Tim Keel's Blog

The Program-Driven Church

I am about a week late on this news, but it bears mentioning anyhow...

One of the topics I spend a significant time engaging in my book Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos is how leaders are often more attuned to managing/running programs than helping people (themselves included) engage God, themselves, each other, and the world of which they are a part. Most of the deconstruction of this approach occurs in parts of chapters 2, 3, 9, and 10 of the book. But I am interested in more than deconstruction because taking something apart only gets us so far...in fact, only as far as a pile of disassembled parts on the floor. In my attempt to suggest something different, however, I am pretty concerned about proposing something that only continues the trend of making me, Jacob's Well, emerging churches, etc., the latest expert to which people then turn for answers. So instead I suggest a number of different things, including nine postures for leadership, that will hopefully reframe leadership and begin to help people move beyond static programs created somewhere else. Leaders must be more than technicians whose main task is to implement whatever some expert declares to be the latest Christian fad.

Why highlight this today? Because of a blog post I found on Out of Ur, one of the blogs Christianity Today maintains. The provocative blog post is titled, "WIllow Creek Repents," and chronicles Willow Creek Church's recent admission that after a thoroughly researched study of its church (that also went beyond Willow Creek and into a great number of other churches) and the spiritual formation of its people, most of what they had been programming, promoting, and investing in had no discernible impact on people's spiritual lives.

In chapter five of my book, in the section titled Post-Christendom, I spend a significant amount of time challenging the assumptions and approach of Willow Creek and other program-driven churches and ministries in light of our current cultural location and a different philosophical approach to "ministry." I am a bit stunned reading this report to tell you the truth. And even more so, my admiration for Willow Creek continues to grow - not because they got it wrong, which we all invariably do, but because they announced in the public domain. I truly think Willow Creek is an amazing community and that Bill Hybels is an extraordinary leader with enormous integrity - as further evidenced by this admission. My beef with Willow Creek has always been about its cultural and theological suppositions. It is because they have been so wildly influential that I engaged with the cultural and theological narrative they have been telling.

Read the article(s) here: Willow Creek Repents?, (Pt.1), and Willow Creek Repents? (Pt. 2)

Paul Potts Made My Day

I was in Philadelphia, like I've just recently blogged about, and true to every previous experience of trying to get in and out of that city, my flight was canceled last night. After a long day of travel, I finally climbed into my bed last night at 1:30 a.m. And woke up with my bronchitis back in full force. Not what I was hoping for and as a result, I was feeling a little discouraged.

Then I got an email with a link to a video. I hate getting this kind of stuff normally. Schlock. Sentimental cheese. However, this morning my defenses were down. Thank God. This link shows an episode of the television show Britain's Got Talent. Most of you have probably seen this already sometime in the last couple of months. Somehow, I missed it. Take a minute and watch this.

Opera Singing Phone Salesman - seriously, watch it.

I sat in bed this morning hacking, feeling miserable, and frustrated that I am still sick. Yet when I watched this, tears started streaming down my face. Not to be schlocky, sentimental, or God forbid - cheesy, but it truly changed my day. I've probably watched it alone and with others five or six times throughout the day and each time it has had the same impact.

I emailed it to my friend Don, sharing with him its impact on me. It knocked him flat, too. His response?

"i will not cry... i will not cry... AAAWWWW dangit. me too. i mean sobbing. the music doesn't hurt, but there's just something about the whole thing - his demeanor, even the tone of his voice (slightly fragile, while still powerful). what a friggin' deal."

I emailed it to my friend Todd, who had of course already seen it. Here is his how it affected him.

"I found that several months ago and felt the very same. I couldn't get him out of my head for days. Finally I realized why: he looks like how we all feel about ourselves, but when he sings, he shows us what we want to be."

I think Todd is onto something. However, I was struck not just by Paul himself, but how Paul impacted those around him.

