Michael Schellman

Gandalf fights Saruman

2012-01-12T20:18:00.000-06:00

This is a classic battle between good and evil.

1 Peter Preaching Schedule

2012-01-08T12:45:00.000-06:00

We are a ways into the book now, but there is still a ways to go yet. Here is the schedule of passages so you can look ahead, as well as links to the sermons and the research notes.

Preaching Schedule 1 Peter
Date	Passage	Preacher	Notes	Subject
Sept 28	1:1-2	Wendy
10/04/11	Communion	Noah
10/12/11	1:3-5	Andrew
10/19/11	1:6-9	Molly
10/25/11	1:10-12	Molly
11/01/11	Communion	Wendy
11/08/11	1:13-16	Noah
11/15/11	1:17-21	Andrew
11/22/11	Thanksgiving	Potluck
11/29/11	1:22-25a	Wendy
12/06/12	Communion	Andrew
12/13/12	2:1-3	Noah
12/20/12	2:4-10	Molly
12/27/12	Christmas Service
01/03/12	Communion	Molly
01/10/12	2:11-12	?
01/17/12	2:13-17	?
01/24/12	2:18-25	?
01/31/12	3:1-7	?
02/07/12	Communion	?
02/14/12	3:8-12	?
02/21/12	3:13-17	?
02/28/12	3:13-22	?
03/05/12	Communion	?
03/13/12	4:1-5	?
03/20/12	4:6-7	?
03/27/12	4:8-11	?
04/03/12	Communion	?
04/10/12	4:12-16	?
04/17/12	4:17-19	?
04/24/12	5:1-5a	?
05/01/12	Communion	?
05/08/12	5:5b-7	?
05/15/12	5:8-9	?

Gandalf Confronts the Balrog.

2012-01-08T11:05:00.003-06:00

In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf comes face to face with an enemy he had hoped to avoid, he stands between his friends and an the Balrog an ancient demon that is too powerful for any of them to defeat, ultimately he gives his life to save the ones he is determined to protect - but this is not the end. . .

Eowyn Destroys the Witch King

2011-09-12T20:11:00.000-05:00

One of the most memorable lines from LOTR is when Eowyn kills the Witch King. "No man can kill me!" To which she replies "I am no man" and stabs him in the face. Later in reflecting on the incident, I wondered whether that actually worked because the prophecy was meant to be understood so literally, or whether the Witch King's confidence, at that moment, was so shaken that he became vulnerable to a new interpretation.

Team Preaching

2011-09-11T11:09:00.002-05:00

Since our pastor Mark Johnson left us for New Zealand (God rest his soul), our church has decided to strike out in a new direction. Rather than having a single preacher, we are going to try having a team preach through a book of the Bible. This approach should have a number of advantages,

It will allow each preacher the time to reflect on a passage and deliver the best sermon possible
It will take the focus off of a personality and places it on the Word of God (where it should be)
It will open the door for more people with a gift for preaching to use it
It will make the departure old and introduction of new preachers smoother.

Wendy and Noah Schneider are setting up the first preaching team for a trial run which will take us through the book of 1 Peter. Wendy (a fellow Bethel graduate,) has provided us with the following articles about team teaching. As they are available online I have linked to them here.

Tolkein and Lewis: Scholars and Friends

2011-08-22T22:35:00.000-05:00

Describing the friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien over the years.

Lost in Translation

2011-08-22T22:16:00.002-05:00

In this clip from News Radio, Jimmy James is reading from his book "Jimmy James Capitalist Lion Tamer", a flop in the states, but a great success in Japan. Trying to capture the sudden success, he has the book translated back into English. Hilarity ensues.

Great Series: The Cross and the Sword

2011-08-22T21:37:00.001-05:00

Greg Boyd lost a good chunk of his church when he preached this series. The Cross and the Sword puts the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the World perspective.

The Cross and the Sword

Acts 28:11-15

2011-08-17T07:11:00.008-05:00

Acts 28:11-15
After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island—it was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. We put in at Syracuse and stayed there three days. From there we set sail and arrived at Rhegium. The next day the south wind came up, and on the following day we reached Puteoli. There we found some brothers and sisters who invited us to spend a week with them. And so we came to Rome. The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged.

