intersections

The Economist on Los Angeles

The most recent issue of The Economist has a short article entitled "Tackling the Hydra" about Los Angeles and urban design. It highlights the debate that is all too familiar to those of us in the coalition for affordable housing and sensible transportation design that takes more cars off the streets and puts more eyes and feet on the sidewalks.

Los Angeles has long epitomised car-oriented sprawl. As early as 1946 the historian Carey McWilliams judged it “a collection of suburbs in search of a city”. So rare are neighbourhoods where basic needs can be met without hopping into a car or bus that estate agents tout the few where they can as “walkable”. Urban planners elsewhere routinely invoke the city as an example of what to avoid.

Yeah, we know.... Do you have to rub it in?

Tick-Tock

This is a music video preview from the forthcoming CD/DVD release by Cobalt Season. As I mentioned below, Cobalt Season will be performing at the Hollywood Adventist Church on Thursday, April 24. Click here for concert details.

Cobalt Season coming to Hollywood

I first heard about Cobalt Season just over a year ago as their album, In Search of a Unified Theory, was being released. My wife and I drove to Orange County to hang with Aaron Flores' community one night last Spring to hear them perform. I was immediately drawn into their artistry and the subversive power of their lyrics. If you haven't heard their music, run - don't walk - to their MySpace page and give it a listen. It's not every day that people of the Jesus Way produce music like this. Mmmmm!

We've stayed in touch a bit in the intervening year and so when they said they were passing through L.A. this Spring, I naturally offered to host them here for a night.

So...on Thursday night, April 24th, at 7:30 pm, Cobalt Season will be performing at the Hollywood Adventist Church. They upcoming CD, Fragile Iconoclast, is being released any day now, so they will be doing songs old and new.

Admission is free, but we are going to be taking good care of our friends, so please come prepared to help us take care of them. Also, their CDs will be on sale so come prepared for that. See y'all in a few weeks!

President Paulsen: "Silence in the face of evil is complicity in what is wrong"

Yeah, he said that! But that's not all he said. Go and read it for yourself at Adventist News Network. Thanks to Bonnie Dwyer who pointed this out to me.

For the first time in my ministry I wish I was at the General Conference to be a part of the conversation that happened there yesterday. It was a meeting of the Council on Evangelism and Witness. Here are a few choice quotes from the article...

The conduct of church members within the community is either a "confirmation or a denial of our faith," Paulsen said, adding that "silence can be as much a failure as speaking the wrong words."

"The faith we have is not best explained by academics or theologians. Our faith finds its most compelling expression in the everyday words and actions of Christians in their communities."

People should see Adventists as peacemakers, but not people who dodge defending the rights of others, Paulsen said, noting the church's failure to respond to the Rwandan genocide. "Silence in the face of evil is complicity in what is wrong," he said. "Let us speak from the pulpit and show from our actions that we oppose anything that instills hatred or inflames violence."

This is the kind of leadership many of us are waiting for. When you are the the primary leader of the church, to a certain degree you get to set the agenda. If Elder Paulsen hadn't brought these issues to the Council in his remarks, my guess is that they would not have been discussed. It so refreshing to have our world president say, "Here is what we're going to talk about..." and have it be something that connects with the real world outside the stained glass windows.

This is not the only "prophetic speech" we've heard from Elder Paulsen in recent days. In a recent article in Adventist World entitled, "Clear Thinking About Military Service," Paulsen reaffirmed the church's stand on non-noncombatantcy. Those of us that have been trying to rekindle a conversation about nonviolence have observed that it has been a long time since we've had a statement like this.

You can read the whole article here. It's not too earth shattering, but I'm sure a few people found it offensive. This piece was much blogged about a week or so ago. In connection with today's story at ANN, there is new reason for hope!

Everyone needs good headshots

I wanted to give a plug to my friend, and fellow Hollywood Adventist Church member, Alburn Binkley. Alburn is skilled video editor and a leader in our Media Ministry here in Hollywood. But he's also very good with a SLR camera as well. The other day Alburn did new headshots for me, including the small thumbnail you see to the left. So, I wanted to let you know about his work and if you need headshots, please contact Alburn and support an urban missionary in Hollywood.

After the jump...a couple of samples of the photos he did for me.

The Militant Angeleno Upgrades my status

I'm feeling better already. In an excellent post that I feel settles this issue forever, the Militant Angeleno explains the Eastside/Westside issue once and for all.

3. THEREFORE, west of the Los Angeles River is NOT "The Westside" nor is east of La Cienega Blvd "The Eastside." There is no dividing line between the two. You cannot be on the Westside and throw crap across the street to the "Eastside." You cannot be on the Eastside and hock a loogie across the street to the Westside. You cannot jump between Westside and Eastside in a precisely-located game of hopscotch. Stop thinking binary here.

Read the whole thing here.

For me the reason this whole thing is so funny (and if you live in Los Angeles you'll understand this, I think) is that those of us that live in Hollywood are never sure where we fall into the descriptions of the city. When I look at the weather map in the LA Times, for example, they have temperatures for Burbank, Downtown and UCLA. Because LA has so many micro-climates, I'm confident my weather is different than Burbank, but we're not nearly as far west as UCLA. So I end up going with downtown. I really am only 4 miles from downtown, but in LA that seems so far.

There is, of course, the distinct social differences between "East LA" and "the Westside". To suggest that there is a center that is neither East nor West is, well...messing with the well established social strata of this city. So, now I can be aloof not just in my Hollywood address but in my "neither East nor West but rather Center of the City" status.

Anyway, just a little Los Angeles geography humor to start the day.

Is Our Gospel Too Small?

The Christian Vision Project has been asking recently, "Is Our Gospel Too Small?" They have several excellent essays posted on their website which you can see here. One that especially grabbed my attention that I would encourage everyone to read is by my friend Tim Keel, called "An Efficient Gospel?" In this article he challenges our reductionistic tendencies and our desire to make our gospel efficient.

One of the features of the modern world was "reductionism": the belief that complex things can always be reduced to simpler or more fundamental things. To reduce something is to take it out of context and to take it apart. Church leaders have become experts at reductionism. Ministries that are successful in one context are reduced to "models" that we try to duplicate in other contexts. Sometimes such reductionism is effective. But when we use reductionism indiscriminately, we end up in a world so simplified it is barely recognizable.

This reductionism directly effects the gospel. Tim discusses his gradual discovery of the deeper meaning of the gospel in this article. What he describes relates directly to something I've been saying for some time. Here's how Tim puts it...

Tom Hayden - Progressives for Obama

Tom Hayden, author of Ending the War in Iraq and former California State Senator says,

All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama.

Read more here.

The Scandal of Jesus

By cartoonist Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News.
Found in the LA Times Opinion section, Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008.

A New Creation

I've been enjoying reading N.T. Wright's latest book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I wanted to share this quote in advance of Easter morning, for your reflection.

The resurrection of Jesus offers itself, to the student of history or science no less than the Christian or theologian, not as an odd event within the world as it is but as the utterly characteristic, prototypical, and foundational event within the world as it has begun to be. It is not an absurd event within the old world but the symbol and starting point of the new world. The claim advanced by Christianity is of that magnitude: Jesus of Nazareth ushered in not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation....

We could cope – the world could cope – with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples' minds and hearts. The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one (67-68).