In today’s tough business climate, companies must make wise choices that lead to real growth.  Choosing the right partner to help you make wise choices is critical to your business success.  I can help you see new possibilities for growth, business development and communications that you might not have known were available.

Real partnership begins with listening to you, the client, in order to develop a deep understanding of your concerns and desires for growth.  It then means asking the tough questions about what it means to effectively take care of those concerns.  And finally, it means developing and executing on a project plan that serves to direct development, and keep the project on track.

I also value my customers enough to be honest.  It is important to me to keep my promise to my clients.  In every phase of initial development and through engagement, I will consistently listen to my capacity to provide wisdom and take care of your concerns.  Ultimately I want to provide superior business intelligence and communication expertise.

Cost-Effective Strategies

I’ve also chosen to remain small and nimble, in order to reduce costs and pass those savings onto my clients.  I can also leverage a vast network of technology and creative partners, giving me the capacity to scale to any size project.  This allows me to keep costs low, making it easier for you the client to do more.

It is also my desire to help you make wise decisions with your business development and communication choices. I can help you see possibilities that you might not have known exist, or how to leverage your existing assets to grow your business in new markets.

The complexity of some technologies has also made it simpler to grow your business in a cost-effective way.  From Social Media tools like Twitter and Facebook, to cost effective web development tools, I can help you leverage a digital world to reach new customers.

I Believe:

• in working to build lasting relationships with my clients.
• my clients are passionate about what they do.
• in listening to our clients.
• my work should reflect my clients needs.
• that business development is a craft.
• that communications is an art.
• that results are the measure of my work.

“Ignorance is bliss.” English poet Thomas Gray

Yesterday I tweeted an old thought that came to mind a couple of years ago.  It said, “Which is better, to be happily deceived or disillusioned, yet aware?” So much of my life over the last 10 years has been about wrestling with my own disillusions, yet aware that they exist.

And as I was driving this morning I was thinking there are essentially three approaches to dealing with pain and suffering.  We can simply ignore the pain and suffering, moving through life as happily deceived, yet still suffering under the weight of circumstance.  We can acknowledge it’s existence as though we have no capacity or power to deal with it.  Or we choose to move in through and beyond it by addressing it.

The first option I think is the most common.  It’s just easier to ignore reality, even when it our ignorance is the very thing that fuels that reality’s existence.  The second option is depressive.  To see the problem and resolve the self to the idea that nothing can change is despairing, if not nihilistic.  The third option is to confront the problem causing the pain and suffering.  Yet to do that we have to assume we have the capacity to overcome it.  And unless we see who we really are, as beloved children of God, we likely won’t.

When Jesus said, “Come follow me,” I can’t ignore that it led him to the cross.  But the cross was a waystation.  It wasn’t the final destination.  What if Jesus knew that to get to the other side of pain and suffering we had to go through it.

I’m learning that my ignorance is not bliss.  It’s destructive and painful in all the wrong ways.  It compels me to infinitely poor choices that usually lead to regret.  But when I confront my ignorance and set down my pride, I can usually find my way through.

I was also thinking, “So much of pain and suffering feels like hell.  It feels like walking through the fire.  It feels like separation from God.  Because in the midst of pain and suffering, when I’m ridiculously honest with myself, my heart is crying out, “Where are you God!”  Is it really possible that God could actually forget me.

“When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Isa 43:2

The only way I can discover the other side of the cross is to keep walking towards it.

But as the world begins to read and process the book, something interesting has occurred. The reaction is to throw out an accusation and then instead of dealing with the text, the audience is left wondering about the accusation.  My case in point is the ABC News interview.  The title says, Pastor Claims Hell Does Not Exist, which is a remarkably inflammatory statement, yet Rob Bell doesn’t say that. Rob has an entire chapter on hell in the book.

In fact in the interview with Lisa Miller, he specifically acknowledge the reality of hell, but he redefines it in a way that most people don’t like, because it doesn’t fit with our historic orthodoxy assumptions, which locate hell specifically in the afterlife and with a closed door policy.