You see this humble, insecure, and somewhat awkward looking man walk onto center stage. He seems horribly out of place and you can sense everyone's discomfort. It is compounded when one of the judges, Amanda, asks him what he is going to do. When he states that he is going to sing opera, there is a physical recoil. Piers, with eyebrows arched, makes eye contact with Simon Cowell and you can tell he is sensing impending doom. The audience is being polite but you can tell they are trying to keep from laughing aloud, maybe even mocking. Perhaps Simon is devising an abuse-laden response to this obvious waste of time. He seems put out. And then the music starts and Paul begins to sing.

Slowly at first. Quietly. But as the music swells, so does he and as he does, his voice transforms him before them and us. The music and lyrics of Puccini flow effortlessly from Paul Potts and as they do, we are transformed, if only for a moment. We experience transcendence. Suddenly there is Beauty, a palpable presence, where we were previously unable to see it. There is a treasure buried in a field that we have unconsciously just stumbled over. And it shocks us. Overwhelms us. Several people wipe tears from their eyes. Others sit enraptured, jaws slack. Some have smiles break slowly, incredulously over their countenances. Still more stand, applauding, cheering. The music and his aria crescendo. It is breathtaking. Then it ends. Those who have been clapping and cheering are joined by everyone else, including the judges, and the entire place erupts...not just for Paul, but for whatever has just happened to them through Paul. He has brought them joy.

And then just as quickly as he expanded, he contracts. It is just Paul standing there again, humble and unsure, a cell phone salesman. Except, he's not. Something significant has happened.

Grace has drawn near.

On the Road: Brief Musings on Theological Education

I am in the air on my way to Philadelphia - which, true to history thus far, continues to be one of the most difficult airports to get in and out of on time (six times in three years and not once did I fail to be delayed or have a flight canceled - check out a couple of posts from 2004 chronicling one such adventure: Stranded! Lost in Philly and A Night in Gotham City).

Anyway, I have recently been asked to join the board of trustees for Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. Along with Al Roxburgh, Brian McLaren, and George Hunsberger, I came out here several times to consult with them as they sought to re-imagine and re-orient their traditional approach to theological training into something more geared to engaging the missional realities and opportunities of our times. BTS is filled with great people, like John Franke and others, who are working hard to engage theology and culture in creative and redemptive ways and help leaders to do the same. I am excited to re-engage with them and see what has been in happening in the time since I was last among them. This has been no easy transition, as any one who has tried to lead a traditional organization through catalytic change can tell you.

One good sign for Biblical is that I recently fielded a call from a young man in our congregation wanting to pursue theological education in an innovative way. Without knowing my history with Biblical, he mentioned that one of the two programs he discovered through some online investigation was Biblical's. I was excited to talk to him about it.

I love theological training/education. It is a deep passion of mine. For some who may have read the first third of my book, Intuitive Leadership, that may come as a bit of a surprise given how hard I am on my own experience of seminary. But part of my rationale for deconstructing my experience is precisely because I think it is so critical. We can be the hardest on those things we care about most deeply.

How the postmodern transition is affecting theological education is on the minds of a lot more people than myself and the people at Biblical. On October 8, I had the opportunity to travel to St. Louis and sit on a panel to discuss the state of leadership in local churches and how seminary education is impacting it positively or negatively. The day long gathering was hosted by the Association of Theological Schools. I was invited, along with five other practitioners, to respond to five questions in a conversational format while seated around a table. It was a "fishbowl format" - while we talked we were surrounded by representatives from nine different seminaries who listened to us, then later probed us for more explicit feedback. It was a positive experience and I felt like what we had to share was heard and warmly and enthusiastically received. It is clear that far and wide, all across a diverse theological and denominational spectrum, schools are feeling the pain of the world we are creating and now living in. That seminaries were constituted in a very different world generally not responsive to innovation or change is a dynamic that will continue to be a challenge for a long time. Institutional metaphors of stability create an inertia that is often hard to escape.

But some are trying. And that is encouraging because it is very important.

Revisiting TRADE, Human Trafficking, and Not for Sale

A week from this Saturday (October 27), Jacob's Well will be co-sponsoring the Not For Sale Campaign event in Kansas City. We have been in discussions with Mark Wexler since this summer and it is good to finally having this gathering so close. The event will be co-hosted by St. James Untied Methodist Church and held at their church at 56th and Paseo. St. James is the home church of former Kansas City mayor, now Missouri Congressman Reverend Emmanuel Cleaver II. It is my understanding he will be at the event, which is from 1:00-2:30 p.m.

