Wednesday, March 23, 2011

brick-a-brack 23/03/11




Management 1.0 was built to encourage reliability, predictability, discipline, alignment and control. These will always be important organizational virtues, but in most industries, getting better at these things won’t yield much of an upside.  That’s why our management systems need to be re-engineered around the goals of adaptability, innovation, engagement and accountability—which brings us back to the issue of leadership.


Monday, March 21, 2011

Ancient Greek Poetry?

John Hobbins of Ancient Hebrew Poetry takes a break from Hebrew to give us a schooling in translating the NT.
Is it hard to translate the gospel of John? Not really. Its diction in the original is clean and terse. The author relies on a bundle of bright oppositions expressed through cascades of words that repeat. A faithful translator does well to mirror such in translation. Why do so many modern translations take away from the text by adding to it? Why set aside repetends and parallelisms in the source text if they can be reproduced? It boggles the mind.
Interesting how the comments completely ingnore the issue of translation and get stuck into arguing about  universalism and evangelicalism, go figure.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Church is just a Funeral Society

Thanks to Pam for pointing out this excellent article from a Lutheran perspective on funeral societies, missional church, Bonhoeffer, and death. Some excerts below, you really need to read the whole thing though.

For centuries, Christian community, organized as a funeral society of a higher order, has played on the natural fear of mortality, even hyped that fear as a motive for Christian life “so that we can go to heaven when we die.” That was the “attraction.” But with humankind’s coming of age, the jig is up. Religion cannot prey on human weakness this way any longer. . .

If we are to continue in Christianity in this religionless new age, then, we are going to have reconceive our relationship to death and understand it once again as the Pauline power that overwhelms and corrupts the creation, which in turn waits in eager longing for the redemption of our bodies in the revelation of the glorious liberty of the children of God. . .

The handful of strident, fire-and-brimstone religionists who sense this breach from our religious past and loudly still try to terrorize people into heaven above only reinforces the vast majority in their secularism. Easy, indeed, when the alternative to dying naturally is to live life now by flattering a divine Egotist who eternally tortures those who don’t pay the bribe of living “religiously.” . . .
I just wish I had the time to respond to such a stimulating article, I'll be printing it out and chewing on it some more anyway. Let me know what you think.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Olsen Defines Fundamentalism

Words are slippery characters, but I think Olsen's definition of fundamentalism as he applies it to other Christians is very helpful:
Today fundamentalism seems to be defined two ways: 1) by a certain ethos or attitude with regard to doctrinal differences, and 2) by the doctrine and practice of “biblical separation” which really means “secondary separation.” First, fundamentalism appears whenever Christians elevate what have usually been considered secondary doctrinal matters to the status of litmus tests of authentic Christian faith; second, it appears whenever Christians refuse to have Christian fellowship with those who they believe are tainted by secularism or liberalism.

From this comment on this post.

Narrative Context and Character Formation


Thanks to David J on Facebook!  From here.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Worship Wars in The Cafeteria of Life

Thanks to DP for pointing to this provocative "rant from a loser in the worship wars", well worth a read and uncannily appropriate given the Sacred Sandwich cartooon for today:

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Why Evolution Is Bad For Humanity

Thanks to Phil on Facebook, dedicated to Jim West.
"Time is the only thing between cats and opposable thumbs . . . "


Jesus treats the Syrophoenecian Woman as a Disciple

[This is an extract from my essay "Breaking Bread: The Power of Hospitality in the Gospel of Mark" which you can read in full and ...