Stuff That Caught My Eye This Week

Some thoughtful ideas and comments from around the blogs this week…

Volf Embraces Economic Freedom – Like Mike I find it a little curious (and maybe very revealing) that the emerging/missional scene seems to have such bias towards personal freedom, but such and equally strong bias against economic freedom.

The Good Soldier – The negative reaction to the latest Mark Driscoll controversy keeps gathering momentum. Darren from Planet Telex does a fine job of picking apart some of the obnoxiously militaristic (perhaps opportunistic as well) overtones in Driscoll’s latest presentation on church planting.

Six Tips For Feeling Better About Yourself – The happiness deficit has to be one of the big challenges of “mid-life.” Some sensible advice in this blogpost with perhaps the most inspiring being the suggested link between potential happiness and mastery/expertise. Not sure if I totally agree with that, but it’s an idea that is worth some reflection.

Matters of Faith Find a New Prominence on Campus via Away With Words – Of course, we don’t need anymore evidence that the folks who rail against the supposedly corossive effect of secularism and liberalism on religious and spiritual curiosity and participation are staggerlingly wrong. Still, it’s worth following the trend seeing the nuances and learning from it.

Sola Scripturas via Vindicated – Gotta love a blog called Guitar Priest and got to love even more the reminder that not all versions of Sola Scriptura lead to the same place.

Spare the rod…? – I have some pretty strong views on the idea of beating children (in any context) and even stronger views on dressing up that practice in religious clothing. However, the notion that inflicting violence on a hild somehow prepares them for “salvation” is one of the more sickening propositions I have read in recent times. As far as I’m concerned some “law of proportionality” should be in place if people want the “right” to beat their children. If you are willing to be beaten by someone with the equivalent power advantage over you whenever you do something wrong, say a nine-foot tall giant with a shovel, then maybe you might have a point worth listening to on the subject. Otherwise, no.

Scum of the Earth – Balanced “review” of an originally named church that is starting to get some publicity.

Learning To Learn – Behind this evocative title is a gentle and considered discussion of what learning and growing together in a church might mean. The idea of better rather than good, growth rather than success, being fellow travellers rather than teachers and students seems not only right, but inspiring.

Seriously Good Conversations – Joshaa does his own roundup every week and all the blogposts on this link are worth checking out.

‘education, discipleship and community formation’ – Andy quotes Mark Wakelin as saying that Christian discipleship “…is about discovering community not creating it.” One idea that keeps coming up for me is how we so often get it wrong by making community a goal in and of itself. Community is perhaps more like a signpost, or a roadside shelter or just a happy accident, but I’m increasingly convinced it should never be a goal or something we try to fabricate.

U.S. Media Fails to Deliver Spanish News Online This is Jennifer Woodard Maderazo’s first guest-post on the always excellent MediaShift blog. Very acute observations.

[tags] Miroslav Volf, Capitalism, Media, Community [/tags]