Ok, so I thought I coined this term given this situation… but it looks like Darren’s beat me to publishing it…
Given my sermon topic for tomorrow, this seemed especially fitting. Too bad I’m probably not going to be able to include it.
…and a very long day!
Today I joined three other members of our church at a conference put on by the American Baptists of Ohio in Columbus about “Loving God with Money.”
No, this wasn’t just some thinly-veiled theo-speak for fundraising. And in that way, I was pleasantly surprised. The speakers actually addressed our need to develop attitudes of gratitude toward God, and how those attitudes of gratitude should translate into thankful gifts in all parts of life - not the least of which should be our finances.
The main speaker did not speak from the perspective of the Lex Donorum (the law of gifts), i.e., that God requires gifts from us as some sort of divine requisition to allay the cost of our salvation. Rather, he spoke from the perspective of “first fruits.” All that we have comes from God, which he gives to us to do his work. As an acknowledgement of this, and out of genuine (yes, genuine, i.e., true) thankfulness, we offer a portion of that which is already God’s, given to us back to God.
And we do so in order that there may be no one in need among us: these gifts care for the relief of the poor and to care for the needs of all within our sphere of influence.
Now, isn’t that a better perspective than “paying off the divine Curmudgeon?”
I was gone yesterday and today on a trip to see the opera/musical/”musical sensation” Les Misérables at Champaign’s Assembly Hall.
I always love the show; some of it may make it in to the sermon. The book’s worth reading too.
More later after some sleep.
As a pastor, an abbot, a spiritual director to the community of Vine & Branches, I teach some of these things, not all, and encourage people to not look to me as the answer-giver to all their questions. Yes, look to me as a mature “older sibling,” listen to me as a teacher, hear whatever wisdom I have been given, but do not do it without working it out for yourself in the context of the whole community and the whole Church both now and in the past.
I think “older sibling” is a good way of putting it. Too often people see pastors as some holier-than-human answer-man… that ain’t me… that ain’t Biblical… it just ain’t right… “spiritual director” is a much better concept: guide, direct and offer wisdom; do not control or manipulate; encourage and empower growth in everyone.
Heh. Not what you think.
To get ordained in the ABC you have to go through this “career assessment and evaluation” which for some reason includes a medical history form. Well, they asked for my autobiography too. Makes sense. There were like 25 pages of questions that I had to answer.
By the end I was getting a bit slap-happy… e.g.:
Question: “Do you smoke?”
Answer: “Only when I’m on fire.” (with a hat tip to Chewie for that one)
Carrying it on into pure humor:
Question: “If yes, for how long?”
Answer: “Until I was extinguished.”
Question: “Have you tried to quit? If so, how?”
Answer: “I couldn’t reach the fire extinguisher, so I just soaked myself under the sink. And like Smokey says, I made sure the fire was ‘cold out.’ Besides, I needed to wash my hair anyway.”
Question: “Describe the circumstances surrounding the beginning of your smoking problem. Include friends, peer pressure, family life and school issues.”
Answer: “I didn’t have any trouble with smoking until high school. Then, as my body began to undergo the changes that occur to every teenage boy, I began developing hair on my forearms. This concerned me, but for a long time I kept quiet about my problem. I thought sure I was the only one experiencing such an increase in hair. But I screwed up the courage to ask my doctor if ZorZoSplat was right for me. And he said no - don’t believe those ads on TV. He then told me that what I was experiencing was perfectly normal. I asked him what I could do about the little hairs coming out of my arm. He said that most people that get them just leave them alone. Some very small minority shaves them off.
“I was relieved, but my troubles had just begun - but not just for me. Most of my friends began experiencing the problem, too. I had a friend who would start smoking any time he was cooking or otherwise around open flame. You see, previously, he could get his arm very close to the gas stove burner while he was cooking, since he had a high pain tolerance. But now, his little arm hairs would start to burn when he did that.
“Well, I didn’t have trouble when cooking, but I started smoking around the decorative candles that people put on tables. Not noticing that my arm was nearing the soothing candle’s light, puffs of smoke would periodically be emitted by the hair on my arm until I observed that it had all been singed off.
“It took some counseling to resolve this problem - a fact I do not like to admit. But eventually, Fred (that’s my therapist) and I worked through the issues that allowed me to put smoking behind me once and for all.
