Sunday March 7 - Jesus Study at Global Gallery

Hi friends -

UPDATE: Due to busy schedules and beautiful weather, we not be meeting today (Sun. March 7th)

A Thank You and a What's Next...

We had an amazing day today with Peter Rollins and thoroughly enjoyed learning from and dialoguing with him. Thank you, Peter, for sharing your time and talents with us. We appreciate your willingness to teach and talk and enjoy lots of good food with us. We wish you the best in all of your endeavors and are excited for your upcoming release of the Orthodox Heretic.

Also, we wanted to extend a Thank You to all who were able to join us this afternoon to hear Pete speak. Thank you for participating in the dialogue, and we hope that you were able to glean and learn from your experience. Know that we welcome you to any of our meetings and hope that you would shoot us an email, meet us for coffee or otherwise let us know who you are and let us continue the dialogue with you. We are very interested in learning about and knowing others in our community and encourage you to join us!

Additional Thank You's to Studio 35 for their hospitality and for helping to make Pete's talk go as smooth as it did! Support local businesses and go check out a film at Studio 35!

Next week, on Sunday, February 8, we will meet at the Global Gallery Coffee Shop in Clintonville at 3:00pm. We will have a discussion with a Nooma video as the initial conversation starter. So, bring your travel coffee mug (they give a discount for being eco friendly and not using a paper cup!) and get ready to Nooma it up.

Sunday November 9 Discussion

Hi everyone! Here are the details for this weekend's discussion:

We will be talking about the relationship between God's sovereignty, God's will, and the role of our faith and choices. Should offer lots of great opportunities for us to share different challenges we are currently facing and some bigger questions about God and faith. Thanks Nancy for suggesting this topic and offering to lead the discussion!

We will meet at Global Gallery on 3535 N. High St (google map here) in Clintonville at 3:00pm. See ya there!

New Global Gallery Location

Just a quick FYI - if you haven't heard, Global Gallery moved their German Village location north to 3535 N. High St. If you drop by our meetings every now and then, be sure to not come to German Village, but follow us to the new location in Clintonville. We'll be meeting there tomorrow (Oct. 5) from 3pm-5pm.

Xenos Summer Institute "Pre-Discussion" - Part 3

Alright - here is question #3, with a little bit of explanation, and a few side tracks. These are the proposed topics of conversation for Sunday's meeting at Global Gallery.

Dennis' initial email asked: "How to reach postmodern young people: What should go into an approach to communication, community, church ethos, structure, practice, etc. in order to avoid losing relevance to postmodern culture?"

I was a little unsure what he was getting at, so I sent another email and asked him to explain a bit more, and this is what he wrote: "I'm referring to non-Christian postmodern people (mainly the young) and how to attract them to Jesus. What does the church need to be in order to be considered relevant to these people's lives? What would commend Jesus to them? I think one of the big arguments I've seen and heard from emergent Christians is that unless the church becomes more postmodern, it will lose its voice with postmoderns. So, the argument is that the church is too propositional, too modern, and that's why we need a change that emergent is pioneering." (btw, thanks Dennis for the great questions and quick email responses!)

Side track A: When Dennis first offered the three topics, I suggested a fourth topic, "The Kingdom of God," and from the looks of an email giving some details about the conference, this topic is also on the table. So perhaps this week we can also toss around the topic of the different understandings of the kingdom of God b/w traditional evangelicalism and emergents.

Side track B: Since the Goshen "Everything Must Change" event, a few of us have tossed around the idea of getting together with other cohorts in the MidWest region. If you haven't heard, Emergent Village officially canceled any official national cohort gathering this year in an effort to stimulate more regional, indigenous and organic gatherings. I contacted a few cohorts this week and they seem interested, so perhaps we could also toss around ideas for a regional get-together.

Xenos Summer Institute "Pre-Discussion" - Part 2

Alright, here is question #2, as posed by Dennis in an email:

View of the cross: What are emergent thinkers saying, and what does it mean? What are the different ways of interpreting the cross, and how wide are the differences between newer, postmodern perspectives on the cross and more traditional understandings?

