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SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes 08 - @soupiset

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Breakout Session: Between Heaven & Helvetica

“[A]n art work has value as a creation because man is made in the image of God, and therefore man not only can love and think and feel emotion, but also has the capacity to create. Being in the image of the Creator, we are called upon to have creativity.… We never find men anywhere in the world or in any culture in the world who do not produce art. Creativity is a part of the distinction between man and non-man. All people are to some degree creative. Creativity is intrinsic to our mannishness.” — Francis Schaeffer

Yesterday I gave an hour-and-a-half design breakout session for participants at the 2009 Baptist Media Forum at Camp Buckner, up near Inks Lake. The seminar was entitled Between Heaven & Helvetica: How Good Design Can Energize Your Existing Communications.  I hadn't delivered a talk that long before, so I was a little nervous to say the least. I figured I'd leave a half-hour for Q&A and prepared what I thought was an hour's worth of content.

My stated purpose was to "embark upon an interactive, multi-sensory conversation among 
designers, self-proclaimed non-creatives, quasi-creatives, and people who have 
to work with creatives in order to sketch at the intersection(s) of good design, good theology, and our role 
as culture creators." True to form, it was meandering and quirky — a soupçon of  history, theology of the Imago Dei, a little design philosophy and advice, and visual inspiration/stimulation (I hope).

About 15 minutes into it, I realized I had too much content, but pressed forward, and we ended up getting through most of it without much compromise. Before I went on, my friend Marcus Goodyear gave a great presentation on online community building; I knew he was going to skew his content heavily (actually completely) online, so I weighted my presentation toward traditional media and channel-neutral branding design.

The preso was a mashup featuring three youth media case studies tied to some theological points I made at the presentation's "history unlesson" ... as well as a gallery of twenty logos I had designed, which I will glom together and present to you below. I also re-fashioned and re-presented my "six design nuggets for non-creatives" talk as a 10-minute overview.

I was really pleased with the mix of people — I asked the group of media professionals (I assumed I'd be getting mostly PR folks, writers and editors) to classify themselves (how modern of me): almost a third of the room comprised designers and creatives. Another third considered themselves quasi-creative, and only one guy thought he was a non-creative.

My friend Tim Snyder made the trip out to the hill country with his visiting friend (my new friend) Josh. They audited the whole session and Josh participated in the interactive [Playdoh sculpting!] portion of the talk as well. With them and Marcus and my friend Brad Russell from The Baptist Standard there in the room, I was more at ease than I would've been.

After the presentation, Tim and Josh and I spent the rest of the day together. On the drive back to San Antonio, we stopped in the Blue Bonnet Café in Marble Falls, TX. That's Josh and his chocolate meringue pie. After that we crashed at my house for a bit ( I really needed a nap) before heading to Alamo Drafthouse Theater to see Slumdog Millionaire.

It was a nice break in the middle of the week.

I leave you with an excerpt from an essay by Leland Ryken that I published in Communiqué back in the day, and dredged up for the conversation yesterday (but didn't have time to share with the group):

"What does the image of God in people say about the arts? It affirms human creativity as something good in principle, since it is an imitation of one of God's own acts and perfections. Someone once wrote, "As image-bearer of God, [people possess] the possibility both to create something beautiful, and to delight in it (Kuyper 142). Christian poet Chad Walsh once wrote that the artist "can honestly see himself as a kind of earthly assistant to God..., carrying on the delegated work of creation, making the fullness of creation fuller" (308). This applies equally to those who are not themselves creative artists but who delight to enter into the creativity of others. And it stands as a rebuke to those who disparage God's gift of creativity in people."

Here's a handful of the logos I've designed* — I used these in the presentation:

 

*the All Saints logo was a collaboration between myself and Von Glitschka, whose work also made it into the presentation.

Liveblog: Conversations with Phyllis Tickle (FRI PM)

-- note -- sorry about abandoning the live blogging last night. it was engaging, to be sure, but just not conducive to blogging.

5:52 pm - I'm here at St. Mark's, San Antonio, in the historic heart of downtown. The room is abuzz, and for a so-called emergent topic, the place is brimming with folks over 50. At 39, I'm clearly the youngest person here. Mary Ellen is here from ¡Viva! — and we were able to talk a bit about the upcoming Open House. Phyllis Tickle's flight was delayed, and she just showed up.

Integrity and the Path of Least Resistance

Hello and welcome to the one thousandth post here at soupablog.com.  Ta-da!

Thanks for letting me have fun with the campaign-season-inspired emotional buildup. Sorry if this post lets you down; if it does it only proves the point I was making about election-style hype.

This is one of those posts I’ve stopped and started writing numerous times over the past week, not because of its quasi milestone status but rather because here I wanted to drive a stake in the ground, clear the air, and start afresh, for my own health and for yours.

But before I do so, I’d like to sincerely thank all of you who have entered into conversation with me here at soupablog. These comments have spilled over into my ‘real life’ in so many enriching ways; I couldn’t begin to count. Dozens of emails, letters, lunches, coffees, and late night conversations about theology and thought, faith and doubt, art and music, design, politics, and myriad other threads have left me encouraged, provoked, breathless, strengthened, challenged and convicted.

I’m convinced this little blog has got some of the best readers in the world. Some of you are loyal strangers, some are family, some are lurking co-workers, some are in my tribe, and others are lifelong friends. And each of you knows different facets of the real me.

And it is for this reason I want to write tonight about integrity. I want to unpack my feelings about my own integrity because the more I insinuate myself into broad conversations with a wide variety of people — and the more technologies allow these widely various peoples to be in conversation with each other [1] — the more we — the more I — leave room for ambiguity and misunderstanding.

From birth we all desire to be understood. We learn there is powerful potential energy stored up in vocabulary and syntax and grammar. We communicate with sentences and paragraphs and hand gestures and facial expressions and emoticons and color and symbol. Each time we gain a new communication tool, we potentially become more understanding and more human (this evening I sat down and taught my twelve-year-old son the difference between imply and infer — it’s a great distinction to apprehend earlier rather than later).

But it’s the misunderstanding — or the propensity to misunderstand — that I want to explore, for when meaning is obscured or misunderstood, one’s hard-fought reputation — one’s integrity — goes on the line.

