Last weeks of my internship

Two more weeks...
I've visited people and I've forgot some
I've preached twice (and again next sunday) and heard other people preach
I've thought about how to be a church and suffered some present things
I've pray with people and worshiped with other
I've seen people at the end of their life and kids runing to sunday school
I've had encouraging times and I've had discouraging times
Thank you Father

Having a coffee

Sitting on my bed...Thinking about the future and wondering where I am going and to what God is leading me.
My internship is over in a month and a half and I don't know what I will be doing after that.
I'm living on the first floor at some friend's place in Lille (France), my internship is teaching me a lot and brings me to places I would not have expected...
But right now I have so many questions...
I can't have a scholarship to take online classes (which I wanted to do for a few quarters at least)
I don't have any money to start a bar ministry...
I don't really want to work in a "secular" job...
What am I supposed to do with that. I know that God will provide, will lead me and show me his will...but right now I don't see anything, right now I'm in a fog with no concrete direction.

sorry

I'm sorry for the lack of updates on my blog, if you're reading this, thanks for remaining faithful.

It's been now almost 5 weeks since I've been back from California. The first weeks were really hard for me is some ways and really encouraging in some other ways (see my last post).

I'm doing my internship in my church right now and God is using that experience in a powerful way in my life. I learn to love people more, to meet them where they're at in life, pray for them and share who they are and who I am. Last sunday I preached for the second time in my life. The topic assigned by my pastor was : "what does it mean to be a Christian today." And to be honest I hated him for a few days after that.

Anyway, it's a question that has invaded my everyday life. What do people around me see in me? What is it supposed to bring in my everyday life? Do people know I'm a christian just because I don't drink, I read my Bible everyday or go to Church every sunday morning? Or do people see that I am Christian for things deeper and more obvious than that?

I preach a transformative gospel... do I live it?

I preach a never ending-deeper than the ocean-ready to give his life-... love do I live it?

An other side of my internship is to meet with people in my church who are at that point in their faith and its expression where they need more... where they need something different.

I'm gonna form a reflection group with who we're gonna think about other ways to do a service, to do worship,... it's pretty exciting to talk with them and see what we could do in the future.

I miss California and think about my friends, brothers and sisters over there everyday. I hope I can come back soon.

After 3 weeks.

Coming back here was not the easiest thing I've done in the past months....maybe even the most difficult. It is hard to come back in the Belgian mentality and I realize the bad aspects of it now more than ever. Anyway... sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

One of my big question coming back here was "why?" or to be more precise, what does God want for me here beside doing my internship. I realize little by little that God might just want me to sit in a bar have a drink and be ready for the opportunities that come to me. It's amazing to see that since I came back, every time I go out in bars, I get into a discussion with someone and every time that discussion evolve toward God, Jesus,... I had such discussions with people I would never expect to. And I feel people around me craving for something and questioning what this life is all about. My friend who visited from London told me: "there is something huge going on in your city, people are looking for God and every conversation ends up with God in it. As if God was sitting in the corner of every bar we go, waiting to jump into the discussion." Please pray for that.

Anyway it was good to be back with Melodie, my family, church and friends... here are some pictures.

  

first blog outside US.

I'm in Belgium, it's been a week. The mixed feelings inhabiting me when I left California have been replaced by other mixed feelings. I look at the people around me in the streets of Tournai, and I have a hard time to love them. I miss my friends in Pasadena so much. It is good to see Melo and my family and friends here again and spend some time with them. I wish I was in class in Payton 301, or in the library right now. Eating balanced and healthy meals feels good....

I start my internship in two churches next week (part time in each). The first one is my own church, the pastor asked me to develop alternative services from time to time. I know that what I learned in my classes will help me a lot, and I pray that God gives me new tools and opens new horizons to me. The second church is a small church -around 20 people- that has been though a lot of hard times. The pastor, who's a friend of mine as well, came 4 years ago and is trying to bring the pieces back together and develop the community. I don't know yet what I'll be doing with him, but I'm excited to work with him anyway.

I'll try to keep you updated with what's going on in my life here on the other side of the ocean.

I love you .

Video final project

02/11

Good lecture guys. Zizek's worldview in interesting since it is new to me. A lot of content in two hours so it's gonna take a while to process all that. One think that seems to be questioned to me is his conception that we have to step back from buying bio, fairtrade etc in order to think about a new way of doing thing without capitalism. My question is, if we do stop, WE can survive, but what about those people on the other side of the production process for who it is their only way of survival (even if they are exploited)? I don't think that we can just stop consumming without bringing an alternative to those people....well it's a really vast question anyway.