Here are a few additional resources:

- - Emergent Village has had some interesting discussion regarding atonement theories in the past months. Here is a blogpost that includes results of an "atonement theory" contest and here is a great, short podcast where Tony Jones and Mark Baker talk about atonement and the contest a bit more.

- - We have discussed this issue already on this blog and you can view the initial post by Zack and the summary of the discussion that we had at Global Gallery. Also, here is a google doc I created that has a summary of atonement theories.

So, feel free to post your response to Dennis' questions, or to pose new questions. Also, I believe this will be the topic for the next discussion at Global Gallery on Sunday July 13 (which sadly, I will miss).

Upcoming Dates

Hi everyone - just some business here regarding the next two weeks activities. Let me know your feedback, likes/dislikes, ideas, etc.

June 15th is scheduled to be a discussion week, and I've asked Rachel Swartz of LowerLights ministry to come and share with us some of her experiences working with inner city families. I thought it could be cool to a get more balanced perspective as we prepare for serving dinner on Sat. June 21st.

So if everyone is cool with it, we can plan for a "normal" discussion week, Sun. June 15th, 3-5pm at Global Gallery, with the topic being poverty in Columbus. Perhaps some frisbee/games in the park again afterwards?

Then Sat. June 21st is an opportunity to serve a meal to some families connected with LowerLights. This will be from about 4:30-7:30pm altogether, and there is no obligation, but it'd be great to have some people come and also help to provide food and drinks.

I know that week is scheduled to be a "super-fun" week, and so I thought that perhaps we could move our weekly activity to that same Saturday night, the 21st. Then we could come up with a "super-fun" idea to invite the families from dinner to participate in as well. Perhaps a movie night at the church, putt-putt golfing, or something similar.

Ideas? Thoughts?

Summary of Atonement Discussion

We had a great discussion yesterday afternoon, and I'll do my best to recount a few of the good questions, comments and over-arching ideas. Feel free to post comments that add what I missed.

- Zack led off the discussion by sharing that the classic idea of God killing Jesus for the payment of our sins makes him feel like he is forced to love God because he is in debt and has to escape hell. He wondered if there were other (better?) ways of understanding what exactly happened at the cross.
Kate shared some great information about different historical perspectives, especially Lutheranism. For more on historical perspectives, read this summary.
- Several times it was mentioned that it is important to have an understanding, or at least a framework of what happened at the cross in order to be able to evangelize and answer questions of non-believers. Zack continually raised a very good point: If what we believe about the cross is not essentially about forgiveness of sins and a "ransom payment," how does that change how we evangelize?
- Nancy shared some very powerful words about her experiences of asking for and receiving forgiveness. She also helped us to understand that the beauty of Jesus' sacrifice can have personal meaning to everyone.
- An important question posed by Jane was, "How can we move from just a cognitive/head knowledge of the Atonement, to it affecting our hearts?" In other words, how does the resurrection change my life more than the simple fact that I believe a city called Paris exists? One answer given was that it how you understand the atonement will necessarily condition how it changes your life.
- Jesse shared an analogy of a kaleidescope: The atonement is an amazingly beautiful and intricate event, and we can examine how it works from the outside, like looking at a kaleidescope. But the point isn't to be able to understand how a kaleidescope works, but rather to enjoy looking through it, and marveling at the beauty. Also, depending on what light you point the kaleidescope at, and how you move it, you will get different beautiful pictures. If you look at the atonement in different ways, different aspects will be emphasized.
- We also referenced the Emergent Village Atonement Metaphor Competition winners, which can be found here

Of course, there was much (MUCH) more shared, asked and answered, but this is a start. Again, please feel free to comment and recall aspects of the conversation that particularly stuck out to you, or perhaps questions that are still lingering.

Just Clarifying...

To make a correction on Eve's posting, we will be meeting at the Global Gallery Cafe location in German Village. They have reserved a table space for our group, so if you are the first one there, go ahead, be bold!, and claim it!

The address is:
German Village
190 East Whittier St.
Columbus, Ohio
Phone: 614/444-5945

If you have questions, need help with directions, need a ride, etc: please email, and I'd be more than happy to help you out!

See you tomorrow at 3pm!