Chasing Francis, the Sleeping Giant

August 10, 2010 in Books, Christian Mysticism, Church, Emergent, Faith, God, Publishing with 3 Comments

Mike Morrell: Chasing Francis is a book that just keeps on going. It’s been three years since it’s publication and I still hear about people discovering it for the first time. The terms “slow burn hit” and “long tail” come to mind. What do you think about that?

Ian Cron: You ever listen to old Neil Young records? Musically, they still hold up, you know? You listen to something like Saturday Night Fever …not so much! I think the book is holding up over time. I think the things Chase learns and talks about still really matter. Again, there are lots of ideas in it that are not original to me. I just organized them into a story and made a book out of them. I think there is truths in it that continue vibrating in our current context, and maybe more loudly when they did when the book first came out. There is an increasing upsurge of people saying, “You know, there’s just got to be something else”.

MM: Indulge me a moment. Here are some endorsements that have only come out in the last 3-6 months.

“I’ve now read it twice and found it equally compelling both times. It’s a remarkable book.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams

“Chasing Francis is absolutely seductive. This one is a feast for the soul as well as a great, churning, joyful romp for the spirit!”

Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why

“Cron provides us with a deeply moving account of loss and discovery. It bears witness to the ability of Francis of Assisi, to speak with a full voice to contemporary seekers and persons of faith.”

Frank T. Griswold, Twenty-Fifth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church

“A powerful and wonderful book! I was deeply moved by this story of the conversion of an evangelical pastor to a much broader vista of God’s passion for the world.”

Dr. Marcus J. Borg, author of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time and The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions

These are some heady endorsements, especially coming three years after the book was released!

IC: Heh – yeah, where were these people three years ago? Seriously, its pretty humbling to get these responses from people I admire so much. I’m praying they help the book get some wind under its wings. It would be great if it would just take off!

MM: Earlier in our conversation we spoke about contemplative spirituality - it amazes me the variety of responses it evokes. It’s all the rage in some circles while many others have never heard of it, even now in 2010. Centering prayer, spiritual direction, lectio divina, and labyrinths…these have ardent supporters in many mainline and emergent and progressive Catholic circles, but then sadly, I think contemplative spirituality is dismissed in other places. It’s seen as “liberal” and “un-biblical.” Could you share your perspective on the importance of contemplative spirituality for the church as well as maybe touching on its biblical and historical roots?

IC: Well, its historical roots go back 1,700 years to the desert mothers and fathers. Then later the language of the contemplative was lost in the Reformation and the Enlightenment, for all of the obvious reasons. Since the Reformation I think that we over-privileged rationalization and under-privileged the transformative power at coming to understand Jesus and truths about the spiritual life through other, more experiential, mediums. At Augustine once said, the human heart particularly delights in truth that comes to it sideways, or in indirect ways. I think that’s what the contemplative life is in many ways about.

The contemplative life is just about waking up to what is. It’s about learning to pay attention. The world is suffused with the presence of God. As Ignatius of Loyola would say, “The whole point of the spiritual life is to see God in all things.” So now God is not just an idea, God is a living, humming reality in every moment. So to learn how to pay attention is learning to live mindfully in the moment, to experience God in everything; that’s the point. Now, the way you get there is through a rigorous life of meditation, prayer, and spiritual exercises -some that that go beyond or bypass the rational mind.

But this material does infuriate some people. I wrote an article for the Catalyst conference on the contemplative life – Everyday Mystics – and I talked about the fact that every Christian, at some level, whether they know it or not, is a mystic. People wrote in and killed me for it. “It’s not in the Bible,” they cried. Well what about Martha and Mary? Martha was modeling the Active Life and Mary the Contemplative life. Both are important but Jesus said Mary chose the better way.

MM: It’s interesting to observe, because I feel like if even self-proclaimed progressive and emergent Christians truly embrace the contemplative vision as you just described it, we could really give some of the more entrenched dead-tradition folks a run for their money in terms of taking seriously the idea that God is really real, present, changing, and alive.

