This is a piece that my friend Jason Coker wrote recently.  I linked to it in other places, but it’s so good that I wanted to repost it in its entirety.  Visit Jason’s blog for more of his excellent insights and writing.  You might even consider supporting him and his family in terms of the ministries and projects they help lead by becoming a member of his blog community.  Here’s the post…

She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered, turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute, but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment

Dear Fyodor,

It’s getting rough for the old girl. Despite the rattle of death in her chest, there’s still a hint of the former beauty and dignity behind those eyes and, as anyone would tell you, she’s as feisty as ever. Still, the truth is she’s dying and there’s nothing to be done about it. As we sit around her bed praying and waiting, her moments of lucidity come with rapidly decreasing frequency.

Everyone here is dealing with the ugliness of her death in their own way. My sister refuses to let her go. She stands just beyond the door, arguing in harsh whispers with the doctors and nurses. She won’t believe the facts of the case, and it’s easier to argue over the interpretation of charts and data than to look straight at the old girl herself. I don’t blame her. Looking is hard.

My older brother looks but doesn’t see. “She’s just a little out of shape,” he says optimistically. “If we can get her up and out she’ll be back to her old self, ruling the roost!” And so he hangs a dress on her and rolls on rouge and glides her round the ward in a wheelchair festooned at the handles with curly ribbon and helium balloons so she might speak with the people. I tell you it’s horrible. Such a thing would be bearable (commendable even!) if compassion was his aim, but it’s not compassion he seeks from her fellows in the ward. No, it’s her rulership he hopes to re-animate and so he props her up like some animatronic relic – a broken-down ecclesiastical Chuck-E-Cheese promising fun-and-games for all the good little children.

Sadly, she scares the children. They weren’t around when she was bright and beautiful. They never attended her grand parties. They don’t know who she was (and let’s face it, as good as she might have been she was also a hard taskmaster, perhaps taking her job of keeping us safe too seriously and – I think – secretly hoping we would never grow up). So the children shrink and shriek and their lack of piety (or pity) has fermented my brother’s optimism into a swill of bitter insistence, rendering him defensive and defiant and refusing the temporary inebriation of grief.

(Can I tell you the truth? I fear her death is more than he can take. He always seemed the stronger one growing up, but I’m not sure he can keep his sanity without her strict order around the house – without her barbed-wire fences to separate the wild vines from the cultivated ones. I don’t think he realizes it was always her intention that we harvest the whole field, and I think all these years later she might even be happy to see us tear down those fences if keeping them meant letting the whole field go to waste.)

For me, it’s her delirious rants that are the most heart-wrenching. She’ll stubbornly hoist herself up to rebuke people who aren’t even in the room – resurrected memories of conflicts and passions long dead and gone to everyone but her own cruelly vivid memories that now, in her mortal distress, seem to have taken on a quality that simply overwhelms her present reality. Perhaps it’s for the best – perhaps it’s mercy – but for better or worse I find I’m not just grieving her death, I’m grieving the robbery of her chance to see the transcendence of death by the legacy she leaves in us. I think she would rejoice in that. I think she would look us in the eye and say, “It’s good to grieve me, but celebrate too. If I live on like this then death wins by making me into a mockery of life. But if I die then the life I lived will be victorious by passing on to you. Now take the best and go.”

She deserves that moment; it’s her birthright. But we won’t let her have it. We insist on preserving her because somehow we think our life is in her, when actually her life (all life!) is a gift that grows in the giving, until one day it grows so fat it swallows every one of us whole, death and all. Who would have thought, Fyodor, that the nihilism you so strenuously decried would lead not to the depraved insistence on rationalized death, but to the dogmatic insistence on irrational life?

You must be wondering how she can possibly endure for so long. It’s the machines that keep her alive. Pray for a death rattle in the chest of those monstrosities so she might finally be free from our obsessions, and enjoy a long night of rest in a well-deserved sleep.

I’ve been wanting to do some blog redesign for some time and while my wife being out of the country for 10 days is not something I’ve enjoyed, it has given me some time to make some changes.

So what have we got?

New background, new header, some new colors, an updated intro and connecting blurb, and all my posts categorized under the general headings of, “Bible & Theology, “Church & Culture, “Life & Mission.”

The changes aren’t quite as revolutionary as I had hoped when I started, but it feels freshened up a bit and I taught my self some new CSS & HTML stuff.

If you tend to just read my posts in a reader, I hope you’ll click through and let me know if you notice any errors on your end.

In case you missed it before, I am doing all of this on top of a cool theme that my friend Todd built. If you are looking for a great WordPress theme and a cool guy to work with, give Todd a shout.

