Advent: Joy

Hey all,

I wanted to go ahead and get a digital version of our time together up on the blog for everybody to peruse. I have really enjoyed taking in each others' responses, and I hope you will too.

For those who weren't able to make it, we spent some time discussing various perspectives on what 'joy' might be. For many of us, the word itself feels sort of antiquated; it's not one that we toss around in everyday conversation very often. What does it mean that Jesus' coming to our world brought joy? It seems that in contrast to the fleeting nature of 'happiness', 'joy' inherently has an element of fulfillment... that when we experience joy we're communing with the core of who/what God created us to be and take in. It comes in myriad moments and forms. It seems to be independent of happiness, quite often. It can also be a mindset and/or discipline (see the previous post by Carrie).

We then shifted our discussion to Rob Bell's Jesus is Difficult: Beatifully Angry sermon. We spent some time recounting Rob's point about how identifying the things in the world that make us beautifully angry can often give us insight into how God wired us individually and what he wants us to address in this world. Ultimately it seems that when we identify and address the things that make us angry, we end up finding another way to create and experience joy/fulfillment for ourselves and the people around us.

We wrapped up the evening with an "ideation session." The session progressed through three questions, the results of which are reproduced in the images below. [click to enlarge]

1. How have you/do you experience joy?


2. What makes you [beautifully] angry?


3. What are you going to do with your beautiful anger to find/create joy?

Progression of Community

Hey everybody,

I was reflecting on Sunday's conversation regarding the first installment of Rob Bell's Jesus Is Difficult series on Gossip, and I had some thoughts/questions I'd like to throw out to the group...


We've touched on these ideas before, but I want open up the discussion again on our [Emerging Desert's] progression of community. One thing that struck me about the conversation on Sunday (or the portion I was able to observe) was that a number of people identified the assumption of closeness in Rob's main points. That is to say, his teaching about how to deal with conflict and thus gossip hinged on an assumption of relational maturity or closeness. I think we have/are/will continue to witness a beautiful evolution of community within EmDes, but I still sense that there is plenty of ground to cover in deepening our relationships. Or to frame it another way, Rob's talk about conflict resolution, etc. made me wonder if we, as a community, are deep enough into each other's lives to even merit that depth of conflict resolution if one should arise (which really hasn't yet to my knowledge). Does that even make sense?

To offer an answer to my own silly question: I think we're getting there. Like I said, a number of us have committed to doing this journey together, and much progress has been made. But we still have a way to go, I think. So I guess the wrap-up questions are these:

- Is our ongoing progression of community something that simply takes time (so we should just keep doing what we're doing), OR is there some increased level of intentionality that would be good for us to collectively put into action?

- If we lean towards "doing more," what would that look like for us as a group? Of course there's a individual aspect to all of this, but should we add an element to our weekly gatherings in which we some how make ourselves more known to each other (whatever that might mean), or would that feel too forced?

Any and all thoughts are greatly welcome!

What's Coming Up + VOTE For Our Next Read

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Alrighty, we are about to finish off Siljander's A Deadly Misunderstanding, which brings us to a transition of sorts. Last week, Sarah G-ski offered the excellent idea of mixing things up and using a podcast medium to guide our discussion for a few weeks while we sort out our next collective book. Based on the positive response from everybody, we're going to go ahead with that approach.

The podcast that's been selected is Rob Bell's four-part teaching series titled "Jesus is Difficult," which he delivered to Mars Hill a few years ago.

In the meantime, based on last week's discussion I have placed a poll here on the blog in the upper right-hand corner. Please cast your vote for one of the following books:

The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See
by Richard Rohr

Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging & Traditional
by Jim Belcher

No Gathering This Week & THE NEW BOOK!

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ALRIGHT!! Just to get it up here on the blog as well... There will be no gathering tomorrow (Sun. July 5th) due to rampant out-of-town-ness and holidays, etc.

We will be meeting next week out in Gilbert for our final week of free-flow conversation before we dig into our new discussion book. (Heather's dad, Bryan, is graciously opening up his house + pool for our cohort while we allow the Schroeder's a chance to get their feet under themselves following their travels). More details to come...

Speaking of our new book - it's been decided!:

A Deadly Misunderstanding by Mark D. Siljander

After 20 votes (way to go everybody!), Siljander's book came out on top by a narrow two-vote margin. So, if you're interested in reading along with the cohort, go ahead and pick-up/order your copy soon as we plan to kick-off the book discussion during our July 19th gathering.

It also seems like it would make sense to declare Bell & Golden's, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, our "next-next" book so that we won't have to go through this whole process again in a few months:-) Objections/comments?

See you next week in Gilbert!