02/09

The ethical spectacles where interesting to study in a way that they can bring us to think about how the church can bring the gospel in different ways. I personally like the transparent spectacle (by the way good example in class) for its use of sarcasm to reveal truth. I would like to use that sometimes in my church for alternative services.

What my church might learn about this chapter: week 10

Peter Rollins: Chapter 3.
"God is nor revealed via our words but rather via the life of the transformed individual." This is something that might seems obvious and even be preached in most churches today. Why is it that we don't change our practices of evangelism then? I love that idea that being the salt should be more about leaving the other thirsty. Our way of living, individually and as a church, should be creating that wordless space in which God is able to speak of himself, a question without answer in which God only can be discovered. It reminds me of that saying by Luther I think: "share God with your neighbors and if needed use words."

Peter Rollins: Chapter 4.

The idea that we are all created with a Go-shaped hole inside of us is a view that I was holding untill recently and that I think many people in the Church hold. With that view, we attempt to bring God to other as the answer, as the one who fill the hole. IN the contrary if we consider God as the one creating the hole, the desire, we will be open to being evangelized by the other, christian or non christian. I think that it is a key view that the church should consider in its approach to "the world". What if instead as considering the other as the outsider, we would consider ourselves as the outsiders, as the one who have to learn from the other?

Peter Rollins: Chapter 5.

In the chapter, Peter talks about ethic and love. Ethic is a set of moral values drown from the text or the teaching, love is what goes beyond the ethic, the 3 miles as he illustrates it. If ever the teaching of Jesus to carry the package of a Roman for 2 miles when asked for one become a rule, Jesus would ask to carry it for 3 miles instead of 2. Love is the lense through which we ought to read everything. I think that my church as understand that in some ways by their 'ethical frame' idea. There is no rule that can be applied to all situation, but there are different situation from which will emane different rule in the light of Love.

Peter Rollins: Part 2. Service 1.
In this chapter, Peter describe a service about Holy Saturday that they set up at Ikon. The theme of the absence of God is at the center of the service and they attempt to bring different interpretations of that absence on the night that Jesus died. This service could be useful to my church in the sense that it give a good example of a service that mix different media, means of expression etc... My pastor asked me to think about different ways to do church when I go back for my internship and I think that this part of the book is gonna bring me new ideas to develop and appropriate.

Peter Rollins: Part 2. Other services.

Those example are gonna be really useful for me when I go back to my church. Not that they are guides to follow step by step, but because they open a lot of thoughts about how to lead a service in a "non-classical" way. I don't think that all those ideas would apply to my context. Personally I would try to make the services more participative. In a "open-mic" kind of way.
This book in general has been literally tranformative for me in my view of the church, evangelism, faith and our conceptions of God. It opened a lot of new insight and leads me on a new journey of questioning and living my faith.

02/04

The tension between modernity and post modernity in the church is something that we have to be aware of. It is impossible I think for my church to define if it is one or the other, I think that some people are more on one side and some on the other but as a whole community, nothing is really defined. I think that leaders who want to move toward a new form of church or even toward a new theology, but still stay in their structure, have to be cautious in how to do because of those different sensibilities.

Beyond Evandalism

I don't even know what to blog about, I think it's gonna take me a few days/weeks to process everything I've learned, questioned, discovered during that conference. It's been two really rich days, on both theoretical and practical ways. I feel like my conception of evangelism and church are beeing even more reshaped since I started this class and through all the readings, and this week-end was like an intensive workshop on that reshaping process.

What my church might learn about this chapter: week 9

Peter Rollins, How (not) to speak of God: Chapter 1
I think that no matter how much loving or how much graceful we want to be personally and as a church, we are always in danger of wanting to bring a singular answer. We must remain caution about the fact that we are always trying to understand God and pine things down so we can present him to others in order for them to understand what we consider as the truth. I think that in order to be missiologicaly relevant the church today has to be more welcoming of the other, with his ideas, conceptions, etc... and not afraid to jump in a discussion without wanting to teach or press its ideas on the other.


