The End of An Era, Part II

The TV is gone. Not a TV. The TV. Gone, daddy, gone.

Just one more thing we've given away with the help of Craigslist. We have no plans to replace it immediately, so our new digs in Southern California will be TV-less.

NPH is actually pleased with this.

The TV was a gift from family at Christmas, 1999, when NPH was single and living without a tube. Family took pity and provided him with one, along with a VCR. It served us well these eight years. But it's big. And heavy. And we don't want to move it again.

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The End of An Era

In May of 1999, on the eve of a new millenium, a young man bought a car. It was his first car for which he was solely responsible, and he walked to the dealership from his aunt and uncle's house in order to buy it.

Today he sold that car. After eight good years that encapsulated almost all of his 20's, the time finally came to let it go. Only four days passed between the time he decided to sell it and the moment that seven $100 bills were pressed into his hand while a hasty buyer swapped the plates and signed the title with an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. It all happened so fast.

The first job, the broken-off engagement, the broken window and stolen stereo, the 10 hour trips to see a girl, the two-day drive to New Jersey with lampshades reaching out the windows;

Two hours on US 1, September 11, 2001. Five hours on the Goethals Bridge a week later. An hour and a half motionless on I 295 while a seminary assignment slipped away;

Back and forth on 71 Highway, day after day for three years. First sermons, first funerals, first weddings.

It all happened so fast.

Sold to the first one to see it. Sold on the last day in the office.

NPH turned 31 a month ago, but somehow it feels like his 20's just ended.

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No (Big) Box For You

NPH and Mrs. NPH are moving. For weeks now NPH has run back and forth to the local bookseller picking up their old boxes. It's been a really good experience, one that has boosted our opinion of the national big box chain. NPH has even gotten to be on a first name basis with Todd, the guy in receiving who has so thoughtfully taped these broken down boxes together and labelled them for us. We're moving across the country with this store's brand name all over our stuff.

But this morning we called for the first time in about a week and were told by the "bookseller" who answered the phone that they recycle their old boxes and don't make them available to customers.

NPH was a little stymied. "Actually, we've picked up boxes from there about four times in the last three weeks. Todd in receiving is who---"

"Actually I just spoke to the store manager," she interrupted. "And he said no."

What can you say to that? NPH was made to feel like a third grader denied access to the drinking fountain. We kindly said, "Thanks," and hung up.

Sure, NPH is sort of a parasite in this relationship. We're getting something for nothing. But the store's not really giving anything anyway. I mean, how much trouble is it to make old boxes available to people, boxes you're going to be getting rid of anyway? (we should point out that the whole chain isn't this way, as we've already arranged for one of their other stores across town to give us some boxes later today)

That "the manager said no" is a really terrible reason for a company to do anything. It's paternalistic and uncooperative. Which, of course, is how corporate business are designed to be. It's just that NPH had found a nice little soft spot in the midst of that chain, and our outlook on the whole thing was improving drastically. All that's changed now.

Now the prospect that we'll spend much time or money there is markedly diminished. The warm fuzzies of the public are good for something; they build trust and affection among prospective customers. Treating them like children "because you said so" is a really bad move.

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The Cup o' Joe Gone Mad

Last week NPH sauntered into a high-end coffeeshop here in town in the middle of the afternoon. Afternoon time is Americano time, but on this day something caught our eye that changed that. The guy behind the counter was talking to another customer about a new drip coffee maker they'd purchased, this $11,000 number that the Specialty Coffee Association of America had called the "Best New Invention" of the year in 2006.

Ever the sucker for a coffee gimmick, we paid $2 for a 16 oz. cup of drip coffee made by the Clover.

