A quote:
If homosexuality is a disease, can I call into work 'gay'?
If you are going to walk on thin ice you might as well dance
This is the personal website of Matthew Dellinger. I use it speak my mind on the continuing work of God in my life, our culture, the the church, and anything else that comes to mind.
I'm currently trying to move into a more serious realm. I want to use this space primarily to address the second and third topics I mentioned: culture and the church. I'm always looking for something to write about, so if ya'll think of anything, just ask and I'll talk about it.
Enjoy, or at least think about what I post.
A ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Sept. 11 offered some patriotic music and a few dabs of the classics, but everything else made me wonder whether I should be listening as a critic or as a Christian. A lot of liturgical music these days asks you to choose between the two.
With its hand-clapping, inspirational, just-folks character, how different this music is from a tradition that ran from plainchant through Josquin and Palestrina to Mozart and Beethoven, and finally to Messiaen and Britten. Without the church to inspire - not to mention finance - great composers, how diminished the history of music might seem to us.
Beauty of musical color, elegance of harmony, soundness of construction and exquisiteness of originality once worked as the lure that would draw the faltering worshiper nearer. Music, as well as architecture and visual art, represented heaven to the earthbound, something dazzling and unapproachable, an advertisement for a paradise still held at arm's length.
Sophisticated music that doesn't reach out directly to its listeners - that doesn't depend on their response - bears the seeds of its eventual irrelevance. One reason classical music struggles as it does today lies with the several generations of composers in the last century who demanded that audiences understand them rather than the other way around.
But music written solely for the comfort of its audience is equally irrelevant. Pushing ethnic buttons as a form of quick access to the worshiper?s attention is only advertising. Easy familiarity acts like the door-to-door salesman's foot in the door, the prelude to making that sale.
Check out the full article here. What do you think of the article - do you agree?
(9/26/07)
The concept of countercultural rebellion and its elusive twin?cool?have resulted in a status competition that has driven consumption to unprecedented heights. It's not conformism that leads us to spend, spend, spend on the unnecessary and the ephemeral, but its opposite: the quest to distinguish ourselves from the masses through our enlightened, hip, or just plain rebellious consumer preferences. And marketers of products ranging from cars (the Volkswagen Bug) to computers (the Mac) to shoes (Doc Martens) have been reaping huge harvests from the countercultural seeds that were sown in the 1960s. The point was never underlined more heavily than when Kalle Lassen, editor of the ragingly anti-capitalist Adbusters magazine, came out with the Black Spot sneaker: a "subversive" running shoe that Lassen hoped would "uncool Nike" and "set a precedent that [would] revolutionize capitalism." As Heath and Potter point out, there is nothing "subversive" about trying to beat Nike. "That's called marketplace competition. It's the whole point of capitalism...."
(9/24/07)
Missional is a term that is often associated with the ECM; we often hear of missional-emerging churches. The term ?emergent church? is also a term that is often used interchangeably with ?emerging church.? Are all these synonymous? Very few who have looked at any depth will tell you so. If they are not synonyms, what do they mean?
First off, I think we?re sort of comparing apples and oranges here. Although words get misused and pick up meanings of their own as they are used, these three terms originally were connected by association, rather than by meaning, as they are now seen to be by some. We?ve already talked about what the emerging church is, so that?s already done. Since, if the internet can be believed, missional can stand by itself of be connected to either of the other two, I?ll start there.
The term missional originates from the Latin ?mission dei,? or the ?sending of God.? The idea is that missions is not something we do, but rather something that is inherent to the nature of God. This mission is why Christ came to earth. I like the way TallSkinnyKiwi (aka Andrew Jones) put it;
?The Father sends the Son,
the Father and the Son send the Spirit
The Father and Son and the Spirit send the church into the world.?
The net goal of all of this is the glory of God. This isn?t some to do with how the church works, but rather an idea about why the church exists. TSK say ?The concept is that mission is not a program of the church but rather an attribute of God. Mission comes first from the heart of God and we are caught up in it rather than initiating it.? It?s important to recognize that this term isn?t really talking about something the church does as an organization; if a church labels itself missional, it means that they have a focus on seeing the individuals that make up the body living missionally, living their lives as part of the mission.
Looking at it this way, it?s easy to see why the EM jumped onboard with this idea. The term has been in use since the late 1800s, but has gained publicity because of the EM?s use of it. We need to get this straight; missional is no more synonymous with emerging than is total depravity or sanctification.
Emergent is something completely different; in its most strict sense, it?s an organization ? Brian McLaren?s EmergentVillage. The folks at EV tend to use emerging and emergent synonymously, but I?m with Mark Driscoll on this; they are different. In a broader sense, it describes the subset of the EM that shuns hard and fast theology and prefers to talk about and question things, embracing and applying the epistemology of our culture to Christian doctrine. This appears to me as a transfer from the organization?s post-modernist leanings, but I?ll talk more about that later. They are often happier to discover that they don?t know something than to discover knowledge itself, and enjoy finding new ways to think of things. For example, instead of referring the Bible as the Word of God, it is viewed as a ?member of our community of faith.? Mark Driscoll especially has been noted for distancing himself from the ?emergent thread? because of their lack of concrete theology.
Sorry about how long this one took. That's partly due to the fact that I'm been looking at the EV for quite a while, and still haven't figured it out. What they say about themselves seems do differ from what they do, and both differ from what others, even in the EM, say about them. Besides which, they seem to have this strange obsession with refering to things in unusual and confusing ways. Also, life has been getting crazy, so I haven't had much time to write. Hopefully that has calmed down somewhat, so the next one will be more forthcoming.
(9/12/07)