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What I'm Reading This Week: The Gospel of Mark, Habits of Heart by Robert Belah et. al What I'm Listening To This Week: Cake, Peter Gabriel, Fountains of Wayne, Flaming Lips, Nada Surf, The Royal Tenebaums Soundtrack

"Last night while we were kickboxing a blonde girl behind me said "hey i like your shirt...armadillos" . i think armadillos have a mysterious ability to unite people. they're a common thread, they're like history...people just know, you don't have to say anything....just let the word roll of your tongue: armadillo. beautiful. it was just another tuesday night. my name, is sharon." - Sharon of Seattle

What I'm Reading This Week: The Gospel of Mark, Subversive Spirituality by Eugene Peterson and Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas What I'm Listening To This Week: Cake, Better Than Ezra, The Strokes, Peter Gabriel, The Who, David Crowder Band

Oh where has all my free time to read and write gone?

A post for my Christian Education class regarding "Organizing and Reorganizing in the Church". By the very nature of being an "organization" . . . in theory at least . . . it should be organic in nature. To be a healthy organization, it has to be a healthy organism, which means that it has to grow, change, evolve, progress, etc. The tendency for many organizations is to stay rooted in the status quo. Because when we get good at something, we don't want to change it. But as the Body of Christ, we should always be "on our toes" so to speak. Mobile and ready to move in whatever direction the Spirit leads. But the tendency is to remain rigid and set which makes it a tad more difficult to go with the direction of the wind that the Spirit of the Lord blows. Let alone properly hear what the Spirit is speaking. But if are churches and CE ministries are truly organic, then we will leave open enough space for the Spirit of God to constantly be moving, thus requiring us to organize and reorganize. Realizing that our organizing things is only a means to an end of being more efficient at our mission and not an end in and of itself. Our tendency to stay rooted in our current organizational model, in a sense becomes dead weight. When the time does come to move and reorganize (and that time will come), we might be so weighed down at the time with the current structure that we couldn't change if we wanted too. The church, as well as individual believers should always be a symbol of continuity and change, calmness and chaos. We should always be rooted in constancy and be a people in flux. Changing and staying the same. Its a paradox worth considering. Of course this isn't a cut and dry process. In fact it can actually be a messy process. If we are truly going to be an organic organism (say that 10x's fast), then that means that we always won't be progressing and growing. But sometimes we'll fall back and in a sense, atrophy. Which makes it all the more important for us to be ready to reogranize when the time comes. Its messy, but a task worth undertaking. As a side note, wouldn't it be great if we were so in tune with the Spirit and free from rigidity that we could almost be ahead of the curve and of change. Most of the time, we are forced to reorganize only after we've been backed into a corner because of lack of foresight and wisdom. Wouldn't it be great if we could be "ahead of the curve"? That we could see the need to reorganize before it was even fully upon us?

I refuse to close my eyes, To the bidding of the night.