A quote:
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.

If you are going to walk on thin ice you might as well dance

The Road to Enlightenment

This is the personal website of Matthew Dellinger. I use it to speak my mind on the continuing work of God in my life, our culture, 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.

Get Wisdom


Wisdom is not one of my stronger characteristics. It doesn't really matter what area you're looking at, I don't have it; if it occasionally looks like I do, its only because I'm a perfectionist. The most irritating thing about this is, it doesn't come up in huge areas; if my lack of wisdom led me to do something flat out stupid, that would be one thing. In my case though, it's mostly that it doesn't ask my self control to kick in until a little too late. For me, those two are a complimentary pair; how much self control you have determines how difficult it is for you to stop what you're doing or start what you're not doing, while wisdom is what tells you that you need to stop or start.

As I was think about that, it occurred to me that gaining wisdom is somewhat of a circular battle. We are told that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and that all wisdom is in Christ. So to gain wisdom, we need to be constantly seeking both the person and Word of Christ. But, being human, that's fairly low down on the priority list most of the time; I have tests and quizzes and homework and work other crap I want to do that tends to get a higher priority because either A) it has a deadline or B) it's a heck of a lot more fun than reading the Bible. So essentially, constantly seeking requires wisdom. I'm sure that that little circle is freakin' sweet once you're in it, but until then, it's kind of frusterating... prayer in this would be appreciated.

(3/23/08)

Spiritual Arrogance?


There's one spot in the new testament that always sort of rubs me the wrong way. It's in I Corinthians 2, where Paul instructs the Corinthians to "be imitators or me." That has always, in my mind, been the height of spiritual arrogance; he seems to be saying "you guys are screwing this up, and I have it right. Why can't you just do what I do?"

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all about having role models. We're human, and to know how to do what we need to do, a lot of time it takes examples. If you've ever taken a higher level math class, you know what I mean; without examples, it's impossible to actually understand the stuff well enough to do it yourself. After hearing a lecture, I can understand what is being done on the board while the instructor is doing it, but without working through it several times, I can't consistently do it myself. And I think that's what a lot he's doing here. But it still at some level bothers me to have this guy hold himself up as a standard for others. I tend to see the church and the spiritual life inside of that as a striving together, more of "how can we help each other move towards Christ?", rather than "you need to become like me." But then again, it's hard to deny that Paul was a man of God, and therefore a man which we should be desiring to be like.

(3/17/08)

Sarah's Pictures


Sarah now has a website up with her pcitures - go check it out!

Sarah's Pictures

(3/4/08)

Cheap Gimmicks or Fresh Ideas?


So over the weekend, I saw a rather interesting movie called Vantage Point. It wasn't particularly interesting because of the plot or anything - all fairly straight forward action movie stuff: car chases, shootouts, guys nearly getting nailed by being retards and running across busy highways. Entertaining, yes. Original, no. What got me interested was the way the action was presented. Rewind to the beginning of the movie.

We are shown a summit of world leaders uniting against terrorism from the perspective of a news agency. Suddenly, as he stands up to speak, the president of the US is shot and killed. As the reporters are commenting on that, a bomb goes of somewhere of-screen. Then, minutes later, a second bomb goes off under the podium. Rewind.

We are shown the exact same sequence of events, this time from the perspective of Secret service agents Thomas Barnes and Kent Taylor. They tackle a Hispanic looking man as he runs onto the stage as soon as the president is shot. Rewind.

We are shown the exact same sequence of events, this time from the perspective of Enrique, the Hispanic man who ran onto the stage. He is a Spanish cop who was assigned to protect the mayor of the town the summit was held in. He later escapes from the secret service. Rewind

We are shown the exact same sequence of events, this time from the perspective of Howard Lewis, an American tourist attending the summit. He videotapes the shooter, and shows this information to the Secret Service. He also meets Anna, a little Spanish girl and her mother. When Enrique escapes from the secret service, he follows him and sees him shot by a man in a Spanish Police uniform. Rewind

And so on. There are two or three more perspectives shown. Every movie review site I saw trashed this movie as using an interesting gimmick to build up a bad action movie, which really made me wonder. The movie doesn't have a lot of stuff going on in it - it takes 23 minutes, according to the camera. So what the directors have done is take a movie that would otherwise be relatively short, and keep you watching it for almost 5 times the length of the events. In my mind, that's good filmmaking. Why is it that we see plot tricks and the like as gimmicks, but the Saw series is applauded as excellent? The way I see it, a good filmmaker is not someone who can wow or shock the audience, but someone who can make anyone watch and take interest in what they are saying through the camera. On another note about this movie, when was the last time you saw a movie about terrorists and the US that didn't contain political commentary? This is such a movie (baring one short conversation between the president and his aide).

