I love Lost. As most of you know I was a bit disappointed that it was all over and especially the way the writers ended everything, but nevertheless, it was still great writing and television. Since the show ended there are a few pieces I wanted to point to that are certainly worth the read.

First, and probably my favourite, was a 13,000 word essay on Lost by Jennifer Galicinski. It is entitled LOST: A Critique of the Modernist Quest and Prophet of a Better Way (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). It is absolutely excellent and for anyone that found themselves lost in the weaving storylines might find this helpful. It’s also a great critique on philosophy tying it in with the imagery and storytelling of Lost. Awesome. Chris Seay should be writing stuff like this instead (he wrote a book on the gospel according to Lost before it was even finished. WHAT?

I put together a quick response to her essay here.

I wrote this when Lost first finished. 5 Reasons Why LOST Disappointed. Which after reading Jennifer’s essay above, it was probably a bit premature considering I didn’t put a lot of work into it.

This was a hilarious video that summarized a lot of how you feel after watching Lost.

An Open Letter To Anyone Who Thought The End Of Lost Was Awesome.

It would be a could compilation of links if I didn’t link to Lost and Gone Forever, who I followed and read after every single episode of the last three seasons. This site helped me understand and analyze the show much better.

Remember that book that I wrote a small chapter in? Aaron Nee made this great video promoting it. Pretty sweet.

Since being to university I have been able to hold two completely contradictory thoughts in my head at the same time and not go insane.  To many, that sentence probably sounds insane.  Here is what I have noticed though.  On paper, by choice and by my life lived I am a Free Methodist (FM), a pastor and a husband.  I am currently in the process of getting ordained by FMCIC and theStory where I am a pastor is one of their church plants.  Philosophically and in my head I am all over the place.  I am constantly reading books that are against and completely contradict everything I’ve assumed, what feels good or what I was told to believe.  I read books from theologians of all faiths, people from all faiths and people who are straight up opposed to my faith.  I constantly mess up my marriage through selfish moves, because I’m changing or through miscommunication.  I teach wrong things at my church, I hurt people and I give wrong advice sometimes.  Somehow I’ve been able to live in this tension fairly peacefully. Others usually become skeptics and/or stale.  They end up being paralyzed with options and never actually evolve and grow.  So in cautiousness, I have decided that it is best to pick a movement that I can connect with and give it my all.  This doesn’t mean I understand everything and can cognitively explain the systematic doctrine of the Free Methodists to anyone that asks.  It does mean though that I am committed, submissive and willing to do what it takes to make this relationship work.  In the same way that I have chosen to be with my wife, I have chosen to be with the Free Methodists.  This doesn’t mean I won’t screw up, say wrong things, but it does mean that I’ve entered into a relationship where I’m held accountable and I have chosen be submissive along with all sorts of other perks.

The only time this way of living every becomes problematic is when I allow the philosophical side of me seep out.  Coincidentally, this blog is an outlet for that, as has the many social networks online.  I’ve used my blog for a place of wrestling with ideas, not where I list off what I’m supposed to think.  This has caused all sorts of issues.  I’ve had numerous people accuse me of not being a very good Free Methodist, and I’ve had people accuse me of being a heretic or tell me I’m out of God’s will.  If I was to use this marriage analogy again then I can see why this is both healthy or problematic.  If my blog was a place to constantly question my marriage relationship, marriage in general and flirt with the ideas of starting relationships with other females then I can see why my marriage might not be that healthy.  However, if it’s seen as building relationships, seeking to understand and appreciate the other and hoping that my wife joins me in this journey then I can see why this would be an important thing to have.  The latter is how I see my blog.
There seems to be two camps of readers on my blog.  There is my one world where I am supposed to be a good pastor.  Teaching people in the way of Christ, giving answers not asking questions and directing people to solid doctrine.  Half the people that read my blog or interact with me online have this expectation for me.  They have a certain standard of what a good Free Methodist should think and believe and I obviously fall short of that.  So they make no qualms about calling me out, disagreeing or straight up getting involved with my relationship with the FM’s.

The other half of the people want to and do engage in the academic/philosophical conversation.  Somehow this half is able to juggle the two realities along side of me.  If I ask an offensive question or link to an offensive article their first instinct isn’t to judge and figure out my intentions and compare to me the FM standard.  Rather it is to jump into the dialogue, seek with me and see what comes out of it.  The conversation flows better with these people, it’s more honest and their is less baggage.

The problem is, most people inside the church fall into the former category.  They all want to make sure I know what the right answer is, what the right thing to believe is and what the right way to act is.  They don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want to dig deeper or wrestle, because they already know what the answers are.  There is no part of them that understands or wants anything to do with people or thoughts that fall into that second category.  While I was in school, it was all about the second category with very little room for the first.  Now that I’m back in Sarnia, everything is switched.  Somehow I can be a good pastor, hold to the Free Methodist doctrine and yet still struggle with, read about and consider contradictory thoughts and theology.  Maybe I’m just lying to myself but I like to think that I can decide to submit and sign on to one theology yet still have the freedom to seek and learn and grow with others.

This is the problem I’ve always had with statements of faith.  I felt like they limited you where you were allowed to go with your reading, thinking and exploring.  It was like a boundary that you were punished if you dare go outside of it.  I had to stop seeing statements of faith as restrictions and more of identifiers.  A statement of faith to me is an identifier of a community of people who have decided that this is who they are and this is what they are striving to be.  If it just says what everyone thinks, then I think we are truly limiting the creativity and growth of everyone who is under that statement.  I can still hold to a statement of faith that says I am a Free Methodist in one hand and with the other be seeking and evolving and growing and stretching in all sorts of directions.  I don’t know of any other way to identify myself with anything rather than looking like what they say they look like and making a choice to say “I am that.”  Identities aren’t decided by abstract theological ideas or disillusionment.  They are chosen and then lived out.

