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L and I spent Christmas at our old church in a foreign country. After this experience, let me just say: Churches can really suck even when it would be easy to be interesting. No wonder the emerging church people are rolling their eyes.
Christmas Eve services can be many things. The church that we used to go to when we lived abroad had a very interesting mix: Americans and British dominated, with other Europeans (all English-speaking) from Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, too, followed by non-Europeans (Chinese, lots of Filipinos, ex-Soviet states, loads of Ghanese and Congolese, Ugandans, Kenyans, and a scattering of other exiles and refugees). You'd think that such an odd lot would have a rich, long and beautiful service that mixes the cultures, showing how the Lord Jesus Christ unites all peoples into one.
Well, that didn't happen.
"Where is God?" we cry. "Where is God right now, in this disaster?"
Two thousand years ago, he was lying in a feed trough, shitting himself. You could have crushed him between your hands. Behold God's solution to our estrangement from him: a crying, puking baby! Hear the words of shepherds, so known to be untrustworthy that they are disallowed from giving testimony in court!
Praise God for His Incarnation, done in God's way and not in mine. Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
Merry Christmas, and may the grace and peace of my Lord Jesus Christ be yours.
-- manasclerk
L and I went over to see a woman we knew when we lived over here. She and her boy even spent a couple of weeks at our apartment in Chicago. Even on the one-day's notice, we had a great time with her and the boy. She has recently remarried and we went over to their place to meet him and congratulate her doubly: she expecting!
B has a way of getting to the heart of the matter with me. One week when we lived here and L was gone to Paris, I got a large glass of cold doctrinal water thrown in my face by her. It was the beginning of a great work of God's grace in my life, and I have always had a soft spot in my heart for her. L and I are Presbyterians, and our church's stance on remarriage is that it is allowable if the other party has died or remarried. So we've been praying for her to find someone great, and there he was!
P is a great guy for her, and a great guy in general. We got along famously even though the Revolutionary War does divide us. Christ unites us. We ate and then just hung out, talking. Talk soon turned from their wedding and honeymoon to the work of Christ in their lives.
And, of course, B once again gave me a face of cold water.
It's time to move. "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!" The gospel is like a sudden thaw that strikes the river of my life, running through it, cleansing it, pushing out all that is not it.
It was a great evening.
-- manasclerk
L and I went with our friends to Sunday services at an english-speaking church they attend here. We left late, of course, which precipitated a crisis. This seems to be a strong theme in this family. The mother and father tell each other and the girlls that they are going to be late. Then they scream at the girls that they are making them late. Then everyone leaves late, with the two teenage girls trying to drag their feet out the door. The oldest is the biggest perpetrator of lateness: even when given hours to be ready, she will be late.
It's all a power thing, of course. The oldest girl always makes people wait for her -- even her peers. She once visited London with a school group and, after getting upset by what the other girls were saying or wanting to do, ran off on her own. Instead of then meeting everyone early so that she wouldn't get in trouble, she showed up thirty minutes late. An event had to be missed. Her peers were understandably quite angry with her. She says that it was their fault.
I am sitting at a desk in my friends' house on the Continent. It is beautiful, this house. Horta designed it early in his career. It has lovely early art nouveau touches. My friends are church workers here. They talk about how this person or that person "just needs the Lord" and how they sent him or her Bible verses. Maybe this is what Christianity is all about but I hope not. Then again, I'm the only Christian that a lot of my friends have ever met. Can you say that you're really all that thrilled that I am the sole representation of Jesus Christ upon the earth to them?
I started out to write a brief overview of my history as a Christian. My childhood ambushed me. I couldn't get beyond the loneliness, the ugliness, the drive to not make a mistake, to try and figure out the rules that no one would tell me. I can't even write about it, even now. You'd think it wouldn't be such a big deal. I am told that the experience of positive emotions takes away the effects of negative ones. I hope in all the weakness I live in right now that this is true, that redemption is true, that salvation is not something left for the "real humans", leaving me out in the cold, beyond the safety of the city walls, exiled from hope.