Gibbs and Bolger: Chapter 10

This chapter about leadership reminds me of that video of Peter Rollins. Even if my church is not really hierarchical, I think it would be interesting for us –as well as for any modern church- to review or rethink their leadership system at the light of the kingdom as we see in this chapter. Giving the voice to those who aren’t heard, empowering people and taking communal decision brings insecurities but I think that it worth trying. This require of course full participation and involvement in the community by members.

Gibbs and Bolger: Chapter 11
Last year I spent a week in a monastery in south of France, and i was really surprised to discover that most of my friends (christian and non christian) found that interesting and wanted to know more. I think that the problem with protestant churches is that we had put aside a bunch of traditions since the reformation because of their "catholic connotation". I think that we have a lot to learn from those traditions and that we should, as a church, be more open to those. I was happy for example to participate in a Liturgy for Pass-over last year in my church that tried to bring together really traditional forms, such as singing psalms, with really modern things such as multi-media experiences.

Gobbs and Bolger: Conclusion
I think that the example of the emerging church has to be taken into consideration by any church that want to be relevant to its culture and community. Those 9 practices developed in the book are applicable in some ways, even in a more "classical" frame of church. I think that they call us to live more close to the gospel, to the others and to ourselves. It is only by re-connecting to those practices that the church will be able to make a significant change in its culture, regardless of the form that it takes. I will definitely keep that book at reach and will try to share as much as I can with my church back home.

Peter Rollins: Chapter 2
The church is often to prompt at bringing answers and "helping" people understand who God is. I really like that quote: "the a/theistic approach can be seen as a form of believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believe about God." I think that it is an approach that I am too often scared to consider and being open to what others believe about God as a way to shape my a/theology is something that calls humility and willingness to abandon an understanding of God....

02/25

second modernism lead to such things as individualization. As a church we have to be cautious with the influence of that on us. It is obvious that faith is not something only individual and that it has a communal dimension that we can not forget. It is the role of the church to encourage a certain form of community, depending on the context and culture of course.

02/23

At the send of the class we talked about the fact that modernity brought a separation of different aspect of life (professional, spiritual, social,...). Even if that tendency is still present in our culture, I see more and more people wanting to come back to a more holistic view of the being and life. I think that the church has to jump into that and live it out.

What my church might learn from this chapter: week 8

Gibbs and Bolger: Chapter 6
I think that the Evangelizing practices of our church today have to be reconsidered. I'm not telling that they are not good at all, but I see a lot of "agendas" and "targeting" such as the one talked about in the book. We should question ourselves in the way we address people, is our goal to bring souls to the church or is our goal to build genuine relationship that embody the love and grace of Christ. Do we want to do apologetic through our discourses and good words or through the way we live and welcome the outcast?

Gibbs and Bolger: Chapter 7

More than welcoming the other (the non-christian, the marginalized, the poor,...) the church has to be a place were people are takend care of, a place where people can experience hospitality. I see in many churches things called "welcoming team" or a welcom booth... The entire body of the church should be practicing hospitality to new-comers, the entire body should be practicing hospitality to people outside the church. And that hospitality should be in fact primarely turned toward the outside of the church, with no other goal than to spread the love of God.

Gibbs and Bolger: Chapter 8
Introducing more participation in the modern church is a big challenge. People are so used to come and be spectators that it's gonna ask them to "be violent to themselves" to come out of the state of consumer/spectator. I think that a participative frame can be introduced little by little by opening the space more and more for everyone to be part of the leadership. Just an example is the configuration of the room, why not going from a 'everything directed to one pulpit' configuration to a more inclusive, circle configuration? That would be just a first step of course

Gibbs and Bolger: Chapter 9
It is interesting to read this chapter today because no later than last night I was talking with my pastor back home on the phone and he was asking me if I would be willing to participate and think about a other way to do the service. And I was sharing that idea of doing a service in which everybody would reflect about a passage or a subject and would take a week to produce a piece of art related to it. The service in itself would then just be everyone sharing their piece of art and explaining it to the others. I think that creativity has to be brought back in Church and worship.

Stokes Chapter 1:

This first chapter is really technical about how to lead a media or cultural research. The author brings us through different steps and teaches us how to choose a subject, how to do researches, how to study our subject and how to plan things. To be honest I don’t see how this can talk to my church. This book is really academic and I don’t think that that kind of study is done in church. Maybe the Church can benefit from such studies but they are not the ones that are going to do them.

02/18

I see a good potential for the church to develop some activities through the use of internet tools such as blogs and wiki. It is interesting because I started using those tools a few month ago and the class brings words to what I'm giong through by using them. By the way, I opened an event to pray about the church in Europe on facebook, and I'm really surprised by the impact this event has and the many responses we get on the page.

