I'll be blogging here

(though it may not seem like it) as well as here http://blogsdiscipleshistory.org/

While you're at it, check out our newly redesigned website at www.discipleshistory.org

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sitz im leben blogeschichte

Having caught your attention with the title for this post, I want to raise a question and then return to a fine Saturday with the family.

Blogging is a curious thing, isn't it. Reading what some people put on their blogs, (or what I put on my own for that matter) I often wonder what is going through their heads. Why write this or that? Why not write something else or another thing? Why this quote or that blurb, or this clip from Youtube or that illustration or picture? Why include these links to websites or blogs? What is the sitz im leben (the situation in life) which gives rise to blogging?

And furthermore, why put such on the internet so everyone, their sister and the dog can read it? And even beyond that, why do we read this stuff that everyone, their sister and the dog blog about?

What is that prompts people to blog what they blog, and what is it about blogging that makes us read them, or worse, subscribe to them?

No answers this cool(er) afternoon in Middle Tennessee, just questions. Don't waste your time trying to deconstruct the title of this post; or, even better, have fun trying to deconstruct the title of this post.

Hello again

Having taken a late-spring and all-summer hiatus, I am nearly ready to resume my (acutely) occasional blogging.

I've got some news to recap, a few thoughts percolating, and more installments on the way for my on-going Stone-Campbell and family history series. There might be an occasional comment from my new study of Romans I began at Central Church last week. Then there's some family news as well. But for now, since I've got two research projects underway, let me finish those and we'll see what blogs forth.

So, my faithful readers, both of you, check back in a week or so and I'll have something for you then.

grace and peace

theologically vapid ditties

Yes I'm still alive, though you wouldn't know it from reading this blog. Chalk it up to a new job, finishing out a summer semester, starting a fall semester with two courses (haven't done that in a long long time, like before the children were born), and my ambivalence about blogging in general. I'm still not completely sold on this blogging stuff; I've read too many blogs that tell way too much (descriptions of bodily functions), say very little of substance (I have enough daily minutiae in my own life, why would I want to read about yours?), or are just down-right narcissistic (after all, my blog is all about me, isn't it, well isn't it?). Maybe I just need to read different blogs. Maybe I need to drop the cynicism.

Anyhow, so long July, August and September, it was nice while it lasted. I'm not rehashing what happened to us. Suffice it to say that we are all well in the Ice household, and for that I am daily grateful.

So what brings me back? The title says it all; I just had to call your attention to Chris Cotten's latest post. Well put! http://ccotten.wordpress.com/. Chris is a new colleague at Lipscomb.

I notice that Blogger is going to a new format. I'm going to switch over primarily because it supports a private-blog feature. I'd like to use that for friends and family and post pictures there. Looking over my shoulder while I type is fine, but I don't want the world peeking through our family pictures. So, friends and family, look for an announcement about how you can subscribe to it. The rest of you will have to be content with this theologically vapid blog.

I've also got new links to add, and I want to return to some of those posting projects I announced on this blog about 27 years ago. But if past performance is any indicator, then you'll believe it when you see it, right?

Grace and peace.

Tag

Having traced my way back through many of the tags that preceded mine (back to Chad, Travis, Krister and others), I am struck by how similar we are, and how unique we are. We have much in common: common concerns, common interests, common experiences, common educational and minsterial backgrounds and training, and common friends. So, I've come up with a little tag of my own. We'll see where it goes, but I'm thinking primarily of those bloggers who are in their 20's-30's, CoC folk, emerging student-leaders of the next generation of our inherited Reformation movement. In other words, those who have been recently tagged by the round of questions I answered for myself below. I've appreciated reading several blogs. Sometime I'd like to meet you bloggers face to face. Maybe this tag will give us a open door to start the conversation.

Here goes:

Three reasons you stay in Churches of Christ:
1. We want to be Christ's church and we take our discipleship seriously
2. Relationships
3. This is my heritage: I have been nurtured in faith in this group and want to stay in order to contribute as I have received.

Three reasons you would leave Churches of Christ:
1. We have too often settled for sectarianism in lieu of genuine undenominational, organic Christianity.
2. We have not sustained well a healthy, constructive, self-critical view of ourselves.
3. We have not tolerated well honest dissent and challenge; neither have we always dissented or challenged well.

Three professors and/or courses who have influenced your thinking:
1. Randy Harris (Systematic Biblical Doctrine and Christian Mind and Devotional Life, both undergradute)
2. John Mark Hicks (Systematic Theology and Theological Hermeneutics, both graduate, and lots of Chinese food)
3. Gary Holloway (Restoration Movement and Hebrews-Jude, both graduate)

Three academic books which have shaped your thinking:
1. Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology
2. Luke Timothy Johnson, Scripture and Discernment
3. Gabriel Fackre, The Christian Story

Three CoC/Stone-Campbell books which have shaped your thinking:
1. Richard Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith
2. Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement
3. Tie: Thomas H. Olbricht, Hearing God's Voice and K. C. Moser, The Way of Salvation

Three hopes you have for the future of Churches of Christ:
1. That we will increase in love
2. That we will increase in being missional
3. That we will critically embrace and continue our heritage of simple Christianity

Three fears you have for Churches of Christ:
1. Having abandoned love, that we will miss the heart of God
2. Having abandoned our mission, that we will turn inward
3. Having abandoned our heritage, that we will become sectarian

Three challenges we will face in Churches of Christ in our generation:
1. Will we be politcial church or a church of disciples. We will sort out our faith in the midst of our national and world climate in some way. The question is, how and how well?
2. We will wrestle with gender and sexuality issues; again, how and how well?
3. We will wrestle with being missional in our postmodern context.

Three bloggers you tag:
1. Chad
2. Mark
3. Travis

Tone of voice

contributes significantly to conversation and communication. So does body-language, inflection, gestures and, most of all, the presence of another person. This is the down-side of blogging. All of these things have to be supplied. I supply them for the blogs I read; and you are doing it right now.

Now, a couple of observations: for all the talk about how "community" is now emerging into digital realms...it seems to me that, for all the benefits of blogs like this and others, there is a fundamental built-in limitation: the all-pervasive and essential human element. No matter how you cut it, we are still typing at each other instead of talking. The dynamic is much the same as it was when we sent folded paper letters in envelopes, or when we faxed, or or or... You get the point. The human element can only come through to a certain extent even in the best of digital, online blogger realms. Another observation, or rather, a question: are we any better off for it? Really, are we?

It seems the technology (cliche alert) is indeed driving us apart. Who knows how many people are nightly, by themselves, typing a conversation into a computer monitor, like me, (or reading one, like you) and in the process something is lost.

Hopefully in the midst of all this fantastic technology we will not surrender that which makes community community: people. Online IM, chatting, blogs, email, whatever, are poor substitutes for the real thing. Were you to hear my tone of voice, which you can't, (you have to supply it remember)you would have heard it rise a little, with a touch of angst and a furled brow for good measure. Got the picture in your head? I think I've made my point.

On that note, greetings to all those of you with whom I have shared many a conversation, and to those of you I have yet to have coffee with..to you,

Grace and peace (typed for now, one day face-to-face).

And so to bed.