Church, two books and some video projects

This morning we had breakfast at Patrick's Bakery, a cafe that is located inside of a greenhouse and serves terrific French pastries. I tried to take some pictures of Silvi against some of the colorful flowers, but she has become camera shy lately. I think I did manage to capture one or two shots without her in flight away from the lens.

During the kid's nap time, I bought two books - Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now by Eleanor Coppola and The Beginning and the End by Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev - at Magers and Quinn, a must-browse bookstore if you're ever in the Uptown area of Minneapolis.

Yesterday we went to the Saturday evening service at church, then had supper with my parents at the Perkins down the road, which stayed with me into the wee hours of the morning. It's only been a month, but going to church feels right for the first time in, well, ever. Guess I've made my peace - for the most part.

This week at work I'm editing an hour-long training video for a large medical company and am working on another project on the side using my own gear. It'll help to pay off some of the debt I incurred when I bought all the video equipment for my company.

Big Bird vs. Goliath

I'm revisiting some thoughts from a few years ago because I still haven't found an answer that is satisfying.

I begin with this question: How do I teach my kids about God? I know that Silvi and Ian will emulate me, which is a terrifying prospect. They'll learn about God first through my example. It's true, I love God deeply but the fact is, I often screw things up. And besides, I don't want my kids to love God as I do: I want them to love Him better than I do.

I've been wandering through the kid's sections of bookstores, looking at the religious books. It's a bit frightening, really. Children's Bible stories with pictures of everyone smiling the same sticky-sweet smile. I mean, come on, when David was walking around town with Goliath's head in his hand, I think more of William Wallace than of Big Bird. Of course, I don't believe that my two-year-old daughter will cuddle up with me at night while I flip through a picture book of Braveheart. And so I have a dilemma. Do I buy the Bible picture books with all the happy smiling prophets and lepers and warriors?

I drive my wife crazy with my penchant for focusing on minutia. But I really do think this matters. A lot. It's taken me a couple of decades to get rid of some of the religious baggage that caused me to walk around like Quasimodo. I know that it is impossible to prevent my kids from having a lot of their own misconceptions about God; it's part of living with limited perspectives. But I don't want to make Silvi and Ian's trek with God more tiring than it has to be. And I have to believe that a childhood of looking at pictures of real people of history like Moses and David and Solomon portrayed with pasted on Crest-white smiles has got to have some kind of an impact.

Maybe I'm making too much of this, or maybe it's "a guy thing." I can't really get into a bunch of smiling vegetables acting out the Last Supper. I did find a few books online at Eerdmans publishing that are at least artistically inspiring. Maybe that's the best I can hope for in a children's story book.

Still going...

I've been staying away from the battle between the Emergents and Traditionalists lately. I made the mistake of clicking through some of their sites for the first time in a few months. Like the Duracell bunny, they're still going....

The first poster is put out by the anti-emergents and the second poster is the emergent's response.

The end of First Friday Films

The co-founder of First Friday Films, John, has moved back to the east coast to pursue work with The Discovery Channel and to get his non-profit organization - Media Serve International - up and running. He asked me if I wanted to continue showing documentary films at Bethlehem Baptist, but after thinking it over, I've decided not to any more. Besides having to work on my philosophy series, I'm just not cut out for the "culture" of the Church. I enjoy talking about films and diverse issues, but perhaps there is another venue.

I still want to have a Nanni Moretti marathon film showing: Palombella Rossa, Aprile, Caro Diario and The Son's Room, in that order.

Iraq

Tonight we are showing My Country, My Country at the First Friday Films gathering. It's getting more difficult to show films at the church as we are gaining more visibility and are eliciting a few strong reactions. This month's selection is upsetting a few people because of the non-Christian perspective on the war in Iraq. One person who has attended the church for 13 years wrote a strong letter asking that only Christian films be shown in "his" church. Last month a few people got upset about the humanitarian slant in the particular film. Another small group of people want us to use more Scripture. The month before that we got a long letter denouncing the "pro-Palestinian" view of the film Gaza Strip.

We've been doing this for over a year and we've gotten one positive email. Oh well. That's how it goes when you try to do anything, I suppose. Lots of naysayers.

But people keep coming.

Forgiving the Church

"When we have been wounded by the Church, our temptation is to reject it. But when we reject the Church it becomes very hard for us to keep in touch with the living Christ. When we say, "I love Jesus, but I hate the Church," we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too.

The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the Church seldom asks us for forgiveness, at least not officially. But the Church as an often fallible human organization needs our forgiveness, while the Church as the living Christ among us continues to offer us forgiveness.

It is important to think about the Church not as "over there" but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer."

Henri Nouwen

Blog depression

There are a few blogs that I glance at most days. It's starting to get to me. Being the contrarian that I am, I like to frequent opposing viewpoints. I find myself reading a few Emerging Church blogs, such as TallSkinnyKiwi and Backyard Missionary, then click over to Slice of Laodicea or Apprising Ministries to read some rather forceful critiques. When I'm done with the "serious" discussions, I pop by Purgatorio for some old-fashioned satire. I sometimes follow links to the people that comment on these blogs, and their blogs usually reflect similar positions.

By the time I finish with these writers, I usually need a shower. I find some refreshment from reading Rain City Pastor, the blog of the pastor (obviously) I knew in Seattle. His thoughts are usually balanced and matured, seasoned by years of pastoring a rather large metropolitan church.

A few months of following the battle within the walls of the Church has me longing for something - solid. Maybe that's why I find myself gravitating toward Lewis and Chesterton and MacDonald. I'm searching for the "mere" in the chaos of modern-day Christianity.

Coldplay plays Lakewood Church?

After taking Silvi to see Coldplay, whenever we stumble across Joel Osteen on tv, she starts to hum "God put a smile upon your face."

Leadership, Life and Theology Institute

Solomon's Porch is hosting a Leadership, Life and Theology Institute next month. There are a few events I am interested in attending. (The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann being one of them. Reading the Questions: Interpreting the Bible with Hints from Derrida and the Ancient Rabbis also looks interesting.)

Community?

Some friends I haven't seen in a long time stopped over last night to see Silvi. One of them is in the process of leaving his church of eight years or so. I say in the process because he still enjoys listening to the sermons, but he has no fellowship with the huge congregation.

He attended a conference in Colorado put on by Aussies Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, where they spoke of their book, The Shaping of Things to Come. I'd never heard of the book, but I guess it's stirring the waters. My friend and I talked about it, about incarnational living, about this whole community thing. I enjoyed the conversation, but I woke up feeling very frustrated.

I just want to get there. Wherever there is. I've been actively deconstructing Church for nearly five years, and it is so old. Once, when I lived in Seattle, I spent a few hours sitting overlooking the Puget Sound with a prof. from Mars Hill Grad School. We talked about breaking out of the deconstruction circle. He believes that it is possible to break free, at least enough to find some rest. He said that what's often lacking is someone to come along side of us and say, "Psst. Look over here. Here's a small door you can walk through. And I'll go with you.

I feel like I've been walking through a lot of doors. Which one is the small door?And who will go with me?

But I digress into self-pity again. I just need to serve more, read my Bible more, pray more, be Missional. No, no. I just need to do less, allow God's voice to penetrate the silence, become less and less. Wait, I've done all those things. What's on tv?