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Ecclesiology

• 08.21.07
  Emerging Church & Academy, Part 2
  Ecclesiology, Theology, emerging church (0)

  I wrote a post a few days ago saying that the emerging church is the result of the academy being brought into the church. This afternoon I read this quote on the Deep Church website: [T]he emerging church conversation has been invigorated by the energy, life and creativity that has come from some significant advances in theology and biblical studies in the last 30 years. In part, emerging church writers are popularising and applying the work of hard-nosed theologians (the likes of N.T. Wright, Stanley Hauwerwas and Walter Brueggemann). Interesting. The full post can be found here.
  
  
• 08.19.07
  Emerging Church: Bridging the Academy & Church?
  Christianity, Ecclesiology, Theology, emerging church (2)

  This is just a quick observation that I seem to have noticed. It seems to me that popular evangelical leaders read books by people like MacArthur, Warren, Hybels, Swindol, Lucado, and Stanley: practitioners and pastors. However, it seems like emerging church leaders are reading books by Hauerwas, Wright, Brueggemann, Volf, McKnight, Moltmann, Franke, and Grenz: theologians and academics. I have no statistics to back this up. It is just a cursory observation based mostly off of blogs I read and visiting the ever-exciting Christian bookstore. So, my observations may not reflect reality. But for the sake of this ...
  
  
• 05.25.07
  Neo-Youth Ministry Part 5: The Youth Minister as Pastor
  Christianity, Ecclesiology, Neo-Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry (1)

  While many full-time youth workers carry the title of “Youth Pastor” I wonder how many take the role of “pastor” seriously. If we are going to forge a new, authentic way of doing youth ministry, then the youth minister must take seriously their role in the pastoral care of the congregation. I believe that some of the most beautiful times in the lives of congregations are when a member gets seriously ill or dies. It is at these times, when the rug is pulled out from under families, that the church shuts up and starts putting up ...
  
  
• 05.18.07
  Are You Infected?
  Christianity, Ecclesiology, Youth Ministry (0)

  Below is the article I wrote for this month's church newsletter.  I really struggled writing it; I just couldn't put the words together like I wanted to.  Hopefully, it will be coherent enough that people will mildly understand what I was getting at.  As we're trying to communicate a new way of doing youth ministry to the people in the congregation, I'm trying to come up with ways to explain my non-heiarchical, non-authoritiative, fluid, and organic approach to ministry.  It's hard to do that in written form with only one page at your disposal.  An anology I used at my last team ...
  
  
• 02.26.07
  Neo-Youth Ministry Part 4: The Youth Minister as Theologian
  Christianity, Ecclesiology, Neo-Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry (4)

  I have to admit, I may be a little biased with this first attribute of a youth minister able to transition towards a Neo-Youth Ministry. During my junior year of college, I gave consideration to going into the world of academics and heading straight for seminary (and a subsequent Ph.D.) after undergrad. But my wife had plans of med school, and I didn’t want to be living off of student loans, so I defaulted back to the original plan of being a youth minister. I still have dreams of one day doing to seminary and possibly completing ...
  
  
• 02.22.07
  Neo-Youth Ministry Part 3: The Youth Minister
  Christianity, Ecclesiology, Neo-Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry (1)

  Having given some attention to the actual term youth ministry, we now turn to the role of the youth minister (or pastor or director, whatever the exact title may be). Before diving into what might be the role of the youth minister within a Neo-Youth Ministry, some things need to be said in regard to the nature of the office itself. I am of the opinion that when the church finds a robust, biblical, missional ecclesiology the need for a dedicated youth minister may very well disappear. Teens and their parents will be fully integrated into the life of ...
  
  
• 02.17.07
  Neo-Youth Ministry Part 2: “Ministry”
  Christianity, Ecclesiology, Neo-Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry (0)

  Continuing to examine the term youth ministry, we now turn to the word ministry. This will probably be a fairly brief post, since I don’t have any real training in Greek. My interest in the term ministry is that it appears that in popular usage it is taken to mean a specific Christian program or institution. You hear the term used all the time like this. At church you probably hear something along the lines of “there is an exciting new ministry being started in order to serve the poor in our community” (or anything else, ...
  
  
• 02.11.07
  Neo-Youth Ministry Part 1: “Youth”
  Christianity, Ecclesiology, Neo-Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry (0)

  In order to begin to re-think what it might mean to do youth ministry, to formulate a Neo-Youth Ministry, we should probably start out by coming to grips with the term “youth ministry”. To begin, I’ll be examining the word “youth”. “Youth”, as it is defined in most church ministry contexts refers to students in middle school (sometimes known as junior high) and high school. Depending on where you are in the country, this includes sixth or seventh grade students through twelfth grade students. An initial observation of this term brings to light that this kind of ministry is extremely ...
  
  
• 02.01.07
  Neo-Youth Ministry Series Introduction
  Christianity, Ecclesiology, Neo-Youth Ministry, Youth Ministry (0)

  As most of you very well know, the prefix neo simply means new. In order to affix this label to a word, the “new” understanding of the word must be so different than the previous understanding to warrant the neo prefix, rather than just slightly adjusting the meaning of the old word. However, at the same time, the “new” understanding must resemble enough the old term in such a way to warrant affixing the neo to the old term, rather than creating a completely new term or reclassifying altogether. To give a really poor example: For centuries Christians were concerned with ...
  
  
• 01.11.07
  All Books Read in 2007
  Books, Christianity, Ecclesiology, Personal, Theology, Youth Ministry, emerging church (1)

  I started doing this last year, and thought it would be a good idea to continue this year. Maybe this year, I can keep up with the list as I go and not forget books. Anyways, this post is mostly for my own personal record-keeping. As I read books and put them in my sidebar, I will also copy/paste that information here. Then I can look back on my year and see what all I've read and maybe offer some insights into the top books of the year. Or something neato like that. <A href="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fmattclecom-20%2F8001%2F26b0ac77-c00e-42a1-ae6d-aedf31391d0c&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A>
  
  

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