Tim Keel's Blog

Some New Books

I'd gotten out of the habit of keeping my reading list (in the left-hand column of the blog) up-to-date. I've corrected that. I am currently reading some great stuff, especially Edwin Friedman's A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. If you are inclined hit the links and see if anything looks intriguing.

I've only read the first chapter of Gordon Mackenzie's Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace. Mackenzie worked at Kansas City's Hallmark Card for 30 years and struggled to maintain his creativity amidst a culture that always seemed to want to recycle old "successful" strategies rather than continue to be original and creative. I don't know Mackenzie, but I recognize at least one person who has provided some of the illustrations that accompany his great writing. Ironically, I discovered this book on a blog that my RSS reader aggregates daily, The Accidental Creative. Fantastic blog. Here is a description of Mackenzie's book by Accidental Creative creator Todd Henry. Check it out: Executional Love.

Fear, Faith, and "The Tale of Despereaux"

At the end of my book, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos, I write about nine different postures for leaders/people to consider as they try to engage with what God may be up to in the world around them. Each posture involves a transition, a change, a movement from one place to another, recognizing that often the way we are postured either facilitates or inhibits participation with God and others. To get somewhere else we must do something else - something different than what has brought to the place we are.

One of the most critical postures I write about is a posture of trust.

"I have a strong sense that many Christians and most leaders have a hard time with trust these days. In our culture many Christians feel embattled and have taken on defensive postures believing their very survival is at stake. The tenor of religious dialogue generally, and Christian dialogue specifically, contributes to a sense of being under attack. Everyone is shooting at everyone. Friendly fire is killing more than enemy fire - that is, if we could decide on who our 'enemy' is beyond the most recent person who offends us...This toxic lack of trust, and the active posture of suspicion in the broader environment, has invaded many places close to home, including our local church communities. Leaders feel at odds with their congregations and struggle to build meaningful relationships. Parishioners feel at odds with their leaders and struggle to be vulnerable with them. While we would never openly admit this to anyone out loud, many of us do not trust God. It seems we believe God is passive, and the role of leaders and church and theology in the face of God's apparent passivity is to defend him from all challengers. It is as if we believe that God cannot defend himself - and after what we have witnessed on the cross of Christ, maybe there is something there that is worth paying attention to, something very sacred and important to be discovered." (Intuitive Leadership, 244)

The transition that I suggest as a means of changing/challenging our posture so that we can trust is a transition from defensiveness to creativity. I might have also suggested a movement from fear to faith. They are very similar. Either way, this need continues to be more and more critical to me as I observe the trajectory of much of what is happening in the world around us. It seems that so much of what happens in popular American Christian culture plays to people's fear - such that we become incapable of living in the way that Jesus modeled and his disciples embodied. People and ideas that challenge the status quo are to be feared and shunned. Truth must be defended. Faith moves from being a radical orientation of dependence on that which/Who is unseen and hoped for to a proscribed set of dogma that is held to with certainty and subsequently defended unquestioningly (at times even violently). And in the meantime, God has left the building. Or at least, I have observed this dynamic in play.

But what if you're not afraid? What if you are more excited than concerned? What if you sense hope on the horizon and in your heart and have to do something about it? What if you want to propose and play and create and engage? That is what gets me up in the morning.

Now, why do I write all that? Because I just watched a movie trailer for a film that is coming out based on one of my daughter's favorite books: Kate Dicamillo's Newberry Award winning children's book, The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread. Watching the trailer for this movie stirred me up and reawakened the impulse that fueled me when I sat down to write about a posture of trust and moving from defensiveness to creativity, from fear to faith. Watch it and see what it stirs in you.

My favorite line? "Oh Despereaux, there are so many wonderful things in life to be afraid of if you just learn how scary they are." Fantastic.

Bishop N.T. Wright on The Colbert Report

Last week Anglican Bishop Dr. N.T. Wright was on The Colbert Report. Host Stephen Colbert was "interviewing" Wright about his recently released book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. If you are not familiar with Wright this might not be the best introduction to him, but it will certainly be the funniest.