Is the success of a church directly proportionate to the abilities of its members?

Many people consider Paul to be a natural choice for a New Testament model for ministry.

He always has the right words – think about the epistles
He has a proven track record – a successful string of church plants

These are just a few of the reasons people often think of Paul as a model. But I would contend that this is a rather one sided view, that has more to do with false notions of leadership than it does with Paul himself.

It has been called the Great Man Theory: the belief that leaders have unique qualities that make them different from ordinary people. And I think has been historically paralyzing to the church.

What if I can’t speak like Paul?
What if I can’t achieve the things he did?

If this view of leadership is correct then the extent to which we don’t live up to greatness the church will suffer. Perhaps it would be best to leave the work to someone else.

If we take a closer look at Paul though, we find that this view has caused us to selectively limit our perception of him to those traits that we think can explain his success. This over inflated view in turn eclipses the role that God played in the development of the early church. I’d like to take a few minutes to examine some of these perceptions.

Myth 1: Paul always had the right words: The epistles are carefully composed letters; they provide no evidence that Paul was a gifted speaker. In fact we have testimony to the contrary. Paul himself admits in 1 Corinthians that he does not come across as wise or eloquent (1 Corinthians 2:1-5). In his 2^nd letter we find out that the Corinthians agree (2 Corinthians 10:10). Paul asks the Colossians to pray that he might be able to speak his message clearly (Colossians 4:4). And Peter tells us in his first letter that Paul is often hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16). Paul actually gives credit to the power of the Gospel – which itself is living and active and is at work in the world. He tells the Colossians that the Gospel is growing throughout the entire world (Colossians 1:6).

Myth 2: Paul’s success record. Many people have perpetuated the myth that Paul was responsible for single handedly evangelizing the Roman Empire. While the book of acts focuses on his ministry, if you look a bit closer you see that God did far more though the collective contributions of average people than he did through any one individual – including Paul. Before Paul even set foot on the mission field God had used ordinary men and women to spread the Gospel throughout the empire. Jews who had traveled to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost had heard the Gospel and taken the knowledge of Jesus home with them. Parthians Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Capadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphilia, Egypt and Libya, Cretans Arabs and Visitors from Rome (Acts 2:5-12).

This brings me to the purpose of my passage. It says when Paul arrived in Rome he was greeted by followers of Jesus who had gotten there before him, and that he was encouraged and thanked God at the sight of them. Why was he encouraged? Not just because he had arrived at the end of his journey, or because there would be people to look after him, but because the church he was greeted was a beautiful example of how God was at work in the Church laying the foundations, and supporting the contributions of all its members. It success didn’t depend on the abilities of rare extraordinary people, but on the collective contributions of each of its members: a word here, a good deed there. No one person could take credit, or understand how it all fit together, but God was orchestrating it all to bring about His kingdom.

1 Corinthians 1:20-31
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

How To Make Someone Dissappear - In Photoshop

2011-01-29T07:36:00.012-06:00

In one of my classes I talk about the Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in 1945. I wanted a photo for my presentation, that showed where the discovery was made. I searched the web and found this image. This is a great picture, but I don't like the people in the foreground. Is there anything I can do to get rid of those them? Thankfully I had access to the tools in Photoshop. Below is a detailed description of what I did.

Open the Photo:

The easiest way to open your photo in Photoshop is by dragging it from your folder into the open Photoshop window. You can also locate it using by locating the word “File” on left hand side of the horizontal toolbar at the top of your screen and selecting the word “Open” this will open a window that will allow you to browse for your photo. When you find your file, double click it.

Zoom In:

The first thing you want to do is zoom in to the area of the photo which you want to edit. Working closer will help you to focus on the task at hand and do more precise editing.