This weekend, Abe Levy, a local religion editor for the San Antonio Express-News, interviewed me for an article he was writing on religion and politics. He had contacted me once a few years prior when he was looking for emerging churches in San Antonio, but as I recall, I declined the interview at the time. But this time I felt compelled to action, to insert myself into the conversation.  But I also had an equal-but-opposite reaction: palpable fear of being misunderstood, of being misquoted, for I knew the feelings of frustration and violation upon being misquoted a few years earlier in the San Antonio Business Journal. That’s another story for another time.

I called and left a message with Mr. Levy.  I was willing to go on the record but I had some real misgivings about being misquoted or misrepresented.  When he called I voiced those fears but he quickly allayed them.

The interview commenced, and the whole experience was rather white-knuckled for reasons of integrity: I knew going into the interview that I’d sort of be fulfilling the interviewer’s desire to find a “moderate evangelical voting left-of-center this year” who would go on record about congregational discussions of politics, or the lack thereof, whether from the pulpit or elsewhere. And I knew my words would be typeset and published in the local newspaper of record and read daily by relatives and old friends whom I love and who would self-identify as being very conservative Christians. Many of those relatives and friends would probably, incorrectly, presume that I too would (still) self-identify as very conservative.

But by granting this interview I’d be clearly stating my intention to vote for Barack Obama — so this would be a coming-out of sorts in their eyes. Although I consider myself a moderate (progressive on some issues, conservative on others, willing to vote either side of the aisle for matters of faith) I knew some could read my words and perhaps feel betrayed or bewildered, confused or disappointed.

Here’s the awkward little snippet from the article. I’ll deconstruct it a little, below.

“Such political activity caused Paul Soupiset to move away from conservative Christian churches, he said, because his former church, in voter guides and from the pulpit, put pressure on its members to oppose abortion and homosexuality. Now, he attends Covenant Baptist Church on the North Side, which, according to its pastor Gordon Atkinson, avoids discussion of politics from the pulpit and other official church settings.

‘My friends and conversation partners about faith sort of reject the far right and the far left and there's sort of a more winsome middle ground to be had,’ said Soupiset, who is voting for Obama. ‘For example, I can state clearly that I'm probably pro life but to me, how that phrase has been defined has been narrow and insufficient. Life's not just about the abortion issue but about being pro-people who are living imprisoned or met with the short end of justice.’

When I read it for the first time in print, I panicked, focusing not on the broad brushstrokes of the interview which were good, but rather on the finer points which weren’t: In my mind, I had once again been misunderstood (or else my over-editing during the phoned-in interview actually, inexplicably, produced some of these words which is even more alarming). My face went red, flush with anger. I felt betrayed.

First off, the opening sentence implies a cause-and-effect relationship that just wasn’t there. I didn’t communicate and/or certainly didn’t mean to communicate a move away from conservative Christian churches simply because they shoved voter guides in our faces; rather, leaving behind the frustration/intrusion of so-called pro-life voter guides only made the leaving a little easier. Our family left, rather, for many reasons, largely because we were trying our best to follow Jesus and because we felt his Spirit was blowing in a new direction and we wanted very much to be about following Him into the inner city and to be available there for His use.

Secondly, the author missed the point I was trying to make — my point was and is that the gospel is so much bigger than the abortion and homosexuality issues, yet that’s what evangelicalism is focusing on. I have more of a problem with the conservative church wasting so much of its precious resources, sharpening their knives, polishing their armor and battling these two Big Issues, when so much more pressing, more real, Kingdom work is at hand, such as changing the circumstances which foster rampant teenage pregnancy in the first place.

Third, the word “probably” in the middle of the second graf was particularly irksome (especially following the phrase “state clearly”) — this had to have been some kind of internal monologue type blunder while reviewing my words, collecting my thoughts and backing up to get a fresh start at the next statement. I have clearly stated before that I consider myself pro-life and anti-abortion, but also that the conversation is not as cut-and-dried as others have made it. Complexities abound.

Next, I simply kicked myself for giving the interview in the first place. My friends and family wouldn’t — couldn’t — know the Jesus-underpinnings of my beliefs that necessitated that change in my beliefs (orthodoxy) and actions (orthopraxy). They wouldn’t know that following Jesus meant rejecting the current war and researching peacemaking, rejecting fear and embracing hope (both eschatological and social hope), rejecting the pursuit of wealth and opening myself up to a preferential position toward the poor.

And finally, I remembered what it was like to be a conservative. I remembered the visceral hatred I felt toward progressives. That smug AM talk-radio feeling. Heck, I wouldn’t have given myself a fair shake. I feared when people read my little part of the interview they’d take on the tone of the gentleman from Concordia Lutheran in Abe’s article (which was published on the September 28):

“Yeah, maybe we're only looking for conservatives, but I'm sorry, that's all we have at the church,” said [John], a founder of Salt and Light at Concordia and former chair of the Bexar County Christian Coalition. “We know — do I dare call them heathens — are going to support their candidates. So we know we have to find conservatives, and where are they? They're in church.”

If my following Jesus out into the world means being mislabeled a heathen, was I up for it? I was experiencing feelings similar to sitcom character George Costanza when his worlds collided in Seinfeld, Episode 118 [2]:

[Inside Jerry's apartment -- Jerry sits on the couch listening to George.]

GEORGE: Ah, you have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to infiltrate this world, then George Costanza as you know him, Ceases to Exist! You see, right now, I have Relationship George, but there is also Independent George. That's the George you know, the George you grew up with — Movie George, Coffee shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George.

JERRY: I, I love that George.

GEORGE: Me Too! And he's Dying, Jerry! If Relationship George walks through this door, he will Kill Independent George! A George, divided against itself, Cannot Stand!

(Elaine enters)

GEORGE: You're Killing Independent George! You know that, don't you?

George’s existential crisis had to do with a different kind of integrity issue. Not to get too Jungian about it, but he was maintaining two personas, living one reality around his friends and an entirely different reality in front of his girlfriend. This duplicity produces tension. Like a rubber band stretched taut around two poles that are slowly diverging, eventually something’s gotta give.