IC: Yeah. Now that’s not to say that the spiritual life doesn’t have to be built on strong intellectual foundation. It does. But the intellectual life can only bring you to the edge of the wilderness of God; it can’t take you in. I think the mystics and contemplatives agree on this. Entering into the wilderness of God happens in a mystical, contemplative encounter with God. This is a gift of the Spirit and is something neither you nor I can manufacture. Look what happens to Aquinas. He gets to the end of his life. He’s written the Summa. Then he has this powerful, mystical experience and what does he do with all his academic material? He calls it “straw” and abandons it. All his life the academic had taken him to the edge of the Wild but it paled in comparison when he finally went through this mystical encounter.

MM: Oh that’s fascinating!

IC: When that contemplative or mystical moment happens, it is a gift. Some people do contemplative prayer for 30 or 40 years and wait for the 3 seconds of communion and they are never the same again. To give you another phrase, “the contemplative life is about a unitive knowledge of God”. It’s about union with God.

This concludes part five.

Part One – Why Won’t This Book Go Away?
Part Two – Would Francis be Medicated Today?
Part Three – Mystics and Prophets
Part Four: Does Orthodoxy Have to be Static?

The Chasing Francis interview is to be continued..! You can keep up with Ian on his blog at IanCron.com and on Twitter @iancron.

Ian Cron: Does Orthodoxy Have to be Static?

August 6, 2010 in Books, Christian Mysticism, Church, Emergent, Publishing with 6 Comments

This is the fourth part of a multipart interview with Ian Cron about his novel, Chasing Francis, which after three years is garnering more acclaim than it did in year one! You can keep up with Ian on Twitter @iancron.

Mike Morrell: Chasing Francis features this protagonist Chase Falson, who starts Putnam Hill Community Church in New England. In the process of transitioning from a professionalized Evangelical persona, he rediscovers mystical and activist faith. Along the way he loses the congregation he started. So, you too, started a thriving congregation in New England and recently left the church you co-founded. Dare I ask, what are the parallels between you and Chase, and where do these similarities end?

Ian Cron: I once heard someone say that everybody’s first book is, to some degree, autobiographical. There are pieces of Chase that are definitely a part of my own personal narrative.  3 years before I started Trinity Church, I began to feel a great sense of dis-ease with the Evangelical culture I had been living in. I remember reading The Post Evangelical by Dave Tomlinson and nearly crying. About 3 years later Brian McLaren wrote A New Kind of Christian and the journey to something new really began for me.

There are definitely pieces of Chasing Francis that are autobiographical. Trinity, during my 10 years, however, was not anything like Putnam Hill, the church in the book. If anything it started off evangelical and became much more of a haven for orthodox progressives as we went on over time. I was thrilled at the kind of theological questions we were asking as a staff and as a community toward the end of my time there.

MM: Isn’t orthodox progressive a contradiction in terms though?

IC: I don’t think it has to be either/or.

MM: Do tell, because a lot of people out there seem to think it does.

IC: I don’t think orthodoxy has to be static. I think orthodox progressives tend to have more theological fluidity and openness than other traditions. I think orthodox progressives recognize that we should always be self-criticizing our own theology, always interrogating our own assumptions, and when we do that, we’re going to make theological adjustments throughout the course of our lives and that’s OK.

MM: So, did you go on a pilgrimage to Italy yourself? I figured you’d almost have to have because of the way you describe the sights, the sounds, and especially the tastes and flavors of Italy.

IC: Yeah, I was there for 3 weeks on a pilgrimage with a group Franciscan nuns and friars. It was remarkable. A lot of them were elderly and had never been to Assisi before, so they were “coming home”, some of them at the end of their lives, to the place where their founder had lived. It was really moving because everywhere we went was such an “aha”, eye opening moment for them. It was very, very beautiful. It was a great experience.

This concludes part four.

Part One – Why Won’t This Book Go Away?
Part Two – Would Francis be Medicated Today?
Part Three – Mystics and Prophets

The Chasing Francis interview is to be continued..!

