Doors.

Sunday morning at work. And it's not at a church. My life's path is an interesting one... not one that has been planned, but a path where I seem to have been led to this place for a purpose. But what purpose? To teach? I believe that is where God has set for me to now go, but it is interesting how the door to leading a church has seemingly closed.

Doors open and close everyday. This job has been rewarding spiritually in that I have been able to affect kids truly in need. The lesson to be learned is discipline. Discipline in patience, listening, and reflection... all things reflected frequently in my writings.

Colossians 3:12-13
Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Reflection: Week 10 [Wednesday]

Fan and participatory culture is a fascinating evolution of entertainment and popular culture. When Trekkies and Star Wars junkies start recycling and creating their own stories, films and characters out of the original canon of material, a phenomenon is born and a cyclical relationship to the medium is generated.

When reflecting on this class overall, I believe understanding historical and contemporary culture is vital to understanding the individual, youth and contributors to our popular culture and world.

The church cannot remain in a bubble and ignore how the world has and is working. Too often, I believe the church tries to create Christian alternatives to culture, rather than embracing popular culture. And more often than not, the Christian product is crap. Christian media tries to package the crap to make it look and sound the same, but in the end it's still crap. You can't polish a turd.

Reflection: Week 10 [Monday]

As we continue to watch Merchants Of Cool, I am reminded of Amy Kaherl's guest lecture about "body image" during Barry Taylor's Pop Culture class... specifically, body-image issues women deal with every day. Being married to a feminist, I have discussed these issues previous to our class sessions, previously viewed the aforementioned film on target marketing, and continue to see everyday evidence of a culture of perfection promoted by today’s corporate culture and mass-media outlets.

We are still in the middle of a women’s rights movement within the Church. And representation of women in leadership is still not universally accepted. Whereas, a hot button issue like segregation has moved from universally accepted, to cultural taboo, and finally to unacceptable within the past 200 years – women's leadership in the Church is still not to that point. There are many denominations that still are not accepting of women in pastoral leadership roles, carefully "allowing" women to lead ministries within the church without "allowing" women in lead pastor roles. We still have a long way to go. And seeing women in leadership positions in all areas of culture is a step that will help young women who see body image as supreme, to view being a woman as something more than a pretty face.

Reflection: Week 9 [Wednesday]

The Merchants of Cool has been previously discussed here on the blog earlier in the quarter. By tapping into the youth market through market research targeting youth trends and belief systems, retrieving information to adapt and stay ahead of the curve. It is a commercial corporate mindset that is highly influential yet still remarkably unseen to the common person.

The "mook" and the "midriff" still permeate our culture in highly influential ways. And even though Britney Spears has moved from singing "Crazy" with bare midriff to literally being crazy, the midriff is still going strong. Amy brought up the fact that women today are dealing with body image at unseen levels. Check out her cause Beauty From Within if you'd like to read more about the issue.

Reflection: Week 9 [Monday]

Carnivalesque is significant, for Bakhtin offers a legitimate, state sanctioned space for otherness of "world upside-down" in which the rules are broken, alternative truths are visualized and difference is embraced. It is in this space that the marginalized community disrupts the stable silence of official lives and identities.

The small group that I started in Seattle was called "outkast" and based our identity on similar thoughts. Moreover the Church doesn't appeal to the outcasts in society and many young people in their 20's and 30's feel on the outside looking in most of the time. The Emerging Church movement is keying on some of the marginalized people, but the Church as a whole has a long way to go.

Reflection: Week 8 [Wednesday]

The theme of justice has been on my mind for most of the quarter. Each new contextual theological theory reminds me of social injustice within the world we live. Christian faith and the gay community are seemingly incompatible concepts, with the religious right fomenting bigotry and spreading fear, using the Bible and the pulpit as weapons to marginalize gays and lesbians. In For the Bible Tells Me So, filmmaker Daniel Karslake examines this faith-based issue both though the personal stories of five Christian families, all of whom struggled to reconcile their faith with loving their gay children, and the observations of well-respected religious figures about how biblical scripture is interpreted and misinterpreted.


Justice within the context of today lecture on deconstruction, the principle of hospitality moves to the forefront. Is the church welcoming the uninvited? Most people believe what many other gay people believe — that conservative Christians are hating, bigoted people. But in reality, they have very simply been misled by their own leaders — their ministers and their priests. When push came to shove, you need to open up the Bible to read it for yourself, then transformation can occur and you can realize that what it all comes down to is love. Gay, Lesbian and Transgender individuals are people too, created as beautiful loving creatures.

Reflection: Week 8 [Monday]

Looking at the popular cultural artistic images can create both instant denotative meaning as well as underlying connotative meaning of a mythic quality.

The photographic images that we viewed today observing cultural myths reminded me of the TED presentation by artist Alison Jackson. We watched the clip in Barry Taylor's Theology, Pop Culture, and the Emerging Church class and it was a surprising look at her provocative explorations of celebrity culture and did not disappoint. She creates obscured photos and films of celebrity look-alikes in surprising, shocking or strange situations, portraying them, as she has described it, "depicting our suspicions."


