Via CNN, mentioned also by Emergent-US and Theoblogy:

WACO, Texas (AP) — A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning when he adjusted a nearby microphone while standing in water, a church employee said.

The Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, was stepping into the baptistery as he reached out for the microphone, which produced an electric shock, said University Baptist Church community pastor Ben Dudley.

Water in a baptistery usually reaches above the waist, said Byron Weathersbee, interim university chaplain at Baylor University.

Lake was pronounced dead at Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, nursing supervisor Pat Mahl said. The woman being baptized apparently had not stepped into the water and was not seriously injured.

Pastors at University Baptist Church routinely use a microphone during baptisms, said Jamie Dudley, the wife of Ben Dudley and a business administrator at the church.

“He was grabbing the microphone so everyone could hear,” she said. “It’s the only way you can be loud enough.”

About 800 people attended the morning service, which was larger than normal because it was homecoming weekend at nearby Baylor University, Dudley said.

Lake had been at the church for nine years, the last seven as pastor. He is survived by his wife, Jennifer, a 5-year-old daughter and two 3-year-old sons.

At a remembrance attended by about 1,000 people Sunday night at First Baptist Church, Ben Dudley told the UBC congregation that they would move forward as a church.

“I don’t know how, when, why, where or what’s going to happen, but we will continue as a church in the community because that is what Kyle would have wanted,” he said.

Sermon 30 October 2005
24 Pentecost Proper 26
Micah 3:5 – 12

“If God were to leave, who would notice?�

I’m guessing this isn’t anyone’s favorite scripture passage. When I read this passage to some folks last week, the immediate response was, “ouch!� This passage does not mince words; in fact, it is harsh and blunt: the prophet’s audience is sinful, and God’s going to take care of business.

Well, then.

What do we do with these difficult-to-hear passages of scripture? The overall cast of the text sounds very foreign to us – speaking of prophets, diviners, visions from God, hearing the voice of God. Then there is the harsh statement against God’s people that they despise justice and distort what is right. There’s all that stuff about bribery, and then the description of the complete and utter destruction of Jerusalem and God’s temple in Jerusalem.

So we start to ask questions: what does this have to do with us? What is the prophet talking about? If Jesus is all about the proclamation of the Good News of God, where is the good news in this?
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I read that actor Alan Alda, most famously of the TV show “M*A*S*H� and more recently of “The West Wing,� recently wrote a book entitled, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned. In it, Alda talks about how he had a beloved pet dog when he was eight years old. When the dog died, Alda was so sad about burying it that his father decided to have the dog stuffed instead.

“We kept it on the porch and deliverymen were afraid to make deliveries,� Alda recalled in an interview with Newsweek. He then continued, “There are a lot of ways we stuff the dog, trying to avoid change, hanging on to a moment that’s passed.�

Churches seem to have a special proclivity toward “stuffing the dog,� maintaining programs, buildings, and even members in an attempt to forestall necessary change. In the short term, it’s sometimes much easier to stuff a church’s pets than to acknowledge their death, grieve their loss, and give them an appropriate burial.

Like Alda’s dog and the camp cat, stuffed animals might bring temporary comfort to those inside the organization, but they may actually turn off or even frighten newcomers who aren’t familiar with the history and meaning behind them. Whether it’s a particular worship style, a ritual, an outdated program, or even a powerful clique within the church, visitors will usually be quick to notice that something’s not quite right. They may not stick around to find out what, or why.

One of the key tasks of a good leader is to acknowledge reality. Sometimes, that means burying a beloved pet, rather than propping it up in denial of its passing, even if it’s your pet.

The rest is here.

What do you think?

I mean, I already knew that one.

But when you’re defrosting a frozen loaf of bread and you forget to take the metal-infused tie-wrap off of the wrapper, you will start a small fire.

Now I have to transfer the good non-plastic-infused bread to a wrapper of sufficient length that it will not go stale.

Ugh.

We had a good discussion on the creation tonight. I’ll post notes later.

G’night…

I shared this as a comment on John’s blog. I thought others might be interested in it.

For my preaching philosophy, I have three “preaching points�:

1. Preaching proclaims the Good News. A careful analysis of the Greek term “Gospel� shows that the “Good News� is the proclamation of the Victory of God - that God has come and destroyed all his enemies and is now in charge. This, of course, necessitates certain language of creation, incarnation [with the cross & resurrection], and re-creation. Nevertheless, some people’s analysis requires almost a creedal rigor to certain aspects of the story itself for the preaching to be good. They require explicit language to tie us in to Jesus every week. Heaven forbid that someone should speak in parables!

