Motivational Posters for the Emerging Church

Oh Greg—THX!!! 

My sister loved the “demotivational” stuff (her sense of humor and passive-aggressive commentary on management (nevermind she was a PM), but these the Intertec of theology, I was ROTFL at some of the other ones. A Friday palate cleaner come early!   

We’re off to a running start today!

Make sure everyone realizes there are a bunch more at the link…

Hard to pick favorites, but “Incarnational Living” could be a terrific bulletin cover.  Motivational.  Inclusive.  It just says:  “ECUSA”

Oh I don’t know… “Relevance” says it all for The Empty Church.

“Incarnational Living” says it all for me.

Hey dude, listen up. Like a hundred years ago, there was this really cool dude named Jesus. It was the dark ages, man, like before there were CD’s and stuff. Anywho, this dude Jesus said some really rad stuff and did some bitchin’ things, like, you know, Harry Potter or Bono or something. He did this really cool concert on a mount and blew everybody away. Radical! But, he like pissed some people off and they like killed Him and all but He left this really bitchin’ book…...........

the snarkster

Snarkster,  LOL!!  thanks

“Transparency” seems WAY too close to home for ECUSA.  Mean clowns.  Says it all really.

“Mystery” is my favorite.  LOL!

Darn, Karen B., ya beat me to it on “Transparency”.  I think we’re just starting to see how “mean & scary” it can get.

For the site that I believe started the demotivational trend, I highly recommend a visit to [url=http://www.despair.com]http://www.despair.com [/url].  I never can go there and look at the material without getting at least one good laugh—Hey! wait a minute - I think that is motivational?!

For the heck of it, I just clicked on this thread.  I’m glad I did!!!  Hilarious, I’m gonna forward it to some friends so they can laugh too!

I liked Humility and Truth the best.  They both seem to exemplify the reappraiser views that we can’t know truth and that what we (reasserters) say is wrong anyway.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

I love it! Thanks!

Great ideas and wonderful pictures!!  They are all so good it is hard to pick a favorite.  I think “Incarnational Living” would also have to be my pick.  How on earth do you find this stuff??

  I have been contemplating an updated bumper sticker from a couple of decades ago:

“Progressive Christianity” is Neither.

‘Liked “Transparency.” 

Reminds me of Jack’s deranged love poem out of Batman :
“I’m only laughing on the outside. 
My beauty is only skin-deep. 
Inside, I’m really crying. 
Won’t you join me, for a weep?”

“Generous Orthodoxy” (also my favorite) is to orthodoxy as “Affirming Catholicism” is to catholicism.
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For the record, I note some nice parallels to the Revisionist Dictionary, including this entry:

“RELEVANT: Trendy; interesting to me where I am right now; in worship, entertaining.”

And these fine visual images pack a punch.

Sarcasm - from the Greek sarkasmos meaning “to tear flesh”.

This is sarcasm directed at Christians by Christians and I’m not of the point.  Is it the intent of the original post that our Emergent Christian brethren would see these clever illustrations, dripping with sarcasm, and realize that everybody is making fun of them and then they would want to quickly turn from their Emergent ways?

Sarcasm - from the Greek sarkasmos meaning “to tear flesh”.

