Postmodern Renaissance Culture Revolutionary

Forbes has just released an article on the most sinful cities in the U.S. America's Most Sinful Cities Interestingly enough, Oklahoma City showed up on two different lists. Oklahoma City ranked number 9 on the list of the top 10 most gluttonous cities. It also ranked number 8 on the most envious cities. The results of this study are based on the editors equivalent categories. So the gluttony sin was measured by looking at obesity statistics and BMI (body mass index) to find that Oklahoma City has a population of 27.5% that is obese. Envy, on the other hand, was measured by looking at property crime rates such as burglary, larceny, and auto theft. What I have to wonder is: why do this kind of study? Were the Forbes editors sitting around, thinking to themselves, "Hey, I wonder if your city is a greater place of sin than mine?" And if you just have to know, that cesspool of lust, Denver, Colorado was number 1. (By the way, Washington D.C. did make the list - #6. But it was ...

This from the, "Take it for what it's worth" category. Last week I visited my 5 year old son's school for his Easter party. Being in Oklahoma, it is still acceptable for a school to have an Easter party. As long as we only talk about Easter bunnies, and eggs, and candy. Don't bother with that historical Jesus event. Anyway. It came time for the egg hunt. They kids all grabbed their baskets and trooped outside. My son has inherited my non-competitive nature. He leisurely wandered around the playground, not bothering with the objective of finding and gathering eggs. That were obvious. It's not like it was hard to find them. 18 seconds later, all the eggs had been found. My son had 2. Out of 500. Luckily one of his friends was a merciful type and shared from his bounty. But the point of the story is that when they got back to the room, the kids had to pool all of their eggs and then the eggs were redistributed equally to everyone. And I scratched my head. And I l...

There are some weeks where an image or an idea seems to follow you wherever you go. The past couple of weeks, the idea of hypocrisy seemed to be everywhere. I have been reading unChristian where they are discussing the attitudes of outsiders toward the church. In it they explore the opinion outsiders have of Christian's being hypocrites. We also had the very obvious case of Governor Spitzer: crusading law man turned simple, albeit it affluent, john. The word has also popped up in conversations I have been party to. Hypocrisy is a definite issue for the church to face and be honest about. The original understanding of the Greek words for hypocrite and hypocrisy come from the Greek theater. The hypocrite was the actor who performed a role behind the mask of a character. Hypocrisy was used in a broader sense. It could apply to any type of acting or faking. When we think about a hypocrite or hypocrisy in today's language, we think about someone who says or does one thing while hol...

One of the catch phrases of the emerging church movement is experiential worship. The substance of experiential worship is to move from recipient to participant. An experiential worship service attempts to draw everyone in the congregation into some aspect of worship beyond just singing or reciting prayers. It may call participants to touch or smell something that connects the people's lives with the message of the Gospel. It may have them actively respond to the worship or prayer through movement or an activity. It may move worship away from a traditional setting by going to a different place or changing the environment of the a familiar place. Last weekend I served as the worship leader for a confirmation retreat. A retreat setting always provides the opportunity to draw people into a more experiential service due to the unfamiliar or less familiar setting. But I was also asked to design more experiential services for two worship times. Since the retreat was for youth, I felt som...