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New Year Greetings!
Rejoice and Resolve
We hope this issue of the EP newsletter finds
you rejoicing in the new (liturgical) year.
The Christian New Year starts off not with a
day of hangovers and football, but with an
entire season of waiting, hope and the
proclamation that, though the days and the
world itself at times seems to get darker,
the Light has come
into the world. And so we rejoice. Gaudate!
Debra Dean Murphy reminds us, in today's post
in b
LOGOS,
that this Sunday is Gaudate Sunday. We will
say more about bLOGOS below, but let me
suggest that one New Years' resolution for
all EPers might be to deepen our involvement
with EP -- visit bLOGOS weekly; pick-up books
by EP authors and publishers; develop your
own "meet the EP" by connecting with other
endorsers; keep in contact with us about the
website or other ways the EP could foster
conversation about radical discipleship in
your own congregation. One way to do this
would be to set up an RSS feed to your
browser from the EP website. It adds no spam
to your mailbox. Having that little EP link
in the toolbar at the top of my browser has
made it easier for me to remember to check
the newest posts on the website, which I find
without fail to be a cause for rejoicing.
May the blessings of the Prince of Peace be
with you and your communities as we wait in
joyful hope.
Therese Lysaught
New Books
I always see a number of interesting books
when I attend the AAR/SBL each year (the book
exhibit is huge!). My book appetite always
exceeds available reading time, but here are
a few that I picked up last month.
Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class
Divisions in a Consumer Church by Paul
Metzger (Wm. B. Eerdmans). Metzger calls the
evangelical church to see the ways in which
they have set up structures of church growth
that foster segregation by appealing to
consumer appetites.
Social Distinctives of the Christians in
the First Century by E.A. Judge.
(Hendrickson). Judge wrote a number of
pivotal essays that initiated many important
discussions in the establishment of social
scientific criticism of the Bible. In
compiling these essays into books form,
Hendrickson has done a great service to those
of us who are interested in studying the
social realities of the early church.
To Share in the Body: A Theology of
Martyrdom for Today's Church by Craig
Hovey (Brazos). Hovey argues that the Gospel
of Mark's recurring theme of martyrdom is
crucial to understanding how the church today
remembers martyrs and understands Christian
discipleship.
These are only a few of the books that found
their way onto my reading stack (I've
neglected to mention the fascinating book on
Russian mail-order brides from Duke
University Press - I do not jest!).
I'm going to cross a boundary that I usually
avoid and mention a couple of relevant
Wipf and Stock books from EP endorsers.
Steve Long has written a Cascade companion on
Theology and Culture, and Michael Gorman has
written a companion to Reading Paul. They are
both excellent introductions. Additionally,
Stanley Hauerwas and Rom Coles have written a
book together that offers up an engaging
conversation between a radical Christian and
a "radical democratic trickster," titled
Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical
Ordinary: Conversations between a Radical
Democrat and a Christian.
Jon
Stock
Meet the EP
Joel Shuman
The feast of St. John of the Cross seems a
fitting day to feature our third new board
member, Joel Shuman, in Meet the EP. Joel
has been with the EP from the beginning,
wearing a variety of hats. Currently, in
addition to his work with the board, he is
co-editor (with Kelly Johnson) of the EP
pamphlet series. Those who attended the
gathering in summer 2006 will remember his
wonderful account of Dante.
Joel is currently an Associate Professor and
Chair in the Department of Theology at King's
College, in Wilkes-Barre, PA, where he
also directs their Center for Ethics and
Public Life. In his writing, Joel focuses on
questions in medicine as well as Wendell
Berry -- frequently even bringing them
together. His books include To Live is to
Worship: Bioethics and the Body of Christ
(CMU, 2007), Reclaiming the Body
(Brazos, 2006), co-authored with EPer Brian
Volck; Heal Thyself (Oxford, 2002)
co-authored with EPer Keith Meador; and
The Body of Compassion (Wipf and
Stock, 2003).