“I became aware of my surroundings.”
From The Ooze:
God has called his people to be the refuge for the world. We are called to be the people to whom the hurting, those in pain, victims of injustice, the downcast and the outcast all can go to receive the grace and love of Jesus Christ. How do we do that?
Monday night, I invited the Executive Board to prayerfully consider who the five most visionary people are in the congregation and invest them with the authority to begin dreaming and visioning what it means to be God’s people in Warren.
This evening, while reading my XML feeds, I found this quote from Church Marketing Sucks:
Irving Bible Church in Irving, Texas has a dream:
We dream of a church where people are free to attempt great things for God; where people have nothing to prove and therefore nothing to lose; where creativity and innovation are honored, not feared; where all kinds of people serve God in all kinds of ways.
It’s part of a web site introducing visitors to their church, starting with their dreams, moving into some basics of faith and finishing with basics about visiting their church.
I like the idea (though the pop up window format is annoying), especially the emphasis on the church’s dreams. Too often I think the church simply doesn’t dream. We do what’s adequate and move on. We never dream big, think large, or imagine that just maybe God does want to do something incredible. Businesses dream and it takes them pretty far. Shouldn’t we—the people of God, who have reason to expect dreams to become reality—be dreaming? (link via Jason Reynolds, the Web Ministry Coordinator at Stonebriar Community Church)
This is the kind of dreaming I’m talking about!
The makers of Ensure are running a commercial that says,
“If you don’t eat right, eat smart! Drink Ensure.”
So in other words, don’t deal with the issue (overeating and/or bad nutrition). Instead, treat the symptoms with an expensive product!
This is irresponsible of Ensure - actually encouraging or enabling unhealthy living in order to sell their product.
Ok, folks, I’ve added two new links to the “Home Team” link category… check them out!
First, John ZuHone’s blog, at http://jzuhone.blogdns.org/. Because he’s a nerd and uses frames, you’ll have to click on “blog” in the upper left corner to actually see his blog. John’s a great guy - a great friend, good researcher (if you like astrophysics, that is!), a great apologist for the Christian faith, and throws some pretty good parties.
Second, The Walter Boyd Band’s Site, hosted by producer Grant Thomas at http://www.phreque.com/~grant/. To navigate the site, you have to look closely for the three four links on the stamp, and click there, on “music”, “info”, “pics” or the other place… 
The guys from Walter Boyd are amazing! You will just have to hear them in concert some time. Perhaps I’ll bring them to Warren someday!
Dr. Robert E. Webber, an expert on Christian Worship, Northern Seminary professor and a friend of mine, has long talked about “convergence” in worship.
Many churches go through what pastors and church growth leaders call “the worship wars.” So bitter and so intense is the disagreement as to style, methodology and instrumentation in the worship service that churches often experience deep division over various aspects of worship, and especially music. Often, musical style is presented as both the problem and the solution to worship-related ills.
Doubtless, style does contribute to worship’s effectiveness for a given demographic. But, as Webber often points out, style is “indigenous.” Style will vary from place to place, even within the same tradition. More important is intent. As he said in class, “the lack of intent in ritual is dead.” The ritual of which he speaks is broadly-defined. It can be anything from Catholic/Orthodox liturgy, to traditional Evangelical Protestant services, to the Pentecostal and non-denominational format, to home church services.
All participants in a worship service, whether in pulpit or pew, up front or in back, must “do worship” intentionally for it to be effective. Those in the “up-front” positions, whether musicians, readers, speakers or actors must see their actions as intended to enable and empower the worship of all the rest, while they themselves worship God.
In worship, as Webber says, we tell The Story. Worship is “the rehearsal of our relationship with God, telling the entire story every time.” That story is creation, incarnation and re-creation, centered in the event of Jesus Christ. This is worship’s fundamental content.
If this is not the content of our worship services, we are missing something - and perhaps it is not even Christian worship. This content, then, is packaged into a “fourfold pattern”:
The content of worship (i.e., the story of creation, incarnation and re-creation), is structured in this fourfold pattern, which leaves room for any number of styles - formal and informal, traditional and contemporary, new and old.
