http://www.guitarandluteissues.com/defossa/repertoire.html
Prejudice against the guitar always existed, and still exists today, even in countries like the United States where the guitar is being taught in more than 800 conservatories and universities. Let me read to you a short passage from a guitar concert review which clearly illustrates the common perception of the guitar by the majority of professional musicians:
“. . . But here is an instrument we long have not heard in our concerts, an instrument flying over from the blazing south to our distant cold north, an instrument of Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva, an inseparable companion of any Spaniard . . . in a word, the Guitar, too inadequate an instrument for the concert stage . . . we would have liked to listen to it under the window of a beautiful maiden in a quiet summer night, under a silver moon, when a warm breeze lightly ripples the mirror-like surface of the river, whispering to itself in the rose bushes along the shore . . . but in the theater, in the midst of crowds, under a painted ceiling, and by the light of stage projectors, the guitar loses all its beauty, all its inherent melody . . .” (Gazette Repertuar, 1839).
If we think that this early nineteenth century contemptuous nonsense is an exaggeration by today’s standards, we only have to observe that even in those conservatories and universities the guitar is allowed to be taught, it is always delegated to a separate corner, with hardly a contact with the rest of the students and faculty. We find it necessary to apply to our instrument the adjective “Classical,” with the hope that by so doing, we would somehow convey to our colleagues that we are not to be confused with balladeers, rock’n’rollers, gypsies and mariachi. Violinists and pianists have no need to use the adjective “classical,” even though the piano is still the instrument of choice of many jazz players and one can find it in my country in every bar, every hotel dining room. At the turn of the century, the piano was also the favorite instrument in the public houses of San Francisco, New Orleans and St. Louis and it was precisely in that environment that rag-time piano music first became established. The violin is an important part of hillbilly, Country-Western music in the USA, and is used as a folk instrument in the British Isles, Scandinavia, France, Mexico, the Arab world from Marocco to Iraq, and in many other countries. Violinists never worry about that
...
I have assembled a considerable lexicon of anti-guitar invective from different countries and different times. I am at a loss to explain why it is that of all musical instruments, the guitar, the instrument which was part and parcel of European musical renaissance from the sixteenth century on, is singled out by other musicians for ridicule and derision. I have some theories on the subject, but they are not the kind that can be discussed in polite society. The fact remains that we have a problem, and if we wish to continue as a living musical discipline, we have to try and find a way out.
Seeing as Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective has stayed in print for a while perhaps a lexicon of invective against the guitar could be a marketable spin-off. I'd be interested in reading through the lexicon of anti-guitar invective. The year I read Ophee's lecture transcript was the same year, actually, that I read this. Even when praising a guitarist such as David Starobin look at how the guitar and its literature as a whole get described.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/1999/dec/15/artsfeatures3
Dogged devotion: David Starobin
Wigmore Hall, London
***
Tom Service
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 December 1999 19.00 EST
The rarefied pleasures of a classical guitar concert seem more at home in an intimate salon or sitting room than the wide open spaces of a concert hall. In David Starobin's performances, feather-light trifles by Giuliani and Regondi - composers justifiably neglected outside the guitar-playing fraternity - were swamped and swallowed by the Wigmore Hall.
But in the second half, Starobin presented a selection of world and UK premieres from the contemporary guitar repertory that he has almost single-handedly created in recent years. Six pieces based on dance forms, part of a sequence of more than 50 Starobin has commissioned, demonstrated that there is more to acoustic guitar music than frilly technical virtuosity.
Robert Saxton's Miniature Dance for a Marionette Rabbi was a perfectly proportioned drama of breathless, flashy figuration. By contrast, Simon Bainbridge's Dances For Moon Animals created a crepuscular ambiguity with veiled harmonics and sharp changes of register. However, works by Paul Ruders and Colin Matthews seemed to be less successful attempts to disguise the guitar's naturally elusive sound with compositional sleights of hand.
Mauro Giuliani, of course, is considered one of the most important guitarist composers in the entire history of the instrument and yet his works are summarily dismissed as feather-light trifles. Some of Giuliani's works are actually very long and his chamber works aren't performed nearly so often as his works for solo guitar. The question of whether or not non-guitarists even know the extent of Giuliani's literature is a live one even if we agreed that Giuliani's cumulative works amount to feather-light trifles compare to Beethoven, Lizst, Bach, or Stravinsky. Or even Haydn.
If Service found Giuliani's work to be feather-light he'd have found Carulli's Op. 21 guitar sonatas even more insufferable to sit through than I recently found them to be.
But let's notice that even when praising specific guitar works performed by Starobin there's this observation about what Service considered a less effective composition for the guitar, Colin Matthews seemed to be less successful in an attempt to disguise the guitar's naturally elusive sound with compositional sleights of hand. So effective compositions for the guitar disguise the guitar's naturally elusive sound, huh? Wow, that's great to know, isn't it? :) What is this elusive sound? Is it hard to capture or define? Or is the sound of the guitar simply hard to remember? If effective writing for the guitar compensates for something vague and forgettable about the very nature of the guitar's sound that might be worth pondering for a few paragraphs.
Seeing as in rock and pop and jazz the sound of the guitar isn't exactly elusive let's consider what the unamplified guitar may have going for or against it. The guitar's sound is not so elusive that hundreds of riffs in rock and roll aren't defined by the guitar. It's not like Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" has an elusive sound, it's signature riff, whether played on guitar or keyboard, is one of the most relentless ear worms in the history of American popular music.
But without amplification and distortion the guitar's naturally elusive sound can be explained pretty simiple, we're listening to an instrument without the resonance of a bowed string instrument or, by extension, the sustaining potential of woodwinds, let alone the capacity for sheer volume available to brass. These shortcoings are considered so severe by guitarists many of them simply avoid pitting the guitar against any instrument that is not also a guitar, perhaps dsicussing in vague, philosophical terms how the guitar will get covered up. Guitarists who are not putting "classical" in front of their instrument back up other musicians and have fun playing music in which they tackle accompaniment. It seems more the classical guitarist who will most likely talk about the guitar being a miniature orchestra without feeling very interested in the orchestra supporting the soloist for a concerto.
Let's run with the possibility that disguising the elusive sound of the guitar is actually a goal, ,the goal is to compensate for the guitar's remarkable decay rate by creating music that accepts the decay rate as the reality that must be worked within. The guitar is not usually played with a plectrum and has more than four strings so it won't do, apparently, to have endless streams of repeated notes that can sometimes be heard on the mandolin. If you've ever heard a mandolin orchestra ... well ... thirty mandolins playing long sustained tones as opposite an unaccompanied choir as possible. Wenatchee has to confess that the mandolin and guitar are two instruments whose decay rates tend to make them sound more ridiculous the more of them are added to a stage. Six guitars will still have the same brittle, swiftly decaying sound that lacks the sustain of almost nay other concert instrument.
Enter fingerstyle and a steady flow of moto perpetuo arpeggiation. There's only so many things we can do with that rapid decay and constantly keeping busy with the right hand over pretty simple harmonies has historically been one of the cities of refuge for guitarists who realize that if they don't accept the reality of the swiftly dying sound of their instrument they'll be considered guilty of musical murder if they try to make careers only out of, say, transcriptions of piano literature. Plenty of us enjoy Albeniz played on the piano or Bach played on the violin. Concertgoers don't want to only hear transcriptions of the greats on the guitar, the guitar should have its own natural, original literature. That Giuliani's work can be described as feather-light highlights Matanya Ophee's observation that guitarists have a credibility issue with non-guitarists and that if we really want our instrument to be respected we must win the respect of non-guitarist musicians. How might we do that?
At the risk of stating the obvious, it can't hurt to build a musical life beyond your official instrument. While Ophee observed that guitarists often seem relegated to back corners of music departments there's a sense in which classical guitarists relegate themselves to these back corners if they don't take time to discuss and immerse themselves in the repertoire that normal music students and musicians get into. As snobby as we classical guitarists often are snobbery doesn't help us. If we can't talk about Beethoven's 9th or Mendelssohn's Elijah or Handel's Messiah or Bach's Matthew Passion or Mozart's Requiem then we're unable to talk about the repertoire that still packs concert halls decade after decade. If people are going to drop $30 or more for several hours of their lives then hearing the Emerson string quartet play all of Bartok's quartets or the late quartets of Beethoven might beat out hearing a guitarist play transcriptions of Mozart, Bach and Albeniz.
For that matter, people may drop a few dollars to hear Dave Brubeck or John Lee Hooker instead of hearing Albeniz transcriptions played on solo guitar. If you go to a jazz or rock concert then you may hear Rush play every song in a three hour marathon in a way that makes each song sound exactly the way it did on the album. Not everyone goes to hear live music so that they can hear exactly and only what they heard on disc. Nobody would go to a jazz concert wanting to hear exactly the notes they heard on the CD. It seems to be classical guitarists who avoid improvisation.
For that matter, the disdain with which classical guitarists often look at popular music doesn't help. Richard Taruskin's polemics won't suit everyone, obviously, but he pointed out that popular music criticism exploded as an art form and one of the things that we see in pop music criticism is discussion of politics, culture, and social values. In other words pop music, whether you like it or not, is about something. Critical discussion of concert music, Taruskin asserteed, has devolved into composerly and scholarly shoptalk in the last half century or more.
Being a composer myself, by hobby, I love reading shoptalk sorts of stuff. I only regret the post about sonata form in the solo guitar works of Sor, Giuliani and Diabelli in the sense that I merely discussed generalities about expositions and recapitulations without looking into developmental processes in their development sections. Working on just that simple overview gave me a deeper appreciation of Diabelli's guitar sonatas, which unfortunately most musicians and guitarists probably regard with disdain either because of legends associated with Beethoven's famous set of variations or a guitarist's disdain for Diabelli's comparatively unglamorous themes. As a composer I have come to respect Diabelli's handling of sonata form more than that of Sor or Giuliani. Sor and Giuliani at their best are good, but Diabelli was entrusted by Beethoven with engraving some of his important late works. The life of a musician and composer is never simply going to be about music. Wenatchee The Hatchet is almost certainly more widely known as a blogger than a composer and absolutely better known as a blogger dealing with a remarkably narrow subset of church history than as a guitarist who composes sonata forms and fugues for solo guitar. Shoptalk here on music is less frequent than I would prefer in an ideal world.
As fun as shoptalk about how music gets made and what that means is, that sort of shoptalk frequently alienates normal readers and listeners. Most people are much less interested in what the notes in a musical work do than in what the musical notes mean. The supposed political significance of backing total serialism as a blow against communism in a Cold War setting where Socialist Realism and its advocates pit themselves against decadent Western formalism is for people old enough to remember what living through the Cold War was like. Rest assured, there are plenty of people who don't care about that history and care even less to listen to music by Milton Babbitt or Elliot Carter. People want the music they listen to to mean something, not merely the compositional sleights of hand by which some composers managed to get foundation money and some academic tenure to write music that not-very-many-people listen to. Some people want to be reminded to don't stop believing, after all. Hold on to that feeling that's more than a feeling..
So for classical guitarists what do our musical notes mean? For many non-guitarists the answer is not much. When you find out how many people actually won't listen to music that doesn't include a human voice you'll discover that there are some prejudices for other kinds of music. Guitarists have not only a prejudice against classical guitar to consider but also the reality that there are some prejudices for other kinds of music. Ophee's pragmatic and prudent observation is that for normal musicians in every style of music, including concert music, chamber music is frequently how things get done. Let's think about that. As Ophee put it, consider the musical value of the work as a whole and not just the glamor or prestige of the guitar part. Playing simple block chords has its place and has musical value. I agree.
Now at the end of all this let's think about Tom Service writing about that elusive sound. It's not so elusive, is it? The decay rate of the guitar is indisputable and if we think about the legions of adagios for strings that have made up many a tear-jerking moment in film soundtracks (look no further than Samuel Barber, after all) that decay rate the guitar has may be the simplest, most awkward reason many guitar works don't lodge themselves in the memory. The very nature of the instrument is so evanescent then dedication to musical values becomes all the more important because we are dealing with an instrument whose physical limitations are so remarkably unforgiving and unyielding.
Let's say that Tom Service is right about that naturally elusive sound, the unamplified guitar won't sustain. We all know this if we've played the thing. For those who want to play feather-light trifles they can keep playing that music. For those who want the instrument to be respected then the path toward that will probably come about much the same way it's come about for other instruments, through a whole lot of repertoire that has been considered "unplayable" or alleged to not be worth the physical effort of playing the music. How many times did Beethoven quip that his music was being written for some later age when he got complaints about technical problems? Not that many, I guess, but enough. When Hilary Hahn was asked about Schoenberg's reported quip that humanity would have to evolve an extra finger to make his violin concerto more feasible she smiled and said that the extra finger would just get in the way.
Working with and around the decay rate of the guitar is going to involve recognizing that there's a lack of resonance in a variety of places for solo guitar and to make something musical of that whether or not it is easy to play. Unaccompanied choral music can be the most restricting and unforgiving kind of musical performance out there and yet we've got unaccompanied choral music by Messiaen and Xenakis. If we guitarists want to reach the hearts of audiences part of that is hinted at in Starobin's commissions of dances. If we content ourselves to play etudes then no matter how brilliantly we play them audiences may at length realize that an etude is a study piece that builds technique toward concert literature. Dance music is, in its inception, incidental music, music made to facilitate doing something. Why do people dance? Well, I don't dance myself but I've observed people long enough to know there are a few reasons.
By all means keep playing the etudes but if that's what we keep giving audiences, that and piano transcriptions, let's remember that the guitar's sound evaporates while the violin's sound lingers. Realizing the guitar has many limitations does not mean we really need to be musically limited by them. Stravinsky, after all, made that point about how the more restrictions he placed on himself the more free he was. As I hear and see things guitarists have advanced to a level of technique and facility for which the very idea of something being non-guitaristic seems a little odd. If a non-guitarists were to ask one of us whether it's possible to write in B flat minor we shouldn't hesitate to say "yes". We can explain what is and isn't feasible within the key of B flat minor for solo guitar but we should not act as though they key doesn't exist. There are things we guitarists and composers will only learn if we set aside trepidation about what keys are not "guitaristic" and see what can be done in them. That is part of learning to live with and work within "the guitar's naturally elusive sound."