Since I was
unable to find a picture of Joel on the web,
I'll include here a picture of his son Amos,
a professional guide and whitewater rafter.
bLOGOS
Read and Rejoice
These past few weeks in bLOGOS
and Pastor's
we hear from:
Debra Dean Murphy,
on Gaudate Sunday (a homily help for those
pastors still working on their
sermons);
Kyle Childress on
learning
how to wait and be patient;
Brian Volck on the ongoing violent
deaths in
the US, the passing of Gordon Zahn, and the
alienation of Christmas-time in
America;
and Tobias Winright's
find
of a piece on the religious history of
waterboarding and torture.
bLOGOS has assembled an amazing team of
commentators, who will shortly be posting
two to three times per week, with reflections
that are beautiful, powerful, theological,
creative, penetrating, humorous, and graced.
Brian Volck, Debra Dean Murphy, Kyle
Childress, Joel Shuman, Jessie Shuman (how
many other theology blogs boast such a
theologically-hardhitting
father-daughter team?), Tobias Winright, Erin
Martin, Halden Doerge, and Allyne Smith offer
reflections on items as diverse as lectionary
texts, liturgical seasons, happenings in the
church, and commentary on cultural events.
They provide helpful links to further online
reading and commentary.
We are
exploring how to add a 'comment' function to
the blog itself. Meanwhile, please use the forums to
continue the discussions that bLogos begins. Let
their work not be in vain but for the
upbuilding of the EP and those communities
the EP seeks to serve.
EP Financial Report
As you might remember from last month's
report, EP has enough funds to pay the bills,
but there is little margin for much else.
What else is there, you might ask? Well, let
me make a few observations. First, if our
Summer Gathering has a focus on the Church
across many types of boundaries, it is
reasonable to assume a broader spectrum of
participants, which may call for a greater
demand on our scholarship pool and increased
costs for invited speakers. Second, if the
Congregational Formation Initiative continues
to expand, our generous grantmakers will
expect EP supporters to show their support by
shouldering a larger portion of the financial
burden of the initiative. Third, there is no
room, given our current income, for any
upgrades to our website or any other service
we might deem helpful to our endorsers (such
as regional gatherings, additional pamphlets,
new book series, etc.). All of this to say
that as 2007 comes to an end, your
contributions would be greatly appreciated
and put to good use! Next month, we will give
a 2007 financial report; and as always, feel
free to e-mail if you want our current
detailed report (mjbowling@indy.rr.com).
Michael Bowling, treasurer
Regional Gathering in Portland
Inhabiting the Church: Ecclesial Discussions in New Monasticism
There will be a Northwest Regional Ekklesia Project
gathering in Portland, Oregon. The topic will be on
Inhabiting The Church: Ecclesial Discussions in New
Monasticism. The speakers will be Jonathan Wilson-
Hartgrove, Tim Otto, and Jon Stock. The dates are
Feb. 29th & Mar. 1.
Sessions will be: Friday evening
Saturday mid-morning
Saturday late afternoon
Details are being worked out for the exact location and
times. For news, updates and registration information
contact Michael
Munk.
From the Editor
Greg Sampson, the pastor of the little
emergent church Susan and I have been a part
of for the last year, shared several
interesting observations this past Sunday.
The first was that "even the books in
Christian bookstores are asking some
interesting questions these days." If so, it
is one of the most encouraging developments I
can imagine. The second concerned his own
early roots in Willow Creek Church. I had
not been aware that they recently released
the results of a comprehensive, three-year
study that
concluded, in essence, that their
mega-church, seeker-friendly model has
resulted in little or no success in inspiring
genuine Christian discipleship. (For more on
this, see Debra Dean Murphy's post "P
ractices
not Programs.") As founding (and widely
imitated) Willow Creek pastor Bill Hybels is
quoted: "Some of the
stuff that we have put millions of dollars
into, thinking it would really help our
people grow and develop spiritually, when the
data actually came back it wasn't helping
people that much. Other things that we didn't
put that much money into and didn't put much
staff against is stuff our people are crying
out for." I commend Hybels for his
soul-searching honesty, and pray that the EP
(which is hardly in a position to put
millions of dollars into anything) may help
God to yield a greater harvest with a more
modest investment in fertilizer.
John McFadden, editor
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