The Center for Progressive Christianity has produced something called “A Joyful Path,” but it seems more geared toward churches than homeschool families. (We’re actually going to start using “A Joyful Path” with the kids in Open Hearts Gathering.)

Chris Smith pointed me to Peter Enns’ book Telling God’s Story (with teaching and student guides) and, from the same publisher, The Story of the World series. Chris uploaded his review of Enns’ book to the Englewood website.

Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, from Seattle, replied: “When we homeschooled, we brewed our own. Godly Play + Howard Zinn + Paulo Freire + Gloria Anzáldua + bell hooks + unschooling. Our daughter has been in public school for six months now, after four years of homeschooling. She had some struggle with some of the way the school did the academics. However, her teachers and fellow classmates know her as a compassionate, cooperative, justice-seeking student. She could speak with pride and authority about her Puerto Rican/Latino heritage, and, better yet, out of a group of 50+ kids (3rd, 4th and 5th graders) she was the only one who knew and could speak about Bob Marley and reggae music.”

One person suggested Waldorf Schools homeschool material.

Chris Hill, from Albuquerque, replied: “I use a standardized form of academic curriculum, and the progressive Christian part is when I have real discussions about spirituality, religion and Christianity (including the philosophical, theological, and historical) with my kids. Believe it or not, we have several discussions a day that pretty much naturally occur. I do most of the initiating, and my oldest brings things up from time to time. I offer my input, others’ input in terms of possibilities, and encourage my kids to think deeply, but not to fret. Life is more about growing into a fuller sense of Self than it is ‘getting it right.’”

Does any of this help you? Do you know of other resources that you’d suggest adding to this list? Please post in the comments!

This gorgeous left/right brain artwork has been floating around the Web for several months now. It’s apparently from an ad campaign by Mercedes-Benz, but the Benz logo has been creatively cropped out to just leave this sort of colorful infographic. Lately I’ve been thinking about creativity and intuition — left brain, right brain, and … gut.

Left
I love what Seth Barnes says, “Life is complicated and busy and needs more parties. I think God loves them. I think heaven is a party. Parties let you switch off the left brain and open up your spirit.”

Right
Daniel Pink has written provocatively about “Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future“:

“If the Industrial Age was built on people’s backs, and the Information Age on people’s left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people’s right hemispheres. We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we are progressing yet again – to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern-recognizers, and meaning-makers.”

Gut
I was recently reminded of this hilarious exchange between Stephen Colbert and President George W. Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Jump to 3:09 when Colbert explains how he and Bush are not “members of the Factinista” but rather go with their guts:

Ironically, there is research — in a book and in Scientific American — that seems to support Mr. Colbert’s comedic claim:

“An often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts … is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our ‘second brain.’ … The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system.”

What I find fascinating is that Michael Gershon, an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology, says this: “The second brain doesn’t help with the great thought processes … religion, philosophy and poetry is left to the brain in the head.”

Why isn’t religion more intuitive? Why don’t we go with our gut more often than our head? Is it simply just another consequence of The Enlightenment? What is your gut telling you?

Bonus Points
One of the most creative people I’ve ever met, former Disney imagineer McNair Wilson, posted a great list of descriptions for both left and right brains — along with two more beautiful left/right brain images to go with the one posted above.

Here’s more right/left brain stuff from ChurchCrunch.

Alternate title: Should We Collaborate or Should We Not Now? (to the tune of The Clash)

There’s been some interesting online conversation lately about the subject of collaboration — both pro and con, interestingly enough.

Pro
Joe Boyd points to this video as an example of what one can accomplish together, rather than alone:

While it’s a clever idea for performing a song, I’m not sure this is indicative of the kind of collaboration most of us will be doing in our lifetimes.

Con
From his creative enclave in Singapore, Fernando Gros points to a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, entitled “The Rise of the New Groupthink.” In it, Cain makes this statement:

“Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.”

To this, Fernando adds his own thoughts:

“The hard slog of creating, innovating and thinking is something we largely do alone. … It worries me that in many parts of society, including schools, we are not encouraging people to develop the skills required to work alone, for extended periods of time, on complex problems.

“In fact, I do believe there is something like a cult of collaboration, especially in tech and startup circles; the notion that no good idea can come from one person alone.

“It’s important not to get sucked into this. We do need other people in order to amplify our ideas at some point. But, if you are a creative person, an artist, musician, photographer or writer, you do not have to wait for a collaborator to show up before you start work on a project, or strive to perfect your craft.