Ian Cron on Francis: Mystics and Prophets, Institutional and Emerging Church

August 4, 2010 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments

This is the third part of a multipart interview with Ian Cron about his novel, Chasing Francis, which after three years is getting more buzz than ever. You can keep up with Ian on Twitter @iancron.

Mike Morrell: What about Francis and the institutional church? One would think he would have abandoned it.

Ian Cron: One of the things that makes Francis very interesting compared to a lot of what we’re seeing in the Post Modern Emergent conversations is that he was not anti-institutional. He actually honored the institution of The Church even in it’s screwed up state. He critiqued it with his life, not his words, and he wasn’t leaving it. He really felt like you could change it from the inside out. I recently read something by Jonny Baker about this very thing. Did you read that article?

MM: Yeah – the one in response to Kester Brewin’s series on Has What Emerged Retreated? Jonny says the idea of leaving institutions is, in his British parlance, “romantic tosh”.

IC: Heh – Yeah, he says it’s equally valid to change something from the outside and the inside. I agree.

MM: I think they both have valid points but Jonny’s really did stick out to me, that people who just want to damn “the man” and start their own thing do end up having to become institutions, and when they do, as often as not it can be just like what it replaced, if not more tyrannical, so why not at least try to make a good faith effort of working from within?

IC: This raises a really interesting point, too. One problem I’ve seen in the postmodern/emergent church conversation is you tend to have one of two different kinds of things going on: one is the emphasis on social justice. That’s a great thing unless you over-privilege social action and have no contemplative life. Someone who over-privileges social justice runs the risk of becoming an angry, disillusioned and very often, a smug activist. On the other hand, there are people who ignore social justice and only care about the contemplative life and this leads to a sort of saccharine piety. They start watching EWTN and saying the Rosary without any interest in the fact that so much of the world is starving to death.

MM: Yeah, I spent about a decade in a church movement that was very contemplative, and I feel like a lot of times we did veer into that danger where we really, at the end of the day, didn’t give a rip about what was happening in the outside world. I transitioned from that into this sort of Anabaptist, Anarchist, hardcore social justice world, and it was like a breath of fresh air to see people who really cared about what’s happening around the world, but, I did begin to encounter sort of an intolerance and almost a mocking of sincere expressions of love for God or spirituality that didn’t into the plight of the Post Modern world and things like that.

IC: Yes, you need both in tension. The commitment to social Justice should correct the excesses of the contemplative life and vice versa. That balance is very Franciscan.

MM: I can see that – there’s the deep impatience of the prophetic tradition, but then there’s the sense of “all will be well” in the mystical tradition; I think you need both to fuel the other.

IC: That’s right. And this is the beautiful polarity that Francis embodies so well.

This concludes part three.

Part One – Why Won’t This Book Go Away?
Part Two – Would Francis be Medicated Today?

The Chasing Francis interview is to be continued..!

Ian Cron: Would St. Francis be Medicated Today?

August 2, 2010 in Books, Christian Mysticism, Church, Emergent, Publishing with 3 Comments

This is the second part of a multipart interview with Ian Cron about his novel, Chasing Francis, which after three years is getting more buzz and not less. You can keep up with Ian on Twitter @iancron.

Mike Morrell: St. Francis seemed to have a wise way of living the change versus being a “protest person.” If you start giving all of your energy to criticizing something, you set your self up to become the mirror image of the very thing you’re critiquing.

Ian Cron: I think that’s right. Francis did so many things that were important for us to consider today, especially in the spirit in which he did them. I felt it was important for people unfamiliar with his life to hear about them. The fact that he was an artist versus an academic I thought was important as well. In fact he was suspicious of academics, and the Academy as a whole. He was reacting to the rise of scholasticism, and the birth of universities. I think what he was afraid of was that Jesus was going to become a theological abstraction versus a living reality.

MM: Indeed.