I was going to say that I don't know why I'm a Christian, that it makes no sense. That's not really true. I can't say why I'm still alive; by all rights I should have gone the way my friend Derek took and exited early. God knows that I certainly paid it enough mind back in college and my twenties. The reason I'm a Christian is plain: God desired me and gave me life. I didn't do anything. There was nothing in me that would attract him to me, like a chair with no seat, a bed with no ladders, salt that has lost it's saltiness. No, I am a Christian soley because of God's inscrutable desire for me. I can't speak for everyone else -- maybe the great Christians, the ones who convert the masses, who can quote whole chapters of the scriptures and don't fuck up every day, maybe they have some other experience. For me, this is true: that he chose me before I was born, that he called to me in loving tones, that he raised me from a death that was worse than death, that he breathed his own spirit into me.
Who can say why he did this? Who can fathom his desires? I cannot think like him. I can barely comprehend what little I can. Yet he wants to call me his son, has given the binding contract of his own word, of his own promise, based solely on his promises to himself that I am his. My life as a child was lived not in a desert but an empty plain, not a place of terrible beauty but of aching plainness punctuated by an occassional massive storm bringing destruction and upending what trees had grown. My life as a son of God is lived in perpetual longing, not in aching plainness but rich beauty, as if I had part of me seeing in black and white and another watching a technicolor, 70mm masterwork of cinematography.
What is behind is still behind, still true. It simply is not as true as he is, not as true as what he has redeemed in me. It shrinks before the import of his grace, his wildness, his terrible beauty. Infinite in beauty and perfection, the Alpha and the Omega, before beginning to after ending. What damage can be done to me that he cannot undo? No, that he will not undo, that he has not chosen to redeem for his own glory. My Christian experience is this, this learning, this discovery of "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -- that [I] may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
I wanted to complain about how I went to a reunion party for the office I worked at here, about how everyone else is doing great things and I'm such a loser. I wanted to complain about my friends' exercise of their faith. I wanted to complain about how rotten I am, how terrible my mistakes, how mediocre my self. Instead, here I am again at the knowledge of all the fullnes of God.
What more could any man desire, than to know the God that created him, and that he is still interested in what I am?
Thanks to Dawn Eden, whose comments about the love of God led me back to the One Who was always there.
-- manasclerk
I'd start another rant, but I believe that Steve Higgs has done a pretty good job of saying it. I recommend reading Russlel Mann's response, too. Both have some interesting things to say.
I'm somewhat concerned about how Emerging Church people compare the current post-modern movement with Martin Luther's start of the Reformation. This is troublesome because it reveals a big misunderstanding of the two situations. When you do a compare, it helps to follow with a contrast, just to keep your argument honest. Let's take a compare and contrast look at Luther and the Emerging Church.
This sounds nuts for a guy whose doing what I'm doing for Christmas, but I just haven't been all that nuts this season. I've gone to one "holiday" party (L's done three) and that's it this year. Either this shows how pitiful me and my friends are or that I just don't have any nearby.
I'm able to simply enjoy the Christmas season without it being crazy. I've been shopping three times, including that day before Thanksgiving. This prevented a Seasonal Music Overload that has struck so many this year. They say that the flu came early but I'm pretty sure that they suffered from SMO. I'll run out tomorrow to Circuit City for a Lite-On CDRW for our Belgian friends -- he just doesn't have enough gadgets. It's hard to be $20 (with discounts and rebates).
We're going to see friends next week that we don't see that often and spend the holiday with them and their girls. Nothing spectacular is supposed to happen, just a homey Christmas with two teenagers and their harried parents. We'll also get to drop in on some other friends we haven't seen in a couple of years or more. Just an insanely relaxing time for us. Maybe it's because it's away from our families. . .
ho ho ho
-- manasclerk
One thing I hate about rich Christians is their propensity to want to run the Church like a business, to use the skills that they normally apply in management to run the body of Christ.
Except, of course, that I'm one of them.
