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November 30, 2004
Pizza 51...
Ok, so I’ve noticed a fairly large amount of hits to my site from people who are searching for “Pizza 51+Kansas City” — no doubt from this past entry. The funny thing is, I didn’t really say too much about Pizza 51, except that it is a pretty darn cool place to hang out. Since then, I have been back to Pizza 51 three or four times and I’ve enjoyed myself every time. They have really good pizza that you can order by the slice. They’re cheesey garlic bread is pretty good too. Most of all, it’s the atmosphere that they’ve created at Pizza 51 — like I said, it’s a pretty darn cool place to hang out. If we still lived in our studio apartment (which was only a couple of blocks from Pizza 51, I’m sure we’d frequent the joint more often.
Anyway, if you’re someone who has stumbled across my humble Weblog in search of Pizza 51, know that I highly recommend it.
If you need directions, click here.
(Aren’t I just so helpful?)
Oh, and the picture (click on it) is of one of the fine Pizza 51 employees flippin’ some pizza dough (originally posted at my Photoblog).
Informatio: Life, Linkage
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November 25, 2004
Mmm... Turkey...
And a wonderful post-supper nap.
Informatio: Blogging, Life
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November 24, 2004
Thanksgiving...
A lot has happened since last Thanksgiving... My wife‘s father came up to live with us in Kansas City so that we could take care of him while he was taken by cancer, I had a heart attack, we bought a house... For some reason, Thanksgiving feels a lot more like New Year’s Day than anything; a changing of the guard that has nothing to do with the rotation of the earth.
But, maybe that’s always the way.
Tomorrow, we’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner for our family and some friends at our new home. This is some change from the studio apartment we were living in last year. It’s pretty neat to think about how life has brought us to a place where we can serve a turkey dinner to a dining room full of people. What a blessing for us.
Informatio: Life
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"Absolute God"
Joel Thomas has listed some theological thoughts that I can really dig (over at Richard Hall’s Blog).
Informatio: Faith, Linkage, Theory and Philosophy
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"Newspapers Should Really Worry"
Experts are forseeing hard times for print news publishers due to the growth of online publishing (er…Blogs):
Young people just aren’t interested in reading newspapers and print magazines. In fact, according to Washington City Paper, The Washington Post organized a series of six focus groups in September to determine why the paper was having so much trouble attracting younger readers. You see, daily circulation, which had been holding firm at 770,000 subscribers for the last few years, fell more than 6 percent to about 720,100 by June 2004, with the paper losing 4,000 paying subscribers every month.Read the rest of the article here.
Personally, I prefer reading real print newspapers to staring at a computer monitor — but I am in the upper part of the 18- to 34-year old demographic that is being studied afterall… I mean, I even print off paper-copies of Blogs to read once in a while.
I don’t know what this means for newspapers in the near future. A large part of humanity is still populated by 35- to ?-year olds who, presumably still enjoy getting their fingers black with newspaper ink. I can definitely see a shift to an all-digital media at some point, though. Hopefully, this will mean inventing new kinds of jobs rather than cancelling old ones.
(Via Wired News.)
Informatio: Linkage
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Oh, me of little faith...
(In our weather services at least.)
By the way, I locked myself out of the house when I went to take this picture… It was 6am. I hope it wasn’t an omen.
Informatio: Life
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November 23, 2004
First snow?
We’re supposed to have our first snow here in Kansas City tomorrow morning… I don’t know if we will, but it’d be kind of fun.
Currently, it’s very windy and raining a lot… But it’s only 41 degrees. The experts say it’ll get down to 29.
Today was a tough day. Maybe I’ll talk about it sometime. For now, I think I’ll just anticipate the snow. Snow is beautiful and God is beautiful for creating it.
Informatio: Life
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November 20, 2004
Joe Myers Notes...
Yesterday, I mentioned that I would post the notes I took at Joe Myers‘ discussion on his book, The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community and Small Groups. The problem was that my Mac (i.e., my “Palm-enabled” computer) has been in pieces since we moved into our house a few months ago. This morning, I broke down and got everything working on my PeeCee, so I could get the notes off of my Palm Pilot — as well as Sync my Palm for the first time in God-knows-how-long.