    “Again, if you think it hardly possible to dislike the actions of unreasonable men and yet have a true love for them, consider this with relation to yourself.
    It is very possible, I hope, for you not only to dislike, but to detest and abhor a great many of your own past actions, and to accuse yourself of great folly for them. But do you then lose any of those tender sentiments towards yourself which you used to have? Do you then cease to wish well to yourself? Is not the love of yourself as strong then as at any other time?
    Now what is thus possible with relation to ourselves is in the same manner possible with relation to others. We may have the highest good wishes towards them, desiring for them every good that we desire for ourselves, and yet, at the same time, dislike their way of life.
    To proceed: all that love which we may justly have for ourselves we are, in strict justice, obliged to exercise towards all other men; and we offend against the great law of our nature, and the greatest laws of God, when our tempers towards others are different from those which we have towards ourselves.
    Now that self-love which is just and reasonable, keeps us constantly tender, compassionate, and well-affected towards ourselves: if, therefore, you do not feel these kind dispositions towards all other people, you may be assured that you are not in that state of charity which is the very life and soul of Christian piety.
    You know how it hurts you to be made the jest and ridicule of other people; how it grieves you to be robbed of your reputation and deprived of the favorable opinion of your neighbors; if, therefore, you expose others to scorn and contempt in any degree; if it pleases you to see or hear of their frailties and infirmities; of if you are only loath to conceal their faults; you are so far from loving such people as yourself, that you may be justly supposed to have as much hatred for them as you have love for yourself. For such tempers are as truly the proper fruits of hatred as the contrary tempers are the proper fruits of love.
    And as it is a certain sign that you love yourself because you are tender of everything that concerns you; so it is as certain a sign that you hate your neighbor, when you are pleased with anything that hurts him.”

William Law
_A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life_

Humor can be healthy in many ways. It can deflate the pretensions of the proud and powerful (as good political cartoons do). It can replace inarticulate exasperation with bemusement. It can poke fun at fads. It can help us recognize our own foibles.

Many of these cartoons operate in those ways.

Foibles: Community; Humility; Liberty; Relevance; Tolerance.

Fads: Contextualization; Conversation; Cultural Awareness; Incarnational Living; Postmodern; Truth.

Absurdist or Black Humor: Authenticity; Missional; Nonconformity; Transparency.

These and others also convey some serious points, particularly about relativism: Conversation; Humility; Liberty; Mystery;
Postmodern; Relevance; and Truth.

The “Ecclesiology” cartoon (in which only the title is religious) looks like self-deprecation, one of the kindliest forms of humor.

I see nothing mean here.

I see nothing mean here.

Calling one’s opponents “mean clowns” and “crazy” isn’t mean? This is love in action?

“Calling one’s opponents “mean clowns” and “crazy” isn’t mean?”

Billy: Opponents? Please show me specifically what connects the images in question with the authors’ “opponents.”

Note that the sinister “Transparency” clown stands atop the Pyromaniac logo, suggesting some affinity between the clown and the authors.

Iranaeus, Phil Johnson is not an adherent of the Emerging Church movement, but an evangelical critic of it.
Here is a link to blogs he’s posted about the Emerging Church. The older entries are towards the bottom.

Pieces like this serve to demoralize and discourage the very folks I’d expect that “Stand Firm” posters would want to encourage: do you really think it’s a bad thing for churches to talk about what it means to be “on mission,” or to live incarnationally, or to do the things that make for this?

I still insist that once the mainline silliness is pushed aside regarding the “emerging church conversation,” what we have is a generation interested in really living according to God’s will as manifested in the person of Christ, and a longing for connection with the ancient-church. Where these people are liberals, they are so because they have been catechized either by fundamentalists who have taught them to hate and fear non-Christians, or the liberal catechists of your own ECUSA parishes.

And really, for former ECUSA communicants to look down on anybody coming from (or out of) the mainline church is ridiculous: if you want God to forgive you for this, how can you fail to show mercy to others?

Irenaeus,
I very respectfully disagree with you.  I see nothing scriptural or Christlike about sarcastically making fun of another Christian.  It certainly doesn’t further the conversation.  Emergents that I have known are doing some pretty amazing ministry while earnestly seeking to live according to God’s will in these difficult times.

I have read Emergent papers, essays, and articles dismissing other expressions of the Christian faith.  They are casting stones from within a glass house.

  really, for former ECUSA communicants to look down on anybody coming from (or out of) the mainline church is ridiculous: if you want God to forgive you for this, how can you fail to show mercy to others?

Yes, one the biggest advantages of being associated with ECUSA is the permanent humility one must have - no, “Wish all Christians were like us” - it’s a perpetual state of ‘Wish we were more like them’

Thanks be to God I belong to an Anglican Church now I don’t have to be ashamed of - it’s quite refreshing.

What is the evidence that the following posters “sarcastically make fun of other Christians,” particularly the Emerging Church?

