jonathan stegall

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.

From Emerging Pentecostals:

…a conversation about emergence within a pentecostal framework would be helped greatly if we took some time to share our stories of emergence.

This is a wonderful idea, and I want to be a part of it. Thus, consider this my story of emergence, or of how I came to be involved with both the pentecostal church and what is commonly called the emerging church.

I met Jesus when I was just shy of fifteen years old, and met him through what you could call a dramatic encounter that took place in an Assembly of God church in Salisbury, North Carolina. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a part of the supernatural actions of God in the world. I wanted to be close to him in tangible ways, and I wanted to bring others to be close to him as well.

As my faith developed, I began to grow in some very specific ways that together have shaped the person I am now, almost ten years later. First, I began to seek out how I, specifically, should serve Jesus with my life. I looked into being a pastor, a missionary to an obscure country, and a number of other things, because I felt strongly that I was called to reach out to people that were far from God.

Finally, I found confirmation in the idea that I was called to reach the outcasts of our own society. The people who did not fit in with the traditional church, whether because the church rejected them, because they rejected the church, or both. This manifests itself in more ways today than it did ten years ago. At the time, most of this kind of ministry was happening in the various underground subcultures, and it still is. But now, it has moved significantly further into the mainstream with organizations like Emergent Village. In any case, my heart was inextricably linked to the underground, and it remains so now.

As I began to learn about this calling, I also began to learn that I had a passion for being at the cutting edge of whatever I could. I can still remember a message I heard that described the church of today as the kind of organization that would build a church at the site where Jesus performed some great feat, rather than following him to see what he would do next. I passionately want to be involved in the current mission of God in the world. I don’t want to be where God was five years ago. I want to know where his heart is today.

In addition to, and as part of, these previous things, I began to have a deep desire to communicate with love, grace, and power to people who did not yet know Jesus, that they might see him as he really is and give consideration to the kind of influence he would like to have on their lives.

These areas have been molded and shaped through education, experience, prayer, thought, and conversation over the last several years, but at their core they remain the same, and they are derived from a desire to live in intimacy with Jesus, thus my involvement with the pentecostal and charismatic church. I am well aware of the shortcomings of the movement, and at this point I identify far more closely with the term Post-Charismatic than with pentecostal or charismatic, but I am also aware that there is much good in the movement.

As for my involvement with the emerging church, it began through my desire to be a voice to the underground. For most of my life, I have fit with the underground, and I’m comfortable with this. I feel at home there. It’s natural that I would want to share what I believe is commonly hidden about Jesus from these unique people.

As I’ve said before, I have been blessed to be involved with the Underground Railroad and learn from and be in community with the wonderful ministries that are part of it. Many of these ministries have been around for decades, and have been doing the kind of ministry that is now known as “emergent” for longer than I have been alive.

Thus, I have come into the emerging church, and thus into Emergent itself, from what you might call a back door. I have learned ministry by grace, unconditional acceptance, and the power of authenticity from the underground, and have sought to learn how it fits with my personal theology, my personal experiences, and my personal areas of calling. Many other leaders of the emerging church, including Andrew Jones, also came to be involved in similar ways.

I feel that this is one of the most valuable facets of the emerging church and the Emergent conversation: that people who spend their lives reaching out to the darkest corners of western society can come together with people who study postmodernism in universities or painting in art schools, with people who understand that colonialism is dead and its obituary is the power of the non-Western world, with those who do research on the effectiveness of modern Christianity in the Western world, and with those who simply feel like something is missing from their normal church experience.

More interesting still, than these examples, is that no one fits into only one of these areas. For example, I have a passion for walking into dark places as a shadow of Jesus, but I also have a ministerial education from a pentecostal university, an art degree from a secular art school, and a weird job history of discussing theology and politics and philosophy for hours at a time while cleaning toilets and mopping floors. Emergence indeed.

In the next few months, there are some travels I’ll be taking. I may update this post, as I’m sure travels will update as well.

Chicago

work related, with free time at night

April 2 - April 4

Chicago

work related, with free time at night

May 7 - May 8

New York City

Baseball game at Yankee stadium with my dad

June 9

Chicago

work related, with free time at night

June 16 - June 19

Bushnell, Illinois

Cornerstone Festival 2008

June 30 - July 5

San Francisco

Adaptive Path UX Week 2008

August 12 - August 15

On another note, I have found TripIt to be an amazing way to organize travel. Certainly is worth it if you travel relatively often.

I’ve been a bit lazy with posting, as of late. So, I want to provide a bit of an update of what’s going on. As these things continue to develop, they may possibly provide some material for more posts. Exciting.

Projects

I have several projects that will be happening over the next few months. Currently, a new site is being created for Revolution Atlanta. Hopefully, it will continue to go well. A few other projects are also in the works, and more details will be coming about some of them.

Also, I’m finally making progress (very slow progress, albeit) on creating a design concept for this website. Yes, this blog. I know I said I might have it designed by early 2008, and I also know that “early 2008″ is almost over. So, let’s shoot for mid 2008, and see what happens. I feel very happy about the general direction things are proceeding with this design.

