As you recall, a few months back we polled our readership for features for a United Methodist iPhone app. It was ludicrous that it’s 2011 and there’s no official UMC app for one of the places where people’s eyes are the most: the iPhone. Ludicrous.

Luckily, that’s been changed. There’s now an official UMC App put out by UM Communications. I guess my General Conference petition that I considered sending in requiring an App has been fulfilled! Yea!

Rob Rynders beat me to the punch with his initial review. Realizing it’s a rough first draft (and updates are very easy to do, automatic in fact whenever you click the “update apps” button in iTunes), here’s some areas where it works and where it needs work.

Features and Commentary:

• Daily Devotional. Short, sweet, to the point, can scroll through previous ones. Excellent.
• Photos and Videos. It has a collection of photos/videos one can view/watch from various aspects of the UMC. Looks decent. I would hope future versions have a way to bookmark or favorite or sort through them.
• The Find-a-Church information is very out of date [EDIT: See below].  It still has the previous minister from 5 years ago on the app for my local church, even though the umc.org’s Find-a-Church information is accurate. Same on three of the surrounding churches, one from 6 years ago. All of them have accurate information on the UMC’s website. Seriously? And no websites displayed where people can click for more information? Seriously? [UPDATE: Looks like the servers updated between last night and today. It's now accurate as far as I can tell. Sorry for the false alarm, glad it was figured out].
• Social Connect. It only connects to UMNS tweets at the moment but still a great start. You could do a search of all #umc tags but given it would need to be monitored before going live due to spammers, it might not be feasible on an “official” app.
• Info-Serve. So I fill out a really long form and I will get an emailed response? That’s….uh, service?

So that’s all great.

But here’s what we’d like to see (taken from the previous conversation), and some are a bit out of the box:

• A feed for the Methobloggers. Seriously. There’s a TON of grassroots content, Rev. Voorhees does very well on editing it and keeping bad stuff off of it.  It can come with a disclaimer “all content is the opinions of the authors, etc”. If you want creative content for people to keep their eyes on Methodist issues and not Angry Birds, this is it.
• Lectionary Tools. The Daily Devotional is great but having the lectionary passage for the week, perhaps linked to the GBOD’s pages, would be an easy thing to include. Code it once, time-frame it, and done.
• Methodist Resources. The Info Serve is helpful-looking (haven’t tried it yet) but being able to read through the Social Principles or read an iPhone-only version of the Book of Discipline/Book of Worship would be of great help to Methodists in discussion. The BoD doesn’t have to be copy-paste-able so Cokesbury would still get their money. I have a digital version of the BoD, BoW, and UMH but an App is more universal. I really don’t want to have to wait for a response to find helpful information like the current setup.
• Ways to get involved. If a moderated email-in list could be compiled of churches that are looking for volunteers, then that list could be made public and locale-specific. Or just links to UMCOR and Advance information.

Good start, UM Communications. Good start. Now get creative and get outside of the box, rethink church, open 10,000 doors, or whatever the buzz word is for this year…start actually exhibiting it with this program and you’ll gain a loyal following of the Google Generation.

Thoughts? Other suggestions?

Darwin and the Church was a topic recently on UMNS. A retired scientist talked about faith and science and how to bridge the gulf between them.  Kuelling ends with this affirmation: “We need to recognize that, as stated in The Book of Discipline, “We find that as science expands human understanding of the natural world, our understanding of the mysteries of God’s creation and word are enhanced.” (Paragraph 160.F)”

I’m all about integrating science and religion in the academic and topical fields. But how does one do that in the liturgical field? How does one pray about science and religion? How does one pray the Apostle’s Creed without thinking of the Firmament or a tiered universe? How does one do a Great Thanksgiving that recognizes God’s mighty acts of evolution and not just creation?

Enter this book.

I admit to being pleasantly surprised by If Darwin Prayed by Bruce Sanguin. While reading the Prologue I assumed this would be a mere theological treatise that would yield few surprises for this clergyperson who doesn’t have a problem with evolution properly understood. Sanguin talks about this challenge in his prologue:

To acknowledge that the human being emerged out of the adaptive resilience and struggle of all of the creatures that came before us is to assume a more humble place in the scheme of life. Gratitude replaces arrogance as we realize that our challenge is not to have dominion over creation but rather to assume our proper place in our one Earth community. An evolutionary worldview implies an underlying shift in identity that can be perceived as a threat to those who cling to biblical literalism.

