soybean bible, ecclesiastical zeitgeist and a penchant for salt

during the years that i attended soybean bible, the seeker church was the constant topic of conversation. most of the professors openly questioned the way that seeker churches: accommodated unbelievers, transformed worship services into evangelistic infomercials and drained the vitality of smaller congregations through transfer growth. i can still remember hearing faculty members bristle at the fact that, courtesy of john wasem, they had received the willow creek association (wca) newsletter in their mail boxes.

since i spent the majority of my time at soybean working with river glen christian church, a seeker-sensitive, w.c.a. affiliated church that was effectively evangelizing upper-middle class suburbanites and enabling them to follow Jesus, i took many of my professor's opinions with a grain of salt. most of the time, their critiques of the seeker church did not square with my experience, but i never attempted to mount an apologetic or say much of anything about it. i figured that my role was to use my gifts to honor God and to seek to build up the church, so that's what i spent my time doing.

after i left soybean, i spent a little over two years working with a seeker church in manchester, new hampshire. i enjoyed my time at manchester christian church and was proud to oversee a twenty-something ministry that welcomed and sought to equip everyone from missionary kids to wiccans to young adults who were in the midst of trysts with strippers. sure, there were times that i was terrified to hear three hundred suburbanites jubilantly singing "show us your power, O Lord our God" and other times when my hands trembled as i listened to sermons on topics like the prayer of jabez, but, by and large, my time there was quite fruitful.

after i had spent a few years there, i felt like it was time to either move to manchester and immerse myself in that ministry, since it's hard to bail your small group members out of jail when you live sixty miles away and i didn't want the girl who left laughably demonic messages on my cell phone to be saddled with excessive long distance charges, or become part of a ministry that was incarnating both the good news and the overwhelming compassion of Jesus within my local community. when rick bennett and j & b wilcox invited me to take part in the latter, i decided to move to beverly and invest my life in sinners and saints.

that transition took place over three years ago. since that time our little community has been worshipping God together, studying the Bible in an (mostly) expository manner, regularly volunteering with our local social services organization, welcoming sinners and saints, the drunk and the brain damaged to share life with us, and contributing a significant amount of prayer and payola to God's subversive mission in the world. i don't want to sound like a pollyanna when i say that it has been the most intriguing and fruitful period of my life thus far, but it has been a pretty wonderful experience.

anyway, after spending three years in the a-institutional church that God placed me in, developing friendships and partnerships with a number of people who are participating in the mission of God in innovative ways and walking with those who are seeking to re-imagine the way we talk about God, interpret His words and, individually and communally reflect His beauty, goodness and truth, i admit that i have a lot in common with and am deeply appreciative of the fellowship i share with those who play a part in the conversation and mission that is known as emergent (as a copywriter, i must confess that this is a horribly written, run-on sentence. maybe i'll use it as an example of "what not to do" in my next training seminar). as a result, i have found that i am once again affiliated with the group that currently sits in the cross-hairs of many of the professors and mentors that i deeply respect. many of these men, a number of which questioned the validity of the seeker church, are now wholly invested within those church structures. now that the seeker sensitive methodology has transitioned from an innovation to an acceptable institution, they have apparently chosen to critique and deconstruct emergent.

i find the latter situation rather ironic. it leads me to wonder whether in ten years emergent will become such a part of the evangelical fabric that we'll no longer question its existence or viability. on a more negative note, it makes me wonder whether Christians (please note: i am including emergent folk in this crass generalization) spend our time critiquing, defending and deconstructing church structures and systems because those tasks are a hell of a lot easier than fully pouring ourselves into the mission of compassion and proclamation that God is calling us to.

in the end, that's why i'm taking the pronouncements of my former professors (whom i deeply love, respect and am eager to please) with a grain of salt.

vote for gentry

a number of people asked me to run. for some reason they always did.

as we stood in front of the "gordon-conwell student association" table, friends and foes goaded me to sign up. the optimists reminded me that someone had to lead the body and lead it well, while the pessimists, who outnumbered the optimists 3 to 1, suggested that this would provide me with yet another opportunity to piss off the administration.

in years past i would have ignored such calls as hubris, a temptation to embrace the ambitious road of ascent or simply a sarcastic aside. this year, however, i responded boldly by choosing to run for korean student association president.

three hours later, the phone in my dorm room rang. "jeffsch, this isch schteven schcott, the schtudent assochiation president." i'd love to tell you that the mere sound of his speech impediment made me feel guilty, but it only confirmed that this was going to be a hell of a lot of fun. "jeffsch, i would likesch to thank for for schigning up to run for korean schtudent assochiation president." i affirmed that it was my privilege to run for this fine office and, if elected, i would serve the Korean students well.