Tom Wright is both an Anglican bishop (Durham) and a pre-eminent New Testament scholar. I have been reading Wright for several years and in July, 2004, had the privilege to travel with my friend Jason Clark to Leicestershire, England, to attend a conference that featured him as its keynote speaker.

I have had many opportunities over the last number of years to meet and interact personally with some of my theological mentors. Surprisingly, that can be a deflating experience. In fact, being an interesting scholar does not necessarily translate into being an interesting (or compelling) human being. However, in the case of Tom Wright, it does. As good (and creative) a scholar as Wright is, he is an even more interesting person to interact with as a human being. Sometimes you interact with someone whom you quickly realize has given everything they have in the form of their writing - and if you try and get them to depart from the script it is not pretty. On the other hand, interacting with Wright you get the sense that you are just skimming the surface of what he knows and has to offer. I remember finding myself wanting to get through the "talks" (which I had flown to England to hear and were incredible in their own right), so that after the fact I could sit down with him in a group, drink a beer, and interact. That is the kind of guy he is. Not to mention prolific. Did I say prolific?

Anyway, you can watch him trying to engage Stephen Colbert on the topic of heaven and the resurrection. Usually I enjoy Colbert's irreverent, incessant, and hilarious interruptions of his guests with his meaningless dithering. In this instance I found myself wishing he would shut-up for awhile and let Wright complete a sentence. Oh well, it is funny (and it was broadcast on Comedy Central after all) and so I guess I need to shut up and take the book off my shelf and read it.

A Woman Responds...

A couple of days following my second message on women and their role in the church (or lack thereof), I received an email from a woman in our church. With her permission, I want to share it - but first give some context.

When Deth began the series, "Neglected Women of Faith," I thought the most compelling aspect of the series was the time he allocated at the end of the message for different women from our community to stand up and share a response. The four-part message series covered the women named in Matthew's genealogy: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Deth told each woman's story and then, at each of the three gatherings, a different woman would respond - 12 in all over the course of the series.

In my two sermons I did less storytelling than preaching/teaching. That is appropriate given the theological and exegetical nature of the passages we referenced. What I missed being able to do is allow space for someone to respond. Which is why I want to share what a woman in our community shared with me. She was a big fan of the messages. I'll say that up front. I am not sharing her email in order to promote myself. I am sharing it to further illustrate the struggles that many women have had trying to live out what God has called them to be and do. She has given me her permission and so with out further explanation her reflections.

"Hey Tim- Yes, I double-dipped on Sunday! :) I REALLY enjoyed the teaching... it evoked a whole host of responses from me and my friends, and I cannot thank you enough! On one hand, I was thinking, 'SEE! The truths I held in my heart were being PREACHED from the front and by a man!' And on the other hand, I am indignant that these passages had not been studied and taught through a culturally contextualized lens! I feel as if so many other passages have, but these have certainly been left aside. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I was a leader in 'the church' for 13 years in Austin... in different capacities: college ministry, church staff, church planter, small groups leader, worship leader, house church and community house leader, etc... and all the while, there was something that never let me be fully free in those contexts. And I, like many others, have had 'the book' thrown at us or have been undermined and insulted because we were women. Gender issues, along with race issues (and class), are still so present in the church. And until they are addressed directly, I guess people don't realize how pervasive they are. It's about a continual renewal of mind and subtle and more obvious changes to come in line with the Galatians passage you are teaching from.

So thank you. It's just liberating and healing to hear what you taught. If you don't mind, could you pass on the titles to the books you were using to study and quote from? My roommates and I were all curious and wanted to read more on it."

If you would like to see a few of the resources I used for those messages, I list them below in a post titled, "Non-Stop Action."

Matthew 25 Project

Just outside of Kansas City is William Jewell College, a small, private university with a Baptist tradition. William Jewell is a great school and over the life of our church we have had a number of students and staff become a part of our worshiping community.

Driving to work this morning I was listening to Morning Edition on the local NPR affiliate, KCUR. In between national news segments KCUR did a brief story that immediately caught my attention. Local reporter Steve Bell opened the segment with this statement:

"A group of young people, mostly teens, is involved with an urban restoration project in Kansas City, MO. The project is named for the scripture that inspired it: 'Matthew 25.'"

