Stop That Yelling!

This blog post corresponds with Season 1, Episode 12 - Parenting

Sometimes I wonder if everyone has the right to be a parent. Perhaps it isn't a matter of right but more of calling. Parenting is a ministry; you are supposed to raise these little people in a way so they will know God and be able to make responsible decisions about their faith on their own when the time comes. We make a big deal about people hearing their calling to ministry and mission work. Sometimes we talk about individual's callings to different vocations. How often do we talk about someone being called to parenting?

I think it is something we should consider. I am not suggesting that we should tell people who can and who cannot be a parent. What I am suggesting is that we take seriously the decision to become a parent (if a decision is involved) and ask ourselves where God might be in this ministry. That would be a great first step.

Here are some of the books mentioned in the podcast:

The Encouraging Parent: How to Stop Yelling at your Kids and Start Teaching Them Confidence, Self-Discipline, and Joy 

by Rodney W. Kennedy

Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

From Watcha' Reading

The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Your a Grand Old Flag...

I recognize that this post is a little past the publication date of our 10^th episode (and that I missed the 9^th episode), but better late than never. If you aren’t happy with this timeline, you can write into the studio and send a s.a.s.e. in order to get your money back.

I am fascinated how emotional people get when discussing the place of the flag in the church and how often the argument refers to the idea that this nation was founded on “Christian values.” If this argument stands, then what would people say of flags in synagogues, or mosques, or Hindu temples, or Buddhist temples? Should the flag not be in those places of worship because the country is not founded on the same values? What of humanists, rationalists, and atheists? If they were to have temples (and some of them do) should those places of worship have the American flag in them?

My fear with the emotional demand for the flag in the sanctuary is that it carries a strong weight of antidisestablishmentarianism (and I love having the opportunity to use that word in a blog post). It moves towards the belief that Christianity and the United States are one and should always be considered such. Such a stance lowers other religions and is dangerous to any hope that Christianity stays true to the essence of its faith. We discussed this on the podcast, and I just wanted to offer a little more to chew on.

The podcast featured Darin Collins whose church website can be found here. We also mentioned the following books:

The Subversion of Christianity, by Jacques Ellul

The Peaceable Kingdom, by Stanley Hauerwas

And as you are all waiting for, the selections from Whatca’ Reading:

The Nature and Purpose of the Church    

                                                            (The updated publication) The Nature and Mission of the Church

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott

Don't Let the Children Come to Me.... They Have Dirty, Sticky Hands

The 8th episode has been up for about a week and no doubt causing quite a stir. Imagine, children in worship being treated as actual human beings. It is absurd!

 Obviously I don’t agree with such sentiments – it is sarcasm, didn’t you hear it in the tone of voice? One of the things that the question of children in worship begs is the purpose of worship. The majority of us mainline Protestant folks tend to shape our service for people who are already Christians; it is not a seeker oriented service. Yet Baptists (and others) do not view children as Christians. They have not made a commitment to Christ. If this is the case, then shouldn’t the worship service, or at least the part when they are present, be focused on moving them to make the commitment to Christ?

 Actually, shouldn’t calling people to Christ be a part of every worship service just in case there is someone visiting who isn’t a Christian? You Evangelicals in the back, calm down and stop the self-righteous chest thumping, your services are so seeker-friendly that a moth in a pitch black room could find you. Anyway, the norm for seeker services may not be what we would want for our children.

 How do we reach out to children, speak to children, and at the same time make the worship service engaging for adults. Here are a couple of thoughts:
      1. Children pick up on much more than we give them credit
      2. Adults get out much more from “simplistic” language than we give them credit

 So sleep on that and hopefully the next episode will be out soon. Here are the books that were mentioned:

  Brown Bag: A Bag Full of Sermons for Children by Jerry Marshall Jordan

A Time With Our Children: Stories for Use in Worship by Diane Deming

From Watcha' Reading

 After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

Drink This Brother, May It Serve You Well

Episode 7 is up! Listen and you can get the scoop and the skinny on the differences between Sacraments and Ordinances.

Who cares? This is a good questions and I'm glad you asked. A great number of disagreements about church life and practices emerge out of a misunderstanding (or lack of understanding) of the theology of that tradition. Why is the priest placed on a pedestal (metaphorical and literal)? Why does the minister wear a robe? Why doesn't the minister wear a robe? Do I have to be baptized to take communion? When we don't know our theology our answers become pragmatic and usually the theology becomes watered down and vapid. Or a conflict emerges within the church because of the lack of theological acuity. So it is important to understand what it is that your tradition practices and then to decide if it is something you can ascribe to.