IC: Which, in part, is what’s happened! So many of us relate to Jesus in theological debates as if he is an interesting idea, something notional.

MM: Right. And you end up viewing theology as though Jesus is not in the room with you; as though God is not present with you.

IC: Exactly.

MM: The radical commitment to the poor, his being an artist versus an academic, creation theology, peacemaking, treating Jesus as though he’s really in the room – as I re-read Chasing Francis three years later, these are some of the things that make Francis relevant.

IC: By the way, his relationship with women was really unusual for the time as well. His relationship with Claire, and his saying “Look, let me help you start an order for women based on Franciscan ideals” was revolutionary for that period. There are other wonderful things about Francis I talk about in the book but this gives you a flavor of it.

MM: So, you said something interesting in the beginning, that Ronald Rolheiser and Richard Rohr said we need more Francis’s today. Why do you suppose we don’t have more Francis’s today, or do we, and we pay less attention to them?

IC: Well, I am going to give you one answer that is somewhat tongue-in-cheek but its not completely facetious. The first one is this: there may be Francis’ out there, but they might be psychiatrically medicated.

MM: Oh my! I could see that, though…

IC: I’m just being completely honest. Today Francis would be considered delusional. Freud wouldn’t come along for 600 more years. There were no medical models for treating mental illness. Today, he would be diagnosed as having Bipolar Disorder, Frontal Lobe Epilepsy or some other ailment. Today we would pathologize his spirituality and medicate it away. That’s true of so many of the saints. Can you imagine what would happen to St. Theresa? They would have her on Haldol or Lithium in a heartbeat.

MM: It’s true. It seems like our thinking about what is sane and what isn’t does keep out some true craziness but it also keeps out a lot of genius.

IC: I also think Francis we don’t have more Francis’ out there because its just too costly. He scares the hell out of most people, me included. For centuries he’s been called “The Last Christian”, for embodying the gospel in a way that ‘s unparalleled. Some called him the “Second Jesus.” Most of us have been so co-opted by the powers and principalities of materialism, of modernism, of fear, that it’s really difficult to get to this kind of place. I think there are some who have the spirit of Francis out there, but they are mostly unsung heroes.

This concludes part two. Part one is here. The Chasing Francis interview is to be continued..!

Ian Cron’s ‘Chasing Francis’: Why Won’t This Book Go Away?

July 30, 2010 in Christian Mysticism, Church, Emergent, God, Publishing with 7 Comments

I recently had the chance to catch up with Ian Cron to discuss his novel, Chasing Francis, which after three years on the market is only garnering more and more acclaim. This is the first of a multi-part interview. You can keep up with Ian on Twitter @iancron.

Mike Morrell: Chasing Francis. It’s this novel about a minister on a pilgrimage, rediscovering and in many ways reinventing who he is, based on his encounter with the living memory of St. Francis of Assisi. So: Why did you choose to write about Francis?

Ian Cron: I heard Ronald Rolheiser along with Richard Rohr at a conference, and the two of them agreed that what the church, both Catholic and Protestant, needs today more than anything else is a the emergence of a new St. Francis. Some would say the Catholic Church has been kept afloat by Francis’ charism for the last 500 years. That Franciscan vision revitalized and rescued the church in the 13th c and I think it could do the same thing today. When I first read about St. Francis, I was awestruck at how important and prophetic a voice he was for the contemporary church. It’s like what the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said in his speech “Changing the Landscape” He said there are so many people in the “postmodern emergent church world that think they are inventing something new, when in fact there were pre-modern people like Francis who were “emergent” long before we were, just in their own context. So, here’s this exemplar for us! We don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel. We can learn from the giants of our past.

MM: You call Francis the consummate postmodern saint. Why?

IC: There are so many compelling reasons for this. First he was the first environmentalist. Francis’ theology of creation was something I think we need to recapture. It’s all about getting in touch with the urgent immediacy of God in the natural order. We need more nature mystics; people who every time they go out into creation feel compelled to take their shoes off.