Issues of the spirit

Recently, I mentioned on this blog that God has been working with me concerning the issue of prayer. He has faithfully brought it to my attention, over and over again. Recently, I finished reading The Great Omission by Dallas Willard.

It is an amazing book, and through it, especially, I feel like I am beginning to see a bit of the bigger picture of what is being said to me. The book covers the kind of authentic discipleship that is typically missing from the Western church, which is essentially the kind of discipleship that Jesus had in mind for his followers. We in the Western church have entirely skipped a lot of it in favor of things that are easier and less powerful.

As he examines this kind of discipleship, Dallas Willard brings together the teachings of Jesus on how to follow him. He looks at various spiritual disciplines; how they can influence a life to authentically experience and grow in the experience of God.

The hardest, and thus probably the most relevant, issue for me to learn about was the issue of solitude and silence. Learning to practice the presence of God by spending time away from other things.

I’m not any good at this. I see the deep relationship that it has to new monasticism, especially, and other parts of emerging things that God is doing in the world. I see the deep, paradoxical relationship that it has to spiritual community.

Interestingly, as I work on a website that I hope will express who I am to the fullest extent possible, I am also beginning to see the relationship that this kind of authentic spiritual experience, leading through silence and solitude to prayer and awareness of God, has to art and creativity and design. I’m beginning to see that, the more I get of this, the better a designer I will be.

That’s not at all to say that the best designers have to care about spiritual things, or that they would be better designers if they did. But it is to say that I, personally, will be a better designer if I can better integrate my life, and better learn to slow it down and be more aware of spiritual things.

I’ve been reluctant to post these thoughts, as they’re still a bit murky. I’ve had many of these thoughts for years, but I feel as though they are beginning to work together in ways that they may not have in the past, and that leads me to believe that it’s worth posting them.

At Josh Brown’s blog, there is a series of posts that I began to link to yesterday that are challenging some of the common critiques leveled against Emergent (and in this sense, I do mean, at least predominantly, Emergent Village, not the global emerging church).

One of the posts deals with the conception that Emergent consists of white guys, sitting around talking about theology. The post itself is well worth a read, as are the comments. One of the comments, from Julie Clawson, is what I want to look into, at the moment.

Part of it reads like this:

“Nice Christian women” are taught to be polite, respectful, and submissive - very hard things to be if you ever want to get a word in edgewise in a conversation with men.

I saw this firsthand during the first year we led the local Emergent Cohort. The group consisted of mostly younger men and single women (wives never show up, what family shells out babysitting money just so the woman can participate in such things???). The group nearly fell apart after all the women left. They left because they never got a chance to participate in the conversation and constantly received the message that they weren’t wanted. If they tried to speak up, some guy would jump in and talk them down, and as nice Christian women they were “trained” to let that happen. The guys weren’t doing it intentionally or generally even aware of what they were doing, they were just holding a conversation like they had been trained to do.

I feel like there is something deeply significant in that statement, as it pertains to things like Emergent, or theological and church-related discussions in general, and also as it pertains to life in general. At this time in the development of Emergent, many of the people who are attracted to it do have a history of involvement with the evangelical church. For a number of reasons that are related to everything from serious biblical misinterpretation to simple selfishness, evangelicalism has not, especially in the last fifty years, welcomed the voices of women. There is a certain “training” that Julie alludes to that women receive in modern evangelicalism that leads them to be quiet and let themselves be shut out of conversations with men.

As a man who has both formal and informal experience in evangelicalism and training in evangelical ministry, I read this comment and was immediately struck by how true it is. I recognize guilt in myself of shutting women out from conversations, because I have spoken as I learned to speak. I have unintentionally expected women to speak in the same ways that I do, and I have neglected to recognize the differences between the framework that I have been given and the framework that they have been given.

The implications of this thought really hit home when I began to think about my marriage. I recognize guilt in shutting out my wife by expecting her to speak like I do. This occurs in public conversations as well as private ones. She has a longer, and in general far more negative, history with the church in general and evangelicalism in particular than I do, and thus this framework has been drilled into her even more than it has into me, and many times I have failed to recognize this.

I believe that a comment like Julie’s has the potential to teach guys like me how difficult it can be for a woman to get past that framework, and the damage that it can cause. This kind of learning is essential for the development of the Emergent conversation as more than a bunch of white guys discussing theology.

Woo hoo. Happy New Year, and all that.

I spent much of 2007 flying by the seat of my pants, for various reasons. Both good and bad reasons. It was an interesting time. I look forward to a different year. Change is good. A large part of my view of a spiritual life is that God allows such a life to go through seasons, just like people north of Florida.

As an aside, I spent much of the latter part of December visiting Florida, where my wife’s family lives and where we went to college. The whole time, the temperature was in the 80s. Not fun.

I don’t believe these seasons necessarily correspond to any of our time periods. I do, however, believe that our mental and spiritual states can influence the times of these seasons, as well as the things we experience and learn during those seasons. And let’s face it, we as Western humans like to feel like there is something different about January 1 compared to December 31.

