Imagine the chaos that ensued when, this sect of Jews following ‘Yashua’ (Jesus, literally the same name as Joshua, meaning Saving One), waited the designated 50 days after Passover and were then interrupted by synchronicity of multiple language, sharing, and neighboring. ‘All because the Spirit inspired them. Pentecost was not planned, programmed, or strategic on the part of the community of Jesus… Pentecost is the name we place on the happening that occurred amidst a Jewish holiday of Shavuot- marking the giving of the Torah (10 commandments and the rest of Jewish Law) to Moses, and book-ending the two main harvests of their early agrarian culture (barley after Passover and wheat 50 days later). Pentecost interrupted that community with new Laws and new cycles. And the Spirit of Jesus accomplished this interruption by re-introducing a multi-culturallism (that was already around them, but had grown flat and unacknowledged) and agnecy (shared responsibility in making, crafting, doing, speaking). It put everyone, across their differences, in play.

Kelley showed me this video last week, about Amy Krouse and the community she was joined by, and I was blown away. The DIY/indie craft world is filled with innovators who “make stuff.” And this story of Amy is what i imagine the feeling of Pentecost being as opposed to “the greatest church service ever” which is how I traditionally grew up imagining Pentecost. It’s a great metaphor to replace the flattened idea of church. Every one was “in play” at the church’s first Pentecost. People were around because of their media-socio-cultural practices (Jewish pilgrimages were made to Jerusalem 50 days after passover). They were a heterogeneous mix, not the same subculture. And a new “thing” emerged. The Jesus story became a story of a people at Pentecost- it was a “beckoning of the lovely.”

So, Kelley and I have been married ten years as of June. And each time I do a wedding it is a chance to remember how much it meant for our friends to participate (grooms men, bride’s maids, Ty Saltzgiver- my Young Life trainer who married us, Ryan Long- the singer-songwriters who played for nothing but a hotel room). The premarital counseling, service design, and the prep for whatever homily I offer- they all give me a chance to revisit the compelling thoughts of love shared by everyone in God’s World.

I was struck this time around by Paul’s choice to place the theme of “incompleteness” inside his ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13. Peterson’s paraphrase puts it this way:

We know only a portion of the truth,
and what we say about God is always incomplete.
But when the Complete arrives,
our incompletes will be canceled…

We’ll see it all then,
see it all as clearly as God sees us,
knowing God directly just as God knows us!

But for right now,
until that completeness,
we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation:
Trust steadily in God,
hope unswervingly,
love extravagantly.

And the best of the three is love

Ten years ago I didn’t know half of what I know about love now. Because love requires locating ourselves in the unknown. It requires mystery and unfinished-ness. People are naturally relational- we understand ourselves in relationship to others and our contexts, and have a consciousness about that relationship. Love requires us to leave that consciousness open for edits. We leave ourselves vulnerable, accessible.  Love edits our memories (forgiveness) and our dreams for the future (hope).

Love of God, and our beloved-ness as children of God… does a similar thing. True knowledge of God-is-love-ness requires receptiveness, and it “softens” us. True participation in this Love-of-God-ness casts out fear (memories) and makes all things new (future).

So asking having strong enough ‘faith’ to be featured on CBN, or being the greatest political orator of our time, or making poverty history… without love is nothing, gets us no further along, and starts to sound like a creaky gate or a bent cymbal.

 AJC: So when Chris interviewed you were you a minister?

TB: Yes, I was ordained in July of 2006 and have been a minister ever since, serving at large within the presbytery for the past year.

AJC:  So does “at large” mean you were not at a church?  ‘Because the AJC is committed to being accurate from the perception of a bystander, and not neccessarily the technical terms of a particular denomination.

TB:  Well, I have been doing minister things, like marrying people and leading funerals and  preaching at churches.  But I was doing that before I was ordained.

AJC:  So would someone in your church say you were a pastor?

TB:  Well it depends on what you mean by church.  I am a part of the universal church but I don’t belong to a particular church. Reformed churches generally considers an ordained minister a pastor for her/his whole life.  But my denomination did change my “standing” from “At Large” meaning in no presbyterian post, to “organizing pastor”  meaning starting a congregation that is as yet not chartered. So the problem includes one’s definition of “church” too.

AJC:  So you mean you do “have” a church?

TB:  I’m not trying to be evasive here.  But all I have is friends who are meeting oneanother on the journey that might end in becoming a formal church.  We plan to meet monthly for the next half year and to seek God’s dreams in the city. But thats it- so far. And I guess 2 or 3 meeting for this purpose includes the presence of Christ who is both Word and Body broken… so you could say this is church.  But none of us thinks so, yet.  Not yet, at least.