Right away the product's claims were vindicated, and they lasted throughout the cup. Combining the technology of a French Press and a Vacuum Pot, the Clover produces a cup of drip coffee that is more clear and subtle than anything else. We've been telling everyone about it since then. Here's a demonstration of how it works:

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Fly Me To The Moon (or LA/Ontario)

NPH is headed to California for a few days next month, and we just found a new airline with which to do travel. After tooling around Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia, we almost accidentally bumped into Express Jet. It's an airline that only began serving our home town in February of this year, and, as the name suggests, all the flights are express--no stops.

Here's a blurb from a news release (ie PR piece) about the airline:

The ExpressJet fleet of 50-seat Embraer ERJ-145XR aircraft are configured with no middle seat, which gives every passenger a seat on the aisle, window or both. ExpressJet branded service will also offer an improved customer experience with valet carry-on bag service and complimentary brand snacks with full meal service options available on longer flights.

In addition, the fare on Express Jet was cheaper than all the other major carriers.

We feel like we've made a discovery.

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The Case for Uncertainty

NPH heard the word this morning from John 16:16-20. In that reading, Jesus tells the disciples something they don't understand, and some of their response is simply to say, "we do not know what he means."

We do not know what he means. It's an explicit admission of something that even the casual reader of the gospels knows, that the disciples don't know what Jesus means. The gospels almost uniformly depict Jesus disciples as confused, mistaken, and misunderstanding of what he is doing.

In most preaching and teaching involving these texts, NPH has heard the disciples' lack of understanding depicted as mental sluggishness, even stupidity. From a detached third person perspective, a perspective that already knows the end of the story, preachers and teachers routinely lampoon the disciples for "not getting it" (winking all the while at those of us who do "get it"). This is a problem, not only for the homiletical hubris it displays, but also because the detached third-person perspective doesn't seem to be the perspective from which the gospel accounts were written. Rarely is there an account of disciple confusion that draws the condemnation or criticism of Jesus in the gospel stories.

Could that be because the writers of the gospels, followers of Jesus all, understood confusion and a lack of understanding to be normative for Christian discipleship? Could it be that the kind of discipleship the gospels depict is supposed to be marked by uncertainty?

NPH thinks so. Although this is a tough sell for Bible believers in North America in the year 2007. Because we have been enslaved to an Enlightenment-derived rationalism that seeks to gain all knowledge, and that, in the process, flattens out all ambiguity and mystery. To such a pursuit, the Bible is a book of "answers" that can simply be applied to one's life with the sure result of health, wealth, and happiness. It's thoroughly technical, as technics and rationalism are close relatives. This rationalism has a lot to do with the kind of following given to someone like the late Jerry Falwell, someone who had the Bible and morality down pat (who "got it") and who's life pursuit was to simply apply extracted Biblical "truth" to modern life.

There's a deep unfaithfulness that can result from that. There's a reduction of the gospel involved, a flattening out of something that is inherently and incomprehensibly mysterious, multivalent, and rich.

Instead, NPH wonders what might a church look like that, with the disciples in John 16, is able to say "we don't know?"

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The Church And The Network

As a pastor, NPH reads a good deal of writing about the state of the church, its current institutional malaise and bright hope for the future. Books like this and blogs like this are only the best expressions of what seems to be the consensus view among protestant church leaders in America: the church has to be less attractional and more missional; it has to stop trying to bring people into the church and start taking the church to people. Alan Roxburgh, featured in the video above, is one of the main proponents of that view.

Here's the realization we're now making, thanks to the Jeff Jarvises of the world: TV has the same problem. Consider this quote from a CBS executive: "We can't expect consumers to come to us. It's arrogant for any media company to assume that."

Gulp.

TV networks are coming to terms with the reality that consumers have gazillions of options when it comes to entertainment content, and fewer and fewer of those options force them to endure advertising. So companies like CBS are shifting their focus from trying to attract viewers to their network and instead trying to get their network content out to where those consumers already are, namely Youtube and other web-based entertainment venues.

Here's NPH's frightening thought: is a "missional" church mindset just the latest example of the church taking a cue from consumer culture? Or is it the other way around?

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