It will include a multimedia presentation that includes clips from a "rockumentary" film Concert to End Slavery, live performances of redemption songs, a clip from the recent release of the Lion's Gate film TRADE, and teaching about a faithful response to human trafficking by David Batstone, author of "Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade--and How We Can Fight It."

Here is a link to a one-hour presentation Batstone made at Google's campus educating them on human trafficking and global slave trade: Authors@Google: David Batstone.

I would love to see a great turn-out, especially from the community of Jacob's Well.

Additionally, I have not had the opportunity to see TRADE. Tragically, it received only a modest, art-house style opening. I recently connected to Craig Detweiler, film-maker and co-author of "A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture." On his blog he tells some of the story of the making of trade and how savagely critics received it and how it has subsequently been buried. Read about it here.

In Rainbows as Consolation for Coughing my Brains Out

I am home with bronchitis. This is my third week. Week one: feel terrible, sound fine. Week two: feel better, sound terrible. Week three: feel terrible, sound like death incarnate. Everytime I cough I feel like one of my lungs is going to exit my body. Blaise had a weekend of sickness, too. So on Monday we went to the doctor. Yep! I have bronchitis, he has strep throat. Yesterday it was the two boys in bed all day. Today he is back in school but I am still in bed.

Being in bed trying to stay still enough to keep from an explosion of coughing is giving me the opportunity to catch up on some stuff I have been wanting to do - like download the new Radiohead record, In Rainbows. I paid US$10, since that is what I would have paid on iTunes. After one listen, I like it.

Here is a good little interview I heard last week on NPR: Terry Gross from Fresh Air interviewing Thom Yorke.

A New Kind of Adult: Up with GRUPS

So, sometime last spring I was sitting in a chiropractor's office and picked up the most recent copy of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The photo at the left, or some variation of it, stared out from the cover. I quickly read the article from start to finish, and truth be told, I was tempted to swipe the magazine - I didn't, but I was tempted.

Why?

Because of the article I read by Adam Sternbergh: Up with Grups.

This article hit home for on a number of different levels. Before I get into too much more detail, let me excerpt a few statements from the article.

"He owns eleven pairs of sneakers, hasn’t worn anything but jeans in a year, and won’t shut up about the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD. But he is no kid. He is among the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap...This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It’s not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent. It’s about the hedge-fund guy in Park Slope with the chunky square glasses, brown rock T-shirt, slight paunch, expensive jeans, Puma sneakers, and shoulder-slung messenger bag, with two kids squirming over his lap like itchy chimps at the Tea Lounge on Sunday morning. It’s about the mom in the low-slung Sevens and ankle boots and vaguely Berlin-art-scene blouse with the $800 stroller and the TV-screen-size Olsen-twins sunglasses perched on her head walking through Bryant Park listening to Death Cab for Cutie on her Nano."

I am afraid to confess that I am a GRUP (with a few caveats, including the exception of spending ungodly amounts of money on clothes). In fact, part of the way I know I am is because I am routinely stared at by the parents of other kids who are my childrens' classmates. They often seem somewhat uncomfortable around me. They are certainly not GRUPS and think that if I am not slightly weird, then at least I am approaching some sort of mid-life crisis that propels me to dress in a manner like the aforementioned paragraph describes.

Anyway, thanks to Rick Bennett for posting this on Facebook and starting a GRUP group. I have been wanting to track down this article and for the life of me, I could not remember that acronym.

Know any GRUPS? Hear any Death Cab playing nearby?

Body Art Goes Mainstream

That is the title of an article I wrote last year for Christian Century. It appeared as the cover story of the May 15, 2007 issue. It no longer seems to be on the Christian Century website, but you can read it here.

In the article I chart the rise of tattooing as a mainstream form of personal expression and give some thoughts/theories as to why this might be happening. Here are a couple of excerpts. The first discusses the way media has increased and in some ways domesticated what has traditionally been a fringe practice.

