beauty

what do you mean by beauty? It kinda stands out to me as an intangible.(did I spell that right?) This is a fascinating thought.

Josh

stuff that matters

God
family
community
beauty
truth
people

what else? what doesn't matter at all?
j

blog on

still here and ready to go after whatever people come up with.
j

josh

totally makes sense. how do we challenge each other? what does that look like? anyone?
j

responsibility

this is just the first thing I think of off the top of my head, but as a community, we have to SUPPORT one another. There are many different ways, prayer, talking, listening, serving, etc. But I also think it is important to CHALLENGE each other. I know in school that I don't really learn anything unless I am challenged by it. It makes me engage my mind to a level where I have to think and analyze. If we don't challenge, then we aren't getting anywhere. Do I make any sense?

speaking of community

sunday night we will be talking about our responsibility to each other in community. i would love to hear thoughts from everyone about it. reply here or on the forum. thanks.
j

yup

totally agree with you on that.
j

thoughts on biology from a guy with a music degree

on the second post. i agree that it is possible to focus so much on trying to become a community that the actual community is hurt by the quest, but at the same time i think we have to put more thought and effort into community building because it is not our nature to move in that direction. the fungi and bugs and whatever will participate in the "decomposing community" (fun image there) because that is what they do. left to our own devices, we will (generally) gravitate to self-promotion which would then move us in the opposite direction of community.
i've started a new paragraph to continue my thoughts 3 times. i think that's i sign i should give up for now and call it a day.

wishing i was smarter (wiser?) than i am tonight
j

a quote worth quoting

Nelson Mandela as quoted in Messy Spirituality by Mike Yaconelli (which could also be called my biography based solely on the title)

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you."

wow - any thoughts?
j

community

cody i totally hear and agree with what you are saying, but don't you also think there is an element of community that involves doing life together? like we've talked about before, we are all involved in a ton of different stories (with different levels of participation in each of them), but i'm not sure they all lead to what we are looking for when we talk about "community". jerry falwell and i are (kind of) a part of the same "christian story" and "american story" and "human story", but are we in community? (the answer is "no" if anyone has any questions)
thinking more specifically about our church. we are in the "jacob's well story" together, but does just participating in that story create community? i think what i am wondering about is what kinds of things would help us do life together even though we are spread out geographically (from edmond to norman to stillwater to moscow). i would love to hear everyone's thoughts about that angle of the community issue.
again, i think you are right about the common story, i just think for community there must be more.
j

expanding the conversation

due to the number of us that are posting here (which is cool) and the volume of posts and topics, i'm afraid that this space is going to get overwhelmed or overwhelming pretty quickly. never fear! i have now added an online forum to the web site that will allow conversations to continue down one track for as long as they need to go. it also has space for conversations about creativity, questions, conversations about sunday nights, random thoughts and more. please register and explore all of the options (including he ability to private message each other through the board and add pictures, quotes, etc.)

i think there is a place for both the blog and the forum and i don't want to get too deeply involved in trying to line out what should go where. we'll give it a couple of weeks and see how things work out and then if we need to set some guidelines, that's doable too. (i don't know that i have ever typed "doable" before -- weird)

anyway, happy typing. let the conversations roll.
j

by the way -- you can access the forum through the web site, through the link to the right, or click here

and now for something completely different

ok all, this sunday night we are thinking together about community, so here is the question. since we don't live within walking distance of each other and we do have jobs, families, school, etc. what can community look like? the bible says they met together daily, in homes, etc. but since that really isn't possible for us, what can we do to develop community? what does it take? what does it look like?
i hope this generates as much thought as the buffalo bills thing yesterday.

still questing for a cool way to sign off
j

cody

i think it means we should bomb mardel's and claim we had hard evidence that bibles were in there somewhere, in the back, behind the wwjd breakfast cereal, near the bibleman display, nevermind.
j

i just have to share

driving around today i spotted this marquee in front of the church that most often fires out sayings that make me want to drive through the front door of the building. you ready?