"jeffsch, there isch only one problem. the korean schtudent asshociation isch not technically a part of the schtudent assochiation. in fact, it isch its own scheperate group." "really?" i countered. "if that is the case, why were signups included on the student association table in the dining room steven? i've put my heart and my reputation on the line by deciding to run and now you're telling me that i am not eligible? i am not going to kid you schteven (i couldn't help myself), i feel like the student association has failed me."

"well," steven said pensively, "the korean schtudent asshociation isch its own organizaschion. they have their own elecschions which are not overscheen by the Schtudent Assochiation. so that schinup wasch a mischtake. however they are an important partsch of the fabric of our inschtitution." "i know they are an important part steven," i said with traces of true pain in my voice, "that's why i want to be their next president."

"well, if you have friendsch who are a partsch of the k.sch.a. you can aschk them to nominate you and put you on the ballot for their elecschion." i thought for a moment, before responding. "thanks for trying to make the best of a bad situation steven, but i think i'll pass. i already feel like a jap walking the streets of seoul by this point, if you know what i mean."

"isch there anything elsch i can do for you?" steven asked. "isch there another schtudent office you would like to run for?" "well, now that you mention it," i said, "i would like to start campaigning for the presidency of the women's resource network. if you'd throw my name in that hat, i'd highly appreciate it."

if that ain’t the gospel…

"like a trash can fire in a prison cell
like the searchlights in the parking lots of hell
i will walk…down to the end…with you
if you will come all the way down…with me."

~the mountain goats, all the way down

listening to, and learning from, a different creed

dr. james and i were interviewed this morning by a film crew that is developing a documentary on salem. (side note: this crew is also responsible for the discovery channel's firehouse usa. if you've watched the latter show, let me know what you think). the director was intrigued by the confession booth and wanted to know what we thought about the inflammatory preaching and preachers that often foul our fair city during this time, how christians and wiccans co-exist in this supernaturally charged environment and whether we prefer beer that tastes great or beer that is less filling.

anyway, in the midst my artificial interview i began to think about what the church can learn from people who profess to be "spiritual, but not religious." i know that the latter statement is quickly becoming cliché, but i still think that it communicates something important about many people's approach to spirituality. we might even be able to call it their creed.

i've heard a fair number of christians (including myself) speak about this creed negatively, suggesting that people who say this are often superficial, anti-authoritarian individuals who only want their MTV and their salad bar spirituality. conversely, i've heard others speak about it in a more positive way, by discussing how we can create ministries, churches and other spaces in which these individuals can feel welcome (as miah recently noted, many churches have created spaces that have more in common with panera bread than a congregational sanctuary. the feel of these places is not accidental), hear and dialogue with others about the Christian faith and hopefully be catechized, assimilated into the body and sent out to share the gospel (which, in this context, usually means: our sins + jesus blood = salvation/eternal life. the gospel is such a contextual concept. when writing, teaching or talking about the gospel i think we should always provide a contextual definition, explanation, analogy or some other way of unloading this most loaded concept).

so back to the interview. somewhere in the midst of discussing the current political landscape of salem (which i know precious little about by the way. but it is t.v., so i guess informed discussion and ideational nuance isn't all that important), i began to wonder why we often do not allow our christian practice and mission to be at least partially shaped and informed by this postmodern creed. what if, instead of condemning this a-institutional creed or accommodating it by transforming it into a hook for our churches/communities/institutions, we listened more carefully to and learned from this creed and her confessors?

would such listening and learning lead us to provide more careful spiritual formation for the individual instead of the minimal catechization that many churches (i include s & s in this group) currently provide? in the midst of the formation process would we go to greater lengths to help the individual integrate into the community rather than simply throwing them into a generational, interest oriented or educational box? would they teach us how to move beyond focusing either wholly on the individual or wholly on the community by learning how to focus on individuals-in-community?

what else could the confessors of this creed teach us? what role do these postmodern confessors and their creed have to play in the formation of our communities and our personal spiritual formation? i can't help but wonder.

your input is welcome.

confessions of an emerging pastor

after spending four days spilling the church's sins, revealing her weaknesses and begging the world for forgiveness, i think it is time for me to offer a few ecclesiastical confessions.

