God's Timing and Endurance Racing

The TopGear US blog has posted a story on the upcoming 2904. And this has me excited. The 2904's website describes itself as a "transcontinental vehicular tournament of efficiency and endurance" -- basically its a contest to see who can get from New York, NY to San Francisco, CA the most efficiently. Teams are allowed $2904 for the trip, which is roughly 2904 miles. This cost covers a team's car, "non-safety" modifications to the car, fuel, tolls, and food.

Anyway, this is the sort of thing that I would love to do. I have been so engrossed in the (hypothetical) logistics that it made me go to a car dealership yesterday. Yes, after some calculating, I figured a diesel powered car would be the most efficient option for powering a cross-country "tournament of efficiency." Natually, that means I (hypothetically) need a TDI. Unfortunately, even an old TDI would not yet have depreciated enough to be affordable for my (hypothetical) situation. This got me thinking...what else might work. How about a Mercedes diesel from the late 80's or early 90's? My (hypothetical) search ended with that thought.

So while my 2904 deliberations stopped there, I did go by a local dealer and had an interesting encounter:

Although I didn't do any car shopping, the woman at the dealership asked me about myself -- normal dealer/buyer small-talk -- and I told her that I just finished my masters degree in theology. As it turned out, she was a big fan of Bonhoeffer. We talked for a while, and we discovered that she has many of the same interests that I have. One such interest is ecclesiology; she had just finished reading Jacobsen and Coleman's So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore (Windblown Media, 2006). We talked for a while about what it means to be church. She found the book helpful, but said it left her wondering "So what?"

This is an important question -- So what?! Sadly Jacobsen and Coleman did not point her toward an answer. We tried to talk about what it might mean to live in community as the "body of Christ" (and here I told her about Hans Küng). I did not know precisely where to point her so that she might get a good explanation of twenty-first century, post-Constantinian church and what it might look like. I told her about James K. A. Smith's Who's Afraid of Postmodernism (a book that I've found very helpful) and told her that it at least gives an outline of what a "postmodern church" might look like.

I picked up a copy of So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore on my way home yesterday afternoon. My initial perception of the book is that is puts much of the emerging church's ideas in fiction form (the book reads very much like Young's The Shack). She and I have agreed to keep in touch via email, and I was wondering if anyone has any ideas about the "So what?" question that So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore failed to answer.

To whom shall I go?

At any rate, it is interesting how exploring a "tournament of efficiency" has put in theological dialogue with someone trying to figure out how to live out her faith with a new understanding of church...