Anyway, below are the notes from the discussion…
Continue Reading...Informatio: Faith, Theory and Philosophy
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November 19, 2004
Phases of the emerging church...
I just read Andrew Jones‘ piece called, “Not Reformation.” It’s short and to the point and coincides with some of my opinions.
In the comments, Andrew elaborated on some thoughts about three different phoases of the emerging church movement:
Emerging Church STAGE 1 (Barn Burning). The emerging church in its initial deconstrucitve, suspicious, reactionary stage, is most similar to the Post-Renaissance period, or The Age of Mannerism (1530-1600) which is when much of the Protestant Reformation was happening. Mannerist art was a reaction to the perfection of the High Renaissance, and leaned towards discontinuity, extremism, and the bizarre. MTV has been called “Mannerist Art”.I can’t wait to read what else he comes up with.
Emerging Church STAGE 2 – (Dumpster Diving) This is the stage where the emerging churches are redicovering what they missed out on, past history, and the Other. It corresponds to the Early Rennaissance (1300-1500) which was a time of rediscovery (of classical Greek and Roman architecture) and a time of small experimental steps with new methods that no one really new how to use to the fullest potential.
Emerging Church Stage 3 (Lego Land) – a time of building with new blocks, non-reactionary, without finding identity from the past, succeeding with the new ways. This finds its parallel with the Baroque period (1600-1750), an attempt toward harmony and grandeur, cross-disciplinary understanding (like today’s emergence theory in complexity), emotional, powerfully imaginative, but also appropriate and proper.
Informatio: Faith, Theory and Philosophy
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Google Scholar...
Simply…awesome. (And free!) 
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.(Link via GoogleBlog.)
Informatio: Linkage, Computing
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Some things I haven't yet had the time to read...
- “Not Reformation,” by Andrew Jones
- “Is Emerging Church a Renaissance Recapitulation?,” by Andrew Jones
- “Emergent Is…,” by Bill Arnold
- “Emergent Is…pt.2,” by Bill Arnold
- “Emergent Is…pt.3,” by Bill Arnold
- “Emergent Is…pt.4,” by Bill Arnold
- “Two sides of the same (dogmatic) coin,” by Steve Bush
Update #2: Phew! There’s some good stuff in there, but it’s a lot to think about.
Update #3: Bill Arnold has since written the fifth (and final) installment of his “Emergent Is…” series.
Informatio: Blogging, Faith, Linkage
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The Search to Belong...
Don’t you just hate it when you learn something and feel like you’re about three years behind the curve?
That’s how I felt last night, when Jacob’s Well (the church I attend) had the priviledge of being led through a two-hour survey of the book The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community and Small Groups, by the author, Joe Myers. It was short and sweet, but I feel like we covered most of the main points of the book. I had an amazing time listening to Joe and hearing the responses of others in the group. I took a lot of notes (which I will post here as soon as I can figure out how to get them off of my Palm Pilot — my “Palm equipped” computer has been dismantled ever since our move).
But, I started this entry with a question… My answer: Well, yeah, I hate feeling that way.
You see, as it turns out, most of the “emerging” church world has known Joe for years now.
Last night, both my wife and I were inspired enough by Joe’s discussion to read his book. He had some very insightful things to say about how humanity’s need to belong works. Hopefully, after I post my notes, I hope you’ll get a good understanding of what I mean.
One important thing I learned about Joe last night is that he enjoys “describing without prescribing.” That’s really cool with me, as I tend to do a lot of that here. When someone has an idea, it doesn’t mean something’s got to be done about that idea… I mean, it’s just an idea, right?
Wouldn’t it be great if others could take your ideas and figure out how to use them for themselves, without needing any other leading or instructing from you? How freeing is that? Not only for the person with the idea, but for the person who uses the idea as well.
I’ll try to have my notes online by the end of the weekend. You can see another picture of Joe Myers in action, here.