02/16

The emerging church in UK is very inspiring to me in my context. Belgium is done with church in a traditional way and I think we have a lot to learn from what has been done in UK. However the spiritual climate is different and the Belgian Church is gonna face different challenges, but I believe there is a good tomorrow ahead. I pray that people in the Church will be sensible to what moves our society and our culture and that they can apply an adaptation of those things for the church, or an adaptation of the church to those things...(like the example of club culture in UK)

What my church might learn from this chapter: week 7

Barker: Chapter 13
I think one of the major problem of the Church in Europe today, or at least in France and belgium, is to address the youth, and especially the one that include themselves in a certain youth subculture that adults don't understand. I think it would be interesting for the church to have a closer look at those subcultures and the youth of today in a way to understand what their conception of the church is and to be able to include them and walk with them.

Barker: Chapter 14
IN this last chapter, we see that Cultural studies englobe many things like politics, systems of power, public spheres etc... Those are things that the church should take in consideration as well in its thinking about its environment, the places it wants to settle and the people it wants to address. A church is never addressing an individual in itself because that individual is part of a wider group of people, with specific heritage, ethnicity, sub-culture, ...

Smith: Chapter 5
It is important to realize how the modern evangelical church has set aside any kind of tradition and practices of the ancient churches (Catholic or Orthodox). I think a way for the church today is to find a common ground were those traditions and practices can meet our contemporary culture. I am fascinated by monastic disciplines and think that my generation is coming back more and more to those. The church should be ready to take its place on the history line, to be aware of where it comes from and what formed it to be able to face the future and impact it's surrounding.

Gibbs and Bolger: Chapter 4
I think that the split between sacred and secular is something damagable to our spirituality today. As it is written in this chapter, this heritage from modernity has divided our life in different sphere that are now difficult to put back together. It is my search today to re-unite my entire self, and I think that this process should be personal as well as communal in order to be able to live a community life that embrace every aspect of our lives. People are in search of wholeness and integrity,...and the church has to be the place where they can find that.

Gibbs and Bolger: Chapter 5

The conception of community is quite different in the emmerging church as it is in my church. Even if there is a good sense of community, I am not sure that most of us see the church as a way of life in stead of as a weekly meeting(s) form. What I would like to start in my city is an intentional community that is rooted in social contacts and that walks together in seeking the kingdom of God. I don't think this kind of community can be started from a classical form of church...howeverm I think that people can be part of it and at the same time attend their congregational church.

02/11

My question about an online church like the one in Second Life is the one of relationship. Isn't the church supposed to be the family of God? How can you relate to your brothers and sisters behind a screen. It is proved that most of the communication we have with other is through behavior, non-verbal signals...I think that we are missing the main point of the communication if all that interact are avatars that you shape the way you want.

02/09

Church, a fan club? well when you think about it (thing that I've never done in that way) why not. In the church you usually have two type of persons, the ones who come and don't get involved (the spectators) and the ones who jump into it and take part in the work (the fan). Those fan are the ones who are gonna try to re-think chrismas, passover and other special days every year in a different way. They are the one who will come to the work day to fix teh building, who will not only come on sunday morning but also teach kids, play music, run the soundboard,...

What my church might learn from this chapter: week 6

Barker: Chapter 11
The first time I heard about a Church in "second life" I was pretty chocked. How can a community be online?...how can we live fellowship through a keyboard and a screen? Even if I still don't get it all, I understand the important place of cyber media in our western culture, and I think the church, in stead of rejecting it should be willing to use it in an intelligent way. Thinks like blogs, wikis...offer an opportunity to connect with people in a unique way and to share idea and information that would stay isolated otherwise.

Barker: Chapter 12

It is important for a church who want to have an effective impact, to be able to read the city or neighboorhood it is located in. The analysis of the social spaces, the power at work, the movements of people etc are keypoint to a good ministry in the core of a city. For example, in Europe, one would want to know were the social life happens, where the part of the population the ministry is aimed at gather (bars, cultural centers, sport club, etc...

Smith: Chapter 4.
Our evangelical background has put aside all kind of spiritual formation/discipline, excusing it by the fact that "faith is a personal matter". But as Smith analyses it, spiritual practices are found in our culture and has an effect on us, wether we want it or not. The goal of the church should then be to bring counter-discipline, counter spiritual formation. I think that we have a whole lot to learn from the fathers of the church and the monastic tradition, and I feel that more and more peoples of my generation feel like returning to those traditions.