I am fortunate to get to instruct an online course entitled, “The Emerging Church in the 21st Century,” for Fuller Theological Seminary each year. Based on current discussions and publications, I try to make appropriate and helpful updates to the course each time around.  This year, I decided to make Brian McLaren’s newest book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith, an optional book choice (students have to read something by McLaren).

After I made this decision, a flurry of reviews of the book were published all over the blogosphere.  I was disappointed that a great many of them paid no mind to the life and ministry of the author and were virtually completely devoid of charity, something which ought to mark all Christian discourse.  More than this, I was thwarted in my effort to find reviews that offered reflections that were practical in nature.

Convinced that there is a better way to engage with the material of Christian authors, I created an alternative assignment, which about half of the class has chosen to participate in.  I created a blog, dearbrianmclaren.wordpress.com, and invited students to write a personal letter to Brian.  Here’s the criteria for the assignment and grading:

1) Letter must be addressed to Brian as the author of the book and should be between 500-600 words.

2) You must speak to the practical implications of Brian’s content for your own life and ministry – no abstract, hypothetical or theoretical speculation.  If taken seriously, what are the implications of Brian’s points and proposals for your church or how you live and minister?  Obviously, you will have to be selective and won’t be able to address everything in the book, that’s fine.

3) The degree to which you write with Christian charity.  You are welcome, even encouraged, to disagree with anything (or everything!) Brian has to say, that’s not the point.  The point is showing that you can disagree and respond to an actual person with Christian charity.

5) Included within the letter, or at the end, you should pose 2-3 questions to Brian that you are left with after reading the book.

4) Provided enough people are reviewing the book in this manner, you must comment on at least three other peoples letters/posts within a week of their being posted on the blog.

These letters have been posted and Brian has even been gracious enough to give some time to reading and responding to them. Though this is primarily a class assignment, the blog is public and I’d encourage you to read the letters and offerer comments if you choose.

Even better, if you’ve read the book, I’d invite to you respond along the lines of the guidelines above and leave a link to your letter in the comments below.

My friend Jason Coker and his family have made some significant sacrifices in order to do some much needed Kingdom work.  Part of that work, for Jason, is blogging regularly.  He does interviews, book reviews, offers insightful theological reflections, and facilitates much needed conversation about some of the most important topics in the world.  He does all of this for free!

Recently, Jason made the decision to offer memberships to his blog.  He still plans to publish all of his content for free, but he is looking to those people who benefit from his work to return the favor in supporting his family with a modest $25 yearly donation.

I’m going to support Jason and I’d invite you to do the same.

Though I hesitate to mention it, the fact of the matter is that he’s trying to sweeten the pot by offering some giveaways.  Every member gets a free t-shirt with some original artwork and is entered into a drawing for an iPod Touch, an iPad when 500 members are reached, and a MacBook Pro when 1000 members are reached.

I hope you’ll join me in becoming a member of Jason’s blog as a way to support him, his family and the projects they are a part of.

Here’s the thing I hate most about blogging – it’s all about the now.  Doesn’t matter how much time you invested or how much thought you put into that post or series birthed by your creative genius – your precious content is forgotten and buried faster than Superman tweeting on speed!

Enter Tweet Old Post.

I stumbled upon this brilliant wordpress plugin recently that resurrects that old content and brings it into the land of the living.

You select an interval (I’ve chosen twice a day), and BOOM – your old content, selected at random based on the criteria you choose, is tweeted.  It even comes packaged with the ability to choose a link shortening service.

One downside – as I have figured out since beginning to use this plugin.  If your readers/followers don’t pay attention, they will think that you’re posting new content and ask you if you’re alright after your car wreck (that happened 4 years ago!).

So, my fellow bloggers, hop on over to here and tell Ajay thanks for writing a plugin that helps us repopulate the interwebs with the precious fruit of our labors.

My wife, Amy, works for an organization that we both love, International Teams.

Their main aim is,

Bringing People Together to Help the Oppressed.

To this end, they recruit, train, and mobilize people to serve on teams all around the world who are working to address some of the greatest challenges in the world today – things like urban poverty, human trafficking and slavery, and the needs of refugees.

On occasion, I have the opportunity to use some of my skills and abilities to help them out with small projects.  In a couple cases, they have asked me to help build websites for various events and communication needs.  This is something I enjoy doing, but by no means am I professional.  The platform I know best is WordPress, so that is what I am inclined to use.  But, WordPress is designed to be a blogging platform, not as a website builder per se.

So, what do you do when you’re doing work for a non-profit, but don’t have much of a budget to work with?  You look to network in the hopes of discovering people of generosity.

Two groups have come through big time!

iThemes, who builds premium WordPress themes, was kind enough to donate their Flexx theme to assist in the creation of the sort of sites that I am looking to build.