But more to the liturgical aspect, most of the book are prayers. Prayers for the liturgical season or lectionary passage. For example, I have permission to post one of the prayers for your enjoyment (this one focuses on Doubting Thomas, Easter Season):

God Bless the Holdouts

O Risen One,
help us to tease out this sacred tangle:
you, in the Father;
us, in you;
all entwined by Spirit?
A holy braid, not weakened by us?

In fact, you say, a lifeline for the lost,
with the power to forgive sin,
to forge new futures not tethered to the worst
that has happened to us
but rather to the best that you have in store for us?

Forgive us if we, like Thomas,
hold out for just a bit
to touch the holes in your hands and your side,
and to take a peek where life’s thorns have punctured our hope.

But there you are,
enfleshed in today’s tortured,
in the left-behinds and the lonely,
and in our own refusal to give in to despair.

You rise up, again and again,
in the doubters and the holdouts,
who, more deeply than most,
want to believe in the power of resurrection.
Amen.

Sanguin intends them for personal devotions, prayers at the beginning of worship and as an act of worship. He gives a one-two page thought between each section to relate the liturgical season with evolutionary science.

I was struck when I read through them how almost invisible the science was, but it emerged in creative ways. In the prayer above, the moniker of holdouts instead of doubters was a helpful change to reflect the evolution of their unbelief rather than a static stage of unbelief.

In fact, the only quibble I have (and it is not with the book) is that I’m not terribly mystical in my prayer life, so I felt a bit out of touch of the deeper words and poetry of the phrases. For others who are more in touch (and I envy you), it might work for you.

Check out If Darwin Prayed by Bruce Sanguin and thanks again to Mike Morrell for the opportunity to review books that I otherwise would pass over.

Thoughts?

Note: I received this book for free from the Viralbloggers network. As usual, while I’m happy to review relevant material, I do so without any restriction on what I write. Enjoy!

If you are a preacher or devotional leader, Stories that Feed Your Soul by Tony Campolo is a great book.  It has about 117 stories from Campolo that he uses on his preaching circuit or remembers from his history as a pastor and teacher. In his words, he wants to “tell you an array of stories that will help you as you try to tell the greatest story ever told” (page 18). Campolo has them categorized according to eight themes in Romans 8.

In my subjective reading, I marked about 20 of the 117 stories that I could readily use or matched my speaking style. Your mileage may vary. I did notice that almost all of Part 5 “Living With Hope” were marked as useful to this preacher. Most of them were one page long which makes expanding or emphasizing different sections of the story easy to do. Also his stories are rather inclusive: he includes wisdom from other religions, has a compassionate take on sexual minorities, and engages some tough issues.

For example, some of his stories are very short. He recounts a Chinese professor who was a Taoist. The professor said to Tony during a classroom discussion “You Christians pray all wrong. You pray ‘If I should die before I wake’ when you really should pray ‘If I should wake before I die.’” From there, you can jump into a musical discussion of Charles Wesleys’ “Wake O’ Sleeper” or talk about a video we’ve discussed on this blog called “Awake O’ Sleeper” or Plato’s Cave or wherever you want to go.

A good simple story has the ability to jump to many different directions while also engaging the hearers on a level they can relate to…and for Campolo, turn them towards the Greatest Story Ever Told. I found many good stories in Campolo’s book that will preach and teach, and I’m sure you will as well. Check it out (it’s also on kindle…woot woot), read more of the viralblogger reviews, and post in the comments your thoughts.

This review is pretty academic, so sorry in advance. But in fairness, it’s an academic book, so I have no choice but to respond to it…academically!

The Nature of Love: A Theology [Kindle Edition here] by Thomas Jay Oord makes the claim that love is not the central focus of many constructive theologies and yet every person would make it a central undeniable claim of who God is.  As Charles Wesley’s hymn goes “God’s nature and name is love” [55]. Oord posits this is perhaps because the biblical account of God’s love is ambiguous and contradictory [4]. Regardless, Oord walks through several constructive theologies and critiques them before settling on his own construction. Along the way there are many joys and concerns.