The other reason it is important for Charley and I to talk about the differences between Sacraments and Ordinances is that is makes us sound smart.

Here are the books referenced in the podcast:

Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. Francis Schussler Fiorenza and John Galvin eds.

Doors to the Sacred by Joseph Martos

A Baptist Manual of Polity and Practice by Norman Maring and Winthrop Hudson

Baptist Sacramentalism, Anthony Cross and Philip Thompson, eds.

Promise and Presence by John Colwell










From Watcha' Reading

Activate by Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Seriously, Tell Me the Honest Truth...

This post corresponds with episode 6

Hopefully by now you have listened to our third brilliant podcast on preaching and are thirsting for more. Hopefully.

If I am to reiterate anything I think it would be honesty. We need to be honest with our congregation. This means sharing when we aren't sure about the text we invit the congregation to wrestle with us. It means sharing our doubts and our own confusion. This even means that there may be moments and times when we may not have a neat and tidy conclusion. Yet I believe people relate more with the honesty of the preacher than with the superior know-it-all answers of a preacher. We need to be honest with our preaching, our spirituality, and our whole lives.

I may be onto something with this honesty thing. Maybe I should start a speaking circuit where I call on people to stop the madness and be honest with themselves. Then they can rebuild their homes (lives) with honest materials (props to Six Feet Under).

I know Charley and I said we would post examples of the outlines we use to prepare our sermons and hopefully we will do that soon. While you are waiting, feel free to browse the books mentioned on the podcast:

The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative by Hans Frei - see the previous post

The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter

Exploring the Texture of Texts: A Guide to Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation by Vernon Robbins

Sociology and the Jesus Movement by Richard Horsley

From Watcha Reading:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem by James Carroll

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Don't forget, your comments on itunes makes a big difference and feel free to visit our Facebook page.

You can hear the podcast via non-itunes on the following link.

Be Careful What You Read

Corresponds with Season 1, Episode 4 - Lost in Translation

This is going to be short because I’m behind. Deal with it.

If we wanted to control the thoughts and ideas of a group of people we would want to control what those people read (or saw or heard). This was a major sticking point with Bible translations – people wanted to control what other people thought and believed. It was important to hold onto the idea of Christ being born of a virgin, or of Christ being born of a young woman. They were certain words and phrases are translated will effect how you understand your faith, so it is important to control what others are reading. Yet if we trust the Holy Spirit, then we should try to make the translation as close as possible to the original, as possible as that may be. Or, maybe God can work through even the worst translation ever done. But, if I could just tell everyone what to believe and what to read, then things would be great.

Books on Bible History and Translation

An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880
By Paul C. Gutjahr, Sanford University Press, 2001.

In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible. Peter J. Thuesen, Oxford University Press, 2002.

The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics. Hans W. Frei, Yale University Press, 1980.

Bible Translations:

RSV
NRSV
NIV
Message
KJV
The Good News
The Living Bible
(There are a million others, just search the web and have a good time)

Webpage of Translations Chart

From Whatca’ Reading:

A Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology. By William Horden, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1955.

Casino Royal: A James Bond Novel. By Ian Fleming, Penguin Books, 1953.

The Final Word

Listen to me because I am right!

This is an attitude that many pastors/preachers embrace. Sure, they will be coy and say things like “I’m just preaching scripture,” or “these aren’t my ideas, they are God’s,” but really what we are encountering is a big ego and an even bigger head. That’s why churches are so big, so they can enter and leave.

For now lets not dwell on the arrogance of such a stance, but instead on the idea that the sermon is the final word. The preacher/pastor has proclaimed the word, it is said, it is the truth, and there is no room for discussion. This makes the sermon very much a one-way proclamation, a picture of some smarty-pants telling everyone else what to think.

For those who listened to the corresponding podcast, you may remember hearing me (Jonathan, the smart one) referencing Foucault. I am not a Foucault scholar by any stretch of the imagination and only understand a sliver of his view on rhetoric, power, and structure. I think one could say that from a Foucaultian analysis, in the sermon people are being “educated,” shaped, and formed in one way or another. Yet I do not think this necessarily needs to be a one-way street, but one is which the preacher is also shaped and formed.