Gibbs/Bolger: Chapter 2.
The question of denomination and labels is an important one in the US, a less important one in Europe I think. Anyway, the fact that most emerging churchs are willing to define itself as "and" or "with" in stead of as "against"is a good question for me in my future ministry and in my place in the church.
The definition of Emerging Church by Gibbs and Bolger gives a good idea and put words on what I would like to pursue while going back to Belgium. This chapter makes me aware of the tension bestween this and the tradition, the modern church our culture.

Gibbs/Bolger: Chapter 3.
The emerging church's will to replace Jesus' life at the center of their message is something that strike me. The church has to take its missionnal place in the community, in the city, in the country. That shift from a "bringing-in" church to a "living-out" church sounds so real to me and my reading of the Gospel. The church needs to be real to its contemporaries, it needs to propose a way of life instead of dogmas and dry beliefs. I think that this is what people are looking for today: something real, even if it can be hard in some ways, but real.

04/04

The fan culture is something interesting to me in the sense that I've never been a real fan. I've been a pretty intense spectator, but don't think I ever brought it to the fan level. It's a culture that I find funny in a way (so much time involved in a TV show, movie or game sounds a waste for me) and in an other way that calls me to think about the passions in my life and the way I am dedicated to them.

02/02

A Structuralist view of things implies that everything can be understood as a set of rules. For example, to understand a western movie, one does not need to watch a specific movie but to understand the general set of rules that makes a western movie. I think that this theory has its limitation in a way that it excludes the narrrative of specifique persons when it come to understand such or such culture. While the narrative is so much important in understanding what surrounds us.

What my church might learn from this chapter: week 5

Barker: Chapter 8

As a European it is interesting to see how Ethnicity and “Races” (word that I profoundly hate) is so differently managed here than back home. I think that the church has to adopt a “natural” approach of integrating people from all cultures and welcoming differences with the love of God. However, I think that the more we put the issue on the center of the discussion the more awkward things and effort will appear.

There is nothing such as Ethnic Churches….Jesus is the one who went to talk to the Samaritan women, the outcast community of that time.

Barker: Chapter 9

When it comes to sexuality and gender, I think that the role of the church is to celebrate the differences between men and women that respect each other in who they are and the gives glory to God as a creator of those differences as well as the similarities that exist. Cultural studies are for that a good tool to understand better where sexism and abuses come from and where our culture(s) are going toward in that matter.

Barker: Chapter 10

This chapter is particularly interesting when we think about the Church as texts and audiences. What kind of "program" does the church offers or is looking for. I think that we are shifting from a church as a "one-way" message to an audience as active producers and actors of what they are watching. The evolution of TV programs and models is a good "thermometer" of the evolution of our culture and thus of the church since church is to be in the culture.

Smith: Chapter 3

The use of narrative appeals more and more to our culture today. This is where people can find themselves, can relate and identify. The Gospel is a narrative in which each one of us can become and actor. This is a view that the church should adopt. If we live our lives in the light of the bible story and find our place in it, we'll be able to invite the stranger in to be part of it to. Then maybe, as the "double-americano-with two pump of vanilla with room for cream" becomes a part of a starbucks coffe customer, the "healed by spit-and-dust-mud blind man who had faith" with become part of the stranger's everyday life.

Gibbs/Bolger: Chapter 1.
It is of the utmost importance for the church to study culture. Without a good understanding of what makes the culture a local church is in, why the church is declining, why the youth is looking for something different than what their parents knew before, what is an effective way to communicate and relate to people nowadays, and many other questions... the church won't be able to deliver a relevant message and to operate an effective impact on the culture it is in.

01/28

The evolution of Marxism into Post-Marxism has let aside a good number of theories of the classical form. I found interesting the parallel between Marxism and the theology of freedom and radical orthodoxy as well. The analysis of a text was good for putting in practice what we have learned so far.

01/26

The closer we come to the present days, the more I find the theories interesting and in application arround us. The intersting part of the class for me was getting to discover the 12 tones scale by Arnold Schoenberg and also the analysis of the movie by Eisenstein. Those two forms of expression really moved me by their intensity and boldness, even if they are really different from one another.

What my church might learn from this chapter: week 4

Barker: Chapter 5.

