theo|digital

Today I’ll be heading down to the Missional Learning Commons “non-conference” hosted in Ft. Wayne Indiana with friends from my church Life on the Vine.  I’ve seen this informal gathering/discussion pop up over the last few years, but now that I know personally a few people who engage in it (Dave Ftich), I’ve been persuaded to join in.   I was also surprised to see my friend JR Woodward tweeting that he was on his way, so it promises to be a thoughtful (and probably lively) crowd.

This is a good thing for me after about a week of serious downtime in Champaign, IL, visiting friends at my old church I-Life at the University of Illinois.  The downstate time was an oasis between the intensity of GCM IGNITE 2009 in Columbus Ohio (where I served as the asst. director of the conference), and my coming big transitions.

I’m storing up a packload of digital theology kinda thoughts, but they’re gonna have to wait for now.

ps – Happy Epiphany.  Isa 60.

This past week has accelerated me to the absolute top speed I have. I could tell sitting in certain classes that my brain was over-CPU crunched and starving for extra cycles. Last I night I had to leave Romans early just so I could recover enough to do three hours in Contextualization this morning. My reading list is ruling my life!

Meanwhile, this weekend I’ll be traveling for GCM down to central Illinois to help at I-Life’s Fall Retreat–leading two training sessions on mentor discipleship and leading the weekend-closing session including communion. I look forward to seeing old and new friends, talking about topics I’m excited about, and getting away from the books for a few days.

And should I get one of these??

Downside: camera is reportedly taking as long as 10 seconds to take a picture!  And it doesn’t have Microsoft Exchange push, but I don’t care.  It DOES have a few feature the iPhone doesn’t, including gMail push, an amazing new “compass” mode for Google Maps Street View (you just move the phone to “look around”), and the thing that’s kept me from jumping to Apple:  a full QWERTY keyboard!

ps – I realize I can’t “get” a Google Android.  The open-source operating system will show up on multiple phones in the next year, T-Mobile’s G1 being just the first new example.  And I agree with Don Reisinger–there’s no reason not to expect Google to do well, even in the face of the iPhone.

This is another treading water post, but so-be-it. I’m planning on climbing the high-dive into Marshall McLuhan later this week, so we’ll hit some pool-grate content then. That’ll be good for me too… it’s funny how my brain feels right now… like I was hitting the gym five times a week and suddenly just stopped for the last month. No heavy reading, discussion, writing. It’s been great, but I’m ready to start the lightweight Keep Those Mental Muscles Warm workout.

I just returned from a 4-day jaunt to Chicago to stand beside my friends Mark & Nicole as they got married. Both were in an I-Team/small group I led lots of years ago when they started dating, and I had lived with Mark in the DawgHaus for five years—my longest roommate outside my buddy Tim. These weddings are always the tears-kind of happy and have the habit of feeling like a short-term museum of relationships arranged nicely at banquet tables. I hugged many I-Life friends and alumni, although I was most warmly surprised to see my friends currently living in Germany: Abby (though no Jeff) and Nate and Steph.

There’s something about the honor of having a had small effect on many people in the same place that made me take a couple seconds near the cheese and fruit table to shed a few tears and thank God for a good life. A gratitude of Now that hasn’t always come quickly this year.

In random thought land:

• United Airlines should be given an award for consistent awful service, and a real bonus should be given to the three total employees they hire to service hundreds of people at a time at large airports: the poor folks are set up to fail. I’ve always usually bought tickets mostly by price and itinerary, not by brand, because they’ve seemed mostly the same. But while a brand has never garnered a positive enough reputation to get my loyalty (possible exception: Southwest Airlines back when they were funny and felt different), United has now succeeded in gaining my negative respect. I’ll be excluding them from future ticket searches, and will be willing to pay more to avoid them, sad to say. ps—as of last Friday, they’ll be charging you any time you check a bag. Really.
• In political poll world, Gallup’s perception polls are interesting. Regardless of who people actually support, Obama leads significantly in who people think will win. The breakdowns are predictable (less Republicans think he will win), but Gallup seemed suprised that the 18-34 crowd—by far Obama’s best demographic—was actually less likely to think he’ll take the Presidency. But this fits the profile: the current post-mod gen is diverse and engaged, but typically cynical (read: roll-eyes despairing) about future goals actually happening, despite the enthusiasm.

