A Very Merry Christmas to My Friends

I hope that all of you and your families have had a great Christmas and are enjoying your holidays.

We have had a great week. After visiting all of the family in Arkansas, we traveled to Atlanta and have spent this past week here at my parents home. It has been a blast and we have done a little shopping, and alot of loafing around. We are so blessed to be able to take it easy for a while during the holidays. Here are a few pics from the Christmas Holiday.







No Christmas would be complete without a "Mooning Santa". He is a jolly old guy who turns, drops his pants and gives you a holiday treat. Check out more of our family Christmas pics on flickr. I'd also be honored if you dropped my my personal blog. Here's praying that all of you have a great holiday and a blessed new year.

I'm in...

Thanks, Jerod, for the e-vite to join this group of thinkers. Signing on felt like a Wylie Coyote cartoon as he struggles to get through the last door and finally catch the road runner. As soon as he steps through he finds that the roadrunner has moved the door and he is stepping off a cliff. Why doesn't the coyote scream like I scream at the computer when it doesn't work! Finally, I'm in....let us see what happens next.

Welcome New Members

celtic lion relief
Originally uploaded by Jerod McPherson.

Just wanted to introduce a few friends to forerunners. Jeff Douglas and Daniel Baker are going to be joining our little experiment. Jeff and his wife Tami, live near Texarkana, AR and are close friends with Jen and I. We have played music together, ministered together and goofed off together. Jeff works in IT and I would rather play guitar in a band with Him than anybody I have played with. A student of tone and a hard rocker, we have been friends through some interesting times. He will bring some realism and practicality to the future.

Daniel Baker is the inspiration, really, for this whole idea. Daniel his wife Sharon live just North of Dallas and work with a "po-mo" type church plant (not really a plant anymore). They are some of the most brilliant people you will ever meet. Daniel has a theory about "gifted people" that really is important to some of the things we are discussing here.

Both of these guys have a stake in what all of us have. A love/hate angst toward the present way Christianity and church body life is being played out. They are some of the people who actually "get it"

Turning back the clock

One of the most common medicines that evangelical church prescribes for itself is the old "let's get back to basics" idea. It is, for me at least, a difficult pill to swallow. In the charismatic and pentecostal traditions it is the incessant tug of "We need revival!" Which translates to me: "Lets go back to the thoughts and practices of the 50's and 60's." While it is so true that we need a God-driven intervention in our world today, I don't believe that we have to rebuild last nights campfire to find it. A few years ago, as my heart was being pulled by the Lord into a more real relationship with God, I found that, at least privately, I began to turn my back on going back to the roots of my own tradition.

The cool post-modern hipsters now tell us to get back into the ancient practices of Christianity. I have chosen to follow their trail myself. I walk labyrinths, embrace the silence, meditate on the scriptures and pray the office and anything else ancient fresh. After all, a little lectio divina and the centering prayer, never hurt anybody right? In fact, not only did it not hurt me, it is completely revitalizing my personal friendship with God. As I walk along this path with God, I am finding that Jen and I are becoming more and more like the hermits of the second and third century: Living our life, growing with our God, and touching whoever might bump into us along the higway. (This might be exactly where we should be). But as we go to our churches, visit churches and interact with church people, (we know sooo many) we can't stop ourselves from discussing how the present modern American church could be changed to really make a splash in our culture today. (Maybe this thought in itself is misguided and arrogant, but nonetheless, most of us think it all the time.)

I began to develop this thought that if we could just go back to the New Testament, you know, if we could somehow duplicate the book of Acts church, that maybe we could rock the world in the same fashion as the first century Jesus people did. My thesis was this: In order for the body of Christ to effectively fulfill the purpose of Christ in our world today, we need to get back to the New Testament Model.

That phrase, "New Testament model" has become a bit of a polyseme. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, uses it to support their favored way of doing church. The model is basically built around Acts 2:42-47. There is teaching, praying, fellowship. You meet, you eat, and you share everything in common. The problem is no one can really agree on how to interpret these passages in 21st century America. I am presently reading a book called God's Example Church, and while it presents a scathing honest comparison between modern christianity and the example of in Acts, it's solutions are, in a word, unrealistic. Just how are we supposed to live communal, share and pray in our world today? Sure there are examples of people doing it, but to most of us they are considered marginal and wacky. (not that there's anything wrong with that).

All of this has led me to this moment, where I am saying that I think, at least for the next 5 minutes, that we are just unable replicate the "New Testament Model". I agree with Bosch in Believing in the Future..."The solution does not lie merely in turning the clock back and insisting that, come what may, we just have to learn to believe again." After hearing many a sermon, teaching and talk about believing again, it is plain harder than it looks.

You can't get to tommorrow by repeating yesterday. You get to tommorrow by surviving today. The church of tommorrow should be new...different. Built on the lessons of the past, transformed by the present and reborn in the future. (Which brings me to the concept of the phoenix church...which needs to be addressed in separate post.)

I guess the questions I have are these:
- What are some of the ways that "turning back the clock" works? doesn't work?
- Is there any true "New Testament Model"?
- Do you know of ways that people are living out their true "New Testament Model" with any success?

Newsweek Article on the Virgin Birth

There is always someone saying that the claims of Christianity are false. As a matter of fact, It is an issue that has been around since the ressurection. I don't really fear these articles, the Da Vinci Code, or the Discovery Channel show proving that Pharoah's son was not killed by the death angel. But alot of people do.

Check out these links and comment.

Newsweek's The Birth of Jesus and Discovery's Wrath of God or Man?

In the future will society in North Amercia be more hostile to people who believe in the supernatural or are we moiving into a time when more and more people accept the strange and the miraculous? And what if any impact does a show or an article or a scientific discover have on a person who already believes?

Welcome to Forerunners!

It has been a plan in the back of my mind for over a year to start a collaborative blog. Jen and I have such a diverse group of friends, I have often thought that it would be cool if we could all pool our collective insight. The original group of forerunners was probably established on the second floor of Bauer Hall Dorm at Southeastern College. We were certain at that time that we were born just a few decades too early. Since college I have made a number of great friends that I am certain belong in tommorrow. The invited members to this blog consist of theologians, extreme sports daredevils, businessmen, clergy, bikers, and musicians (and others I am sure).

My hope is that we can discuss the things that matter. You know, music and movies, food and philosophy, sports and the future of Christianity on the world as we know it. All of the forerunners have much to contribute, and I can't wait to hear from everyone.