So I’m struggling to live in these two worlds.  Since leaving school, I am much more accustomed to living in a world of asking questions, reading books, landing in uncomfortable places, being challenged and having great dialogue.  Yet the deeper I get, the more I see that many people are just not interested and many are straight up opposed.  How do these two realities co-exist without one despising the other?  I’m still learning what that looks like.  One side thinks the other side is sheltered, weak and indoctrinated and the other side thinks the other is irresponsible, prideful and heretical.  At some point, somewhere the sides have to seek to understand each other and co-exist.  I’m just not convinced yet they can have great conversation.

Just finished writing this post over on Linking Life.  I’m having an extremely frustrating experience with Acer right now where I am 6 months in, shipped my computer to them four times and I am still without a replacement or a refund.  Read the full post here and why Acer is being horrible and let me know if you have any ideas on how to get their attention?

In being downtown Sarnia we have always said we never wanted to have an agenda. The idea stemmed from hardcore, door-to-door sales pitches for religious beliefs that we wanted to stay away from. Missionary dating, evangelism surveys, salvation cards, invite your friends to church for a chance to win a stereo Sundays and witnessing in your cworkplace are all part of the deeply disconnected culture of evangelism that we are reacting against. When you have to fake a relationship with someone (or why bother even faking at times?) then we thought there must be something wrong.

So in going downtown, to an environment completely unfamiliar to us, one of the things we were going to make sure we did, was erase all agendas. We had seen the dangers of what agendas could do, so we wanted to steer clear of them. We were not moving downtown to “save” the downtown. We were not moving there so we could better understand their culture and then eventually hit them in the head with Bible verses. We didn’t grab beers with store owners, join the Artwalk committee or go to the concerts so we could get them to come to the events we ran or to church on Sundays. Our sole purpose was going to be to move somewhere that was abandoned and build relationships with the people that are there with no expectation on them at all. So that’s what we did.

We’ve been here for three years now. I would say we’ve done pretty well at successfully integrating ourselves into the fabric of what is happening downtown. Besides a few special circumstances, we get along with many of the people downtown and I would call most of them friends. At this point, any good Christian would see this as a great opportunity to present the gospel as we know it and share it with as many as possible. The only problem is, it sort of feels that would negate the whole non-agenda clause that we established when we first started. So we continue to build relationships, and genuinely care about the people downtown.

I think my problem with agendas are, that they feel inconsistent with what the gospel really is. When somebody has an agenda in a relationship, they are really only nice to you or want to be your friend because they want something from you, or want you to do something for them. If we wanted to have everyone that lives downtown, attend theStory’s service on Sundays, and so we started integrating ourselves into the downtown core so we could start bringing people out to the service, then that would be an agenda. That isn’t why we are there. People showing up at our service really has very little to do what is going on.

However, as Christians, I think it is still crucial that we have a mission. A mission is different than an agenda. Agenda’s can be checked off as completed when the work is done or when I get what I want. Mission is about a commitment to a way of life, something that you bring into whatever happens around you no matter how people respond, if they respond at all. As Christians, we believe that the way we should live our lives is by loving God and loving others. Part of our mission is to do that to the best ability wherever we are. Since we are downtown, our mission is played out daily in our relationships with whoever we run into. Agenda’s come with expectations for the other, mission comes with duty for yourself.

There is a purpose I’m downtown but it isn’t to complete or follow an agenda. I will not be able to wake up tomorrow morning either disappointed or excited because the agenda worked. Mission doesn’t give such a clear picture of what the future looks like. Rather, it gives you an arrow in which direction to head. The other beautiful thing about mission is that it gives purpose that is based on what you should contribute rather than what you need to accomplish or how people must respond. In other words, with mission you aren’t scored and ranked, where with an agenda, you almost get marked with how closely you followed it and how people react to you.

So after three years we are beginning to see what this looks like. If we were following an agenda, we would have been disappointed long ago, since really no one from downtown is attending our Sunday services. However, that was never our goal. Our goal was to move into downtown, and love on downtown people. End of story. Whatever comes from that was awesome, but there will never be any expectation to exactly how that will play out, who will join us or what it will look like. We are constantly accomplishing our mission every day, it will never full be accomplished and that’s what I like about mission. It just gives you daily purpose for how you should live your life rather than mandating what everyone else has to do around you to fit into how you think things should be.

For this, I am grateful. I think throwing out an agenda was a good thing for us. It has allowed us to face into whatever came our way and not pre-determined exactly what we were going to look like. We allow our mission to shape our day to day activities and how we interact and go from there. I don’t feel stuck, and I do not feel like I have failed at anything because there is nothing to fail at. I am here and I love people and I love God. Mission being accomplished.

The following is a conversation that happened on my Facebook Wall a few weeks ago.  Ralph is a worship pastor at the large Baptist church in Sarnia, and we tend to go back and forth quite a bit on theological conversations but never really land on any kind of common ground.  We both have our own reasons I am sure that this is the case.  The conversation that I’ve posted in its entirety below has been referenced a number of times (positive and negative).  So if you have some time, read over this conversation, correct me and show me how I could have handled this better and/or where my theology needs working.

Nathan Colquhoun All Roads Lead to Heaven? http://ff.im/-kmaGb