The “good news� always declares the whole story - creation, incarnation, and re-creation. But it sometimes does so in subtle, impressionistic strokes: for preaching is an art.

2. Preaching is a prophetic exercise. This is where most people start talking about “application� of the Word to life. By necessity, if we truly apply The Word, we are applying Jesus himself to life - more than merely words on a page of scripture. Moreover, the Prophet says, “This is the Word of the Lord� and then declares “Here is how we stand� and then declares some resolution to that discrepancy which is essentially the “good news� as defined above, which may or may not sound like good news to the hearers. That receipt of good news will depend on the perspective they’re coming from.

3. Good preaching evokes a response. This response is defined generally by an active participation in the cross of Jesus Christ that will give us the opportunity to participate in his resurrection. This response will take many forms. Whatever the form it takes, it is a participation in his body and blood.

With these three things in mind, all of the other reasons for preaching: encouraging, teaching, evangelizing, exhorting, proclaiming - and all the rest - fall into place. When they do, we move away from discussions of style and into the real content of the Word of God: Jesus Christ himself.

I’ve been really diggin’ a new local radio station, The Freq 107, Greenville, PA. They call themselves “Today’s Real Music Station.”

They broadcast as WEXC 107.1 which comes in loud and clear here in Warren. They play some good edgy rock. This includes a good dose of U2 and (for some very strange, unclear reason) some rather mediocre U2 covers. They’re also known for some Switchfoot and stuff like that.

This is a station I like to listen to just for enjoyment. Their playlist is a little short for constant listening, but they’ve got a lot of good stuff there. They do a good job of avoiding the orgiastic crud that some of the other stations are playing around here. Unfortunately, they periodically rub that fact in everyone’s face. Bad form. Very bad form.

Overall, a very good radio station. Check them out at 107.1 FM (WEXC) if you’re in FM range of Greenville, PA. Eventually, when their website gets developed, they seem to plan to have streaming live audio.

Rock on.

This afternoon I began in earnest to put notes together for our Discipleship Discovery Groups on the topic of the Creation.

As I began to work through the scriptures, I began to understand that there were four major creation stories we could discuss.

The first two are obvious, Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a and Genesis 2:4b - 25 [to which the entirety of chapter 3 is attached]. In addition, there seem to be two other sets of passages that involve discussion of the creation: parts of the Wisdom/Poetic Literature and the New Testament references to Christ’s involvement in creation.

As we listen to these scriptures, we gain a sense of how humanity is to fit in to the rest of the created order. From that point, we are able to determine God’s intentions for humanity and, in some sense, what it means to be fully human.

Derivitively, when we study “The Fall”, we will have a better sense of what that did to human beings, and, likewise, to the creation.

Looking deeper into both the creation and the fall - the way the world was and what it became - we will gain a better understanding of what Jesus Christ came to accomplish: what the good news is, and how he brings about new life. Therefore, our study will begin with the stories of creation in order that they may lead us to Christ.

Sermon 23 October 2005
23 Pentecost Proper 25
Matthew 22:34 – 46

“The Theory of Everything�

Over the last two weeks we’ve spent some time with Jesus as he interacts with a group of good, churchgoing folks. First we heard that Jesus told these good, churchgoing folks a story about a party that God was throwing and how they had rejected God’s party first through disinterest and then through active rebellion. We remember how Jesus told them that God had offered the invitation to others because of this. As you recall, this made these good, churchgoing folks very angry, to the extent that they wanted to kill Jesus. We saw how this story correlates to our lives today: that the church is growing faster than it ever has before in the history of the world – all over the world – except in North America and Western Europe. We saw how God is throwing a party all over the world, and how we are invited, if we are willing to live the faith in the way that those people are living it. And if we do not, we discovered, we will be destroyed, just like the people in the story who turned down the party.

Last week, we heard about how the good, churchgoing folks Jesus was talking with were so convinced that they were right and Jesus was wrong that they went out and found some corrupt, nominally-church-affiliated people, whom they normally hated and disdained, and allied with them to destroy Jesus. But since they were good churchgoing people, and since some of their allies were government officials, no one wanted to get their hands dirty. So they tried to trap Jesus between his loyal popular support and the watchful authorities. They hoped that one of them would kill him because of his answer to their question about paying taxes to Caesar. As you recall, Jesus managed to spring the trap back on the good, churchgoing people to tell them that God really owns them, since his image is on them, and that their entire being, along with all their work and possessions and all the rest, belongs to God and is to be given to God.
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I find that the most difficult passages of scripture to preach on are those that are the most familiar. Attempting to say something true, that burrows deep into the meaning of the exhausted soil of the most-heard texts, without merely becoming cliché, is trying. People have heard it all before. It’s likely that your flash of insight will be one they saw lighting up skies long before you were born.

