jonathan stegall

From RobbyMac:

Brother Maynard has suggested that September should be a month of post-charismatics giving voice to what apostolic leadership could/should look like. I’d like to propose a synchro-blog to get the ball rolling – namely, as I’ve just shared my earliest “charismatic” experience (after becoming a Christian, that is), let’s remind ourselves and tell each other our stories of how we first became acquainted with, and eager for, the felt presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Should you be unaware of what a post-charismatic is, give the above blogs, as well as Mike Morrell’s, parts of this blog, and several others, a perusal. In any case, I had actually been planning to give an account of my first encounter with the Spirit. In the near future, I believe I will be telling my story, in a very broad way, for the people of Revolution.

I spent a good part of 1997 and 1998 diving into various occult beliefs and practices, especially Wicca. I found good and bad there, and in addition to that it brought out good and bad that was already in me. One of the things that has always been a part of me for better and for worse is a desire for things to be supernatural, but authentic and life-changing at the same time. I grew up in the church, and did not find it to be any of those things.

In light of this, I wasn’t expecting anything in particular when I visited my first Pentecostal church, which was, and is, an Assemblies of God church in Salisbury, North Carolina. I visited because I had been bribed by a friend, and found myself sitting in a chair watching teenagers clap and sing to God, standing in front of an empty stage while a sound system played CDs. This in itself was radical to me, considering my particular upbringing, but certainly not enough to interest me.

My friend, in what I now understand to have been an incredibly perceptive moment of contextualization and maybe some syncretism, explained to me that I could try to invoke God and see what might happen. Being very familiar with invocations and the interesting experiences that they could bring about, and having never thought about the word in connection with this kind of God, I thought it was worth a try.

When I did this, it was as though I was entirely engulfed and surrounded by tangible power. I had no idea what to do about it, and decided not to do anything but sit there and experience it. I have no idea how long I sat there, and I remember getting up at some point to listen to a youth pastor preach, but I honestly don’t remember anything he said.

As an aside, that is not to devalue people who preach and teach well, but it is to say that for myself as a teacher, a preacher, a theologian, or whatever; my task is to chase after the heart of God and help others to do so as well. If that involves discussing the demise of Christendom and why that is a good thing, or discussing the relevance of Leviticus to postmodern minds, that’s wonderful. If it involves shutting up and getting out of the way, that’s also wonderful.

Anyway. That night, I learned that I wanted to go after God with my life, and be wherever God was and do whatever God was doing. It is this that has placed a drive in me to be at the cutting edge of things I’m involved with (be it design, theology, ministry, or social action), because that’s where change happens. A couple of years later, when I was in college seeking to learn more about all these issues, I was introduced to the writings of Brian McLaren and others like him, some who are known and some who are unknown. I mention him because this introduction occurred through the book More Ready Than You Realize, a book about sharing Jesus with postmodern people. In it, he writes this:

Then he [a friend of Brian's] became serious and said, “Really, Brian, I want you to remember that you’ll never stop growing in Christ. I don’t ever want you to get comfortable. I want you to always find the curl of the wave, the place out in front where things are happening. Go to the cutting edge of things, and throw your energies in there. That’s where you belong.” Now, nearly thirty years later, I remember that moment vividly, and I realize that God was speaking to me through Dave that day.

I believe that at that moment, in a medium-sized church in a small town, I was given a drive for this. A drive to be at the cutting edge, always moving, always changing. I have not always lived up to this, any more than I have always lived up to the desire to be where God is, but these two desires have combined to be the shaping forces in my life.

So, as a life-related aside, I’m looking into purchasing a bike. One of the nice benefits where I work is an annual wellness benefit, where we receive an amount of money that we can use on… wellness. Workout equipment, bikes, gym memberships, weight loss, things to help quit smoking, and so on. It’s a wonderful thing.

