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June 27, 2007
Breaking News: Study shows that teens talk with other teens online about drugs and sex
Study: Drug, Sex Talk Present In Teen Online Chats
I don't think this really surprises anyone....for as long as teenagers have had parents they have come up with "clever" ways to talk about taboo subjects.
Again, I don't want to beat a dead horse. But I'm still amazed almost every week with what my college students post on either their My Space or Facebook pages. It's almost as if they feel that others won't read what they display (i.e. parents, future employers....their college pastor).
This is obviously something I will begin discussing more on this blog in the future....issues related to social networking and ministry.
Posted by rhett at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2007
Tuesday is for Technology....Cell phones, PDA's and Stress
Cheesy title, but you know, it has a ring to it. One of the things that I have been thinking through a lot lately (now that I have a little more time to think since school is done) is how I structure my blog. And I've decided that I need to give at least one day a week to technology.
Why? For several reasons: 1) It inundates our lives (that's a good enough reason there); 2) we use it constantly, and I'm finding that we need to think through our use of it; 3) how do we think through our use of it theologically; 3) i'm wanting to think through these reasons and more since I will be the presenter at Blog World Expo on technology, blogging and social networking in college ministry.
Some days I may post about my theological reflections on technology (obviously that is consuming my reading list below these days), or about my frustration with it, or about cool tech gadgets such as the beautiful i-Phone by Apple which of course I don't have, nor am I ready to cough up the money to get one. It may take many different avenues.
Today, I just want to reflect on something very shortly, and my reflection comes out of reading Mark Driscoll's blog and some of the things he has been posting lately.
Last year Mark had a phenomenal post called Death by Ministry. Such a good name. And I've noticed that he has been writing more on that issue.
You can read his three posts below:
All these posts are great. Posts 1 and 3 are what really caught my eye thought. Post 2 talks about the family of the pastor and ministry and none of those statistics were new to me as I have grown up in and around ministry. But something jumped out at me regarding 1 and 2. And it was the infiltration of technology in the writing. In post 1 Driscoll lists some fascinating practices of many successful business executives, CEO's, etc. and one of the things that they tend to rely on is technology and especially emails and their Blackberry's. And then as you read post 3 and what causes stress it's not shocking that stress is often caused by constant stimulation and what he dubs the 24 hour lifestyle.
Correlation: Technology=Stress
Most of you are saying duh. And of course there are extremes to this on either spectrum, but we all have stopped and probably asked the question, "Should I really be looking at my phone driving down the highway, while texting a response at the same time?" At least I have asked myself that question. That's when I knew I was addicted.
About 6-8 months ago I was talking on this blog about getting a new phone and some of you sent in good suggestions. I wanted a PDA. So I thought about the Treo and the Sidekick, but I ultimately ended up with Blackberry Pearl, which I love and am addicted to.
How addicted?
--It's on me all day (in my hand or pocket)
--I look at it non-stop to see if I missed a call, text, email
--When the alarm on it goes off in the morning, turning it on, and the emails roll in I lay in bed and scroll through them all before I get up
--I text and read emails on the road
--I play Brickbreaker while I'm waiting to meet up with students or friends
I could go on but it's all quite pathetic. But in the last several months I have noticed the correlation in my life between technology (specifically my phone) and stress, specifically the stress or worry that sort of lasts all day because I'm reading and communicating all day.
How healthy is it to read email at 11pm or later, just before you go to bed. Talk about bringing stress into sleep? Or how healthy is is that checking email is the first thing I do in the morning?
What about you?
Are you tied to your phone/PDA? Have you thought about getting rid of it? Why or why not?
Am I believing the lie that I need technology to stay plugged in to what is going on so that I can be successful and a good employee, pastors, etc.?
technology, cell phones, stress, ministry
Posted by rhett at 01:36 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2007
After the Weekend Reflection: Things you learn when your spouse is on bed rest
So since my wife has been on bed rest I have been doing a lot of thinking and I've come to many conclusions, but just a few I thought I would share.
One, a woman's work is never done. Not sure of the history of that phrase or quote, but I did come across it as being an episode of . I have to be careful how I say this....but I know in many households women often do a majority of the work in the home (i.e. raise the children all day; do the laundry; clean the house; buy groceries; cook dinner; make the beds; feed the pets.....should I keep going?) As I've mentioned before I'm an egalitarian. So my wife and I pretty much split up all kinds of duties and we both do work that is sometimes considered the work of the other sex.
But now that my wife is on bed rest I am coming to an even much more appreciation of the work we do together as a couple. How we share duties and responsibilities. As I'm struggling to keep up the stuff around the house myself during this time, I can't imagine how many women do it all at times (i.e. all the stuff listed above.....and some do all of that and work on top of that).
