ken wilson online

Just heard from Thomas Nelson that Barnes & Noble’s promotion of Jesus Brand Spirituality is June 3 – 13th.  It involves placing the book on the “New Hardcover Arrivals” in their “Top A stores.”  I guess that means bigger stores or whatever. Top A because they have Jesus Brand Spirituality on the table, perhaps? So do what you can to calm the rioting mobs who may have been expecting it out there on May 27.

Prepare yourself for an ordeal. Heh-heh. That’s what the author of one of the books that made it into the almost canon said to those wishing to serve the Lord. What kind of ordeal? The ordeal of community, family, relationships, of being together with others, in, say, a church, or at work, or in a neighborhood, or any other gathering of humans together with other humans. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together says that the enemy of community is the ideal of community. Striving for the ideal community kills the real one. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, ye who may be drawn to pastoral ministry by the longing to escape the real community for the ideal one. Exchanging the pursuit of the real God for an ideal one.
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That’s daughter Judy, the first confirmed purchaser of the book from a bookstore (Barnes & Noble at Union Square, in Manhattan.) I’m told by Thomas Nelson that this is the day the book will be found on the “new arrivals” table in all the Barnes and Noble stores nationwide. Not sure if that is the table in the front of the store or by the religion section. Either way, a fortunate selection as I’m not a well known writer. I think much credit is due the design team at Nelson, led by Greg Maclachlan who developed the cover of the book. Barnes & Noble has it on the display table for two weeks, I understand. If it sells well enough, they may extend the table time, which is what one wants.  If you wish to do me a favor, purchase it from a Barnes & Noble store sometime in the next two weeks. You could, for example, take the next two weeks off and travel to as many states as possible purchasing books from as many stores as possible. Or not. Having written it, I’d like it to sell more rather than less. I’m finding the whole book writing business much changed since the last book I wrote several years ago, before the Internet had such an impact.
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Frederick Buechner has a little devotional reading do-jobby titled, Listening to Your Life. As though your life is telling a story, and you’re both a participant in the story and audience to it. So while you’re in the middle of living your life, listen to it as well. Because maybe God is in there playing hide and seek.
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In one of my other lives, I serve as regional underseer of the Great Lakes Region of Vineyard Churches–about 114 churches in all. We had our regional conference in Cincinatti last week–hence my blogging silence. A wonderful time. We had nearly 200 more in attendance than our previous regional conference, always a good sign. The theme of the conference was 4Ward ’till Kingdom Come, because the theology of the kingdom is the treasure buried in the field of the Vineyard.
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Sure, Mothers Day is probably the invention of the florists and the candy makers.
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How do we know what we know? That’s the concern of epistemology. Now, forget the word, epistemology, as I only used it because it starts with an “e” and so fits “it’s the economy, stupid.” But it’s one of those underlying currents behind all the flailing about in the religious and secular and evangelical world these days: how do we know what we know? I got to thinking about it after reading today’s entry in David Crumm’s Read the Spirit. I confess I was tuning in to Read the Spirit this morning because they did an interview with me yesterday as Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back is finding its way into the bookstores. David Crumm interviewed Christine Wicker who noted that Southern Baptists are seeing a decline in baptisms, and that the president of the Southern Baptists think it’s due in part to Christians being viewed as “mean spirited.” Wicker also mentioned a Southern Baptist preacher who is now preaching universalism, the view that nobody goes to hell–all, in the end, are saved. It does get your head spinning, these currents.
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Something wonderful is happening, driven by a sense of desperate need.  Secular scientists are recognizing the need to reach out to people of faith, especially people of evangelical faith, in order to bridge the cultural divide that is now hindering our capacity to respond in love and wisdom to the global environmental crisis.  And people of evangelical faith are open.  They are willing to engage people of science.  Because God is a myth busting God, and a God who likes to shake things up.  All this wonderful turbulence and cultural quaking left me sitting in a large meeting room at Ohio State University–excuse me, The Ohio State University–with about 15 scientists, professors of astronomy, environmental science, biology, mostly, and 15 evangelical pastors and leaders.  And I must say, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in the room with us.
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