Informatio: Faith, Introspection, Life, Theory and Philosophy
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November 17, 2004
27 Reasons, or Happy Birthday Julianna!
Today is Julianna‘s birthday. In honor of the years that she’s lived on this earth, here are…
27 Reasons Why I Love You
Each year brings many more than just one more thing that I love about you Julianna. With all my heart.
(Idea stolen from Cliff — thanks, Cliff!)
Informatio: Life
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November 15, 2004
Meatless mind...
Ok, so you may have noticed that this Weblog has had few thought-provoking entries as of late. Some ideas are on the backburner, though, it’s just that I’ve been pretty busy and my mind has been on other things.
As a former vegetarian, I must tell you about one of my favorite lunch-time meals (which I just finished eating): Boca Spicy Chik’n Patties. Not only do they taste great, but they’re great for you too.
But, why the Spicy Chik’n instead of the two Original Chik’n varieties? Well, after years of experimentation, I have come to the conclusion that the Spicy Chik’n Patties actually heat up in the microwave better than the other two Boca Chik’n products. Now, I don’t know why this is, but it it (for some reason, the Original Chik’n tends to get hard edges that are not very appetizing). In fact, when I’m in the mood for soy-based chicken substitute nuggets (as we allget in the mood for from time to time), I actually opt for the Morningstar Farms Buffalo Wings — tasty! But I digress…
I think Boca might be one of my favorite food companies. They make great tasting food and none of it is actually real — or, rather, none of it is “real” in the sense that it’s all food that’s made to taste like something it isn’t. Boca isn’t the only company that makes frozen meatless products, though… There’s the aforementioned Morningstar Farms, as well as Amy’s Kitchen and a few others. Every company has their specialties, of course — Boca for Spicy Chik’n and Smoked Sausage, Morningstar Farms for Buffalo Wings and Corn Dogs, Amy’s Kitchen for Pot Pies and Enchiladas... You get the point.
I worked in Berkeley, California for a short time and one of the more popular lunch spots for the company I was with was a restaurant called Long Life Veggie House (you’ll have to scroll down the page to find it), a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. At Long Life Veggie, you can order everything from General Tso’s Chicken to Mandarin Pork or Beef and Broccoli and, while you’d swear that you were eating the real thing (texture, taste, and all), you’d be wrong… It’s all made out of soy.
Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your regularly scheduled activities for the day. Just remember… I like Spicy Chik’n. It’s good.
Informatio: Life
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November 11, 2004
Being saved...
I’m always looking for ways to increase my personal acknowledgement of what the “Gospel” is. Whether it’s through reading scripture, or praying, or reading, or talking to people… God provides wisdom in many ways. I’ve written about it a few times on this Weblog (or, if I haven’t actually made a point, I’ve threatened that I would one day). But, I’m still not there — I don’t know if I’ll ever be.
My friend, Mary, wrote something today that really spoke some Gospel truth to me. It’s about being saved:
A lot of Christians use the term “saved” as if it’s a one time redemption thing. They say, “I got saved,” and what they mean is, “I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior and prayed the sinner’s prayer and now I’m going to heaven.” However, unless I hear someone else using it this way, this is not how it is processed in my mind. When I think of being saved, I think of those small instances in which one moment has been changed, one moment that adds into the great equation that is the gradual redemption of my life as a whole. You see, I’ve gotten saved a lot.I really suggest you read the rest of Mary’s story here.
I don’t have much more to add at all. Thanks, Mary.
Informatio: Faith, Introspection, Life, Theory and Philosophy
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November 10, 2004
55 degrees outside and I'm under it...
I am feeling poor enough that I stayed home to rest today. I hope it doesn’t get worse, but it is going around. I just hate staying home when I know it could get worse, but I’m hoping my rest today kills off whatever it is that’s attacking me.
I’ll leave you with a photograph I took of last night’s sunset. I have a very good friend who was once my photography teacher. He didn’t allow anyone in his classes to turn in photographs of sunsets. It went something like this: “I’ve seen enough photographs of sunsets in my time. Yes, they’re beautiful and yes, I like them. But, sunsets are beautiful on their own and anyone can take a beautiful photograph of a sunset.”
