the church geek

Moving on to the celebration of the Christmas season, I continue in my sermon series “He came down that we may have life” focusing on the various streams of the spiritual life. This sermon is on the evangelical or Word-centered life.

During my freshman year of college, Donald Regan, the former chief of staff during the Reagan administration published his memoirs in a book called “For the Record.” In it, Regan leveled allegations at the President and First Lady about the use of astrology in the White House. In his book, Regan wrote:

“Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise.”

Many were horrified to think that the White House made major decisions based on the movement of the stars. Ronald and especially Nancy became the butt of hundreds of jokes and comedic material on late night television.

In our modern, sophisticated, and scientific world astrology seems like a bit of rubbish and a form of superstition. Of course that doesn’t keep many of us from checking our horoscopes, we just don’t want the White House making important and major policy decisions based on what they read in the horoscope or see in the stars.

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In case you haven’t noticed, this blog has suffered a bit of life situation imposed silence over the past week or so. Being on the road visiting family and a shortened work week limited my blogging free time. The already short week was compressed even tighter by covering a funeral for another vacationing pastor who high-tailed it out of town. Next week looks no better as we’ll be doing the same thing, heading over to WI for a visit with my family.

Inspired by other posts on the net this week highlighting favorite books of the year, I thought I’d throw in my two cents worth. My reading list was rather short this year, so I’m limiting my list to my three favorite books:

1.) Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf

A former student of Jurgen Moltmann, Volf is one of the finest theological minds out there. Yet, he writes about the faith in a very practical and easily understood manner. In this book, Volf tackles the essence of the Christian faith with an in depth look at its two basic elements of giving and forgiving. While steeped in theological reflection on God’s life in Trinity, Volf brings somewhat abstract concepts to life with splendid illustrations and examples from movies, culture, as well as his personal life.

2.) How (not) to speak of God by Peter Rollins

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This is the 4th sermon in my Advent/Christmas sermon series called “He came down that we may have life.” An exploration of the six great streams of the Christian tradition and spiritual life.

Nicholas Herman was a clumsy young man, kind of like a bull in a china shop. Living in tumultuous times in 17th century France, for a few years Nicholas served in the army during the Thirty Years War, but he suffered an injury that forced him out of active service.

Later, he became a personal valet for one of the officers, but Nicholas ruined just about everything he touched. Frustrated and burdened by his clumsiness he decided to join a monastery, where he thought he might be made to suffer for his failures.

But God had other plans for Nicholas. During his previous service in the army, Nicholas had an encounter with God that set him on the path of a life of faith; that life blossomed within the halls of that monastery.

Taking on the name of Brother Lawrence, he was assigned kitchen duty. This of course caused just a bit of fear and trepidation within him, with sharp knives to lop off fingers, large pots of soup to drop, and other dangers of the sort.

Serving in the kitchen turned out to be the best thing for him.

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Somehow, yesterday evening we found time to see a movie, which is a bit of a surprise for two pastors on the day before Christmas eve.

We went to see “Stranger Than Fiction.” And to our surprise we both loved it. It’s one of the more creative and imaginative movies that we’ve seen in a long time. Will Farrell (of SNL fame) was just perfect; not over the top, just good solid acting here. I laughed harder at parts of this movie than I have laughed in a movie for a long time.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Harold (Farrell’s character) comes to realize that he is a character in a novel written by a novelist who has not yet finished her work yet and is trying to figure out how to kill him off. Most of the movie is spent trying to figure out whether Harold is in a comedy or a tragedy, and in what manner he will meet his untimely death.

The movie raises lots of good questions: How much control do we really have to make life what we want it to be? Are we part of a larger meta-narrative? What makes a hero? And, Can anything redeeming come of out even a tragedy?

There is much more to mine from this surprisingly good movie, making it worthy of many more viewings, and perhaps even worthy of a nomination for movie of the year.

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Well, thanks to a very gracious price reduction by the conference hosts, a session which said “by all means, attend this event,” and a rather dramatic price drop today in airfares out of my home town, I will be attending the Mainline Emergents conference at Columbia Seminary in Atlanta on Jan 30 - Feb 1.

I’m very much looking forward to this event, and I hope to meet some of my fellow bloggers there!

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For those of you who receive my feed via RSS and don’t regularly stop by the website, you may want to check in and see my updated blogroll.

My original intent was to simply drop those blogs I’ve stopped reading or who no longer seem to post regularly, but as I started poking around, I found other blogs that look to be of interest.

Especially note worthy are new blogs in the category Ministry & Technology as well as Presbyterian (most of the Presby ones aren’t new to me, I just hadn’t posted them on my website.)

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This is the 3rd Sermon in my Advent/Christmas Sermon Series called “He came down that we may have life,” an exploration into the spiritual life, looking at the six great streams of the faith. Through examining the story of the Shepherds, I explore what it means to live the charismatic or Spirit-filled life.

Just over a 100 years ago, an African-American minister from Houston Texas by the name of James Seymour, arrived in the city of Los Angeles to become the pastor of a small “Holiness” congregation. Seymour began to teach his new congregation about the work of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues. Three months later the Holy Spirit began to move in their midst.

Some began to speak in tongues. Others fell into two or three hour long trances. Healings were reported. Crowds, curious to see what was happening, began to gather. After a few weeks, the meetings moved to an old building at 312 Azusa Street to accommodate the crowds. Every morning, noon, and night, that building played host to three straight years of revival meetings.

