Author: Rebecca Trotter

A mom, writer, thinker, talker, teacher, Christian and odd duck . . . www.theupsidedownworld.com
writing

Any professional writers out there?

I’m in need of a little help. I have recently begun building a freelance writing business. Several months ago, I was hired to be a regular contributing writer for a start-up Christian Lifestyle magazine which is available in 30 states in Walmart, Borders and other national outlets. I’m not making money doing it, but I figured it’s a real magazine with good production values, run by people who, business wise, know what they’re doing and that it would serve as a good launching point to begin marketing myself to other publications.

At any rate, I got a copy of the magazine with my first column in it. And those of you who have some experience probably know what I discovered. Continue reading “Any professional writers out there?”

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education, homeschooling

The Carnival of Homeschooling Is Up!

If you are homeschooling or interested in homeschooling, be sure to stop by the Carnival of Homeschooling hosted at Life on the Road.  It’s a trip around the homeschool blogosphere without having to spend hour searching for something interesting. Of particular interest to me was a review of the latest Caldecott award winner – The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  These sorts of awards have gotten … Continue reading The Carnival of Homeschooling Is Up!

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religion

A prayer to begin your day with

As my family and friends who read this blog already know I was raised Catholic. I stopped considering myself Catholic over a decade ago because I believe the RCC to be in error on a great number of issues. However, I do think that the Catholic Church has managed to hold on to some old wisdoms about and tools for the Christian faith which most Protestants aren’t well aware of. An example of this would be some of the old, stuffy prayers which Evangelicals in particular tend to scoff at. While praying from the heart is essential, using a written prayer can be like giving a lover a love poem written by Shakespeare or Elizabeth Barret Browning rather than writing your own. Continue reading “A prayer to begin your day with”

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being mom, family, humor, kids

So does this mean they’re going to grow up to be terrorists?

This afternoon my 8 year old was annoying me so I suggested that he play his zoo tycoon game on another computer.  This is one of those games where you have to set up a business and run it well to make more money to re-invest into the business and grow it, etc.  Part of the game format is that if you screw it up, … Continue reading So does this mean they’re going to grow up to be terrorists?

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current events, politics

Why we’re all a bit gaga over Barack Obama

Now, as some of you might have figured out by now, I tend to be pretty conservative in my thinking. Which means not that I’m always thrilled with Republicans, but that I typically don’t like Democrats so much that I vote Republican (although not for George W. Bush in 2004, I’m proud to say!). However, I must admit that I’m actually kind of excited about the prospect of Barack Obama running for president. I even find myself thinking from time to time that I’d like it if he were elected president. Which is weird because I disagree with almost all of the man’s policies. And I don’t think I’m alone. But I do think I’ve figured out why that is and why it makes more sense than it would seem. Continue reading “Why we’re all a bit gaga over Barack Obama”

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religion

The Emerging Church Promise and Failure Part 2

In my last post, I looked at how the emerging church movement is trying to re-construct Christianity in regards to praxis, or the living of a Christian life. Today I’m going to look at the emerging church’s approach to doxology.

Part 2: Doxology or “Doing” Church”

To start, I want to acknowledge that I’m using the word “Doxology” in an unorthodox way. Technically doxology refers to a statement of praise and glory to God. The two we are most familiar with are “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen” and the commonly sung:

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

For my purposes, I am using the word doxology in the sense which Geoffrey Wainwright expresses it in the title to his 1978 book: Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life. Doxology is how we live out our theological belief in Christianity when we gather and worship, pray and meditate and then take that experience out into the world we live in. J.I. Packer in his book God Has Spoken (which I haven’t actually read, for the record) puts it this way:

“Theology, as I constantly tell my students, is for doxology: the first thing to do with it is to turn it into praise and thus honor the God who is its subject, the God in whose presence and by whose help it was worked out. Paul’s summons to sing and make music in one’s heart to the Lord is a word for theologians no less than for other people (Ephesians 5:19). Theologies that cannot be sung (or prayed for that matter) are certainly wrong at a deep level, and such theologies leave me, in both senses, cold: cold-hearted and uninterested.”

So for this discussion I am using the word doxology to indicate those ways that we as Christians practice our faith when we worship, gather together for church, meditate, read scripture or engage in other spiritual disciplines.

One of the features of Protestantism is that it is reactionary in nature. Continue reading “The Emerging Church Promise and Failure Part 2”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
religion

Emerging Church – Promise and Failure Part 1

Over the last couple of months, I have been looking into something called the “Emerging Church” movement. This movement seems to be seeking to reform the evangelical church in light of the failures of the evangelical movement to bear transformational fruit in the lives of individuals and the larger community.

There are things that are happening, being talked about and experimented with in the Emerging Church movement which I think are very, very good for the church body as a whole. I can easily see a time when the work and ideas germinating today in the Emerging Church movement will become extremely influential in Christianity. However, I am also concerned that ultimately, they are setting themselves up for failure. Their influence, it seems to me, may end up being one of style rather than the radical transformation of the Christian life and church which they seek and which the gospel exhorts us too.

Before I get to what I think are the seeds of their failure, I want to discuss what I think they are getting right. The Emerging Church movement tends to be focused on two areas: praxis and doxology. Praxis being how we live as Christians. Doxology being concerned with how we “do” church through our services, prayers and other communal activities. In Evangelism attention to these two areas of Christianity has tended to be thin gruel. Praxis meant don’t sin and doxology meant sing, listen to a sermon and pass out grape juice and bad bread once a month. As the black sheep offspring of the Evangelical movement, Emerging Churchers are taking these areas apart and trying to completely reconstruct them into gourmet meals using both experimentation and borrowing from ancient wisdoms.

I am going to do a three part series on what I think the Emerging Church movement has to teach us as Christians, what I think the seeds of their undoing are and a new vision which could turn the Emerging Church movement into the transformational power I think the church needs today.

In Part 1 I will cover praxis. Part 2 will be on doxology and Part 3 will cover the flaw and new vision I have spoken of above.

Part 1: Praxis or Christian Living

In my experience I think it’s fair to say that conventional evangelism presents praxis as a series of rules for personal morality which we should be motivated to follow out of loyalty to God. Continue reading “Emerging Church – Promise and Failure Part 1”

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