1. about three years ago, after a valiant struggle against categorization and cunning attempts to label myself as an eh-vangelical instead of an ee-vangelical, i finally confessed that i wade in the evangelical stream. now after a couple of years of dancing on the margins and regularly deflecting criticism that has been launched at the emerging church by raising my hands in a sign of resignation and saying something like, "i'm not an apologist for emergent, just an interested party," i'm ready to come clean. i am a willing and ongoing participant in the emerging church conversation. i am proud to walk forward with this crew as together we submit to and pursue the mission of God.

2. i also confess that i often do not what "emergent" stands for and means. from my perspective, "emergent" is more of a missional community than a clearly defined institution or organization. that makes definitions a bit difficult.

3. although i have a deep love for the church, in all its various and sundry forms, i have occasionally scrutinized and judged other forms/methods/modes and denominations/organizations with a hermeneutic of suspicion instead of one of charity. for my lack of charity and the divisions it undoubtedly caused, i ask forgiveness.

4. for many years i mentally characterized committed pentecostal and charismatic christians as anti-intellectual enthusiasts. now i realize that individuals from these very traditions are expanding my perception in significant ways and are challenging me to replace many of my ministerial fears with a thoroughgoing missional faith. i thank God for these brothers and sisters and beg their forgiveness for the way i slandered them in the past.

5. i do not know how to pursue the missional opportunities God has given our community without embracing an entrepreneurial spirit. so instead of risking failure, i do nothing. i confess my fear of failure and will need a number of you to help me if i am to move forward.

6. i wax eloquent about social justice and commit a bit of my time to the poor. but when someone is truly disordered, in a psychological/physical/spiritual way, i often ignore them instead of accompanying them through their desert. in fact, i have a friend who is languishing on a "ward" right now and am almost afraid to visit her. i don't know what to do in these situations and do not know what to say. moreover, with this friend in particular, i question the value of my accompaniment.

7. i realize that when i'm teaching, preaching or praying i occasionally sound certain about what i believe and where i think the church should go. these slivers of certainty are completely unintended and often extremely untrustworthy. beware.

8. i don't do the mission/vision/values thing well. maybe one of the reasons i'm outside of the institutional church is because i am not a very organized person. i don't know if that's true, but it's definitely something to consider.

9. i am as uncomfortable with God's sovereignty as you are. i have openly questioned his ordering of sexual relationships on a number of occasions and, in periods of great suffering, such as those we have witnessed in South Asia, Iraq and Mississippi/Louisiana, i am quick to question both his presence and the extent of his control. i also have great, overwhelming questions about the last word and the word after that (the concept, not the aptly titled book) and the final consummation of the Kingdom.

10. i love Christ and am committed to His church. it is an honor to walk with you. i will walk, teach, sing (yes, even the girls' parts), accompany, lead, listen, serve and sacrifice beside you for as long as you will have me.

11. i confess that i have often had a false humility concerning my teaching and preaching gifts. i think that this tendency has occasionally had a negative impact upon the church and, more importantly, has dishonored our Creator by blighting the beauty of his creation.

may the peace of Christ be with you.

snapshots of a fragmented soul

cloaked in burlap, wrapped in snow, an introverted preacher calls to the crowd:

"city of peace, receive the peace of God."

"hot chocolate to warm your bodies, confession to warm your souls!"

"you've received condemnation from the church, now receive her confession!"

"drink our free hot chocolate, 'tis sure to ward off the bird flu."

"isn't it time the church came clean? come hear her confession."

somewhere along the line, the preacher realizes that his slogans are not the bane of the boulevard's existence. rather, his slogans are his way of blessing the churning, chaotic and charmed city. faith is such a funny thing. then again, so is fear.

the well-groomed pastor and the cynical confessor stop in front of a store front. the latter leans against a warped door, while the former lays his bag of crullers on a window frame. the pastor works for a mega, while the cynic helps lead a micro. one of the pastors carefully explains the four squares of his tradition, while the other laughingly imitates a friends' astute observation: "buncha e.o.e.in' whores in this town." both of these pastors, one carefully coiffed and bright-eyed, the other cynical, yet harassed by hope, are walking the same path. the body is broken, the blood is shared.

his name is scotland. i desperately want him to hear my confession, he simply wants to spend a few moments with me. i speak of the church and he asks about life, i talk about life and he questions the church. after twenty minutes together, i am standing on the fence of frustration, due to our failure of communication, when i stop. these moments, inviting the stranger walk beside, if only for a moment, are sacred. accompanying someone to a destination, rather than blithely providing directions, can be sacramental. i realize that i learned to administer this sacrament at the cracker barrel and cannot conceal a snicker.

