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    The Death Rattle of Christendom by Jason Coker

    May 8, 2010 // 1 Comment »

    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.

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    Posted in blogging, christendom, social networking

    New Look for Lifeasmission

    May 7, 2010 // 5 Comments »

    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.

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    Posted in blogging, social networking

    Tweet Old Post WordPress Plugin

    February 23, 2010 // 4 Comments »

    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.

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    Posted in blogging, social networking

    The Scripture & Culture Seminar with Darrell Guder and Andy Crouch

    October 24, 2009 // No Comments »

    Get in on this!

    Here’s the twitter stream for the #ecclesia hastag
    [iframe http://twubs.com/ajax360/embed/ecclesia/? 500 400]

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    Posted in church, conference, culture, leadership, missional, social networking

    Boston Bound: Lookin for Tips

    October 14, 2009 // 4 Comments »

    I have had something like a 15 year love affair with Boston, which is strange for someone who has never actually been there, but that’s about to change.  Amy and I are currently planning a long weekend in Boston and various excursions from there around New England.

    boston planning

    So, who’s got the 411 on Boston and the surrounding area?  What and where do we need to make sure to check out?  What’s our best bet for scenic, yet affordable accommodations?  Looking for any advice anyone wants to throw our way, thanks.

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    Posted in Amy, social networking, travles

    Job Search 2.0

    October 1, 2009 // 5 Comments »

    If it wasn’t obvious by my open letter to HR, I have been looking for work.

    When Amy and I got engaged, we went round and round about whether to be in Memphis where I was pastoring or in Chicago where she was just getting settled into a pretty major career position.  Through lots of prayer, discernmnet, and discussion, Chicago won out.

    I moved up here at the beginning of May and since then, beside keeping myself busy with wedding planning and then getting us settled into a new apartment, I have been teaching an online class, The Emerging Church in the 21st Century, for Fuller Theological Seminary.

    With the wedding behind us, the apartment pretty much in order, and the class coming to an end, I am getting more focused on looking for work.

    Both because we are so at home in our church community, Life on the Vine, and because we are trying to make decisions that offer us the flexibility to be part of birthing a new missional comminity, I’m not looking for church staff positions.  Instead, I have mainly been looking for staff positions at colleges and universities as well as with non-profit organizations whose work in the Chicagoland area I could get excited about.  I have also given some consideration to working my way into the world of web development through project coordination and information architecture.  I am definitely open to continuing to be involved with online education.

    While I am conducting the job search 1.0-style (job boards, websites, and other manner of non-relational means), I’d rather go the route of Job Search 2.0, via relational connections, leveraging the power of social connectivity.

    So, at the risk of this being misinterpreted as some sort of act of desperation (IT’S NOT), but because I tend to be a relational networker, I thought I would open my search up to a broader audience to solicit your ideas and feedback.  Anyone, especially those of you who know me well, have any bright ideas about jobs, resources, or people I should try and connect with?  If it helps, here’s a basic resume and CV.

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    Posted in chicago, community, social networking

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