, but I'm not sure that the band he played with Monday night is on either. Of particular importance, whoever the drummer he had with him was phenomenal. And I say that as one who's rarely won over by a drummer.

From the Houston show:

It's not entirely Stryper unless you relive the power ballad era that they existed in.

The little baby boy that gets mentioned and shown in this one opens the show Monday night with his band:

Monday cannot get here fast enough.

Whatever one thought of Oral Roberts, he definitely had an influence on the faith of millions. By the time I was born again, the televangelist phenomenon was at a low tide due to scandals and false prophecies. If there's anything I've learned since then, it's that God uses even those ministries I (or others) may not quite get. Watching Roberts back in the day, there was a very evident earnestness in his faith that came across regardless to how receptive I might have been to his style. Seeing the legacy he leaves behind, it's hard to argue that God hasn't used him for a great deal of good in his 91 years.

Joel Osteen's statement:

For more than 50 years, Oral Roberts was a dear family friend and we are deeply saddened by his passing.

He was a great hero of faith whose legacy will live on in the hearts of millions of believers worldwide. He profoundly affected all of us through his strong faith in Jesus Christ, and his deep compassion and love for his fellow man.

On behalf of the members of Lakewood Church and the Osteen family, Victoria and I send our heartfelt prayers and deepest condolences to the entire Roberts family and to all the students and staff of Oral Roberts University.

Oh, and while I've skipped a beat on the recording of services the past few weeks, I will update with a bit of blogging soon enough. Exciting times ... can't keep them all to myself, ya know.

My favorite line of the whole sermon was as follows: "When Jesus wasn't present, the disciples got stupid." It's a comparison to how far we fall away as a church when we're left to our own devices. If you're easily offended, the sermon might not be up your alley. Kim's is a very prophetic style and he's not afraid to call out the church as a whole, seminary schools, his own Presbyterian church, and even lead us into calling ourselves out where we need to.

This probably ties into the William Stringfellow booklet I've yet to make a dent in, so I'm hopeful that I'll be unearthing that when I get home later in the day. I'll try and add some additional thoughts on the sermon then, as well. And maybe I'll have a few additional thoughts from the other sermons of Kim's that I'm downloading.

One nice benefit of the previous job was that my weekends were mostly free. As a matter of practice, I'd spend most Saturday's taking something akin to a sabbath before heading over to church. Sundays, meanwhile, were spent doing a mix of "personal" tech work and "work" tech work at the office, where I would be able to record and clip video of the Sunday services. The day-to-day workload gets a bit magnified now, so it's still up to me to sort out where I find time in the day to do the video editing that you may have gotten accustomed to here. It'll return ... just give me a little while to adjust.

There's a fairly sizable list of things I'd love to get around to blogging here, but just never had time to do with time already spent with the previous gig, the other blog, something loosely approximating a life, and a news junkie habit in need of far more than 12 steps to cure. I'm optimistic that I'll be able to make a dent in that list and that the result will be a brighter burning light for others to see out of this little corner of the internet.