I've been reading more on emergence and complexity as it relates to management. There's a really good book, Complexity and Management : Fad or Radical Challenge? by Stacey, Griffin and Shaw, that does a pretty indepth analysis of the proponents of complexity theory in management. It's content is interesting, but what strikes me is how I start thinking about how this applies to Church leadership.
Except, of course, that it doesn't.
That's one of the points that Jaques and Clement make in Executive Leadership: A Practical Guide to Managing Complexity. Their theories apply only to the narrow field of business management. They state very clearly that it does not apply to church hierarchies. Jerry Harvery went even further to state that the theory of Time Span of Discretion (Jaques's big contribution) is nonsensical for spiritual leadership.
I want to make God as little as everyone else does. I'd love to have the church fit into one of my neat management theories. Then God would be predictable and not scary.
God is scary. The Spirit does not follow my advice.
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. . . For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." (Paul's letter to the church at Corinth, chapter 1)
God doesn't have to do some new, bizarre thing simply because a new way of looking at the world comes about. If that were true, the gospel would no longer be good news.
-- manasclerk
Well, it's Christmas again, and time to review the lot of lousy Christmas music that is clogging the airways. So let's look at alternatives!
 Noel by Steve and Derri and FriendsThe lineup includes Buddy and Julie Miller, Kevin Max, Riki Michelle, Brent Bourgeois and of course the Steve, Derri and Jerry. Contemporary Christian Christmas Music with a great feel. I especially like the "All Along the Watchtower" intro to "I Heard the Bells". |
 Christmas Caravan by the Squirrel Nut ZippersWild gonzo music style. What if German cabaret singers had married mountain hillbilly players and their children formed a band? Come on: you know that any Christmas album with a song called "Indian Giver" is going to be great. |
Get them while you still can.
-- manasclerk
I've been reading some blogs from other Christians. And it just hurts me to see them flagellate themselves over their sin or the sin of the church when the grace of Christ shines.
Look, folks: I know you've been hurt. I know that you've been lied to about the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that you're trying to recover from the law. I agree with Paul: they should go all the way and emasculate themselves! You want what's right. You've asked for a fish and been given a snake. I really feel for you.
So let's get two things straight:
First, it's the "Church Eternal" not the "Church Emerging". God's not doing something brand new today -- he's always doing something brand new and he's always doing the same thing that he always been doing. The Gospel transforms us as it has our brothers and sisters who came before us. We're no holier than our parents' generation, than our grandparents' generation, than the people who brought us Finneyism to begin with.
Second, it's not about what you read or argue, about the theology and deconstructionist philosophies. It's about a person, a man, the son of God, Jesus who rose from the dead and sits with God his father in heaven. The good news is that it isn't about an idea but about a person! I love theology. I even think that it has helped me understand God better. But, as the old Baptist evangelists used to say, knowing about God and knowing God are not the same thing.
I feel for young people like http://bechurch.net/. Man! What did those people do to you? They fed you lies and half-truths. Half the gospel is no gospel at all. Grace is free and you are born spiritually not by the will of a man or woman but by the will of God.
I'm trying to get a standard set of icons for my posts, to make it easier for folks to figure out what they are going to be reading. So far I've got the weird cross for church and faith. I'll probably create an icon for business process stuff. Security will end up being a lock and key -- apologies to everyone in the industry beforehand. Personal stuff will have a picture of my brother's dog.
L and I went into Chicago for the INFOSEC party last weekend. One of the owners is a member of one of the very swank country clubs out in the 'burbs, so they got the ballroom for their shindig. Wonderful evening. We had a great time with some folks that I like at the company.
We decided to just stay at one of the nearby resorts with good rates and run into our old church in Chicago on Sunday morning.
I've been ruined forever.
Our Chicago Church (CC) is a conservative Presbyterian type. When we started going about 10 years ago, people would actually use terms like "Reformed" and "Elect" in the aisles. Very Calvinistic. At CC God's grace came to us and through us, ministering and ministered unto.
So how come when I came back to visit the only thing I could think of was how profane the church service was?