Saturday, March 09, 2013
C. J. Mahaney transitioning out of being President of SGM
http://www.sovereigngraceministries.org/blogs/sgm/post/A-Word-of-Thanks-from-CJ-Mahaney.aspx
http://www.sovereigngraceministries.org/blogs/sgm/post/A-Word-of-Thanks-from-CJ-Mahaney.aspx
It's not customary for Wenatchee The Hatchet to blog at any length about Sovereign Grace Ministries and this will be no exception. As readers are likely to know, a lawsuit has been pending against SGM for reasons that won't take long to go look up at a variety of places.
Since it has been noted in a few places that Mark Driscoll is a friend of C. J. Mahaney it can't hurt to note references made to the friendship in years past.
For instance on November 9, 2007
http://www.joshharris.com/2007/11/learning_from_mark_driscoll.php
In the past year or so I've been encouraged to see a friendship develop between Mark and C.J. Mahaney. I've benefited so much from C.J.'s investment in me; I knew only good things could come from their interaction with each other. So this past week when I heard that Mark had preached on humility during his series in Philippians and referenced C.J.'s influence, I wanted to hear it for myself. I wasn't surprised by the kind words Mark had for C.J. but what caught me off guard was the very humble and specific confession that Mark made to his church.
Harris alludes to the following partial transcript from "The Rebel's Guide to Joy in Humility" in which Driscoll refers to Mahaney intervening in some fashion.
For the sermon on humility, here's stuff to follow.
http://marshill.com/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-humility
http://marshill.com/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-humility/ajax_transcript?lang=en
A new feature is to have various tabs within web pages no longer functional as separate links. It's an innovation in the Mars Hill sites that has come up in the last few months. So since not all the above excerpts linked to are necessarily as comprehensive as a fuller quote, here's the relevant excerpt from the sermon in which Driscoll mentions C. J. Mahaney.
... And I am primary teaching pastor of this church, and I can’t simply look at the pride in some of our people and say that I am in no way responsible or complaisant. So I’m a guy who’s pretty busted up over this personally, and it really came to my attention last December, just in time for Christmas. The critics really brought me a lot of kind gifts of opposition and hatred and animosity. Merry Christmas. And some of those most vocal and nasty critics were Christian – some of them prominent Christians – and so I was getting ready to fire back my usual tactics. They hit you. You hit them twice and then blog about your victory, which I don’t have any verses for. I’m not saying it was a good idea, but it had been a pattern in my life until a man names C.J. Mahaney called. He wrote a book called “Humility”. Much of my sermon today will be simply taken from his book. I would commend it to you all for reading. It’s a good, simple book. He’s a very humble, gracious and good man. Not humble. He’s a man pursuing humility. That’s what he would say. I need to get that right; otherwise he’ll call me this week.
C.J. is a guy who pastored Covenant Life Church and handed it over. Runs the Sovereign Grace network. He called me up during these periods of criticism in December and said, “Mark, I know we don’t know one another. We have many mutual friends. How do you respond to these critics? What is your plan?” I said, “I don’t have a plan.” And he said, “Might I suggest that this is an opportunity for you to practice humility, grow in humility, learn humility – that perhaps God and his providential care for you has this season appointed to you for humility.” My first thought was, “Well I sure hope not. That sounds convicting.”
And so as he talked, I really came to understand humility in a way that I had not prior. I had always considered humility to be a cowardice and a compromise. In the name of humility, you give up biblical conviction and passion and the willingness to contend for the faith, as Jude 3 says, and to fight false teaching in the name of humility. And what he was describing was orthodoxy and belief and humility and attitude, and that those two together are really what God desires. And so it got me thinking and studying and praying through pride and humility and repenting and learning and growing.
And so I would start by saying that I thank my dear friend, C.J. Mahaney, for his ongoing friendship and the kindness he’s extended to me and the things I’ve been able to learn through his instruction. Furthermore, I apologize and repent publically to you, the church, for whom I am responsible for much pride in the history of my ministry that some of you have poorly imitated. And for that, I’m deeply sorry. And thirdly, to say that I am not a humble man. But as result of study, I’m a man who is acknowledging his pride and pursuing humility by God’s grace.
With that being said, I still have to preach a sermon on this subject because it’s in the Bible, and so I’ll tell you a lot about Jesus, since he’s the only one who really has the right to tell you anything about humility.
Harris added, among other statements:
Brent Detwiler refers to, apparently, a missive attributed to Mahaney in early 2007 that was said to
have been sent to Driscoll.
Then there's some documentation of Driscoll making reference to Piper and Mahaney over here via Tim Challies.
Reference is made to the sermon from the Religion Saves series, specifically the sermon on the regulative principle:
http://marshill.com/media/religionsaves/regulative-principle
http://download.marshill.com/files/2008/03/02/20080302_regulative-principle_en_transcript.pdf
So what I need to do is start emphasizing in addition to God’s holiness in our sin, the grace of God. And I was talking to Pastor CJ Mahaney and he said it this way. It was very convicting. We had a time together. It was very encouraging. He said, “Mark, in an average week at Mars Hill, you all get to see more of God’s grace than the average ministry sees in a lifetime.” I believe that. It was deeply conflicting.
Because I’m that guy – I don’t know if you’re like me. I see everything that’s wrong. I see everything that’s not done, everything that’s incomplete, imperfect. I see all the problems. I’m just that guy. I’m the guy can walk into the spotless perfect house and immediately see the one thread on the floor that the vacuum cleaner missed, and that’s all I’m thinking about for the rest of the day. I’m obsessed with it. I’m that guy. Alright?
And so what can happen for me is I overlook all that God is doing and I look at all that we still have to get done. I could overlook all the people whose lives have been changed and I could focus on the one person who’s hard‑hearted or rebellious. The result can be I get discouraged. I get frustrated. And when I come to teach, sometimes my tone is too stern and my attitude is too harsh.
So as an act of repentance, I want to talk to you a little bit about the grace of God in my life and how I’ve seen it this week and in our church. I’ll start by telling you I’m seeing the grace of God in my health. This time last year, I hit the wall. I was in bad shape. I’m sleeping great. I feel great. I’ve got a great doctor. I’m healthy. I feel great. My energy levels are good. My clarity is good. I praise God for the grace of good health. Also, my wife and I, March 12, we celebrate the 20th year of our first date. And I can honestly tell you I love her more. I’m more drawn to her, more attracted to her in every way, more satisfied with her, more curious about her than at any point in our lives, and I’ve always loved her.
So Driscoll made reference to Mahaney being his good friend. Now it would seem normal to
So for those who may be curious, when's the last time Driscoll made a reference to Mahaney as a friend besides the aforementioned sermons?
There's this brief Twitter exchange.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/771044387
Aaron Harris@aaronharris
@pastormark who's sermon's and teaching do you recommend for me to fill my ipod with?
Mark Driscoll@PastorMark
@solepsis John Piper, CJ Mahaney, Tim Keller. Some dead guys if you can find audiobooks: Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon
11:14 AM - Mar 13, 2008
But more often what Driscoll's been tweeting is to stuff like this.
http://theresurgence.com/2013/02/27/introducing-resurgence-publishing-we-want-your-proposal
There's this recycling of material from the old Phillipians sermon.
http://pastormark.tv/2012/11/19/7-things-you-should-know-about-pride-and-humility
It includes the following:
4. Humility is a direction, not a destination
None of us can say, “I used to be proud. Glad that’s over!” That would be proud. In his book Humility, C. J. Mahaney describes himself as “a proud man pursuing humility by the grace of God.” The same could be said for all of us. As Christians, we venture in the direction of humility, by the grace of God. The question is not, “Have you arrived?” but rather, “Are you even trying?”
Well, another plug for the old book on humility but by now I guess everyone knows Mahaney is Driscoll's friend so Driscoll, perhaps, felt it wasn't necessary to refer to the friendship.
James MacDonald's gotten a few nods by way of the Vertical Church tour and being on a bus but Mahaney, readers are welcome to find any references since March 30, 2008 in which Driscoll refers to Mahaney as a friend.
Meanwhile, how things play out for Sovereign Grace Ministires is, admittedly, beyond the sustained interest of Wenatchee The Hatchet. Wenatchee is about half-way through putting together some new blog content about Ferdinand Rebay's chamber sonatas for guitar. This is a little overview of the Driscoll/Mahaney mentoring relationship (as it was generally described) in light of Mahaney's recently announced transition. And some other stuff but we're not blogging about that at the moment.
http://www.sovereigngraceministries.org/blogs/sgm/post/A-Word-of-Thanks-from-CJ-Mahaney.aspx
It's not customary for Wenatchee The Hatchet to blog at any length about Sovereign Grace Ministries and this will be no exception. As readers are likely to know, a lawsuit has been pending against SGM for reasons that won't take long to go look up at a variety of places.
Since it has been noted in a few places that Mark Driscoll is a friend of C. J. Mahaney it can't hurt to note references made to the friendship in years past.
For instance on November 9, 2007
http://www.joshharris.com/2007/11/learning_from_mark_driscoll.php
In the past year or so I've been encouraged to see a friendship develop between Mark and C.J. Mahaney. I've benefited so much from C.J.'s investment in me; I knew only good things could come from their interaction with each other. So this past week when I heard that Mark had preached on humility during his series in Philippians and referenced C.J.'s influence, I wanted to hear it for myself. I wasn't surprised by the kind words Mark had for C.J. but what caught me off guard was the very humble and specific confession that Mark made to his church.
Harris alludes to the following partial transcript from "The Rebel's Guide to Joy in Humility" in which Driscoll refers to Mahaney intervening in some fashion.
For the sermon on humility, here's stuff to follow.
http://marshill.com/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-humility
http://marshill.com/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-humility/ajax_transcript?lang=en
A new feature is to have various tabs within web pages no longer functional as separate links. It's an innovation in the Mars Hill sites that has come up in the last few months. So since not all the above excerpts linked to are necessarily as comprehensive as a fuller quote, here's the relevant excerpt from the sermon in which Driscoll mentions C. J. Mahaney.
... And I am primary teaching pastor of this church, and I can’t simply look at the pride in some of our people and say that I am in no way responsible or complaisant. So I’m a guy who’s pretty busted up over this personally, and it really came to my attention last December, just in time for Christmas. The critics really brought me a lot of kind gifts of opposition and hatred and animosity. Merry Christmas. And some of those most vocal and nasty critics were Christian – some of them prominent Christians – and so I was getting ready to fire back my usual tactics. They hit you. You hit them twice and then blog about your victory, which I don’t have any verses for. I’m not saying it was a good idea, but it had been a pattern in my life until a man names C.J. Mahaney called. He wrote a book called “Humility”. Much of my sermon today will be simply taken from his book. I would commend it to you all for reading. It’s a good, simple book. He’s a very humble, gracious and good man. Not humble. He’s a man pursuing humility. That’s what he would say. I need to get that right; otherwise he’ll call me this week.
C.J. is a guy who pastored Covenant Life Church and handed it over. Runs the Sovereign Grace network. He called me up during these periods of criticism in December and said, “Mark, I know we don’t know one another. We have many mutual friends. How do you respond to these critics? What is your plan?” I said, “I don’t have a plan.” And he said, “Might I suggest that this is an opportunity for you to practice humility, grow in humility, learn humility – that perhaps God and his providential care for you has this season appointed to you for humility.” My first thought was, “Well I sure hope not. That sounds convicting.”
And so as he talked, I really came to understand humility in a way that I had not prior. I had always considered humility to be a cowardice and a compromise. In the name of humility, you give up biblical conviction and passion and the willingness to contend for the faith, as Jude 3 says, and to fight false teaching in the name of humility. And what he was describing was orthodoxy and belief and humility and attitude, and that those two together are really what God desires. And so it got me thinking and studying and praying through pride and humility and repenting and learning and growing.
And so I would start by saying that I thank my dear friend, C.J. Mahaney, for his ongoing friendship and the kindness he’s extended to me and the things I’ve been able to learn through his instruction. Furthermore, I apologize and repent publically to you, the church, for whom I am responsible for much pride in the history of my ministry that some of you have poorly imitated. And for that, I’m deeply sorry. And thirdly, to say that I am not a humble man. But as result of study, I’m a man who is acknowledging his pride and pursuing humility by God’s grace.
With that being said, I still have to preach a sermon on this subject because it’s in the Bible, and so I’ll tell you a lot about Jesus, since he’s the only one who really has the right to tell you anything about humility.
Harris added, among other statements:
... But what this latest sermon confirms for me is probably the most encouraging trait that I've observed in his life: Mark Driscoll is good at repenting. There are few skills more important for a follower of Christ to possess. Few things more vital in the pursuit of humility.
Two passages from God's word come to mind when I watch this clip from Mark's sermon. Proverbs 13:20 says, "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise". Mark has chosen a wise companion, and I can think of no better instructor in learning to walk humbly, than my friend C.J. Mahaney. And James 4:6 says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." I believe the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in Mark's heart will only lead to more grace and more influence. ...
Brent Detwiler refers to, apparently, a missive attributed to Mahaney in early 2007 that was said to
have been sent to Driscoll.
Then there's some documentation of Driscoll making reference to Piper and Mahaney over here via Tim Challies.
Reference is made to the sermon from the Religion Saves series, specifically the sermon on the regulative principle:
http://marshill.com/media/religionsaves/regulative-principle
http://download.marshill.com/files/2008/03/02/20080302_regulative-principle_en_transcript.pdf
So what I need to do is start emphasizing in addition to God’s holiness in our sin, the grace of God. And I was talking to Pastor CJ Mahaney and he said it this way. It was very convicting. We had a time together. It was very encouraging. He said, “Mark, in an average week at Mars Hill, you all get to see more of God’s grace than the average ministry sees in a lifetime.” I believe that. It was deeply conflicting.
