Category: Emerging Church

ETS Paper: “Emerging churches in dialogue with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A fresh practical theology of discipleship for the church”

Update December 23, 2006.

I have updated the paper here.

I just thought I would let you know that I am presenting a paper this Wednesday at the Evangelical Theological Society in Washington, DC.

The title is: "Emerging churches in dialogue with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A fresh practical theology of discipleship for the church."

Here is a summary of what to expect.

According to UNC sociologist Christian Smith, evangelical teens tend to view Christianity as “feeling good, happy, secure, and at peace” (Soul Searching, 164). And yet Jesus said "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also" (Mt 5:39 TNIV). We've got an educational problem here. How do we bridge the gap? We need to take a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle this issue. I use the practical theology reflection paradigm described by Princeton Theological Seminary's Richard Osmer.

If we are going to reach young adults, it will be instructive to investigate what emerging churches are doing. I suggest that these emerging churches should properly be seen as laboratories where innovative Christian practices are being explored. I then present some insights by Dietrich Bonhoeffer on discipleship and innovative Christian practices. I then look at the meaning of "turning the other cheek" according to New Testament scholars. Finally, I suggest how a few emerging church practices could be utilized to teach young adults about turning the other cheek.

Here are the details of when and where I'm presenting.

Wednesday, November 15 // Afternoon

Lincoln East
3:20-4:00 PM
Andrew D. Rowell (Taylor University)
Emerging Churches in Dialogue with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Fresh Practical Theology of Discipleship for the Church
(replaces paper by John S. Hammett, which is moved to November 15 in C-356 at 11:00 am)

I am on the "program changes" page which you can find on the conference page here.

I had written earlier about the ETS conference here.

December 1, 2006 Update

Due to your kind requests, I have put the paper I presented below. I have been reading a lot more Bonhoeffer and have decided to completely restructure my dialogue between Bonhoeffer and Emerging Churches in another paper. But, if you are interested, here was my first stab at the whole concept.

Thanks Steve Knight for the link at Emergent Village.

Best Podcasts for Church Leaders

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date October 10, 2006
3 Comments on Best Podcasts for Church Leaders

Here are the best podcasts for church leaders that I have found.

Update: January 30, 2010.

Here are some suggestions I gave a friend recently:

Video podcasts: Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, Reliable Sources, NBC Nightly News; Audio podcasts: Shields and Brooks. I know those are all politics but those are the ones I almost always listen to. T
Here are lots of other good ones that I listen to as well: Rob Bell Mars Hill; John Ortberg Menlo Park; Will Willimon; Mark Goodacre NT Pod; Harvard Business IdeaCast; Willow Creek; Andy Stanley North Point Ministries; BusinessWeek–Behind This Week's Cover Story; Catalyst Podcast; The Kindlings Muse; Neue; This American Life.
iTunes U also has a treasure trove of good stuff–Duke, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, MIT. I love the "Recently Added" option in the left column of iTunes which tells me the latest podcasts that have been downloaded.

Original Post October 10, 2006

The ITunes links will only work if you have the free ITunes software installed on your computer. See below for more directions. I have also put the MP3 location for each link in case you don't want to bother with ITunes.

Catalyst Podcast (ITunes): MP3 location. The Catalyst Conference was this past weekend. It is this cool conference for pastors under 40. See my preview of it here. There are good interviews with Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Andy Stanley, Eugene Peterson, and Donald Miller.

Defining Moments Podcast (ITunes): MP3 location. These are samples of the Willow Creek Association Defining Moments audio CD's. They are good 10 minute interviews but really leave you wanting more. And that is the point. They want your church to become part of the WCA and then the pastor will get the full CD's.

Emergent Podcast (ITunes): MP3 location. The Emergent Village is the main organization of the Emerging Church movement. These podcasts are usually just plain good theological discussion. You will enjoy them even if you aren't "emerging." The first seven are with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf.

Mars Hill Bible Church (ITunes): MP3 location. Rob Bell, of the NOOMA DVDs, Velvet Elvis author and author of spring 2007 book Sex God, has more people download his sermons than anyone.

Mosaic (ITunes): MP3 location. Erwin McManus, author of The Barbarian Way, and numerous other books, and pastor of Mosaic in LA.

MPPC Sermon-Cast (ITunes): MP3 location. John Ortberg, pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, and author of The Life You've Always Wanted and other books, is an outstanding teacher.

North Point Ministries: Life Rules (ITunes): MP3 location. This is a series on relating with one another. This is with Andy Stanley, pastor of the #3 influential church in the nation according thechurchreport.com and author of the new book Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication. North Point only podcasts their most recent sermon series.

Practically Speaking (ITunes): MP3 location. This is a series for church leaders based on the Seven Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley and friends.

Covenant Worldwide of Covenant Theological Seminary has thirteen classes that are podcast. They actually have many more for free at their website here. Below are the ITunes links.

Old Testament History with V. Phillips Long (now at Regent College).
Biblical Theology with Gerard Van Groningen.
Life & Teachings of Jesus with Daniel Doriani.
Life & Letters of Paul with Hans Bayer.
Ancient & Medieval Church History with David Calhoun.
Reformation & Modern Church History with David Calhoun.
Calvin's Institutes with David Calhoun.
Christian Ethics with David Jones.
Apologetics & Outreach with Jerram Barrs.
Youth Ministry with Mark Davis.
God and His Word with Michael Williams.
Humanity, Christ and Redemption with Robert Peterson.
Spirit, Church & Last Things with Robert Peterson.

See also my post about the best audio on the internet which is my most popular post.