First, select the zoom tool (that’s the icon that looks like a magnifying glass on lower half of your vertical tool bar, which is on the left hand side of your screen). Now when you move your curser back onto the photo you will notice that it looks like a magnifying glass. This magnifying glass will allow you to selectively zoom in or zoom out of any part of your photo. The control to change your zooming options is located on the left hand side of the horizontal toolbar which is at the top of your screen. There you will find two magnifying glass icons side by side one with a plus the other with a minus. The one which is presently selected will have a white box around it. Make sure it is the one that has a plus sign is selected. Now move your curser back onto the photo, to the center of the person or group of people you want to make disappear. Now click the left mouse button. This will enlarge the area you are going to edit. The more you click the photo, closer you will zoom into your photo. The size of the area you want to view should display your subjects prominently in the center of the screen, but leave a fair amount of the surrounding space as well. If you happen to zoom in too far, a quick way to back out is to use your keyboard. Hold down the control key, and then click the minus key until the view on your screen is back to the right size.

Erasing:

Next select the eraser tool (this icon looks like an eraser and is found in the middle of your vertical tool bar). Now, as you move the curser back onto the photo, you will notice that your curser has become a circle. This circle allows you to indicate the area you want to erase. Move the circle over the people in your photograph. Ask yourself if this size circle is the right size to erase the people in your photo. You want the eraser to be able to move around inside the contours of the person or group without erasing too much of the background. If the circle is the wrong size go back to your horizontal toolbar at the top of your screen. On the left hand side, where the magnifying glasses were, you will see the word “bush” and a circle with a number under it, and next to that you will see a small black triangle pointing downward. This triangle indicates the presence of a dropdown menu. Click the triangle to open the menu and change your options. The options available allow you to adjust the size and “hardness” of the eraser. Hard edges are clean, soft edges are fuzzy. Because there are a lot of rocks in the photo, you probably want to choose a hard edge and it looks like the number 13 is a good size eraser that will allow you to stay inside the contours of the people you want to erase. You can make these changes using the slide bars at the top of the menu or by clicking one of the options displayed on the bottom. Now move your curser back onto your photo and holding down the left mouse button erase the people in your photo. Try to stay in the contours of and not to erase too much of the surrounding image.

Sampling:

The next thing you will want to do is sample some of the background and use it to fill in the space left behind by your eraser. Natural environments (like the leaves on trees, or rocks on the face of a cliff,) are fractal in nature, which means that one area looks pretty much like another making it very easy to disguise any cutting and pasting you do. Decide which part of the photo you want to fill in first. Let’s start with the cave. Now locate the marquis tool at the top of your vertical tool bar (this one looks like a rectangle, circle, or some other shape made up of dashed lines). By right clicking this icon you open a menu that allows you to change from one shape to another. Select the shape that you want to work with. For the cave, let’s chose the rectangle. Right click the rectangle icon in the menu. Now move your curser back onto the photo holding your left mouse button down click and drag till you form a rectangle selecting the area where the heads of the erased figures cross over into the cave. When you let go of the left mouse button you will have a rectangle that you can move around with the directional arrows on your keyboard. Hold down the right arrow key and move the marquis to an area of the cave’s opening that does not contain the erased area. Now with your mouse, select “edit” from the toolbar at the top of your screen. Select copy from the drop down menu. Now use the arrow keys to move your marquis back to the area over the place where the subject’s heads used to be. Go back to the edit menu and select paste. You have now successfully filled in a portion of your photo and are one step closer to removing any trace of your subjects. You can continue sampling areas of your photo by copying and pasting until you fill in all the white space created by your eraser. Use good judgment, do not sample too large of an area or else your editing will be too obvious, select the right shape tools. If the marquis tools are not precise enough try one of the lasso tools (on the vertical tool bar, right below the marquis). If you make a mistake you can undo it by going to the edit menu and selecting step backward. This is a great feature that will allow you to undo changes you have made all the way back to your original photo.