Thankfully. I'm not really equipped to continue this charade. The funny thing is that when I'm talking to my other potential clients, I'm not running into any problems. That's gotta tell me something about how I sabotage my own efforts there.
Good news is that a friend tells me that there is a lot of interest in the organizational dynamics ideas I keep harping on. Of course, he works in the education industry.
I've been interested in the chemistry of gasolines since J worked at a research facility that did a lot of work for the petroleum industry. (His comment on Slick50 Oil Additive: "What's it say? Helps you at start up. Um, yeah . . . it does that." Better was his coworker's recommendation of Texaco Premium every fifth tank to keep the engine clean.) So I was pretty interested in the controversy that Kitman has sparked.
He argues that lead was always unnecessary -- it was only used to increase octane and reduce engine "knock" anyway -- and always damaged engines. Which may have been the reason to add it to gasoline. Detroit had little interest in auto owners being able to keep their cars for 100,000+ mi (161,000+ km; it's a magic number from the American past) and so it makes sense that they would support it.
Of course, I doubt that there it's all so simple. But an interesting read. And further at mediachannel.
-- manasclerk atSign comcast net
INFOSEC's managers are sold on the "trusted advisor" idea. This comes from The Trusted Advisor by Charles Green, David Maister and Rob Galford (Free Press, 2000). They bantered this around in my friend's performanc review. I actually believe that trusted advisor ideas and "techniques" are solid, money-making and morally good. Unfortunately, INFOSEC's staff don't understand the big point, that it's not about being the most expert but being trusted.
I was going to write a longer piece on this, but instead, go read Green's article, "Ten Myths About Selling Intangible Services." It's simple, clear and concise. Or select from his many others.
It comes down to this, more or less: "Buyers look for rational reasons to justify what is finally an emotional decision, built heavily on trust."
I went into the INFOSEC offices yesterday, mostly to take care of some business. It was snowing here in the north end and getting to the NICTD station took longer than usual. Even scary with all the wet, falling snow. The thought occurred to me that I shouldn't have bothered going all the way in.
Lucky I did because I learned something about myself.
One of the INFOSEC guys had his performance review. It didn't go as well as it could have, so I took him down the street to a local coffe shop for a latté. I like the guy a lot -- more creative than analytical, a tea-drinker in a coffee-drinker's office, and the only guy in the office who's not on Adkins's diet. Which means he's slim, of course.
They had a major complaint about him: he asked for help on something that he didn't understand how to implement in Visual Basic. He's a Java expert, with a strong knowledge of C++ and various *nix scripting languages. He's bright and can think outside the box that most programmers are in. So, he asked for help and asked the wrong person. It got back to the upper client levels: what is INFOSEC doing bringing in incompetents?
He's never said that he's a VB expert. He understand the basics but he's been doing most of his work in .Net, not VB6. The INFOSEC management, however, have sold him as a VB expert.
A lie that needs to be maintained.
I've been there. I've sold myself as something I'm not in consulting and then had a miserable time of it. It's one of the reasons that I tell people that I'm not technical. It's not that I don't have any technical skills but that I don't live to program. I don't wake up hoping that everyone will leave me alone so that I can administer this network. Technical details are things I have to put up with in order to do my job. People who understand this are great to work for. Technical people tend to think like engineers (there's a great article on how engineers think or better put, the limitations of their style that makes them so effective at engineering) and I simply don't. I can talk to them and translate what they are saying to others but I just don't spend my days in that box. I've got another box I live in.
The INFOSEC folks sold him as an expert in all things and he's not. Now he's tasked with maintaining the lie.
-- manasclerk
J, in a comment to a previous post, said about me: "He wants to make the rules (which of course implies throwing away old ones) and he wants to follow the rules." Unfortunately true.
It's a latter-born thing. I don't just want to rebel. I want to overthrow the existing power structure which doesn't serve me in any way and replace it with egalitarianism which has the dual benefits of giving me more power and of making it seem like I'm serving some greater good instead of my just my own power needs. It's the power struggle that makes this blog.