Second Francis is our first peace activist, in particular, with Muslims.

MM: Which is hugely relevant.

IC: Hugely relevant! You’ve read the book so you know that during the Crusades, Francis led a transcontinental peace delegation to extend an olive branch to Muslims and to try and persuade the Crusaders to repent and return home. That’s fairly amazing. It’s the first transcontinental peace delegation we know of in history.

MM: It is amazing, especially given the official stance of the church in his era.

IC: It was remarkably courageous. It could have cost him a visit to the stake.

MM: Probably not very good.

IC: Here’s another thing about Francis: he was radically committed to the poor at a time when the church had become garishly opulent and materialistic. It could be argued that it was the largest, most powerful investment bank in the history of the world.

MM: And what’s fascinating is that he did it without directly criticizing the church for its capitulating to culture.

IC: Now that’s fascinating, isn’t it? Here’s Francis’ strategy–if you want to critique something, just do it better. Don’t go off at the mouth criticizing everything that’s wrong with the Church. Just do it better. Let the excellence of your life be your highest form of protest.

This concludes part one. The Chasing Francis interview is to be continued..!

Contemplative Mind: Breaking Away from a Secular Worldview

July 27, 2010 in Christian Mysticism with 4 Comments

The contemplative mind is the most absolute assault on the secular worldview that one can have, because it is a different mind from what we’ve been taught in our time.  The calculative mind, or the egocentric mind, reads everything in terms of personal advantage and personal preferences.  As long as we read reality from that small self with a narrow and calculating mind, I don’t think we’re going to see things in any new or truly helpful way.

All the great religions have talked about a different way of seeing that is actually a different perspective, a different vantage point, a different goal than what I want or need the moment to be.  Christians called it contemplation, and some Eastern religions called it meditation.  To quote Albert Einstein, “No problem can be solved with the same consciousness that caused it.”  Contemplation is a different consciousness, and its starting point is precisely not what I prefer or what I need things to be.

Adapted from Contemplative Prayer (CD)

…a bit of wisdom from Richard Rohr. You can subscribe to his daily Radical Grace email here.

A Farmer’s Market in Heaven Where Everything Is Free and Everyone Is Welcome

July 25, 2010 in Church, Emergent, Food for Thought, Justice, Publishing with 1 Comment

Spencer Burke interviews Sara Miles about her work at the St. Gregory of Nyssa‘s Food Pantry and her new book Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing Raising the Dead. It’s an inspiring interview – check it out!

Tears for Fears: My Anxiety and Modern Life

July 11, 2010 in Faith, Friendship, Life with 68 Comments

“My Name is Mike; I’m An Anxiety Sufferer.”

I don’t know if there are Panic Anonymous meetings, but if there were that’s how I imagine I could introduce myself. I’ve alluded to this on the blog before; my close friends and even many of my acquaintances know about this aspect of my life…and now I’ve decided to let you, dear reader, in on a significant truth about my life: I suffer from panic. Anxiety. Phobias. Fear.

Apparently, I’m not alone. By my admittedly-sketchy statistical abilities, I estimate that a whopping 10% of the U.S. population suffers from some form of panic, phobia, PTSD, or generalized anxiety. (Crunch the numbers for yourself here) And we seem to be growing in numbers as our social, spiritual, and physical environment continues to complexify in the 21st century.

We all get scared, of course. Certain stimuli – whether interior or exterior – prompt our fight or flight response. A roller-coaster; seeing a snake in the yard; witnessing a bank robbery. Our brains and bodies are remarkably resilient; most of us confront and get over specific fears with amazing adaptability. But for some of us – for a host of reasons – this fight-or-flight (or heightened adrenal state) just stays with us, becoming aroused at increasingly non-life-threatening stimuli. For many of us, it begins to creep up at unexpected moments, or not go away for hours. For growing numbers of us, anxiety, panic, and phobia are a way of life.

This is certainly true for me.