Personally, I think the popular celebrity culture magazines like US Weekly should be reserved for time spent on the loo. But my wife thinks differently, and thus our family is not just readers, but subscribers.

Reflection: Week 7 [Wednesday]

The praxis model is essential when discussing a church plant or outreach structure. If we take seriously the Great Commission that Jesus threw down like a gauntlet to his followers, the praxis model's belief of action towards social change falls directly in line with change within a community a church plant or outreach structure is moving towards. I said it better last week. But you get the gist.

Reflection: Week 7 [Monday]

As we continue to discuss culture, I am reminded how dependent today's culture is on technology; and as it changes, so does our culture. It is fascinating to think that only 10-15 years ago, cell phones were as big as a textbook and computers were pretty much only in large tower desktop form.

Our culture has grown dependent on technology, to the point where a fictional scenario like the script to Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard of a group of terrorists plotting to systematically shutting down the United States computer infrastructure is a legitimate fear and real possibility.

This past weekend, my dependence on technology came full circle. After finishing shooting footage for a short documentary film, I proceeded to download the footage to my Apple laptop… an hour later, my computer died. Turns out the hard drive had crashed, was dead and gone and the data not recoverable. Admittedly, the experience is a large pain in the ars. And ironically, the situation could have been avoided if I would have used the technology available at my home to diligently back up my data onto my external hard drive. Irony. You cruel beast, you.

Reflection: Week 6 [Wednesday]

Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of homogeneity is spot on. You cannot deny that the structure and nationalist belief that order and rationalization in modern culture led up until the point in modernity where Communism and the Holocaust could be held as a common belief to the powers that be. These examples are products of the modern mindset and is a brilliant argument by Zygmunt Bauman [pictured here] that the Holocaust, contrary to being history's best example of barbaric regression into amorality, was in fact confluent with modern principles and deployed many tenets of modern rationalism of which, in other spheres, Western society is unequivocally proud.

Reflection: Week 6 [Monday]

How do you bridge the witness, worship, and formation of Christianity to a subculture using the anthropological method of contextual theology? Our small group today focused on the naturalist subculture, while other groups discussed the coffee-shop subculture and a highly irreverent and equally awesome Touchdown Jesus Notre Dame subculture.

Breaking it down further... as a witness, you can join the naturalist conversation where they are and ask questions to connect to the movement, questions like: What do they see in nature? Where does pollution come from? Why isn’t “being green” a priority to the majority? And lastly, you can bridge the shared beliefs of the naturalists and share stories of spiritual encounters while in nature, preserve the environment, and be actively involved in nature.

Worship can be connected through meditation, hiking, and enjoying nature together.

Finally, an anthropological method of formation focusing on the creation story [Genesis], debunk myths: Finding a common bond between Christianity and Environmentalism, transformation of “New Earth” [Revelation 21:1], and bring Jesus into the conversation: Symbol of care of other people, animals and the Earth.

Reflection: Week 5 [Wednesday]

Christ was a great revolutionary… Karl Marx would have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount. – Fidel Castro

The details of the sermon Jesus gave were to uphold the rights of the “little people” and poor, so I can see where Castro would pair revolution and the Sermon on the Mount together. Although it is more of a social justice speech than a socialistic one, with references to the poor, meek, merciful, and peacemakers throughout the Beatitudes.


Karl Marx believed that religion is the "opiate of the masses" and was against faith towards a higher power. Jesus said he came not to overthrow the law, but to fulfill it. The definition of a revolution does fit Jesus and his words, faith, and actions on Earth, so the first part of Castro's quote is correct. Although it was not as a political revolutionary, but as an agent of change in the cosmic struggle.

Reflection: Week 5 [Monday]

Moving deeper into application of the translation model... How does one take the “truth” of the gospel and translate it to a culture that is foreign from ones own? It could be argued that the truth of the Bible is love, a concept that could be communicated to another culture through word or picture stories with various possibilities. And if you believe the key concept of the Bible is the life of Jesus, the same strategy of word or picture stories is an avenue that could move throughout typical language and cultural barriers different than your own.


It was very interesting to have Randy Mah in our group and hear his experiences trying to bridge the gap between the Chinese culture his parents and grandparents experience, himself being a third-generation Chinese-American. The strategy of breaking down the roots of certain Chinese characters and how they can help translate the message of Genesis and the Gospel was fascinating. Randy's story of using the symbol for "come" to share Jesus dying on the cross with his mother was especially moving. It was a blessing being a part of it today. That, and our powerpoint rocked.

Reflection: Week 4 [Wednesday]

Marxism by nature being an anti-capitalistic movement is interesting when reflecting on my previous post relating to Radiohead taking on the music industry. After hearing more about Marxism in today's class, Radiohead's move against the music industry is more of a reworking of the old call to the workers of the world to unite and reclaim the means of production, which is definitely a contemporary Marxist idea.

Reflection: Week 4 [Monday]

The Emerging Church is something that I have been a part of for the past 7 years from helping start a church plant in West Seattle that grew to about 150 attendees to seeing the limitations of the model evolve out of a lingering postmodern mindset.

