Remonstrance

Driscoll elaborates about the “Macho Man” video in Basecamp news, and it helps frame his earlier comments and adds insight for church growth and leadership… I’m on the hunt now for his materials on “assessment”. It’s only a few minutes long, and worthwhile:

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If you’re reading about “the Restless Reformed” in the zine, you’ll see what I mean. He throws a dose of Calvinism in there to keep it real…

Ok, here’s a refinement of the earlier KSU Invasion thoughts. (Moving from inspiration to implimentation.) Interestingly, Levi was thinking in parallel terms.

So here it is: we can publish two (2) “Underground Newspapers”: one in January, one in February. These will feature some controversial articles (i.e., Intelligent Design vs Naturalism), and some interesting articles (i.e., Symptoms of Depression, by Dr. Joel Hughes). Key features:

• Controversial articles will try to be very fair, and present our group as intellectually rigorous thinkers (e.g., Naturalism will be presented as having some apparent merit, but also it has problems).
• All articles will invite further investigation or comments to our KSU Underground Blog site, where people can post their opinions / objections.
• Place a button on the blog/Web site: “DISCUSS NOW!” which opens a chat room – or, “TALK TO US NOW!” which pages an “Operators are standing by…” who will dialog with the inquisitive person.

Of course, all these will point to our CBS meeting, and make it sound like an appealing place where intellectually credible and non-dogmatic thinkers assemble.

WHY DO THIS?

This is what we did in 1969 at the OSU Campus with The Fish: an Underground Newspaper which helped us to launch The Fish House, which of course became later known as Xenos.

So cool, ain’ no fool!

Today our KSU group is so completely different than the 2001 meeting in that tiny apartment. We tried meeting at the Student Union, but we started with so few (actually, just 3) students, the large, empty room was absurd. Eric, Eric and Mark scored an apartment for us to meet in, and we quickly outgrew it and moved to Lake Street, and from there to College Ave.

But I forgot why we were meeting off-campus, and tonight I regained my perspective: when we were just starting, a living room meeting made perfect sense, but now with attendance around 40, a living room has proven to be impractical.

What we need to do is move back on-campus.

Spacious and comfortable facilities are everywhere down there, and now we have the people to fill it up and make it work. Even more, we have a strong Body of Christ at KSU waiting to flex its muscle – I say let’s do it!
A Revolution Within Reach!

Street Interviews, Jay Leno-style, asking funny or unexpected questions, the way Leno stuns those college students with simplistic questions about history or politics they should know, like, “Who was the first president of the USA?” We should hit the streets with shockingly funny questions, and then add some meaningful but related questions to give the interview some significance.

Instant Movies: we have a rich repository of Columbus videos, and we can either redo them KSU-style, or mix some KSU scenes and acting into the video. I’m thinking of their “Heaven” video which relied on expensive props – by using theirs as a base, easily add our KSU touch, and kick out the videos.

Oprah Testimonies: We should do a regular segment, “Joe’s World” or where someone like Joe employs his dry but humorous interrogative style, but also steers the conversation into some spiritual depth – a Testimony, Oprah-style. But there are others with the gift of interrogation, and perhaps we should have a rotation of interviewers to keep up the spice.

Kick Out the Jams! We got some serious musicians now in fellowship. Someone like Jake should lead a group and turn the meeting into a music fest – strains of cool sound drifting through the Student Union would turn a Bible Study into a real event competitive with the Rathskeller in the basement.

How Should We Then Live? The KSU group needs to take a weekend retreat to understand this video series by Schaeffer. Fascinating and meaningful, we can then spread this material across multiple weeks of Bible Study like a “History Channel” segment that augments the teaching. This is not hard to do.

Scarlet Thread Documentary – it would not be hard to make a multimedia mini-series taking the Columbus Seminar Thread teachings (which were videotaped), and convert them into a Ken Burns Civil War-style documentary series, showing segments at each week’s meeting. It’s already a narrative, placed in history and known geography so the visuals are readily available. Joe said we add some reenactments too, but I don’t know about that…

Bruxy Cavey Road Trip – It’s time to take an overnight road trip to Toronto to see Bruxy’s church and watch how they pitch the anti-institution, pro-relationship Christian radicalism that would make so much sense at KSU. “Don’t follow the Bible, follow Jesus,” is one of his typically-inflamatory yet true and relevant slogans we should be using. Man, at Xenos we’re more Bruxy Cavey than Bruxy Cavey is! Why aren’t we putting it up front and center? Would KSU students get offended? I think not!

Panel Debates, such as “Intelligent Design or Evolution? You Decide!” We may not be able to get opposition panelists to show up, but we do have people who understand the Naturalist’s viewpoint enough to do a fair job of representing the view.

Chat-X or Letters to the X-Editor: We could follow up such panelist debates or teachings or movies with an on-line Chat Room where people can dig into it further, moderated by our KSU students – after all, this is how Sarah Debaugh got saved. Or people can e-mail objections and/or questions which we will faithfully read the following week at the meeting…

WHAT DO YOU THINK?