A couple guys also got together and wrote a book called, “Digging into WordPress.“  It’s a tremendous resource for those who are looking to get to know WordPress from the inside out.  They were gracious enough to donate a PDF copy of their book.

For a networker like me, who loves to help other people out when he can, it’s a huge encouragement to receive the help of others when it’s needed.  If you are in the market for a stellar WordPress theme be sure to visit the people at iThemes.  If you want to do some self-instructing in the world of WordPress, this book, “Digging into WordPress,” is a must have.

Thanks to both these groups for being generous with their products.

In my constant quest to make this blog as interactive as possible, I’ve added a Skribit widget to the right where you can suggest topics for discussion here at lifeasmission.  Anxious to see what sort of suggestions you all might come up with.

Just a quick note to lifeasmission readers.  I am moving to a new hosting company.  I’ve never made a move like this before so I am not entirely sure what to expect.  Just wanted to let you know in case the site goes down for a time.

As soon as everything gets transferred over and we’re up and running, keep your eyes peeled for some reflections on the Missional Learning Commons from this past weekend.  It was chalk full of great stuff!

Like I did for 2008, I hope to put together a montage of memories from 2009… hopefully in the next month.

But on top of that, I wanted to think back on what I’ve written in 2009.  Taking into account comments and personal importance, here’s a list of my favorite posts (1/month).

January: A Kenyan New Year

February: 5 Days, 4 States, and All Kinds of Goodness

March: Amy G. Drops the F Bomb!

I think this was the most commented on post of all time w/ 50.  And apparently there are a lot of people out there googling “F-bomb” cause it got all kinds of random Internet traffic!

April: Good News for Your City

May: Life on the Vine

June: Believing the Right Way

July: Married

August: Moving & the Muddy Buddy

September: Mi Amigo Manuel – Neighborliness Lives!

October: Bi-Vocational Ministry (series)

November: Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education (series)

December: Christmas Video Comment Extravaganza

Looking forward to the intersection of life and mission in 2010!

Click through to the site of you don’t see the video announcing the winners of the Better World Books gift certificate and Live by Giving donations.

Lifeasmission Readers,

Just a quick reminder of the video comment extravaganza I posted about last Sunday. So far we’ve got just two video comments – from my friends Ben and Joel (be sure to check out Ben & Joel’s blogs).

If you have a webcam or a way to make a short video, you can participate. You can get all the details in the short video below, but here’s the gist of it.

1) In the original post, leave a video comment (or link to a video) where you’re mentioning some way in which you are trying to make God’s desire for this season more important that the world’s.

2) As long as you leave the comment by midnight (CST) this Friday, you’ll have a chance to win 1 of 3 Christmas gifts that benefit others.

3) You’ll make my Christmas merrier by convincing me that this blog is not TOTALLY self-serving

Don’t forget, you are can make comment here if you want, but leave your video comments for this “contest” over on the original post.

Peace.

If you don’t see the video, click through to the site for the lifeasmission Christmas video comment extravaganza!

It was just over 3 years ago that I “met” Todd. I was in Norway studying and writing my masters thesis. In my search for resources, I came across Todd’s blog and was excited to find someone else who was thinking about missional living in suburban contexts. We developed a collaborative friendship in the blog-o-sphere and I finally got to meet him face to face when his church community, The Well, in suburban Philly, was hosting a small seminar with Al Hsu regarding “The Church & Suburbia.”

Through our respective church communities, Todd and I are both affiliated with Ecclesia, a missional church planting network which gives us even more opportunity to interact.

Todd is living the dream as a bivocational (or bioccupational as he prefers) pastor and draw some income from doing web design. I have always admired his work with crafting wordpress themes and when I saw some of his latest work on the blog of one of his friends, I jokingly told him to send me the zip file. He took me seriously and 30 minutes later, I am enjoying the beautiful goodness you see before you (unless you’re reading this through a reader – if you are, do yourself a favor and click through to check it out).

Anyway, Todd didn’t ask for any money, but I am gonna give him some anyway cause he’s my hero!

For the sake of your own soul, you should get to know Todd. For the sake of your blog, you should hire him to rock your world.

UPDATE: Flight was delayed in Memphis so missed the connection in Atlanta. We are enjoying the local Ramada and we’ll take the same flight tomorrow that we missed today at 3PM.

I am heading to Kenya in the morning with 5 friends.  We are going to be helping to put on a camp for a orphanage in Eldoret.  For those of you who pray, any that you would offer on our behalf would be most appreciated.  Please excuse the blogging hiatus.  We’ll see you in 2009!

I am in the process of upgrading my blog to include the IntenseDebate plugin.  I think this will be a helpful tool for commenting in the future (or maybe not, in which case, we’ll go old school).  But, while it is doing its thing, it seems that existing comments are unavailable and perhaps new ones won’t show up right away.  All should be back to normal in a few hours.