the bible is God's weapon of mass instruction

WOW. i launched a lot harder on my blog, but didn't want to take up the space here.
j

quick correction for jonathan

if the cubs forfeited every game following the trades you mentioned, the cardinals would still be playing golf. houston finished second.
i do like the proposed name change. you would just have to be very careful about pronunciation.
fraud? 5 game series, 4 cub wins. you know what i'm talking about.
j

baylor dynasty

ncaa 2004 is the only way baylor will ever beat tamu. sigh

not cool enough to have a catchy exit line
j

mark it down

the first homestar runner reference officially graced the blog at 10:58:17 am on october 7. thanks for breaking the silence corey.
j

evan

hey man -- should have gone with eksports although ummm-wheatthins is inspired.
question of the day atlanta braves = buffalo bills of baseball?
welcome evan
j

language of evangelism

i think that has been a major issue in the church for a long time. how do we reconcile the need to tell the stories of our God with the fact that much of the language of the bible has been adopted as negative slang for christians ('born agains") or rejected as too absolutist or exclusive or not PC enough? i think it comes back to what we were talking about in worship the other night. our story with Christ is the thing that we know best and that has the best chance of being heard because it is validated by the fact that it is ours. we aren't telling a "christian story" or a "church story" or even a "bible story", we are telling our story. if it is really ours then the language becomes accessible because it is our language, not language we learned in an evangelism course. the man who was healed of his blindness in john 9 could only say "i once was blind, but now i see". it isn't terribly theological, but to a blind man it is a powerful gospel. i don't know that we need to find new ways to tell the story, i think we just need to find our way to tell it. Jesus was different in every aspect of who he was, but he offered the kingdom in ways that could be understood because he talked about things people understood (lost sons, wheat, bridegrooms)
i think the other part of our "language" is the church. we provide opportunity to see that our story is real and that it works. i said the other night, the greatest presentation of the gospel is the redeemed community being what it ought. what do you think?
j

a thought or two on love

lots has been said that is great. let me weigh in on a couple of things (or three)

on the whole loving people / loving Christ thing -- as i'm thinking about it, Jesus said whatever we do for "the least of these" (which could be any or all of us) we have done for him. he also said that obedience to him is how we demonstrate our love for him. if those things are true (and they are) then it seems that every time we love someone, we are loving Christ. which i think is just another way to say what cody said.

as for what it looks like to love Jesus more. i was thinking about how i fell in love with kenda. i didn't wake up one day and decide that was going to happen, it kind of snuck up on me. as i was with her and saw who she was and what she did and how she interacted with the world and with me i realized i was in love with her. i couldn't put my finger on a point when it happened, i just knew that it had. 14 years later as i continue to be with her and watch her and experience who she is and how she interacts with the world and with me and with our kids (etc.) i find myself falling more in love all the time. all that to say, i am in love with her because of her. i think it is the same thing with Jesus. if we are with him, if we see him interact with the world, if we know more about him and who he is and what he is doing, if we experience him in our lives then the result will be love for him that grows whether we focus on it or not. that's still not a how to, but i don't know that the "how" of that looks the same for any of us. i think if there was a rigid system for making it happen, God would have chosen to lay it out so that goofy people like me would be able to access it.
corey's right. thinking about love is a good thing.
j

last thing for the night

i'm trying to picture a squid training program.
welcome chad and melisha
j

admire my restraint

cubs win!
see i waited a whole 90 minutes before posting that.
j

continuing support of low art

spiderman's not bad, but the coolest super hero ever?
hong kong phooey
close second?
space ghost (before the cartoon network got ahold of him)

followed closely by the herculoids
your thoughts?
j
btw -- that ashley girl has a lot of time on her hands

in defense of low art

i like the little ceasar's guy. pizza pizza!
j

thoughts about anthropomorphism

which by the way is a fun word to type. when we describe God, we are stuck using human analogies because that's all we have. when we start to think about something that is completely "other", we have no way to describe it. it kind of like every unusual thing we eat "tastes like chicken". it doesn't, but we've all eaten chicken and so we try to describe the new or unusual by "taming" it and making it accessible. we are stuck doing the same thing with our descriptions and ideas of God.
fortunately, it seems like we have permission to go this route as long as we don't go so far as to make God like us. (or us like God i guess). throughout the Bible, God describes himself as things we can access (father, etc).
i know this doesn't speak to the heart of cody's blog, but corey got on that.
j

great article

i was checking out this month's articles on next wave and i ran across this great article on community. it is worth taking a few minutes to read. i've been thinking about how our community came together this weekend for phases and how much fun that was and how much there was to be proud of in the midst of it. thanks for all of you who made it happen. now go read the article.

