Categotry Archives: church

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Church as Business (part 1–A Rose By Any Other Name)

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Categories: church, food for thought

Looking back at the deconstruction I’ve gone through over the past 10 years or so, I smile just a little at how progressive I used to think I was early on. 🙂

If you’ve known anything of my story, you know that we began the church in Tulsa after the institutional pattern, which was all we knew–and it morphed into a house church. That entire process was such a learning experience, and it showed me so many inconsistencies as we continually struggled with the tension between what we wanted the church to be, and what we had to do to keep it afloat.

This is a preview of Church as Business (part 1–A Rose By Any Other Name). Read the full post (653 words, 2 images, estimated 2:37 mins reading time)

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Practicology (excerpt)

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Categories: changing mindsets, church, food for thought

Here’s an excerpt from my latest post over at Communitas Collective…

Is it just me, or are there just too many “–ologies” out there? Theology, ecclesiology, eschatology—oh, and there are other multi-syllabic terminologies, too, like orthodoxy, orthopraxy, hermeneutics, rhamazeutics, and salmonellics. (If you can’t tell where I stopped using actual words and started poking fun—I just proved my point.)

This is a preview of Practicology (excerpt). Read the full post (259 words, 1 image, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

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Destiny Reinterpreted (excerpt)

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Categories: church, food for thought

Here’s a snippet from my bi-weekly post for the Survivor Blog on Communitas Collective…

I’m observing that former institutional leaders like me seem to be in various stages of processing. Some are just burnt out from all the crap, and left completely disillusioned, even possibly questioning their relationship with God. Some have just walked away because they believed there must be a better way, and have found their way into more organic expressions of faith.

This is a preview of Destiny Reinterpreted (excerpt). Read the full post (258 words, 2 images, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

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An Online Community for Disenfranchised Believers

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Categories: church, community, link love

This morning, my blogger friend Glenn, a former institutional church pastor, just launched a new site you should check out.

Communitas Collective describes itself as “a place for the rest of us.” It’s a social online community site specifically designed for people who are leaving (or have left) institutional forms of church and are trying to navigate their relationship with Christ without that map. Since that idea comprises quite a lot of what I talk about here…I guess it makes sense that I would be excited about this.

This is a preview of An Online Community for Disenfranchised Believers. Read the full post (275 words, 2 images, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

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"ReJesus" Review Part 1: A Conversation with Michael Frost

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Categories: books, changing mindsets, church, Jesus

As mentioned previously, in conjunction with reviewing the book ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church…I had the opportunity to chat with one of the book’s authors, Michael Frost. Michael serves as Vice-Principal of Morling College in Sydney, Australia, and is the director of the Tinsley Institute at the college. Besides co-authoring two books with Alan Hirsch (ReJesus is their second collaboration), Michael has written numerous books on his own, Exiles probably being the most well-known. He is also the founder of the missional community “smallboatbigsea”, and travels and speaks internationally.

Distance being an issue, we opted to converse by online chat. Below is the transcript of our conversation. Due to the length of the conversation, I’ve chosen to break the review into two posts. My actual review of the book will be posted tomorrow.
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This is a preview of "ReJesus" Review Part 1: A Conversation with Michael Frost. Read the full post (2261 words, 2 images, estimated 9:03 mins reading time)

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NEWS FLASH: Strange Man with Gotee Ascertains Spiritual Truth From Independent Film Shoot

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Categories: church, food for thought, What the heck was THAT?

by Elmer Sczhlapczkovsky, Asphyxiated Press

(TULSA, OK) During the shooting of an independent film in a dark nightclub in Tulsa’s historic Brookside District this week, a strange man with a salt-and-pepper gotee claimed to have received a revelation of spiritual truth.

This is a preview of NEWS FLASH: Strange Man with Gotee Ascertains Spiritual Truth From Independent Film Shoot. Read the full post (1007 words, 2 images, estimated 4:02 mins reading time)

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Fences and Wells

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Categories: changing mindsets, church, food for thought

Of all the studying I’ve done over the past two years, one of the most impacting books I’ve read is The Shaping of Things to Come by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. Not a quick read by any means, but full of great information and ideas about how church and ministry can be reshaped to better serve this culture. It gave some cohesion to a lot of thoughts I’d already been processing. So I’d like to give credit here and tell you that I’m borrowing ideas from that book to write this post.

In the last two posts I talked about how we’ve come to use the “sinner’s prayer” as a sort of determining factor in deciding who is “saved.” We questioned whether this is really an accurate litmus test, since conversion really is a matter of the heart, not a prayer formula. And this also begs the question: why do we even feel this need to measure this? Why are we bent on deciding who is “in” and who is “out”?

This is a preview of Fences and Wells. Read the full post (985 words, 2 images, estimated 3:56 mins reading time)

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De-Toxing

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Categories: church, Meanderings (look it up), Rantings

Toward the end of yesterday’s post, I inserted this remark:

“…sometimes our personal woundings complicate our emotions, and sometimes we have to unravel that in order to know whether a confrontation is from love or from wounding. And that part has to wait for another post. :)”

Wait no longer.

This is a preview of De-Toxing. Read the full post (792 words, 1 image, estimated 3:10 mins reading time)
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