He continued, saying:

"Jeff Buscher, campus minister at William Jewell College, is supervising the renovations at four homes in the urban core. Buscher heads the Matthew 25 Project, aided by cooperation from the city, the Local Investment Corporation and the Community Cadet Club."

I know Jeff. He is the campus chaplain at William Jewell. He and I have interacted on multiple occasions, both at Jacob's Well and when I have had the opportunity to be up at Jewell for speaking at a class.

The Matthew 25 Project is a really great initiative. You can read about the project briefly on the KCUR website. You can also listen to the streaming broadcast of the story I heard this morning on the same site.

Teens Devote Vacation Time to Urban Repairs

Brookside Championship Hockey

To the victors go the spoils. Blaise (in goal) and his teammates win today, 9-4.

Huzzah.

I Dig Paul Pierce

I am sick of Boston teams winning everything in sports.

That said, KU alumni Paul Pierce is such a stud and he played so amazingly well (MVP) over the NBA playoffs and championship (which I normally can't stand) that I overcame my distaste for big market purchased franchises and actually rooted for the Celtics. Then I remembered that I really like Kevin Garnett and discovered how much I like Doc Rivers and Ray Allen. As a result I might be forced to confess that if I were a fan of the NBA and had to pick a team to root for, I would probably pick the Celtics...

...but only because Paul Pierce was first a Jayhawk.

The Red Sox, the Patriots, and the Bruins can still go hang.

Non-Stop Action

It has been a crazy-long and full end-of-week, weekend, new-week stretch.

We are wrapping the inaugural missional training center offerings today. It has been great. Classes began Thursday and except for a day-off on Sunday, we have gone hard for five days. I think everyone is full (and tired).

Sunday was not an off-day for me, however. Just the opposite. We did a power-sprint through passages from 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy relative to women and their role and function in the church. If you are interested in some of the better resources that I interacted with, here is a couple you might consider checking out.

Women's Service in the Church: The Biblical Basis, by N.T. Wright (this is an article that you can read online).

Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry, by Stanley J. Grenz, with Denise Muir Kjesbo.

Good News for Women: A Biblical Picture of Gender Equality, by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis.

Finally, my family is split up over the next nine days. Mimi, Mabry, and Annie are with 18 others from the JW community, on their way to Croc, Mexico (outside Monterey), to spend a week building houses and doing educational development alongside YouthFront's team that is in residence year-round. As I blog, I think they are around halfway through their 22 hour journey. Blaise and I are bachelors and living large. Look out.

Words

joy | joi |
noun
a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

sub·lime | s∂'blīm |
adjective
of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or joy.

e·voke | i'vōk |
verb
bring or recall to the conscious mind; to elicit a response.

Timothy Finn of the Kansas City Star reviews last night's show here.

Missional Training: Day One

We're off to a great start. Yesterday was a full day of learning and engagement. Here's a quick quote from Alan Roxburgh:

"The most effective approach to forming mission-shaped life is to develop organizational structures that fit the environment in which the church is located. Environment has to do with the values, ethos, and systems of belief and life in a local area. This means we won't be able to create structures for mission-shaped life in a church without being aware of the environment in which the church finds itself. While this sounds like a sensible and reasonable way of going about the process of forming structures, it is also one of those assumptions that runs counter to the ways we normally go about church life. In most circumstances, church structures are assumed to be environment neutral, that is, church structures are simply developed out of what has been done in other churches of a similar type and really have little to do with the environment in which the church is located."

Missional Training Center Pilots Tomorrow

One of the things Jacob's Well has been working towards for awhile is a new way of approaching theological training for leaders in the church. This includes people who have a calling to be "professional" clergy (that is, ordained pastors, e.g.). However, that particular expression is but one small part of what we are exploring. Perhaps more important are people who want to be "ordained" to be teachers, engineers, parents, cooks, insurance adjusters, etc., not as second-class citizens of God's purposes, but as the primary or normative way of responding to God's calling to serve in the world.