It started years ago – innocently enough at first: I’d be driving with a buddy or a family member on a long, interstate road trip, when suddenly I’d feel overwhelmed. The open road, unpredictable hills and dips, lots of cars, hundreds of miles – it felt like the ocean was spilling into my bathtub – unstoppable. And I’d have to pull over, and let someone else drive. Gradually it became more intense, and more consistent: Soon I wasn’t driving on the Interstate beyond the perimeter of my city, then beyond the more suburban areas near my city. Whenever I tried, I’d become a liability to myself, my passengers, and other drivers; I felt like I was piloting an out-of-control roller coaster, and I couldn’t wait to hit the brakes or pull over. Finally, I wouldn’t drive on the highway at all. This has been my state for quite some time.

Rather simultaneously with this, I was becoming an increasingly troublesome passenger. First I had difficulty, occasionally, riding in the front seat with drivers; I’d writhe and squirm as though I was strapped to a rocket headed toward the moon – on the outside. It wasn’t that I was afraid of an accident per se – I’ve never been in a serious car accident. It wasn’t fear of sudden impact or death; the motion itself is its own source of dread. For awhile the backseat was my safe haven; no more, not necessarily. When this sense of sheer panic would come or go was unpredictable; I could go cross-country with no problem, or go around the corner with a friend and be crawling out of my skin. I began to avoid riding in the car with others besides my wife (who, ordinarily, does not provoke this response). I get out less nowadays.

This is your brain on fear..

For awhile, I considered all of this a simple matter of phobia. I couldn’t stand being in cars, but I was fine in airlines and in social situations. Once I got from Point A to Point B, I was perfectly normal. But then something comically absurd happened: I started trying a variety of therapies – cognitive-behavioral, hypnosis-based, and healing prayer-based – to overcome the vehicle-related phobia. Not only did therapies of various sorts not help, they made things worse: Specific phobias multiplied into new phobias as fast as I could think them up; phobia itself blossomed into full-bloomed generalized anxiety.

What happens when I’m feeling anxiety? Most often, things in my chest: A feeling of ‘heart racing,’ and ‘the willies’ – but super-strong and disorienting. Shaking and shivering. Other times, I’ll feel things in my head: Dizziness, headaches, racing thoughts, approaching ‘insanity.’ Shortness of breath. Chest and head tag-team together a good deal, squeezing me out of the game of life altogether.

This has been effecting me more and more, of late; I love to travel, and I love spending time with people. But lately, I’ve restricted both, significantly, as a panic attack can occur anywhere – at a restaurant, at church; surely on a cross-country or transatlantic flight. More significantly, anxiety (and my response to it) has cost me a move: We’re not going to Colorado Springs as originally planned. I’m still working with the awesome folks at The David Group and Presence, but we’re not able to move to that beautiful mountain country, namely because it’s high altitude made me feel even crazier than usual. Following the advice of two doctors, we’ve indefinitely postponed the move – “While most people adjust to the altitude in a few weeks to a few months, people with your condition sometimes never adjust,” they in effect told me. I just couldn’t imagine feeling as disoriented as I do in the mountains, 24/7. So I had to pass up a wonderful opportunity for myself and my family.

This is no fun at all.

So where do I go from here? I wish I could wrap this post up with a neat ending – “But I’ve finally had breakthrough – I got better!” – but alas, I can’t. I do hope to type these words some day – and some day soon, dammit! But in the meantime, I continue to learn. I’ve had some very illuminating brain scans; I’ll be following their leads on some blood tests next week; I’m trying some alternative therapies too bizarre to share with you just yet (though I certainly will if they yield results). I might have to bite the bullet and try a pharmaceutical approach, at least for a season, though I have to admit I’m biased against this. (I hear that many anxiety sufferers don’t take meds, because – get this – they’re afraid to! Ah, the vicious circle…) In all of this, I’ve become a student of the human psyche, in its cognitive, nutritional, fitness, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. I have way more empathy and camaraderie with those who suffer from mental illness of all sorts, especially anxiety and depression. We’re all in this together, y’know?