Layers:
Before you go on to edit more of your photograph, I should mention something about layers. On the right hand side of your screen you will see a panel that says “layers” and shows a thumbnail of your image and another thumbnail of the area you just cut and paste. Photoshop allows you to edit your layers separately, and to eliminate layers that you no longer want, without affecting the rest of your work. This is a really helpful feature, but it can get frustrating if you are trying to select something when the wrong layer is selected. For instance, when you go on to sample the next part of your photo if you are not on the layer of your photo called “background,” you will get a message that says “could not complete the copy command because the selected area is empty”. For our purposes we will not be using the layers function. Under the “layers” menu on the toolbar at the top of your screen select “flatten image”. You will do this each time you cut and paste on your image.

Smudge:

Overall your cutting and pasting has pretty convincingly filled in the erased area. But there are probably some areas that still need some touching up. For this you want to use the smudge tool. The smudge tool is found on your vertical tool bar under the icon that looks like a droplet. Right click on the icon and click on the tool that looks like a hand with the index finger pointing downward. This is your smudge tool. You can use this to blur and smooth out edges where your editing is obvious. This tool works a lot like the eraser tool and you can adjust the size and hardness of the smudge tool in the same way (by locating the work brush on your horizontal tool bar and selecting your option from the dropdown menu).

After

Before

The original image was found here:

http://www.wehaitians.com/in%20ancient%20document,%20judas,%20minus%20the%20betrayal.html

Educational Materials

2011-01-29T06:59:00.003-06:00

For several years I've been teaching an 12 week course on hermeneutics. In addition to writing the content for the course, this has given me the opportunity to do a create a number of class materials:

Teaching Outlines
Workbooks
And Slide Presentations

This slide show belongs to the presentation I give in week 1.

how we got the bible

More PowerPoint presentations from mschellman

Effective Effects for Flyers - in Word

2011-01-28T07:45:00.005-06:00

Here is a flyer that I designed for Prayerperation, a multi-church event that took place in South Minneapolis. Admittedly the text at the bottom still needs some work, but I want to point out what I did with the title and image. The image is a shot of the Minneapolis skyline that I "borrowed" from the web. I used the "soft edges" effect in M.S. Word to give to create an ethereal effect. Then using "text effects" I created a the solid 3D text that rises out of the city. My overall intent was to suggest that the reality of prayer(the focus of the event,) transcends the every day life of the city.

Prayer Per at Ion Flyer Half Sheet Size

Great Series: One Gospel for Men and Women

2010-08-22T21:00:00.001-05:00

Here is a great series by David Landt, the pastor of The Mills Church. A number of years ago he took his church through this issue and asked his members to make a decision on the role of women in the church.

One Gospel for Men and Women

Newsweek Article on House Churches

2010-01-27T13:25:00.002-06:00

I was up at the Y today having a cup of coffee, when T.J. says "wow" or something to that effect. She draws my attention to an article in Newsweek, Jan 11, 2010. called House of Worship: Finding Spirituality at Home, by Lisa Miller. The most notable point being that 7% of Americans meet in home based church meetings. According to the article the proliferation of house churches may be a backlash against the mega-church and CEO pastor models from the 80's. People are looking for something more intimate, more genuine. This is encouraging to me when I think about our fellowship.

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 1/27/2010 01:15:00 PM

Why 11 Dimensions is Better

2009-08-30T01:00:00.002-05:00

I thought this was a great interview, from my perspective as a follower of Jesus; because, I believe it is an example of the positive direction that science is going in overall. In order to see this however, you need to take into account where scientists were and what they used to think, and contrast that with what new possibilities they are opening up to, as they make these new discoveries. Let me give you an example. Once upon a time scientists used to believe that the universe was eternal, with no beginning and no end. This is what they believed all the way up until the 20th century. Needless to say, this view was at odds with what the Bible teaches about the creation. Therefore, it was impossible for a Christian to hold on to the belief that the universe had a beginning, and also be respected by the scientific community; because, as far as we knew, there was no empirical evidence to support this claim. However, in the 1920's, the Hubble Telescope confirmed the existence of other galaxies outside of our own, and observed that all of these galaxies were moving away from each other at a tremendous speed. Scientists could no longer believe that the universe was eternal, and had to concede that the universe had a beginning. This is how the Big Bang Theory was born. The reason Christians don't see this as a victory is because we typically focus too much on the conclusions scientists make, and not enough on the observations which lead to those conclusions – in this case, an expanding universe. Ultimately, scientific conclusions are not the product of observation alone, but observation filtered through a particular world view. So, while we all must contend with the observations science makes, we are not obligated to come to the same conclusions.

