Blog Awareness: Mockingbird’s Leap, Advent Conspiracy and Jesusland

Here are a few blogs I think you should check out this week.

Be sure to take a look at what Glenn Jordan of Crooked Shore is up to for the Advent season. He’s invited a bunch of his friends to join him in the practice of attention as we prepare for Christmas.

Glenn writes,

This is a special project for the Advent season. It is a short-term but intentional community of friends and connections from many places who have agreed to practice attention in the run up to Christmas Day, so that we can learn to appreciate the many ways we have been gifted.
 We live with the awareness that often the busyness and commerciality of the season leads to inattention, so that we are constantly in danger of not noticing. Maybe this year, if we are intentional about attention, and then blogging about what we see, we might be better prepared for the advent of the Christ Child, the great Gift of God.

Here’s a list of people who will be joining him in the project, I am happy to be a part of it as well.

Chris Mohr sent around a link to this site (and the next one) which looks to unmask the idol of consumption at Christmas and instead offer compassion as what Christmas should be about. They say,

Advent Conspiracy is an international movement restoring the scandal of Christmas by worshipping Jesus through compassion, not consumption.

You can find out more about what they are doing and how you can participate in making Christmas a day that’s focused on worshipping the living Christ through compassion not consumption this year.

Finally, Revolution in Jesusland promises to be provocative and enlightening in a (non-Enlightenment sort of way) as it calls:

…Is a plea to the progressive movement [in American politics], to take another look and get to know the diverse and complex world of evangelical Christianity in its own terms. Here you’ll find interviews, commentary, analysis and other dispatches from all over “Jesusland.??? This tour will explore everything from the workings of the local church, to the evangelicals’ vibrant, decentralized national leadership training infrastructure to theological questions such as, “How in the world DO they read the Bible literally???? and “Do they really think I’m going to hell????

Here’s a post that introduces some of the ideas that are going on with the Jesusland blog, but it’s basically encouraging a broader view of evangelicals in America. Yes there are evangelicals who oppose the war, work for justice, care for the poor, and challenge the powers of consumerism and American politics all while taking the Bible very seriously. This blog will help you find out who they are, and what they’re up to (see about page).

bloggers