"Perhaps part of the mainstreaming of the tattoo subculture can be attributed to television. Athletes and entertainers with tattoos are ubiquitous. Cable television has given rise to lots of niche programs on heretofore fringe topics, and tattooing is one of them. The Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel each has a popular show that follows the ups and downs of life in a tattoo parlor (one called Inked, the other Miami Ink). These shows allow people who might never enter the tattoo world to take a front-row seat in the safety and comfort of their living rooms."

One of the main points I make in the article is that for many, tattoos mark a significant transition in life and are often used as a rite of passage. In the article I quote Kansas City's own Whispering Danny (Kobsantsev) and then go on to make some assertions about tattoos and why their popularity continues to increase.

"[Tattoos are] more than an exercise in novelty, according to Kobsantsev. People who come to see him are usually very purposeful. Often a tattoo is a way of declaring something to the world. To be sure, there are those who get a tattoo as a form of rebellion or as an act of machismo. But just as often tattoos function in more substantial ways--as a means of remembering or commemorating something significant or transformative in one's life; as a sort of talisman to gain power; as a way of exercising and expressing control over one's body after suffering some kind of assault or trauma; or even as a kind of visual timeline charting significant events. Tattoos have become a means of expressing oneself and one's story in a dramatic way...Twenty-first-century American culture lacks significant rites of passage. Premodern cultures have always relied on different rites to help people navigate transitions and to provide meaning for life passages, whether a coming of age, the achievement of mastery in a chosen vocation, a new commitment or the loss of a loved one. Often rites of passage involve some kind of mark that involves pain and in some way sets the person apart as different. In the same way, tattoos make a declaration about personal identity."

The reason I bring this up is because about a month ago, I received a call from a friend on the east coast. Earlier in the year Scott discovered that he had breast cancer and had to have (I believe) a partial mastectomy. The surgery went well, but left him with quite a bit of scarring. The reason he called was to tell me about an interesting string of things that happened to him.

Scott works in a seminary outside Philadelphia. One day he was sitting in waiting room somewhere and picked up a copy of Christian Century that was there. It wasn't the issue I wrote in, but in the issue he was reading there was a letter to the editor about my article. Scott hadn't seen it and so when he got back to the library of the seminary he found the article and read it. Then he called me and told me a great story.

Scott decided that he didn't want to have reconstructive plastic surgery. He decided he'd rather have a tattoo over the place of his surgery. It was then his wife spoke up and said that he ought to try and get on Miami Ink. Scott wasn't that into it, but his wife insisted and filled out the necessary paperwork and mailed it in. Later that week a producer called Scott to verify his story. Since then they have been working out the details and this week, Scott is in Miami getting inked. He told me that either Chris Nunez or Chris Garver would be doing his tattoo. I am not sure when the episode that he is in will air, but when I does, I will make sure and post about it.

Claude Nikondeha

This weekend Jacob's Well hosted Claude Nikondeha, his wife Kelley, and their two children Justin and Emma.

Claude is the director of Amahoro Africa. I met Claude last May in Uganda. Six people from Jacob's Well traveled to Kampala, Uganda, to participate in the first ever Amahoro Africa gathering. After getting to know Claude just a little bit there, I wanted him to come and spend some time with us in Kansas City.

Claude is from the African nation of Burundi. He left his home in Burundi at 18 and moved to France to pursue an education. He graduated with a degree in journalism. He continued from there to England where he received a graduate degree in communications. In 1998 he moved to the United States and in 2002, married Kelley. In 2005 they adopted two beautiful children from an orphanage in Burundi. They currently live outside Phoenix, Arizona, where Claude is developing Amahoro Africa. The Nikondehas plan to move back to Burundi sometime in the next several years.

We were really blessed to share the weekend with Claude and his family. One of the highlights of Claude's visit was an interaction that I did not get to witness but only heard about. Earlier this year a Burundian family was relocated by Catholic Charities out of a refugee camp in Tanzania. They had been living there for ten years. Now this husband and wife are living here with their five boys. The woman who is their case worker is a member of the Jacob's Well community and through her and another woman (who works for Catholic Charities and goes to JW) a smallish group of people from our church adopted the family and are trying to help them transition into life here in the United States. On Saturday morning Claude went over to their apartment and spent a couple of hours getting to know them and their story. It was the first time they have been able to speak to someone in their native language of Kirundi since they arrived in the United States.