Second, I am truly thankful for my wife who is the greatest partner. I have always been thankful for her, but we can often forget our blessings in the business of life. This is helped us realign our priorities and remember our blessings.
Third, I'm selfish. Now I consider myself to not be a selfish person. But now I'm realizing how often our "giving nature" is based on our desires and abilities to give and not be selfish. But when a crisis hits, or a sickness occurs and we have to carry more of the weight and serve another, you soon realize how selfish we can be. I usually give because I'm not required to do so....and it's easy to give when things aren't demanded of us. But it's much harder to give when we are required to do so, and people need us. I don't know if that makes sense. But serving my wife during her bed rest has shown me how much more giving and selfless I still need to be. I'm a work in progress.
Four, life is pretty easy when you were single. And life was pretty easy as a married couple. But having a kid on the way brings a whole new perspective....one that we are looking forward to enjoying. But it's funny what I used to stress out about when I was single, and when it was just my wife and I. Now I look back on those things and exclaim, "Really, that stressed me out!"
That's all for the reflections for now....I will keep you updated on my wife, her bed rest and the soon arrival of our first child.
Posted by rhett at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2007
When God slows us down
I've been wondering if God sometimes has to bring circumstances and situations into our lives to get us to slow down...stop...reflect. And I'm pretty sure that he does. This has hit home within the last couple of days. My wife started experiencing too many contractions for us being still 5 weeks away from the delivery date. So after a trip to the doctor, we are now at the beginning of 5 weeks of required bed rest for her. This has brought home very quickly for us a new way of having to do life. We are both very independent and hard working people with pretty busy schedules, and we were using these next 5 weeks to finish the things we needed to finish before the baby came (i.e. transitioning people at work, finishing the baby room, etc.), you know all the supposedly "important stuff." Now that has come to a screeching halt.
But even in the last couple of days I think we have both been learning a lot. We've been learning that when we live life at such a go, go, go pace you hardly have time to notice the other beautiful things happening around you. We've been learning that when you live so frantically at times, that you realize the things you think are important are really not that important at all. Instead this slowing down helps you refocus what is really important. We've been learning to rely on and serve each other more. I think we have been doing this, but when one is on bed rest it becomes even more evident how much you need each other and how you must work more together. When we as people are very independent, holding down jobs, running meetings, driving all over town, you forget how much we need each other in community.
And one of the biggest lessons we have been learning is how much we need the people around us (friends, family and co-workers). They have set up schedules to bring over food, to visit my wife when I have to leave for meetings, etc. All this makes me realize that we don't often like relying or depending upon other people because we can be so use to doing things for ourselves.
Last night in college group we began a six week summer study on the book of 1 John. And last night we focused a lot on 1 John 1:1-4 and there are many amazing things that one can talk about in that passage, but two things stick out in my mind as I think about what is going on in my wife and I's life right now.
One, the tangibility of what John describes concerning the word of life. He states that they "touched" and "heard" and "looked" at. God, incarnate in the human form of Jesus Christ is not "out there", but is "here" with us in very tangible ways.
Second, one of the ways that God becomes tangible to us is through the ways we experience Him in the fellowship with one another, and the fellowship that John says we share with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. The fellowship of our friends has brought home new ways of experiencing the love, grace, service and humility of Christ.
Though bed rest is not something I wish upon anyone, I almost feel as if God has done us a big favor (that's easier for me to say since I'm not the one on bed rest), because it has helped us realign our priorities as we head into the birth of our first child.
Posted by rhett at 10:16 AM | Comments (1)
June 13, 2007
The Re-Orienting Work of Culture
Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trend by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson and Michael J. Sleasman.
I first saw mention of this book when I was reading a post at Brent Thomas' blog. And the title intrigued my interest and I have liked the other books of Vanhoozer.
I just finished his section on the four things that culture does: culture communicates--culture orients--culture reproduces--culture cultivates.
These four things have me thinking a lot about what culture is communicating to me and how it is re-orienting me to a life that is different, or might be different than that of Jesus Christ.
He closes the section by saying:
Enough nurture of a particular kind produces in us a kind of second nature. Researchers at an Australian university looking into the neurophysiology of watching television discovered this telling fact: repeated and prolonged viewing destroys the capacity of the viewer to pay attention. Here is a kind of nurture, then, that corrupts nature.
Prolonged exposure to cultural texts--and we are always exposed--produces various types of effects for good or ill. Culture is always cultivating our spirits in one way or another, sensitizing or desensitizing us, and enlivening or dulling our capacity to attend to various aspects of reality. Many of us may be unaware of the effect that culture is having on our spirits. Yet disciples cannot afford to sleepwalk their way through everyday life. those who confuse the real world with pathetic imitations can hardly be effective ambassadors for Jesus Christ.