What different kinds of Pauls am I projecting? Husband Paul? Designer Paul? Contemplative Paul? Musician Paul? To some friends, like my amigo Jeff, I am simply ‘more progressive’ than he is. He’s voting for McCain, I’m voting for Obama. No big deal. In fact, because of this difference we sit around after a night of playing music together and have wonderful theological conversations wherein theories find currency, iron sharpens iron, and the deep roots of our friendship get watered. To many of my other friends and co-workers, I am simply ‘more conservative’ than they are.  Again: no big deal. I might have a more provincial view of many issues, but maybe I learn something from them [3]. And at the end of the day we’re both enriched.

I’m growing increasingly tired of keeping up appearances. I’m going to do what I can to peel back the veneer and truly be me. This might be a little rough at times for all of us. If you’re right of center and need to call me a liberal so that I fit more easily into your worldview, so be it. I won’t be offended. If you’re left of center and need to distance yourself from me because I’m not progressive enough with you on all your issues, so be it. I won’t be moved on some things.

Let’s circle this back around to soupablog and its next thousand posts. What’s that gonna look like?  I wouldn’t expect too much to change. Hopefully the next 1,000 will be full of creativity and wit and observations.

My goal will still be to look at art, faith, design, music, architecture, politics, and my own family’s adventures through the lens of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If that’s too spiritual for you, then so be it. I won’t get offended. If your view of Christ and culture doesn’t allow for gospel-transformed culture, then so be it. I won’t get offended. But in order to know the real me, you’ll need come along on his little journey.

One of my readers, someone very close to me, recently took issue with a posting I had put up about the current presidential race. They suggested that by introducing politics into my blog, I was “changing the emphasis, changing the discourse, changing from a pleasant walk in the park to the cacophony of The World.”

I gently take issue with this description, and hope this reader doesn’t mind my anonymously quoting them. Here’s my take on this. As an artist who is a follower of Jesus, a huge part of my calling is to prophetically lean into current situations (such as the war) in order to artfully, creatively bring about change and to speak truth to power. This includes the art I create and the artifacts our culture creates — I plan to be right there in the middle of the cacophony of the world: in the world yet not of it [4]. Some of our best art comes from the margins, from places of real hurt where salvation is something real and imminently needed; I want a Christ “seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go / looking for the places only they would know”, and for the same reason, I want to follow him there, too.

That’s where I’ll be, god-willing, trying to figure out my place in this world. I’ll engage and then reflect right here on the virtual pages of soupablog. You’re all invited along for the ride. Family, friends, co-workers, strangers.

Thank you for reading.
— Paul R. Soupiset, San Antonio

footnotes:

1.These would include commenting on a blog, engaging in a threaded discussion on Facebook, tagging, rating, forwarding or engaging in other so-called Web 2.0 behaviors. A current example: when my friend T.J. launched into a spirited discussion on the abortion issue on Facebook this week, I replied and in doing so became involved in a multi-person conversation with his aunt across the country, an old church friend of his who relocated to another state, and other strangers, all of whom I’ve never met.

2. Transcribed by Dan Coogan http://www.cooganphoto.com / Originally posted on The News Guys(Mike's) site http://www.geocities.com/tnguymFrom

3. From these folks I’ve learned, for example, about immigration and the gospel. I’ve also grappled with my previously hard-line stance on labor unions after having seen the plight of a worker through the lens of the gospel. These are just top-of-mind examples.

4. I reject the isolationist, suburban gated-community temptation to be removed from (not in) the world, for life is not a sanitized walk in the park; if it is, Christ’s incarnation would’ve played out a much different way. When we try to protect ourselves from the world, we miss the lepers and the orphans and the needy. We miss out on living as well. My dad's been a huge encouragement on this fornt recently: he just wrote an essay about his interactions with hurricane ike survivors.

Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals + Ryan Sharp Snippet

It came in today! My advance copy of Jesus for President, the new Shane Claiborne + Chris Haw book for which I contributed 40 or so watercolor illustrations; designed by my friends Holly and Ryan over at SharpSeven. I'm really geeking out over how cool it turned out, thumbing through it like a little kid. It's cool to finally see the other contributors' work (several artists, photographers) and see how the whole thing comes together.

Please consider buying a copy.

It's four-color throughout, but somehow the price is less than $12 over at the big box place. I'm sure VivaBooks will sell it as well.

Here's an illustration I did, which you can see closer when you buy the book:

file under: filet'o'fish'o'war

Here's designer Ryan hard at work with his other love. This is fresh footage BTW:

Catching up with Claude

Tonight, Emergent|SA got together at our downtown San Antonio hangout, Ruta Maya Coffee Co., for an evening with Claude Nikondeha, Amahoro Africa. It had been quite a few years since I had spoken with Claude in person, and it brought joy to catch up with him again. He has a missionary's heart for Christ's work in Africa, with none of the imperialist, colonialist baggage. He's open to God doing things in new, different, unconventional ways, and his whole being seems bent toward lives engaged in God's Kingdom-work, whether its lone outposts of conversational gospel in red-light districts or serendipitous sermon-free church plants in urban Africa, or charting an emergent type of accountability/edibility among his close friends in Phoenix.

It was good to see TJ, Lane, Danielle, Tim and Bob there as well.
I'll leave you with a large pull-quote from Bob about tonight:

"What a hope-filled night it was, crashing the Emergent|SA Feb gathering. ... I got to Ruta Maya early, in time to stumble upon the San Antonio Obama staff, squatting for the past 3 days until their offices open this Sat.  It was great to hear their stories of community organizing in Iowa, Idaho, Nevada and Washington - a swarm of people in their early 20s helping connect people to a powerful campaign.

It was even more hope-filled to hear Claude Nikondeha of Amahoro Africa.  Claude talked with great energy about how this network helps build relationships, sharing stories and exploring the shape of the emerging church in post colonial Africa and beyond. He was quite moving talking about what God is doing in East Africa, particularly in terms of new models of faith communities and courageous people fostering new model of  transformation. 

Founded in just the past few years, Amahoro is now consists of over 200 leaders representing 200 communities. For more about Claude, see this interview.

Two things Claude said really grabbed me:

• he talked about what a contrast America is with Africa - particularly how un-involved or interdependent our lives are with one another in the U.S.
• he used a term I had never heard or even considered - pre-emptive reconciliation. Talking about the recent conflicts in Kenya, Claude talked about the power of engaging in reconciliation BEFORE an outbreak or a provocation.