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Now playing: Gomez – Cry on Demand
via FoxyTunes

I’ve been incommunicado because my weekend rushed into this Friday, May 2nd, which was my 30th birthday. Wow. Had a great time down here in Champaign – 30 of my friends (not planned like that) joined me at the Dawg Haus for:

• 80 pieces of Kentucky Fried Chicken (there’s a 1-800 number you order from with Cheery Chicken People on the other end)
• 20 lbs of mashed potatoes (I made them myself because I wanted to – plus, nobody knows my secret ingredient)
• 48 biscuits
• 3 lbs of buttered corn
• 1 gallon of thick sawmill gravy (5 sticks of butter and whole milk)
• adult picnic-ish drink of choice: hard lemonade.

Honestly, it was just what I wanted on my birthday: some of my closet friends just chillin’ around the DawgHaus and me getting to host it. There’s something about being able to give on your birthday that’s a lot better than getting. Or maybe in the new economy of God’s community, those categories aren’t even that helpful.
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Now playing: The Weepies – Hideaway
via FoxyTunes

I-Life in Champaign has posted the audio for my talk (mp3 -10.5MB) on 5 April in their New Heart series. Like usual with me talking, you miss a bit because we had almost 50 photos, but you can still follow the stories, and why I think Kingdom hearts are to be subversive.

In Champaign almost two weeks ago, I spoke on “In Search of a Subversive Heart” where we spoke about structural evil, power, and King Jesus who rules over them and calls us to subvert them his way. And we reached into the deep story of elderly Mrs. Ntonsheni, the wise victim of South African apartheid.

“Christians are subversive, they think about power upside down,” we said.

More on the talk later (the audio will be available at some point soon). But already I’ve gotten many questions on the related books, some I relied on or recommend for further reading. So for students and friends that were at SNG:

Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals Shane Claiborne is the guy best known for living a “neo-monastic” lifestyle in Philadelphia. But his thoughts on Jesus’ subversiveness in this book are really nicely done. A sweet looking book too – every page is customized! Although this isn’t a resource I read much directly for our talk (I’m still reading it), If I was going to pick just one book for someone “to know more” – this seems to be it.

The Powers That Be by Walter Wink. Wink is the theologian who has done much work on power and structural evil (and one of the guys Shane Claiborne read). He wrote a more detailed trilogy of books before this one, which acts as somewhat of a summary. He’s classified in “liberal” school of theology, which means I’m going to read him cautiously because our assumptions about Jesus and the scriptures may not be the same. But I think he’s got some stuff that’s really worth the thought. I have some previous posts on him.

The Boy Child Is Dying: A South African Experience. by Judy Boppell Peace. I read from this book when telling the story of Mrs. Ntonsheni. It appears to be out of print – I was lucky to find it – but there a few available used online. A very short book, but very powerful pictures of daily apartheid.

Some of the images we saw together were used with permission from the United Nations photo archive.

I’m in Champaign to be with my friends at Saturday Night Grace at 7pm tonight, Wohlers Hall, UIUC. No worries. When I come back from speaking to real people, I’ll return to snotty lectures from my digital soapbox.

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Now playing: Kaki King – Bone Chaos In The Castle
via FoxyTunes

A quick blurb for Ignite 2007. Our little network of campus-based churches in the Great Commission Ministries world are bringing back a start-up version of the Ignite conference in downtown Indianapolis right after Christmas: Dec 28-30.

I have super memories at being at these when I was a student and staff at I-Life, and hoping a lot of my friends there (and new friends!) will make the trip. It’ll be to fun to re-connect, worship, learn, eat, laugh, and remember again that this thing called the Kingdom is done together, not apart.

Plus I’m getting to help coordinate parts of it, and will probably even get the chance to slow down enough to teach a workshop session. You know – you could come listen.

If you haven’t registered yet – do it quick! The regular registration fee jumps up to “late registration” I think on the 6th of Dec. I registered in time for the “early” fee.

Nathan P Brown – former I-Lifer turned genius advertising producer – just finished producing a video short for World Vision about their athletic team program running for 6000 children that are orphaned daily due to AIDS.

My counter is doing six days now.

They have a big I-Life going away party planned for me tonight at the haus. My roommates have been cleaning, and I’ve been largely left out of the plans, which is really odd – usually I’m the center of it. But I’m excited – I’m gonna need some good closure this way.

And at the same time, my friend Ty’s wife Laura has gotten unexpectedly very sick – in and out of ERs all week and now has finally been admitted to the hospital. It’s painful to think about, and has me worried and in prayer. He’s also been the center of planning my party – so that’s tough – do I want him at my party or at his wife’s side?? Of course the latter, but it’s a sucky choice to make.