-1- AUTHENTICITY: absurdist noir; no hint of connection to Christianity

-2- COMMUNITY: the caption could apply to many of us; and only “confessions of faith” even touches on religion

-3- CONVERSATION: parodies mushy, feel-good attitudes common in contemporary American society; note that softheaded thinking is on the short list of some Stand Firm commenters’ rants against Baby Boomers, which I don’t recall present company denouncing

-4- CONTEXTUALIZATION: nothing specifically religious here

-5- CULTURAL AWARENESS: nothing specifically religious here

-6- HUMILITY: a well-deserved poke at teenage attitudes that have nothing to do with Christian faith

-7- INCARNATIONAL LIVING: pokes fun at a legitimate term that has also been used and abused as a fad-word for the past two decades; within the bounds of fair comment

-8- LIBERTY: Fair comment on the snares of worldliness

-9- MYSTERY: a Reformed poke at Christians like me whose faith is more mystical, less rationalistic than Calvinism; squarely within the bounds of fair comment and certainly not mean

-10- NONCONFORMITY: Nothing religious here, just eight goose-steppers (one in preposterous purple) with a Stalinist building in the background

-11- POSTMODERN: Nothing religious here, just a well-deserved poke at a powerful anti-Christian intellectual fad

-12- RELEVANCE: Nothing religious here, just an astute and long-overdue poke at a certain sort of narcissistic solipsism common among young people but present as well in their parents’ generation

-13- TOLERANCE: Nothing religious here

-14- TRANSPARENCY: Nothing religious here; “transparency” is used and abused in all sorts of contexts, including accounting, corporate governance, government reform, and humanistic psychology

-15- TRUTH: Nothing religious here; certainly within the bounds of fair comment on process-focused discourse

Exactly which of these posters “tear the flesh” like sarcasm?
_ _ _ _ _ _

That leaves five Christian-themed posters that I’m not sure about:

-16- APOLOGETICS: Not very successful as humor but rather flaccid for sarcasm

-17- ECCLESIOLOGY: Could apply to lots of churches, including the Anglican Communion

—- I don’t know enough about GENEROUS ORTHODOXY, MISSIONAL, and NARRATIVE THEOLOGY to judge those posters. Generous Orthodoxy certainly packs a barbed sting
_ _ _ _ _ _

The first 15 posters are successful and relatively gentle satire and certainly within the bounds of fair comment. (I’m surprised to see Stand Firm commenters fussing like feminists about them.) If you disagree with me, please explain what’s wrong with particular posters.

I’d also welcome enlightenment about the last 5 posters.

On balance, these 20 posters are more godly, perceptive, and restrained than many partisan political comments on orthodox Anglican blogs.

What is the evidence that the following posters “sarcastically make fun of other Christians,” particularly the Emerging Church?

Irenaeus, perhaps you didn’t notice the title that Mr. Johnson gave the series of posters? Or the blogs in which he explains that they are all take offs of positions found among the Emerging Church movement? They’re all about the Emerging Church. Did you look at the information I linked to?

Guys:

We just need to take the high ground - the posters are funny - and more true (unfortunately) than not - but if they offend rather than draw people to Christ, perhaps they are not something of which to encourage.

So, Billy, whilst I may not see ‘biting sarcasm’ or cruelty intended - I do agree that there are better ways to get across ones’ opinion.

So, in this venue I think we are on the same page.

“Irenaeus, perhaps you didn’t notice the title that Mr. Johnson gave the series of posters?”—-Billy D

Billy D: Maybe you didn’t notice that the title nowhere appears on the posters themselves. Motivational posters appear on walls in ones or twos or threes. People don’t take them in with museum guidebooks or even web browsers in hand.

Insofar as the posters make light of human foibles extending well beyond the Emerging Church (as is clearly the case with posters #1-17), it’s hardly decisive that the authors have the Emerging Church in mind. Satire, like direct criticism, is one of the ways in which people expose, recognize, correct, and avoid error.

So would this sort of poster be OK if it was directed at Mormans?  Hindus?  Why is it funny and OK if it is directed at Christians?