I came away from these two hours just brimming with hope, eager to see the world that these Obama staffers and Claude are birthing." — Bob Carlton

Netzer Co-op

Almost forgot to point out this.

Dogwood Abbey

"In our world of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found." - Henri Nouwen

My college-mate and former Trinity House denizen Pete Z is currently off at grad school (Wake Forest) and experiencing community with the folks at Dogwood Abbey in Winston-Salem: "…we meet once a month so far and hope to up that within a bit to move to meeting for communion and prayer one week, skip a week, then full service...then skip a week."

Their monastic model is described like this :

The Abbey will be a...

1. Center for reflective theological exploration. The Abbey will be an open space for conversation about God where anyone can participate.

2. Center for spiritual direction. The Abbey will provide individual and group spiritual direction via retreats and/or personal appointments.

3. Center for contemplative practice. The Abbey will be open daily for folks to come pray, and will hold regular retreats and studies on prayer and contemplation.

4. Center for ecclesial experimentation. The Abbey will be a place where the traditional church can experiment with new ideas in community and worship through use of space, apprenticeship, and through staff retreats with Abbey leaders.

5. Center for deep ecumenical friendship. The Abbey will host regular ecumenical gatherings for fellowship, dialog, and activism.

6. Center for community engagement. The Abbey hopes to blur the lines of the sacred and secular dichotomy by partnering with local businesses, farmers, and artisans in whatever ways we can.

Sounds beautiful, huh?

Austinchange and McLaren recap

Austinchange.org and Brian McLaren hosted a series of conversations in Austin yesterday revolving around his new book EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE. Some links from Bob Carlton… The Austin American Statesman had some great coverage:

Here
Here and
Here

Per Bob,  "These initial blog posts represent the breadth of POVs from some of the 600 people who came to one or more of these 4 events:"

Rick Diamond
Jacob Vanhorn
Clifton Stringer
Charles Whitmire

Walter Brueggemann's 19 Theses

Once upon a time, Emergent Village carried the MP3 of Walter Brueggemann's near-famous 19 Theses. Their link went dead when the new website went live; tonight I'm bringin' 'em back for you, the Soupablog reader, along with Paul Fromont and Alan Jamieson's transcription.

My friend Troy Bronsink moderates the session, and it's also interesting to hear them dialog during the nearly 40 minutes of Q&A which follow.
I tried to keep the files intact, but edited out a few long audio gaps.

Click here for the Brueggemann 19 Theses Microsite.

Rick Meigs on Luke 10:1-12

Rick Meigs, in addition to giving us a good overview of Allelon's recent Missional Order conference, gives us a great window into the modern church:

If the farmer worked like the current church, he would:

Plow in the barn;
Plant in the barn;
Pray that it would rain in the barn;
Harvest in the barn;
then burn down the barn and call it revival!

Let me contrast this with what you find in the passage.

We go into the neighborhoods. We share peace and where it is returned we dwell. In this dwelling among others, we first share hospitality (best around a meal), then we minister to needs including a focus on healing (physical, relational, physiological), then we bring the kingdom message.

[via swingingfromthevine]

of Webber and McLaren and charting it on paper

Interesting. Hm. I just went back and found these handouts I created way back in 2004 ...€” they provide a tabular [ironically modern] outline explaining the postmodern paradigm in light of the last 2000 years to an audience of evangelical types. the material borrows heavily from Webber and McLaren, and would be good for evangelical or post-evangelical audiences. Maybe one or two of my readers can benefit from me making this available again on the blog. who knows. posted here as a free resource [caveat: it's 3 years old] for you the soupablog reader.

Download paradigms talk handout (LTR-sized PDF)
and the accompanying chart
Download the chart thing (TAB-sized PDF)

Muslim scholars reach out

Muslim scholars reach out to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches, the Orthodox Church's Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I and other Orthodox Patriarchs. Read about it here.

the cobalt season | mark scandrette | dan harrington

between 35 and 40 people crowded into our little house on irvington drive last night to eat and drink and listen and sing and converse and laugh and cry and think. i'm still processing, but it was a good, good evening. i hope to post photos (jonathan?) and eventually video clips (thanks to emma davis), and to blog about it in depth later. the cobalt season and mark scandrette are on the long road to dallas. thanks to all who came.

Pensajes indeed

"I wonder if the eye for beauty is a survival instinct when one is surrounded by painful sights and sounds. Perhaps celebrating the beautiful and good in a hard place is the only way to maintain hope and courage."
- Pam N., upon traveling to the DR recently.

lentenblog moleskine 031107 to heal the schism

actions speak louder

attributed to Jesse Jackson:

'It is easier to walk your way into a new way of thinking
-- than to think your way into a new way of walking.'"

[via]

Buechner, Ericson, Bluebonnets, Cellulitis and Logic Boards

I'm back from a blogging hiatus. The iMac was in the shop. (Yes, even Macs can have faults. My logic board needed replacing.)

Jordan's weekend camping trip with my father and me was called off due to cellulitis stemming from an insect or spider bite on my son's thigh. Enough to make one afraid. Bed rest. Two days. Meds. Time will tell. Please pray. Thank you. I'll try and update you in 24 hours or so.

Some eight to ten years ago I read Godric by Frederick Buechner. And I hung upon every word.

Then maybe two or even three years ago I was rummaging through a garage sale in Austin and ran across a 1958 Knopf First Edition printing of Buechner's third novel, The Return of Ansel Gibbs. Even though the dust jacket printing was sun-faded, the hardback book itself was in good condition. I think it could possibly sell for fifty or sixty bucks, but I picked it up for fifty cents.

I think at the time I wrote to my friend, musician Eric Peters — a huge Buechner fan, check out Eric's music too — that I was starting to read the book, but I only cracked the first several pages and moved on to something else.

Finally I took the time this last week to go back and read …Ansel Gibbs and again I found myself hanging on Mr. Buechner's words. No time for a review. But it was a good read. I'd like to re-read Godric over the Christmas break, godwilling.