dear God, how i loathe lyric posts

"remember to remember me.
standing still, in your past...
floating fast like a hummingbird."
~wilco, hummingbird

"hey jude,
don't make it bad.
take a sad song,
and make it better."
~paul mccartney, hey jude

"somedays i'm bursting at the seams
with all my half remembered dreams
and then it shoots me down again

i feel the dampness as it creeps
i hear you coughing in your sleep
beneath a broken window pane."
~david gray, this ain't no love that's guiding me

"saint joseph's baby aspirin, bartles and jaymes and you...
or your memory."
~the mountain goats, you or your memory

rest assured that there are lips and assholes on the counter and i'm planning on grinding. more to come on my unexpected stint as a street preacher, the third anniversary of sinners and saints, david gray and more.

overheard

"God loves you and has a hard plan for your life." ~Mark Galli, as quoted in Rob Moll's CT article, "The New Monasticism."

i think i just pissed myself

check out holy ghost tees. props to matthew for the link.

pixie notes, volume 1 part 2

please note: kellie wrote this post in response to a conversation that is taking place on aaron monts’ blog. so, if you are the kind of person who cares about context, read his post entitled house church. if you could care less about context, feel free to read it anyway. i think it’s stimulating stuff.

OK, so I know I’m getting in late on the conversation. I originally wrote a long comment which Jeff was going to post on his blog and link through the comments (I am married to Jeff by the way) but now this thing has 55 comments. So I might as well go and make it longer.

My intention is to help try and give a little more clarity on a very fuzzy thing: what home churches are and how they operate. Here is my curriculum vitae on homechurches (if you need it): I did my internship for LCC with Xenos Christian Fellowship and after graduating spent two years living with them. I have spent two years now helping to lead Sinners and Saints. OK…so not extensive, but still.

Side note: someone comments back hit the nail straight on the head. The author of the article that started this here shindig is a blessed child of God who doesn’t support his arguments well at all. I think it was called “cultish”. Anyways, I read his book with wineskins in the title during my internship. Long-time ago, so don’t have all the details straight but I do remember a strain linking the tabernacle times (good, Israel directed by God chosen Moses, and the church is mobile) and temple times (bad, Israel ruled by lots of bad and some good kings, not everybody can make it to temple) as a reason to go with homechurches vs. traditional churches. I think this sufficiently highlights the background of said article and provides evidence for referenced comments.

I understand the main difference between the home church model and traditional model to be the point of entry for the convert. In both models, people are brought through relationships. One will tend to invite them to the home church first and the other to the main church service. This is largely because home-churchers will identify themselves first with their home church and then the fellowship when asked where they attend. “I am a part of the Sinners and Saints home church. We’re with City on a Hill Christian Fellowship.” When I was in the traditional church I said, “I am a part of Jefferson Street Christian Church. I go to the Land home group.”

As to us getting the same bugs as the traditional church…would we be a church without it? I mean, wasn’t the NT with the exception of the Gospels largely written to corral said problems? Bit of info for you here: Xenos did go through a church split a while back. I think that it involved music.

So, why home churches? Here are my personal reasons:

1. Personally, as a woman, it opens ministry opportunities that are rarely open to me in the traditional church. Or if they are available there, I am to afraid of controversy to take. Honestly, I went through all of college planning on taking the academic route. My parents were always involved with ministry and when I was twelve one of their friends took another position because the church he was at didn’t want to change anymore. And ministers moved all the time…I’d already had enough of that. So I went to a ministry focused college with the intention of never marrying a paid minister or doing paid ministry. Besides, I’m a girl that doesn’t like to teach kids or sing songs so there weren’t many areas that I thought a church would hire me. And then Doc Kurka suggests I go to Xenos because the internship I wanted to do in Germany fell through. So I head out to Xenos thinking I’ll be studying worldviews or something (they do a big lecture series on that) and end up spending my time building relationships and learning to do church. My mentor challenged me to stay in the church…. “too many of our minds go into academia, we need some here in the church too” and “the best thing you could do is to teach someone else what you know…teach them to live Christ.” He told me that I could plant home churches. Wow, somebody actually telling me that I could teach and plant churches and help with church strategy. No one had ever thought I could do that before.