Here is an everyday example: how should we read the holiday season. How a culture "does" Christmas reveals much about its ultimate concern. On the one hand, Christmas is a theological event that marks the birth of Jesus Christ, the moment when the eternal Son of God became man. On the other hand, Christmas has become a cultural event that has evolved over time in an increasingly materialist direction. What is the meaning of Christmas according to twenty-first century North America? It is important to recall that cultures does not often communicate directly: there are few explicit answers or thesis statements in the texts of popular culture. Yet there is copious indirect communication. Instead of addressing our belief-systems head-on, cultural works structure our daily practices and colonize our imaginations. Culture's power to shape our habits of thinking and acting is on conspicuous display during the Christmas season, the holiest of holy times for commercial retailers.
We need to carefully and honestly ask ourselves in what world of meaning do we dwell, at Christmastime or in ordinary time? Where do we spend most of our time, in our bodies and, just as importantly, in our imaginations? We need to guard what enters and inhabits our hearts. We should be dwelling in the real world displayed in Scripture, not the counterfeit worlds projected by other, non-canonical texts. Sleepwalkers of the world, awake!
Wow! What does our infatuation with reality TV especially, say about us as a culture....we can't even handle living in our own reality, we instead have to live in others reality...not even their real reality, but their fake reality.
Posted by rhett at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)
It has been a long time coming....
These last two years have been some very long and very hard and very tiring years. But on Saturday it all came to a great end. I officially walked across the stage at Fuller Theological Seminary's largest graduation in history, and I received my graduate degree in Marriage and Family Therapy.
What am I going to do now? Well, I will continue to work at my current job as the college pastor at this point. But one of my dreams is to be able to integrate my Master of Divinity and Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy, in my work as a college pastor. It had become clear to me after several years in college ministry that I was no longer equipped to handle the many issues that were arising, issues that required special training in some areas.
So for now, I will enjoy being a graduate and I'm pretty sure that I don't want to pursue anymore degrees for the rest of my life. This should be a fun summer of preparing for the 2007-2008 college year, and a really great summer as my wife and I await for the arrival of our first child in July.
Posted by rhett at 10:01 AM | Comments (3)
June 12, 2007
Fuller Seminary's, Dr. Scholer has a great write up in the LA Times
The Los Angeles Times had a great write up on Fuller professor David M. Scholer who is dying from cancer.
He is currently teaching a 12 week class at our church on "Prison Epistles of Paul."
Rejoice always: a lesson in dying
Here is an interesting quote from Dr. Scholer and the LA Times who has been an advocate of women in ministry for many, many years....
Students will often hear him say that a sign of maturity is to be able to "live with ambiguity."
As he describes it, he tells each class something like this:
"People who think they have all the answers to all of life's questions are fake. You have no right to oppose women in ministry until you have made a friend who is called to ministry and you've listened to her story. You have no right to make a statement about homosexuality until you have made friends with a Christian homosexual person. The conclusion you draw is another issue."
Posted by rhett at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2007
Technology and Mission
Great article by Singaporean theologian Simon Chan. This is a timely follow up from my previous post.
The Mission of the Trinity
What is the place of new communication technologies in worship and mission?
I believe that if we have a clear, coherent ecclesiology, if we know what it is to be the church, then technology will have its proper place. It's when we lack a clear understanding of our own identity and are driven by a pragmatic understanding of the church and its mission that technology becomes a threat to the life of the church. For too long, evangelicals have been driven by a rather shallow understanding of the church. We tend to see the church as a kind of pragmatic organization to fulfill certain tasks. And of course, if the church is viewed in this way, then we use technology very uncritically as long as those tasks are done.
This is especially important when it comes to the ultimate meaning of communion. Technology has created what we call virtual reality. It can give you a sense of intimacy. But whether it is real intimacy or not is quite another matter. I think this is where the Christian understanding of community enables us to look beyond what modern technology can offer, because the Christian understanding of real communion is embodied communion. Communion means bodily presence. That's at the heart of our incarnational theology, God coming to us in person; it's the meaning of the resurrection of the body. So no matter what virtual reality technology can create, it will never be an adequate substitute for communion.
But a high-definition video screen seems to bring us much closer to the preacher. Does that sense of intimacy happen in liturgical worship?
The traditional liturgy doesn't exist primarily to foster interpersonal relationships. It operates on a very different paradigm. In the liturgy we are, in a very real sense, objectively recognizing God for who he is. And in the midst of proclaiming who God is, we encounter God. At the end of the day, we may not be particularly drawn toward individuals, but in a good liturgy, we are drawn to God. We recognize him for who he is.
Posted by rhett at 04:56 PM | Comments (1)
