The Rise of the Casual Christian Tribe

Religious researcher George Barna has named a new Tribe on the religious spectrum, the Casual Christian. Barna writes,  

“Casual Christianity is faith in moderation. It allows them to feel religious without having to prioritize their faith. Christianity is a low-risk, predictable proposition for this tribe, providing a faith perspective that is not demanding. A Casual Christian can be all the things that they esteem: a nice human being, a family person, religious, an exemplary citizen, a reliable employee – and never have to publicly defend or represent difficult moral or social positions or even lose much sleep over their private choices as long as they mean well and generally do their best. From their perspective, their brand of faith practice is genuine, realistic and practical. To them, Casual Christianity is the best of all worlds; it encourages them to be a better person than if they had been irreligious, yet it is not a faith into which they feel compelled to heavily invest themselves.”

Read Full article here

New Pop Culture Podcast: What the Shopping Mall teaches Us. The Coffee Shop

Last Friday on my radio spot Clayton and I continued our imaginary wander around a shopping mall and this time we stopped at the Coffee shop. We discussed the cultural meanings behind Coffee and the Coffee shop. You can listen or download here.

Living Like Jesus

Looks like this is turning into book recommendation week!

On Sunday at Church I showed a short video about Ed Dobson, who wrote the book The Year of Living like Jesus. I first heard about Ed’s book a month or so ago and rather cynically thought to myself ‘Here we go someone is trying to do a Christian version of A.J. Jacob’s The Year of living biblically.’ I expected that the book would be written by some cynical twenty something, who would chide the reader for their uptightness while he vibed out in a Jesus robe at the beach.

But then I actually picked up the book and found something completely different to my preconceptions. Ed Dobson is not an angsty young man, rather he is a middle aged former pastor who is dying of Lou Gherig’s disease. When Ed discovered that he would only have a handful of years left to live, he decided that what he wanted to do with the limited time he had left was to truly try and become like Jesus. Thus Ed decided to put aside all of the knowledge, theories and theologies that he had learnt and to truly walk and live each day like Jesus.

Ed first of all realized that to be like Christ he must immerse himself in Jesus’ world. He steps out of his comfort zone living as Jesus would have as a Torah observant Jew, he begins to pray at the Synagogue, to pray the Hebrew prayers that Jesus prayed. He listens to the gospels everyday over and over on his ipod. He begins to pick up hitchhikers, he gives away most of his clothes. You may not agree with everything that Dobson does but his desire to be more like Jesus is a powerful reminder of what it truly is to be a follower of Christ.

This book is a raw, honest, moving and at time heartbreaking story of a man’s attempts to follow Jesus as practically he can. For me this book has really struck a chord, firstly it reminds me that we cannot separate Jesus from his Jewishness, something that sadly Christian history has done again and again. But most of all it reminds the believe to borrow a term from my old boss and friend Alan Hirsch that we are committed to the conspiracy of little Jesus’. That God’s plan to redeem the world is centered around us each day getting up and asking the question how can I be more like Jesus today.

 

Margaret Feinberg

Often after I give talks people seem to sniff out the fact that I read a lot, so people come bounding up to me asking for recommendations of books to read. Often I am dumbstruck, this is normally because I am reading some obscure history book about some strange obsession that I have at that moment. I also find so many contemporary Christian books difficult to recommend simply because without wanting to sound judgemental, a lot of books these days seem like pop psychology with a thin Christian veneer.

However one author that I have been recommending to people is Margaret Feinberg. I had the privilege of meeting Margaret and her husband Leif earlier in the year, who besides being really interesting people, were incredibly helpful, giving this car less Aussie a lift back to my hotel, a journey which I had naively intended to walk ( I had not realized that being a pedestrian was against the law in Southern California). Margaret has a unique style, in which she manages to both be readable and profound at the same time.  Check out Margaret’s books  The Sacred Echo and The Organic God as well as her latest Scouting the Divine.

The Link Between Creativity and Creeds

I have an article up on the Origins Project site in which I examine the paradoxical link between Creeds and Creativity, and manage to advocate for the Ramones, an Austrian Fellow named Helmut and a high view of Scripture. Check it out here.

The Trouble with Images

I have been thinking a lot about the Biblical Commandment not to make images. It is a commandment that we have always applied to the creation of idols, but if you examine the text, it refers not only to the making of idols but of likenesses. In his study of the power of image amongst Japanese youth, cultural critic Donald Richie notes,

“We live in such an inundating sea of images that it is a commonplace that we now look at the image and not at the thing itself. . . . A result is that essence is turned into surface and integrity vanishes. . . . We have now reached an age where we may be beginning to appreciate the biblical second commandment which, as you will remember, says that: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any likeness of any thing.”

