_awakening

Scripture as Story.

Julia M. O'Brien has a thought provoking essay up on Bible and Interpretation entitled Growing an Audience. Here's a sample:

If biblical scholars want to continue to have relevance (and stay employed) we have to start talking more about why people should care about the Bible, not relying on the fact that they historically have. We need to quit depending on religious institutions (or maybe religious radio) to cultivate a "tradition" that we can expertly correct. We need to speak more about why the Bible matters to us, what we think it has to offer beyond "background."

Well put. I think she not only speaks well to the issue of the popularization of the Bible in publishing, but also to the need to re-introduce the scriptures as something that can speak to us today in our current human condition.

Her article reminded me of a conversation we had last week in class where we talked about the scriptures as a record of God's happening to humanity. In other words, the scriptures are a collection of writings focused on God's real and tangible interaction with humanity. The scriptures are not just ancient stories, but speak to the larger human condition and God's interaction in the very midst of those human conditions. It is a collection of writings that speak about the past, but also about the now.

Community of God.

Recently I had a conversation with Jamie about the need to find something to keep me more connected to the academic world... and then this. I was asked to help TA a course at the Haggard Graduate School of Theology at Azusa Pacific by my thesis advisor, Karen Winslow. We had had the conversation a ways back about the possibility of me sitting in one of her classes as a TA and the timing couldn't be better. So starting next week, I'll be helping with GBBL 631 - Community of God.

This class in particular was one that played an important roll in my academic journey. It was because of this class that I was exposed in a much deeper way to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Qumran community. Here's the class description for GBBL 631:

When Jews returned from exile in Babylon, they constructed a Jewish identity around the Torah, other ancient traditions, and the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, During the period of our study, 537—AD 70, they lived under the control of Persians, Greeks, and Romans, except for the century of Hasmonean rule. The ancient resources for our study include Ezra, Nehemiah, 1-2 Chronicles, certain prophets, the Elephantine papyri, Jubilees, the Qumran library, the Targums, Josephus, and Philo. This study of diverse Jewish communities of the “Second Temple period” forms a context for understanding the early Jesus movement, as well as for Rabbinic Judaism, which emerged after the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE.

The class is pretty comprehensive as students are exposed to a wide variety of texts and current scholarship on the time period. The required reading looks like this:

An Introduction to Early Judaism - James C. VanderKam

The Dead Sea Scrolls Today - James C. VanderKam

Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World - Alan F. Segal

Early Judaism: Religious Worlds of the First Judaic Millennium - Martin S. Jaffee

Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism - Gabriele Boccaccini

I'm totally looking forward to the class. It should be quite the experience. I'll post more later from the goings on of class as I can.

Rob Bell Interview [Part 3].

More from Zach's interview session with Rob Bell:



Rob Bell Interview, Part 3 from Zach Lind on Vimeo.

Rob Bell Interview [Part 2].

And now for your weekend viewing pleasure, part two of Zach's interview with Rob Bell:



Rob Bell Interview, Part 2 from Zach Lind on Vimeo.

Rob Bell Interview [Part 1].

Zach Lind, technophile extraordinaire, recently interviewed Rob Bell without leaving the comforts of home. Here's part one of the interview...



Rob Bell Interview, Part 1 from Zach Lind on Vimeo.

This Weekend...

Mikayla, Madi, and I are heading out to be a part of this. Back on Sunday afternoon...

Beach Camp Update.

Well, our week of Beach Camp has almost come to an end. Tonight is my last session with the students. Tomorrow morning after breakfast, we'll be doing worship on the beach as our closing time... and then we'll be heading back south as the students head back to Visalia. It's been a pretty amazing time on a few fronts. It's been great to get some focused and extended time with Megan and Madi. We've eaten our meals together, hung out late at night after the sessions, played games, walked on the beach, and let the waves bury our feet in the sand.

This morning was the beach baptism that is pretty traditional for Friday morning for this event. Everyone walks to the beach, where the student ministries pastor and a few staff baptize students in the ocean. Megan, Madi and I sat on a towel and watched student after student as they entered the water to be baptized. After a few students, the questions started to flow. Daddy, why do people get baptized? What does it mean?  Have we ever been baptized? The next minutes were golden, those times as a father you always look forward to - having a great discussion with your kids about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. This camp has been filled with these kinds of moments. Pretty much almost every night, as we walk back to our "home away from home" [our little tent trailer], the girls rehash through the evening teaching - what they got and what they didn't. In short, the conversation has been more rich than I could ever have imagined.

The sessions as a whole have been really encouraging as well. The session Wednesday night generated the most discussion, as we dove into what kind of implications we could draw from Jesus dining with "tax collectors and sinners." I also talked a bit about how the Sa'kred community has been wrestling with this of late. Last night we pushed this forward a bit, exploring the story of the good Samaritan [a story which by the way is way more subversive than we ever were told of in VBS or various Sunday schools]. We posed the observation that the teacher of the Law asks Jesus "who is my neighbor," yet in the end Jesus never answers the question - he just flips the question, asking the better, more pressing question..."Who is it that loved neighborly?" The question is not who should I love, but how should I love every human being?