The other highlight is Claude's sermon from yesterday: The Just Worshiper.

The next Amahoro Africa Gathering is on the calendar, by the way. It will be in Rwanda from May 20-28, 2008. The topic will be reconciliation and will include Bishop Desmond Tutu. It promises to be an extraordinary time.

La Blogotheque: Les Concerts a Emporter...

...is French for "The Take-Away Shows" from La Blogotheque.

Have you been to this site? It is wonderful. Mike Crawford turned me on to it several months ago and I am addicted.

Created by Vincent Moon, each week the blog features a video of a band in an impromptu setting playing a song or two. But to call it a video is to under-describe the energy, creativity, and artisanship of what happens when Moon starts his camera rolling.

The site describes the shows this way:

"The Take Away Shows are a Video Podcast produced by the french weblog La Blogothèque. Every week, we give away a session, shot with a band, in an unusual, urban environment. Sessions are always filmed as a unique shot, without any cut, recorded live. We usually haven’t much time to record them, so the groups have to be spontaneous, to improvise, play with what they have with them, and with their environment, whether there’s a public or not."

It has been a great place for me to discover some music I might not ordinarily hear. Really good music.

You can subscribe via iTunes or Feedburner and when you do, new, compelling music performances shot artfully will appear on your media player of choice. I love technology (for the most part).

Some of my favorite Take Away Shows include:

Jose Gonzalez
Arcade Fire
Sufjan Stevens
Eagle*Seagull
The Shins
St. Vincent (who I just discovered - she's this week's show)
The Nationals

Have fun exploring...

A Psalm from Merton

The following excerpt is taken from a book of prayer drawn from the writings of Thomas Merton. It is titled, simply, "A Book of Hours," and is edited by Kathleen Deignan.

It is a beautiful psalm and I have thought of posting on it before. However, when I read it this morning I was struck by the assertions Merton makes in this hymn about God. When I preached on James 2:14-26, I commented that pursuing justice is currently a very sexy thing to be doing. My contention in the sermon, along with so many other voices more experienced in this than myself, is that unless our action is rooted in the identity of God then we will quickly tire of serving God through serving the oppressed, exploited, and the powerless. When we discover that the Spirit that inspires James to write,

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead," (James 2:14-15)

is also the same Spirit who heard Israel captive and exploited in Egypt crying against their oppression and began to act on their behalf, then we must recognize that if we are followers of this God, then as his disciples we are likewise called to action.

But too often it is our lesser commitments to other things and our possessiveness of things that keeps us from responding. In that spirit, Merton's description of God here is challenging and compelling.

He Who is infinitely great has given to His children

a share of His own innocence.

His alone is the gentlest of loves: whose pure flame

respects all things.

God, Who owns all things, leaves them all to themselves.

He never takes them for His own,

the way we take them for our own and destroy them.

He leaves them to themselves.

He keeps giving to them, giving them all that they are,

asking no thanks of them save that they should receive

from Him

and be loved and nurtured by Him,

and that they should increase and multiply,

and so praise Him.

He saw that all things were good, and He did not enjoy

them.

He saw that all things were beautiful and He did not want

them.

His love is not like ours. His love is unpossessive.

His love is pure because it needs nothing.

Revolution in Jesusland

I recently highlighted the article, "Preaching Revolution," Zack Exley wrote for the magazine In These Times. Zack made a couple of comments on the blog post and directed me to a new blog he and his wife began called Revolution in Jesusland.