Where “convergence” comes in is in this area of “style.” In convergence worship, we seek to take an eclectic mix of forms (whether musical, verbal or visual) from multiple decades, traditions and tastes to form a locally-unique (i.e., indigenous) blend of style. This prevents us from setting up the “us vs. them” issue often discovered when congregations attempt to substitute contemporary (think rock band) for traditional forms or vice versa. Instead, we seek to discern what particular convergence expresses the worship style of both the worshipping community and the community to which we are called in mission to serve.
Because, after all, it’s not all about us.
I found Christianity Today’s review of “Saved!” It says what I was struggling to say in my pathetic review below.
And for the “less official” review, there’s always Hollywood Jesus.
After a long church day today I decided to unwind by watching a movie. I’d heard a lot about the movie “Saved!” (starring Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin and Patrick Fugit), so I watched it tonight on DVD.
It is a movie that has raised the ire of many in the conservative side of the Christian community for its irreverent portrayal of the Christian sub-culture. It is, by all accounts, a satire, and a good one at that. It is a movie written and produced by people who grew up in Evangelical Christian sub-culture, and now are writing from an outsider’s perspective. Having experienced much of that Evangelical Christian sub-culture myself, I find a lot of humor in this movie.
Jena Moore plays Mary, a girl in her senior year at a Christian high school in Maryland. (Reviewer’s aside: now, at this point, I have a choice - a) give away the movie, b) describe the setting of the story in a way that will get 1) all of the content-blocking software blocking M Squared T and/or 2) offend my readership by the description of the humorous dilemma Mary creates for herself, or 3) say absolutely nothing useful.)
Ok, so three or four attempts at writing something useful have failed. So, here come the broad brushstrokes.
This is a movie about “crisis of faith.” It brings up the issues that “churched folks” must deal with in our contemporary culture. It talks a lot about how Christians can behave in ways that really put people off who are on the “outside.” It actually says a lot about those who are on the outside and why they don’t want in: they see right through a lot of the saccherine shenanegins seen everyday in public Christianity (e.g., TBN).
While I don’t really like the movie’s conclusions about what the answers to some of these crises of faith are, I found it very thought-provoking. I think it’s worth seeing. Nonetheless, I must issue the following caveats:
This movie is PG-13. It has all the stuff that goes along with PG-13 ratings. If you dislike seeing/hearing PG-13 rated stuff, or if you find it unwise given your disposition, you don’t want to see this. (It’s not that worth it.)
This movie makes you think about how you approach your faith. It will ask and frame questions in a way that challenge Christian assumptions. I would suggest, however, that it probably understands very well what Christianity is all about - even if the conclusions they draw from that understanding are problematic and some downright wrong.
This movie lampoons the Christian sub-culture. If you are a big fan of Christian sub-culture, and don’t like to see it teased, parodied and satirized, this is not your movie.
I liked it, however, and I’m interested in watching it with people who want to discuss the issues it raises.
Sermon 24 April 2005
5 Easter, Year A
John 14:1 – 14
“Now Is the Dwelling of God with His People�
First Movement: The Messianic Scene
From the Prophet Isaiah:
“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you… the LORD will arise over you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you… the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you… [all this] shall be acceptable on my altar, and I will glorify my glorious house.� (Isaiah 60:1, 2b – 4a, 5b, 7b, NRSV)
“I will appoint Peace as your overseer and Justice as your taskmaster… the sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor the brightness of the moon give light to you by night; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself; for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning will be ended. Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever… I am the LORD; in its time I will accomplish it quickly.� (Isaiah 60:17b – 21a, 22b, NRSV)
(more…)
This time, on leadership:
let me put it this way: There is not a leadership model on earth, whether organic, decentralized or hierarchical, that will form a leader into a Christlike leader or even guarantee the freedom from the misuse of leadership. Systems are the structural expression of those who operate in the system. Therefore, any system can be corrupted and taken advantage of. Simultaneously, a Christlike leader can work in virtually any system to lead with Christ’s character and power. Even the most hierarchical system can be the environment for healthy and conscientious leadership if the man, woman or team is truly becoming like Christ. According to Paul, the onus of proper leadership rests on the leader, not the system. If the one gifted with leadership is following Christ into the true embodiment of love (sacrificially willing the good of others), then that person will lead well.
A good reminder about how churches grow from Next-Wave. Especially good for a church as it plans to grow.