Well this went on a bit more until I apologized and said, “Sorry for complicating matters.  My primary concern here is that folks in my neighborhood, colleagues in my denomination, and potential benefactors beyond those groups not think I’ve jumped ship.”  To which he said, “Oh, I see.  Well, thank you for your time.”

And after that I think we both hung up the phone and went our separate ways to find a stiff drink and this is what resulted in the paper the next day:

A story in Saturday’s Living section about author Phyllis Tickle included incorrect information about Troy Bronsink’s status with the Presbyterian Church. He is a pastor.”

Nice, huh?

It ties together quantum theory, emerging creative systems, and education… so far.

I will make periodic posts as I go on this read.

Parts and Wholes:

everything is related. Since the industrial revolution most of society has thought in terms of machines. We assume a whole is made up of many parts, and wholeness depends on each part working effectively. Living systems do not work the same way. “Unlike machines, living systems, such as your body or a tree, create themselves. They are not a mere assemblage of thier parts but are continually growing and changing along with their elements.” (3). The authors site Buckminster Fuller for holding up his hand and asking, what is this?” To which he would respond, a hand is not a static thing, “what you see it not a hand… Its a ‘patterned integrity,’ the universe’s capacity to create hands” (4).

The hand is a concrete demonstration of the possibility of hand-ness. In fact, the cells in your hand replace themselves in less than a year and a half. Meaning: the matter crammed and ordered together that you are your using to scroll up or down your browser did not belong to your body 18 months ago— ashes to ashes and dust to dust, huh? Dieing and rising is not a one time thing, we are continually being converted as participants in the Way of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is continually sending new information, new circumstances, new relationships, new possibilities for us to step into. And this in not only true about individuals, but also about systems, families, organizations, and… churches.

However, A living system’s ability to re-create itself, “depends on our level of awareness, both individually and collectively.” The authors of presence suggest that “The basic problem with new species of global institutions is that they have not yet become aware of themselves as living” (7).

This makes me wonder the same thing about the church. Do Presbyterians or non-denominational CCM churches recognize that they are a whole made up of parts that are continually growing. Are we able to suspend our current self understandings long enough to imagine new ways of participating in God’s future revealed as the kingdom of God? And so the question of learning becomes significant. How do we change our thoughts and actions to include this kind of awareness? That will be the next post.

The Rules // Presbymeme II

• in about 25 words each, answer the following five questions;
• tag five presbyterian bloggers and send them a note to let them know they were tagged;
• be sure to link to this original post, leave a comment or send a trackback to this post so others can find you;

The Questions // Presbymeme II /

1. What is your favorite faith-based hymn, song or chorus.

Currently tied between Lori Chaffer’s “Please Don’t Make me Sing this Song” and “Come Ye Faithful Raise the Strain” (hymn 14 blue hymnal- though I mess with 1870s melody) by John of Damascus (c. 675-749).

2. What was the context, content and/or topic of the last sermon that truly touched, convicted, inspired, challenged, comforted and/or otherwise moved you?Mark Lomax at Church Unbound as he spoke about the reign-dom of God.3. If you could have all Presbyterians read just one of your previous posts, what would it be and why?

I think the discussion around the future of presbymergent several months back was a good one to have my presbyterian colleagues weigh in on.

4. What are three PC(USA) flavored blogs you read on a regular basis?

• LeRonShultz
• Reverend Mother (a pseudonymous seminary classmate)
• Adam Walker Cleaveland
• Ryan Kemp Pappan

5. If the PC(USA) were a movie, what would it be and why?

“Stranger Than Fiction” the pop-pomo film where Will Farrell meets the voice of his narrator and strives to control his poetic destiny. Why?: Because we continue to hear the voice of our Narrator, but in our fear of our imminent death we run the other way or try to form committees of experts to avoid our very vocation. And because I’m pleasantly surprised at the courage of folks I meet who do take the risk of stepping into the script, and laying down our tribe’s future for something larger than our own story, only to find that this is the very act that makes our story and tribe what it is.