The  second MSNBC interview is actually the more inflammatory one.  Martin Bashir, who is normally an exceptional journalist, frames his question in a way that leaves Rob with two options.  Disagree with his book or look like he’s trying argue.  Martin asks him the same question twice, “Is it relevant to how you respond to Christ in this life?”  Rob answers yes…twice. And then Martin Bashir quotes a critic who says, “The use of Scripture is indefensible…That’s true isn’t it?” I was a journalist in college and that’s a terrible way to open a line of questioning.  What’s Rob supposed to do?  Bashir does it again when he says, “You’re creating a Christian message that is warm, kind and popular, for contemporary culture, but it’s frankly, according to this critic, unbiblical and historically unreliable.  That’s true, isn’t it?  You’re amending the Gospel message so it’s palatable.”  How do you answer that?

I like Rob’s answer, which is that our choices matter. And this is Rob Bell’s talent.  He takes our historic understanding and filters it through love and the framework of God’s mission, which is based on the restoration of all things. So what comes out is a restorative approach to the Gospel. And because he operates this way, people accuse him of double speak, or not answering the question.  But what he’s doing is reframing it in new way, and it doesn’t look like what people are expecting.

Tim Chailles states this perfectly when he says in his Amazon review: “Does Rob Bell deny the existence of hell? He would say no. We would say yes. He affirms, but only after redefining. And that’s just a clever form of denial.”

Several times on Twitter I’ve had people say they don’t like him because he denies the Gospel, doesn’t believe in hell, and doesn’t answer the hard questions.  None of which are really accurate.  When I press for examples, I get no response.  The truth is Rob doesn’t answer the questions in a way we like.

The reality is that it’s easier to suggest he’s saying something he’s not, than to deal with what he is saying.  Embracing new ideas is not easy.  Our logic gets deeply embedded into our brains and it actually is biased towards supporting what is already there.  So I get that.

I’m just glad we’re having the conversation that God’s love is bigger than we can imagine.

I have a love/hate relationship with personality tests.

Yesterday I asked the question on Twitter: What would Jesus get on the Myers-Briggs test? I got a lot of responses but they all came out very similar.  Rachel Held Evans summed it up very simply with, “Whatever I got, right? ” She was obviously being humorous, but the problem is that everyone else said the same thing.

The question came out of a late night pub conversation with some friends, and when I asked it out loud, it immediately drew a loud response of laughter.  And in some ways it seemed like the laughter was directed back at us, as if we were all ironically in on the joke. It was like we all knew that Jesus couldn’t be limited by a narrow definition, so why were we trying to do the same for ourselves?

I believe in the power of technology.  But for every invention is an equal and opposite intention.  Technology can be used to captivate as much as it illuminates.  What if the personality test, which has given us a means in which to understand our current personality, has also given us permission to say, “This is just who I am, damn it.  Deal with it.” And by declaring, “This is who I am” we become captivated by a narrow definition of what it means to be human.

I have friends on both sides of the spectrum, introvert and extrovert. And after taking the test, they all say the same thing.  “Oh now I get it.  This is who I am.”  It gives language to what they see every day in their lives.  But I also see it captivate them by giving them permission never to grow.  They get stuck in a definition provided by another human being and then live there…permanently.

I get that completely.  When I first took the test fifteen years ago, I was an INTJ. INTJ’s are described as:

INTJ: Have original minds and great drive for implementing their ideas and achieving their goals. Quickly see patterns in external events and develop long-range explanatory perspectives. When committed, organize a job and carry it through. Skeptical and independent, have high standards of competence and performance – for themselves and others.

And I was an asshole.  But in learning that I was committed, organized and could carry it through, was skeptical and independent, I was empowered to be an asshole.  It destroyed most of my relationships.

And then I began listening very seriously to the command to love from Jesus.  The problem is that love doesn’t it neatly into a single category.  It calls us to introversion and extroversion, sensing and intuition, thinking and feeling, and Judging and Perceiving.  It calls me, in other words, to become a whole human being.

