By: Deve Persad on September 18, 2014
How do you define greatness? The definitions surely abound; most of those definitions would point toward outcomes, performance and goals achieved or surpassed. Many of them would draw comparisons against the weaknesses or deficiencies of others. Greatness, in our starry-eyed culture, is also measured in both beauty, exemplified in power, and often in profit. Churches…
By: John Woodward on September 18, 2014
I cannot read a business book without automatically applying its lessons to my church or ministry, because I have never worked in the business world. My initial response tends to be negative, as my mindset is: “What does Wall Street have to do with Jerusalem?” So I began reading Good To Great by Jim Collins…
By: Jon Spellman on September 18, 2014
Story. The Gospel is incarnational. It is primarily a story about the ultimate Other making himself one of us, putting on our flesh and walking in our shoes (or sandals as it were) so that we could be reunited to him and ultimately reconstituted to perfection. It is a powerful story. Incarnation. In his important…
By: Phillip Struckmeyer on September 18, 2014
On Tuesday of this week, I was talking with a co-worker about a multi-ethnic ministry event we have coming up in November. Santes and I were discussing the session he is going to lead at the event and he made mention of a video, a TED Talk, he would like to show a clip from…
By: Nick Martineau on September 17, 2014
I can still vividly remember being 20 years old and leaving the country for the first time. I can remember walking off the plane in Entebbe, Uganda. There was a burning smell in the air that I didn’t recognize. I remember grabbing my bags, leaving the airport, and being swarmed by men wanting me to…
By: Dave Young on September 17, 2014
I would never have imagined an entire field of study for anthropological knowledge that focuses on senses and aesthetics. However, just because I’m naïve regarding such scholarly work doesn’t mean I don’t see its relevance, especially when entering into new cultures. When we go into a new culture we’re bringing our subjective perception of our…
By: Mary Pandiani on September 16, 2014
Someone once told me that as individuals we end up all singing the same song again and again, meaning that no matter what sermon I preach, paper I write, or even conversation I have, it usually revolves around the same guiding principle that I value and is unique to me. For me, reading Sensory Ethnography…
By: Michael Badriaki on September 14, 2014
Morgan‘s book titled The Sacred gaze:Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice is an intriguing read. I was tempted to judge the book by its cover and in fact, at first glance, I wondered what Gandhi, an Avatar of possibly one of the Hindu faith goddesses and an image of Jesus, have in common? My…
By: Travis Biglow on September 13, 2014
What a good book to describe the time we live and the affects of social media on life and on how life is viewed. I find it very fascinating how Sarah Pink connects the way visual ethnography is so interconnect with anthropology. I like how she shows how the Internet and social media have become…
By: Carol McLaughlin on September 13, 2014
This week my gaze has been at times distracted and slow to focus due to illness and catch up. Therefore my engagement with David Morgan’s book, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice seemed to be chapter by chapter rather than an overall gleaning. Morgan sets forth that “sacred gaze is…
By: Miriam Mendez on September 13, 2014
Growing up I could remember having this painting hanging on the wall across from my bed. And every night, my mother reminded me that Jesus will always protect me. I can remember gazing at this picture until I fell asleep. I was comforted knowing that if at any time during the night I was afraid,…
By: Bill Dobrenen on September 13, 2014
We live in a 21st century world inundated with images. Billboards, magazines, television, the Internet, and the large screens in large churches blast out image-laden messages that call us to change, to think, to buy their products. We are used to these images, so much so that we take them for granted. And who hasn’t…
By: rhbaker275 on September 12, 2014
I have enjoyed a new experience in our reading the last two weeks. In Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship in Dialogue, William Dyrness awakened a sense of the richness of the visual in worship. Dyrness presented a two-fold stimulus for engaging the visual arts: on the one hand, art enhances the worship experience providing…
By: Stefania Tarasut on September 12, 2014
There are many things in life that I don’t understand. I don’t understand the purpose of the church (I know! I’m a pastor, but I struggle with church). I don’t understand why Jesus is almost always portrayed as a beautiful white man… even by non- whites. Finally, I don’t understand why Christians are driven and…
By: Clint Baldwin on September 12, 2014
(“Home – Morning Coffee While Reading Ionesco’s Rhinoceros: A Study in Brown & ‘Texturality.'”) The above is an image and its title that I posted earlier this week on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I really liked all of the varied shades of brown, textures, and lines involved. But, what I really want you to…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on September 12, 2014
Growing up in a church context where religious visuals are not part of the tradition, both our last week’s reading on visual faith by William Dyrness and this week’s reading by David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice have stretched my perception about visuals in the Christians worship. After…
By: Julie Dodge on September 12, 2014
Art is a reflection of culture. Art is demonstrated in many mediums: narrative (story), music, poetry, visual, and performance. And what is culture? “Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by…
By: Richard Volzke on September 12, 2014
Stevens said, “Humans do not live in a place but in the description of one.”[1] This quote has caused me to stop and reflect on my own worldview. At one time it seemed that my surroundings were defined by some preset order of things, but this is not the case. The environment does not define…
By: Dawnel Volzke on September 12, 2014
Before reading Pink’s book, Doing Visual Ethnography, it helped me to understand first what ethnography is about. Knowing that it is the systematic study of people and cultures helped to provide me with a better context in order to understand the concepts that Pink covered. There are entire fields of study given towards understanding social…
By: Brian Yost on September 12, 2014
When I ordered the book Doing Visual Ethnography by Sarah Pink, I was not sure what to expect. I had never heard the term “visual ethnography”, so I began to search for a good working definition. I discovered that there are schools, like Leiden University that offer specialties in Visual Ethnography. Apparently it is something…
