Just saw this video on the YS website, I'd love to hear your feedback :) Also to those of you who have subscribed to my blog thanks, I'm glad you have done so, but if possible I'd love it if you could post your responses back on the blog to generate some discussion :)
I add this because it is part of a paper I'm writing now on Ecclesiology. When I was talking to a friend of my about the identity of the Adventist church he said that he thought that the church had a weak ecclesiology. What do you think? What makes church ...church? How do we balance our idea of being the remnant people and the true church with any sort of ecumenicism? Or should we just think that we're the best and nobody else has "the truth."
A few months back as I was sitting in a meeting with a bunch of Adventist pastors somebody started throwing around the term truth like... truth was the Sabbath or belief in Ellen White. What would Ellen White have thought of that? I'm no EG White scholar but I think that she would have pointed to only one truth. Jesus Christ. Wasn't it Jesus that said that he is THE Truth? How do we balance and market (see above video) ourselves and our view point without the arrogance of being the only true religion? Perhaps that is what my friend meant by our having a weak ecclesiology.
Keeping Jesus #1
Benji
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Not the Caddilac of Computers
So everybody complains about Vista and Microsoft...Let me tell you apple has it's share of issues as well. I bought Stephanie an refurb ipod touch which is a pretty beautiful machine. I was super excited to install some apps but when I hooked it up to itunes I had to pay $10 to install a new OS. Not cool at all, no where on the apple site was I warned about this, I also had lengthy discussions with people at the apple store before I purchaced the ipod asking about the differences between 1G and 2G machines and never was warned about this. I know, it's only $10 but I felt like I was being robbed.
Then on Sunday Stephanie's Macbook crashes. I make an appointment with the genisus at the apple store and they proceed to tell us that the hard drive is toast. All of the data is gone (Stephanie doesn't have an accompanist so we have recorded two versions of all of her choir songs on Garageband...it's all gone) Apple was good enought to do an out of warranty repair and replace the disk as well as upgrading us to leapard and ilife 08. It helped to ease the pain of losing a lot of data. I got the computer back in less than 24 hours however when setting up the computer this afternoon it crashed again! Same thing.
I'm glad (knock on wood) that I'm running my trusty HP. with beautiful windows Vista...I don't understand all of you haters :)
Benji
P.S. after this nerdy post I will hopefully be posting on a fun theological topic in the next day or so.
Then on Sunday Stephanie's Macbook crashes. I make an appointment with the genisus at the apple store and they proceed to tell us that the hard drive is toast. All of the data is gone (Stephanie doesn't have an accompanist so we have recorded two versions of all of her choir songs on Garageband...it's all gone) Apple was good enought to do an out of warranty repair and replace the disk as well as upgrading us to leapard and ilife 08. It helped to ease the pain of losing a lot of data. I got the computer back in less than 24 hours however when setting up the computer this afternoon it crashed again! Same thing.
I'm glad (knock on wood) that I'm running my trusty HP. with beautiful windows Vista...I don't understand all of you haters :)
Benji
P.S. after this nerdy post I will hopefully be posting on a fun theological topic in the next day or so.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sitting in Class at Seminary
Ok, so last week I promised myself that I would post to my blog. Mostly so that Stew couldn't make fun of me about not posting during Intensives. I had this great idea that I would post daily on my progress on my sermon and maybe get feedback that I could incorporate into my sermon. I will do that someday, but obviously it didn't happen last week.
This week I"m sitting in Systematic Theology, which despite me posting during a lecture is pretty interesting. (We are talking predestination right now, which Adventists have conveniently passed over and as far as I know don't discuss much.) This month has been very busy but last Sabbath took the cake, those of you in church know what I'm talking about. I am very much a notes preacher and I lost my notes between services, that was scary, but it went ok.
I posted some new pics of Dylan on Flickr and you need to check them out, I can't you how much Dylan is changing, it's so amazing to watch! Plus we're having a girl end of February/early March!
Hopfully more posts later one some interesting topics, i.e. life and theology
Benji
This week I"m sitting in Systematic Theology, which despite me posting during a lecture is pretty interesting. (We are talking predestination right now, which Adventists have conveniently passed over and as far as I know don't discuss much.) This month has been very busy but last Sabbath took the cake, those of you in church know what I'm talking about. I am very much a notes preacher and I lost my notes between services, that was scary, but it went ok.
I posted some new pics of Dylan on Flickr and you need to check them out, I can't you how much Dylan is changing, it's so amazing to watch! Plus we're having a girl end of February/early March!