Other ITunes podcast links:

The below ITune links either aren't as strong as the ones above or are not directly related to church leadership. But I thought I would place them anyway for your to see what is available and what I'm listening to. The links below will only work if you have ITunes installed on your computer. If you don't, I'm sure these MP3's are available but you will probably have to google them. I don't want to take the time to find them right now.

NYT Op-Ed Podcast (New York Times and other NYT is good.)
NPR (Anything at NPR.org or podcast is good. National Public Radio)
Moyers on America (PBS)
Nature (Science journal)
Science Talk: The podcast of Scientific American (Science journal)
Relevant Podcast (Relevant Magazine for Christians in 20's)
Jesus Asked (Book by Conrad Gempf; Zondervan, 2003. Read by the author in 15 minute segments. "In the Gospels, when people asked Jesus a question, he often replied with one of his own. This book looks at the questions Jesus asked and how they can enrich our understanding and faith.")
PeterKreeft.com (Christian Catholic philosopher)
wiredparish.com (interview with Rob Bell is pretty good)
Willow Creek podcasts (not much there right now except a few random sermons)
Leadership Network See my posts about listening to these video venue audio segments here.
Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Gordon-Conwell Chapel
Donald Miller a few posts from a while ago
BusinessWeek – Climbing the Ladder
Christian Audio podcast – Devotional Classics
Duke Chapel Podcast including Richard Hays and Walter Brueggemann
USA Today's Pop Candy – on pop culture

Here are some basic instructions to get you started using ITunes for podcasts.

Basically, you download ITunes here. It is free. I would recommend doing it. You might as well learn what people are talking about and it is free and convenient to have ITunes download your MP3's for you.

Basically, ITunes like Internet Explorer doesn't work unless you are connected to the internet. When you open ITunes and see the ITunes store, go to the right side of the page under "Quick Links" and click "Power Search." On the next screen, click "Podcasts" which is on the right side of the page. Under Title, put "Mars Hill Bible Church" and then click "Search." You will have found the podcast for Rob Bell's church. Click on Mars Hill Bible Church. Then you can see the main page for the podcast. At the bottom, all of the episodes are available. If they are not in the right order, click on "Release Date" to have them organized from most recent to least recent. You can either "Subscribe" at the top so that you get each new sermon as it is posted on the net each week or you can just click "Get episode" and download the past sermons that you want.

You can click on "Podcasts" under Library on the left side of your screen. This will show you all the podcasts which you have downloaded and subscribe to. Right in front of the title of the podcast you have downloaded is a little triangle pointing right or down. If it is pointing down, you can see all the details of what episodes you have downloaded. If it is pointing right, the details are hidden. When you click on the name of the podcast, it is highlighted and a little arrow appears to the right of the title. You can click on this arrow to go to the ITunes home page for that podcast. You right click on the icon of the podcast on its ITunes home page to get its ITunes link (url).

If you want to get back to searching for more podcasts, just click on the left side of your screen where it says "ITunes store." In the ITunes store, you can always click back to the ITunes front page by clicking the little house at the top of your screen.

The podcasts you download are audio computer files called MP3's. Podcasts are generally free. You can also download audio books or songs but you have to pay for them.

Unlike the Apple song files, you can play the podcast MP3's on any computer and MP3 player. You can also burn them on CD's and play them on some CD and DVD players.

For convenience, you might want to be able to access your ITunes MP3's without ITunes. Here is the default location where podcasts are downloaded to your computer:

C:Documents and SettingsyourusernameMy DocumentsMy MusiciTunesiTunes MusicPodcasts

If you want to make a shortcut, go to My Documents, My Music, ITunes, ITunes Music, Podcasts. Then right click and click Create Shortcut. Cut that Shortcut folder and paste it on your desktop.

You can grab the MP3's there if you want to transfer them to your MP3 player or a CD. I

You can double click the photo on this post to get a bigger photo of what my ITunes looks like.

Ecclesiology Emerging Church

Should we be worried about Contemplative Prayer?

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date July 22, 2006
1 Comment on Should we be worried about Contemplative Prayer?

A fellow professor asked about what the contemplative prayer movement is and if we should be concerned about it. Here is how I responded:

Critics of contemplative prayer are particularly worried that Christians will accept Hindu or Buddhist practices. When Christians speak of “meditating” or “meditation” or “Lectio Divina” (spiritual reading) or what we can learn from Catholic mystics such as Teresa of Avila, these critics start getting very concerned about these manifestations of contemplative prayer influencing people toward eastern mysticism. For example, Richard Foster has a chapter on “meditation” in his book Celebration of Discipline. These critics worry about the continued influence of that book. They worry that Christians will do Eastern mysticism practices and dismiss Scripture. In reality, most people including Richard Foster are simply showing people what Biblical prayer and Scriptural meditation is all about.

A number of Christian writers including Robert Webber and Tony Jones have decried our lack of historical knowledge. They have tried to remind modern Christians that Christians throughout history have memorized Scripture and prayed in solitude. Some people within the emerging church movement (such as Jones) have encouraged these “ancient” practices as a response to the harried and consumeristic modern life-style. You won’t be surprised to learn that contemplative prayer is not spreading like wild fire because it mostly entails mediation on Scripture and times of prayer in solitude! This is not easy for any of us!

It is appropriate to listen to the warnings about contemplative prayer but I would assume the best about Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Larry Crabb, Tony Jones, Robert Webber, James Houston and any others who urge us to meditate on Scripture and spend time in prayer! This is the right kind of contemplative prayer.

I would be happy to hear if there is more I need to know about this movement.

Update February 2007:

See also a well known church Church of the Open Door (Maple Grove, MN) that has a Response to Emergent Church & Contemplative Movements (PDF) that sounds a lot like my response.