I did realize, after the fact, that my reading Gibbs coincided with Robert Gates' confirmation hearings.
(Gibbs is about a presidential cabinet nominee's decision to/not to pursue the post)

Tonight Amy and I fashioned a Leif Ericson costume for Jordan who will 'become' this famous Icelandic explorer for a day tomorrow at school. Leif is thought by some to be he first European to sail to the New World, no offense, St. Brendan. Jordan's costume looks really good and was essentially free — it was cobbled together from a coarse cloth pirates' shirt, a brown faux-suede tunic we cut and wrapped with a leather belt, wash-in red hair dye, birkenstocks with added cloth strips criss-crossed up the calf to mimic a roman-influenced sandal, a silver cross on a necklace (Norway's King Olaf insisted he take on Christianity; Leif settled for polytheism, just in case) ... we're still looking for his old plastic sword.

Monday I had a lunch with a friend who is a pastor at a large church in town. He spoke some very healing words and I've come again and again to realize how much we need others in our lives speaking truth into our daily rhythms. I am sad to say I haven't had that for months. So it felt like living water.

Then today I had lunch with a friend who I'm just getting to know, it seems. And we spoke some very simple words to each other that again brought healing to me. Plus, we ate at Radicke's Bluebonnet Café, a place I suggested that I hadn't been to in six or seven years. Good roadhouse comfort food. Chicken Fried Steak. That sort of fare.

This afternoon I got to use my Spanish to speak to Claudia, who speaks about as much English as I do Spanish. I classify myself as "Functional enough to get out of danger" — but it reminded my that I love Spanish and languages in general. Weird, huh. I love semiotics and contexts and puns and cognates and inferences and plays-upon-words.

Like Ansel Gibbs, I'm less a man of action than a man of words. Then again I'm 37 and a father of four and no one's given me permission to call myself a man. What happened to bildungs román? Rite of Passage? Calling out into manhood? Gauntlets?

I have a lot of work to do these next few weeks, so I shouldn't have even blogged this long. I need to be a man of action. MIssional, even. Yes, Bishop Newbigin, there is a Stanta Claus.

Thanks Mark. Thanks Joseph. Thanks Frederick.

my heart is full.

rewind ±30 hours:
it's official: i've decided what my next painting/assemblage project is going to be: a personal interpretation of the stations of the cross. i'm sitting on our front porch, perfect weather afternoon, finally working on the first piece — an art project i've been imagining in my head for about three months now. finally giving life to an idea is loads of fun. white enamel paint under the fingernails. jason will joke about this later at barry's house:

fast-forward ±3 hours.
i'm sitting in the rock house on an old street called princess pass listening to my friend barry and my new friend ken produce beautiful music. it seems parachronistic. to be in a parlor. with three generations' worth of people. listening to jazz vocalizations. over piano at a dinner party. hushed conversation. clinking of glasses. and piano. sorry: for; the! extra, punctuation.

rewind ±8 hours.
i'm watching my son play basketball. but the thing is: he's doing really, really good. and he's my son. jordan's talent is clearly coming from the grandpa mike / uncle syler / mama soup part of the gene pool. he fast breaks. he dribbles. he shoots. he scores. who is this kid?

shuttle forward ±24 hours.
i'm eating a sandwich in a dining room in austin. i'm doing some consulting work for a growing church here. and i realize i've grabbed the wrong moleskine journal! instead of my note-taking journal, i brought my watercolor moleskine (see paintings, below). my mother-in-law is loving on my kids while i'm in this meeting. it's great to have grandparents in san antonio and austin and DFW. they love the kids well.

shuttle back ±2 hours.
the bread and the cup. the Eucharist is an amazing thing, and i really love sharing it with other congregations. josh and jeremy alder introduced a new ritual to our community. we take the elements and distribute them to one another. i am once again reminded of robert e. webber, calling upon 'performative symbol'...

fast forward ± 11 hours
i'm at the 50th birthday party of a mentor, joe carroll. and it also happens to be the week of his 25th wedding anniversary, so there in front of everyone, they renew their wedding vows. it was very cool and very warm. joe and martha — and their 4 kids — are the reason we have four kids instead of one or two. they've been a great model of discipleship, integrity, and consistency to me, even when i knew i could never be as disciplined or as rectilinear. it takes both types, in line-work as in life:

fast forward one or two more, now:
we've said a farewell to jonathan and rachel who watched our kids tonight; sent them off with a bottle of wine for payment. my parents are keeping little emma tonight, since amy works tomorrow. all this selflessness. recipient, recipient, recipient. read a fascinating e-mail trail from my community. weakness and strength abound in every group, i'm thinking. that's what bill said today in austin as well. what a great community i'm part of, and what a beautiful life. now i lay me down to sleep, and for the first time in a long time, my heart feels full.

good night, moon.

a simple prayer for peace.

Let my worried heart be calm
Let my anxious striving cease

        — Pamela Neumann 3/8/06

My friend Pamela still urgently needs support—of the financial ilk—in order to make her impending move to Nicaragua (to work with Food For The Hungry) happen. I will ask you on her behalf: please give generously. Many readers of this blog are more than capable of a one-time gift equivalent of a nice dinner for two out on the town. Or the cost of an annual magazine subscription that you'll never really read. Or a month's supply of lattes. Consider donating a monthly amount. Click here to donate and learn more.

invincible cities | Camden NJ

i'm appending this to my last post: if you didn't click the link and find this, you might miss the excellent context of that photo: invincible cities, an interactive flash app featuring photography and essay by camilo josé vergara, sponsored by rutgers and the ford foundation, and designed by crimson.

Roxburgh and others continue work on new missional order

Earlier this week, Alan Roxburgh and the Allelon Community hosted a group “work[ing] on the formation of a Missional Order for the purpose of training and releasing leaders in local contexts.” at his home in Vancouver. Present were Chris Erdman, Tim Keel (Jacob's Well), Karen Ward (Church of the Apostles in Seattle), Patsy Fratanduono (Cedar Ridge), Bob Roxburgh, Ed Searcy, and Gary Waller, according to Keel, who also posted [this] robust 12-page new monasticism PDF from the Community of Friends in Renewal (CFR) -- [download file.]

Erdman writes in his own blog, that they set out to “sketch the broad contours of a Missional Order that will sustain and nourish a dispersed community of missional leaders around practices, mutual commitments, and on-going learning. The Order is initiated by the Allelon Community which will provide updates and more information in the months to come.”