Anyway, you can see my photograph of last night’s sunset here and learn a little of why I like Missouri so much.
Informatio: Life
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November 09, 2004
Firefox 1.0 released...
I just installed the “gold” version of Firefox 1.0. Since I had been using Firefox 1.0PR for a while now, there isn’t anything major to report, except… Three of my favorite extensions no longer work!
Updates needed…quickly…
My own update: Be sure to check your preferences in your new install as they will all be reset to default. Ugh.
Informatio: Linkage, Computing
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O' sinful gossip...
Why art thou so fun?
From Rick Bennett:
Just to increase traffic and to have a little fun at the expense of my friends in light of the election last week, I have decided to read the minds of some of the most active Emergent leaders and contributors and guess who they voted for in the election last week. Acutally I am not guessing how people vote.Aren’t you just so keen to know?
(Link via Rudy Carrasco.)
Informatio: Faith, Fun, Politics
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November 08, 2004
Rules of Pinky...
Despite my weariness of the word, postmodern, John O’keefe has come up with some pretty cool “Rules of Pinky” (as opposed to “Rules of Thumb” — get it?) that any emerging churches — no, make that all churches — should think about:
(Via Lucas Land.)
- A postmodern/emerging community of faith needs to have a willingness to encourage it’s participants to extend the self to the world around. As a gathering, they need to have a desire to see “community” as something more then a collection of small tribes, and they need to be able to see past their own tribe to that of others. They need to move from inside the community to a place of “uncomfort” and be in mission to all.
- A postmodern/emerging community of faith needs a willingness to move past what is, and redefine what will be. While we would never ask them to be innovators, we would expect them not to be imitators. If what the community is seeking to do is imitate another community, then that is not seeing what can be – but only living what is. When people “imitate” that tells us they see this as another “church program” and not a true expression of community and self.
- A postmodern/emerging community of faith needs a willingness to treat all people as equals. When we say “all people,” we mean all people, regardless of age, race, gender, belief system or any other “box” we can think of, are equal in the eyes of God.
- A postmodern/emerging community of faith has a willingness to hear the voices of others. The idea that we accept people is cool, but if you are not going to hear them, we are simply speaking empty words; it is not just “hear” it is “listen.”
- A postmodern/emerging community of faith has a willingness to not be driven by programs, building or budgets. It does not center on what it has but on what it can do with that it has.
Informatio: Faith, Linkage, Theory and Philosophy
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November 05, 2004
Temporarily out-of-service...
I’m trying to upgrade my Blog software today — since it’s beta software at the moment, I’m having a few technical difficulties.
Thanks for your patience.
Informatio: Site-Related Issues
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November 03, 2004
Post-election peace pledge...
Thanks to Jeff Jarvis for this one…
After the election results are in, I promise to:(Link via Andrew Careaga.)
- Support the President, even if I didn’t vote for him.
- Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
- Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
- Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.
Informatio: Politics
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November 02, 2004
Cult Movie List...
From Christopher:
This is the list of top 50 Cult movies (or so) as chosen by Entertainment Weekly. I will bold the ones that I have seen and put a series of * to indicate how I liked it. ***** would indicate that it was the bomb diggity (a good thing). * indicates that you should really avoid this steaming pile of poo.See Christopher’s scores here.
I think I’ll join in. Below is the list movies, and I’ll be using the same scoring method as described above. (And, yes, there’re are actually 61 movies in the list — go figure.)
Informatio: Fun, Film
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I voted! How about you?
It’s 7:26am… Voting took about 20 minutes — and we began at the end of a pretty long line. All in all, it was painless and easy. It was fun too; it’s neat to see so many people out to exercise their “voice.”
I’m not going to write much about how I feel, as I will save that until after Theology Pub tomorrow night, but I did just check my own presidential poll, and noticed that Bush got another vote from someone, putting him one ahead of Kerry — it will be interesting to see if my poll turns out to be a decent representation of how the election turns out.
Anyway, since I haven’t disclosed who I decided to vote for yet, I thought this would be a good time: I voted for John Kerry.
