Tomorrow

Tomorrow is my last Sunday on staff at Tucker Street. Did I mention that I have spent the last five years serving as the youth minister of a 30-year old post-denomational/protestant/evangelical church? And they're looking for a part time youth minister, if anyone's looking for a bivocational type of situation.
The thing is, my interactions/conversations with the pastor and the elders of Tucker Street contributed as much or more to my personal "emergence" than all the emerging church-type books I've read. Seriously.
See, about thirty years ago the founding elders were disfellowshipped from Church of Christ. Soon a new fellowship had started. Over the years it has developed its own flavor, conscious of the historic church and faith.

Soon I'll be just a member. Or maybe I should say soon I'll be a member. That's a better way of looking at it. I'm looking forward to being an ordinary member without having to run the youth program. Also, not working there will give me the freedom to be out visiting churches both here in town and elsewhere. We're planning on visiting St. John's Antiochian Orthodox Church some time in August. The Orthodox church has been very intriguing to me.

Needless to say, this transition looks to be a difficult one. It's been hard to paint my office to make it just an office. (In my time there it was painted bright red with a Detroit Red Wings border and lots of memorabilia. Now it's a soothing/serene brown. I'm toying with the idea of hanging a large crucifix on the eastern wall to give it even more of a spiritual refuge appearance. (Plus, that should serve to scare away any hardcore fundamentalists.)

Right now I'm sort of watching my kids as my wife is at a MOPS leadership retreat. Sort of, because obviously they're destroying my house as I post.
In fact, I wrote a more thoughtful version of this post moments ago which was deleted when my son got on the computer to play games while I answered the phone.

I watched a classic anime last night. Probably everyone has seen Castle In The Sky, but it was pretty interesting. The kids and I watched it 2.5 times straight through. They thought it was neat. Man, the English dubbing looks funny. It's like everyone is a skilled ventriloquist. They're talking with their mouths closed. Amazing!

I've been reading Newbigin's The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. It''s a very good read. I like Polanyi's epistemology, or at least, Polanyi's epistemology as dictated/interpreted by Newbigin. It seems to me like this does bring a new higher plane to the debate over liberal/conservative interpretation. Very helpful. For me it has always been more helpful to read books that influence the emerging church folks than to read the emerging church books. So I read Nouwen, I read Foster, I'm working on Lewis, I read Newbigin, I read Guder. Some of that stuff obviously isn't written for mass use, but it's good.

Well, I've rambled long enough.
May God's blessings be on all of you, today and forever.