First off, Oord makes many great definitions:

• Basic Love Definition:  ”To  love  is  to  act  intentionally,  in  sympathetic/empathetic response to God and others, to promote overall well-being.” [17]
• Agape Love:  ”acting intentionally, in response to God and others, to promote overall well-being in response to that which produces ill-being“ [56]
• Eros Love:  ”acting intentionally, in response to God and others, to promote overall well-being by affrming and/or seeking to enhance value“ [83]
• Philoi Love: “acting  intentionally,  in response to God and others, to promote overall well-being by seeking to establish deeper levels of cooperative friendship“ [115]

I like these definitions and will retain them in my own ministry usage, I suspect.

Joys

• I appreciate how Oord does not equate Love and Self-sacrifice [28].
• I also appreciate his critique that Agape Love is not the only form of love we are called to [51].
• I do appreciate his final constructive theology: Essential Kenosis. Essentially, Kenosis refers to “self-emptying love” that Jesus models on earth. It’s not equated to self-sacrifice [which as a voluntary action would be problematic], but rather is essential to Christ in that Christ can do nothing but the highest form of Love which is self-giving. Love is not coercive.
• The book ends on an uplifted understanding of Christian hope. Are we to hope that God will coerce love on earth as in Revelation?

Concerns

• Oord makes the claim that in Christian community is the only place where we can experience some forms of God’s love [25]. Really?
  

  The person not engaged with others in the body of Christ stunts his or her capacity  to  love and  feel  loved. Without being engaged  in  the practices and  liturgies of  the church, some expressions of  love are simply not possible.

  I reject this interpretation. While Christianity is best lived out in community, we do not dictate where and when God’s love is experienced. To do so is arrogant to claim God cannot give God’s love in its fullness whenever God wishes. In my opinion.

• Oord really lost me in the Open Theology chapter as he doesn’t give a succinct definition of its central claim. Something like “God is on the side of the Oppressed” is the central claim of Cone, “Practice Theory Practice” is Liberation, “Matter is time” is Whitehead, etc. No central claim = lost reviewer.
• My notes on his chapter on Open Theology go like this: “Open Theology is basically Process Theology, isn’t it? [88]” and a few pages later “Oh, so they are similar but Open Theology is not based on Whitehead’s worldview [90]“. Essentially, I see OT as Process Thought without the non-matter-based worldview. May make it more appealing to more than academics, but removes a lot of Process’s power IMO. I’m surprised he is not more overt about this as Oord is familiar with Process, having co-edited a book on it with my old Evangelism professor Bryan Stone.

In the end, I am not persuaded to move from Process’s understanding of theodicy to Oord’s understanding of theodicy. We both agree that a loving God who can yet does nothing about true evil seems contradictory. Oord’s Essential Kenosis suggests that because God loves perfectly God cannot override the freedom God has given creation, which is itself an act of love. Process makes the same claim but does so in a philosophical system which is not restrained by classical theology. I make the same critique of EK as I did of Open Theology: they are shades of Process Theology without the Whiteheadian worldview that gives PT its power. That doesn’t make them wrong…it just is less enthralling to me.

So, check out the book if you are an academic, but do so comparing it to Process Thoughts’ mainstays (my default book to turn to is Suchocki’s God Christ Church) if you want a full experience.

Thoughts?

This is a book review as part of being an Ooze select blogger. As always, while reviews can be bought, the content is my own honest opinion!

Usually I put together a long review for subjects that I’m passionate about: peace and justice are often those topics. However, the Economy of Love video curriculum is so short that I barely know what to write about.  You can click the link for the outline but the 5-part video series looks at these topics:

• Week 1: Tension – Being the hands and feet of Jesus in a broken world
• Week 2: Enough – Christ’s demand to love our neighbor through redistribution
• Week 3: Vulnerable – Living lives that collide with those of the marginalized
• Week 4: Filled – Is the gospel we preach good news for the rich and poor alike?
• Week 5: Practice – Following Jesus with our hands, our feet, and our resources

Basically, the discussion revolves around going against consumer culture which feeds on people and starting a relational tithe [website] that not only gives money but gives of ourselves. That subject is explored in the different aspects above.  The videos, in contrast to Nooma or other video teachings, are less than 4 minutes long and consist of a voice-over by Shane Claborne with depictions of the lesson. Very short, sufficient for an introduction or re-focusing moment in a teaching, not a closer to a lesson.