Globalization already affect our churches, the easy example of worship music traveling all over the world and impacting the majority of evangelical churches (and others). The cultural settings of our days require now to work with new alternative lifestyle and identities, and I think that it is when we will be able to meet those that the church will have an impact in our societies. Hybridity in a way that it include people from every lifestyle/culture/"class"/haircut/....should be one of the maine character of our church today. Jesus was the one who was hanging out with the outcasts wasn't he? Aren't we called to walk in his steps?

Barker: Chapter 6
The idea of "the aestheticization of everyday life" is something that keeps my attention. I've been thinking a lot lately about the fact that we decompose as life in different fields (an heritage of the french enlightenment). We don't mix our spiritual life with our professional or emotional life.... The different forms of aestheticization apply mainly to arts and everyday life, but I want to see my faith as an art, and I want to practice that art in my everyday life/contact/thinking,...

James K.A. Smith "Who's afraid of postmodernism?" Chapter 1.

So many people are scared of the dangers of post-modernism, and try to keep the church away from it. But we have to face it because it is not something that we can avoid, it is herem in our culture, and if we want to be a church as the church is meant to be, we have to deal with it and bring the church in this new era. The first thing to do, and which is the point of this book, is trying to understand what post-modernity is. I like the phylosofical approach that the author takes and the bridges that he wants to build between secular phylosphers and christianity today. Looking forward for the next chapter...

James K.A. Smith "Who's afraid of postmodernism?" Chapter 2.
Since I arrived at Fuller, that idea that the gospels (and the rest of the Bible) were only interpretation was a pretty new idea, even if I could "sense" that before. That idea, brought questions about inspiration, infalability,... I really like the idea that even if we rely on interpretation (cause this all we have right?), those interpretations can be true. However I'm still convinced that there are some objective truth (like God is love,...) that don't depend on our interpretation of things... The european church, and me being a part of it, has still a lot to "deconstruct" in that field of interpretation, objectivity,....

Barker: Chapter 7
It is important as a church to think about identity (self identity and social identity) as something always in the process and also as being something individual and communal. The failure to approach some cultures, or some persons, is often grounded in the inability to let people express their true-self and trying to reduce them to an icon of the "perfect christian" or "perfect church member." Acceptation of the other/the outcast for who he is and building a true relationship is, I think, the first step to be able to reach our and share God's love.

01/21

Interesting to see where the myth of the "chosen nation" comes from. As a European, it is striking to see how God is involved in politic at such a great scale in United State. Claims like "God is on our side" or even just "God bless you" from the mouth of a president is not common for someone from a country where the Church and State are so "well" separated. As Christians we ought to be careful of the way we use God in our political stands....and like a good friend of mine says: "The question is not the one of God being on our side, but the one of us being on God's side".

01/14

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of historical and theoretical lectures like today's lecture. But I understand that it will help me grasp more of where the cultural studies and even our culture comes from. The point that kept my attention was the one about Commodity Fetishism. It talks to me in the way that, as Tim says, even if the Fair Trade is more and more present, it is still a marketing tool. However, we should as a church be sensible and engage in social justice and despise its marketing aspect, fair trade is a way to be a part of bringing social justice.

What my church might learn from this chapter: week 3

Caputo chapter 4.

Is it that impossible to live how Jesus lived? Is it that impossible to have our faith at the tip of our fingers and our testimony in our hands to share? I think that the place of the church is in the streets of our cities, in the parks and hospital before than in the church building on Sunday morning and Wednesday night. We need to study the wor(d)(k) of God and worship together, but if it just stays inside the church walls we just miss the whole point of God's love.

Caputo: Chapter 5

I was really struck during the election by the importance of the issues of abortion and gay marriage. How can those two issues be so important in a debate that people don’t talk about things such as social justice, alternative energies and other things like that? Like Caputo I don’t mean to underestimate their importance, but I think that it is a problem when people, churches and political group take those as their major battle. I really like Caputo’s analysis of the system we live in as western people and the urge to deconstruct it to live the kind of life that Jesus would live today in 2009.

Barker: chapter 3.

If “Meaning is never fixed but always in motion and continually supplemented”, we should be careful as a church with the words we use and the context we use them in. The concept of deconstruction (seems to be all over my readings) is something that we should take into consideration. I think it can be interesting for a church to “deconstruct” its paradigms, language, beliefs,…in order to seek what really form those. This is even more important while approaching another culture.