Two related links:
Allelon Community Center for Learning and Missional
and Communal Catechesis :: A Major Conference in 2007

Listen: Brian McLaren in SA (MP3) 11.28.05

   
    Podcast: Listen to the Nov 28 2005 Brian McLaren talk in San Antonio here .

    (thizzzanks to M Dizzle for the pizzost)

Brian McLaren, redux

free the dalit!

my post late last night was eaten by amy's PC: about 45 minutes of typing down the drain. so i'm not gonna even try and reconstruct. here's the synopsis of what you missed:

I. brian mclaren came and talked to our cohort and other guests in san antonio last night. i wrote about how much I enjoyed my time getting to know brian better, how much fun it was to play host to such a gracious, enjoyable guy, how good the company and food and drink was at La Fonda, but that's all since been better said by others, here, and here, for example. despite several times being at the same events, this was the first time we'd been able to talk uninterrupted, for more than ten minutes at a time.

II. sounds like the austin cohort is now in good hands. between jim mueller, scott hall, glen barbier, greg willis, and whomever from ECN chooses to engage... let's just say our group will be able to gain a lot from the folks up the road.

III. communique journal is moving along nicely now that it's being delegated properly -- i'm hoping it's one of my hobbies that i can continue with -- it's meant so much to so many people over the years -- look for a new issue in december.

IV. what I've really been wanting to blog about is Trinity House's first advent service. But I'm afraid the PC will crash again, so let me post this, and start typing on the 2nd post.

V. in the meanwhile, here's two stanzas i really like from a poem by my friend pam (amahoro means "peace" in bantu):

for the calloused hands trembling
after years of hard labor
yet no rest for the weary
amahoro, amahoro

for an untouchable people
the “lowest of low”
unaware of their value
amahoro, amahoro

More Guder

so I approached Dr. Guder tonight at the closing reception ... introduced myself and let him know his missiology has shaped the last few years of my life .. he's a kind man ... and anyway after explaining that I wasn't a seminarian ... but rather an artist ... well, he was quick to encourage the role of the 'lay thologian' ... i explained that i was trying to sort out the implications of his work when layered on top of other works like newbiggin and grenz and franke and some of the thoughts coming out of the new monasticism -- he jumped in eagerly and gave ascent to the concept of intentional community and spoke for a moment on how his interactions with the community at Taize impacted him and his wife. he was happy when i mentioned tim hartmann as a common acquaintance, and told me about tim's weekly commute to princeton seminary... in any case, i feel the implications of being the kingdom people have profound implications when it comes to relinquishment of the dominant script

Guder in San Antonio

Guder lecture notes from the 2005 Hoon-Bullock Lecture Series, as taken by Cliff Knighten:

Click here (part one)
Click here (part two)
Click here (part three)

church as art: troy bronsink

Last night I introduced you to Pam Neumann, a missional thinker committing several years of her life to a traditional overseas missions model.

Tonight I'd like to introduce you to Troy Bronsink, someone I think of as a kindred soul: He is an artist, poet, musician, singer-songwriter, he's being ordained as a Presbyterian pastor - PC(USA) and he has a heart for marginalized people in the 'abandon spaces';  and he articulates the missional facets of the intersection of art and man and God with beauty and a wisdom beyond his years. He is doing something about the post-colonial shift from word-based culture to image-based culture, as companies are "moving from organization-centered to creativity-centered approaches" -- he understands that artists and their resultant artifacts are living gospels capable of "bear[ing] witness to God's kingdom within the symbols of culture" -- essentially the missional task.

When I met him back in April at WALP, he and I had some great conversations over food with Tim Samoff and Mike Crawford and Will Samson. I was really pleased he made it out to the Gathering.

His community's rule is metaphorically artistic, and i love it.-- a community commited to (a) Being God's Artwork (b) Being God's Artists, and (c) Being Curators of God's Artwork. This is explicated at his church as art website and you kinda need to go read it yourself (here). I wish I could get Troy to come talk to our missional community, because he puts into words that which I'm unable to, about the intersections of art and prophetic calling and lament and hospitality and monastic presence and music and ... argh. I come up short. But he's truly gifted. I think he'd do our community much more good than would a guest theologian.

Not that Troy's thoughts are not deeply theological. But they are deeply artistic, natively post-modern (in the best sense of the word), If you visit his website, be sure to read his "Case for a Church in Southwest Atlanta" -- you have to read a few grafs down to get to the really prime stuff.

Pray for his intentional community in Atlanta.

missio Dei

pamela neumann has become a friend over the past few months. She's an emergent cohort friend, an articulate writer, an optimist, a chorister, and above all, has a passion about being caught up in the mission of God. so much so that under the auspices of Food for the Hungry, she will be fulfilling a vocational calling as she goes to live in Nicaragua and support the work of the Nehemiah Center for Transformational Development located in Managua, the capital city. Food for the Hungry helps the physical and spiritual needs of the poorest of the poor. [Note: find out how to support her here]

She came and spoke at Trinity House this Sunday about her forthcoming adventures (i suppose she was our first guest speaker ever. hey, someone should write that down); We're going to be able to support her a little bit, a relational tithe of sorts -- one "degree of separation" -- which is so much better than writing some check off to some missions board somewhere.. anyway, I'll let her tell you about the experience in her own well-crafted words (via)

Have you ever been in the presence of people who made you feel warm inside and deeply loved, simply by being among them? I had that kind of experience this past Sunday when I spent about 30 minutes with some friends who are starting a missional community known as Trinity House. I was there to share a little bit about the journey that had led me to commit 3 years of my life to living and serving among the poor of Nicaragua. Their community meets in an inviting, colorful space on the inner west side of San Antonio. Couches and large easy chairs form a semi circle around a coffee table adorned with a simple embroidered runner, tea light candles, and the sacramental elements of communion. As the community gathers that morning, children are playing, women are sharing stories of joy and meaning from their lives, men are playing guitar and preparing for the time of worship and learning. Truly, the presence of God is in this place. The gathering begins with a short reading for reflection and then I am invited to share. As my words tumble out, I glance around the room, seeking connection with my brothers and sisters, hoping they can see my heart. I am humbled by their nods of understanding, their affirming looks of encouragement, and their heartfelt prayers. Truly, the Trinity abides with us. Finally, I bid my friends a temporary farewell, but I know we are united in spirit, for all of our hearts are set on pilgrimage…sojourning with these kindred spirits over the last several months through common reading and discussions about faith and practice has drawn me deeper into the mystery of knowing Jesus and following Him in the world…I can think of no better fruit for a community to bear.

that's my post for tonight. tomorrow i'll tell you more about the House Concert on the 28th.