Anyways, enough testimony…back to the opportunities. The homechurches that I have been a part of (this may not apply to every homechurch you come across) have a head leadership of 4 people, 2 male and 2 female. They rotate teaching, take care of growth and discipline issues, and facilitate developing more leaders to hopefully plant a new homechurch. The female leaders do basically everything the male leaders do except peeing standing up. When I moved to Boston, Xenos was debating female elders, and the 2 head pastors were men. But on every other level ministry opportunity was shared across gender. Now of course, if one of the guys met some girl they worked with and she started coming ‘round we’d try and move the relationship focus to one of the girls….the “When Harry Met Sally” thing combined with ministry is a time bomb.

2. I love the fact that in home-churches most people are lay ministry. I really like hanging out with people that aren’t Christians. It is stimulating and stretches me. One of the best ways that I have found to do this naturally is through the workplace…I spend more time at work than I do with my husband. A 40-hour work week and ministry are feasible if shared with 3 other people and the church gets to 25-30 people at its largest. I find too, that it encourages people with other vocations that they can do serious ministry too. I’ve known home church leaders that were doctors and dentists and teachers and social workers down and waiters. And if you got them aside, they’d tell you that their main joy was building the church and discipling and teaching. Most of them hadn’t known Christ long before some had said to them….grow a little and you can lead a church too.

3. I love the fact that when I hear the word “ministry” in the homechurch it is applied to long conversations at coffee bars or pubs, or counseling and praying for another believer, or writing encouragement notes. I love the fact that in Xenos, when you meet with someone (even those that have been around for only months) you haven’t hung out with for a while, conversation will turn to ministry. All Christian are ministers, so it’s natural, right? And isn’t something wrong with your spiritual growth if you’re not serving? See, homechurches tend to put people to work immediately so they don’t know there is the option of pew-sitting. One of our guys was mystified that a close Southern Baptist friend evaluated his spirituality on the basis of knowledge rather than service. He thought the way to be a Christian was to spend hours loving the disabled guy that most people wouldn’t spend time with…or on the fact that he handed out money to help non-Christian friends at work with medical bills.

4. I love the fact that in home church, I get audience support when I am teaching. Another “ministry” of the church is to support the teacher by talking. If the service is dead, the members know that it is just as much their fault as the people guiding the meeting. I mean, if it didn’t make sense or you thought the teacher was completely not making the text relevant, you had the opportunity to say so, yeah? I love the fact that it is so laid back I can bring some of the classroom into a teaching, that I can go detailed background because it is a small group. I don’t have to worry about losing someone because I know that a) they tell me they don’t understand or b) I can see it on the face and I will have the opportunity to sort it out with them.

5. I love that fact that homechurches can at times totally disarm the lost. They come in with all these preconceptions about church and Christians which are immediately turned on their head. They start asking questions…You’re a church? Why are you meeting in a house? (Because the church is really the group of people worshiping God irrespective of where they meet). Who is your leader? (Well, we have 4 leaders because in the church ministry is shared and at some level everybody shares part of the responsibility). We get the chance to immediately start teaching truth because they start asking questions.

6. I love the fact that right now all of our money goes out (well except for $20 for toilet paper and coffee). Right now we don’t have any overhead and it is a blessing. Someday we may get big enough where it makes sense to get a building for the main teaching or to pay a few people to oversee a network of churches. But right now we have the blessing of giving it all away. When we started going through church finances at one set meeting a month I saw a passion for giving take hold in our members. We have our monthly missionary commitments, but our goal is to exceed that. Then we sit down and try and come up with places to give the rest too. Our goal is a near empty bank account. It’s changed us.

7. I love the history of church growth. When I interned with Xenos, I was with the North 4^th Home Church. When I came back after college, they were in the middle of birthing a new church and I soon was a part of Red House Home Church. Some of my friends stayed with the other church. When I moved to Columbus both churches had birthed a new church. So, now my friends in the original group were now part of four different home churches. That meant a lot of people came to Christ and grew up into maturity. Yeah, it took place over years but it is so cool to look back on and to look forward to for Sinners & Saints. It gives people a tangible hold on growth…like starting a new service, except it happens more often. And when they see themselves growing, they get excited to do it again.

So in the end, it’s still church. When we grow big enough we look really similar. We have the same goals. With this difference: most people become members by joining a home church and then start associating with the larger body. We start with the small and grow big because we intend for our small churches to self-replicate, because we intend our people to “self-replicate” themselves through helping someone else to grow in Christ.

Jesus, the Christ,
however little we know your Gospel,
it is light in our midst.
However little we grasp your presence,
it is light for us.