The best part? The book has an annotated script of the voice-over, complete with scripture references, more questions, and brings depth to the topic.  That makes it easy for personal study to go deeper if you want. There’s also accompanying questions and quotes  in the back.

I guess that from the Economy of Love I was looking for more content rather than questions, more guiding information than guiding questions. I think we get that we are consumeristic and can ask ourselves the questions but at the end if we don’t have examples of stories or life testimonies that can inspire us through a vision of a transformed life, then we are left feeling a bit lost at the end. I missed the testimonies or examples of changed lives that could inspire our own.

So if you are armed with information already about consumerism and our culture and are looking for guiding questions, or if you already have an idea of what response your church wants to give to a community and are looking for inspiring others, Economy of Love is a decent shot at it.

Anyone else seen the series and would like to comment?

I almost swerved off the road several times yesterday. Not for imbibing or DWS (Driving Whilst Shaving) or DWSML (…My Legs) but because I was listening to an audiobook of Stuff Christians Like.  Jonathan Acuff is a blogger on the popular StuffChristiansLike.net and the man is just hilarious. The tagline “100% funnier than The Shack” is pretty spot-on.

While you can buy the book here, the audiobook is free at the moment on ChristianAudio.com.

What I really appreciate is the way how Acuff uses humor as a hack (a humor.hack), as a way to cut through the layers of self-righteousness and embarrassment.  He’s able to talk about stuff that we are uncomfortable with or that people outside the church notice in ways that are humorous but also empowering.

For instance, here’s a segment from an interview found on Christian Audio’s freebie interview too.

Acuff (6:00): I think sometimes we have…a Christian “F” word which is “Fine.”  There’s a temptation to shine up your life.  How’s your marriage? Fine. How’s your work? Fine. I think a lot of it stems from the core issue of believing that if you get mad and express something as horrible then it looks like God is horrible. So you don’t want to say things are bad right now, cuz then a non-Christian will go “if life is bad for that guy and he is a Christian, then why would I want anything to do with that God?” There’s an incredible temptation to whitewash our lives. 

It’s humorous but with a point.  Hence, being able to poke holes in the shield of self-righteousness and expose what our little idiosyncrasies can mean to the outside world.

Finally, Acuff responds with a helpful distinction between mockery and satire.

Acuff (7:15): There’s a world of difference between mockery and satire.  Mockery has a victim. Mockery’s goal is to hurt and wound. Satire is humor with a purpose. And my ultimate purpose is to share the love of Christ.  The bottom line is that mockery is a great shortcut to laugh but it removes your ability to speak and love later…My goal is to make this huge mirror that is big enough that we can all look in it and go “hey is that us? Are we okay with that? Is that what love looks like?”

I highly recommend it.

Video preview after the break:

So check out the site and the book and the free audiobook, and support Christian humor as a way of breaking down the barriers between people today.

This is a gifted review.  As always, while I claim I can be bought, buying me doesn’t guarantee you will get gold stars…but hopefully you will get good feedback!

I was gifted a copy of iPastor from the developer of this iPhone application.  It’s basically a CRM for pastors that allows you to input a person’s contact info but then append five areas to their contact info:

It is unfortunate when I pick up a book that looks interesting and realize it is totally not written with me in mind.  The Diversity Culture by Matthew Raley is that kind of book which is written to evangelicals who find themselves increasingly feeling isolated and incommunicable to the diversity of contemporary society.  Given that (a) I do not identify with evangelical culture, and (b) I have many avenues into contemporary society, then this was not the book written for me.

However, it was a book written ABOUT me, in a sense.   From the words of the back cover: a new culture of “spiritual openness, moral flexibility, and social diversity” is what the author writes about.  Though I am Christian, I am clearly immersed in that kind of culture and as such I must contend with some of the claims in the book of which I disagree with.  I decide on a daily basis what eternal “tenets” of Christianity I am gonna bend or seek to integrate better in my ever-changing relationship with the culture around me.  Raley helps me feel “examined” in a helpful way in three movements he makes in the book.