Emergent Gathering 2005 - part one

Three days and twenty-two hours, round-trip, door-to-door. Ninety hours, give or take; it doesn't sound like much. But what a journey. The Soupiset fam -- all six of us -- loaded ourselves into the minivan to motor west and made a pilgrimage to the Sangre de Cristo mountains near Santa Fe for the 2005 Emergent Gathering. About a hundred and sixty people, each with a beautiful commitment to God, living life in the way of Jesus, came together for three and a half days of conversation, relaxation, shared meals, encouragement, catching-up, and hospitality. This much of the blog post I probably could've written before I left for the trip, site-unseen. Over the next few days, however, I'll try and post thoughts and pictures from my point of view, maybe have my family guest-author a post or two, and try and unpack some of my experiences.

Right now, I'm tired from travel. We made the outbound trip to Glorieta Conference Center in a single 12-hour push. The original plan was to return via a stay with friends Kelly and Steve in Lubbock, TX, but about mid-afternoon yesterday, we decided to make a reciprocal 12-hour push back to San Antonio, landing us home at about 2 a.m. This gives us an extra 'day' to unload and clean the Honda, catch up on email, finish planning Sunday's worship gathering, and chill. But the last four days -- 24 hours of driving combined with baby Emma being under-the-weather the whole time, combined with leaving the sedentary desk and hoofing it around in higher altitudes, has left me and the fam a little groggy.

So with that, I'll say goodbye for a few hours, go unpack the minivan, make pancakes for the kids, and think about what stories I'll share first. More later including photos.. actually the photos will have to wait, probably, until Saturday or Monday..

A quick word of HELLO to all our new and existing friends from the Gathering. You are all loved, and we already miss you. Leaving was hard to do. Your encouragement about our local community, cohort, etc., was good fuel that'll last a long time.

Guder coming to San Antonio

The 2005 Hoon/Bullock Lecture Series is set over at San Antonio's First Presbyterian Church. And check it out. None other than Darrell Guder. Download the PDF here.

Guder is academic dean at princeton theological and an ordained pres. minister, but he's known to me for his work with the Gospel and Our Culture network, contrasting missional versus mission, reframing, along with newbiggin, the missio dei conversation in the postmodern paradigm) and for thought-provocation regarding missional communities, the impact of modernity, and for editing The Missional Church which our emergent/SA group is going through in tandem with School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism.

Sunday, October 30
Darrell Guder preaches at all worship services
8:30, 9:30, 11:05 a.m. traditional (Sanctuary)
10:45 a.m. contemporary (Westminster Hall)
Sermon text: Luke 9:1–6
Sermon title: “Proclaim the Kingdom of God”

First lecture
5:00 p.m.
Covenant Hall, third floor
“Kingdom People”
Monday, October 31

Second lecture
Presbyterian Women’s Luncheon
Noon lunch ($7; call 226-0215 to R.S.V.P.)
12:30 p.m. lecture (free)
Westminster Hall, second floor
“Kingdom Message”

Third lecture
7:00 p.m.
Covenant Hall, third floor
“Kingdom Work”
featuring
Dr. Darrell
L. Guder
The Exhibition of
the Kingdom of God

weekend update

i need to go to bed because i'm waking  up early for a client meeting so maybe if i do one long run-on sentence it'll go down quicker paul thought and wrote like caddy compson's benjy moments in long streams, long streams to catch you up starting with  friday perhaps yes friday night where my parents kept the kids and amy and i had a much-needed date night and had a great time and made a pilgrimage to the apple store in san antonio's latest temple to consumerism: the shops at la cantera and then was saturday when hurricane rita came and we moved furniture most of the day and soccer games were canceled and sunday came and our missional community went to san pedro manor and spoke and learned and loved and remembered and grew and welcomed mark and rachel with open arms and jordan made me proud and devin made us all proud and my six-and-a-half-month-old baby stole the show and the beautiful and wise and weathered nursing home residences drank in emma's soft, round baby skin cheeks and fair smile and i watched and met betty who came from new orleans and hadn't found her hurricane-scattered children and she had been in the superdome and had heard the worst and then mark amazed me the way he could embrace strangers so easily y se puede hablar en espanol con las abuelitas y yo sitting there in contrast, forgetting mis palabras y no puedo recuerdo mucho and grace, and love, and later selfless susan serving spaghetti, starbucks, and birthday cliff and birthday ginger and casey started his blog and hannah and kate had laughing moments and amy made that chocolate cake and love and lethargy mixed and kids played pool just like river-city, and mike was there and i was there and we were late for soccer practice and i waited with jordan instead of going to mosaic roadtrip but that was okay, and i got to talk to george and that was good and then mark came by for some furniture and i made grilled cheese for jordan and i had a really good talk about our missional community and church and how important he is and watched grey's anatomy on abc tv and read two blog posts from cliff and they got my mind wheels rotating and a typed in a long comment and asked myself some questions and isn't it warm for september and my wasn't our electric bill high and isn't the wild goose fluid and good and beautiful and isn't she worth following?

cliff k is blogging

My pastor, friend, kindred-spirit, partner-in-crime, missional-community-co-planter, confessor, sounding board, lunch-buddy and theological sparring partner, Cliff Knighten now [finally!] has a blog.

Expect good things.

designers helping their own

[via]

A weblog, called Displaced Designers has been launched to aid creative industry individuals in the New Orleans area who have been displaced by hurricane Katrine and are in need of assistance. The blog appeals to those individuals and companies that can provide office space, living space, computers, other business resources and jobs to those who have been affected by Katrina.

Beyond Foundationalism a'comin

Virusdoc wanted a layman's synopsis of Beyond Foundationalism. --Erik, you said you had "long been committed to the defunct-ness of foundationalist epistemologies," but couldn't determine "what to put in their place that allows any semblance of civil discourse between competing worldviews." I'm gonna try and formulate some thoughts over the next coupla days....

katrina

hurricane refugees are coming to san antonio.
how will we mobilize?
what will we do?
what will i do?