This afternoon we just needed a break from the whole "camp scene," so we took off in search of a movie theater. All we could find was this pretty ghetto little theater near the 101. The only thing showing that interested the girls was Surf's Up. It was pretty entertaining, nothing too heady... just a great time to laugh with my girls.

One more session to go tonight and then we're heading home tomorrow morning... [perhaps a little stop by the Channel Island Surfboards in Santa Barbara might be in order as well.]

The Sa'kred Journey.

Can I just say how much I absolutely love our community?

For those of you who know a bit of our journey [this will come as no surprise], you know our experience with Church has been, well... less than stellar, bordering on the edge of downright painful. We know what it feels like to be deemed by a community as an outsider. [One comment was made that it was impossible for us to believe what we do and even be Christians... but that's another post for another day.] In fact, for the past few years Jamie and I have truly wondered if there was something wrong with us, something deep within that just made us "un-churchable".

It was almost a year ago that we came to Sa'kred - pretty battered, pretty wounded. We were in need of a community that would love us, believe in us, and nurture us. I came to Sa'kred in the role of teaching pastor - a role that is supposed to exude confident leadership [or so I've been told]. Yet the place I was in, I had this deep and haunting awareness of everything I was not. I was scared. I was numb and empty.

It's been almost a year now. And what we've encountered in the Sa'kred community has been the most amazing thing I have ever encountered in a faith community. We've honestly been embraced for who we are, allowed to be who we are and feel what we feel. We've been invited into people's lives, some of the most amazing people we have ever known. In short, we've been loved, truly loved.

Sa'kred is at a crossroads of sorts right now. Our lead pastor, Aaron Gutridge, is on a six week sabbatical. It's been six years of toiling in the lead role of Sa'kred and it's exacted a toll on Aaron and his family. He's taking some much needed rest and time away to reflect on the journey, where it has come from and where it could possibly go from here. During this time, I've stepped in to help lead our community.

As I look at who we are, where we've come from, and what could possibly lie ahead - I can honestly say that I have rarely been this energized and genuinely filled with hope. I hung out with my buddy Stephen this morning [at one of my low rent offices] and we both had this growing sense that God is doing something quite extraordinary in our midst. It feels like something is coming, but we don't quite know what it is. All I know is that the journey for Jamie and I has come full circle - from being deeply hurt by the church to finding hope and healing within the church. The Sa'kred community has become something rich in our lives, something more profound than words.

Last night [we've been meeting on Sunday nights at 5pm for the month of July], we continued our teaching on Rhythms by exploring breathing as a metaphor for prayer. So just as our breathing is something that is unconsciously essential for our lives, so would prayer be. Just as exhaling and inhaling are two sides of breathing, so we would experience times of genuine exhaling, holding nothing back from God, and experience times of inhaling, drawing in a spirit of peace and love, of restoration and a sense of wholeness in our lives. It was an amazing time together.

Afterwards, a bunch of us headed out to Pizza Port, a local favorite, for a little pizza and libation. As I sat around the table, I couldn't help but be absolutely blown away.

I thought about our journey.

I thought about this community.

And I thanked God.

[By the way, I highly recommend the Carlsbad Chronic.]

TEAM Conference 2007.

Over the past few years I've had the amazing privilege to be a part of the TEAM Conference hosted by the Youth Leadership Institute and Azusa Pacific University. The conference was designed to be an opportunity for high school and college students to gather to wrestle with question of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this present cultural. Over the years, the conference has grown and transformed into an event that is more of a gathering-point and conversation starter, rather than your "traditional" conference - which I love. There is a such a cool spirit of openness to exploration and journey.

This year, much like the last few years, I'm doing the Alumni Track, as well as teaching at one of the general sessions. The Alumni Track is for those students who have already gone through the basic track in their first year, and have now returned for their second or third year of the conference. I've done this Alumni Track now for the past three or four years and have always been so impressed with the level of questions and discussion that is generated in these sessions - and this year is no different.

My approach to these sessions has been to always bring something new, something that I've been teaching through [or am thinking about teaching through] as a part of the Sa'kred community. This year with the alumni we've been exploring living the resurrected kind of life, focusing on the resurrection not merely as an event to be celebrated once a year, but a life to be invited into. The resurrection essentially was not about resuscitation, but about the life that was coming - a life that Jesus inaugurated through his death and resurrection. So we've been looking at what it means to live a life of freedom, and embrace, and generosity, and peace.

At last night's general session I filled in for Mike Erre [teaching pastor at Rock Harbor], who had to fly back home to be with his Dad who has been battling cancer. Mike has been a good friend over the years and it was great to be able to serve and free him up to go home to be with his family. Anyway, the topic I was given was to address the issue of all humanity being co-image bearers of God, which has a myriad of fascinating implications for how we see ourselves and those we encounter in this life.

So in the end... TEAM Conference = Good Times.

Rhythms Artwork.

Here's some of the artwork we've been working on for our latest teaching series, Rhythms.