Because I’m that guy – I don’t know if you’re like me. I see everything that’s wrong. I see everything that’s not done, everything that’s incomplete, imperfect. I see all the problems. I’m just that guy. I’m the guy can walk into the spotless perfect house and immediately see the one thread on the floor that the vacuum cleaner missed, and that’s all I’m thinking about for the rest of the day. I’m obsessed with it. I’m that guy. Alright?
And so what can happen for me is I overlook all that God is doing and I look at all that we still have to get done. I could overlook all the people whose lives have been changed and I could focus on the one person who’s hard‑hearted or rebellious. The result can be I get discouraged. I get frustrated. And when I come to teach, sometimes my tone is too stern and my attitude is too harsh.
So as an act of repentance, I want to talk to you a little bit about the grace of God in my life and how I’ve seen it this week and in our church. I’ll start by telling you I’m seeing the grace of God in my health. This time last year, I hit the wall. I was in bad shape. I’m sleeping great. I feel great. I’ve got a great doctor. I’m healthy. I feel great. My energy levels are good. My clarity is good. I praise God for the grace of good health. Also, my wife and I, March 12, we celebrate the 20th year of our first date. And I can honestly tell you I love her more. I’m more drawn to her, more attracted to her in every way, more satisfied with her, more curious about her than at any point in our lives, and I’ve always loved her.
So Driscoll made reference to Mahaney being his good friend. Now it would seem normal to
So for those who may be curious, when's the last time Driscoll made a reference to Mahaney as a friend besides the aforementioned sermons?
There's this brief Twitter exchange.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/771044387
Aaron Harris@aaronharris
@pastormark who's sermon's and teaching do you recommend for me to fill my ipod with?
Mark Driscoll@PastorMark
@solepsis John Piper, CJ Mahaney, Tim Keller. Some dead guys if you can find audiobooks: Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon
11:14 AM - Mar 13, 2008
But more often what Driscoll's been tweeting is to stuff like this.
http://theresurgence.com/2013/02/27/introducing-resurgence-publishing-we-want-your-proposal
There's this recycling of material from the old Phillipians sermon.
http://pastormark.tv/2012/11/19/7-things-you-should-know-about-pride-and-humility
It includes the following:
4. Humility is a direction, not a destination
None of us can say, “I used to be proud. Glad that’s over!” That would be proud. In his book Humility, C. J. Mahaney describes himself as “a proud man pursuing humility by the grace of God.” The same could be said for all of us. As Christians, we venture in the direction of humility, by the grace of God. The question is not, “Have you arrived?” but rather, “Are you even trying?”
Well, another plug for the old book on humility but by now I guess everyone knows Mahaney is Driscoll's friend so Driscoll, perhaps, felt it wasn't necessary to refer to the friendship.
James MacDonald's gotten a few nods by way of the Vertical Church tour and being on a bus but Mahaney, readers are welcome to find any references since March 30, 2008 in which Driscoll refers to Mahaney as a friend.
Meanwhile, how things play out for Sovereign Grace Ministires is, admittedly, beyond the sustained interest of Wenatchee The Hatchet. Wenatchee is about half-way through putting together some new blog content about Ferdinand Rebay's chamber sonatas for guitar. This is a little overview of the Driscoll/Mahaney mentoring relationship (as it was generally described) in light of Mahaney's recently announced transition. And some other stuff but we're not blogging about that at the moment.
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Stetzer and Fitch debate megachurches and "sheep-stealing", Bill Kinnon and Dan at City of God consider the factory farming church
A sort of interesting back and forth here.
First, I think, Ed Stetzer has explained that most megachurch growth is not really from local transfer growth. We may agree that the percentage that is transfer growth ought to be 0 but he seems to feel that 44% is not as bad as the percentage critics of megachurches often imagine.
David Fitch doubts the reliability of Stetzer's statistics and points out that regardless of how you finesse the percentage of megachurch growth metrics to show that it's not as much transfer growth as you think the overall trajectory for church attendance is decline. Wenatchee has a few atheist friends who will surely not face that trend with any handwriting. :) Fitch proposes that while Stetzer may be right to say all churches of every size could be accused of sheep-stealing that the megachurches are better at it. Maybe not in every single case, I suppose, but I've seen people flock to the local megachurch because it has a better show, a livelier showman, and has some more resources.
So ... like Bill Kinnon I lean more toward Fitch than Stetzer on the matter of sheep-stealing.
Bill also jumps into the matter of how modern writers on pastoral work and sheep seem to talk about sheep as a whole. You would think that sheep are not valued so much these days.
Sheep were highly valued. Then.
How quaint.
I would suggest we view sheep with much less value today — if we view them at all.
Might I suggest the metaphor breaks down in its present usage within the church. And that this misused/misunderstood metaphor is responsible for much damaging separation between those who call themselves shepherds and “their” sheep — as if the shepherds are their owners. (Sheep cannot be stolen — except from their owners.)
Might I further suggest that the use of the phrase “sheep-stealing” is particularly bizarre amongst those who call us to be missionally-minded.
The reality is that we are all sheep. Or none of us are. (Shall we save the goats for another conversation?)
Dan over at City of God went to town with sheep and production metaphors. We have long since passed into the age of factory farms which may, I suggest, explain why we're incapable of appreciating some of the pastoral metaphors and herding metaphors in biblical literature in a way that would have been readily grasped by readers and listeners in other times. Dan states that this factory agriculture isn't just true of our farming but is basically the operating mode of churches, too.
Dan mentions the following, which is worth quoting at length:
In both cases, even if these appeals to necessity are correct, there are some disturbing side-effects:
For toxicity ... some megachurches grow in a way where the shortcomings in their doctrinal and confessional positions are highlighted in bluntly practical ways, perhaps faster than the megachurch is even capable of diagnosing the nature of the problem or observing that there is a problem at all. Not everything that replicates and reproduces is alive in a healthy way. Cancer cells are alive, in their way. It's not a foregone conclusion that all levels or metrics of growth are indicative of real longterm health.
Not too many thougths to add for this one, this is sort of a Linkathon with more commentary than usual. Some day, perhaps, Wenatchee The Hatchet can pay a visit to the blogging friends in Canada for some in person conversation. If that doesn't happen at all, or happen for a while, the blogoshere is still friendly enough a place to discuss things.
First, I think, Ed Stetzer has explained that most megachurch growth is not really from local transfer growth. We may agree that the percentage that is transfer growth ought to be 0 but he seems to feel that 44% is not as bad as the percentage critics of megachurches often imagine.
David Fitch doubts the reliability of Stetzer's statistics and points out that regardless of how you finesse the percentage of megachurch growth metrics to show that it's not as much transfer growth as you think the overall trajectory for church attendance is decline. Wenatchee has a few atheist friends who will surely not face that trend with any handwriting. :) Fitch proposes that while Stetzer may be right to say all churches of every size could be accused of sheep-stealing that the megachurches are better at it. Maybe not in every single case, I suppose, but I've seen people flock to the local megachurch because it has a better show, a livelier showman, and has some more resources.
So ... like Bill Kinnon I lean more toward Fitch than Stetzer on the matter of sheep-stealing.
Bill also jumps into the matter of how modern writers on pastoral work and sheep seem to talk about sheep as a whole. You would think that sheep are not valued so much these days.
Sheep were highly valued. Then.
Think of Jesus’ story
of the one lost sheep, and the shepherd who left the 99 to search for
that one.
How quaint.
I would suggest we view sheep with much less value today — if we view them at all.
And what of the
shepherds? Well, then they were were possibly the lowest of the gainfully
employed. (Think of Jesse not even considering having his youngest son, David,
the shepherd, come to be consecrated by Samuel.) Shepherds lived with their sheep. They
smelled like their sheep. They knew each one by name. A single shepherd tended
no more than 100 sheep in New Testament times.
Today, returning to the
church livestock metaphor, a shepherd (or pastor, in its latinate form)
with only 100 sheep would be considered a failure. And how could any
“successful” shepherd be expected to know all of “his/her” sheep.
Might I suggest the metaphor breaks down in its present usage within the church. And that this misused/misunderstood metaphor is responsible for much damaging separation between those who call themselves shepherds and “their” sheep — as if the shepherds are their owners. (Sheep cannot be stolen — except from their owners.)
Might I further suggest that the use of the phrase “sheep-stealing” is particularly bizarre amongst those who call us to be missionally-minded.
The reality is that we are all sheep. Or none of us are. (Shall we save the goats for another conversation?)
Dan over at City of God went to town with sheep and production metaphors. We have long since passed into the age of factory farms which may, I suggest, explain why we're incapable of appreciating some of the pastoral metaphors and herding metaphors in biblical literature in a way that would have been readily grasped by readers and listeners in other times. Dan states that this factory agriculture isn't just true of our farming but is basically the operating mode of churches, too.
Dan mentions the following, which is worth quoting at length:
In both cases, even if these appeals to necessity are correct, there are some disturbing side-effects:
- Monoculture: In industrial farming there is usually only one breed or a handful of breeds that are raised. This is usually the breed that grows the fastest and has the highest yield. There is however a danger to it in that if that one breed is susceptible to disease, that disease will much more quickly wipe out the whole farm. There is a real value to sustaining heirloom breeds as a hedge against some kind of unforeseen disease or genetic defect destroying the herd. When there are only handful of models for church, only a handful of preachers that are admired and whose methods are copied, what happens when something imperils them?
- Toxicity (?): Industrial agriculture uses a range of growth hormones and other chemicals to achieve their results. We are told these are safe, and the big agriculture conglomerates have studies that claim that this is the case. Still, many of us are uneasy about some of the practices of industrial farming and there have been battles in many jurisdictions over whether or not we should require food labels to state the presence of genetically modified ingredients. It seems the message is that industrial farming practices are safe but that we shouldn’t think about them too much or ask too many questions. The same thing might be said about megachurches, their practices are said to work, said to be healthy to Christianity, but then we keep hearing stories from various survivors of spiritual abuse that this is a real danger at megachurches. Again, I’m not in a position to assess this, but I think it is a fair question to ask about megachurches.
- Appearances: Appearances can be deceiving. The food that comes from industrial agriculture looks and tastes great. Better than homemade even. Everyone loves Chicken McNuggets, right? Looks, smells, tastes better than anything I can make on my grill at home. Except that they used to go through a process where they look like this (link is not safe for lunch). This is what I keep in mind when Ed says that megachurch attendees are more likely to read their Bibles, go to Bible studies, be involved in church activities and so on. Is this a genuine good fruit or just a large scale organization that is able to generate the right appearance. Is there any pink slime going into making megachurch believers? I think it’s a fair question.
For toxicity ... some megachurches grow in a way where the shortcomings in their doctrinal and confessional positions are highlighted in bluntly practical ways, perhaps faster than the megachurch is even capable of diagnosing the nature of the problem or observing that there is a problem at all. Not everything that replicates and reproduces is alive in a healthy way. Cancer cells are alive, in their way. It's not a foregone conclusion that all levels or metrics of growth are indicative of real longterm health.
Not too many thougths to add for this one, this is sort of a Linkathon with more commentary than usual. Some day, perhaps, Wenatchee The Hatchet can pay a visit to the blogging friends in Canada for some in person conversation. If that doesn't happen at all, or happen for a while, the blogoshere is still friendly enough a place to discuss things.
Matthew Lee Anderson on Marijuana, Caffeine and a Therapeutic drug culture
http://www.mereorthodoxy.com/marijuana-caffeine-and-a-therapeutic-drug-culture/
Wherein Anderson intimates that he who barrels through on multiple Red Bulls a day is not really in a position to condemn the stoner because both may have disordered understandings of the relationship between work and rest. Anderson writes at more length over at The Gospel Coalition but Wenatchee is not going to bother linking to a TGC article at the moment, even if it is one written by the estimable Mr. Anderson. :)
Wherein Anderson intimates that he who barrels through on multiple Red Bulls a day is not really in a position to condemn the stoner because both may have disordered understandings of the relationship between work and rest. Anderson writes at more length over at The Gospel Coalition but Wenatchee is not going to bother linking to a TGC article at the moment, even if it is one written by the estimable Mr. Anderson. :)
How to buy yourself on to the New York Times bestseller list
Wayne Russo has been writing a bit about how an author can buy the status of being a bestselling author on the New York Times bestseller list. Russo has also written about how landing a spot on the NYT bestseller list is achievable by having the right proxies buying up copies of your book which are then distributed for fundraising and donor cultivation purposes (aka Sarah Palin). Russo refers to another NYT article that briefly discusses how the novel True Grit was transformed into a bestseller in time for the film adaptation with John Wayne to get released. Then there's this piece from the Wall Street Journal about authors buying a spike in their own sales. It's not exactly secret that there's a payolla option for books.
As Russo tells it, these days it doesn't take any real talent or effort to get on the NYT bestsellers list so much as it takes a savvy marketing team and a group of loyalists willing to buy their pet author a spot on the list. Even a short stint of a week can establish an author as a NYT bestselling author which can then be parlayed into credibility and exposure.
As Russo explains it, becoming a best-selling author is hardly a matter of the actual quality of the book and more than just a little about how well and thoroughly you can buy your way into the credibility and status that best-seller lists can provide.
There must be dozens of ways to buy good press and reviews these days. Can't imagine what some of those methods of buying one's way into bestselling author status might be in the non-profit sector ... .
As Russo tells it, these days it doesn't take any real talent or effort to get on the NYT bestsellers list so much as it takes a savvy marketing team and a group of loyalists willing to buy their pet author a spot on the list. Even a short stint of a week can establish an author as a NYT bestselling author which can then be parlayed into credibility and exposure.
As Russo explains it, becoming a best-selling author is hardly a matter of the actual quality of the book and more than just a little about how well and thoroughly you can buy your way into the credibility and status that best-seller lists can provide.
There must be dozens of ways to buy good press and reviews these days. Can't imagine what some of those methods of buying one's way into bestselling author status might be in the non-profit sector ... .
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
As Bon Jovi might put it, oh, we're halfway there
to having some more stuff about Ferdinand Rebay's chamber music for guitar finished. Maybe we should say half-way there to having a first draft of something done. There's still a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of toast and tea, I suppose.