“You can just go for it. Moreover, you can go a long, long way alone. In fact, if you can go it alone, you’ll have far more to offer your collaborators when you finally start working with them.”

I think Fernando’s advice is right on, and even though he (and Joe Boyd) self-identify as introverts and I’m an extreme (off the charts) extrovert, I too have found that working alone — from my home office here in Charlotte, when I’m not on the road — has given me space to do some deeper and more creative thinking. I can’t say that I’ve solved any of the huge, complex problems facing the Church (yet), but I am deeply grateful to have the kind of space I have in order to do the kind of work I’m doing — and for the great colleagues around the country that I then get to collaborate with.

What about you? Do you agree that having quiet space to create is essential? Or do you prefer to work closely with others? What are you working on that you just need to “go for it” and collaborate with others later?

Doug invited me on to discuss a new report released last week from the Johns Hopkins Non-Profit Economic Data Project that shows how non-profit organizations have outpaced for-profit companies over the past decade (2000-2010) in terms of job creation. Here’s how the conversation went:

I was particularly interested in how this new data shows the success that the non-profit sector has had over the past 10 years, even during the three main years of recession (2007-2009), adding jobs at a rate of 1.9% per year while the for-profit world shrank by 3.7% year over year during the same period. Today, the non-profit sector is the third largest employer in the U.S., with 10.7 million workers.

As someone who has worked in the non-profit world for the past 15 years, I am not surprised to see the data reveal that non-profits are creating more jobs than for-profits. Recently a reliable source confirmed for me that more than 500 new U.S. non-profit (501c3) organizations focused (in some way, shape or form) on addressing sex trafficking were created in just one year alone (2010). Those new non-profits no doubt employ people, in order to do the good work they are setting out to do (locally, nationally, or internationally).

It’s worth noting that this kind of “cause d’jour” proliferation of non-profit work is actually leading some leaders to suggest we need fewer non-profit organizations rather than more — fewer organizations that collaborate more/better with each other.

Churches vs. Non-Profits
Related to this whole conversation is the parallel story that the most common organizational form/financial structure for Christian churches in the U.S. has become increasingly unsustainable. Going the way of the dinosaur are churches of 50-100 people with full-time paid staff and large, inefficient buildings to maintain.

At the upcoming Funding the Missional Church conference in Minneapolis, speakers such as Bob Carlton will be discussing what churches can learn from successful non-profits about telling a compelling story, casting an inspiring vision, and engaging people in participation in the work of the ministry.

Where Are the Church Jobs?
A third conversation related to all this is being generated by people like Ryan Kemp-Pappan around holding denominational systems accountable for convincing women and men (especially young adults) to rack up enormous financial debt for going through seminary, doing unpaid internships, etc. — in order to attain the prize of a full-time paid ministry job at the end of the rainbow.

The argument is that the institutional church has made a promise to these folks and that promise includes gainful employment that will allow them to get out of debt, if not right away at least eventually. But the reality is the cost of higher education is putting everyone deeper and deeper into the hole, and the church ministry jobs that were supposed to be there when they got out of seminary (and through all the hoops) simply aren’t there.

My Presbyterian Church (USA) friends Landon Whitsitt and Carol Howard Merritt have already addressed this question to some degree already. I was slightly encouraged to hear Craig Van Gelder from Luther Seminary in the Twin Cities confess last week: “We’ve done a lot to address student debt, mostly by blaming the student. The problem is not the student, the problem is us.”

Much more has been said and will need to be said about this. Seminaries are an industry in the midst of deep change too.

At the risk of being accused of promoting a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” philosophy, I will say that seminary graduates (and others) will need to become a lot more entrepreneurial and create opportunities for themselves, rather than wait for opportunities to be handed to them. My advice: Create a position for yourself rather than waiting for someone else to hire you. Or, to put it another way: Spend less time searching the employment listings and more time creating your own business ministry plan.

Chris recently began hosting TLDR (The LockerGnome Daily Report), which streams live from his home office in Seattle and is then edited into short segments for broadcast on his YouTube channel. It’s an innovative use of live streaming and recorded Web video, and his ability to produce voluminous (and consistently good) content is impressive.

Recently, Chris posted this delicious morsel from TLDR, calling on his audience to help him craft the content for the daily show and making some salient points about how online content will be shaped now and in the future.