Because I don't want to follow the existing rules, I would rather consult with those higher in the corporate ladder, since they follow a less restraining set of rules. At the same time, I want to strip them of their power and send it down the chain. Yeah, I know that "empowerment" doesn't work at its extremes and that Jaques was right. Still, I can't shake the "Give the Power to the People" ideals. I'm so democratic.
It's more true than I'd like to admit. Or at least probably more than I'm going to admit here for awhile.
-- manasclerk atSign comcast dot net
J pointed out last night that my blog was way too confusing to put up with. He directed me to Real Live Preacher on salon.com's blogsite (apparently I'm supposed to have some idea who this is, and I probably do, but it's worth reading anyway because RLP got a book deal from Eerdman's and this way I'll get to see the before and after editing) for an example of doing it right.
Which of cours is totally correct. I apologize to all my readers for being all over the map. J pointed out that on any given day, he coudn't tell if he would be subjected to a rant on:
I'd love to be more audience focused, but truth is I'm just doing this to figure some things out over time. Databasing my ramblings allows me to go back and mine them later; for example, when I am asked to fill in at a conference in five days.
To make things simpler, I'll promise J that from now on, I won't talk about IT Security at all on this, except for my job struggles. Reviews of comics, novels, management texts, and sociological monographs stay. As do personal thoughts about the Church and faith.
How's that sound, amigos?
-- manasclerk
At B's wedding, I learned a very simple lesson. I don't know why I didn't see this before. I started to understand during the Eucharist, after the wedding vows. I sat in front, on the side opposite the groom and bride and matron of honour. I could see the communicants coming forward, kneeling with their hands cupped in front of them. The priests came to each and said "The body of Christ, broken for you" followed by another who offered the cup and said, "Blood of Christ, shed for you" (or something close). I must have heard her say "Body of Christ, broken for you" fifty times. I didn't get tired of it. I felt guilty, like I was enjoying a voyeuristic pleasure in watching others take communion. Then I got it: it's not a private moment but a public expression of Christ's love for each of us in the Eucharist.
Body of Christ. Broken for me. Blood of Christ. Shed for the remission of my transgressions.
Yes, Virginia, there is a person who would actually use the comment box rather than send me incredibly long winded emails (no, timmyturner101, I wasn't thinking specifically of you). So a big hello to Jill of bikeToShine for using the comment box.
She also has this really cool site of her bike trek across the US -- more or less: she went from Tooele (which I think is pronounced "Tool-ee" and used to house the US weapons destruction facility, which has some really great folks who went through a scad of my emergency response courses back in the day) to Syracuse, NY. Wow. A buddy of mine did the Bike Across America thing twice and I thought he was nuts (he is) but this is setting up on their own and all. Hearty "Huzzah!" to the team.
-- manasclerk
Every now and then I look at the "latest updated blogs" list when I log in to blogger.com. Today, I was reading http://jitterygirl.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_jitterygirl_archive.html#107042213674898318 jitterygirl's description of Thanksgiving in a culture outside of her own and, it seems, more like mine. Long prayers of thanks to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and thanks for all of those who have gone before us whose sacrifices have given us what we today enjoy. But I've also been on the other side of this discussion, or at least lived with those who sit soundly on that side, with more than a sneer at the limited thinking and foibles of Christians in the States. I used to think that the point was to be cool and my faith wouldn't be seen as so stupid, such a crutch. But cool doesn't work. In the end, cool is contempt on everything else without having much to offer on my own.
Apparently, KK sent on my CV to another VP, who sent it on to a divisional director who called me. We had a great chat. I covered my usual caveats -- I'm not a techno geek although I know a lot of technical material; I prefer to do the things that security consultants don't want to do, such as presentations, discussions, developing teams, etc.; I've got broad experience. We just kind of talked. Apparently, I've got another phone call coming with the VP and a possible lunch with a consultant who lives here in N Indiana. All seemed to go very well.
Of course, we never got around to exactly what they were looking for. I think that they are trying to build their team here in Chicagoland. Which would be awfully convenient.
-- manasclerk