The cover story of the April 6th, 1906, Los Angeles Times said, “Weird Babel of Tongues, New Sect of fanatics is breaking loose, Wild scene last night on Azusa Street, gurgle of wordless talk by a sister”.

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I really like this simple missional idea from Jason Clark.

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This is part 3 in my slowly emerging series of reflections on the book How (not) to speak of God.

Rollins provides some pretty stiff challenges to how we currently do things in the modern church. His third chapter holds specific applications to the act of preaching. The chapter is a critique of the use of ‘power discourses’ to communicate the gospel, either by way of word (apologetics) or by wonder (miracles and the like).

These power discourses operate at “command level” language, forgetting that Jesus modus operandi was not to compel or to command belief but to love people into faith. Rollins suggests that even Jesus’ ‘power’ miracles were performed out of love rather than as a means to compel belief.

He suggests the need to create a space for folks to seek for themselves; asking the questions with them and celebrating the complexity of faith and life. But too often, especially as preachers, we offer the quick answers from on-high saying, “Well, you know the Bible says such and such so you should do so and so.”

Rollins makes me wonder about the place for the traditional preacher in the emergent church. For many of us in established mainline congregations, the pulpit has become a very comfortable place to be with our notes and/or manuscripts right in front of us, steering the conversation right to where we think it should go. But to be honest, the question needs to be asked, are we truly having a conversation?

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So, this morning in confirmation, I asked my students what they thought they were going to get for Christmas, to which one of them responded, “an I-Pod.” On a lark I asked “So, who’s your favorite musical artist?” thinking of course that I’d once again proven as ‘un-cool’ having never heard of them before.

This ninth grader responded “Sufjan Stevens.” I just about flipped, as I’ve been listening to Sufjan’s Christmas music for the last couple of weeks!

It was a beautiful moment.

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Over the past month or so, I’ve been enjoying a wonderful little and evidently not well-known blog called Just Pastors. It features almost daily posts on the various concerns of being a pastor and in ministry in our post-modern world.

What I appreciate most? There aren’t any issues discussed related to denominational concerns (in fact I’m not even sure what the denominational homes are for the three pastors who blog there, and their bios do not reveal any of that information.)

This is simply a forum for those trying to understand what it means to be faithful to their calling to serve God’s people. Go check it out.

I wonder if you are aware of any blogs of a similar nature?

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This is Part 2 in a series of posts on the book “How (not) to speak of God.”

I’m currently slowly re-reading through this book, trying to digest it, dialog with it, and let it become a part of me, which is why these blog posts are not coming at great speed.

Chapter 2 called “The aftermath of theology” focuses on the nature of disbelief in the midst of belief. Rollins states the difference again is not so much in what we believe as how we believe it.

The fundamentalist holds a certain certitude that their ideas about God represent the way that God and the world really operate. While the mystic (a term that for Rollins is quite synonymous with ‘emergent’) recognizes that a relationship with God cannot be reduced to how we understand that relationship.

One key idea from this chapter is that Christian theology has often held transcendence and immanence to be polar opposites, while Rollins argues that these necessarily are one and the same using the term ‘hypernymity,’ meaning that God’s transcendence comes by virtue of God’s immanence.

God is blinding presence; God’s revelation is in fact too much information and thus God comes to us concealed amidst revelation. God, therefore, can never be fully known. In fact, God is not an object that we study, but rather is a subject or ‘mystery to participate in, before whom we are the object.’

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This is the 2nd Sermon in my Advent/Christmas Sermon Series called “He came down that we may have life,” an exploration into the spiritual life, looking at the six great streams of the faith. Through examining the story of Joseph, I explore what it means to life the holy or virtuous life.

If you’ve followed the news in the Christian world at all over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Pastor Rick Warren has taken a lot of flak lately from a number of conservative religious folks; especially those involved within the Republican political machine.

First, for those of you with no idea who Rick Warren is, he is the pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church, a large mega-church of about 20,000 people in southern California. He is also the author of one of the most hugely popular Christian books on the market, The Purpose Driven Life.

Recently, Warren organized and hosted an AIDS conference at his church. He did it out of his growing conviction that theologically conservative Christians must do a better job of being involved in addressing the various social issues faced both in this country and around the world.

As Warren puts it, Christians can’t ignore HIV/AIDS. It is history’s greatest health crisis. In fact, Warren has come to believe that this crisis may be the greatest opportunity the Christian church has ever had to demonstrate Christ’s love.

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A little over a month ago, I used these Christian vs. Christ follower videos in one of my sermons.

Many in my fairly traditional Presbyterian congregation benefited from my analysis and the use of the videos, in which I talked about the difference between being ’showy’ about your faith and quietly going about the business of being a disciple.

More than any other sermon in my year or so at my church, this particular sermon elicited substantial comments, reflections, and I hope some changes in attitudes about discipleship amongst members of my congregation. Use of these videos for that sermon proved to be both remarkable and profitable.

Today, the Christian blogosphere is thoroughly scrutinizing these videos from the vantage point of their original context as advertisements for a church in the Chicago area. The analysis and scrutiny goes far beyond any thoughts or issues that ran across my mind while pondering their use as sermon illustrations.

Internet Monk raises some lucid points about the dangers of promoting a church as better than that ‘traditional’ church just down the road. And from his perspective I think he is on to something. The videos may unintentionally send the message that we are ‘holier than thou’ by virtue of our ‘coolness and hipness.’

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Sufjan Stevens is my new musical hero. You can hear audio streams of his 5-box Christmas CD set here. This is great stuff!!!

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