Continue Reading...Informatio: Life, Politics
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Happy voting everyone!
It’s 5:25am… In a little while, Julianna and I will vote.
I’ll let you know how it goes. You should let me know too!
Informatio: Life, Politics
Posted at 05:25 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (3)
November 01, 2004
Election Eve Prayers, by Will Samson...
Here is what I am praying for on the eve of this election:Very well-said…er…prayed, Will. I think I’ll do the same.
- That each citizen of this country who wants to vote and is properly registered will be allowed.
- That one candidate might have a clean and decisive win, avoiding the pain and agony of 2000.
- That on Wednesday, November 3rd, each person who follows Jesus will remember that our model for governing is to serve. As “Christians” that is the only power we have.
- That each one of us will reach out to those with different beliefs and look for how Jesus might be expressed in our lives through them. This will be especially true for us in the Church who might hold different opinions. After all, someone is bound to be disappointed. But remember that everyone is watching, and a test of being a follower of Jesus is how you love other followers.
Informatio: Faith, Politics
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Theology Pub on Wednesday...
Ever since then, I’ve been trying to figure out a way that I could work something like this into my own life — even if it didn’t turn out exactly as Doug envisioned it. Well, this Wednesday, I finally get to try it out. At 6pm, my small group (and anyone else who wants to stop by) is meeting at O’Dowd’s Little Dublin at the Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri (map).
- Courtesy and respect will be shown at all times.
- Commitment will be made to listen to the perspectives of others.
- All statements that are not explicit facts must include the attitude of “it seems to me.”
- All participants will work hard to increase their understanding of the issues between meetings.
- Participants must arrive by 8:15 pm.
We’ll be processing the thoughts and feelings we had as they led up to the election tomorrow, as well as the voting/election process in general. Food and beverages are available at O’Dowd’s (including some very hoity-toity, aged whiskeys)... We may even read some scripture and pray a little bit too. Most importantly, everything will all be done in public. This may stretch some comfort zones a little (mine included), but from everything I’ve read and heard, these excercises of practicing our faith in a public setting are very positive.
It should be fun to see how this all turns out, even if it doesn’t go completely according to plan — for all I know, I could wimp out and just let everyone socialize. In any case, my small group’s presence in any public place always tends to draw some kind of attention.
Informatio: Life, Faith
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Cops & Robbers...
Our house got broken into yesterday. Now that’s a fun experience. Not much was taken — our VCR/DVD player, Julianna‘s Nikon N65, and a bag to carry everything in — but if you’ve ever had anything stolen from you, you know it’s not the “stuff” that you feel bad about, but the violation.
The robber broke in through one of our dining room windows while we were at a Chiefs game. He took his time too. After removing a storm window, he broke through the regular window (leaving the storm window unharmed). Then, he stepped over a bunch of stuff that’s still laying in our dining room, post-move (all stuff that could have easily been stolen or broken by stepping on). Then, he proceeded to unplug the VCR and unscrew the cable and basically leave everything in it’s place — he even took the remote that went with the VCR and not the variety of others that were laying around. Then, he emptied one of Julianna’s work bags (leaving everything that was in it on our kitchen counter) and took the camera (which was hanging on a hook next to the bag). Since the back door was unlocked, we figured that he left that way. (And, oddly enough, even though nothing else was taken, we found a DVD in our upstairs guestroom — the DVD was last seen on top of our downstairs television.)
The cops came soon enough (even though the dispatcher says it can take up to four hours). They took a report and dusted for prints. There were even a few drops of blood scattered around on our floor in a couple of locations — presumably, the robber had injured himself while climbing through the window (although the cops said that they usually don’t take blood samples unless a violent crime has occurred).
Anyway, because the storm window was left intact, we were able to clean everything up and put it back in place.
We really did have a pretty fun weekend up until yesterday evening, seeing our friend’s band Builder play on Friday, the Kansas City Wizards play on Saturday, and the Kansas City Chiefs play on Sunday… Maybe we had too much fun.
We thank God that we are safe and that not much was taken, but I’d like to ask that you pray that our house be protected.
Informatio: Life
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