He describes the blog's purpose this way:

"Right after the 2004 elections, a cynical map made the rounds of progressives’ inboxes everywhere, separating 'Jesusland' from the 'United States of Canada.' Several other self-righteous riffs followed. The image was a hit because it expressed a sinking feeling in the hearts of many progressives that America had been taken over by an incomprehensible cult of ignorance, intolerance and hate—a cult they knew as 'evangelical' or 'born again' Christianity...This blog is a plea to the progressive movement, to take another look and get to know the diverse and complex world of evangelical Christianity in its own terms. Here you’ll find interviews, commentary, analysis and other dispatches from all over 'Jesusland'...This evangelical 'revolution,' as one Christian pollster has labeled it, is unquestionably the fastest growing and most surprising of American social movements today. Whichever way you measure, it probably dwarfs the secular left. From mega churches to tiny country churches, evangelical Christians are rediscovering the 'gospel of the God of the oppressed.' Perhaps the most surprising among these are the suburban, white evangelicals who are stepping outside of their comfort zones to 'get into relationship' with the poor, the oppressed, the homeless, prisoners...They are building houses for and teaching job skills to homeless people, they are creating tutoring programs for kids in failing schools, they’re paying health care bills and sending off rent checks for people living on poverty wages—and there’s even a movement afoot among these people to move their young families out of wealthy suburbs and into forsaken inner city neighborhoods, putting their kids into broken and often violent public schools. And in their Sunday services and Bible studies they are questioning the very foundations of modern American capitalist ideology."

This week, Exley was in Atlanta, Georgia, for the Catalyst conference. His posts detailing his experience there are great and encouraging. The message that is going out is, in essence, redefining the gospel for many. Make sure you also read in his archives (there aren't many as this is only his second month). There is some great writing there as well.

Thanks for this great resource, Zack.

Robert Jenson Lectures

My friend Tim Suttle sent out an email last week for which I am really grateful. The note he sent to "fellow theology geeks" was to inform us that Nazarene Theological Seminary is hosting theologian Robert Jenson for their Grider-Winget Lectures in Theology series.

Somehow I have to get in the lecture series loop because over the last five years I have missed a number of lectures including ones by Walter Brueggemann, Stanley Hauerwas, and George Lindbeck.

Robert Jenson is Professor Emeritus of Religion at St. Olaf College. The lectures will be held on the campus of NTS on October 9-11 at 10:30 a.m.

Wikipedia article on Jenson.

Caleb Rukundo

A week ago, on Thursday, September 27, Jacob's Well had the honor of receiving Caleb Rukundo as a guest. Caleb is from Kampala, Uganda.

I met Caleb last May when I traveled with five others from the Jacob's Well community to Kampala for the first Amahoro Africa conference. After being in Uganda for only a day or two, Brian McLaren and I were talking and he asked me if I had met Caleb. At that point I had not. Brian went on to describe Caleb as a modern-day St. Francis of Assisi, a pied-piper for street children living in Kampala.

A couple of nights later, however, while standing in line for dinner, I introduced myself to the man standing beside me - only to discover that it was Caleb. Because the line was long, we had a good deal of time to get to know one another. After we had received our food, we sat down and ate together.

Over that meal I learned firsthand what an amazing man Caleb Rukundo is. If he wasn't so peaceful, his story would be heart-breaking. And even though God has done and continues to do great things in and through Caleb, there is no denying how difficult his life has been and how it has marked him.

He himself lived on the street from the age of seven. This is hard for me to comprehend as my youngest child is six-years-old. Caleb left home when he witnessed one of his twelve siblings die of malaria. He was afraid that if he were to remain there, he, too, would die. His story is really too involved and personal to represent here on this blog. However it is worth saying that throughout his life you can discern the hand of God directing and protecting this very gentle, humble, vulnerable, and passionate human being.

While in college at the age of 21, Caleb began spending more time on the street with young kids. And he also began to invite them home to live with him. Each day more kids would show up. Finally when his small flat had ten occupants, his landlord kicked him out. Now, at 30, Caleb has three different spaces for street kids, one for girls and two for boys. Each space accommodates twenty people. Caleb has just been engaged to be married to Rhita, and hopefully they will join their lives together in December.

It was wonderful to reconnect with Caleb last week. He spent a couple hours with a few folks from our staff, telling us his story and a little about the challenges and needs of his ministry to kids displaced by the war in northern Uganda, the famine in NE Uganda, or by the deaths of parents from HIV/AIDS and malaria. Then, he and I left Jacob's Well and drove into Westport where we met the crew from JW that had traveled to the Amahoro conference. Claude Nikondeha, the the director of Amahoro, has just announced that the next Amahoro gathering will occur in May, 2008, in Kigali, Rwanda. The theme this year will be reconciliation. Hopefully we will once again be able to travel to Africa and reconnect with Caleb, as well as many more.