And then something funny happened.  As I began to practice love, my personality changed.  I became an ENFP.  Three out of the four categories changed. ENFP’s are described as:

ENFP: Warmly enthusiastic and imaginative. See life as full of possibilities. Make connections between events and information very quickly, and confidently proceed based on the patterns they see. Want a lot of affirmation from others, and readily give appreciation and support. Spontaneous and flexible, often rely on their ability to improvise and their verbal fluency.

It’s a very accurate representation of my current personality, but it’s also not the whole of who I am.  As I made the jump from introvert to extrovert, I had to relearn what it meant to spend time alone again.  As I abandoned my need to judge everything, I had to relearn the value of judgment through love.  In other words, there was value in both/and.

By limiting ourselves to a narrow framework of INTJ, ESFJ, or ENFP , we’re missing out on the larger possibility of what it means to be fully human as revealed by Jesus.

What do you think?

Where is God calling you to let go? A friend of mine recently retweeted the following, the first part of which I’ve heard many times.

“The only constant is change. When I submit to that reality, creativity and passion float to the surface.”

And the comment made me think about the nature of change embedded into the universe.  God didn’t begin with perfect.  God began with good.  But it’s easy to assume that what is good can’t change.  If it’s good, why on earth would it want to change. But that’s the rub.  Good is a qualitative state that does just that.  It allows for change.  In other words, God embedded into the world a natural creativity that allowed for things to grow and change, which then allows for a constant stream of creativity, as opposed to something static.  Because I can imagine if we did begin perfect, we’d spend the rest of our lives not wanting to change. And that is honestly the epitome of hell to me.

Which leads me to the nature of grace.  What if grace is embedded into change? What if the very nature of change reveals the reality of grace.  In other words, God has already gotten over all of our junk.  Because in the end change has consequences, some good and some bad.  It does affect us but none of it defines us.    And the sooner we let go of our judgments about it, the sooner we can get over it, embracing the reality of grace.

Buddhists have a very similar understanding of the creativity and change embedded into their practice of meditation.  In meditation, the deepest form of it is the free flowing mind, to empty the mind of thought.  But the emptiness is not a void.  It’s the process of allowing the mind to experience and let go of the thought process.  And I was thinking it’s essentially the practice of grace.

I looked at my son tonight and realized that as much as I love him at this age, I don’t really want him to stay this age.  I want him to grow and change.  I want him to experience the fullness of life that comes from growing, pain, suffering, joy, challenge and overcoming. I want him to know the feeling of not getting the job, kissing the girl for the first time, failing a test, and getting down on his knee to ask a girl to marry him.  But he can only experience that if I let go of who he is now.  I want him to feel the full range of emotions that come from being human.

But then I was immediately hit with the same reality for myself, and then my family, and then my neighbor, and then…my enemy.  How much of life is dealing with the frustrations with wanting things not to change.  How much of our striving, wars, conflict and the worst that we have to offer is because we’re afraid of what’s next, or we’re trying to get to something that we once had.  And it captivates us with fear because no matter how much we try, we can’t get it back.

So it seems to that the risk God took with the world is to allow us to grow, and that growth is the fullest experience of grace.  What say you?

“I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love..as I say, they’re my work, they’re my play, they’re my passion. Words are all we have really. We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. You know, [humming]. And, then we assign a word to a thought, [clicks tongue]. And we’re stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think, yeah, the same words that hurt can heal. It’s a matter of how you pick them.” George Carlin, Seven Deadly Words

Recently I asked, “When does a word stop meaning what it used to mean?”  The responses I got were varied.

“often, when a secondary definition reaches critical mass. the tipping point is that its primary definition swaps place, and dies out over time.”

“When your attorney gets involved.” (my favorite)

“when the new meaning holds meaning to you, no matter how large a group – a good example is the word “pimp” – for our parents, it has one meaning – for us, it has another meaning – and for our kids, who knows “

“when it becomes popular”

Like Carlin, I have made a living out of words.  I love getting to the deeper meaning of words and have spent my life learning to craft the use of words.  So I was having a conversation the other day with a friend around the word, “Evangelical.”  When is someone definitively an evangelical or not? Much of the hub-bub over Emergence is, from my perspective, a fight for the soul of evangelicalism.