Barker: chapter 4

Biology and the understanding of the body differ from a culture to another. This is something else that we should keep in mind as we approach different culture. For example, in urban western culture tattoos are totally accepted and even part of the norm, when in some foreign countries it is still really rare and not accepted. Our understanding of what our body and its functionment…will impact the way that we interact with people. It is then important to understand the codes and views of the culture we live/work in.

Caputo: Chapter 6

Those two example of churches or "non -churches" that Caputo gives are really good points. The church of today is, I think at a turning point and enter (or has already entered) when it has to re-think itself (or maybe I should use deconstruct). The danger thaugh is to deconstruct the Church (with capital C) as an institution and human system, to reconstruct an other Church which will become an other institution or human system. Deconstruction has to be a way of life, a daily basis experience and has also to be deconstructed itself at times...

01/12

The heritage of the enlightenment and the separation of the church and state -and therefore separation of faith and the rest of life- in the 18th century seen in England with the emergence of the "English Identity" is still so strong in Europe. As a European I can see how that period still influence my generation and our identity as a church today. And I think it's important for us to see where it all comes from and how we can bring a response to that.

What my church might learn from this chapter. Week 2.

Culture and Cultural Studies:
Chapter 1:
Talking to my pastor a lot about my generation and the way we can be the church in our contemporary culture, I realize through that Chapter that Cultural Studies is one of the key for me and my Church to understand where we come from. Understanding what shapes us, and our culture is the best way to have an opportunity to have an impact on that culture. Also, for a few years my Church has been really involved in counseling and spiritual formation. And I think that cultural studies should be part of that kind of formation because our life (in a holistic way) is impacted by our culture.

Chapter 2:
I think it is important for the church to work at decoding the 'maps of meaning' of the people it deals with. The church has for too long trying to evangelize without taking the time to try to understand its audience and I think that the main part of bringing the gospel is listening to others, trying to assimilate their 'language' and understand their culture(s). So the church should be aware of 'signs' delivered by such or such culture it wants to address.

What would Jesus deconstruct.
Chapter 1.
In his first chapter, Caputo invites us to think about that well known question "What would Jesus do?" and reconsider its modern interpretation surrounded by commercial by-products and used as a weapon against "those who are wrong". His portrait of Jesus is not what is usually depicted in the church in general and barely in my own church. I agree on Caputo on the point that it is time for the church to live its faith out and bring changes in our society by bringing the Truth of Jesus Christ. A Truth that deconstruct, that is ugly and smells bad, but that is real and often lives next door to us.

Chapter 2.
Our understanding of faith as a Journey has to be re-evaluated and Caputo shows how in every path there are wrong ones, dead-end paths, etc. Deconstruction and the fact that nothing is settled and has to be "tested" should be something that any church should keep in mind. In that way, by trying, or should I say "discerning" with the help of the Holy Spirit, the church can go on an "adventure" in the sense that Caputo means it. It can be a scary thing for a church or even for anyone of us, because there will always be uncertainties and dangers, but I believe that it is how faith has to be lived and lived out.

Chapter 3.
Caputo in the chapter define deconstruction in light of different concept: the gift, hospitality, forgiveness and love. His explanation of those are, I think, utterly biblical in a way that Jesus calls us to love the unlovable, to give without expecting in return like he did, to offer hospitality to the other and to forgive what is unforgivable. I think that the church, even if it teaches those in that way is often missing the point and putting "economies" around them. I think deconstruction is needed in the church (of the church) in order to come back to the true meaning of Love, Hospitality, Gift, and Forgiveness as Jesus means them.

01/07

Mc Gavran criticized the idea of Mission Station in the 30's and came out with the idea that maybe one shouldn't change its culture to become a christian. Even if that idea seems basic to me and most of us, I think that the Church today try to "deculturize" too often people. What about a punk guy coming with his big tainted mohawk; piercings all over his face and big boots on Sunday morning, how is he gonna be accepted in most churches?
An important question that stroked me too is the one about how to be christ-like in those new spaces such as Youtube or Facebook.

Intro Class 01/05

I was really excited by the first class because I felt that the content will apply a lot to what I want to do in the futur and that I will learn good tools that I can use in my life (personnal and ministry). The basis laid today was really relevant and almost a "picture" of my life", especially when the prof talked about the church in Europe and the difficulty for young people to create a dialog between their life in the church and their friends who are not familiar with it.