A Second Reformation

Last Sunday, September 30, I preached one of the most recognized passages from the epistle of James: 2:14-26. It is the renowned "faith without works is dead" passage. A couple of people have asked me for the quote that I ended the sermon with. It is from an article I read in the late 90s published in a magazine from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis. The author is Wade Bradshaw, of whom I know very little. Nevertheless this quote as stuck with me since I read it and I have used it in various other contexts. Most recently it appears in chapter five of Intuitive Leadership.

Before I quote Bradshaw, I want to set up the context of how I used it on Sunday. A couple of weeks ago I in suggested in my sermon that the popular, modern American expression of Christianity is regarded by most outside its boundaries as less than good news. A new book by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons called Unchristian is adding research to the growing impression that many of us have had that something is increasingly wrong.

In James 1:19-27 we can summarize James' understanding of pure religion: to use one's mouth in keeping with the word that has been implanted in you, and to care for widows and orphans in their distress and to keep oneself uncorrupted from the world. My question is simple: what would our reputation be if we were to heed this word, if we were to quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry? If we were to keep our mouths shut? How would we be regarded if we understood a profound expression of our vocation to be care for the exploited and oppressed? It is in this context that Bradshaw's quote becomes significant.

"As we listen [to those around us]…we will hear voices that are bored, cynical and profoundly unimpressed by a Gospel that all too often appears to them to be merely verbal or mental. These people assume the Gospel is simply another sales pitch with ulterior motives tucked away in the background. These presuppositions have huge ramifications for how our message will be heard by those we try to contact... The first Reformation was the re-discovery of the theology of Paul—of God’s grace given freely to wholly undeserving sinners. A second, postmodern reformation will require the complementary re-discovery of the theology of James—that faith is always manifested. Postmoderns want to see the fruit of a message before they check into its doctrines. This is not a return to an anemic social gospel; this is a biblical response of gratitude to God manifested in concern for others."

Hail to the Chief...

...also known as Annie Keel, one of two newly elected 6th grade representatives at St. Peter's School.

I am so proud of my girl. This was her third attempt at a student council position. Her perseverance paid off. Now to the hard work of governance and making good on all those campaign promises.

Maybe I can score a post-election interview.

Intuitive Leadership Released Today

My new book, "Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos, is being released today. I am pretty excited about it. The book has been available for pre-order on Amazon since June which means for those who pre-bought it, it either ships today or it arrives today. I have not been to any local booksellers to see whether or not it is on the shelf. Hopefully it will be. If anyone gets a copy, please let me know. Eventually Jacob's Well will be selling copies but we are still trying to figure out how to do that. We are going to try and schedule a book release party at Barnes and Noble on the Plaza some time in the next couple of weeks, so stay posted for that.

Here is the book description.

"As our culture shifts from modern to postmodern, pastors and church leaders are finding that old, rigid church leadership systems and structures no longer seem to work. Church leaders are searching for and discovering new, creative ways of leading- emphasizing intuition, creativity, narrative, and an embrace of the chaos and tension of our time. Tim Keel, pastor of a thriving emergent church and a rising leader in the emergent church movement, offers a thought-provoking yet practical exploration of this new style he calls Intuitive Leadership. His fresh approach will be welcomed by pastors and lay leaders interested in the emergent conversation and how Christian mission should look in our rapidly changing culture."

While this is a "leadership" book, it is not written exclusively for people who would fit into traditional leadership categories: pastors, teachers, etc. Rather the book seeks to help people understand their location and what it looks like to respond to God, themselves, and their community as a result of that location. It is within such a responsive posture that true leadership becomes a possibility. It also tells a good bit of the story of Jacob's Well and how it developed and why.

If you are interested to engage the book some more, hit the Amazon link and once you are on my page, click the "search inside" option. You can read a good portion of the first chapter.