Generally speaking, churches have assumed theological training is primarily for the professional class of Christians who are then employed by them for their own benefit. Not only that, but the nature of the theological education has largely been academic/scholastic and disconnected from the nature and purpose of the church as it flows from the life of God and his purposes in the world. However, the missional turn many are trying to make is a rediscovery of the calling of the church to embody the mission of God in every facet of life. Thus, everyone is included and enlisted to enact the mission of God wherever they are. This is a massive-shift culturally, and one that institutions like churches, denominations, and seminaries are having a tough time making.

This conversation about the nature, content, purpose, and expression of theological education is going on in most quarters that I find myself. In fact, much of my traveling and speaking recently has been with institutions of theological education, denominational or otherwise.

The Work of the People

I had a real surprise today.

Beth came to my office and informed me that Travis Reed had just stopped by to say hello. Last time I saw Travis we were in Rwanda. Travis lives in Houston. What the heck?

Turns out Travis was in Kansas City on a job. He had a 30 minutes to kill before he flew out and so he stopped by to say hi. Travis makes films. He is also a freak. Seriously.

I met Travis in Rwanda (pictured below with us at the "Hotel Rwanda") among a group of people that are doing in Central America what Amahoro is doing in Africa and Emergent Village is doing in North America. This community is called La Red del Camino (this merits a post of its own). I am not sure why those guys were letting Travis hang out with them, but it probably has something to do with the fact Travis is part of a group of people that have been at work creating what he calls a global liturgy using film, music, etc. They call this The Work of the People.

Perhaps you know that the word "liturgy" comes from the Greek word leitourgia, translated "the work of the people." Thus worship and the way we create space to worship is literally the work of the people.

JW people are familiar with one piece of Travis's work. We used the video he created about the Advent Conspiracy and his community's (Ecclesia) participation with Living Water to bring fresh water to Chacocente, Nicaragua. They are the community that lives in the town dump. We edited the long version down to four minutes and you can see it here.

Check out The Work of the People website. They have some amazing participants and creative pieces. Check out Travis's blog post about his time in Rwanda: Rwanda Friends. It will give you a sense of what a good, strange man he is.

Sigur Ros This Week

Sigur Ros plays late Thursday night at The Uptown Theater in Kansas City. I am seeing the show with my wife (and more than a few people from JW if their last concert is any indication of their following here). I saw that last show when they were touring for Takk. Probably the best show I have ever seen.

For those who don't know, Sigur Ros is a band from Iceland. Amazing music. Amazing videos. Art. That is what Sigur Ros makes. Art.

They released their new record today and you can stream the whole thing for free from the Sigur Ros website. If you have a few moments watch Glosoli.

Some Photo Streams from Africa

Traveling to Africa this year we brought along Jacob's Well staff member Beth Mercer to video both the Amahoro gathering as well as our journey and experience in Pokot. Beth worked really hard and did a great job. Now we simply have to sort through 11 hours of footage in our quest to assemble something that can help tell the story of our time there. In the shot above, you can see Beth filming Edward Simiyu (from City Harvest Church in Nairobi) interviewing people from the Pokot community about the challenges they are facing and the impact that the boreholes/wells will have on their lives. Usually the dialogue traveled down a long line of translators/translations: English-->Swahili-->Pokot and back again.

As an aside I want to call attention to the trees in the background of this photo. In the sermon at Jacob's Well yesterday I mentioned how drought-stricken this region is. There is no agricultural practice to speak of. Edward told us that few people in Pokot had ever tasted a vegetable. Instead, they cut down branches from these trees and boil the leaves in order to get some greens. And trust me, even that is a contested venture as all of these trees' branches are filled with the most long and wicked thorns you could imagine. In fact, take a look at them below...

I still have not uploaded any photos from the trip. However, as of now, Beth has uploaded a set of photos from the Rwanda segment of the trip, including a set specific to the Amahoro gathering, to her Flickr account: Beth Mercer's photos.

You can also see the photos from two others on the trip.

Fuzz Kitto from Australia and Mike Todd from Canada.