In any case, this year I want to use it toward getting a bike. My wife and I live in a small one bedroom apartment in Atlanta, and don’t really have a place to put a large object like a bike, or the desire to get mud and all those things all over carpet that we don’t own. So, I’m very interested in getting a folding bicycle that I can leave in my car, or leave in a corner of the apartment where it doesn’t take up much space.

Our working arrangements are not such that we could get rid of a car in favor of a bike, unfortunately, but I do hope and plan for this to be the case in the near future.

With all that said, I’d love to hear any recommendations for good folding bikes. Reasonably priced, long lasting, folding bikes. In the beginning parts of my search, I have been impressed by the Dahon Espresso and the Dahon Speed. Similar recommendations, or contrary recommendations, are welcome.

As a bit of an aside from various posts I have in the works, I have an appointment with an optometrist this weekend. The last time I went to one was just shortly after I began working fulltime in front of a computer screen, around the summer of 2006, and the contacts that I wore at the time caused my eyes lots of trouble.

By trouble, I mean that my eyes would get red a lot, the lenses would move around more than they should, my eyes would produce lots of ’sleep’ (I’m not sure what the technical term for that gooey stuff is), and so on. My boss at the time always thought I had pink eye and would spray my keyboard with anti-bacterial sprays, so I gave up and got a pair of glasses that I’ve been wearing since then.

For a little bit more context, I began wearing contacts when I was eleven years old, and wore them until I was 23, so I do have a good bit of experience with the ways that they should work in a human eye.

Before these issues began, I was wearing Acuvue 2 lenses. I experimented with the Acuvue Oasys, which was somewhat worse, and in between the two Acuvue brands I also experimented with CIBA Vision’s Night & Day lenses, which were the worst of all.

In any case, I have been out of the loop with the current technology of contact lenses for a couple of years, and am wondering if there are any recent advances, perhaps even specifically for people who have experienced the issues that I have, who need computer friendly contact lenses. Certainly I plan to talk to the optometrist about this, but any other insights would be most welcome. Please feel free to comment.

Once again, I’d like to present some initial thoughts stemming from our trip to Cornerstone Festival. I think this time there will be more than one post, as there are lots of things to think about.

Thoughts on the Music

Cornerstone, in recent years, has undergone a shift that causes it to have a lot more metal, especially metalcore, than it did in the past. Because my wife and I like metal, this is a good thing and a bad thing. The good is obvious, and the bad comes from the fact that things can get a bit oversaturated, and when this happens the quality can lessen. In a few years, the scenes will shift again and this will change, so it’s best to enjoy the good parts of it.

In any case, for me the best show was Living Sacrifice. The last time I had seen them was Cornerstone 2001, and they were better this year than they were then. It was an incredibly strong show.

Also, for the last several years my wife and I have had the privilege of gradually getting to know Neocracy. They are an amazingly talented death metal band that is constantly improving and writing better music, and great people. They have been informed that they need to come to Atlanta.

Thoughts on Seminars

Cornerstone continues to have amazing seminars every year. Naturally, many of them occur at the same time, and thus it is impossible to catch all of the good ones.

Brad Culver, Mary Culver, and Peter Wohler have been among our favorites since we had the privilege to meet them. They continue to speak into our lives through their seminars and through conversation with them, and they are gracefully willing to share their lives with us.

Several other things are worth saying about these seminars, as well as the seminar by Miroslav Volf and the Jesus for President tour. These, though, will be in additional posts.

Thoughts on other Cornerstones

• 2007

I wanted to announce that my dad has started blogging. I’ve told him for some time that he should do so. Feel free to stop by and give him encouragement in his new adventure, as he learns WordPress and the various things one must know in order to blog with it (categories, tags, posts and pages, linking to external sites, and so on will be entirely new things to him, for a little while).

My dad is an interesting guy. He and I disagree on a myriad of issues and have for a long time, but we typically have healthy disagreement. I don’t have to be afraid to tell him what I think, and vice versa. We also agree on some very important things. In any case, I think he has things to say, and should say them. Plus, blogging is fun.