So what is a preacher to do? Using the same-old, same-old will merely add more to the vaccine against the virulent Word of God. Of course, the Scriptures must remain fresh for the preacher as well - before a fresh sermon can germinate from the seed of the preacher’s heart.

The struggle with the familiar creates a rather different approach to sermon preparation. Rather than delving deep into scholarly works or devotional literature - or for that matter, even commentaries - the preparation of the familiar text is one more of meditation, breathing the text in and out, until its rarified significance carries its life-giving components to every part of the body.

Out of this whole-body experience of the text - one that perhaps takes more quiet and listening than speaking and explaining - the passage quickens an otherwise dead sermon, allowing it to rise from the dust, as the flesh gathers upon the bones of the word. In this way, we become the people who bring out of the storehouses old treasures as well as new. The familiar receives its polish and we see it gleaming.

It is not possible to go back to the Scriptures every time and find something new. But if the Word is Alive, we will find it has renewable significance despite its age.

Otherwise, we all would have stopped preaching long ago.

I heard a great band tonight at the evening session. The Jared Mahone Band is a group out of Columbus, Ohio with a “fresh, groove-inspired acoustic rock” sound whose “writing and tone have been compared to contemporaries like John Mayer and Gavin Degraw, but their soul and spirit reveal deeper roots.”

These guys played for us this evening, leading us in worship and celebration in preparation for communion.

Check them out!

These guys are going on the sidebar - hoping the best for them!

This (very expensive, very large) hotel in downtown Columbus has a great WiFi connection on each floor so it looks like I’ll be blogging from here.

There was a LOT of construction on I-71. For instance:

Peace out…

I’m off to the statewide convention of the American Baptist Churches of Ohio. Posting will be spotty for the next couple of days unless I can find some WIFI.

This is really cool.

We Have Decided Not To Die is an 11-minute triptych film with three rituals: Birth, Between and Re-Birth. Here is one of the stunning images from it:

The whole film is viewable here. You will want broadband (cable or DSL) to see it well.

Check it out!

via Jonnybaker

This week I’ve been doing some thinking about Spiritual Gifts and Spiritual Fruit after several discussions with several different groups on the topic.

One of the terms in which I have couched the discussion of “spiritual formation” or “formation-in-Christlikeness” has been “habits.” We “de-habituate” sin and “habituate” godliness. When we see that our automatic, knee-jerk, or normal response to something is sinful, we discover we have a habit of sin at work in us. When the automatic, knee-jerk or normal response to something is Christlike, then we discover we have a habit of godliness working in us.

The thing we must realize, though, is that the action is the fruit of the habit. It is not the habit itself.

So when we see ourselves going back to the same things over and over again - good or bad - it is the habit that drives them. These actions are the fruit of what is going on much deeper inside.

The illustration of “fruit” is a helpful one especially in dealing with sin. The sin itself is the fruit. Fruit is the result of a healthy plant producing its natural outcome. No one attempts to keep an apple tree from bearing fruit by plucking the apples from its branches and smashing them (or, for that matter, even the blooms that precede the apples). That works until the next growing season, when the apples return, each approximately in the same places. Rather, one keeps an apple tree from bearing fruit by killing the tree. One has to eliminate the tree, root and branch.

Nevertheless, we all try to eliminate sin in our lives by plucking the fruit - dealing with the behaviors of sinful actions without dealing with the tree itself: the attitudes and the will that is housed deep within us. While that kind of action is good in the short term, keeping us from collaborating even more with evil and harming ourselves and others, it is not a satisfactory long-term solution.

Spiritual Disciplines, then, are the tools we use to give a good dose of Roundup to what Paul in Galatians 5 calls “the Flesh.” The flesh bears fruit, he says, which looks like all those things we don’t want. Spiritual disciplines largely ignore the blooms and the apples and begin to cut off branches much closer to the trunk. They also apply the withering chemicals to the roots to first disable and then kill the entire tree. They starve the fruit of that which nourishes it such that it cannot survive.

Some wonder at the effectiveness of the Disciplines, since results are rarely visible immediately. Moreover, it often seems like they don’t really address the fruit that we’re dealing with. Given time, given proper dosage, the Disciplines begin to make the environment in which the tree grows less conducive to bearing fruit.

These Disciplines are intentional spiritual practices that help us put on new “innards” that bear different fruit from the kind we knew before. They do not produce the fruit directly, but they will do the work of transformation of the tree’s environment to make it dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.