On a weekend when the world remembers the 9/11 that made that date infamous, many questions remain unanswered.
My concern is that there are answers that remain unquestioned.
Tag Archive - culture
Fat Geese Stuck in a Fishtank
Just over a week ago, I started posting my notes from some talks of Alan Hirsch’s we attended. Today, I continue recounting these with notes from Thursday evening, which was the culmination of Forge Chicago’s week-long training. (If you’re in the Chicagoland area, I highly recommend you check them out.
- [When it comes to church], the adventure has gone out of the venture
- Communitas [def]: The type of community formed in adversity.
That ‘adversity’ can also include short-term missions, sports teams, etc.) - Communitas – a form of solidarity- forms after wins or losses as long as the team comes together.
- During storms and events like 9/11, communities turn into communitas by a shared experience – often hardship.
- Communitas is a new way of relating. People who were friends or associates become comrades. This is an entirely new dynamic.
- When communitas is established, people will have a lot of “remember when…” stories, because their relationship was borne of, or developed in adversity.
“So I’ll cherish the old chocolate cross…”
We made a sojourn to WalMart yesterday and saw the signs of the season: chocolate-covered marshmallow crucifixes. Awesome. How long before Keebler makes electric chair cookies? Or my favorite, lethal injection lollipops. (Is letting junior suck on a syringe any worse than crunching through a krispity cross?)
The Biggest Mistakes Christians Make in the Media
Phil Cooke knows media, he knows marketing and he knows the church. He’s a great speaker, and I really enjoy reading his blog.
Last week Phil spoke to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville about the “10 Biggest Mistakes Christians Make in the Media.” I’ll give you the first few to whet (yes, this is the proper way to spell it) your appetite. For the rest, and even better, to find out his reasoning behind the statements, you’ll have to read his blog post.
The End of Christianity in America?
If you want to keep an enterprise of any sort alive, you have to keep selling it. You must never assume that people understand why you exist, what you believe, or where you’re going. Every day is a new opportunity to present your vision – and you must do it in a way that makes sense to your audience.
D.A. Carson has said it something like this: One generation believes in something. The next generation assumes it. The third generation forgets it, and the fourth generation denies it. I think he’s on to something. Culture varies from place to place. Some are ahead of, or behind the curve. Overall though, I think America is roughly in the same place with Christianity.
