Friday, October 17, 2008

Welcome and Question #1...

For awhile now I've been having conversations with friends and family about Christianity in general and Evangelicalism in particular. I know people who have been completely disillusioned with Christianity, I know people who have "gone liberal", and I know people who have "gone fundie." I don't know if these are just the inevitable growing pains that afflict people in their 20s and 30s, or if there is some kind of intrinsic shift going on in the evangelical church in North America. My guess is it's a little of both. In any case, all of these conversations gave me an idea.

I propose a conversation. This conversation will be open and public. Several people, from several locations (spiritually, sociologically, and geographically) have been invited to be official contributors. I'll start the ball by posting a few questions here and there. The official contributors answer the questions that strike their fancy however they like, and then readers are free to respond in comments. Challenge, encourage, fight, interact in whatever way you like. I have no idea if this will fly or not. My hope is that it will eventually pass a critical mass and become organic and self-sustaining, but it's just as likely (maybe more likely) that it will fizzle and die. In any case I think these issues are worth trying to talk about and this is a format that I think is promising.

The name. The name was a problem that I solved by just picking something obscure and bizarre. It does mean something to me, and is partly inspired by one of our contributors, but I'll leave the precise meaning to you.

The contributors. I'll let them all introduce themselves as and when they wish. When I signed people up I didn't say anything about pseudonyms one way or another. I use my name for reasons of my own, but if someone wants to post or comment anonymously, that's just fine by me. Those contributors that have blogs that I know about are listed in the blogroll. If you'd like your blog listed there too, just let us know and I'll link it up.

And now for the first question. We'll keep it light and autobiographical.

What's your story? With regard to faith and Christianity, who are you and where do you come from? You obviously found this idea interesting enough to sign up, tell us all why.

Well people, have at it.

4 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

jon checking in. i'll post some sort of narrative defense of my presence and purpose here in the next couple days.

Jon Coutts said...

decent choice on the name. I'm disappointed you didn't go with "I Could Blog of Your Love Forever" though.

Colin Toffelmire said...

Hehe, that was also my favorite but I thought, considering the possibility of copyright lawsuits, that something more obscure would be better. I'm curious what people will think the title means. I'm not going to say what I think it means, or why I added to your original suggestion of Of Sevenfolds and Fourfolds (which I think was a subtle dig at poor A.B.). I've been on a reader-oriented interpretation theory kick lately so we'll let the readers decide on meaning this time. Glad you're here.

Scott Street said...

Jon, you make me laugh. Loved your comments. I think I actually laughed out loud when I read them.