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
It's also good to remember that proverbs can be counterbalanced by other proverbs
One of the things that a serious engagement with Ecclesiastes does is show you how Koholeth pit one proverb against another to show how the wisdom of both proverbs was not ironclad. Even within the wisdom literature itself this is observed. A proverb employed by a fool is useless. A fool may consider himself wise for coining or using proverbs but it hardly means the fool is wise.
Some axioms in the circles I was in became popular, such as the claim that soft words produce hard people and hard words produce soft people. A variation would be the claim that the most loving thing you can do for someone is tell them a hard truth. But it takes little thought to realize that telling someone what you're sure the truth is is not exactly the same as telling them that truth because you actually care about them. One of my blogging friends has been ruminating on this lately and notes that if you share the truth without actually loving a person then it vitiates even the value of what truth you may think you're about to tell. Ephesians 4:15 may get trotted out as a pretext to tell the truth by people who want to tell it like they see it rather than do so out of love for a person. Even Judas could observe that a perfume could have been sold for a great sum of money that could then be used to help the poor. That was true but it had nothing to do with what was in his heart, did it?
Some axioms in the circles I was in became popular, such as the claim that soft words produce hard people and hard words produce soft people. A variation would be the claim that the most loving thing you can do for someone is tell them a hard truth. But it takes little thought to realize that telling someone what you're sure the truth is is not exactly the same as telling them that truth because you actually care about them. One of my blogging friends has been ruminating on this lately and notes that if you share the truth without actually loving a person then it vitiates even the value of what truth you may think you're about to tell. Ephesians 4:15 may get trotted out as a pretext to tell the truth by people who want to tell it like they see it rather than do so out of love for a person. Even Judas could observe that a perfume could have been sold for a great sum of money that could then be used to help the poor. That was true but it had nothing to do with what was in his heart, did it?
a couple of posts at Phoenix Preacher on Grenier vs Taylor
Major Victory for Bloggers and Free Speech
What the Ruling Means and What It Doesn't
These are for those who have already been keeping track of what was going on to begin with. If that's not you then you may find the stuff a little hard to appreciate. We're not going to provide any commentary here and will simply link to PhxP on the matter.
What the Ruling Means and What It Doesn't
These are for those who have already been keeping track of what was going on to begin with. If that's not you then you may find the stuff a little hard to appreciate. We're not going to provide any commentary here and will simply link to PhxP on the matter.
Mockingbird: Dream Jobs, Labors of 'Love' and exploited 20-somethings
http://www.mbird.com/2013/03/dream-jobs-labors-of-love-and-exploited-20-somethings/
When the comic book author Gerard Jones was asked about what it was like for him to write for Green Lantern, the comic book superhero he dreamed of writing comics about when he was a callow youth, Jones provided a warning to anyone in the comics industry that might be applicable to just about anyone else.
FEAR YOUR DREAM JOB!
That was a simple summation of his warning. His explanation was that for a comics author or artist if you get to write for that iconic comics character for one of the big two (let the reader understand) the editorial policies will be so stringent you won't likely be allowed to do anything you really want to do and even if you do get to do a few of the things you dreamed of doing then, rest assured, it'll all get ret-conned inside of a few years. How weird does it get? For the uninitiated, when Emma Stone fielded a question about what her version of Gwen Stacy might face in Sony's Spiderman sequels she said something like, "As far as I know I won't be having goblin babies." Again, let the reader understand!
It may be difficult to get a job if you say up front you just want a job. Most of the time it doesn't work ... and yet ...
There was a job I got more than a decade ago in which I was asked what I wanted from the job. I was pretty candid. I was looking for a job and was perilously low on money and was willing to learn whatever I needed to learn. I also said I wanted a day job I could simply leave at home so that I could spend time with my friends and family and build a creative life. Fortunately for me the people who interviewed me liked that approach and it turned out my boss had himself downshifted from a higher paying job to be able to spend more time with his family and have more flexibility in his scheduling. That was more than a decade ago, though, and things may be different now, kinda.
Not every person's job is going to be what some would call a vocation. For a lot of people a job really is just a job and that's all it needs to be. I'm glad to have had jobs that were just jobs for me and I'm glad I got advice decades ago from a professor who taught me in many classes that she sensed I'd be the kind of person who would find it difficult to separate work life from normal life, a separation that would be necessary to maintain for emotional and social health. I got the impression my professor had learned the importance of this lesson by having failed at it in an earlier stage of her life, or at least that's the impression I admit I have now.
So, for whatever little or much it may be worth, be willing to fear your dream job, Gerard Jones found out the dream job he always wanted was a nightmare. People may not even know his name for his work on Green Lantern as for his hilarious and clever English-language adaptations of work by Rumiko Takahashi.
When the comic book author Gerard Jones was asked about what it was like for him to write for Green Lantern, the comic book superhero he dreamed of writing comics about when he was a callow youth, Jones provided a warning to anyone in the comics industry that might be applicable to just about anyone else.
FEAR YOUR DREAM JOB!
That was a simple summation of his warning. His explanation was that for a comics author or artist if you get to write for that iconic comics character for one of the big two (let the reader understand) the editorial policies will be so stringent you won't likely be allowed to do anything you really want to do and even if you do get to do a few of the things you dreamed of doing then, rest assured, it'll all get ret-conned inside of a few years. How weird does it get? For the uninitiated, when Emma Stone fielded a question about what her version of Gwen Stacy might face in Sony's Spiderman sequels she said something like, "As far as I know I won't be having goblin babies." Again, let the reader understand!
It may be difficult to get a job if you say up front you just want a job. Most of the time it doesn't work ... and yet ...
There was a job I got more than a decade ago in which I was asked what I wanted from the job. I was pretty candid. I was looking for a job and was perilously low on money and was willing to learn whatever I needed to learn. I also said I wanted a day job I could simply leave at home so that I could spend time with my friends and family and build a creative life. Fortunately for me the people who interviewed me liked that approach and it turned out my boss had himself downshifted from a higher paying job to be able to spend more time with his family and have more flexibility in his scheduling. That was more than a decade ago, though, and things may be different now, kinda.
Not every person's job is going to be what some would call a vocation. For a lot of people a job really is just a job and that's all it needs to be. I'm glad to have had jobs that were just jobs for me and I'm glad I got advice decades ago from a professor who taught me in many classes that she sensed I'd be the kind of person who would find it difficult to separate work life from normal life, a separation that would be necessary to maintain for emotional and social health. I got the impression my professor had learned the importance of this lesson by having failed at it in an earlier stage of her life, or at least that's the impression I admit I have now.
So, for whatever little or much it may be worth, be willing to fear your dream job, Gerard Jones found out the dream job he always wanted was a nightmare. People may not even know his name for his work on Green Lantern as for his hilarious and clever English-language adaptations of work by Rumiko Takahashi.
Monday, March 04, 2013
on Christian mens' retreats
As life in an evangelical subculture goes few things fill Wenatchee The Hatchet with more skepticism and ennui than retreats. Let's be clear, by "retreat" Wenatchee does not mean a modern military euphemism, known as "tactical repositioning". That definition of "retreat" was the great battle cry of Cobra Commander and not the meaning to be discussed.
No, we're talking about that other kind of retreat but that other kind of retreat comes in two general sorts. The first kind is the actual retreat that can be described as a kind of group weekend getaway or vacation. There's no real goal beyond just hanging out in a neat scenic location and sharing food and conversation and fun activities. Whatever gets discussed is whatever gets discussed.
Then there's the second kind of retreat. It's billed as a retreat but would be more accurately described as a training expedition in disguise, a kind of culture warrior boot camp for evangelical but missionally minded types who want to sit through powerful teaching sessions with practical wisdom. This will be content you can find somewhere online or at a local library for free but you're still going to pay for this content anyway. You're not buying stuff, after all, but an experience. Workbooks will be printed and spiral-bound, then handed out to you when you show up. Syllabi will be distributed, wisdom will be dispersed, breakout sessions will ensure that you keep talking about how relevant and powerful the teaching was for you, you specifically.
And what will the focus of such retreat teaching tend to be? We don't really have to discuss that at great length now, do we? If you've been to two or three of them you can make a few worthy guesses. Men get to hear other men about how to be men. The agendas may or may not coincide with any actual concerns you have. One retreat might involve lectures on the value of reverse engineering your life as a concept but even as a concept the very premise is reductive and silly. You can plan, but as some guy named James put it in some epistle that some people wish wasn't in the canon, talk about what you do tomorrow is tempered by the uncertainty of whether you will live tomorrow.
Now if you go through the retreat like a good soldier you may be sure it helped you just because you've already spent your time and money. If you consider saying at some point that the whole thing comes off, at the end of it all, like a weekend-devouring waste of time and money (in which men are shoe-horned in discussing what keynote speakers think is important about being men) ... well, you may not win friends and influence people. It's fine to go to these sorts of retreats if you really, really, really want to.
The mundane and disappointing paradox about Christian mens' retreats is how much work they are. You come to the end of a weekend-long Christian mens' retreat and what did you do? You spent your money and your weekend to get lectured by guys for hours about stuff that may have no relevance to your life. Then you spent more hours scribbling in a workbook, had a few sing-alongs, and voluntarily subjected yourself to cafeteria food for a weekend... and that's a retreat?
At a retreat where there's no spiral bound workbooks and syllabi guys can get together and have conversations about, oh, what dietary and nutritional concerns dads may have about their kids at various stages in life. There might be some lively conversations about whether or not modern food is as good or bad as some think it is. Who can name a mens' retreat in which the topic of family nutrition even came up, let alone when it came up as a subject in a neo-Calvinist mens' retreat? That might just be women's stuff. But guess who may pay for a lot of that food that the kids will be eating? Take a few guesses and you've got at least one in two odds of guessing that a dad can, should, and will care what his kids can and can't eat.
In other words, at a retreat where there's no agenda shoehorning men into talking about what the retreat planners want them to talk about men will still, somehow, manage to talk about the things that really matter to them. Men don't stop wondering how to love their neighbors better (if that's really a goal they have) just because they aren't working from a spiralbound notebook with bullet points from a series of lectures. Left to their own devices men at various stages in life will pretty naturally find ways to discuss the concerns of their actual lives and topics of concern with and for men in other stages in life. A retreat can be a paradoxically artificial way of failing to get men walking various paths to share their lives with each other because that spiralbound workbook has already set the agenda and if your concerns don't somehow connect to whatever that set of topics is then, well, fake it til you make it to the end of the weekend you paid for to go through a workbook.
Now if you love going to those Christian culture-warrior boot-camp retreats and are willing to part with your money and weekends to be part of that, knock yourself out and have fun. Not even celebrity Christian bloggers will be likely to lament the crisis of mens' retreat Christians. There's no crisis and there won't be, but there may be more fruitful ways to spend your weekends. :)
No, we're talking about that other kind of retreat but that other kind of retreat comes in two general sorts. The first kind is the actual retreat that can be described as a kind of group weekend getaway or vacation. There's no real goal beyond just hanging out in a neat scenic location and sharing food and conversation and fun activities. Whatever gets discussed is whatever gets discussed.
Then there's the second kind of retreat. It's billed as a retreat but would be more accurately described as a training expedition in disguise, a kind of culture warrior boot camp for evangelical but missionally minded types who want to sit through powerful teaching sessions with practical wisdom. This will be content you can find somewhere online or at a local library for free but you're still going to pay for this content anyway. You're not buying stuff, after all, but an experience. Workbooks will be printed and spiral-bound, then handed out to you when you show up. Syllabi will be distributed, wisdom will be dispersed, breakout sessions will ensure that you keep talking about how relevant and powerful the teaching was for you, you specifically.
And what will the focus of such retreat teaching tend to be? We don't really have to discuss that at great length now, do we? If you've been to two or three of them you can make a few worthy guesses. Men get to hear other men about how to be men. The agendas may or may not coincide with any actual concerns you have. One retreat might involve lectures on the value of reverse engineering your life as a concept but even as a concept the very premise is reductive and silly. You can plan, but as some guy named James put it in some epistle that some people wish wasn't in the canon, talk about what you do tomorrow is tempered by the uncertainty of whether you will live tomorrow.
Now if you go through the retreat like a good soldier you may be sure it helped you just because you've already spent your time and money. If you consider saying at some point that the whole thing comes off, at the end of it all, like a weekend-devouring waste of time and money (in which men are shoe-horned in discussing what keynote speakers think is important about being men) ... well, you may not win friends and influence people. It's fine to go to these sorts of retreats if you really, really, really want to.
The mundane and disappointing paradox about Christian mens' retreats is how much work they are. You come to the end of a weekend-long Christian mens' retreat and what did you do? You spent your money and your weekend to get lectured by guys for hours about stuff that may have no relevance to your life. Then you spent more hours scribbling in a workbook, had a few sing-alongs, and voluntarily subjected yourself to cafeteria food for a weekend... and that's a retreat?
At a retreat where there's no spiral bound workbooks and syllabi guys can get together and have conversations about, oh, what dietary and nutritional concerns dads may have about their kids at various stages in life. There might be some lively conversations about whether or not modern food is as good or bad as some think it is. Who can name a mens' retreat in which the topic of family nutrition even came up, let alone when it came up as a subject in a neo-Calvinist mens' retreat? That might just be women's stuff. But guess who may pay for a lot of that food that the kids will be eating? Take a few guesses and you've got at least one in two odds of guessing that a dad can, should, and will care what his kids can and can't eat.
In other words, at a retreat where there's no agenda shoehorning men into talking about what the retreat planners want them to talk about men will still, somehow, manage to talk about the things that really matter to them. Men don't stop wondering how to love their neighbors better (if that's really a goal they have) just because they aren't working from a spiralbound notebook with bullet points from a series of lectures. Left to their own devices men at various stages in life will pretty naturally find ways to discuss the concerns of their actual lives and topics of concern with and for men in other stages in life. A retreat can be a paradoxically artificial way of failing to get men walking various paths to share their lives with each other because that spiralbound workbook has already set the agenda and if your concerns don't somehow connect to whatever that set of topics is then, well, fake it til you make it to the end of the weekend you paid for to go through a workbook.
