StretchyChurch

Well, immediately after writing my last post about not posting, I watched a movie called One Night with the King, which, as many of you know, is the story of Esther from the Old Testament. Let me give you my thoughts…

Pros

• It’s got a pretty good cast, with Sallah/Gimli as Mordecai, Gaius Baltar as Haman (minus the stuttering, plus a throaty vocal), Lawrence of Arabia as Samuel (no they didn’t mix up the OT timeline–it’s backstory), and Denethor as Prince Admantha (with the same long hair!). It’s also got Omar Sharif, which I have to admit is pretty impressive.

• The special effects are pretty good. Lots of CG shots of Babylon that actually look pretty real.
• Overall the production quality was pretty good. It didn’t totally feel like a low budget Christian movie.
• The ladies will love King Xerxes with his big, well-oiled pecs! (This picture doesn’t do him justice–you’ll just have to see the movie. Oh, and just for fun, here’s what Xerxes looks like in 300.)
• There’s a forced reference to the coming Jewish Messiah.

Cons

• There’s a forced reference to the coming Jewish Messiah.
• On the one hand Esther comes across a bit too much as a happy-go-lucky American . On the other hand, even though the character shows courage by going to the king unbidden, she comes off as kind of a wimp whenever she’s around Haman.
• Everyone does great British accents (because for most them it’s their real accent), except for Esther and Xerxes.
• The movie is actually pretty hard to follow (even for someone who knows the story).
• The ending is really cheesy. Esther has this necklace with a jewel that projects Stars of David all around when held up to light. In the end, it turns out that only Esther can see the stars. Haman can’t see them. Xerxes can’t see them. But wait–at the last moment Xerxes reveals he actually can see them. And they all live happily ever after.

There’s one more thing I have to mention–and it’s a bit of a “Yikes!” factor. In the end credits, I discovered that the movie was produced by Matt and Laurie Crouch. Matt Crouch is the son of Paul and Jan Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Yikes! (I guess that’s where they got their budget….)

Anyway, all in all it wasn’t a bad movie. It was good production quality (so it didn’t feel cheap) and the story is a good story (the story has been around for thousands of years, after all…). And the cast was really good. I just wish they hadn’t made it so confusing by adding all kinds of unnecessary “motivation” to the characters.

Yikes…  Looks like I’m on a no-posting binge.  There’s kind of a lot going on in my life right now, but I’ll fill you in on it a little bit later.  In the meantime, I’ll try to think of some stuff to write about!

In honor of Spider-Man 3 (mediocre as it was), and especially in honor of my two-year-old son, Micah (who LOVES Spider-Man), I’d like to post a couple videos I recently found on YouTube. The first is the opening to the classic cartoon (Micah can watch this twenty times in a row and not get bored!). The second two are…well…creepy. You’ll see what I mean…

Aw, yeah… Nothing like the good ol’ days (even if I watched this as re-runs in the 80’s)!

Gotta love the Spidey-Voltron!

How about those moves! And the massive web-shooter on his wrist!

I just discovered an video on the Allelon site where Alan Roxburgh (author of The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World) interviews Ryan Bolger (author of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures).

It’s a pretty good interview–helps clarify some stuff about missional and emerging church. Some of the things they talk about include:

–what the missional church is
–Bolger’s own journey
–what the emerging church is
–the connection between the missional church and the emerging church

Bolger offers some helpful distinctions between the missional church and the emerging church (and he admits he is speaking in broad categorizations). Here’s one of the differences between the two (not an exact quote):

The missional church asks, “How do existing churches begin to truly live out the mission of God in the world?”

The emerging church asks, “How do we live as an authentic community of believers in this culture?”

Click here to see the video.

Many of you have heard of the “Ebay Atheist” who sold himself on Ebay. His name is Hemant Mehta and the person who bought him is Jim Henderson of Off-the-Map (and who hosted last year’s Revolution Conference).

Hemant has recently written a book called I Sold My Soul on Ebay. Jim has recently written a book called Evangelism Without Additives (which I read last year under the title A.K.A. Lost).

I came across two interviews with Hemant and Jim on a program called Life Today. I was surprised when I saw who was hosting the show–James and Betty Robison. I have to admit, I really only know Robison by reputation, but my assumption was that he was just another over-conservative Christian cable TV talk show host. But I was really impressed by how kind and welcoming he was to both Hemant and Jim, and by how open both he and his wife were to their ideas and thinking.

Here are the two interviews. The first one focuses mostly on Hemant and his story. The second focuses more on Jim and his story.

Hemant’s Story
Jim’s Story

I’m sitting in my living room right now watching a Nightline episode in which two atheists and two Christians (one of which is Kirk Cameron) debate the existence of God. And I have to admit…I’m kind of embarrassed.

It’s not the worst display of bad evangelism I’ve ever seen, but these debates just seem so pointless and counterproductive. At one point, Kirk Cameron pulled out some pictures of mock evolutionary missing links; animals like the “crocoduck” (half crocodile, half duck), the “bullfrog” (half frog, half bull), and the “sheepdog” (half sheep, half dog). And as he showed these, the atheists merely rolled their eyes.

An argument like that isn’t evangelism, it’s belittlement. It’s making fun of the other’s beliefs. And that tact just doesn’t work.

In the end, none of the atheists became Christians and none of the Christians became atheists. The only thing that happened was that they all got annoyed at each other.

When I think about evangelism in the Bible, I can’t think of any examples in which Jesus or Paul or any of the apostles tried to belittle someone into believing the gospel. Instead, Jesus simply welcomed and loved those who were “sinners”–and they loved him right back. Paul said to his audience things like, “I see that you are very religious”–he treated them with respect. And Philip simply asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”–he didn’t say, “I can’t believe you don’t get this!”

I wonder when we’re finally going to start taking Peter’s words seriously, and actually treat people with “gentleness and respect” as we dialogue with them about life, the world, their pain…and about Jesus.

Welcome to the new StretchyChurch! I’m excited to have moved over to WordPress–not because I was dissatisfied with Blogger, but because WordPress allows for a bit more customization.

I hope you’ll enjoy the changes–which for now are primarily aesthetic… Let me know what you think so far!