The church I had a pleasure of being involved in was called Doxa Church and we had a church building that was given to a group of a couple dozen of us that were meeting in the basement at the very beginning. From that group, Doxa Church grew out of an emerging church model embracing the arts and music while continuing to root itself into the DNA of the community of West Seattle. [Pictured here is the coffee shop that later was created in the same basement Doxa grew out of]

In the Spring of 2006, the Elders decided to merge into the larger Mars Hill Church congregation and share the [admittedly generous space] large facilities with 500+ of their members that were commuting from West Seattle about 20-30 minutes to Ballard [a section of Seattle just Northwest of Downtown]. This caused many of the attendees to leave, included my family and small group of about 20+ individuals. In retrospect, the decision is a good one for God in allowing 500+ believers to worship in a building directly in their community where they live. But the differences of beliefs of Mars Hill versus Doxa were extreme for most [the biggest three differences being the archaic role of women in the family, aversion against women in ministry, and aggression towards gays & lesbians] and the events still harbor deep wounds for many, including myself, that may never fully heal.

The healing continues in my life. And I pray to continue to learn from my experiences. In the past months, I have felt called to write about peoples lives and how the Church has wounded them through doctrine, traditions, and beliefs that alienate people instead of loving them for their differences.

So if anyone has story they'd like to share, please let me know. I'd love to talk about it over a hot cocoa or cold soda.

Reflection: Week 3 [Wednesday]

Fuellenbach's idea of believers being agents of transformation is a superb one. What do you believe in? "Oh, I'm an agent of change." Watch out, now! Love it. I always wanted to be a secret agent. Jason Bourne style... except without guns... unless you are a president with a Machiavellian agenda in the Middle East. [Sigh.] Too bad a vote for Hillary really isn't a vote for Bill to get back in White House as the President instead of First Gentleman.

Reflection: Martin Luther King Jr.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who knew it takes time for attitudes to change, would not have been surprised that nearly two decades after his death were required to make his birthday a legal holiday. His birthday, Jan. 15, is a national holiday, celebrated on the third Monday of January, created in 1985. "It doesn't really matter with me now," he declared the night before his assassination, "because I've been to the mountaintop ... and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

I love MLK day; a day for embracing the change of our nation and the civil rights movement. If you have a minute, take time to listen to the famous speech delivered in 1963 to more than 200,000 civil-rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. If you don't want to listen to those two excerpts from his most memorable soliloquy, you can view it in PDF format here. Every year I listen to at least one speech from Dr. King just to keep the dream alive. Even if it's only in my mind.

It was nice to have the day off of school today to celebrate the life and freedom of a people and culture that was ignored and taken advantage of for centuries. That being said, our country and civil rights has come a long way. It's hard to believe that less than 40 years ago, America had separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks and "colored balconies" in movie theaters. So as we remember the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., let us recognize the full depth of his faith and vision — not just the antiseptic version that has now become part of our official culture.

Reflection: Week 2 [Wednesday: Bonus]

In regards to question posed in class of how Jesus would respond to the the good versus bad in relation to culture, the most important thing is how industrialization and the emergence of technology has made the world a much smaller place than during JC's day. The fact that most everyone in the world knows who Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson is points towards the machine that industrialization has turned into. Entertainment is king. And it's that low culture that is not necessarily the best humanity has to offer, but it's the most popular. Literally, culture is the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Reflection: Week 2 [Wednesday]

Ryan mentioned the Merchants of Cool during his lecture today. It's a great little documentary that shows how the corporate culture has now become a corporate vulture. You can watch it at the link above in small streaming segments from the filmmakers website, or watch the entire film at this link here.

How do you become an expert in contemporary culture, society or culture in general? How do these guys like Arnold, Leavis, Hogart, Williams and Hall rise to a point where people are looking to them for the definition of what part of culture is good and what part is bad? An overview of where culture has moved to and from in industrialization, working-class culture, and mass-produced culture is interesting -- but it further begs the question of why I should listen to these guys?

The idea that anything mass-produced destroys local cultures is the most solid one that seems to come from a objective context that is looking at the outcomes and statistics of particular cultures, versus a the anthropologists and sociologists listed above who seemingly study from a subjective standpoint.

Reflection: Week 2 [Monday]

I'm not going to brag... but our small group's definition of culture was clearly the best. Or maybe it's my perception that it was the best definition. [Eh, Group #4? Ya, I'm talking to you!] Nevertheless, our group [Denise, Harmony, Michael, Randy, and myself] came up with Culture: "A conscious or unconscious fluid dynamic of art, behavior, ideology, and signs developing organically within and characterizing a given society or subgroup."

It is interesting when thinking about the universal aesthetics of a current cultural canon and what would be considered the best and brightest pieces of art of our times. I'm afraid that popular culture would proclaim American Idol, MTV's Real World, or The Apprentice as the most influential media reflection of current cultural society. Personally, I'd lean towards the iPhone, U2 & the World Wide Web as greater cultural signposts. But people love to hear Simon bitch out a horrible singer and hear the Donald mutter, "You're fired!" [Sigh... I hate America.]