We search for you, Jesus, the Christ,
sometimes with uncertain steps,
but you have already come.
You bring light into our anxiousness.
You know
we would never want to choose darkness
but always welcome your inner life.
~brother roger of taize, life from within

happy haiku friday

the cold, black onyx

worn by waves, anchored in sand

remains my teacher

do or die, part deux

bottom of 5

you know your team is in trouble when you get overly excited about an HBP. oswalt looks unhittable.

first and second, no out. i'm going to follow rick's advice and think happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts...

(marginal note: i can't believe fox just drew attention to their dumb-ass "right now!" box by playing that stupid, we substituted substance abuse for social justice song by van halen).

and it's...another blown call. everett clearly missed molina. in these instances, where the umpire has absolutely no angle on the play, he should be allowed to ask the first base umpire, who had a perfect angle on the play, for assistance. dumb-ass union monkey.

okay. 3-1 is a hell of a lot better than 3-0.

that's the stupidest comment i have ever made.

you'd think that on a day like today, when i got a promotion at lifeway, probably sold the corolla, completed a ball-busting take home exam for a seminary class and am sitting on my couch with a beer in my hand and dog at my feet, i'd be a little more optimistic. so i'm doin' it. if karma works for earl, optimism will work for me!

good at bat for eckstein. he struck out, but he made him work. little by little. little by little.

top of 6

is there anything less compelling than an in-dugout interview with tony larussa? i think he would rather eat meat than talk to thom brennaman in the midst of a tight playoff game.

why do they have to put the in-dugout microphones on idiots? earlier, brandon backe noted that "the walk from the mound is the loneliest walk in the world. i don't care if i done good or not. i hate bein' pulled." jeff bagwell is sitting in that dugout, doing nothing, and you choose to mike the likes of brandon backe? come on! (of course, this entire argument would be unnecessary if fox pinched their penchant for stupid gimmicks (i.e., scooter, right now!, diamond cam, fan cam, manager interviews, etc.), of which dugout mikes are only a part.

you can't scheme a schemer! except when you can. that squeeze was huge.

bottom of 6

okay, the gig is up. edmonds, walker and sanders cannot catch up to a 97 mile an hour fastball anymore. or a 95 mile an hour fastball for that matter. this team has some major re-tooling to do over the winter. i told rick that if we don't win this year, we won't win for 7 or 8 years. i'm not the prophet or the son of a prophet, but...

i think pitching to pujols with one out and no one on bat is foolish.

i told you i wasn't a prophet. oswalt just stole albert's milk money.

that oswalt is one cool customer. he's a consistent, understated and sane version of prior. ugh.

top of 7

i found this incredible picture of gate 5 at bush on the nyt website this morning. i found it strangely touching. it also provoked the following top 5 lists.

top five moments at busch stadium:

watching the cardinals whip the cubs to secure the 1985 national league east title

sitting five rows from the field on a beautiful sunday that also happened to be the last regular season game at busch

willie mcgee's ninth inning walk-off homer on opening day in 1997

the "brawl" that was precipitated by will clark spiking the "secret weapon" and ozzie swinging at will and hitting him in the helmet

watching the cardinals whip the padres to win the first game in the 1997 nlcs

holy shit. when it rains it pours. they're chilling champagne in the visitor's locker-room right now.

bottom five moments at busch stadium:

making vicious fun of tony gwynn throughout the aforementioned game and laughing when somebody threw a twinkie at him

getting douched with beer in the right field, upper mezzanine section when i was nine years old. did i mention that i was wearing my brand-new satin bullpen jacket (oh yeah, i still have it)

having frank thomas' foul ball (it was an interleague game) bounce of my hand and into the hand of the guy sitting next to me. that was the closest i ever came

the day that our greedy, bob dole votin' owners push the self-destruct button on my youth. "it'll increase attendance." we drew over three million almost every year! "it will revitalize downtown!" yeah, for people who are seeking jobs with aramark or sports' service. "the ballpark village will be a year around draw!" yeah, just like the half-vacated union station. fuckers.

bottom 7

even tony realizes reggie can't catch up to that heat. hello so!

can i add another one to my top five? every moment i spent at the stadium with my grandfather. earlier this year he tried to convince me that i had attended a game at sportsman's park with him in the early sixties. i almost didn't have the heart to tell him that i wasn't alive then. it was one of those rare, advanced age moments that are truly memorable.

top 8

spent monkeying around with blogger's font formatting. insert curseword: _________.

bottom 8

if we could have taken 2 out of 3 from houston during the last week of the season, things could have been different.

