Peter Rollins Podcast Interview

Peter Rollins did an interview recently on The Nick and Josh Podcast.

Thanks to Jonathan Brink for transcribing some of the choice comments from Rollins, including this one on deconstruction:

“A lot of people talk about deconstruction like this. They say, ‘Well we’ve got to deconstruct and then once we’ve deconstructed, we can rebuild.’

“And I want to stop at that point and say, ‘No. We never cease to deconstruct. Deconstruction is not like knocking down a building so we can clear a space to build something new. Deconstruction is like the heat that keeps our ideas fluid and molten and moving and dynamic.’”

Listen to the whole interview

Emerging in Chile

According to Héctor David González there’s a new “Iglesia Emergente” Facebook group for emergent Christians in Chile. The group already has 30 members. The group’s profile graphic currently reads, “Todo debe cambiar” (“Everything must change”).

Peter Rollins in Minnesota for "Minne-ikon"

Peter Rollins’ official North American tour in support of his new book The Fidelity of Betrayal is still on for November and early December, but he’ll also be stateside in August for a special four-day event at Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis.

Being dubbed “Minne-ikon,” Peter Rollins and a team from the ikon collective in Belfast, Northern Ireland will present a series of lectures, discussions, and workshops around themes of transformance art, the God beyond God, and other emerging ideas centered on the once and future church. The time will culminate with a ikon-type worship/transformance experience.

According to the Facebook event description, “Minne-ikon” is “for anyone high school aged on up who is interested in how the emerging church conversation can intersect in generative ways with the mainline church. This is a phenomenal opportunity to work closely with Pete Rollins and the ikon community to explore their philosophy and theology. Each day will begin around 4 and end around 9 p.m. and includes dinner.”

Space is limited so sign up soon and forward this information to any friends who would be interested.

Cost is $100 and includes four meals and materials (A copy of How (Not) to Speak of God and perhaps one other book).

Send check plus name, address, phone and email to:
ikon event
6100 Normandale Road
Edina, MN 55436

Sponsored by: Normandale Lutheran Church and Solomon’s Porch

Emergent Survey Update

Due to an overwhelming response, the Emergent Village survey had to be closed earlier than the August 10 deadline that had previously been given.

Tony Jones will have more details in next week’s Emergent/C email newsletter. If you’re not already signed up, please subscribe to Emergent/C now.

A Visit to Uncle Frank's house

By Will Barrett and David Smith:

As the result of a budding friendship with Brother Juan and a few local friars in Tampa, I found myself working, praying, sharing, and exploring at the St. Francis Inn (a soup kitchen and place of hospitality) in north Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. I couldn’t help but find their organically egalitarian structure attractive, demonstrating some of the best characteristics of emergent but from a starkly different church background. What follows are brief observations on the Franciscans’ belief and praxis, comparison with those of emergent and how the two can benefit from each other.

St. Jude, pray for us.

Incense, liturgy, lectio divina. Dispensing with the obvious similarities between Frankies and emergents, another more distinctive aspect of Franciscan church caught my eye. Each morning, we celebrated mass in the round (well semi-circle).This isn’t just a spatial convenience but one that reflects their understanding of the Body of Christ. They strive to see Christ in every person they come across and to display Christ in themselves for their neighbor. Their faith is found looking into the eyes of their friends, and they sit accordingly. The priest sits at the head of the arc behind the knee-high altar and lectionary, all at the same level as the people. After the homily, the priest says something I didn’t expect to hear outside a cohort meeting. “Feel free to share any thoughts or ideas,” says Father Franky, at which point we begin passing ideas between friars, nuns, lay workers, homeless and even protestant-for-lack-of-a-better-term mutts like me. This scene conveys well the overarching idea of reconciliation (without condescension) that bubbles throughout this and other Franciscan communities. We celebrate mass in the morning because we want to break bread together first and then serve our brothers and sisters throughout the day at the soup kitchen. It’s about reconciling with one another in order to reconcile with the surrounding community. There is solidarity there that cannot be faked any more than it can go unnoticed by the people of Kensington. This cell of the Body sees church as not a lovely painting which we all agree to admire but a mosaic in which every piece of broken glass (us as individuals) adds to the beauty of the final work.

