Tag Archives: Narrative Theology

General, Vineyard Movement

Some Of My Favorite Blog Sites…

A site I have been following recently asked for blog suggestions as they were looking for some new sites to follow. In thinking about that, I decided to list out some of my favorite blog sites for your reading pleasure. Note however that this is a very small list as I have over 80 sites on my RSS feed… yeah, I’m strange that way!  😛

Vineyard Related:

  • Jason Clark – Jason is a Vineyard church planter in SW London, UK, as well as a teacher at George Fox Seminary and a PhD student in theology at Kings College London. He has some great thoughts and conversations on the church, culture, mission, and theology in general.
  • WordHavering – Written by Mike Freeman, a Vineyard Boise (Idaho) pastor, this blog full of amazing “musings/haverings on God, theology, the Bible and the occasional movie.” While it may sound cliche, I would have to say that Mike’s style of write is refreshing and warm to the eyes.
  • As I See It… – Marty Boller is the pastor of the Cedar Rapids, IA, Vineyard church and has been exploring ways to move from focusing on size of a church building, money in the bank account and/or the number of folks attending to really, truly following Jesus and being missional to our communities
  • Peace Catalyst International – Peace Catalyst is an organization seeking to “stimulate peacemaking between individuals and between peoples.” Most of the articles are written by Rick Love, a truly peaceful and loving man, who severs as a consultant for Christian-Muslim relations in the Vineyard, USA.
  • Brambonius’ blog in English – Brambonius is a Belgium Vineyard guy who writes some eye opening posts about Jesus, Christianity and the Bible through a European worldview.
  • Carl Medearis – Carl is an international expert in the field of Arab-American and Muslim-Christian relations as well as the author of “Speaking of Jesus” (one of the best books ever!). The thing I love about Carl is his passionate love for Jesus and the ability to separate the culture of “Christianity” from following the person of Jesus. Well worth the read!
  • Verse&Verse – A wonderful blog full of heart felt poems and deep views on following Jesus. It is written by Steven Hamliton who currently in the process of launching a Jesus community in urban Pittsburgh. He is also deeply involved with the Vineyard Anti-Slavery Team.
  • Captain’s Blog – Written by Chad Estes, this blog just oozes the freedom, mercy and love of Jesus to all people at all times. It is definitely a good site to have on your RSS feed.

Continue reading Some Of My Favorite Blog Sites… →

Theology Thoughts

Introducing Narrative Theology

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For most of the past decade I have preferred biblical theology over and above systematic theology as I’ve felt that biblical theology better incorporates the historical and cultural aspects of the Bible into modern day life (i.e. the “white on the page”, as a VLI instructor used to say). However now I find myself drifting more and more into narrative theology as it takes into account the story aspect of life and how each of our individual and corporate identity is shaped by stories.

“Story is a basic principle of mind. Most of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories… narrative imagining is our fundamental form of predicting [and our] fundamental cognitive instrument for explanation.” (Mark Turner, The Literary Mind [v, 20])

Now I know that some of you probably read my first paragraph and got this dazed confused look on your face as you didn’t understand a word. That is alright as the purpose behind this post is to introduce you all to narrative theology (well that and I have been reading a blog series on the subject by Fuller professor J.R. Daniel Kirk). And don’t worry, I will also explain biblical and systematic theology as it is important to understand them in order to fully understand narrative theology.

But before we get too far down this path, I must remind you all that there is no one ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ theological approach. Each approach has its strengths and weakness as well as its champions and critics. Sometimes the different approaches are used in conjunction with each other as they ask different questions. It is also helpful to note that as our cultural and philosophical understanding of humanity shifts, so does our understanding of theology and how we approach the Bible – hence different theological approaches, which, I must mention, number far more then this post in prepared to address.

The predominant theological discipline is by far systematic theology as it has been around for most of the past two thousand years. This approach generally starts with a particular topic (marriage, sin, nature of God) and then goes throughout the entire Bible looking for versus along that theme. Once all the related versus have been orderly and rationally gathered, the systematic theologian will then seeks to draw an conclusion that is applicable to all people at all times.

Continue reading Introducing Narrative Theology →