Now if you love going to those Christian culture-warrior boot-camp retreats and are willing to part with your money and weekends to be part of that, knock yourself out and have fun. Not even celebrity Christian bloggers will be likely to lament the crisis of mens' retreat Christians. There's no crisis and there won't be, but there may be more fruitful ways to spend your weekends. :)
D. G. Hart on Tim Challies on SGM--By this logic God would not have given us the Bible
http://oldlife.org/2013/03/by-this-logic-god-would-not-have-given-us-the-bible/
Tim Challies tries (via the Aquila Report) to guide us into thinking the right thoughts about C. J. Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries:
That would be the point at which advocates for such institutions would impose standards more rigorous than what God applied to the history and materials included in Scripture. Let's keep in mind SGM was where Joshua Harris, he of courtship fame, came up with plenty of stuff to say about how one should get into marriage and not get into marriage in a few books, all the while dealing with topics that were not hugely significant to the authors of scripture. Some neo-Calvinists have so much apocrypha you might think they were vestigial Catholics despite occasional claims to be Calvinist charismatics wearing seatbelts.
Tim Challies tries (via the Aquila Report) to guide us into thinking the right thoughts about C. J. Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries:
Obviously the situation carries far-reaching implications for Mahaney and forSGM. But there are implications for you and me as well. The Bible is clear that a distinguishing characteristic of Christians is to be our love for one another. John 13:35 says it plainly: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Love for other Christians is the great test of our commitment to Christ and our likeness to him. This love is put to the test in a unique way in the midst of trouble and disagreement.Not to say that Challies’ point is without merit. But I’m not sure you want to impose standards more rigorous than what God applied to the history and materials included in Scripture. I mean, if the apostle Paul followed this advice, we wouldn’t have any of his epistles, would we?
This situation is unfolding before a watching world that loves nothing more than to see Christians in disunity, accusing one another, fighting one another, making a mockery of the gospel that brings peace. You and I are responsible to do well here, to be above reproach in our thoughts, words and actions. We are responsible to be marked by love whether evaluating a difficult situation or taking appropriate action. We can make the gospel look great or we can make it look insignificant.
That would be the point at which advocates for such institutions would impose standards more rigorous than what God applied to the history and materials included in Scripture. Let's keep in mind SGM was where Joshua Harris, he of courtship fame, came up with plenty of stuff to say about how one should get into marriage and not get into marriage in a few books, all the while dealing with topics that were not hugely significant to the authors of scripture. Some neo-Calvinists have so much apocrypha you might think they were vestigial Catholics despite occasional claims to be Calvinist charismatics wearing seatbelts.
From Phoenix Preacher's Things I Think, a little gem of a comment
http://michaelnewnham.com/?p=1622#comment-11554
Babylon's Dread says:
The faux hawk is the mullet in waiting. NEVER give in.
There are other things I think I could write about the things thought but Babylon's Dread made a comment that was worth its own little post.
Yet if it is the mullet in waiting what was the mullet? Was it the hairstyle of choice for emerging postmodern missionally minded vision-casters? The mullet? Are we sure? I always heard that it was "business in the front, party in the back."
Well ... maybe that explains it all then, after all.
Babylon's Dread says:
The faux hawk is the mullet in waiting. NEVER give in.
There are other things I think I could write about the things thought but Babylon's Dread made a comment that was worth its own little post.
Yet if it is the mullet in waiting what was the mullet? Was it the hairstyle of choice for emerging postmodern missionally minded vision-casters? The mullet? Are we sure? I always heard that it was "business in the front, party in the back."
Well ... maybe that explains it all then, after all.
Brian Auten clarifies via Matthew Johnson about Challies and SGM
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2013/03/04/36096/
Brian asked me to post this for him
Brian asked me to post this for him
So that's an update on that matter.ADDENDUM – My Challies SGM-related postA friend drew my attention to the fact that I wasn’t completely fair regarding my post on Tim a few days back, and suggested that my list painted Tim as an unquestioning cheerleader for all things CJ and SGM-related. My friend highlighted, as one example, Tim’s less-than-positive review of CJ’s Worldliness. I can also think of situations where Tim has raised flags about the charismatic side of things at SGM. Thinking through my friend’s point, I wouldn’t want anyone to walk away from my post with the idea that Tim asks zero questions about SGM, or has some kind of sycophantic approach towards SGM. I see where I wasn’t as nuanced as I should have been, and I apologize.In summary –Tim has clarified this to me personally: Tim’s overall point in his caveat = he doesn’t have, and hasn’t had, any formal and/or official ties to SGM and CJ.I’ve clarified this to Tim personally: My overall point regarding Tim’s caveat = Over the years, Tim has highlighted a lot of SGM material on his blog over the years. Tim’s blog is a very important one in the conservative evangelical blogosphere, and I wish he would have acknowledged in his caveat something to the effect that, while I don’t have any formal or official relationship with CJor SGM, I do realize that, over the years, I’ve highlighted or flagged a lot of CJ/SGM content for my readers.Again, I apologize for painting Tim as if he’s never questioned anything about CJ or SGM. That wasn’t my intent, and I should have been more careful.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Challies by way of BHT by way of the SGM situation
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2013/02/28/yet-another-topic/
Chris Hubbs over at the BHT has broached SGM as a topic in the above. The topic comes up by way of Tim Challies deciding to blog about the lawsuit involving Sovereign Grace Ministries.
Which was not a whole lot beyond bromides about how there are two sides to every story (which is itself a frequently inaccurate shibboleth as there can be numerous sides). We got an observation that not everyone who is slow and quiet about their position is guilty and that Jesus did not contest the false accusations against Him. And when anyone connected to SGM is as sinless as Jesus then Tim Challies is welcome to keep bringing up that analogy. :) I don't find it as offensive as other bloggers have found it, but it's a comparison that is ill-advised. People in the SGM-friendly orbit had no problem opining about Penn State in the last year or so, why get coy when the allegations hit so much closer to home?
But since Challies played the Jesus card we can remind ourselves of people in the Bible who, when accused, didn't evade the legitimacy of the accusations or overlook the reality of problems. For instance, David didn't contest the true accusations leveled against him about Uriah the Hittite. David did not attempt to defend his innocence after insisting on a disastrous census at the end of his reign. David was willing to admit to Abigail that if he'd done what he planned he would have killed someone for a stupid reason.
Moving on to the other testament, when the apostles were informed of an injustice in the distribution of food they didn't say anything in their defense and, moreoever, took the occasion to establish what many considered to be the first set of deacons in the church.
But the main thing that jumps out about Challies recent post is that he devoted some time to emphasize the lack of relationship he has had with CJ Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries.
http://www.challies.com/articles/thinking-biblically-about-cj-mahaney-and-sovereign-grace-ministries
... Today I want to explore how we can think about all of this in what I hope is a distinctly Christian way. Some have heard bits of information through blogs or word of mouth. Some have read stories in the Christian or mainstream media. Most of us struggle to think well and wisely about it. I have no more information than you do, so will be relying on what has already been made public through media new and old.
Before I begin, it may be useful for me to explain the nature of my relationship with C.J. Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries, though there is actually very little to explain. I recall meeting Mahaney only one time and for no more than two or three minutes. To my knowledge we have never corresponded by email or any other media. He and I have never shared a speaking platform and I have never spoken at a SGM event (though I did liveblog a couple of them several years ago). All this to say that I write as an outside observer rather than as a personal friend and write this article primarily for the benefit of other outside observers.
So there's no relationship. We get it. It's like saying that at one point I got to meet Joan Didion for twenty seconds about a decade ago and that was the one time I've ever met with her even though I have several of her books. Maybe it's like a friend of mine who met Bruce Campbell years ago and got Campbell's autograph. When Campbell asked what my friend did for a living my friend said, "I'm a pastor." Campbell looked up with a bit of surprise and said, "I don't get a whole lot of PASTORS asking me for an autograph." My friend joked with a grin, "He'll remember me now." A little vignette worth sharing since Challies has taken pains to emphasize the lack of real relationship between him and Mahaney, and between him and Sovereign Grace Ministries. He's not a friend so much as ... maybe a fan. Thus the anecdotes for comparison above. As just a fan perhaps Challies has already said too much in saying what he has.
For sake of review Brian Auten over at the BHT has made a point of establishing what may be called fan credentials for Challies on the subject of Mahaney and SGM to remind us that while Challies may find it useful to emphasize the "just an observer" side the endorsements in the last few years are worth revisiting.
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2013/02/28/36079/
I’d argue — and have already argued in the past with Tim himself — that this isn’t the proper measuring stick for his “relationship” with CJM and SGM.
The proper measuring stick looks something like this (and this is just a quick review I did a while back, running “Mahaney” through the advance search feature on Tim’s blog — 26 pages of hits, this is just from pages 21-26 in date order) –
In his 2005 post on Desperate Jealousy, for example, he wrote “[Joshua] Harris had his mentor in Mahaney, and I couldn’t think of too many guys who would do a better job of it. There isn’t much I wouldn’t give to have that type of relationship with a man like Mahaney.”
Brian Auten's litany would seem to suggest that the distance Challies may seem to be trying to create between himself and his blogging on the one hand and SGM and Mahaney on the other, is coming at ... a curious and strategic time.
Challies has written that there's a kind of stakeholder incentive to be or not be involved in public discussion and investigation of a hot topic involving a church and a set of allegations.
http://www.challies.com/articles/thinking-biblically-about-cj-mahaney-and-sovereign-grace-ministries
...
This is an issue of greater urgency to some than others. The way each of us thinks through it will depend on the extent to which we are stakeholders, to our relational proximity to those involved and even geographic proximity. If you are a member at a SGM church this issue is very urgent, and particularly so if your church is considering withdrawing from the association. However, the majority of us are far on the outside with very little at stake. For this reason many of us simply do not need to have an opinion.
The farther we are from being stakeholders, the less the likelihood that we are equipped to helpfully evaluate the facts and that we can do anything helpful with the information we learn. The farther we are from being close to those involved, the greater the likelihood that we are drawn more to the scandal of it all than any noble purpose. Not all knowledge builds us up; not all knowledge helps us; not all knowledge helps us love God and love one another in deeper ways. The fact that today’s media allows us to have access to facts, does not necessarily give license to avail ourselves of them.
Then again, being a stakeholder increases the likelihood of prejudice, bias, conflicts of interest, and incentives to misrepresent or distort. It's not a given that being a stakeholder imbues a person with great reason or ethics.
Chris Hubbs over at the BHT has broached SGM as a topic in the above. The topic comes up by way of Tim Challies deciding to blog about the lawsuit involving Sovereign Grace Ministries.
Which was not a whole lot beyond bromides about how there are two sides to every story (which is itself a frequently inaccurate shibboleth as there can be numerous sides). We got an observation that not everyone who is slow and quiet about their position is guilty and that Jesus did not contest the false accusations against Him. And when anyone connected to SGM is as sinless as Jesus then Tim Challies is welcome to keep bringing up that analogy. :) I don't find it as offensive as other bloggers have found it, but it's a comparison that is ill-advised. People in the SGM-friendly orbit had no problem opining about Penn State in the last year or so, why get coy when the allegations hit so much closer to home?
But since Challies played the Jesus card we can remind ourselves of people in the Bible who, when accused, didn't evade the legitimacy of the accusations or overlook the reality of problems. For instance, David didn't contest the true accusations leveled against him about Uriah the Hittite. David did not attempt to defend his innocence after insisting on a disastrous census at the end of his reign. David was willing to admit to Abigail that if he'd done what he planned he would have killed someone for a stupid reason.
Moving on to the other testament, when the apostles were informed of an injustice in the distribution of food they didn't say anything in their defense and, moreoever, took the occasion to establish what many considered to be the first set of deacons in the church.
But the main thing that jumps out about Challies recent post is that he devoted some time to emphasize the lack of relationship he has had with CJ Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries.
http://www.challies.com/articles/thinking-biblically-about-cj-mahaney-and-sovereign-grace-ministries
... Today I want to explore how we can think about all of this in what I hope is a distinctly Christian way. Some have heard bits of information through blogs or word of mouth. Some have read stories in the Christian or mainstream media. Most of us struggle to think well and wisely about it. I have no more information than you do, so will be relying on what has already been made public through media new and old.
Before I begin, it may be useful for me to explain the nature of my relationship with C.J. Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries, though there is actually very little to explain. I recall meeting Mahaney only one time and for no more than two or three minutes. To my knowledge we have never corresponded by email or any other media. He and I have never shared a speaking platform and I have never spoken at a SGM event (though I did liveblog a couple of them several years ago). All this to say that I write as an outside observer rather than as a personal friend and write this article primarily for the benefit of other outside observers.
So there's no relationship. We get it. It's like saying that at one point I got to meet Joan Didion for twenty seconds about a decade ago and that was the one time I've ever met with her even though I have several of her books. Maybe it's like a friend of mine who met Bruce Campbell years ago and got Campbell's autograph. When Campbell asked what my friend did for a living my friend said, "I'm a pastor." Campbell looked up with a bit of surprise and said, "I don't get a whole lot of PASTORS asking me for an autograph." My friend joked with a grin, "He'll remember me now." A little vignette worth sharing since Challies has taken pains to emphasize the lack of real relationship between him and Mahaney, and between him and Sovereign Grace Ministries. He's not a friend so much as ... maybe a fan. Thus the anecdotes for comparison above. As just a fan perhaps Challies has already said too much in saying what he has.
For sake of review Brian Auten over at the BHT has made a point of establishing what may be called fan credentials for Challies on the subject of Mahaney and SGM to remind us that while Challies may find it useful to emphasize the "just an observer" side the endorsements in the last few years are worth revisiting.
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2013/02/28/36079/
I’d argue — and have already argued in the past with Tim himself — that this isn’t the proper measuring stick for his “relationship” with CJM and SGM.
