Daily Links – 10.8.09

Zombie Consumerism
Thanks to John for pointing out this great post on Zombie Consumerism and it’s parallels to real life. In the post, John Rooks (president of the SOAP Group) points out how much Zombie Consumerism, always going after low prices, parallels America’s obsession with places like Wal Mart. Especially interesting are Rook’s comparisons between George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and the 2004 remake (you might watch buy both and compare them to see the changing theological landscape in our postmodern world):

A quick side note on Zombie dexterity: It has been argued that the theatrical shift from slow moving Zombies to fleet-footed gymnastic Zombies as in 28 Days Later and the Dawn 2004 remake is a reaction to the digital age and speed of computers, or to continue the analogy, computer viruses.

The Universal Church: Not So Universal?
“There has never been a time when the church was one. The centralizing of the church around Rome and the papacy was a historical move emerging between the third and fifth centuries in an already divided and contested Christendom. “Each one of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ,’” as Paul attests in one of his early epistles (1 Cor. 1:12). There has never been a Christendom in terms of a universal kingdom of Christ. While the Roman medieval church was extending both its powers and territorial domain from the eleventh century to the sixteenth, it became increasingly aware of its own smallness. . . . Even before the Reformation’s splintering, Christendom was an ideology only partly realized and internally contested. The church, then, is always to come. It is a promise that forms the horizon within which the churches seek to be and become more fully the church.” (Politics of Discipleship, by Graham Ward p. 25-26 HT: Halden)

Reading the Bible Missionally
There is a great series going on here by Tony Stiff. Here’s an excerpt: “The necessity of having our lives wrapped up in mission. If you’re going to read the Bible missionally you must be living missionally otherwise the questions you bring as a reader to the text won’t be aimed at mission but something else. Nevertheless there is a circularity at work here. Reading Scripture missionally also deepens and informs missional living.”

Mark Scandrette: Five Myths of Community
Scandrette, author of Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus, talks about five myths of community at Flood Sacramento.  Here is a synopsized version of his talk (you can listen to the entire talk here):

1) The Myth of Longing: Scandrette notes that we have all long to belong to something, but, the idea that community will be a place we always “belong” is a false conception of community. You will not always “feel” community as a sense of belonging. We all bring preconceived notions to waht community should look like, and we have to also consider that our expectations will not always be met. This is an integral part of community.
2) Myth of the healthy skeptic: These are the people who go to different churches and just complain about how “bad” the church is. They don’t tithe, but only give to organizations far away from the community. This person thinks that they are better than others because they are not into middle class things. The truth is, we are all stumbling forward trying to figure out community, and we need to be patient with all those on our journey as they must be patient and forgiving with us.
3) The myth of the right leader:  If we have the right leaders, everything will be great. A leader is someone who follows the Jesus way, in the ethics of the kingdom of God, and is able to help another person to do that. There is nothing in their about being a great public speaker, organizer, or being a great guitar player.
4) The Myth of Flat Leadership: The myth that we don’t need leaders anymore. We will collectively decide what happens. The problem, argues Scandrette, is that someone has to initiate something. Scandrette also notes the varying levels of maturity in those who have been longer down the Jesus way. Some people will need mentoring and others that will need the help of the community on their way. I wonder what he would think of Bill’s post I linked to the other day, but this seems like a fair point.
5) The myth of community without conflict: Similar and probably a byproduct of number one. Community doesn’t mean we will all just get a long. There will always be drama in community, and you can’t just leave one community if you start having drama.  A big part of community is learning how to forgive and be forgiven by those in community.