Early in the interview, Michio Kaku makes this statement.

"We physicists thought we knew it all; the universe was made out of atoms...that's the old picture. The WMAP satellite has forced us to throw out all this and introduce a whole new set of facts."
In order to analyze a statement like this, what I want to know first is - what is this “old picture”? What are the “old facts,” and what are the “new facts” that are replacing them? Michio Kaku states “we physicists thought we knew it all.” Since he is referring to physicists I assume the old picture he is talking about then is the materialistic universe. The old scientific world view that says that matter is all there is exists and that angels and demons can't possibly be real because you can’t see, feel, touch, or taste them. This is the world view that says there is no God. The “facts” then, which are being thrown out are not the claims of Christianity, but of a world view which claims that the only reality is the one we can perceive with our senses. The new facts are those observations which are leading scientists to conclude that there is stuff out there that we cannot see, and what they are finding is that there is more of that unseen stuff, than there is of the stuff we can see.

How do they know that? Well, by inference. We can see that in the universe, galaxies are all flying away from each other at a tremendous speed, and getting faster all the time. Now, given the rate of expansion, we have no explanation for why the stars and planets in those galaxies are holding together the way that they do. There is simply not enough matter in the universe to account for the necessary gravity to do this. The conclusion then – is that there must be more stuff in the universe that what we can see with our eyes – hence dark matter and dark energy (called dark, because we cannot see it or measure it). So where is all this hidden stuff? One theory is that it exists in other dimensions which we are unable to detect except by the gravitational effects of their mass. In other words, observation has forced scientists concede the existence of unseen stuff.

The existence of other dimensions greatly weakens the materialist’s position. If matter can exist in dimensions which we cannot see, this opens the door to the possibility of things like the existence angels and demons, and the possibility of things like miracles. A world with other dimensions makes these things sound – not so impossible.

The fact that Michio Kaku talks about a multiverse where our universe is the offspring of some other universe, and that we may be giving birth to other baby universes may sound troubling. But none of this is based on observation. It is merely the opening of the scientific mind to the possibilities of what might be out there; a concession that it’s more than what they had once believed, and a speculation about what it could be. From a Biblical perspective God was once a Universe unto himself who created our physical universe. Heaven and Hell seem to be universes unto themselves, not to mention the New Heavens and the New Earth.

I understand that we need to be careful not to resort to a God of the gaps theory, which makes God the explanation behind any unexplained phenomenon. I am not saying that modern physics has discovered God, or heaven, or anything like that. I am merely saying that the new cosmologies developed by physicists are leaving more room for faith and science to coexist than was possible in the past. And that is a good thing.

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 8/30/2009 01:28:00 AM

Preparing for SHIFT 2009

2009-08-19T21:11:00.004-05:00

SHIFT 2009 is full steam ahead for September. This year I will only be teaching Biblical Studies: How We Got the Bible and An Introduction to Biblical Genres. Same as last year, we will be using Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart's book Reading the Bible For All It's Worth. I am looking forward to meeting the new class. It's gonna be awesome.

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 8/19/2009 09:19:00 PM

The Voice of Truth: RE: Women's Roll in the Church

2009-05-06T20:53:00.004-05:00

Flock, Herd, Swarm, Church

2009-03-06T01:16:00.002-06:00

The word we translate "Church," Ekklesia, refers to a gathering of people the same way a flock refers to a gathering of birds, a swarm refers to a gathering of insects, a school refers to a gathering of fish, and a herd refers to a gathering of cattle. Nothing formally planned or structured is implied by the word Ekklesia itself; for example, in the New Testament Ekklesia reffers to the Church, but is also used to describe the rioting crowd in Ephesus. (Acts 19:20-41) One can hardly think of two things that are less alike than a worshiping body and rioting mob. Yet it is our historic conception of the Church as a formal institution that misleads us here. What the word Ekklesia actually describes is a a group in a collective behavior called aggregation.

