Blogs Entries in the Key of Life

I keep having these extraordinarily full weeks that keep me from staying current on this blog. I am "back-[b]logged," so to speak...So I end up doing these catch-up blog posts in the order of my current and much over-used yet favorite quote from The Princess Bride: "Let me e'splain...no, there iz too much: let me...sum up." Oh well. That is life right now. And a warning on the front-end: this blog post is going to be way too long.

We had an amazing Sunday worship on June 5th. Once a year we lock up the doors of the church building and have a party/celebration outdoors at a park on the outside of Kansas City. We sing, eat, play games, talk, even nap. We also baptize people: this year Steven, Tobias, Stephanie, Marlies, Walter, and Nick. It was such a beautiful day on so many levels.

Just prior to that I was in Pennsylvania leading the staff and faculty retreat for Biblical Theological Seminary. We drove into the heart of Amish territory: Strasburg, Pennsylvania in Lancaster County. Very beautiful. Each night after dinner we walked from the retreat center (The Netherlands) into the main square of the town for ice cream at an old-time ice-cream shop(pe). Many of the houses along the way had no powerlines running to them, buggies drawn by horses passed by frequently, and most buildings had some sort of historic plaque attached to them including the date of the building's origin: in the pic to the left, 1763. It was a good time and I enjoyed getting to know and interact with the people of the BTS community. I believe they are doing the hard work of trying to figure what theological leadership formation looks like in response to the emerging missional realities of our world.

I am beginning to think I jinx the Eastern seaboard whenever I am in that part of the country, however. When I was there in December my flight was cancelled due to snow but I was able to have a fun day in Philly killing time until I could fly out the next day (original post here). Guess what? Same thing happened again. My flight was delayed 5 hours due to rain this time and when I ended up in Cleveland for my connection, of course it was long gone. So I slept in a hotel and got up early and caught another flight home. This one was not fun. My dad was getting ordained Saturday morning in the Episcopal Church after recently completely his MDiv at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin. I was supposed to participate in service but missed that opportunity due to my tardiness. At least I didn't miss the ordination. To be sure, I broke several land-speed records (and laws) but after landing at 10:15 a.m. I was in the sanctuary of Grace and Holy Trinity downtown at 10:45 a.m., a mere fifteen minutes late. I am glad my little horse and buggy was in racing trim.

Lastly, I mentioned awhile back that I have been working on a book project for the last six weeks. Well, I finished it on Friday, which feels great, and I am excited about what has been produced. I've been working on reader's guides for each of the three books in Brian McLaren's New Kind of Christian trilogy. Jossey-Bass contracted with me to write questions to help individuals and groups interact conversationally with the material in the books. The total project ended up being about 16,000 words and each book will now include these guides in the back. Additionally, I believe an electronic version will be available to down-load, and a separate booklet will be produced and included in a boxed-set that Amazon.com will be selling. I may have some of those details wrong, so don't hold me to it. It was great working with Julianna Gustafson, the editor overseeing this project. I think these things will be seeing the light of day fairly quickly.

Not much more to report for right now, except that the trailer for this movie looks amazing and that Bill Withers on the iPod riding my bike back and forth to work everyday is pure heaven. Here are a few more pics from the picnic, courtesy of Stacey Schmitz. You can see the rest of his pics here. Thanks to Tim Samoff for the individual baptism pics - his are here.