First, Raley talks about the practical way that contemporary society tries to navigate cultural differences.  Raley identifies this as “street postmodernism” where there’s no rhyme or reason to people’s beliefs: they just follow what gives them meaning and keeps them from getting hurt.  This was a helpful analysis of the cafeteria-style culture that Christians are called to be relevant to.  Further, Raley calls out evangelicals who call this culture simply “relativism” ie. people who assert there is no Truth.  In actuality, Raley states that they know there is a truth, there is right and wrong, but they don’t have a method to integrate eternal Christian truths into lifestyles full of change and rapid escalation.  Again, I don’t identify as evangelical, but this was a breath of fresh air that Raley “got” a key understanding of this culture.

Second, Raley talks about crucibles, or understanding that people have negative experiences in which they are formed into the people they are today with strong understandings of some truth.   This truth is not always positive about Christianity!  The evangelical’s typical response has been either reject-correct (reject the conclusions they found) or accept-affirm (accept the conclusions and agree with them).  Raley seeks a third path which seems to be compassionate engagement which both affirms truth but challenges assumption from a position of weakness.  A power-narrative this isn’t.  I found Raley’s compassionate response and affirmation of people’s crucibles to be an interesting illustration of how typical evangelical engagement of culture is off-base but not fatally flawed.

Finally, Raley shares a prejudice with me (well, his may be simply good analytics while mine is clearly a prejudice) against mega-churches.  He helpfully articulates why mega-churches are successful: they offer everything to everyone via market segmentation.  In my town, if you are young working class you probably attend X church, if you are older upper class you attend Y church, etc.  Demographics seek out similar demographics, perhaps.  But mega-churches are able to offer young adult ministries, seeker services, elder outreach, all the various “storefronts” that make people feel a part of the church, even though it is huge.

Raley’s critique, however, is that such “variety of demographic storefronts” feeds the personal autonomy more than collective discipleship.  If you can choose the inputs and the segment of the church life that you want to participate in, then you don’t have to stretch as a person.  As Raley says, “the body of Christ has become a customizeable package offered by an industry.”  As I write often on this blog, the echo-chamber is present in mega-churches simply because of the choice of the worshippers to only attend and pay attention to what is relevant to them and ignore the rest.  It’s a helpful critique from the “inside” that I appreciated.

In short, if you are evangelical, The Diversity Culture would be a good read.  If you are a non-evangelical-identified pastor, it is an interesting read.  If you are part of the cafeteria culture…then you might not get much out of the book but it could help with gentle correction of wayward evangelicals who seek you out in less-than-helpful fashion that Raley critiques as well.

Thoughts?

A seminary friend on Facebook pointed me in the direction of the Glo: The Bible for a Digital World (website here).   It’s an interactive bible with pictures, video, timelines, articles, and an NIV bible for notes and presentations.  It seemed like a good resource for bible studies of all ages, so I picked it up over the weekend.  If you want a review of its functionality and overview, check out JesusFreakHideout, but as usual I’ll be running it through grueling trials.  Read on…

Why a multimedia bible?  I have only to look at the immediate attention that children and youth give to media and movies to know that Bible teaching may benefit from using media resources to stimulate learning. We know from neurological studies that neurons that fire together, wire together.  So multimedia may be useful for students to fuse bible teaching with everyday discipleship.

My initial enthusiasm was dampened when I saw the publisher: Zondervan, which is not known for having a breadth of theological resources in academic circles.  If it is truly to be a study resource, it ought to have a breadth of theological diversity in its resources, which Zondervan just doesn’t want have.  But let’s not judge them unfairly until I get through the material..

So let’s walk through Joys and Concerns, shall we? And end with case studies of Glo’s treatment of a biblical text and a hot topic.

Most of my joys come from the functionality of this powerful program:

• The sessions manager is awesome.  I love being able to pursue one topic then start a new session to check out a related one, and be able to switch between them.  It makes parallel processing (which is essential for bible study) easy, as well as make it easy to bring up different aspects while in a bible study (such as switching between images, text, and the timeline).  Bravo!
• The 3D walk-throughs are COOL.  The Sistine Chapel is fascinating…has each painted section as a hotspot to click and learn more.  I lost about 30 minutes of ministry planning today just clicking around it.  I’ve never seen the Sistine Chapel so this is as close as I’ve been!
• Clicking and searching for ANYTHING is neat.  I can click on a passage and send it to “results” page which searches all the bible, media and articles for the passage referenced.  I wish I had this for all my scholarly books.
• Neat and intuitive interface.  If you right click, swipe the mouse, or drag and hold, it will interact like an iPhone.  If you can use an iPhone or a Nintendo Wii, you can use this.