The proper measuring stick looks something like this (and this is just a quick review I did a while back, running “Mahaney” through the advance search feature on Tim’s blog — 26 pages of hits, this is just from pages 21-26 in date order) –
13 June 2005 (Review of Piper’s Sex and the Supremacy of God — 1st he’d read of Mahaney)
21 July 2005 (Jamming to Songs for the Cross Centered Life) – referred to how he’d been meaning to read Cross Centered Life for a long, long time
22 July 2005 (Greatest Sinner I Know)
25 July 2005 (review of Songs for the Cross Centered Life)
12 August 2005 (review of Mahaney’s Sex, Romance and the Glory of God)
2 November 2005 (Covergence — mentions Mahaney @ MacArthur’s church)
21 November 2005 (A Desperate Jealousy)
2 December 2005 (Link to review of Mahaney’s book on Humility)
5 December 2005 (9th Commandment)
6 December 2005 (highlighting Solo Femininity — SGM’s Carolyn McCulley)
9 December 2005 (Sam Waldron part 2 – reference to Mahaney in MacArthur’s church)
12 December 2005 (Link to Josh Harris re: biblical advice for blogosphere and emphasizing that Harris may soon write on his mentoring relationship with Mahaney)
15 December 2005 (highlighting Bob Kauflin’s blogs for music)
22 December 2005 (Warnock interview of Harris on Mahaney mentorship)
22 December 2005 (Thursday Ramblings – highlights In the World but not of the World SGM audio series)
20 February 2006 (link to Mahaney re: reading/study habits of Dever, Mohler, etc.)
28 March 2006 (link to Mahaney’s interview of T4G guys re: serious threats to the gospel)
29 March 2006 (link to Girl Talk – “a book well worth reading for mothers and daughters”)
20 April 2006 (link to Mahaney’s article re: a plan for reading and study)
3 May 2006 (Link to Harris letter re: his friend, hero and mentor, CJ Mahaney)
13 June 2006 (link to Mahaney’s Deliberate Complementarian Pastors)
9 August 2006 (WorshipGod06 — highlighting SGM as “never known more caring, humble people”)
16 February 2007 — Friday Ramblings (Resolved Conference, included Mahaney)
18 February 2007 — Resolved Conference V (session by Mahaney)
26 May 2007 — New Attitude II
27 May 2007 — New Attitude III (talked with Joshua Harris)
28 May 2007 — New Attitude IX
3 July 2007 — (Link to Shopping for Time)
13 March 2008 (post re: traveling to Ligonier Ministries – Mahaney mentioned)
8 April 2008 (link to CJ/Carolyn Mahaney re: when husbands are criticized)
15 May 2008 (link to Mahaney’s posts on modesty and chance to pre-order his new book)
15 May 2008 (link to SGM’s Carolyn McCulley in Ethiopia)
9 June 2008 (highlighting Mahaney’s book list)
30 October 2008 (Free copy of worldliness for your pastor)
13 November 2008 (quote from Mahaney re: Busyness)
3 September 2009 (link to free Kindle version for Carolyn Mahaney and daughters’ Shopping for Time)
In his 2005 post on Desperate Jealousy, for example, he wrote “[Joshua] Harris had his mentor in Mahaney, and I couldn’t think of too many guys who would do a better job of it. There isn’t much I wouldn’t give to have that type of relationship with a man like Mahaney.”
Brian Auten's litany would seem to suggest that the distance Challies may seem to be trying to create between himself and his blogging on the one hand and SGM and Mahaney on the other, is coming at ... a curious and strategic time.
Challies has written that there's a kind of stakeholder incentive to be or not be involved in public discussion and investigation of a hot topic involving a church and a set of allegations.
http://www.challies.com/articles/thinking-biblically-about-cj-mahaney-and-sovereign-grace-ministries
...
This is an issue of greater urgency to some than others. The way each of us thinks through it will depend on the extent to which we are stakeholders, to our relational proximity to those involved and even geographic proximity. If you are a member at a SGM church this issue is very urgent, and particularly so if your church is considering withdrawing from the association. However, the majority of us are far on the outside with very little at stake. For this reason many of us simply do not need to have an opinion.
The farther we are from being stakeholders, the less the likelihood that we are equipped to helpfully evaluate the facts and that we can do anything helpful with the information we learn. The farther we are from being close to those involved, the greater the likelihood that we are drawn more to the scandal of it all than any noble purpose. Not all knowledge builds us up; not all knowledge helps us; not all knowledge helps us love God and love one another in deeper ways. The fact that today’s media allows us to have access to facts, does not necessarily give license to avail ourselves of them.
Then again, being a stakeholder increases the likelihood of prejudice, bias, conflicts of interest, and incentives to misrepresent or distort. It's not a given that being a stakeholder imbues a person with great reason or ethics.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
have content in the hopper ... but it's not ready to pop up just yet
There's a time to write and a time to have a social life. I don't imagine people wait with baited breath for what Wenatchee The Hatchet writes. If you do, though, thanks.
As productivity goes this is a somewhat fallow period for Wenatchee (notice I didn't say "season", which I am tempted to ban from Christian blogs at various times). In order to write one must manage to research, think, and read. There is going to be a post or two about James Harleman's Cinemagogue at Wenatchee The Hatchet. Wenatchee is still reading through the book, though, and juggling a few social activities and some work activities.
There's so much planned that I may have to plan how to write about the stuff. I'm not at a stage where marathons of tens of thousands of words just flow. For alert long-time readers, don't let "A Confluence of Situations" give you the impression that Wenatchee was on some manic writing binge! That series of posts was assembled more than a year ago after a lot of research and was conceptually refined over the course of a year. One of the things people may not realize about prolific bloggers right away is how much material gets recycled and how much material may be dormant for months or even years before some of it goes up.
And sometimes things just get sidelined. That essay about Nikita Koshkin's Sonata for Flute and Guitar I meant to write seven years ago? Heh, not quite there yet but I've at least sketched out the motiff analysis across the cycle so that makes Wenatchee a few steps closer to having something.
And those essays on Justice League in the DCAU are surely not going to write themselves! Sometimes the fists of justice must love at arm's length when protecting the world from better worlds. But if things go well, dear readers, expect to read some stuff about Superman and the Cadmus arc at some point in 2013. Wenatchee just might seee about timing that to coincide with the release of Man of Steel.
But things are incubating now. The chickens have not yet hatched here or for some other projects that have been undertaken by Wenatchee The Hatchet.
As productivity goes this is a somewhat fallow period for Wenatchee (notice I didn't say "season", which I am tempted to ban from Christian blogs at various times). In order to write one must manage to research, think, and read. There is going to be a post or two about James Harleman's Cinemagogue at Wenatchee The Hatchet. Wenatchee is still reading through the book, though, and juggling a few social activities and some work activities.
There's so much planned that I may have to plan how to write about the stuff. I'm not at a stage where marathons of tens of thousands of words just flow. For alert long-time readers, don't let "A Confluence of Situations" give you the impression that Wenatchee was on some manic writing binge! That series of posts was assembled more than a year ago after a lot of research and was conceptually refined over the course of a year. One of the things people may not realize about prolific bloggers right away is how much material gets recycled and how much material may be dormant for months or even years before some of it goes up.
And sometimes things just get sidelined. That essay about Nikita Koshkin's Sonata for Flute and Guitar I meant to write seven years ago? Heh, not quite there yet but I've at least sketched out the motiff analysis across the cycle so that makes Wenatchee a few steps closer to having something.
And those essays on Justice League in the DCAU are surely not going to write themselves! Sometimes the fists of justice must love at arm's length when protecting the world from better worlds. But if things go well, dear readers, expect to read some stuff about Superman and the Cadmus arc at some point in 2013. Wenatchee just might seee about timing that to coincide with the release of Man of Steel.
But things are incubating now. The chickens have not yet hatched here or for some other projects that have been undertaken by Wenatchee The Hatchet.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Some Presbyterians still think Mark Driscoll is Baptistic Reformed? A small correction
http://oldlife.org/2013/02/the-value-of-kellers-stock/
http://theecclesialcalvinist.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/how-conservative-presbyterianism-lost-its-mojo/
Bill Evans’ piece on the decline of conservative Reformed Protestantism has been making the rounds and it raises an important question about the better and worse times in church history. He starts by noting that conservative Presbyterians are not as influential as they once were:
Driscoll has repeatedly held that congregational rule is like allowing the mentally ill to run the psychiatric ward they are kept in. That would make it hard to argue that Driscoll is in any sense a baptist about ecclesiology or church polity even if he's allied himself with particular Baptists (as in particular atonement, Baptist polity).
As for Reformed, he's certainly Reformed in the sense that he keeps telling us that's his tribe. It's not particularly set in stone because he might shake hands with a T. D Jakes at Elephant Room 2 last year (which got some summary commentary from Trevin Wax) or telling The Gospel Coalition that some of his Reformed brothers like to treat Pastor Joel (Osteen) like a pinata. Of course Driscoll treated Osteen like a pinata back in The Rebel's Guide to Joy, but it was in Christian love and things change. For a guy who has publicly sounded off against women in ministry as ardently as Driscoll has you would have thought that Jakes might have been less readily endorsed for having played a role in backing the ministry of Paula White. But as Driscoll was underscoring over and over, he was open to learning from other tribes.
In the case of Jakes and associates, was may be the most significant element to emphasize. Try to follow the link to The Elephant Room website that's over here at The Resurgence. Or at least there used to be stuff at the website. Now all you get is this. Even if you follow this:
http://www.theelephantroom.com/tag/james-macdonald/
As I was writing about Mars Hill on the Andrew situation, some folks engaged in a massive information and media purge somewhere along the line. Maybe after the Elephant's Debt went up the Elephant Room was just not as critical. There's a new update in the last few days over there at The Elephant's Debt, for those who are curious.
http://theecclesialcalvinist.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/how-conservative-presbyterianism-lost-its-mojo/
Bill Evans’ piece on the decline of conservative Reformed Protestantism has been making the rounds and it raises an important question about the better and worse times in church history. He starts by noting that conservative Presbyterians are not as influential as they once were:
A while back my friend Anthony Bradley posted an insightful and provocative blog piece asking why the popular influence of conservative Presbyterians prominent a few decades back (e.g., Jim Boice, R. C. Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson, and John Frame) seems to have waned in comparison to Baptists of a broadly Reformed soteriological persuasion. I posted an extended comment at the time, and thought I would expand on it here.
There are at least two big issues in play—the Baptistic Reformed success as driven by institutions (e.g., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Founders’ Movement) and gifted individuals (e.g., Don Carson, Al Mohler, Mark Dever, Mark Driscoll) on the one hand, [emphasis mine] and the apparent Presbyterian decline on the other. As a Presbyterian I’m not particularly well equipped to comment on the first, but I think I have something to offer about the second.
Driscoll has repeatedly held that congregational rule is like allowing the mentally ill to run the psychiatric ward they are kept in. That would make it hard to argue that Driscoll is in any sense a baptist about ecclesiology or church polity even if he's allied himself with particular Baptists (as in particular atonement, Baptist polity).
As for Reformed, he's certainly Reformed in the sense that he keeps telling us that's his tribe. It's not particularly set in stone because he might shake hands with a T. D Jakes at Elephant Room 2 last year (which got some summary commentary from Trevin Wax) or telling The Gospel Coalition that some of his Reformed brothers like to treat Pastor Joel (Osteen) like a pinata. Of course Driscoll treated Osteen like a pinata back in The Rebel's Guide to Joy, but it was in Christian love and things change. For a guy who has publicly sounded off against women in ministry as ardently as Driscoll has you would have thought that Jakes might have been less readily endorsed for having played a role in backing the ministry of Paula White. But as Driscoll was underscoring over and over, he was open to learning from other tribes.
In the case of Jakes and associates, was may be the most significant element to emphasize. Try to follow the link to The Elephant Room website that's over here at The Resurgence. Or at least there used to be stuff at the website. Now all you get is this. Even if you follow this:
http://www.theelephantroom.com/tag/james-macdonald/
As I was writing about Mars Hill on the Andrew situation, some folks engaged in a massive information and media purge somewhere along the line. Maybe after the Elephant's Debt went up the Elephant Room was just not as critical. There's a new update in the last few days over there at The Elephant's Debt, for those who are curious.
Friday, February 22, 2013
HT Tim Bulkekely "What's Wrong with Higher Education?"
http://bigbible.org/sansblogue/digital-life/whats-wrong-with-higher-education/
... Clay Shirkey, always a provocative and often a prescient commentator has an interesting take on the state of higher education. His starting point is cost benefit. In the USA the cost of a basic bachelor’s degree rose 75% in the first ten years of this century while the income of graduates has dropped 15% (both figures adjusted to 2000 dollars). That’s hardly a powerful selling-point! In NZ a Statistics NZ report in 2007 found that already then “Debt [was] increasing proportionally faster than income”, this is not merely an American tale.
And so ...
http://www.theawl.com/2013/02/how-to-save-college
... Bustillos' answers seem to be that in the world of higher education, things are going fine, mostly, and that the parts that aren’t going fine can largely be fixed with tax dollars. (Because if there’s one group you'd pin your hopes for an American renaissance on, it would be state legislators.) I have a different answer: School is broken and everyone knows it.
That sentiment is the first sentence of Kio Stark’s forthcoming book, Don’t Go Back to School. It’s a guide for people taking the advice in the title; Stark interviewed almost hundred people who dropped out or took a pass on everything from high school to grad school, but still figured out how to learn what they needed to learn, in order to do what they wanted to do.
...
The value of that degree remains high in relative terms, but only because people with bachelor's degrees have seen their incomes shrink less over the last few years than people who don't have them. "Give us tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life so you can suffer less than your peers" isn't much of a proposition. More like a ransom note, really.
This is the background to the entire conversation around higher education: Things that can’t last don’t. This is why MOOCs matter. Not because distance learning is some big new thing or because online lectures are a solution to all our problems, but because they’ve come along at a time when students and parents are willing to ask themselves, "Isn’t there some other way to do this?"
MOOCs are a lightning strike on a rotten tree. Most stories have focused on the lightning, on MOOCs as the flashy new thing. I want to talk about the tree.