I would argue that the tension in the evangelical church revolves around the basic understanding of an atonement.  How can a loving God demand the sacrifice of His own son to appease his own sense of justice regarding human sin?  This theory of atonement is called “Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory.” It was first espoused by Anselm of Canterbury and deepened by John Calvin’s use of the law to radicalize the “penalty” element.  In virtually all the conversations I’ve ever had within a cohort, conference, or with people struggling with God, it can be boiled down to a tension with this theory.  Because if the theory is true, it creates a strange tension within the Christian story.

Yet I remember the moment, standing in a cheap hotel room in Lake Tahoe, when I realized the basic framework that would become my book.  Humanity was demanding the sacrifice, not God. And yet I instinctively realized that if I let go of the old theory, I was in essence leaving my roots behind.  I was venturing into uncharted territory regarding my own faith. I was buying into something that I felt was more in line with the actual story.

I’m very comfortable in my own perspective, having spent countless hours reconciling and working through my own faith, but I recognize that we’re often searching for the meaning of words.  So my question is this.  From your perspective, am I an evangelical Christian? I’m asking for your perspective, so don’t be shy.  Is holding a specific belief about the cross in a specific way a requirement for being an Evangelical Christian? If you are not comfortable sharing your own thoughts about it (and I get that) then perhaps share what you think those who are evangelical would say.

What say you?

The Outlaw Preachers are a diverse group of friends who love to passionately share the love and grace of the Gospel.  I’ve gotten to know most of the organizing group and consider them good friends.  I will also be presenting Discovering the God Imagination in a breakout session.  It’s in Memphis in December, and its incredibly cheap.  What more could you ask for.  If you want to have fun at a gathering, I can guarantee this is the one to come to.

Where: Memphis, Tennessee

When: December 3 – December 6

Who: Y’all or you’uns (preacher title not required)

How much: (re)Union is $49/person. Lodging is $59/person. So $108 TOTAL. That includes dinner on Friday night, breakfast every day, and drinks and snacks through the daytime and evening sessions. There is also a full kitchen for those with certain dietary restrictions.

Lodging and Conference: We have booked up the Pilgrim House Hostel & Retreat Center. The first 70 people to register will be there. Once we reach capacity, we have overflow accommodations made at an adjacent hotel. “This will either be a small family reunion or Outlaw Preachers Woodstock.” -Connie Jo

The keynote speakers include:

Adele Sakler of Queermergent
Brian McLaren; Author, Speaker, Pastor
Jay Bakker of Revolution NYC
Jeremy Ritch of Hold Fast Ministries
Phil Shepherd of the Eucatastrophe

Breakout session speakers include:

Brandon Mouser of Ink Church
Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith & Pirate Christian Radio
Derek White; UMC Pastor
Drew Tatusko
Jonathan Brink; Author: Discovering the God Imagination
John Harrison; Pastor
Marcus Gibbs of Ink Church
Pastor Nar; Losing My Religion Podcast

Jesse Schroeder

Congratulations Jesse.  I know you got to hear the basic thesis in DC, but I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the book.

“Win a FREE Copy of Discovering The God Imagination http://wp.me/pnyrF-r1 by @jonathanbrink.  Please RT.”

Tweets must be posted by Friday, October 1 and they have to include my twitter handle so I can keep track of who posts.  Winners will be chosen by my daughter so there’s no funny business.  Looking forward to seeing who wins.

So I just finished the Bit Tent Christianity Conference.  And I liked it.

Big Tent Christianity was arguably the first mixed tradition conference I’ve been to put on by the traditional emergent crowd (Doug and Tony).  Over half the speakers were not traditional emergent speakers. Many were from traditional denominational structures including the Reformed Church of America.  I liked seeing this broader conversation.  I attribute this to Philip Clayton, Justin Heinzekehr, and Tripp Fuller for expanding beyond the border to “create a bigger tent” conversation.  Well done.