When is the sermon finished? I used to say that it is finished when I preach it, but after some thought I think I would amend such a statement. After I preach the sermon, and it is floating in the sanctuary, stirring individuals, it is still happening. When someone contacts me later with a question, thought, or idea in response to the sermon it is still happening. It is at this moment that I am affected by the sermon, sometimes more than the person with the comment. I may be moved to change my point, or to better articulate my point, or to deepen my faith in one way or another because of the interaction. Now the power is in the hands of the listener with the comment, and I am the one who is being invited to engage the word.

If I preach with a sense of finality then I am closed to the continued movement of the sermon. But if I look for continued engagement and dialogue, then the sermon continues to be heard and is never really finished. This means that I may not always be right. Ouch!

Ok, now for things mentioned on the episode.

The Foucault Reader is a great intro to Foucault

From What'cha Reading:

A Writer’s Coach: An Editor’s Guide to Words That Work, by Jack Heart
Published by Pantheon, 2006 (take note, Charley)

The Coming of the Body by Hervé Juvin
Published by Verso, 2010

Stay safe, tell your friends, and leave comments on i-tunes (preferably good ones).

The Dog Ate My Sermon

season 1, episode 2

I once heard a story of a friend of mine sitting in the ANTS library, reading a commentary, and preparing for a sermon. As he was deep in a scholar’s explanation of a text someone else came up to him and said, “don’t prepare, just let the Holy Spirit move you.” Sad to say, the person was serious.

There are those people who feel that sermon preparation forces God and does not free the Holy Spirit. These people will argue that if you have nothing to say on Sunday it is because God will not give you anything to say. Weak.

Granted, we always need to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our preparation and our preaching. There may be times when mid-sermon you go a different direction or change things altogether because of a “feeling.” Yet this is different from going to preach with nothing at all.

To do no preparation at all shows little respect for your congregation and almost no respect for the act of preaching and proclaiming the Word. If you want to have a good product, give God something good to work with, spend time in prayer and preparation, and show up with something.

Lets be honest, winging it is not so much trusting the Holy Spirit as it is being lazy, procrastinating, and spending to much time playing Farmville.

Ouch.

In the corresponding episode we mentioned a number of resources. For commentaries we mentioned the Interpretation series, the Anchor Bible series, and the New Interpreters Bible. There are other good commentaries, but these are some good ones to start with.

We mentioned the Oxford Annotated Bible and the Harper Collins Study Bible as editions of the NRSV that we like to work with.

Here is a link to the Christian Book Distributers site where I attended a warehouse sale and was almost trampled by Christians.

Finally, there are a million plus sites about the lectionary – look it up.

After thought - I neglected to link the other two books mentioned on the podcast:

The Homiletical Plot by Eugene Lowry

Homiletic by David Buttrick

Now Let's Sing the Gathering Song!

Welcome to the blog! If you are reading this either you listened to the podcast and were left desiring more (you just can’t wait another two weeks), you followed a link from some other page to this blog, or you intended to go somewhere else and now are deeply saddened by the lack of scantly clothed women.

Regardless, you are here so keep reading, you might find it worth your while.

In our first podcast we talked about Contemporary Christian Music, starting with Stryper. Something that we did not directly address was the purpose of music in worship. Here are my two cents (actually my 10-15 cents at least).

Music not only gives the individual a way to articulate a powerful experience, but also joins an individual with a community in articulating that experience. It is one of the few times in a worship service when individual’s actions are shared with others at a powerful and profound level. If you have ever heard the monotone, robotic reading of a congregation during unison or responsive prayers, you know that just because everyone does something together they are not experiencing together. Music, however, demands a physical involvement through the breathing, the singing, and pushes the individual to an emotional, mystical, spiritual experience. I am sure that there are those who sing with no emotion, but that is because they are as cold as ice and are willing to sacrifice...

In singing and sharing and articulating an emotional experience, people are embracing, to a certain level, values of the community (see Amazing Grace, or It is Well for hymns that embrace specific Christian values). This is where the type of music is important. If the hymn is not written well, the values offered will be weak and will not help in making good Christians. This is part of my (Jonathan’s) beef with Christian Contemporary Music. The individualistic emphasis on me and Jesus leaves out those around me, those outside the walls of the church, and does not call for growth. Good hymnody is important, as Charley emphatically stated in the podcast.

Now the fun thing about a blog is that I can throw out something loaded like this, unpack it a little, and then leave it for the reader to chew on. Ha!

Feel free to leave comments and Charley or I might respond, or e-mail us at 12ecast@gmail.com

Watch this Space for Future Development

A post is coming soon.... a podcast is coming soon... a new day is coming soon....