...
I’ve been thinking about the effects of the internet for a couple of decades now. I’ve watched industry after industry forced to renegotiate their methods and models, in the face of a medium that allows for perfect copying, global distribution, zero incremental cost, ridiculously easy group-forming: The music business. Newspapers. Travel agents. Publishers. Hotel owners. And while watching, I've always wondered what I’d do when my turn came.
And now here it is. And it turns out my job is to tell you not to trust us when we claim that there’s something sacred and irreplaceable about what we academics do. What we do is run institutions whose only rationale—whose only excuse for existing—is to make people smarter.
Sometimes we try to make ourselves smarter. We call that research. Sometimes we try to make our peers smarter. We call that publishing. Sometimes we try to make our students smarter. We call that teaching. And that’s it. That’s all there is. These are important jobs for sure, and they are hard jobs at times, but they’re not magic. And neither are we.
Twenty years ago I started college. I had already worked out that nothing that interested me would ever land me much of a job. Biblical literature? I knew there was probably no chance of getting a teaching job with that unless I jumped through denominational hoops I knew I didn't want to deal with, and I never wanted (and don't want) to be a pastor. What about literature? What about literature? Getting a degree in literature seemed useless even to me at 18 and 19. Philosophy? I didn't think I'd want to be a lawyer and the other options were the teaching route and teaching, I benefited from teaching, to be sure, but I didn't want to get into education.
How about music? Well, sometimes I wish I'd gone that route but instead I became a journalism student. Ha, even before I'd graduated I realized that there was no way I was going to get a job with the degree but I also realized I'd foundered at algebra and so shifting into the fields of study that were more likely to land me work (i.e. the hard sciences) was impossible for me half-way through completing my education. I was never good enough at math (and I was not sure my public school teachers in mathematics were good enough) to have gotten me on that path. So realizing that I'd already been on the path to study a host of useless things in terms of a job search I finished my journalism degree because in the 1990s, at least, it was probably smarter to at least finish the degree because, as a couple of candid professors told me, even by the 1990s all a B.A. proved was you could finish an expensive committment.
Okay, then, I figured i should at least prove that I could do that much. So I graduated with what I knew was already a useless degree the year before I got it. But as useless degrees went journalism, at the time, might still have been better than theology, literature or music as a field of study. My friends had gotten the impression I was already a music major because of the course load I was taking. I was already voluntarily trying to work out invertible counterpoint while I was making sure I graduated with the journalism degree I had. There's a point in possibly everyone's life where you figure out you made a decision that has no actually good outcome and the best you can manage is damage control. I learned how to write competently along the way and that's netted me some activity here and there.
It could have been worse, after all, since it was just a college degree and not a marriage. Only my life was potentially ruined by a possibly ill-advised and expensive decision. At least I finished the degree. Not everyone I know who incurred college debt even managed to finish their degrees. How's that for optimism? :)
... Clay Shirkey, always a provocative and often a prescient commentator has an interesting take on the state of higher education. His starting point is cost benefit. In the USA the cost of a basic bachelor’s degree rose 75% in the first ten years of this century while the income of graduates has dropped 15% (both figures adjusted to 2000 dollars). That’s hardly a powerful selling-point! In NZ a Statistics NZ report in 2007 found that already then “Debt [was] increasing proportionally faster than income”, this is not merely an American tale.
And so ...
http://www.theawl.com/2013/02/how-to-save-college
... Bustillos' answers seem to be that in the world of higher education, things are going fine, mostly, and that the parts that aren’t going fine can largely be fixed with tax dollars. (Because if there’s one group you'd pin your hopes for an American renaissance on, it would be state legislators.) I have a different answer: School is broken and everyone knows it.
That sentiment is the first sentence of Kio Stark’s forthcoming book, Don’t Go Back to School. It’s a guide for people taking the advice in the title; Stark interviewed almost hundred people who dropped out or took a pass on everything from high school to grad school, but still figured out how to learn what they needed to learn, in order to do what they wanted to do.
...
The value of that degree remains high in relative terms, but only because people with bachelor's degrees have seen their incomes shrink less over the last few years than people who don't have them. "Give us tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life so you can suffer less than your peers" isn't much of a proposition. More like a ransom note, really.
This is the background to the entire conversation around higher education: Things that can’t last don’t. This is why MOOCs matter. Not because distance learning is some big new thing or because online lectures are a solution to all our problems, but because they’ve come along at a time when students and parents are willing to ask themselves, "Isn’t there some other way to do this?"
MOOCs are a lightning strike on a rotten tree. Most stories have focused on the lightning, on MOOCs as the flashy new thing. I want to talk about the tree.
...
I’ve been thinking about the effects of the internet for a couple of decades now. I’ve watched industry after industry forced to renegotiate their methods and models, in the face of a medium that allows for perfect copying, global distribution, zero incremental cost, ridiculously easy group-forming: The music business. Newspapers. Travel agents. Publishers. Hotel owners. And while watching, I've always wondered what I’d do when my turn came.
And now here it is. And it turns out my job is to tell you not to trust us when we claim that there’s something sacred and irreplaceable about what we academics do. What we do is run institutions whose only rationale—whose only excuse for existing—is to make people smarter.
Sometimes we try to make ourselves smarter. We call that research. Sometimes we try to make our peers smarter. We call that publishing. Sometimes we try to make our students smarter. We call that teaching. And that’s it. That’s all there is. These are important jobs for sure, and they are hard jobs at times, but they’re not magic. And neither are we.
Twenty years ago I started college. I had already worked out that nothing that interested me would ever land me much of a job. Biblical literature? I knew there was probably no chance of getting a teaching job with that unless I jumped through denominational hoops I knew I didn't want to deal with, and I never wanted (and don't want) to be a pastor. What about literature? What about literature? Getting a degree in literature seemed useless even to me at 18 and 19. Philosophy? I didn't think I'd want to be a lawyer and the other options were the teaching route and teaching, I benefited from teaching, to be sure, but I didn't want to get into education.
How about music? Well, sometimes I wish I'd gone that route but instead I became a journalism student. Ha, even before I'd graduated I realized that there was no way I was going to get a job with the degree but I also realized I'd foundered at algebra and so shifting into the fields of study that were more likely to land me work (i.e. the hard sciences) was impossible for me half-way through completing my education. I was never good enough at math (and I was not sure my public school teachers in mathematics were good enough) to have gotten me on that path. So realizing that I'd already been on the path to study a host of useless things in terms of a job search I finished my journalism degree because in the 1990s, at least, it was probably smarter to at least finish the degree because, as a couple of candid professors told me, even by the 1990s all a B.A. proved was you could finish an expensive committment.
Okay, then, I figured i should at least prove that I could do that much. So I graduated with what I knew was already a useless degree the year before I got it. But as useless degrees went journalism, at the time, might still have been better than theology, literature or music as a field of study. My friends had gotten the impression I was already a music major because of the course load I was taking. I was already voluntarily trying to work out invertible counterpoint while I was making sure I graduated with the journalism degree I had. There's a point in possibly everyone's life where you figure out you made a decision that has no actually good outcome and the best you can manage is damage control. I learned how to write competently along the way and that's netted me some activity here and there.
It could have been worse, after all, since it was just a college degree and not a marriage. Only my life was potentially ruined by a possibly ill-advised and expensive decision. At least I finished the degree. Not everyone I know who incurred college debt even managed to finish their degrees. How's that for optimism? :)
Jim West poses a question about Paul's church planting effectiveness and Ephesus in response to a tweet
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/twitter-theology-that-makes-me-sigh-8/
http://zwingliusredivivus.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/sigh2.jpg
Here's a longer version of what West has written a rejoinder to. Ed Stetzer plugs for the book here:
http://www.edstetzer.com/2013/02/monday-is-for-missiology-the-f.html
Today I conclude a series (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five) through Paul's Missionary Methods, a new book I contributed an essay to with the assistance of Lizette Beard, my coauthor and colleague at LifeWay Research. Other contributors include Michael Bird, David Hesselgrave, Don Howell Jr., Craig Keener, Chuck Lawless, Benjamin Merkle, J.D. Payne, Robert Plummer, Michael Pocock, Eckhard Schnabel, David Sills, Christoph Stenschke, and John Mark Terry.
And now we come to the bit West refers to
... Simply put, Paul did not stay long when he started churches. Allen notes, though it seems paradoxical, that the brevity of Paul's time with the churches he planted is likely what helped them succeed. ...
West just can't let that slide and writes the following:
http://zwingliusredivivus.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/sigh2.jpg
Here's a longer version of what West has written a rejoinder to. Ed Stetzer plugs for the book here:
http://www.edstetzer.com/2013/02/monday-is-for-missiology-the-f.html
Today I conclude a series (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five) through Paul's Missionary Methods, a new book I contributed an essay to with the assistance of Lizette Beard, my coauthor and colleague at LifeWay Research. Other contributors include Michael Bird, David Hesselgrave, Don Howell Jr., Craig Keener, Chuck Lawless, Benjamin Merkle, J.D. Payne, Robert Plummer, Michael Pocock, Eckhard Schnabel, David Sills, Christoph Stenschke, and John Mark Terry.
And now we come to the bit West refers to
... Simply put, Paul did not stay long when he started churches. Allen notes, though it seems paradoxical, that the brevity of Paul's time with the churches he planted is likely what helped them succeed. ...
West just can't let that slide and writes the following:
Really? So, 1) how would one go about demonstrating that claim? And 2) who says the churches Paul planted succeeded? 3) Do you consider the mess of the Corinthian church a ‘success’? 4) Why? What on earth is good about that congregation and how could it possibly be a model for any church? 5) How do you know the churches Paul planted wouldn’t have been MORE successful if he had been able to be with them longer? 6) Paul’s work at Ephesus (!) certainly didn’t last and wasn’t successful even for 40 or 50 years (since it is the Church excoriated in Revelation for having lost its first love). 7) So what is success anyway?
It’s just more of the short sighted pseudo-scholarship twitter seems to accommodate most ‘successfully’. If your ‘theology’ can be expressed in 140 characters, it isn’t a theology worth holding.
[No offense to the good people at IVP].
Interesting questions from West about how successful Paul's church plants actually were. To go by the situation in Ephesus described in the pastoral epistles there seemed to be some recurring problems finding men qualified enough to handle the tasks that Timothy was supposed to find them to do. Assuming for the sake of conservative scholarship that 1 and 2 Timothy are a) written by Paul and b) deal with a continuing situation it sure looked like Timothy was failing to find men qualified enough to handle whatever elders were supposed to handle at the time in Ephesus. Tradition held that Timothy became bishop at Ephesus. It may not simply have been the case that Paul's church plant there faltered but that even leaving Timothy in charge of finding qualified men to help carry on the teaching and work there faltered because, at least according to one tradition, Timothy ended up staying there so long he became the first bishop of Ephesus.
Some stuff to keep in mind about the early church in Ephesus and the church in Corinth. It's interesting to note that while many Reformed types love Romans that's the epistle Paul wrote to a church he didn't plant. I wonder how it was he managed to have time to write what has been considered his greatest, most lucid, and compelling epistle, was it because he was writing to a church he didn't plan and that wasn't riddled with the problems that cropped up in the other churches that he did plant so he had time to focus on something besides "What are you people doing!?"
Just playing with that idea a bit.
HT Mockingbird and Atlantic and Slate: Romantic comedies aren't what they used to be, or are they?
http://www.mbird.com/2013/02/another-week-ends-poptropica-love-retrospective-bullies-foolish-proof-colbert-logs-lucille-bluth-and-the-nabokov-anderson-connection/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/22/the_atlantic_says_romantic_comedies_aren_t_what_they_used_to_be_maybe_that.html
... Among the most fundamental obligations of romantic comedy is that there must be an obstacle to nuptial bliss for the budding couple to overcome. And, put simply, such obstacles are getting harder and harder to come by. They used to lie thick on the ground: parental disapproval, difference in social class, a promise made to another. But society has spent decades busily uprooting any impediment to the marriage of true minds. Love is increasingly presumed—perhaps in Hollywood most of all—to transcend class, profession, faith, age, race, gender, and (on occasion) marital status.
...
Perhaps the most obvious social constraint that’s fallen by the wayside is also the most significant: the taboo against premarital sex. There was a time when carnal knowledge was the (implied) endpoint of the romantic comedy; today, it’s just as likely to be the opening premise. In 2005’s A Lot Like Love—a dull, joyless rip-off of When Harry Met Sally—Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher meet cute by having sex in an airplane lavatory before they’ve spoken a single word to each other. Where’s a film to go when the “happy ending” takes place at the beginning?
Christopher Orr's observations seem accurate enough. Alyssa Rosenberg proposes that Orr, nonetheless, missed an important shift she's seen in romantic comedies. There are still obstacles in a romantic comedy but the obstacles may not be where they used to appear.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/22/the_atlantic_says_romantic_comedies_aren_t_what_they_used_to_be_maybe_that.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/22/the_atlantic_says_romantic_comedies_aren_t_what_they_used_to_be_maybe_that.html
But a point I think Orr misses is that the genuinely strong romantic comedies of the last decade or so have ventured inward for obstacles, rather than inventing ludicrous external ones. In romantic comedies as in third-wave feminism, the proliferation of choices has forced protagonists to figure out what they really want, leaving indecision, self-doubt, and even arrested development as rich fodder. [emphasis added]
Part of what made Bridesmaids so wonderful was that Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) wasn't an essentially perfect woman barred by class or reputation from pursuing true love. She was a self-loathing mess grieving the loss of a relationship and her professional dream who had to fix herself before she was capable of loving someone, rather than overcoming external obstacles to be with someone she already loved. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy (Steve Carell) had to overcome his deep-seated terror of sex, and of growing up, to be able to form an adult emotional relationship. If romantic comedies have gotten harder to do well, maybe it's actually not because so many barriers to finding love have fallen, but rather because modern love's gotten more difficult, and more difficult to capture.