Most of  my concerns focus on usability and appropriateness for casual usage:

• No user manual or help.  None.  Zip.  While it may be intuitive, only by being a computer nerd was I able to find my way to some areas.  There are some web videos, apparently, but that’s hardly helpful in the moment.
• The research is narrow and dated.  All the articles are from the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible published in 1976.  All of them.  While the Glo is undoubtedly early in its maturation and will be updated with more resources, I hope better commentaries will be included soon and for free.  As Switched.com remarks:

After looking through Glo’s Web site, we weren’t able to find that list of theologians and ministers that graces the front pages of every Biblical translation. Although the Word itself is that of the standard NIV translation, Glo’s bountiful non-textual addendums do not appear to have been subjected to a panel of religious scholars.

• Needs a powerhouse computer to run.  Of course mine handles it with no sweat [/nerd], but I doubt the majority of church computers have all the processing power prereqs or 18 gigs of free space. 

Our first case study looks at the media integration within Glo and how they augment the experience.  I took the story I’m teaching the children today in our after-school program (Joseph having dreams and being betrayed by his brothers in Genesis 37).  Along with the textual notes are the following media imagery (all of which are zoomable and high definition…yea!):

• The Dream of Joseph fresco by Bartolo di Fredi
• Current-day image of Shechem (where the brothers grazed their flocks)
• Current-day image of “Flocks near the pit of Joseph” (Bibleplaces.com)
• Dothan Valley view west from tell (Bibleplaces.com)
• Beth Shemesh cistern (Bibleplaces.com)
• Train of camels on the Mount of Olives (Library of Congress)
• Dothan Valley shepherd and flock (Bibleplaces.com)
  
• Joseph is sold by his Brothers ink by Gustave Dore

The interesting part is that all the media marked “Bibleplaces.com” are from 1890s pictures obtained for $20 from BiblePlaces.com.  Quite the bargain for Zondervan!  Ha!

When you click on the passage and click “Send To” you can send it to many of the other “lenses” (read more about these here)  For instance, sending the text to “Timeline” shows that this story of Joseph is likely between 1696-1695 BCE. I believe that to be accurate and you can show how it relates to the other stories at the same timeframe.

Also, sending it to the “Atlas” yields this neat outline of where the towns mentioned are in relation to where Joseph ended up (click to enlarge):

So for the study I’m giving today, I’ll be using the Atlas image to give the children (1st-5th grades) an idea of how far away Joseph was from his family.  If I really wanted to, I could simply walk through this story clicking the imagery so that people get immersed in what I’m talking about.  Using the sessions manager they would be easily accessible during a study so one doesn’t have to wait.  Very handy.

Given this case study, for a guided bible study, I think Glo is a great resource as it augments and immerses you in the biblical story…which is probably why the Glo designer’s company is Immersion Digital!  Ha!

So, it does well for bible study.  But how about a topical study that might have more of a slant to it?  Let’s find out:

Given those concerns about scholarly articles, I wanted to test out how a topic is treated.  To test out a Zondervan NIV resource, the most obvious place to look for bias is its coverage of homosexuality. Searching for homosexuality in the bible lens brings up not seven bible verses, but 13!  Along with the obvious seven are (for no apparent reason, there’s no notes on homosexuality in any of them):

• 1 John 1:9
• James 5:16
• 2 Timothy 2:19
• Psalms 32:5
• Proverbs 28:13
• Isaiah 59:1

• Is Homosexuality Compatible With Christianity?
• Homosexual Theology
• Paul, Romans and Homosexuality
• Number 9: Homosexuality [of the Top 10 things facing Christianity]
• When More Than Prayer Comes…Out of the Closet
• A Challenge of Courage & Compassion: The Church’s Response to Homosexuality [Albert Mohler]
• A Matter of Pride? [Mohler]
• The Challenge of Homosexuality – How Important Is It? [Mohler...again]

And no, there are no pictures (save a bunch of sand representing Sodom?) or videos or 3-D walk-throughs

So if I had to judge, no, this isn’t an unbiased or scholarly source for this topic of homosexuality.  Even if there was a variety of theologies presented, they are all from the same website (Lifeway.com…and remember that Lifeway removed copies of a magazine that had women pastors on the cover), and three are from one dude.