I don’t need none of your bad news today
You’re a sad little boy, anyone can see you’re just a sad little boy
That’s why you’re carrying on that way
Why don’t you burn it all down, burn your own house down, burn your own house down
Try to kill your own disease
And leave the rest of us, there’s a lot of us, leave the rest of us
Who wanna live in peace to live in peace

I’m gonna find me a man, love him so well, love him so strong, love him so slow
We’re gonna go way beyond the walls of this fortress
And we won’t be afraid, we won’t be afraid, and though the darkness may come our way
We won’t be afraid to be alive anymore
And we’ll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us
Till there are no strangers anymore

Don’t bring me bad news, no bad news
I don’t need none of your bad news today
You can’t have my fear, I’ve got nothing to lose, can’t have my fear
I’m not getting out of here alive anyway
And I don’t need none of these things, I don’t need none of these things
I’ve been handed
And the bird of peace is flying over, she’s flying over and
Coming in for a landing

I was excited to have some conversations the past few months with AJC Religion editor, Chris Quinn.  He’s great. He reported on Brian McLaren’s particpation in the Mainline Emergent/s event, Jan 2007 and this summer’s Jesus For President and Church Basement Roadshow.  Today he wrote a nice short piece about Phyllis Tickle and her upcoming book, The Great Emergence.  In it he quotes me talking about the local Atlanta Emergent Cohort:

Troy Bronsink, a former Presbyterian pastor who leads a strand of the Atlanta movement, describes some involved as “refugees from ecclesiological abuse.”

I did say that, but I have not been de-frocked nor have I burned my frock (I don’t actually have a frock).  I was ordained in July of 2006 to validated ministry in my neighborhood of Capitol View.  During my time there I have done a lot of odd projects inlcuding managing a coffee shop, community organizing,  neighborhood association work, volunteering with the Annie Casey Foundation to convene conversations around Public Art and Culture.  For a year  I was intalled as minister at The Church of St.Andrew in Sandy Springs, but that was an 18 month contract that ended abruptly at 12 months (to here more about that read this post).  Since then my family and I have grown more and more committed to the future of our Southwest Atlanta neighborhood and two months ago began planning to form a Christian community here called “Neighbor’s Abbey.”  I am working intimately with the PC(USA) and the Presbytery here in Atlanta to begin this work.  MOre than that, though I am working with my neighbors to discover what it should become— so there will be more to hear on this as it unfolds.

So I am the former minister of one particular presbyterian congregation, but I have not left the tribe. I’ve only left the formal traditional congregation side of Presbyterianism.  And BTW I still hang out on occasion with formal traditional Presbyterians, and they don’t bite ;^)

I’ll be speaking in October at an Atlanta event organized by Progressive Christian Cooperative, called The Beloved Community: From Formation to Action. I met Kimberly, the inventor behind this, through the Emergent Cohort and have begun to learn from her passion to bring innovative practice of spiritual formation into the human right advocacy circles as well as advocacy into spiritual formation circles. So, though the event is in October our conversations this summer and my talk are simmering on one of my back burners along with what I’ve been reading by Wolfe.

In Wolfe’s article “Silence Cunning and Exile” (quoting James Joyce) I was stuck by the fellowship between beauty and suffering. Almost in a vin diagram sense, these two vivid themes, beauty and suffering, overlap in the costs to access them and the effect the evoke. They have an admission and an affect. They both beg a question that is never answered until the spirit/body s t o p s and in silence hears/feels/knows LOVE. Eyes to see and ears to hear…

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Raising Sand: a duet album of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss produced by T-Bone Burnett

In a very short review: the album needs to be played loud. Its one you need to listen to more than twice and then it will haunt you. At first, Plant sounded less Zeppeliny than i expected but after a while you recognize the violins of Krauss, her haunting shrills and Plant’s mood building swells as part of the old Zepplin greatness. And Krauss’ willingness ot bring her whole self into rock-feeling songs like Let Your Love Be Your Lesson, is unmistakably what makes the album work. Two unlikely paired together to remind us why we love them both and to host an entirely different project. But the real flair is Burnett’s ability to pull the best repertories for these two.

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There is, we discover late and often,
an arresting quality about your word to us.
We do not want to be arrested or even pause,
for our days are planned out…

Minister to us in our cowardice and timidity.
Set us to be as bold as you are true,
to meet the authorities who resist and arrest . . .
our ancient mothers,
our old convictions,
powerful ordaining communities
and last, even, city hall.

(from “We do not want to be arrested” by Walter Bruggemann, Awed to Heaven Rooted to Earth)

Stank is in his early fifties, and except for his balding head and pachy beard you’d think he was late twenties. Dark black, chiseled muscular physique, and tattooed by the sun that follows him every day as he works odd jobs for cash. And a contagious grin- always smelling like the cheap Black-and-Mild cigar that he is almost always smoking. He helped me build my deck, effortlessly lifting by him himself the 14 foot long 2 X 8 that I needed help lifting.

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