In some ways the conversation was deeply academic.  Many of the presenters were Presidents of Seminaries.  Yet I couldn’t help but be inspired by some of these academic voices, which are often missing from events like this.  The caliber and content of some of the voices, created a great new mix to the conversation. Yet the same element could be lobbed as the one big criticism of the conference.  The conference was still largely a white male voice.  There were great voices of racial distinction, such as Anthony Smith, Bruce Reyes Chow, and Stephanie Spellars.  But I just hope for a larger participation.  In some ways, it can also be said that this is the white male conversation, which is fair given that the five organizing voices are white and male.

But Big Tent was about expanding the tent. The early conversation included a spirited conversation around the limitations of the metaphor of the Big Tent. In trying to expand the tent are we losing what it means to have an identity, or are we breaking down the barriers of relationship.  I would argue the latter but many people were uncomfortable with it.  Anthony Smith had what I thought was one of the better responses when he tweeted: “how can a tent have boundaries when there are no walls nor doors?”

A large part of the question of denominations seems to be a search for identity.  The tent is important to people because it informs and grants identity.  When we stand under it it helps inform our own understanding of who we are.  It gives us something to stand on. To lose that identity can feel like death.  So to leave that identity can feel like suicide. I can’t recount how many times I heard someone (in some form or other) say, “I’m trying to understand who I am.”  But one thing really stood out to me.  About half the crowd admitted switching denominational identity at some point in their life. That suggests that our desire for permanence is often sabotaged by our own realities.  We sometimes can’t stand the tent we are born in or even choose.

During the first day, the second panel was on theology and the following was on the Bible.  These two panels provided a strange dichotomy between our discovery of God, which we call theology, and our codified conclusions about God, which we often call “Biblical”.  The panel on theology was exploratory and fairly open.  The panel on the Bible was tense yet invigorating. Jo-Ann Badley and Peter Rollins verbally sparred with each other over opposing stances.

The panel on sexuality was the most intriguing. I firmly hold that we need a vigorous dialog in the church around homosexuality, and this panel provided it. Ian Markham gave a remarkably simple review of the historical understanding of Catholic pro-creation, which set a great stage for entering into a broader conversation.Kimberly Knight then shared her experience with hope in the midst of family judgment, and then reminded us that we are a collection of stories.  A critique by Frank Green, who was on the panel, suggested the panel was too male.  A hum of agreement filled the room and I agree. But it was Brian Ammons who stole the show for me. As a practicing monogamous homosexual, he took on some really serious sacred cows within the homosexual culture, the most important being that as human beings we “don’t” have a choice.  Brian called that a political lie and essentially said, “Its bull and victimizing.”  When we remove choice we remove our own humanity.  Very new approach to the conversation.  Brian brought out an intriguing point in that we are searching for an understanding of sacred sex in healthy relationships.  I agree.

We often talk about homosexuality as one of the defining conversations of the emerging church.  But this panel made me think the question is broader.  Sexuality is at the heart of what it means to connect with another human being.  It’s the space where we are terribly vulnerable, yet at the same time are rewarding for that vulnerability with one of the quintessential pleasure experiences: the orgasm. Perhaps God is telling us something in the act of sex that when we demonize it, we miss the deeper meaning.

If there is one common criticism of these types of conferences (having a LOT of speakers in short segments) it is the information overload.  I felt really bad for the last group because I just couldn’t take anymore and my brain largely shut off.  Yet the last speaker Tom Oord closed with an absolutely great confession.  He shared his conflict of living in a denomination that probably wouldn’t commonly participate in gatherings like Big Tent, yet deeply felt that the one thing that must inform his faith in God is love, which is I would suggest is the heart of emergence.

As always, the best part of being at these conversations is meeting new and old friends.  I find the hang time with people who can engage a healthy dialog around God, even in the midst of conflict can be very healthy.  Much love to all of you who got to hang.  Thanks Brandon, Connie, Amber, Julia, Christina, Nadia, Zhina, Steve, Anthony, Rich, Sara, Troy, Mike, Tripp, Travis, Jon, Bill, Doug Tony, Kimberly, David, Chad, Dan, Rachel, Jan, Spencer and so many of the people who shared your heart for God.  May we all live into God’s love in extraordinary ways.