top 9

i can't find it in me to hate craig biggio. but hating the fact that someone wrote a haray caray, a fired cards broadcaster by the way, quote on the walls of busch stadium comes naturally.

bottom 9

if we have to end it now, i'm glad we're ending it at busch.

enjoy retirement larry walker. thanks for playing with a bulging disk and enduring the cortizone shots.

for the record: i'm rooting for the white sox and trusting that the final send off will be respectable.

there it is. congratulations astros. but i hope drayton mcclain chokes on his reprocessed meat.

there's no crying in baseball. no crying.

does somebody need to tell tom brennaman that shoeless joe has been dead for 50 years?

worth a thousand words

alex posted this beautiful picture and wrote some nice words about our community on his blog. thought you might enjoy the picture and the post.

memorandum from captain random: do or die edition

if the cardinals blow this one, i'm going to hit an eight-ball and burn down those damn crawford boxes. in fact, while i'm at it, i might burn the other crawford - that abomination of desolation - down as well.

top of the seventh

on the red wall behind our black couch, i am keeping a list of people to kill. at the top of my list are two fox commentators. three ryan dobson stickers will be awarded to the first person to guess who these two "broadcasting professionals" are (for the record, i do not consider "scooter" a color commentator).

as much as i bitch about my life on this blog, i should probably mention when things go well...on that note, pettitte just picked eckstein of with the most illicit move i have ever seen. that move would be called a balk in babe ruth league. i can't believe they let that, um, motherfucking broadman & holman author get away with that! anyway, today i ground out four and half hours at work, helped phil wyman and his team set up a massive stage in salem for their haunted happenings outreach, was greeted with squeals of delight and hugs when i returned to the afterschool program after a two week absence and spent two and a half hours at the bev library falling further in love with n.t. wright (his nuanced, thoroughgoing understanding on the kingdom of God, as put forth in Jesus and the Victory of God continues to impress me). when i returned from the library, hopped up on caffeine and hungry for dinner, i found that kellie and her parents were watching scarface, which they thought featured less nasty language and violence than goodfellas. that killed me. of course, the cardinals could ruin it all, but that remains to be seen.

bottom of the seventh

if the cardinals lose this series, i'm going to remember two major base running gaffes. the first was pujols going on contact with no outs last night and the second will be eckstein getting "balked off" in the top frame. of course, i'll also remember our manager and all-star centerfielder acting like adolescents in the late innings of a must-win game, but i don't want to talk about that.

if i was an angels or an astros fan, i think i would have to strangle myself with a rally monkey or hurl myself off of the crawford boxes. is there another group of fans that pair such extraordinary enthusiasm with such unsurpassed baseball ignorance? i didn't think so.

burke singled. runners at first and third with one out. come on, berkman, roll into a double play.

holy shit. that all-league flag football player just broke my heart.

so many people give me shit for my pessimism. but scoff all you want, dear friends. pessimism softens the blow.

top of the eighth

wouldn't you assign a prisoner with a tatooed map of the facility to perpetual solitary confinement?

four outs to go and the commentators are defending the legitimacy of berkman's 337 foot home run. inappropriate comment deleted.

three up, three down. i'm going down to the basement to swipe some of james' methyl alcohol.

bottom of the eighth

i got nothing.

the umpiring has been woefully inconsistent this post-season. i think it's time to bust up the union.

now they're showing pictures of the new busch stadium. pour on the salt guys, pour it on.

top of the ninth

can we say die?

you gotta love eckstein. taking what he can get, even when it doesn't really matter. he's been one of the brightest spots of this season.

edmonds. one runner on, we're down to our last out nad pujols is coming up behind you. lean into it!

they're giving us just enough rope to hang ourselves. prove me wrong, pujols, you true believer. prove me wrong.

holy fucking shit. holy fucking shit.

bottom of the ninth

the cardinals haven't had a home run of that magnitude in 20 years (ozzie smith, 1985 n.l.c.s.. can we say go crazy, folks. go crazy!?)

two away. convulsions are starting.

alex just made a great point. if jeter had hit that homerun or a certain half-crippled first baseman smoked a shot off of the american league's best closer, the commentators would have gone crazy. as it was, it sounded like they were disappointed that they will have to miss their complimentary halliburton tour tomorrow.

holy fucking shit.

a moment of clarity in the midst of obfuscation

"in my head and my body there's this race between life and death going on. but then isn't that the case for everybody who's ever lived, forever and always? isn't that the nature of being alive?" -douglas coupland in eleanor rigby, pg. 247.