As an aside, recently my wife and I attempted to take him to his first Yankees game at Yankee Stadium, since this is the last season it will be open. Various issues occurred, and he only got to see the 9th inning, but he did at least make it into the original Yankee Stadium before it closed. We’ll go to the new one another time.

My dad and I have a great relationship, and have tried to do things like that for each other. In any case, here is my welcome to the world of blogging.

My wife likes to make me random birthday cakes. I thought I’d post the cakes from 2007 (the dragon) and 2008 (the bat) as a salute to her randomness.

I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in the town of Salisbury, North Carolina. It is roughly 45 minutes north of Charlotte. One of the great, enduring things about Salisbury is a soda called Cheerwine.

It’s a great soda, and I always make sure to stock up when I visit my family in North Carolina. Essentially, it is very easy to find Cheerwine anywhere in North Carolina, and sometimes in South Carolina.

However, it is a very rare thing to find it outside the Carolinas. Today, I found it in a Kroger in Atlanta, and I was so excited I had to take a picture of it.

Ironically, we are leaving Atlanta on Sunday afternoon to travel to North Carolina.

Recently, I’ve been reading Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change.

I have also read The Secret Message of Jesus, which is meant to be read as a companion volume. If you have not read The Secret Message of Jesus, feel encouraged to click the link and pick it up, as it is on sale for $6.99 at Amazon.

In any case, as I have been reading Everything Must Change, I have found much to be challenged by, to remember, to share with others, and to allow Jesus to shape my life by. Most of the things that he presents are at least familiar to me, if not things that I’ve thought, prayed, discussed, taught, been taught, and been convicted by. Often, though, he expresses these things in ways that I have thought but not expressed, or have forgotten, or particularly in ways that bring up new implications for my life.

As an aside, there is a review of this book that Jonny Baker wrote several months ago, and it is worth reading. Jonny Baker is one of the people that is most aware of what God is doing in Western culture, and he has a brilliant mind and spirit. The post indicates that much of the thinking is already established in the U.K., although it is certainly radical in the United States. Brian McLaren has an insightful comment on the post, as well.

The strength of this book lies in the insights that it presents into what powers the world, especially America and those who are impacted by the American Empire, and in the insights that it presents into what Jesus has to say to that power. The “framing story” that Jesus offers really can and should change everything, in my life and your life and in the ways we interact with the world around us.

There are countless examples and quotations (and misquotations) floating around on the internet, and a quick search will bring up many of them. But there are a few things that have really shaken me, and inspired my imagination.

Communism, [Rene Padilla] says, specialized in distribution but failed at production. As a result, it ended up doing a great job of distributing poverty evenly. Capitalism, he says, was excellent at production but weak at distribution. As a result, it ended up rewarding the wealthy with obscene amounts of wealth while the poor suffered on in horrible degradation and indignity…

The twenty-first century began in the aftermath of the defeat of Marxism. The story of the coming century will likely be the story of whether a sustainable form of capitalism can be saved from theocapitalism [the religion-like seeking of prosperity], or whether unrestrained theocapitalism will result in such gross inequity between rich and poor that violence and counterviolence will bring civilization to a standstill, or perhaps worse.

There is an amazing amount of depth in that paragraph. and it helps introduce the “suicide machine” and its systems that this book is attempting to deconstruct. Certainly it is not an optimistic statement, but the book is constantly balancing it with statements like this:

If we believe, the decadent and self-indulgent West can be converted from overconsumers to creative stewards, from empire builders to community builders, from sex-obsessed and self-indulgent couch potatoes to people like Graciela, Luiz, and Leticia and their family - who along the way through their life, discover a magnificent vision and a sacred mission that give their lives unimagined meaning.

And this is the kind of statement that challenges everything about the way I live, and inspires my visions about the way I want to live. This is the kind of thing that makes the book a valid challenge to those of us who claim the story of Jesus.

