After a week at camp and too many days playing catch up and getting ready for the start of the school year and congregation activities, here is Podcast #16. I try and wrap up the comments about the Evil Genius episodes and essentially establish them as the baseline for my wanderings for the coming weeks. What you hear in Dave is not unusual, its where many, if not most, postmoderns are, so the places we will be going in future podcasts will be sites, events, and people who seek to engage postmoderns from that baseline. Some will be specifically Christian, some will be other spiritual traditions, others will be secular – all will attempt to address the questions of meaning in a postmodern world.
As I mention, the next podcast will be on The Burning Man Project, the amazing experiment in temporary community, and one of the most experiencial, postmodern events you will find. Spontaneous community, spontaneous relationship, spontaneous spirituality and religion. Be warned – if you consider yourself in any way sheltered, you will find things here that will both amaze and offend. While Burning Man builds itself as family friendly, it may not be the type of family values you are used to.
Mentioned Links:
Demerging
The Post Evangelical by Dave Tomlinson
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Was listening to WJP #16 as I was finishing up my sermon on Romans 12:1-8. I am chaplian for a retirement home community who, while certainly not post-modern, are quite open to the ideas you expressed. Thanks for a great podcast.
I really enjoy the podcast. I find myself looking for the next even before it comes out. I really appreciated you discussion regarding why faith needs to make sense now for postmoderns.
When you spoke earlier about Dave’s internal reflection vs. other people’s influence I got worried that I’m in the wrong line of work. I work with people and it depends on the notion that I can influence them for good or ill. I decided that we are in the post-modern era and logic doesn’t have to follow modern rules. I’m going to keep believing I can make a difference.
My take is individuals are always the starting point for any real difference. Neither of us are in the wrong line of work. We have the power to influence. We also are shaped by what’s going on inside us.
thanks for listening.
Hey Tom,
Your link to “The Post-Evangelical” says it is written by Dan Kimball but Amazon says it is written by Dave Tomlison. Can you correct your link?
Thanks for the catch. That’s what I get for reading “Emerging Worship” while writing about “The Post Evangelical”.
Tom,
I was listening to a podcast put out by Cedar Ridge Community Church – a message by Brian McLaren. It is called “Stories of Presence”. There are two parts. In part one, he gives some stats of young people dropping out of the church, both mainline and evangelical. It’s pretty staggering. He also cites a guy with several stages to faith development. His point is that as a community we need to not just teach knowledge, but to share stories of our own doubt, confusion and hard times. It’s pretty good after he gets past the Timothy set up. The links are below.
Lon
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/crcctalks
http://www.crcc.org/converse/1961.mp3
McLaren is one of the primary voices for the Emergent Church movement, a group of pastors, leaders and congregation that are focused on connecting with emerging generations. Many of these congregations are “not your parents’ church”, being heavily tech and image driven but also digging deep into ancient church practices and models of community. Here are a couple of his books.