The St. Francis Inn’s mission statement states their aim ”... to build relationships with those that we serve by respecting their human dignity and by helping them to restore hope in their lives, and by living simply among them.” Whereas existing monastic communities were often isolated in order to focus on God and the inner life, St. Francis proposed monastic communities in more urban settings, closer to the poor and marginalized. Story has it that Pope Innocent III had a dream soon after St. Francis’ proposition in which he saw a picture of St. Francis holding up the falling Catholic church, symbolizing a repairer to the then crumbling apostolic body. His spirit of reform found expression not so much by looking within the church, but by focusing outward on the people. You’re not likely to hear any familiar buzzwords around the Inn, but it’s clear to see that they take missional living seriously. “Love thy neighbor” is a bold and revolutionary command when thy neighbor is anyone in thy geographic vicinity. This is more than an emphasis or a featured program; it is the very thrust of the community, and here we find more common ground with emergent missional approach. Both groups work to recover the biblical idea of being blessed to be a blessing for others, that our true blessing is being the city on the hill, the salt of the earth that Jesus told us we are. In Kensington and in emergent this involves digging our fingers deep into culture and striving to relate, befriend and serve those around us. If we look at the new monastic movement, we find that intentional community, relocation and solidarity with the poor bind our two faith cultures together. The emergent emphasis on the environment and local/global justice as well as general care for creation echoes back to St. Francis’ unbridled love for all living things and for their reconciliation with humans as told in Fioretti di San Francesco.

Can we save ourselves a lot of argument for the moment and assume a general understanding of emergent theology? Thanks. Turning, then to the Franciscans, can we find common ground between dogmatic Catholics and ecumenical emergents? In my time in Kensington a few significant theological similarities became apparent. Most notably, Frankies see the gray. A brother in Kensington told me that God is found in every situation, even the most dire, buried beneath the filth, always close, he always is there and probably weeping with us. The idea of God’s solidarity with all of us mandates that we imitate God in the same fashion toward our neighbor and not an object of cold charity (chilling that those two words should ever be found together), our black-and-white theology of saved/lost, brother/other and sinner/saint is … insufficient. In a community of faith that requires doctrinal adherence to articles of faith, they sure do question a lot of it. This posture moves them to hold their theology humbly, always rigorously seeking truth but never convincing themselves that they’ve got it all down. Another commonality is an appreciation for something Catholics have understood since antiquity: mystery. God is approached with the same fear and trembling that we work out our salvation. When grilled about the Trinity or the Eucharist, they respond not with the acrid defensiveness of many an evangelical but with a solemn and accepting trust in One who is beyond our understanding. Franciscans more than most, even among Catholics, embrace paradox; not as a cop-out of hard questions, but recognizing the limits of our own understanding, seeing dimly as we do through a sometimes very muddy glass. Their faith is found in the threshold of knowing the saving Love of God is around, inside, and working through them, but living that love out in the muddled, chaotic, and uncertain world of the poor.

Both groups are reformers of a counter-cultural, out-with-the-old-wineskins spirit. The Order of Friars Minor is a part of a much larger Roman Catholic Church, whose strict adherence to conformity for the sake of unity and doctrinal purity is the standard of dogmatism. Emergent has the advantage of existing cross-denominationally, with much greater freedom to dissent, and a culture of awareness that encourages calling someone out when necessary. For all the bold ideas and gray theology I found among the Frankies, there is a reluctance to bring it outside of their community. You cannot have a prophetic, envelop pushing, no-holds-barred voice within such an institution as the RCC. Obedience to Mother Church is one of the vows they take, so it’s really no surprise that the counter-cultural Franciscan voice isn’t more openly broadcast … but I still wish it was. After this softening of one’s voice (maybe one does speak up but collectively not enough to cause any deep shift) you are tucked away in the corner of the warehouse. This point is mentioned not to rile up dissension within the Order, but as observation based on the sometimes very bold theological statements made in individual conversation with brothers and sisters at the Inn that will never make it beyond such a personal setting into the wider and more open world of theological discourse.