still reading like i'm in prison (thanks for that line chad)
j

ummmmm never mind

cubs win! cubs win!

in case you missed it, you can rejoice in the details here.
thank you and good night.
j

by the way

welcome corey and cody. glad you guys are here. if anyone else wants to jump in on the conversation, email me and i'll send you an invitation.
j

evangelism

i think a lot of the struggle with evangelism is that in the past there has been a mind-set that evangelism and conversion occur in a vaccuum. that is, once a person chooses to step into God's story, then all of their previous story is declared meaningless so that they can become a good member of the church community. it's much easier that way because then the church doesn't have to deal with baggage and everyone can just sit together and be good and then go their separate ways. i guess that's great, the problem is there is no model for that kind of christianity in the bible.
yes the first followers of Jesus were changed dramatically by their interaction with him, but they also maintained their individuality. i can imagine that the conversations between simon the zealot and matthew the former tax collector were probably not always cordial.
the truth is, we cannot be shaped by just one narrative. your story intersects with my story that intersects with her story that intersects with God's story and all of us (well except for God) are changed by those interactions. that is the beauty and the struggle of doing life and faith in community. can i do life with someone who is radically different than i am, but who is also moving toward Christ just like i am striving to do? the beauty of the Body comes from its diversity, the problem has been that, for a long list of reasons, the Church as a whole has not been too interested in being diverse. i long for it.

like jonathan said in our community group a while back "i'm tired of going to church with white people"
j

response to cody

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. more later.
j

ou daily article about phases is out

besides giving me and liz a fun name change and relocating liz, it is a pretty decent article. i still love that this guy has no idea what to call me (besides jay hill) so i am the well "organizer" -- those who know me feel free to laugh hard now.
you can see the article here
happy reading! come see it this weekend.
j

more on mission / impact / evangelism

ok so i'm thinking about this whole evangelism / mission / impact thing and into my inbox flies this email from melisha. as far as i'm concerned, this nails it. i asked her permission to copy a ton of the content here, so here goes -- it is absolutely worth the read.

In high school, before I became a Christian, I despised most of the Christians I knew. I think a lot of that had to do with their way of evangelism, which
included a I know something you don't know attitude. They were on the
"right" side and I was on the "wrong" side and until I came to their side
they were better than me. Those people made me not want to become a
Christian. I don't know if that makes sense. Anyway, when I became a
Christian, I was taught not to be friends with non-Christians because of
their negative influence which didn't make sense to me completely. I wanted
to know how I could ever impact people I seperated myself from. Now, I see
how dumb all of it was, and I have had a fear of coming across like the
people I didn't (and still don't) like. I didn't known much about
evangelism but I did know I wouldn't do it the way I had seen it. I didn't
want to treat people like they were a formula and if I plugged in the right
numbers they would follow Jesus too.
I have understood the idea of forming relationships, and that idea felt
right to me. It was still just an idea, though. I didn't know what came
next. I still don't but God has shown me something. I have been looking at
the end product too much. I was looking at these people who I knew needed
God and thinking of the day when they found Him. There's nothing wrong with
that but I realized I had to look at all of the stuff that happens before
that. It is discouraging to look at someone and think I am not close enough
to them to be sharing Jesus through my life. Instead, I want to see the
relationship and the person as the most important thing and not be focused
on what may happen because of it. I also saw that I was spending all my
time knowing a lot of people a little bit. I started praying for God to
show me who I need to be pursuing a real relationship with.

thanks melisha -- you still have my vote to lead the conversation sunday night.
j

several of us spent some time last night getting the back ready for phases:exhibition this weekend. i have to tell you, thanks to a great save by josh about how we should set up the trellises (trellisi?) things look really great. i can't wait to see the room covered in art from our participants. chad and i had the chance to talk to isaac from the ou daily and there should be an article (complete with chad's mug shot) in friday's paper.

what a cool opportunity to encourage creativity and creative people. if you can make it out to any part of the event, do it.
j