Bad research material if you ask me.  So given those concerns, considering Glo a serious scholarly resource may be setting you up for trouble.

Conclusions

I would recommend Glo for pastors and bible study leaders looking to augment a guided bible study.  Its resources and immersive qualities will make for great bible studies.

I would not recommend Glo for individuals wanting to see a breadth of scholarly teaching on a subject, or for unguided studies on hot topics. 

I would say there’s hope for change, given Glo’s connectedness to the internet.  Adding in a variety of resources would be a welcome addition in the future, but since they are tied to Zondervan, then variety isn’t going to be likely. 

Though I come off as anti-Zondervan, it’s not intentional.  I cannot help but look at my shelves after 7 years of full-time academic study of Scripture, theology, and church history, and having saved almost all my books…and I have zero, zero Zondervan study resources (other than flavors of bibles) and less than 5 books (all on youth ministry or emerging church).  You can either accuse me of a narrow theological education or take it as anecdotal evidence of the weight scholars in my tradition give publications from Zondervan.

So, in short, if you are a well-read bible study teacher, you can use the media resources and the session manager to put on fresh and interactive bible studies with ease.  Use them as tools to help with instruction.  That’s precisely what I will use it for today.  Otherwise, put on your discerning caps when you do topical studies and know that what you are getting is rather narrow when compared to the breadth of material available on the internet and in academic settings.

Thoughts?  Thanks for reading and welcome to our visitors!

::::: NOTE: This review has FULL spoilers. Stop reading, bookmark the page, click the star in Firefox, in Google Reader click S (to star it) then J (to keep going), and come back when you are done. :::::

While I’ve warned about spoilers, this is not a review of the plot, the characters, who is who and what plot twists there are. However, scattered through the book and culminating in the final chapters is a few concepts that need review and a certain amount of hacking. Read on for more.

::::: YES, this review has FULL SPOILERS. STOP READING NOW! :::::

Growing up my grandmother would sing as she watered the flowers hanging off her porch.  She said that if you sing or talk positively to flowers, they grow better.  I thought that was strange, but research as far back as an 1848 book Soul-life of Plants indicated similar findings.  So I tried it and sure enough, my plants died much slower than they did before.;-)

The concept of human voice or thoughts influencing reality is one of the side concepts that is played out in the book.  The field of Noetics claims the measurable impact of the human mind, and the character in the book claimed to have impacted the growth of crystals and other small items just by thinking focused thoughts.  It becomes a dangerous counterpart in the book to the search for the Lost Symbol which would give a single human great power of the mind.

The key point, found in the discussion between the researcher and a computer programmer, is that when you bring in more humans with focused thoughts, then greater change is possible.  If more and more people channeled their thoughts, they could effect changes in the real world.

Reminds me of Margaret Mead‘s famous quote that you’ll find on activists email signatures everywhere:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  ~Margaret Mead

However, the problem is biblical.  Since the Tower of Babel, not only has the ability to speak with one language been taken from us, but due to our various cultures, even our ways of thinking are completely different.  The likelihood of uniformity in thought and expression is very small.

But that leads me to Mead’s lesser known quote that may be the key to this conversation:

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.  ~Margaret Mead

In this way, Noetics fails to understand the human race’s true gift: diversity.  Uniformity of thought disregards diversity of expression.  It is our differences that make us strong, our diversity that reminds us of our values, our jumbled bunch of random people that study under different people that lead to breakthroughs.  It is a seminarian studying with other denominations that evoke in our formation reminders of what is unique and what is shared with everyone.

If the divine is found between two people, then the ways in which we isolate the divine moment and presence is truly anathema to the human race.  In the ways how humanity ghettoizes our living spaces and lives in the echo chambers, we are minimizing the divine presence. In the ways how our politics of divide and conquer continue to gain momentum, we are going down the set of tracks where the divine is harder and harder to find.

This concludes my review of The Lost Symbol.  I enjoyed the book’s merits as a story and am thankful for these two concepts that sparked conversation.  Hopefully you will enjoy it also.

Thoughts?