I tend to think that, in all of this, I’m a living embodiment of the zeitgeist – full of the promise and perils of this age. We’re living such intense lives now, sped up by technology, depthsof knowledge and empathy; its bound to take its psychological and physiological toll. Not all of us have adapted yet; not even (or especially not) those who are most keenly interested in, and dispositionally calibrated toward, these exciting and tumultuous changes happening in our cultural milieu. So we are God’s misfit children and evolution’s maladjusted innovators. God help us all. I only hope that my pain and eventual breakthrough can play some small part in the transfiguration of the world.

So…keep inviting me to get out of the house, and grab lunch or a drink. Tell me about your conference or retreat. But don’t be surprised if I don’t hop in a car with you. :)  Feel free to share your philosophies of anxiety and fear, or the crazy remedy that you hear worked for your cousin, though please understand that I’ll give far more weight to phobic people themselves weighing in and sharing stories. With open source collaboration and the discovery of Divine ubiquity amidst our mess, perhaps we’ll all learn something in the process!

CONVERGE in DC This Month!

July 9, 2010 in Conferences with 0 Comments

This crossed my desk from Brian Gorman…it looks awesome! If I didn’t have a prior engagement in Atlanta that weekend I’d be here:

The D.C. Area Community of Communities is inviting anyone interested in or part of a community to join us for our regional community gathering, July 30-August 1. This gathering brings together people from communities all over the Mid-Atlantic region to teach, conspire, and dream for God’s beautiful kingdom on Earth. A combination of seminars, practical skill shares, concerts, and plenary sessions will make this a great time together. We hope to draw co-conspirators from around the region to share in this wonderful event.

Join us at Eden Valley Center (edenvalleycenter.org), a beautiful 100 acre farmland just 45 minutes north of D.C. We’ll be camping out, so bring tents, stoves, rain gear…more info to come on what to bring.

We hope to draw co-conspirators from around the region to share in this wonderful event.

Participating communities include: Church of the Savior (D.C.), Simple Way (Philly), Formation House/An Ordered Life (Pittsburgh), Dorothy Day Catholic Worker (D.C.), and others!

Go to our website, www.dc.newmonastics.org, for more info and to register. Email Brian at brianjgorman [at] gmail.com if you have questions or would like to participate in some way. We’re still looking for some musicians and skill share leaders! You can register here.

Why the Archbishop of Canterbury Thinks A New England Novel Can Change the Future of the Church

July 1, 2010 in Christian Mysticism, Church, Community, Emergent, Faith, God, Publishing, Theology with 2 Comments

This crossed my desk this morning and I thought it would be of interest…

For Immediate Release

Archbishop of Canterbury Endorses Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale

Colorado Springs, CO (June 28, 2010)—More than 800 years ago St. Francis of Assisi single-handedly altered the spiritual and political climate of his time. Today, Chasing Francis, a captivating book that examines the lessons the saint can teach contemporary Christians, has received an endorsement from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.

“I’ve now read it twice and found it equally compelling both times. It’s challenging, disarming and delightful, and the vision behind it is a serious one. It’s a remarkable book,” says Dr. Williams.

This significant endorsement has sparked a renewed interest in Chasing Francis, which is a creative and compelling hybrid of fiction, theology, and historical biography. The first book by Ian Morgan Cron, Chasing Francis masterfully weaves actual accounts of St. Francis’ radical impact on the world into the fictional story of a New England minister on a pilgrimage to regain his faith.

Listen to Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams’ address at the “Fresh Expressions: Changing the Landscape” conference in which he summarizes the plot of Chasing Francis; discusses the five principles the book emphasizes for the church: transcendence, community, beauty, dignity, and meaning; and explains why he is strongly recommending it to others. (Begin at minute mark 23:00.)

***

Since its founding in 1975, NavPress has become known as a trusted ministry leader in discipleship and leadership development. The Navigators, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is an interdenominational, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people navigate spiritually.

Page 10 of 41« First...«89101112»203040...Last »