Random Shots

Driving home from the airport last night around midnight I saw what I thought was a huge storm bank. Lightning was flashing everywhere and I assumed that most of it was coming out of the dark clouds in front of me on I-29. Turns out that the "cloud" was smoke, thick and dark. Around 7:30 p.m. lightning struck a unleaded fuel storage tank across the river from the downtown municipal airport. It caught fire and has been burning ever since - including right now. The flames were astounding. If it hadn't been so late I would have pulled over and watched it for awhile. As it was I settled for snapping shots from my phone as I sped by on my way home. You can read more here, as well as see video coverage of the fire on the site.

On a totally unrelated level, Philip Lesniewski (captured in action shot below, hotly negotiating) just sent out this somewhat intimidating looking picture. It bears some explanation. Philip is a staff member at Jacob's Well and was on the Africa trip. He is like a force of nature in Africa. For five years he worked for the Peace Corps, three of those years in Mali. Because of his height we introduce him to Africans as the white Maasai. That always generates a smile and a nod. It is hilarious to travel in Africa with Phil. He will approach and start talking to anyone. When we were shopping for souvenirs in downtown Nairobi we found him questioning a random woman on the street about her opinion of Kenyan women wearing trousers. On our way to Africa we had a nine hour delay in Heathrow. In short order Phil had made two new friends and they joined us at the table in the airport Starbuck's for a good part of our day. One was a young woman returning to her home in Tanzania. She had had no end of troubles trying to get out of the USA. Phil and a few others from our group tried to help her navigate some of the difficulties she was experiencing from the airline. The other person Phil introduced us to was Andrea, pictured here. I am not sure what Philip did to make him appear so threatening, but I love the contrast between that sense and what you see on his shirt. He is originally from Sudan, but now lives in Canada. He was returning to Sudan to help navigate some political issues there. Apparently this is his kids' favorite shirt.

After a Long Trip, a Quick Jaunt to Philly

Well, I got home Saturday night and had a great reunion with my family. I spent a good part of Sunday sleeping and just trying to cover some of the basics. The older two kids were leaving Monday for camp and I had a quick trip to prepare for too, so the house was a whirlwind of activity from early evening on.

Yep, you read it right. Monday I had to jump on a plane for a quick trip to Philadelphia. I have mentioned before that I am on the board of trustees for Biblical Seminary. Biblical held its annual board retreat yesterday and today. So, I woke up at five in the morning yesterday for my 7:00 a.m. flight. Now I am back at the airport waiting to return to KC.

The retreat was good. The people at Biblical are amazing and it is always great to be together with them. The retreat was held at Bear Creek Mountain Resort, a ski resort north of Philadelphia about an hour and a half. Or at least that is the idea...

After picking up my rent-a-car I jumped on the highway and started north on I-476. I had missed lunch so about 30 minutes later I exited the highway looking for a quick bite. However, when I tried to return to the highway I saw around 20 cars on the onramp stopped or reversing their way back down the ramp. Apparently there was a horrific accident and traffic in both directions was shut down for over two hours. As a result, I also reversed and went off-road, crossing a highway median in my car (that was a first) and found an alternate route that only doubled my drive time.

There is something unholy about my relationship to travel in and out of Philadelphia. I have documented my many travails with travel and this city on my blog (see here, here, and here for a primer). Today I didn't take any chances. I left the retreat center at 2:00 p.m. for my 7:10 p.m. flight. And of course, for the first time ever, I made it to the airport, dropped off my car, and passed through security with nary a hitch. Well, except that when I was in the security line an airport employee came in and announced that none of the bathrooms in the entire terminal were working due to a "sewage" problem. It was hilarious to see people break out of the line to take care of any anticipated "business" - myself included. Even so, I love this city and the people I know here.

I can't wait to be home though. Back in the office tomorrow. Back at church on Sunday. Drinking Broadway coffee. Preaching at Jacob's Well for the first time since late April. I am really excited. I am going to spend this week in the series that we have been engaging as a community on neglected women of the Bible. Then the following week we'll begin a new series through Paul's New Testament letter to the Philippians. Did I say I can't wait?

I will also start blogging in some of the details from our Africa trip.