parables of a prodigal world

Well, the discussion on the Emergent Village post on predictions of the collapse of "Emerging Church" as a defining label has been both prolific and edifying. Many of the commentators have made me think anew about the issue. But an interesting sub-current within the commentary was the theme of how we Christians should or should not be conducting ourselves within the conversation. If you read through the 30+ comments, you will sense a dynamic of anger swelling right toward the middle, and then subsiding as a new sense of loving rebuke was introduced, and that tone then prevailing toward the end. And I think that dynamic is a beautiful metaphor for the Christian story as a whole, which also reminds me of another such metaphor, one that I personally experienced a few years ago. For those who don't know me personally, I'm an attorney (please don't hold that against me). Some years ago, I was representing a client before the Social Security Administration. We had just ...

Yesterday I wrote that Kester Brewin has predicted that the Emerging Church will collapse in 2008, and that there was a post at Emergent Village that expanded on Brewin's prediction, with Brewin himself offering more details on the thought. That post has generated much and varied discussion, but this morning I noticed a shift in the tone of that discussion. Consider the following comments: Deb Jan 5, 09:43 AM Emerging Church? New ways to present the gospel? All these big new fangled words like “unpack” and “organic conversation”. Why don’t you all get on your faces and beg God to forgive you all, and forget about all these other books and start reading The Book. I don’t know how I stumbled on this thing. Does anyone on here know about The Holy Spirit? Oh and that God chooses who will be saved, not these characters like Rick Warren in Hawaiian shirts. shang di ai li Jan 5, 11:59 AM Thank you Deb you make me wonder if God knew what He was doing picking shepherds and astrologers ov...

In my soon to be released book, Parables of a Prodigal Son: The Theologically Grounded Testimony of an Ordinary Scoundrel , I strive to provide my testimony through the matrix of a proper understanding of the historiocal Christian faith, an understanding gleaned primarily from the scholarship of N.T. Wright. This Weblog will attempt to carry forward the conversation that began in Parables of a Prodigal Son, limited not only to my own life stories but to the stories that are now being played out in the world around us. As in Parables , I will discuss these stories in an effort to make sense from within a historically biblical worldview, a worldview that takes into account the existence of a God that created the universe, who transcends and yet is at all times in loving interaction with it. I will strive to carry forward the conversation in a manner that takes into account the historical fact that a young peasant Jew named Yeshua, executed in first-century Palestine by the Roman authorit...