The Franciscan community, with their unassuming and distinctively egalitarian ways, their rejection of power and their refusal to isolate themselves from God’s people, are something of an anomaly with the larger Catholic Church. They don’t seem to fit in, even among their own; and this is a comforting thought. There is animosity between emergents and the larger evangelical/ mainline community, with the H-word (heresy) thrown about, but a look at the Frankies gives us hope that we can flourish within our own faith without compromising either truth or love. The Frankies exist in a very dogmatic religious setting, but it doesn’t keep them from engaging in open dialogue or from engaging their communities. It seems like there is an inverse relationship between quality of theology and depth of compassion, how refreshing, then to find a group as modest and uncompromising in their theology, whose passion for the poor and the disenfranchised … frankly, shames us. Doctrinal orthodoxy and populist compassionate solidarity are not as strange bedfellows as we make them out to be, and this vagabond has friends in Kensington to thank for that.

Mark Driscoll Kicks His Own Ass

When The Wittenberg Door makes fun of Emergent, it clearly isn’t funny (wink). But when they make fun of Mark Driscoll, well … he’s not “Emergent,” so it’s OK to laugh … right?

Mark Driscoll Reaches New Spiritual Level, Kicks His Own Ass

Here’s a sample:

“At the Re:Ignite conference he talked about how Jesus and Peter didn’t wear matching sweatshirts that said ‘Best Buds’,” said John Kinston, a conference attendee who was live-blogging the event.

Kinston is emblematic of the many young pastors who support Driscoll. He planted Kiona Community Church three years ago in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. He attends 37 Mark Driscoll conferences each year, because he said he needs the support of fellow church planters and the inspiration of steroidal statistics.

“Numbers aren’t important, but we’ve grown 81.7% a year since our launch date and I still can’t get the guys to step up and be warriors,” said Kinston. “We want to love our city and we can’t do that with a bunch of pansies who would rather play video games than go to a monster truck rally or tattoo their faces like Mike Tyson. ...

Driscoll turned down our request for an interview, saying, “Interviews are for wimpy guys who wear Sans-a-Belt slacks and chew sugar-free gum.”

We love you, Mark. Honest. We do.

And we love this picture:

Thank you, Wittenberg Door, for your equal opportunity humor!

Help Eugene and Minhee Cho Fight Global Poverty

This fall, Eugene and Minhee Cho are launching a new non-profit organization to raise awareness and much needed funds to fight global poverty. In order to do this, they are putting their own money where their mouth (and heart) is, by donating $1 for each person who joins the Facebook group for this new, as-of-yet-unnamed organization—with a goal of having at least 100,000 people join.

If you’ve been invited to join the group that says “For EACH person that joins, we will Donate $1 to Fight Global Poverty”, this is them—and it is legit! The group has already grown to over 36,000 members, but it needs lots of help to get to its 100,000-member goal.

Watch this video to learn more:

Kester Brewin Signs Off the Blogosphere

The bad news is that Kester Brewin will no longer be blogging.

The good news is, he’s just saying “goodbye for now,” and adds, “doubtless I’ll be around online again at some point.”

The really good news is that Brewin is “going to stop this blog, and spend some time working on a follow-up book.”

The next book, a follow-up to Signs of Emergence, will be “an extended meditation on the idea of ‘the other,’ leaning left on the poetry/theology continuum, and hopefully drawing on the stories of some fantastic people [he’s] met.”

Brewin writes, “I’ve been pondering Jesus’ summary of the Law to ‘love God, and love your neighbour as yourself,’ and re-phrasing it as ‘love the other, love The Other.’ The other within the Self, the other within our communities, The Other that is immanent and beyond all … It strikes me as the core of everything we are about as people of faith. Indeed, since the birth of consciousness, it’s at the core of everything we are about as people.

“And yet, with the continuing rise in anti-social behaviour, teenage stabbings in London, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, theological schism, global terror threats and clinical depression, it seems that in our fluid, multicultural, melting-pot, border-less, easyJet world, we are further from accepting the other than ever before.

“Yet, despite all this. I think there are signs of hope. And we need to be those signs of hope. Personally, communally, locally, corporeally, we need to be communities that have this love for God and other at our core.”

So we’ll be keeping an eye out for signs of Kester’s re-emergence in the blogosphere and a new book from him in the near future, as well. Godspeed, Kester!