Kiera has a birthday this week (May 14) and mine is a few weeks later (June 3). This year, we decided to celebrate both at the same time, and visit Bones Steakhouse. Bones, according to reviewers, is one of the top ten best steakhouses in the United States (number one, according to some).

We had hoped to visit this steakhouse since we moved to Atlanta, and decided to go ahead and do it for this year’s birthdays. Bones is in Buckhead, which is the neighborhood of Atlanta where various multi-million dollar mansions are, along with Coke executives and professional athletes and so on, so the steakhouse is a haunt of many Atlanta movers and shakers. Translation: Jon and Kiera do not belong.

When we arrived, we declined to use valet parking, and went inside. Neither of us fit in this kind of atmosphere, but wanted to enjoy a great steak anyway. While we didn’t order any appetizers, we did order a Heineken. Then, we each ordered a vegetable and a steak. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the steak was the best we have ever had. It most certainly deserves its rating.

The funny part of this trip, though, was before the steaks arrived. Our server set a dish on our table called Grit Fritters (for which we didn’t ask), and said it was a favor we could enjoy while we waited for our steaks. We both spent some time working as servers during college, and so we understand that occasionally servers do favors like that (though, usually it’s a free soda), and we also understand that once a dish hits the table, it legally has to stay on the table. When we received the bill, this dish was on it. Imagine the cojones guts it must take, to deceive a customer like that and not be phased by it!

In any case, since our bill was already very large it didn’t make a (notable) difference, so we didn’t fight it. But wow. It’s worth a mention on the blog, at least.

I want to let you in on one of my greatest fears. And one of my greatest hopes. I wrote recently about the ways I’ve grown into things of emergent, and before that how I grew into the underground and have desired to reach out there.

For a little more background on how I got to my current place, I want to give a little more history. While I was in high school, trying to un-learn some things that I had learned before I met Jesus, and trying to figure out what those things meant and what the new things meant, and how to put it all together, I had to figure out what to do about college. I felt strongly that I needed to learn ministry, so I went to a A/G college that is now a university, and pursued a B.S. in Church Ministries with a Bible concentration.

There, one of the first things I was faced with was the question of how I would financially support the kind of ministry I wanted to do. Prior to this, I hadn’t thought about it, at least not in any in-depth way. This was my idealism. It occurred to me then, though, that I could use and enhance the skills I had in web design to support myself. I could create websites on a relatively flexible schedule, do a lot of original, creative work, and make enough money to support myself (and my family, if I were to get one) and also hopefully to support a ministry.

Thus, I had become somewhat cynical of the church. I believed it didn’t care about the kind of ministry that I wanted to do (which, to some extent, is true, though I think it is less true than it was seven years ago when I was preparing to graduate from high school). I benefited from my education even so, much more than I expected. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. My theology and spirituality and hope for the church as a whole. and my part in it, were shaped in powerful ways there, and I was fortunate to meet and marry an amazing woman as well. But, I had traded the first idealism for another idealism, that I could quickly transition into funding a ministry from the creation of great websites.

When I finished the first degree, we weren’t yet financially able to leave Florida, and Florida is still quite behind in technology, and also art, education. So, I pursued another bachelor’s degree, in Interactive Media, at an art school. I learned a lot through it, as well, and then was finally able to leave Florida and see seasons again. Also, I became extremely fortunate to become a part of Revolution Atlanta, and feel like I am involved in, and can be more involved in, ministry there.

Now, I find myself trading, or perhaps balancing, the web-related idealism with cynicism. Do I need to pursue graduate school? If so, where? Who pays for it? If not, can I ever get to the point of doing my own thing? If I do transition into an individual way of working, will I have time to do ministry then? If I don’t, can I work in a relatively normal position, and still have time to do ministry? Who pays for it then? Does that mean I do need to pursue graduate school, more importantly than otherwise?

So, there is much to learn and question.