I think that the command not to make any images is centered around the Hebraic fixation with knowing (yada), that is to truly know God, to truly encounter relationaly someone or something wholly other. The image creates a substitute for the other, sure it is a replica but it is not the real thing. It is a facsimile of the other devoid of relationship. This is what pornography is at its core.

For a moment, imagine a culture in which there was no photos or capacity to create images. Would we have eating disorders and body dysmorphia? How would consumerism be affected? Would celebrity culture be destroyed? It is probably not a realistic scenario but a provocative one none the less.

I am going to leave the last word on images to C.S Lewis who wrote in A Grief Observed,

Images I suppose have their use or they would not have been so popular. to me however, the danger is more obvious. images of the Holy easily become holy images – sacrosanct. my idea of god is not a divine idea. it has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself.

He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme examples, it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.

Vertical, Horizontal and Spooky!

“At the same time, the word of the Cross is called folly because it assumes that the vertically-impaired, the horizontally-addicted, the very people whose habits deny the presence and power of grace—especially those who are made aware of and thus grieve their idolatry—are given the grace that makes all things new. Grace makes the horizontal possible in a whole new way.”

From and article entitled In the Beginning, Grace in Christianity today. This article is quite interesting in of itself, but what is most interesting is the similar way that the writer Mark Galli uses the terms horizontal and vertical in a way that is spookily like the way that I use the terms in my new book. Anyways my weird insights aside the article is a good read. Check it out full article here  

WorldVoice

 

 

 

My friends at World Vision have shared with me a really interesting new online initiative that I thought you guys might be interested in. Check it out here

National Youth Ministry Conference

Having a great time here at the National Youth Ministry Conference. Has been great to catch up with old friends and meet some new people. I have spoken twice and about to launch into my third talk, the groups have been really responsive and have seemed to really nut through some of the stuff I have been presenting. I often enjoy times like this to present new material. I spoke yesterday morning on the history of cool, and we took apart how the concept of cool operates as one of the most powerful social ethics in our culture today. In my second talk I explored what the removal of the sacred from our culture means for young people and I discussed some ways forward for churches and youth ministries to become beacons of covenantal relationships in a world that is rapidly atomizing. I about to in my last talk throw around the concept of radical individualism and discuss how many young people are following a new religion which has grown up in our midst of which most of us are unaware.

Faith for ME!

“The great weakness of North American spirituality is that it is all about us: fulfilling our potential, getting a handle on principles by which we can get an edge over the competition. And the more there is of us, the less there is of God.”

Eugene Peterson: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places ( I think that this statement does not just apply to North American Spirituality but to Aus/NZ/UK/Euro spirituality as well.

New Podcast: The Other Side of Repentance 3. Cultivating a Life of Sacredness

This talk is the third part of our series on the concept of the sacred and its disappearance from our culture. In this episode we discuss the nitty gritty of cultivating a life of sacredness. We discuss how the believer is called to both destroy the sacred cows of our culture, and to also bring the sacred into the everyday. Plus we also contrast the worldview  of 80′s cult TV show Monkey with the biblical imagination.

Listen or Download Here
You can download or subscribe through itunes here

McKnight on McLaren

Really interesting article by Scott McKnight in which he explores the theology of Brian McLaren. Read here.

New Pop Culture Podcast: What the Shopping Mall teaches us. Homewares

We started a new series this morning on the radio in which we take an imaginary walk around a shopping mall. In our imaginary shopping journey we ask the question ‘what do the things we buy tell us about ourselves’. This morning we looked at what our homewares and obsession with interiors tell us about our cultural situation. We examined the history of the department store and how luxury shifted from something for the aristocracy to something for the masses. Plus we look at how the attacks of september 11th 2001 led to a growth in the sale of flatscreen TV’s. All this and more. Download or listen here

Religion the Facebook Way

For the longest time, the question just sat there on his screen. Cursor blinking. Waiting quietly, like a patient priest in a confessor’s box.

Religious Views: _____.

Creating a Facebook profile for the first time, Eric Heim hadn’t expected something so serious. He had whipped through the social network Web site’s questionnaire about his interests, favorite movies and relationship status, typing witty replies wherever possible. But when he reached the little blank box asking for his core beliefs, it stopped him short.

“It’s Facebook. The whole point is to keep it light and playful, you know?” said Heim, 27, a college student from Dumfries, Va. “But a question like that kind of makes you think.”

Such public proclamations of beliefs used to require a baptism in water, or a circumcision, or learning the Five Pillars of Islam. Now Facebook users announce their spiritual identity with the stroke of a few keys. And what they are typing into the open-ended box offers a revealing peek into modern faith and what happens to that faith as it migrates online

Thanks to Christoph for sending me this. From the Honolulu Advertiser. Full Article here

Amazon

I am now a grown up and have an Amazon Author’s page! Check it out here

Mooncakes, New Project and Speaking Around the Place

Well things have been pretty busy as church has been taking a lot of my time plus I am also working on a new project which is pretty darn exciting but is meaning that I have had to have my head down writing, should be able to let you know more about it later in the year. I even missed  my annual portion of mooncakes as the Chinese Moon Festival passed me by.