(3/3/08)

What Do You Ask Yourself Before Preaching?




(3/1/08)

Willow Creek Repents?


Few would disagree that Willow Creek Community Church has been one of the most influential churches in America over the last thirty years. Willow, through its association, has promoted a vision of church that is big, programmatic, and comprehensive. This vision has been heavily influenced by the methods of secular business. James Twitchell, in his new book Shopping for God, reports that outside Bill Hybels' office hangs a poster that says: "What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?" Directly or indirectly, this philosophy of ministry-church should be a big box with programs for people at every level of spiritual maturity to consume and engage-has impacted every evangelical church in the country.

So what happens when leaders of Willow Creek stand up and say, "We made a mistake"?

Not long ago Willow released its findings from a multiple year qualitative study of its ministry. Basically, they wanted to know what programs and activities of the church were actually helping people mature spiritually and which were not. The results were published in a book, Reveal: Where Are You?, co-authored by Greg Hawkins, executive pastor of Willow Creek. Hybels called the findings "earth shaking," "ground breaking," and "mind blowing."

If you'd like to get a synopsis of the research you can watch a video with Greg Hawkins here. And Bill Hybels' reactions, recorded at last summer's Leadership Summit, can be seen here. Both videos are worth watching in their entirety, but below are few highlights.

In the Hawkins' video he says, "Participation is a big deal. We believe the more people participating in these sets of activities, with higher levels of frequency, it will produce disciples of Christ." This has been Willow's philosophy of ministry in a nutshell. The church creates programs/activities. People participate in these activities. The outcome is spiritual maturity. In a moment of stinging honesty Hawkins says, "I know it might sound crazy but that's how we do it in churches. We measure levels of participation."

Having put all of their eggs into the program-driven church basket you can understand their shock when the research revealed that "Increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone's becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether they love God more or they love people more."

Speaking at the Leadership Summit, Hybels summarized the findings this way:

Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn't helping people that much. Other things that we didn't put that much money into and didn't put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.

Having spent thirty years creating and promoting a multi-million dollar organization driven by programs and measuring participation, and convincing other church leaders to do the same, you can see why Hybels called this research "the wake up call" of his adult life.

Hybels confesses:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

In other words, spiritual growth doesn't happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. And, ironically, these basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage.

Does this mark the end of Willow's thirty years of influence over the American church? Not according to Hawkins:

Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he's asking us to transform this planet.

(2/28/08)

Can Christian Musicians Play Secular Music for God's Glory?


Bob Kauflin answers this question in a way I appreciate, especially coming from someone of great influence in the modern worship scene.

"I received an e-mail recently asking a similar question about the legitimacy of Christian musicians pursuing a career in secular pop music. How should we think about it? Is it always wrong? It is something we should encourage? Here are some thoughts I've shared over the years with individuals who were trying to determine God's will for their lives in this area."

"The most important question to ask (and sometimes the most difficult to answer) is, 'What are my motives for wanting to be involved in secular music?'"While I never assume someone's motives will be completely pure, There's a significant difference between someone who lives to play on stage and someone who lives to serve others with their gifts."

Read the full article.

I honestly will get around to archiving this crap one of these days. I do realize that this page is about 3.75 miles long, and I'm about 4 months behind. It just takes time...

(1/21/08)

Screwtape on Broadway



Behind this low-budget but high-energy presentation is the New Jersey-based Fellowship for the Performing Arts, which aims "to produce theater from a Christian worldview that is engaging to a diverse audience." FPA had playwrights Jeffery Fiske and Max McLean transform Lewis' letters into a gripping drama, with McLean cast as an urbane Screwtape in a plush smoking jackets.

McLean does all the speaking for 85 minutes without intermission, and real sweat puddles his face by the performance's end. But Karen Wright as Screwtape's secretary Toadpipe, keeps the show from being just a talking head. A mix of Gollum and puppy, she squeaks and grunts appreciation of her boss, then mimes wonderfully the human behavior Screwtape describes in words.

The Screwtape Letters is on stage at a close-to-Broadway church that doubles as a theater, but it does not merely preach to the choir; reviewers in tehh Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, NYTheater.com and CurtainUp.com have praised it.

(1/8/08)

Scotch Mist

There is a great freedom in ditching your label and creating music purely for love's sake, as Radiohead did this year. And with that independence comes the ability to simply put together an amazing nearly hour-long concert that aired on New Year's Eve.



(1/6/08)