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God." (2 Corinthians 2:14-17)

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 3/06/2009 01:16:00 AM

Chaos Theory and Paul's Organizational Leadership Style

2009-01-05T01:29:00.003-06:00

If you are interested in the insights and implications of emergence and chaos theory on our modes of social organization you should give this paper a read. Chaos Theory and Paul’s Organizational Leadership Style. The author, Richard S. Ascough, is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Queen’s Theological College, Kingston, Ontario, Canada (or at least he was at the time this was put up on the web). Though Ascough does not support traditional Pauline attribution of later letters, like Titus, Ephesians, and the letters to Timothy, his comparison of new models of social organization to Paul's leadership style is basically correct. While I am excited to have found this article, I am a bit dissapointed the author did not explore the concepts farther.

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 1/05/2009 11:29:00 AM

Steven Strogatz How Things Sync Up

2009-01-04T01:24:00.002-06:00

Steven Strogatz is a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University and author of the book Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. Here is a video where he demonstrates Synchronicity from inanimate objects to human beings.

This video demonstrates that what unites two similar objects in regular synchronous action is the bridge, connection, or the communication between them.

Christian Community is not the result of strong top down leadership, but the emergence of patterns of behavior in response to a common attractive force. Individuals are drawn together by the Word - and sync up with eachother as they are allowed to communicate in random (self initiated encounters).

Rather than focusing on top down leadership and elaborate institutional structures, what I believe we should be focusing on in our churches is the quality of connection and communication between members. I would go so far as to say that the Church is not a place where relationships happen, rather the church is visible manifestation of relationships. Where there are no relationships there is no Church.

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 1/04/2009 01:31:00 AM

Mirror Neurons

2008-12-11T17:02:00.001-06:00

In this IT Conversations Podcast, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with UCLA's Dr. Marco Iacoboni about mirror neurons: the cells in our brains which enable us to comprehend how others are feeling. When I see someone get hurt, many of the same neurons are going off in my brain as are in the injured person. It is believed that mirror neurons may be what lies behind such specialized skills as imitative learning, empathy, and perhaps even moral development. They may also be instrumental in the spread of such social epidemics as spiritual revival.

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 12/11/2008 05:02:00 PM

Mukyokai

2008-11-07T15:53:00.002-06:00

Mukyokai (the non-church movment in Japan), was begun by Kanzo Uchimura. Kanzo Uchimura’s theological views were very similar to that of the reformers. He affirmed divine revelation, justification by faith, and especially the priesthood of all believers. Yet in terms of ecclesiology, he did not feel that the reformers went far enough. His desire was to investigate the true nature of ekklesia. What characteristics did he believe to be a part of the true ekklesia?

Invisible“Faith in Christ is what brings the church into existence; therefore the church should be just as invisible as is faith. The church as the essential ‘ecclesia’ cannot be seen by human eyes, since it is the gathering of a spiritual body.”

OrganicThe Church as “the body” of Christ was a central idea in Uchimura’s ecclesiology. “The organic gathering in the spiritual ‘koinonia’ is the centrality of the true Church.” For Uchimura, the Church is forever being created and destroyed – it is a dynamic entity.

Bottom UpFor Uchimura the church begins with a person’s faith-experience which makes the individual an “agent of independent autonomy.” This idea of independence and autonomy has to do with identity and the freedom to make responsible and ultimate decisions. From these believing individuals the church emerges from the bottom up. The Christian church grows out of the gathered body of believers, rather than persons finding their identity as believers within a pre-existing institution.

Empowered Laity
Uchimura believed that having professional clergy were in danger of giving the impression that there was some kind of ranking system before God, separating spiritual authorities and spiritual laity. Secondly institutional churches (with professional ministers) push members towards particular roles like evangelism or diaconal work while the main duties are performed by the paid clergy. Therefore in Mukyokai ministers have secular jobs and receive no financial remuneration. The “ministerhood” of all believers is emphasized and all are encouraged to use whatever spiritual gifts they have.