It is funny how working in Box Hill, Chinese festivals tend to seep into your annual rhythms. Anyways all this busyness means that I have had to cut down on the amount of speaking requests that I am taking but I will be speaking at these two events.

National Youth Ministry Convention 09 Gold Coast More info here

One Mission Conference Adelaide. More Info here (this is a Salvation Army event but is open to non-salvo’s)

New Podcast: The Other Side of Repentance 2. The Sacred

In part two of our series The Other Side of Repentance we examine the Sacred. What makes something sacred? How can we go back to the source of the sacred? How have false images of Christ contributed to us losing the idea of the sacred? Plus we discuss how we can cultivate a life of sacredness that is in contrast to so much of the narcissistic spirituality that we see today.

Download or Listen here You can download or subscribe through itunes here

Interview about my New Book

Well I am starting the cycle of doing publicity ahead of my new book’s release in the new year. Here is an author interview that I did with Christian Book dot com about  the Vertical Self.

Tell us a little about yourself.I am a writer who tries to report on what’s really going on in the borderlands between faith and popular culture. I am passionate about helping people understand the fluid culture in which we are living. I love mining the ancient and mysterious depths of the Bible to find remedies to our contemporary cultural maladies. I am also the founder of Uber ministries, as well as being the pastor of a fantastic church called Red. I live in Melbourne, Australia.

What was your motivation behind this project? More and more as a culture we are being encouraged to find meaning in projecting an image to the rest of the world. In the past people derived a sense of self by referring back to the truth found in Genesis that we are all made in the image of God. But now people seek to find an identity by wearing all kinds of disposable personalities such as ‘cool’, ‘sexy’ or ‘glamorous’. People all over the world are spending literally billions of dollars a year in order to ‘keep up appearances’. The problem is that the more that you project a false image or personality to the world that is not rooted in your God give identity, the more you lose a sense of self. So I wanted to help people see how we were being sucked into this game of masks and to point people back to the freedom of being defined not by our culture but rather our God given identity.

What do you hope folks will gain from this project? I hope that people gain an awareness of how we have all been influenced by what I call the horizontal self. That is trying to gain a sense of identity from our peers and our culture, and instead I am encouraging people to embrace what I call the vertical self, that is being defined by the reality that we are created in the image of God. That is does not matter what our culture says about us, God made us in his image. I also make a strong case in the book that the way to escape this obsession with image is to pursue a path of holiness. I also wanted to breathe new life into our concept of holiness, which in an image driven culture is seen sometimes by even people of faith as something akin to social suicide. I wanted to help people see that holiness of the bible is not a ‘Ned Flanders’ kind of holiness but rather a gutsy, earthy and sometimes messy journey to becoming who God wants us to be.

How were you personally impacted by working on this project?I was really impacted writing this book and had to ask myself a lot of hard questions about how I was putting out an ‘image’ to the world. Ironically even in promoting this book, as an author I always find it is a tightrope walk, as often authors are encouraged to see themselves as part of their ‘brand’. In an age of twitter and facebook etc it is a real challenge to remain honest and humble and to not fall into the trap of self promotion for self promotion’s sake.

Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists?I have some pretty diverse sources of inspiration and favourite authors. I am inspired by Neal Gabler, John Leland, A.N Wilson, Haruki Murakami, G.K Chesterton, Harold Kushner, Raymond Chandler, Jack Keroauc, and John Kennedy O’Toole. Plus I think reading the NME in the late 80′s and 90′s taught me how to write.

Anything else you’d like readers / listeners to know: I hope that this book helps people to look at the culture and their own lives in a whole new way, and that it opens their eyes to the way that God is shaping them everyday.

New Pop Culture Podcast: Dan Brown

Here is the podcast of this mornings radio spot about the cultural influence of publishing phenomenon Dan Brown. Listen or Download here

Dan Brown and the New Faith

Today on my radio spot we will be discussing the publishing phenomenon that is Dan Brown. With some estimates claiming that 2.5 million copies of The Lost Symbol were sold in the first three days of release, Dan Brown’s popularity tells us a lot about the state of play in contemporary cultural attitudes towards faith. We will not be dissecting his books, but rather turning the spotlight on the black polo wearing failed synth pop artist who became one of the most influential shapers of modern thought alive today.

For some more background this is a great article from the New York Times which examines how Dan Brown shapes contemporary thought. Read here

Light FM 89.9FM 10:30am (Aust Eastern Time) You can listen online here