two and a half years ago, i took a seminary exegesis class that focused on matthew. although the lectures were a little bit stiff and the professor was suffering from the power-point plague, it was good stuff.

at least i think it was good stuff. instead of reading the commentaries, interacting in exegetical conversations ("it's a subjective genitive? that's fascinating!") and honoring the prof with my attention ,i re-read the novels of douglas coupland. i found myself wrapped up in the apocalyptic visions of girlfriend in a coma, i participated in virtual picnics in the palm springs desert and i wondered why the european girls i met during my travels never showed up on my front porch sporting hot pink cowboy hats and unholstered cap guns. i read the coupland corpus in dr. ciampa's class and i felt guilty.

but i shouldn't have. i think that christians would be a lot better off and the church a bit more healthy if we were as attentive to the everyday revelations that we stumble across in novels, music, conversations and coincidences as we are to the scriptures. i fear that we will never be able to fully hear the poetic proclamations of the ancient prophets or respond to their summons until we are willing to listen to and live among the prophets in our midst.

that is all. krista, thanks for the long-term loan.

always out of context

"i've got reservations.
about so many things, but not about you." -wilco, reservations

"who would you rather bone? harriet miers or condoleezza rice?" -jamie simkins

"when we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers." -karl barth

"i write down good reasons to freeze to death
in my spiral notebook,
but in the long tresses of your hair
i am a babbling brook." -the mountain goats, broom people

"held under these smothering waves
by your strong and thick veined hands,
but one of these days i'm gonna wriggle up on dry land." -the mountain goats, has thou considered the tetrapod

"george bush is the smartest man i've ever met." -harriet miers, current supreme court nominee and two-time runner up for miss washington

musings from the media center

last week i read mark winegardner's crooked river burning. this novel sets the love story of david zielinsky, the son of a connected union organizer and a small town starlet, and anne o'connor, who's family is to cleveland what the daley's are to chicago, against the social, political and athletic history of cleveland. throughout the novel david and anne attend the ill-fated coronation ball of allen freed, the self-proclaimed progenitor of rock and roll, participate in the golden era of indians baseball and browns football, the scenes that featured satchel page were at the center of my emotional experience of the novel, and find themselves in the midst the race riots, racketering, economic shifts that comprise rust-belt era politics. the story of anne and david's on and off again, at turns naive and adulterous, relationship provides a strong enough plot. however, it is the detailed descriptions of their individual attempts to form and maintain their identity within the city limits of cleveland that i found most compelling. i was especially drawn to david, who throughout his journey from a bright-eyed and ambitious politician to a middle-aged man whose ideals were broken by city hall and busted by the electorate, always retained a vestige of his initial hope. through david, winegardner is reminding us that we will all be exposed to the subtleties of evil and will, at some point, find ourselves playing life from both sides. however, although he has deep sympathy for the situations and circumstances we will ultimately find ourselves in, winegardner still believes that a conversion to corruption or an embrace of a thoroughgoing hermeneutic of suspicion is still the result of a choice. in essence, even in the midst of the most despairing realities, winegardner believes that we can choose hope.

in the end, as other readers far wiser than i have noted, winegardner reminds us that by telling one story well, even a story that is set among the unexpected twists and turns of the cuyahoga, a writer can tell the story of us all.

he spoke…and it was good

just a moment ago i had my feet propped on my plastic trashcan, cheez-its in my mouth and an excerpt of brother campbell in my hands. as i savored the saltiness of both the crackers and the clipping, a hesitant, high-pitched voice said “how are you doing?”

at that moment, tears unexpectedly sprung. the voice faded as quickly as it came, but in that moment i remembered.

i remembered God’s pronouncement of the imago and recalled why i chose to follow jesus in the first place. i had the ears to hear the image and a desperate longing to see it fulfilled in myself as well as in the pock-marked, beyond plump, half-hearted goth of a boy who finally dared to offer a greeting.

i tell you this not to be overly sentimental or spiritual, but because i need you to remind me. remind me to pay attention to these rare moments when tears unexpectedly spring and a lump arises. remind me to listen and long for the voice who spoke of the image initially and the high-pitched voice which betrayed it today.

as i continue upon this road i am beginning to suspect that it is these unexpected encounters and remedial revelations, rather than our systematic theologies and well-constructed liturgies, which will enable us to persevere. and to persevere, from my perspective, seems to be the point.

while we debate the degree of miers' orthodoxy

n.p.r. reports

seven point six, thousands dead

how i hate mother