Love hasn't gotten more difficult at all, and arguably it isn't any more difficult to capture, it may simply be that fewer people are aiming for love as much as they are aiming for chemistry. After all, if modern love is really that different from love as it was understood in the past nobody would keep coming up with film adaptations of Jane Austen novels.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/22/the_atlantic_says_romantic_comedies_aren_t_what_they_used_to_be_maybe_that.html
... Among the most fundamental obligations of romantic comedy is that there must be an obstacle to nuptial bliss for the budding couple to overcome. And, put simply, such obstacles are getting harder and harder to come by. They used to lie thick on the ground: parental disapproval, difference in social class, a promise made to another. But society has spent decades busily uprooting any impediment to the marriage of true minds. Love is increasingly presumed—perhaps in Hollywood most of all—to transcend class, profession, faith, age, race, gender, and (on occasion) marital status.
...
Perhaps the most obvious social constraint that’s fallen by the wayside is also the most significant: the taboo against premarital sex. There was a time when carnal knowledge was the (implied) endpoint of the romantic comedy; today, it’s just as likely to be the opening premise. In 2005’s A Lot Like Love—a dull, joyless rip-off of When Harry Met Sally—Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher meet cute by having sex in an airplane lavatory before they’ve spoken a single word to each other. Where’s a film to go when the “happy ending” takes place at the beginning?
Christopher Orr's observations seem accurate enough. Alyssa Rosenberg proposes that Orr, nonetheless, missed an important shift she's seen in romantic comedies. There are still obstacles in a romantic comedy but the obstacles may not be where they used to appear.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/22/the_atlantic_says_romantic_comedies_aren_t_what_they_used_to_be_maybe_that.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/22/the_atlantic_says_romantic_comedies_aren_t_what_they_used_to_be_maybe_that.html
But a point I think Orr misses is that the genuinely strong romantic comedies of the last decade or so have ventured inward for obstacles, rather than inventing ludicrous external ones. In romantic comedies as in third-wave feminism, the proliferation of choices has forced protagonists to figure out what they really want, leaving indecision, self-doubt, and even arrested development as rich fodder. [emphasis added]
Part of what made Bridesmaids so wonderful was that Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) wasn't an essentially perfect woman barred by class or reputation from pursuing true love. She was a self-loathing mess grieving the loss of a relationship and her professional dream who had to fix herself before she was capable of loving someone, rather than overcoming external obstacles to be with someone she already loved. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy (Steve Carell) had to overcome his deep-seated terror of sex, and of growing up, to be able to form an adult emotional relationship. If romantic comedies have gotten harder to do well, maybe it's actually not because so many barriers to finding love have fallen, but rather because modern love's gotten more difficult, and more difficult to capture.
Love hasn't gotten more difficult at all, and arguably it isn't any more difficult to capture, it may simply be that fewer people are aiming for love as much as they are aiming for chemistry. After all, if modern love is really that different from love as it was understood in the past nobody would keep coming up with film adaptations of Jane Austen novels.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Mere Orthodoxy and Jane Austen
http://www.mereorthodoxy.com/romance-in-pride-and-prejudice-sometimes-we-settle/
Since Austen's lovely and funny novel turned 200 this year someone got an invitation to blog over somewhere and someone couldn't resist the offer.
Since Austen's lovely and funny novel turned 200 this year someone got an invitation to blog over somewhere and someone couldn't resist the offer.
Guitarist composers and longer forms
I've been mulling this one over for some time and haven't been sure how I want to field this because part of me wants to use specific cases and part of me doesn't. But the idea I'm thinking about is whether or not guitarists who compose manage to get longer forms to actually work. Angelo Gilardino it was, I think, who wrote that even among the 19th century masters of the guitar idiomatic expression tended to supercede musical values.
Ah, here we are!
Until around 1920, original music for guitar was composed almost exclusively by guitarists. Among these, few were able to maintain a balance between musical values and an idiomatic command of the instrument; not even Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani—without doubt the most significant guitarist-composers of the first half of the nineteenth century—are immune to such criticism.
Now it's too bad I haven't managed to hear Delpriora's sonata after all this time but recording and licensing aren't simple. Nonetheless, Gilardino's observation has stuck with me. It's been a tiny catalyst among others that have inspired me to consider how guitarist composers have handled sonata form, particularly. Now that we're in the 21st century guitarists have begun to compose more extended forms and have added to the roster of sonatas and fugues, my two favorite forms, and I'm still eagerly awaiting the recording and publication of Koshkin's 24 preludes and fugues.
But with all that still in mind I've been wondering why, as Gilardino put it, few guitarists were able to maintain a balance between musical values and an idiomatic command of the instrument. I have some ideas about that and I'm even willing to discuss them in polite company but I'm still trying to think through how most politely to say them. :)
As musical values and the sonata forms of the 19th century guitarist composers go I have more thinking and studying I want to do. But I do think the physical limitations of the guitar have played a role in guitarists not striking the right balance, and I think that guitarists avoiding a conceptual as well as physical mastery of playing in all keys is ultimately the most significant problem in the lack of development of longer forms by guitarist composers. I don't think this is necessarily as true since 1920 (per Gilardino) as it was prior to that time. I'd like to write more but I've got some Matiegka and ... other guitar sonatas I want to absorb some more.
I've also got a number of recordings I've been soaking up and I'd be remiss if I didn't get back to blogging about Rebay soon this year. I'm trying to find the right balance between musical values and an actual social life with another even more important aspect of life that involve regular installments of inbound currency, however fiat it may be.
Ah, here we are!
Until around 1920, original music for guitar was composed almost exclusively by guitarists. Among these, few were able to maintain a balance between musical values and an idiomatic command of the instrument; not even Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani—without doubt the most significant guitarist-composers of the first half of the nineteenth century—are immune to such criticism.
Now it's too bad I haven't managed to hear Delpriora's sonata after all this time but recording and licensing aren't simple. Nonetheless, Gilardino's observation has stuck with me. It's been a tiny catalyst among others that have inspired me to consider how guitarist composers have handled sonata form, particularly. Now that we're in the 21st century guitarists have begun to compose more extended forms and have added to the roster of sonatas and fugues, my two favorite forms, and I'm still eagerly awaiting the recording and publication of Koshkin's 24 preludes and fugues.
But with all that still in mind I've been wondering why, as Gilardino put it, few guitarists were able to maintain a balance between musical values and an idiomatic command of the instrument. I have some ideas about that and I'm even willing to discuss them in polite company but I'm still trying to think through how most politely to say them. :)
As musical values and the sonata forms of the 19th century guitarist composers go I have more thinking and studying I want to do. But I do think the physical limitations of the guitar have played a role in guitarists not striking the right balance, and I think that guitarists avoiding a conceptual as well as physical mastery of playing in all keys is ultimately the most significant problem in the lack of development of longer forms by guitarist composers. I don't think this is necessarily as true since 1920 (per Gilardino) as it was prior to that time. I'd like to write more but I've got some Matiegka and ... other guitar sonatas I want to absorb some more.
I've also got a number of recordings I've been soaking up and I'd be remiss if I didn't get back to blogging about Rebay soon this year. I'm trying to find the right balance between musical values and an actual social life with another even more important aspect of life that involve regular installments of inbound currency, however fiat it may be.
a new little detail about the MH campus web pages
http://marshill.com/downtownseattle
A sweet little redesign that shuffles the list of active pastors into a tab you can click on that doesn't have a separate permalink. Cute. Tim Beltz is still listed as Biblical Living Pastor at Mars Hill Downtown. Jamie Munson's still listed as Pastor. There's just a little more scrolling and clicking to find the stuff. When reading earlier blog posts discussing real estate and governance feel free to keep this detail in mind about the web page redesign. There's also this separate list that may be useful for future reference and seems to stay relatively up to date, give or take a few shake-ups.
A sweet little redesign that shuffles the list of active pastors into a tab you can click on that doesn't have a separate permalink. Cute. Tim Beltz is still listed as Biblical Living Pastor at Mars Hill Downtown. Jamie Munson's still listed as Pastor. There's just a little more scrolling and clicking to find the stuff. When reading earlier blog posts discussing real estate and governance feel free to keep this detail in mind about the web page redesign. There's also this separate list that may be useful for future reference and seems to stay relatively up to date, give or take a few shake-ups.
Where are they now? A Scott and Derrin Thomas follow-up
Earlier this year we discussed the transition of Scott Thomas from Mars Hill to The Journey, where he is currently Pastor of Ministry Development. He's been that for some time but it's only gone up on the website of The Journey recently. That transition was discussed earlier here.
There's an additional bit of information that's interesting.
http://thejourney.org/leadership/staff/ministry-development
Scott Thomas
Pastor of Ministry Development
sthomas@thejourney.org
Why are you at The Journey?
I love the passion for the mission of God at The Journey. It is a beautiful work in progress but it is tethered to a to commitment making followers of Jesus and starting churches.
What do you love about St. Louis?
It has a rich cultural emphasis with a down-home feel among a diverse demographic. Whether one is attending a baseball game or a broadway musical, people in St Louis are friendly and helpful.
Derrin Thomas
Ministry Development Executive Assistant
dthomas@thejourney.org
Why are you at The Journey?
The Journey is the reason I am in St Louis. I had become aware of The Journey during my previous job with a church planting network across the country. I am here because I want to be a partner with a church whose focus is upward and mission is outward -- it is both exciting and fulfilling.
What do you love about St. Louis?
St Louis is the most underrated big city in America. It has amazing history, architecture, attractions, and infrastructure. It's also in the best corner in the country -- right on the border of the Midwest, the South, and the East (and just far enough away from Texas). This provides a unique stew of the best parts of different cultures that gives the city a soul and identity. Also, Cardinals and ribs.
Here's a little more information about him.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/derrinthomas
Executive Assistant - Ministry Development
For those with a little time to dig around there was a termination process in 2007 in which then Lead Pastor Jamie Munson wrote the following about Bent Meyer.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/10-01-2007-email-from-jmunson.pdf
Pastor Bent Meyer - Grounds for Immediate Termination of Employment
* Total lack of trust for Executive leadership and insubordination
* Multiple unfounded accusations from Bent regarding abuse of power, power grabbing and motives of leadership
* Not following protocol and process for making bylaw commetns by contacting church attorney without permission
* Showing unhealthy family favoritism by establishing son Cameron as a spokesman for Salts recap meeting [emphasis added--was Munson possibly looking for the word "nepotism" here?]
* No communication with elders regarding Cameron's sin and removal of grace group leadership
Some might conclude this is a political move to gain more support for the bylaws as Paul and Bent were outspoken critics of the current direction. This is not the case, the executive team wants to conduct itself in a way that is full of integrity, walking in the light, under full disclosure and in a decisive manner that best serves Jesus and His Church through Mars Hill. If the bylaws don't pass, so be it, we didn't want to wait on what we had determined were necessary and inevitable firings until after the bylaws had been voted into approval because that would have been deceptive. We made the decision to terminate them now and give them the option to resign or undergo the full investigation. We have a higher view of being men of integrity than playing politics to swing a vote in our favor.
There's an additional bit of information that's interesting.
http://thejourney.org/leadership/staff/ministry-development
Scott Thomas
Pastor of Ministry Development
sthomas@thejourney.org
Why are you at The Journey?
I love the passion for the mission of God at The Journey. It is a beautiful work in progress but it is tethered to a to commitment making followers of Jesus and starting churches.
What do you love about St. Louis?
It has a rich cultural emphasis with a down-home feel among a diverse demographic. Whether one is attending a baseball game or a broadway musical, people in St Louis are friendly and helpful.
Derrin Thomas
Ministry Development Executive Assistant
dthomas@thejourney.org
Why are you at The Journey?
The Journey is the reason I am in St Louis. I had become aware of The Journey during my previous job with a church planting network across the country. I am here because I want to be a partner with a church whose focus is upward and mission is outward -- it is both exciting and fulfilling.
What do you love about St. Louis?
St Louis is the most underrated big city in America. It has amazing history, architecture, attractions, and infrastructure. It's also in the best corner in the country -- right on the border of the Midwest, the South, and the East (and just far enough away from Texas). This provides a unique stew of the best parts of different cultures that gives the city a soul and identity. Also, Cardinals and ribs.
Here's a little more information about him.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/derrinthomas
Executive Assistant - Ministry Development
The Journey Church
October 2012– Present (5 months)Saint Louis, MO
Executive Assistant
Mars Hill Church | Downtown Bellevue
Nonprofit; 51-200 employees; Religious Institutions industry
November 2011– April 2012 (6 months)Downtown Bellevue
Assists Lead Pastor in communication, email and calendar management, and project management.
Application Assistant
Acts 29 Network
September 2008– June 2011 (2 years 10 months)
Provided administrative assistance for the hundreds of assessments each year. Responsibilities included organizing thousands of documents, manually processing document submissions, communicating with assesses and regional directors, and creating streamlined processes.
For those with a little time to dig around there was a termination process in 2007 in which then Lead Pastor Jamie Munson wrote the following about Bent Meyer.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/10-01-2007-email-from-jmunson.pdf
Pastor Bent Meyer - Grounds for Immediate Termination of Employment
* Total lack of trust for Executive leadership and insubordination
* Multiple unfounded accusations from Bent regarding abuse of power, power grabbing and motives of leadership
* Not following protocol and process for making bylaw commetns by contacting church attorney without permission
* Showing unhealthy family favoritism by establishing son Cameron as a spokesman for Salts recap meeting [emphasis added--was Munson possibly looking for the word "nepotism" here?]
* No communication with elders regarding Cameron's sin and removal of grace group leadership
Some might conclude this is a political move to gain more support for the bylaws as Paul and Bent were outspoken critics of the current direction. This is not the case, the executive team wants to conduct itself in a way that is full of integrity, walking in the light, under full disclosure and in a decisive manner that best serves Jesus and His Church through Mars Hill. If the bylaws don't pass, so be it, we didn't want to wait on what we had determined were necessary and inevitable firings until after the bylaws had been voted into approval because that would have been deceptive. We made the decision to terminate them now and give them the option to resign or undergo the full investigation. We have a higher view of being men of integrity than playing politics to swing a vote in our favor.
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