Hopfully more posts later one some interesting topics, i.e. life and theology
Benji
Friday, April 25, 2008
Renters vs. Owners
It is somewhat funny that I usually blog during some of my busiest times, when I should be doing other things. However, tonight is the Sabbath and I am enjoying just decompressing from a week of intensives at bethel. This weeks intensive was for my measurement based leadership course. Very interesting... I wonder if there are any of you that read the blog that may wonder if measurement and church should not go hand in hand? Here are my major take aways from the class so far...
We have just scraped the surface of stewardship culture in the church. The issues of time/talent/treasure is nice and helpful, but what we have done is created a culture of renters. Part of this goes back to our wonderful Catholic friends and the idea of a priesthood that we as protestants have never really gotten away from. However I think in the Adventist church, along with others who have a structure like ours where the church does not choose it's pastor, we have aided and abbeded in this renter culture.
Think about it...it is only recently that pastors even think of staying in a church more than 3-5 years. How can a pastor really be an owner of that churches vision to fulfill the Great Commission in a community when they are constantly thinking of their exit strategy and the congregation knows that what ever ideas a pastor pushes on them are going to change when the next guy comes anyways. This creates a culture of both renter pastors and renter congregations that are never allowed to have a long term strategy for reaching the lost in their community because of the revolving door of leadership.
So how do we fix it? I don't know about you but as I look at many of the challenges I have at my church many come down to this issue. It truly is an issue of stewardship. How do we get rid of a patriarchical top down system and replace it with one that is more empowering, one that creates a heart of service and one that has the customer (i.e. the people we want to see in our church) in mind.
Random thoughts post by
Benji
p.s. Couldn't post without adding a Dylan picture, this was taken at the Madison Zoo and this lioness had her eye on Dylan...it was actually a little disconcerting.
p.p.s. I finally broke down and got a facebook page, Stephanie is on Myspace, if you know us please check out our pages!
We have just scraped the surface of stewardship culture in the church. The issues of time/talent/treasure is nice and helpful, but what we have done is created a culture of renters. Part of this goes back to our wonderful Catholic friends and the idea of a priesthood that we as protestants have never really gotten away from. However I think in the Adventist church, along with others who have a structure like ours where the church does not choose it's pastor, we have aided and abbeded in this renter culture.
Think about it...it is only recently that pastors even think of staying in a church more than 3-5 years. How can a pastor really be an owner of that churches vision to fulfill the Great Commission in a community when they are constantly thinking of their exit strategy and the congregation knows that what ever ideas a pastor pushes on them are going to change when the next guy comes anyways. This creates a culture of both renter pastors and renter congregations that are never allowed to have a long term strategy for reaching the lost in their community because of the revolving door of leadership.
So how do we fix it? I don't know about you but as I look at many of the challenges I have at my church many come down to this issue. It truly is an issue of stewardship. How do we get rid of a patriarchical top down system and replace it with one that is more empowering, one that creates a heart of service and one that has the customer (i.e. the people we want to see in our church) in mind.
Random thoughts post by
Benji
p.s. Couldn't post without adding a Dylan picture, this was taken at the Madison Zoo and this lioness had her eye on Dylan...it was actually a little disconcerting.
p.p.s. I finally broke down and got a facebook page, Stephanie is on Myspace, if you know us please check out our pages!
Monday, January 07, 2008
Dylan's One
So it's been a while since I blogged. There were a couple of times in the last few months where I actually started a post here. In fact, this week is so busy that I really shouldn't be on here now. But I wanted to let people know what's going on... My winter quarter started yesterday. Fall was a good quarter with some very intriguing classes, which paired along with a very fulfilling trip to Youth Specialites, I feel that some of the pieces of a puzzle that has been sitting on my table for a while is coming together. Of course the puzzle is far from complete but perhaps I have sorted out teh edges?
This was a wild Christmas, we spent time in Santa Cruz/Bakersfield/College Place and racked up about 7000 miles each in the air...Dylan and I got pretty sick, it was Dylans first illness so it was stressful and we made a few trips to the Dr. :) But he is on the mend now and walking around the house, pulling stuff off of shelves. He's picked up some cool words like "ut-oh" I think mommy taught him that one? And he is just a great blessing for us. I better go and do some of the reading/typing/studing/sermon prep/ that I have to do. Check out the flickr account for some pics of our holiday adventures.
Keeping Jesus #1
Benji
This was a wild Christmas, we spent time in Santa Cruz/Bakersfield/College Place and racked up about 7000 miles each in the air...Dylan and I got pretty sick, it was Dylans first illness so it was stressful and we made a few trips to the Dr. :) But he is on the mend now and walking around the house, pulling stuff off of shelves. He's picked up some cool words like "ut-oh" I think mommy taught him that one? And he is just a great blessing for us. I better go and do some of the reading/typing/studing/sermon prep/ that I have to do. Check out the flickr account for some pics of our holiday adventures.
Keeping Jesus #1
Benji
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
