the church geek

I’ve been hearing a questionable disagreement lately in reference to our denomination’s General Assembly’s recent approval the Peace Unity and Purity Task Force Report. The recent iteration of the disagreement occurs on Pastor John Foreman’s blog:

Many of us are grieved by both the potential result of the AI {AI=Authoritative Interpretation which is a ruling regarding the meaning of our church’s constitution}, and by the means through which the AI was used to change the plain intent of the constitution without the consent of the presbyteries. While we disagree with the intent of the action, which is obviously to open the door to the ordination of individuals who do not meet our constitutional standards for ordination, we even more vehemently disagree with the process used to undo the action of the Presbyteries in ratifying those constitutional standards (three times). This action of the General Assembly constitutes, to many of us, a breech of trust.

In response, I make the following observations:

1. All overtures to overturn G6.0106B {the fidelity/chastity clause which is the ordination standard most people are concerned is likely to be violated} were rejected by the GA at this year’s gathering.

2. The AI recommended by the PUP task force was put in place by the vote of GA without approval of the presbyteries, which is what the rules of the book of order dictate regarding the approval of any authoritative interpretation.

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Last night I attended a talk given by Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead, a book I admittedly have not yet read. Marilynne is a Congregationalist and her talk was to be on the decline of mainline denominations. She didn’t always stay on the topic, but even so she had some pithy things to say.

My favorite line was “Taking the text seriously does not mean literalism but rather contextualism.” While this comment came in response to someone who stated that evangelicals took the text more seriously than others, she directed most of her criticism during the talk towards the likes of popular scholars Crossan, Armstrong, and Spong, castigating them for shoddy scholarship that disparages the O.T. and its influence on both the N.T. and Jesus.

I think she has a good point, which partly explains why you see Marcus Borg in his book, The Heart of Christianity, constantly pushing for a metaphorical or allegorical interpretation of the Biblical text. At its heart is the assumption that the text as we have it cannot essentially be trusted and we ourselves are the source of all knowledge. In the end it makes the audacious claim that we are superior to the text.

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Interesting discussion over at Adam Walker Cleaveland’s blog, pomomusings, about ‘Jesus is my lover’ type worship songs. In moderation, I generally like a fair number of the newer contemporary worship songs, but I agree; there are just some places that these songs should not go.

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What else do I love about the ministry? This last week I had two funerals, one on Saturday and one on Monday. While I don’t like having two lumped together like that, I don’t like having to throw out my work plan for the week, and I don’t like giving up a planned day off, I do love the opportunity for ministry that funerals present. That far surpasses any inconvenience funerals create.

In the last two years (including my student pastorate), I have had an opportunity to do a handful of funerals. Except for one service which felt very perfunctory (like we were doing it because it’s just the thing we do when someone dies…) each time I’ve felt like this was one of the most important/significant things I’ve done in the ministry.

It is a joy to be with, to walk with, and to pray with a family in the midst of the loss of a loved one. I find that serving as the pastor for the funeral of a loved one draws me closer to the family and changes/deepens the relationship than it was before.

How do you do it? I get asked. Through lots of prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Generally its not as hard as people think…funeral homilies/sermons somehow just write themselves. I find that if I listen close enough, I can usually find some way to tie in the hope of the Gospel and to witness to the Resurrection.

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This week marks the beginning of my second year in the ministry. Last year, I started in my current call at Knox Presbyterian on Sept 18th and was ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament on Sept 25th.

Even though the last two weeks have been pretty crazy and stressful (further compounded by some circumstances related to my wife’s ministry), I can confidently say that God’s call has been confirmed to me over and over this year.

I’m hoping to take a couple of blog posts over the next couple of days to reflect on this. For now, here’s my first thought:

When I was first approached by my pastor at the time to consider the possibility that God might be calling me into the ministry, one of my first reactions was “What on earth will I say in the pulpit for 15-20 minutes every week?” I’m not a big talker…so the idea of being in the pulpit week in and week out scared the tar out of me.

Now, I’m not sure I’ll ever get to the point of going into the pulpit without a prepared manuscript (though I do occasionally flirt with the idea.) Even so, I have noticed that I’m becoming much more at ease with preaching and not feeling so tied to the manuscript. And I think (despite a clunker a few weeks ago) on average that the sermons are getting better and better.

But maybe we’d better leave that up to the congregation to decide…

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I’m thinking of taking four out of October’s five Sundays to deal with the topic of Stewardship in my sermons. I’ve occasionally touched on it, but not in this extensive of a manner. A few things I hope to accomplish:

First, I want to deal with our society’s attitudes about wealth and tackle the question of “how much is enough?” I’ve not read the book Affluenza or others like it, but I suspect that this a good place to start.

Second, I hope to help people see that Stewardship is Discipleship. How you think about and use your money reflects on how you see God as well as the depth of your faith. In a nutshell, I see Stewardship as a grateful response to the gifts of God.

Third, I want to disconnect the idea that Stewardship is about keeping the church open and supporting the church budget. (though I do want to encourage people to support the church budget!)

My sermon ideas are very sketchy at this point. Do you have anything you might recommend: resources you’ve used, scripture passages, or illustrations?

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My friend Bill, provides one of the best sermon illustrations on the subject of humility that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s also an excellent reflection on the benefits of not taking oneself too seriously.

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There’s a story that’s been circulating on the internet the last several months….

A driver was being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the traffic light turned yellow just in front of him. The man did the right thing stopping at the crosswalk even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman hit the roof - and the horn - screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands in the air.

He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder, the ‘What Would Jesus Do’ bumper sticker, the ‘Follow Me to Sunday School’ bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.”

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You’ll notice a lack of blog posts this week, because I’ve spent almost all my ‘free’ time working to recover from various computer meltdowns.

We came home last Saturday evening to a two year old Dell Computer that we couldn’t boot up. Evidently the motherboard was fried from a surge through our DSL modem which had been left unprotected, but we are still not 100% sure exactly what happened.

My wife’s completed sermon remained unretrievable until Tuesday, which is a little too late when you have to preach on Sunday morning! And we had to go out and buy a new computer to replace the fried one. Of course, a subsequent amount of work ensued in order to re-configure it and to restore various bits of scatterd data.

Then, to make matters worse, on Wednesday afternoon I decided to download a new virus protection program on to my church laptop…The program crashed Windows XP and there was no rebooting it, fixing it, or repairing it. So, wiping everything off the computer, I reinstalled the OS.

I’m sure there are some lessons I am to learn from all of this (like creating recovery disks and more frequent burns of backup CDs.) But by Friday afternoon things were up and running almost back to normal.

I sure do miss the days when we did everything by pen and paper…Not really, but when stuff like this happens I do have to wonder if computers are more work than they’re worth.

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