As someone who is very much interested in the intersection of TV and social media, Chris’ comments in this video are very intriguing to me: “This is a television show. … Watch it wherever, dude, I don’t care. You can watch it on a real TV set, a piece of hardware, or a smaller screen. It doesn’t matter. Television is, to me, anymore (sic) an ethereal concept.”

This seems to jive pretty well with the NPR report I heard recently about the recent changes to YouTube to ramp up millions of channels on YouTube to compete with traditional broadcast and cable TV.

Check out Chris’ thoughts on the future of TV and content curation: “Curation is the next level for publishing. You! You are the next level”:

Check out my recent thoughts on content curation.

Check out my YouTube channel, which I’m going to be giving some more love in 2012.

Now if I could just get my own damn TV to connect to the Internet so I could watch YouTube …

Is your TV connected to the Internet yet? Why or why not? Do you agree or disagree with Chris Pirillo? Or what’s your YouTube channel? Share in the comments!

Back in December, the conversation was around the terms “incarnational” vs. “missional” for the type of ministry we’re talking about in the emerging church. I had the privilege of doing that first experimental #missionalchat with Kathy Escobar, co-pastor of The Refuge and author of Down We Go: Living Into the Wild Ways of Jesus.

Afterward, Kathy was kind enough to join me for a short Skype videochat interview, to continue the conversation from our online Twitter chat and to talk more about the themes in her book and the kind of ministry she is committed to modeling for others. One of my favorite quotes from Kathy in this interview is this: “To me, downward mobility is not really about money. It’s about this attitude of the heart.”

Here’s my interview with Kathy Escobar (the lighting wasn’t great on Kathy’s end, but the conversation was enlightening!):

I’m going to be doing another #missionalchat tonight at 9pm ET with Anthony Smith, a.k.a. Postmodernegro. There’s no one I can think of who most embodies the ongoing spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his prophetic speech and pastoral ministry, than Anthony.

Anthony, Rod Garvin, and I did a podcast together several years ago entitled “Practicing Pentecost” for the Wired Parish network. Anthony’s writing has developed a faithful audience on his own blog, as well as through his contributions to several Emergent books, including An Emergent Manifesto of Hope and The Justice Project.

Anthony and his wife Toni are lead organizers of the Mission House community in Salisbury, NC, and I’m grateful to Anthony for his ongoing role on the Leadership Team for TransFORM Network.

I’m excited to focus our #missionalchat tonight on what the missional church must learn from the teaching and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Please join us on Twitter tonight from 9-10pm!

Have thoughts to share on Dr. King and the missional church? Have questions for Anthony Smith (@postmodernegro)? Please tweet using hashtag #missionalchat!

cross-posted from Emergent Village Voice

My kids have read far more of the best-selling young adult fiction books than I’ve read (or even seen the movie adaptations of) the best-selling adult non-fiction and fiction books. The Wimpy Kid and Hunger Games books are both popular in the Knight household, that’s for sure.

What I Read in 2011
I did read some really good books in 2011 (not all published in 2011), and here’s a rundown of the ones I would definitely recommend (in no particular order):

Down We Go: Living Into the Wild Ways of Jesus by Kathy Escobar – more here

Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love by Mark Scandrette – more here

Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All by Landon Whitsitt – more here

Journey in the Wilderness: New Life for Mainline Churches by Gil Rendle – more here

The Church Is Flat: The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church Movement by Tony Jones – more here

Toward a Hopeful Future: Why the Emergent Church Is Good News for Mainline Congregations by Phil Snider and Emily Bowen

A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith by Brian McLaren

Poke The Box by Seth Godin

My Top Pick of 2011
But my pick for best book of 2011 would have to be …

Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me by Ian Morgan Cron

Subtitled “A memoir … of sorts,” Ian’s second book (Chasing Francis was his first) is the powerful true story of his own childhood, growing up in the northeast with a mostly absentee father — who just happened to work for the CIA. True story. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s just an amazing read. But I’m not doing justice to how great this book is, so go read the review by David Zimmerman, who sums it up with this: “We join Cron in his search for a safe home, a caring father, redemption from a deeply scarred past, even though his story is entirely unique; it is in fact through his unique story that his readers are graced with a fundamental truth of the universe: love always stoops, and faith always jumps.”

Yeah. That’s good.