For myself, I’m not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions. But I do enjoy the feeling of a fresh start, and the ideas and perspectives that come from that feeling. In light of this, there are a number of things I look forward to about 2008. Many of them will cause new ideas and new perspectives.

• Finishing a certain freelance project.
• The opportunity to do certain other freelance projects that I really resonate with and believe in.

  There are several ministries and organizations with which I’ve discussed doing this kind of project. I really enjoy the opportunity to create these kind of sites, and learn about what these people do, and how to express it on a website.

• Finally designing this website and getting rid of the default WordPress theme.

  I know, I’ve been talking about that all year. Hopefully, it’s really going to happen in 2008, though. Maybe even early 2008. Don’t hold your breath, though.

• Learning more about Ruby on Rails.
• Learning other stuff to make me a better web person.
• Seeing more of how the things on my heart resonate, or don’t resonate, with the things on God’s heart.

  I have a lot of passion for various things. With some of them, I really understand how they relate to my vision and purpose for life. With others, I have no idea. I like to learn this kind of thing, though.

• Getting caught up on my reading.

  Normally, I read a lot more than I did in 2007. Theology, spirituality, ministry, escapist fantasy, design and programming, business, and so on. I have more books piled up waiting for me to read them in all of these categories than I normally do.

• Various travels and events.

  Especially Cornerstone. This is the 25th anniversary of the fest. It will be a wonderful event, I’m sure.

  Atlanta has a lot of really cool events this year, too. Great concerts, a big tattoo convention, more great concerts, and other things.

  Work and web related travels will include, at least, several trips to Chicago. They will probably also include a conference or two. As always, I’ll try to post these when I know the dates and locations in case there is an opportunity for sharing a beverage.

• Of course, there is the election.

  I find myself much more terrified than optimistic, but I still have to consider it something to look forward to. The last eight years in the United States have had an almost exclusively negative effect on how followers of Jesus are looked at by everyone else. Biblically, this is a bad thing.

  I believe that, one way or the other, the next four years will also have a significant impact. My fear is that we will be worse off than we are.

I’m sure there are other things that I’m forgetting to anticipate, and many other things that will completely surprise me when they come. And I’m okay with that.

In any case, welcome to the new year. May the face of God shine on you when you don’t expect it.

I married my best friend at a church in Lakeland, Florida, in a building that had previously been a Scotty’s hardware store. Right now, at 2pm EST as Wordpress makes this post live, our ceremony was starting.

I have an amazing wife who walks through life with me. Plus, she’s hot. We were twenty year old college students, and I wouldn’t change a thing about our lives together.

She’s an amazing woman with a wonderful heart that sees the best and the worst of mine. I have learned so much from her, and continue to learn everyday.

Below are lyrics to our wedding song that I play on the morning of each anniversary. Tourniquet’s When the Love is Right. Kiera, I love you. Thank you for always being with me.

The journey through our life can bring
A place and time for everything
A day of hope, a year of fears
A thousand smiles, a million tears

Our paths were meant to cross
And I couldn’t forget you
No matter what the cost
We both had to see this through

Take my hand, take my heart
We will never be apart
Never be apart
Because I love you

Follow me and I’ll lead you
Lead me and I’ll follow you
Anywhere, anytime
When the love is right
The path is bright

From the Father of lights you came
And I know I’ll never be the same again
A beautiful gift has been given to me
Your smiling face is all I see

The look that’s in your eyes
And your smile that sets me free
Has made me realize
All that you see in me

Take my hand, take my heart
We will never be apart
Never be apart
Because I love you

Follow me and I’ll lead you
Lead me and I’ll follow you
Anywhere, anytime
When the love is right
The path is bright

Together now and forever
You are the one
You are my everything
To me you bring
The love that I have waited for

The look that’s in your eyes
And your smile that sets me free
Has made me realize
All that you see in me
Our paths were meant to cross
And I couldn’t forget you
The soul in you is the soul in me
The way that it was meant to be

So An Event Apart Chicago is finished. Several things were new to me, and several were somewhat familiar, but for me, even the familiar ones were very relevant. In a way, these are the parts of the event that stuck out to me. Many of them were part of my design education, but, of course, things that are not used are easily forgotten.

For a time during the latter part of my design education, I spent a lot more time programming than I did designing in school, and in various work projects I needed to use different methods of design than I often would have liked, or was taught to use. Many of the design theories and processes had been underused for a while, and it was wonderful for these to be refreshed and re-emphasized, and also phrased in different ways than the ways I learned them.

So much of design, and particularly design on the web, is as much about continuing education as it is about a base of knowledge. When I was studying the Bible and theology for my first degree, I had a professor that I’ve quoted here and to anyone who will listen, and he said that if a person were to earn a PhD in theology, and not read a book for six months, they would no longer be relevant. Their field would have passed them. Obviously, the web is younger than theology, and this idea works on the web at least as well as it does in theology.