Engaged with the world
For Uchimura the church was to be engaged with the world. The central task of the church is evangelism, and for this believers needed to be a part of the world. He was critical of the separatist mentality he witnessed in much of the church and taught against making a distinction between sacred and secular. Such distinctions are non-biblical and encourage an escapist mentality.

Uchimura has a view of ecclesiology that fits well with the Open Source Ecclesiology I am proposing. I would encourage you to read the article. It demonstrates an intuitive grasp of emergent complexity and a freedom that resonates with the values of the Open Source movement. Because of mass transit and various forms of mass communication, we live in a much more fluid culture than we did 100 years ago. Our bonds with other people are not so much dictated by where we live, but by what we do. The institutionalized church that is identified with a building, today reaches more people through social networks than it does by virtue of location. People go to the church they want to, not the church next door. Uchimura’s model of the church seems to be better suited for our non-localized lives. What do you think?

This information was found at Westminster Bookstore (wtsbooks.com)

DNA, The Bible, HTML

2008-09-15T15:23:00.001-05:00

I just finished listening to a Tech Nation Interview with Greg Bear on IT Conversations. About 22 minutes into the interview they start talking about some reasearch done at Harvard on the human genome. They are finding large strings of letter combinations that are aranged like palindrones. This is significant because the repeated information at the end mirrors the information at the front end so that the string is self correcting if any errors in duplication occur. It is also relevant because it signals the beginning and the end of a sequence of information. The beginning and the end of a transmission.

It is hard not to notice the similarities to the Biblical method of signalling the beginning and the ending of a segment of narrative or prose called chiasm. The Bible was written in a day before the invention of paragraph indentations and sentence markers. In fact there were not even spaces between the letters of the text. They way the authors indicated where a story began or ended was by shaping the elements into a chiasm.

This is also similar to tags in HTML tags which open and close a sequence of commands. Could it be that this very simple way of marking the beginning and the end of a transmission of infomormation is written into the fabric of everything? Could it be evidence that a mind much like our own was coding messages into the universe itself. Something to look into. Incidentally there I just discovered a site which talks about chiastic structure called in the beginning dot org.

Matthew 6:1-3

2008-08-22T22:20:00.005-05:00

From King of Queens: Patrons Ain't

1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Four Tragic Shifts in the Visible Church

2008-06-14T01:27:00.001-05:00

A short article called "Four Tragic Shifts in the Visible Church, was recommended in the latest entry of Are Karlsen's blog. The four tragic shifts of which it speaks are,

From a Dynamic Organism to a Settled Institution
From a Polyform Ministry to Uniform Ministry
From a Suffering Church to an Institution Ease
From a Spirit-Dependent Church to a Letter-Dependent Institution (by letter dependant he means ecclessialogical forms - not scripture).

If you are interested, you can find the article here. I really liked it. That is not to say that the Spirit has not been at work in the institutional church, but it seems to me that the current form of the church perpetuates the clergy/laity distinction and is a contradiction of God's intent in 1 Peter 2:4-10.

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 6/14/2008 01:27:00 AM

Reformation 2.0

2007-10-28T07:20:00.004-05:00

In a talk he gave at Pop! Tech 2004 (entitled Renaissance Prospects,) Douglas Rushkoff spoke about our culture being on the verge of a new renaissance. Much like the old renaissance, this new one is the result of the convergence of scientific discoveries and technological advances cause a dramatic shift in how we see and interact with the world.

As in the Old Renaissance * * * So in the New Renaissance

The Printing Press * * * The Internet
Perspective Painting * * * Fractals
Spencerian Sonnet (the extended metaphor) *** Hypertext
The Novel *** Virtual Reality (Gaming)

The liberation and empowerment that came as a result of the first renaisance, literacy and increased capacity for communication and understanding led to advances in all areas of life, including religion.

If we are in fact, on the verge of a new renaissance, why not a new reformation? The original reformation was fueled by the same advances that energized the renaissance. It changed the way we engaged our faith and the way our faith engaged the world.

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Posted By Mike to Christianity 3.0 at 10/28/2007 07:20:00 AM