For something a little serious, check out this clip of Ian doing a reading at megachurch Willow Creek Community Church. Or for a good laugh, watch Ian doing a reading from the book at an Evening of Stories at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville:

That hopeful note is followed by a description of the kind of religion Weiner would like to see in the world (and particularly the United States):

“We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.”

I would like to suggest to Weiner — were we sitting together at Starbucks or Caribou having a conversation over a cup of joe — that for more than a decade, the emerging missional church movement has been seeking to agitate for and begin to construct such a path. My friends and colleagues who have been the architects and thought leaders of this movement may not be so bold as to claim that title or status as “the Steve Jobs of religion,” but I’d like to be bold enough to say that Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, and Peter Rollins (among others) have each, in their own way, played this role to some extent.^*

Besides acknowledging the Jobs-like work that has already been done, I’m beyond ecstatic to hear this clarion call from a self-described “None” for “a religious operating system” that will serve both the Nones/Unaffiliated and the rest of us. This is what fuels the work I’m doing with Hope Partnership for Missional Transformation and TransFORM Network.

And I’d like to suggest that faith leaders — from across denominations and traditions — need to begin reflecting deeply on this idea of participation. What Weiner calls “highly interactive” and “experimental.” It’s essentially the same message that Landon Whitsitt wrote about earlier this year in his book Open Source Church, and it’s an idea that Dr. Ryan Bolger, from Fuller Theological Seminary, has been playing with recently, as well (see video below).

In an interview with Luther Seminary, Bolger suggests^** that we are now living in a post-postmodern era that is characterized primarily by the participatory nature of the Internet and technology culture that has shaped it:

Bolger says, “The shift from postmodernity to participatory culture means people find their identity through what they create as opposed to maybe what they consume. … Our churches are still structured in such a way that we do it to them, not inviting them to create worship with us. So, if that’s the case, there’s really no space for people who’ve been formed by our participatory culture in our churches.”

Bolger’s provocative comments, coupled with Whitsitt’s book and Weiner’s op-ed in the Times, beg the question: Who will create the religious communities of the future that will engage participatory people?

That’s a revolution I want to be a part of.

^* Yes, I’m very aware that these are all white males, and that has been the legacy of the first 10 years of the emerging missional church movement. The next 10-20 years promise to be far more rich and diverse, with broader participation from women and people of color as this leveling of hierarchies provides greater opportunity for developing platforms for greater influence. Stay tuned …

^** Forgive me, Dr. Bolger, if I’m putting words in your mouth! I think my interpretation of what is said in the video interview is accurate, but it is my interpretation and may not reflect the actual views held by Dr. Bolger. In other words, results may vary.

One of these other challenges is what Richard Beck talks about in his book Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality (2011, Wipf and Stock). In short, it’s the age-old debate about Christ and culture — and how far the Church should go in its engagement with “the world.”

If you’re a recovering evangelical (post-evangelical?) like me, the struggle Beck unpacks in Unclean is a familiar one. It’s the same thing Tony Jones talks about in his new book, encouraging us to adopt a theological posture of panentheism. That may be a leap for some people, especially those who’ve grown up in church environments that preached “holiness” as being “set apart” and untainted by the evils of the world (which is, essentially, a posture of “Christ against culture”).

If you’re struggling to adapt your thinking about how to do church in the emerging culture, you may need to consider starting here, with your theology of purity. Richard Beck explains why in this short video:

UPDATE 12/9/2011: Skye Jethani has posted a short excerpt from a sermon he gave recently at Newsong in California, where he makes this insightful statement, which relates to the conversation above about our theology of purity: “We are so focused on trying to change the world that we haven’t let Christ first change how we see the world.” Watch the whole clip:

Bob is someone I appreciate very much, and I’m grateful to call him a friend and a co-conspirator in the missional renaissance that’s taking ahold of the Disciples of Christ. I was honored to help organize the “Missional Church” track at the Disciples’ General Assembly this summer in Nashville, and Bob was one of the practitioners and discussion facilitators who made that time really rich and rewarding for everyone who participated. (Thanks to Dale Lature who captured much of the missional sessions from General Assembly on video, including Bob Cornwall’s table discussion on the second day!)

In this conversation, Bob and I discuss Tony Jones’ new book The Church Is Flat, and Bob unpacks some of the history of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and how it relates to this missional moment we are living in right now.

Without further adieu, here’s my conversation with Bob Cornwall — featuring my snazzy new intro title/music and rolling credits at the end (let me know what you think by leaving a comment below!):