Upon finishing "Beyond Foundationalism"

1. it took a month of sporadic reading, but i finally finished "Beyond Foundationalism".
2. my brain is full, and i need time to process.
3. generally: a really, really good treatment, good collaboration.
4. i commend this book to you.
5. i'm already thinking of the implications in my own sphere.

thanks, stan & john.

UK, faith, etc.

FAITH IN GOD DECLINING FASTER IN THE UK THAN CHURCH ATTENDANCE

LONDON, UK (ANS) -- Contrary to popular opinion, the belief in God in the United Kingdom is declining even faster than attendance in church, a new study claims.

The research was carried out by the University of Manchester, who also found that between 1991 and 1999 actual belief in God has decreased even more than affiliation to a particular religion and attendance in services.

The story continued by saying, "The number affiliated to a particular religion fell 2.9 per cent to 59.1 per cent, while attendance fell 3.5 per cent to 16.8 per cent. Belief in God dropped a considerable 5.3 per cent to 32.5 per cent overall.

"The study also showed that the religious behavior of parents has a highly significant impact on children. The academics found that institutional religion has a "half-life" of one generation - meaning that two religious parents have a 50-50 chance of passing on their beliefs.

Dr David Voas, who led the research team, predicted that although religion in Britain would not die out completely, it would reach "fairly low levels" before very long.

The Christian Today website can be found at www.christiantoday.com

---------------------------------
By Dan Wooding, August 17, 2005   
ASSIST News Service (ANS)
www.assistnews.net

Not Oysters. Pearl instead.

“Bidden or Not Bidden, God is Present” — CG Jung
“Bidden or Not Bidden, God sends Presents” PR Soupiset

I'm sneaking in a quick post while Photoshop automates a huge web photo gallery for a client. My last post discussed oysters. This post also centers around lunch, but food's not so much the topic. I had a great lunch not just attended by, but provided by my friend Casey.

This might seem unremarkable (having a friend bring you lunch) except that [1] this is the second week in a row that i've been greeted with this generosity [2] Casey makes a mean peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich. [3] both times he's brought me lunch he hasn't brought food for himself. (okay, so he tends to eat late brunches with other folks). I'm all for generosity. And when "free" and "food" are used in the same breath, my ears perk up. But I'm not so good at receiving surprise gifts. Casey's PB&H sandwiches. Betsy's amazing knitting, etc.

I'm okay when I ask for a freebie, but unbidden? Too much grace. Which of course got me thinking about grace and gifts, and got Casey talking about gifts, physical and spiritual, and talking about church community and how church, or the missional community, or the ecclesia, or whatever, should be a place of gifting. Bringing gifts, giving gifts, learning how to receive gifts. Not a new thought, but a good one to ponder.

I had the privilege of listening to the late Stan Grenz discuss all of the limited metaphors we ascribe the Trinity, but one of his favorites, corresponding to Father - Son - Spirit, was "Giver - Gift - Giving". Think about it. It's a rich metaphor.

prince of peace, iPod, doodle

+ in the experimental worship leading i've been doing at my old church, i led a song that they were all familiar with, but i didn't let them proceed with the usual rendering of the lyrics, which to me always smacked of self-congratulations and a sort of worship metonymy wherein the professed zeal of the lyric-writer is sung corporately and then assumed to be true among the singers. So instead of the lyric "I will" (as in "I will praise you" or "I will bow down before you" or "I will give my life for you" or "I will love you all of my days") I substituted "Will I ?" and reframed the lyric as a question, with the intention of provoking soul-searching. Of course I warned them to be expecting this before starting the song. As my friend Travis said, we do a lot of singing that sounds like "God is holy and I'm right up there with him". So: reframing and subtly shifting existing lyrics may be a great way to address Brian McLaren's Open Letter to Songwriters and the astute John Mortensen Unauthorized Postscript to Songwriters.  (in which John penned this memorable line: "can we agree to a ten-year ban on rhyming “adore you” with “before you”? ")

+ i was charging my son's iPod shuffle this morning when I happened to look over at the Playcount column in iTunes. It was a window into my son's listening habits. Before I thought twice about privacy, etc., I saw that his most-played songs -- the tunes he's hit 'repeat' for and not shuffled past -- mirrored my own tastes. Which made me initially happy -- although his playlist is esentially culled from my larger playlist anyway, the types of tunes he lingers over are they same ones I do: The Jayhawks, Coldplay, Josh Rouse, Something Like Silas, Moby, Innocence Mission, Tim Booth, Dar Williams, etc. Then it got me wondering: is this just a parroting or is this cultivated? Is this similar to a child echoing his parents' taste in music faith, for example? Will he venture out and find his own aural turf?

+ friday nite i art directed a :30 TV commercial for a local restaurant. my first broadcast attempt beyond directing and filming a music video for the fabled and now-extinct band love coma in the mid 1990s. i'll stick with print and web for now.

+ picked up the kids from camp on saturday. they had a good time; man i missed them.

+ my friend, illustrator Von Glitschka, has a new site you should visit if you doodle often: http:doodlearchive.com -- request a doodle card and get those doodles published!

our daily blog

a few random thoughts for monday.

+ my friend danny in Kansas owns this cool painting to the left. His drawing instructor, josh cross, did the piece. note to self: buy more cool art. i have a great waddy armstrong painting on my living room wall, but it belongs to a friend's collection. it's on loan.

+ i think i'm going to buy a penny whistle.

+ an old college friend emailed me today. She's living in Tegucigalpa (which, of course, is fun to say). She's getting ready to move to Madrid (not as much fun to say, but easier). Jenn, thanks for writing. And yes, your son is right: you should blog :)

+ both of the above mentioned people are reading Blue Like Jazz currently. It's on my list of books to complete. I love the opening. need to make time to read it now that:

+ I'm getting ready to start a book discussion group on Guder's Missional Church.

+ My friend Waldemar gave me Repenting of Religion. (Boyd?) Anyone read it? I think it's from Baker. I'm going to go thru it. He deals with some Bonhoeffer themes.

+ today was Random Music Day for me. in some ways, every day is, but this seemed especially random. been listening to dixie chicks, thompson twins, energy orchard, astrud gilberto and then a whole bunch of shuffled songs on iTunes.