SD Reader Articles

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 24, 2005 in Church Technology, Sheep&Goats | 7 comments

The editor of the San Diego Reader has asked me to find home churches, prayer groups, punk rock ministries– the new and offbeat to review in my Sheep & Goats column. Let me know if you have a suggestion…

Cultural Christianity

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 22, 2005 in Church, Culture | 4 comments

I’ve been thinking about how the church raises generations of cultural christians. I saw a definition describing them as:

Most Christians would probably fit within the category cultural Christians. Their self-identification as “Christian” is more cultural and social than religious. These are people who might say that they were ‚Äúborn Christian.‚Äù They are often born into ethnically conscious families and are therefore baptized, married, and buried in a particular church — but have little or no interest or concern about its teachings or the meanings of its practices. A relationship with God through Christ may be either non-existent or as a Refuge/Provider/Magician on an as-needed basis. Perhaps a code of etiquette is linked to their notion of Christianity. Cultural Christians serve on church councils, vestries, boards, and the like in the same spirit as they would perform any other volunteer service to a charitable organization.

Post, Emerging, ?

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 21, 2005 in Church | 1 comment

An interesting conversation on 2005 being a watershed ‘year of the emerging church. Here’s a quote from one site:

“2005 will be the year the shit hits the fan. emergent has been around long enough for people to figure out what’s up, or at least the parts they were never going to like in the first place. prepare to be excommunicated by some and misunderstood by others. it’s excruciatingly painful, but it’s the way it’s going to be.” – http://www.jenlemen.com/

Firing Missional Blanks

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 20, 2005 in Church, Culture | 6 comments

I just spoke with a local Pastor in Pacific Beach. For those of you who don’t know about PB, it is a beach community in San Diego filled with surfers, lots of drugs and partying. Anyway this pastor spoke about how PB is a difficult mission field trying to reach these people who are “rebelling from their parents, the government and the church.”

Here’s what made me sad. I asked him how they were trying to reach this lost community. He answered, “We have a book store, we’re building a seniors community center and we have an event called Music Mosaics.” I asked him what ‘Music Mosaics’ was and he explained it was “high class music, choirs, organists, etc.”

Now I’m pretty curious. How many drug addict, street kids, surfers and abandoned post-college youth are they really reaching with these things? There’s got to be a time when many traditional mainline churches decide, let’s stop trying to reach more of us. Atheists debates don’t bring in non-christians, organists don’t get the homeless youth excited, X days of purpose programs will be rejected by a spiritually bancrupt, yet spiritually open community in this next generation. Am I wrong?

Jesus in the Margins : Finding God in the Places We Ignore

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 19, 2005 in Culture | 5 comments

I just got my hands on a manuscript of Jesus in the Margins : Finding God in the Places We Ignore by Rick McKinley (You may know him as the pastor of Donald Miller Blue Like Jazz). I’m one-third of the way into it but I can already tell this one is going to be a must-read for many of us out there. Here’s a snipit from the publisher’s site:

Jesus is our ultimate model for finding identity, acceptance, and legitimacy from the Father. As we pull back the curtain on His life, we discover that Jesus knows what it’s like to be marginalized. He understands how it feels to have society shove you to the side, to not really be accepted, and in the end to be totally rejected. He can identify with life in the margins because when God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, He landed in the margins. On purpose. And He chose to land there because it’s in the margins that broken lives get mended, prisoners are set free, and the poor hear the Good News.

I hope to have a review soon…