Slowing Down and Reflecting Cross-generationally

by

26 Mar 2012

Jason Fischer reflects on Slow Church:

“…I find it appropriate to confess that as a youth and family director my divided heart has been tempted to compare the programs I have created at church against those in other churches. The youth directors over at the other church always seem to have so many kids, small groups, and elaborate worship services while I struggle to keep cranking out the multitude of marginally-attended events at my own congregation. Maybe Pastors have been double-minded in this way as well, but I soon realized that my frustration with low turnout and the endless cycle of busyness was not allowing me, or our congregation, to share the best of what God had given us with each other.”

read the full post here: EP guest post, Patheos Slow Church

Posted in Uncategorized

[ Posted in Uncategorized ]

The White Savior Industrial Complex

by

22 Mar 2012

Teju Cole is the author of Open City, which won this year’s PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He expounds on the sentiments behind his tweets regarding the Invisible Children / Kony 2012 videos at The Atlantic website.

I disagree with the approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to doing good work than “making a difference.” There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.

read the entire article here: The White Savior Industrial Complex

Posted in Signs of the Times - Tags: , , ,

[ Posted in Signs of the Times | Tags: , , , ]

197px-The_Vision_of_The_Valley_of_The_Dry_Bones

The Deep Hope of Easter

by

22 Mar 2012

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34.

What is the new covenant that God has made in Christ and what does it mean for our life in Christ today? This question is an essential one raised by today’s Old Testament text.  The ways in which Christians have answered this question through the centuries have often led to anti-Semitic attitudes and oppression of the Jews.  The gist of the reasoning has been that the Jews screwed up and God had to start over from scratch and now the Christians are the people on whom the blessing of God rests (and, of course, the Jews are outsiders, heretics and the ones who had Jesus crucified, and thus worthy of having all manner of violence inflicted upon them).

Is this really the sort of God, covenant and people that Jeremiah is proclaiming here?  I hope not, but let’s look a little deeper.  Gerhard Lohfink, in his classic work Does God Need the Church?: Toward a Theology of the People of God sheds some light on this passage:

Read more

Posted in Lectionary Reflections - Tags: , , ,

[ Posted in Lectionary Reflections | Tags: , , , ]

The Problem with Rowan Williams

by

21 Mar 2012

From Australian theologian Ben Myers who writes at the blog Faith and Theology:

It is often said that Williams is an unusual churchman – too scholarly, too ponderous, too sensitive to complexity – but it should equally be said that he is an unusual scholar. Although he has made important contributions to several academic disciplines – not only theology but also history, political philosophy and literary criticism – his deepest commitment has always been to the cultivation of community rather than to any particular intellectual project.

If his critics complained that he was an unusually academic archbishop, Cambridge will also find him to be an unusually priestly scholar.

To read the rest click here.

Posted in Signs of the Times - Tags: ,

[ Posted in Signs of the Times | Tags: , ]

Michelangelo's Nicodemus

Naked Intent

by

14 Mar 2012

Fourth Sunday of Lent

2 Chronicles 36:14-23 OR Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:4-10
John 3:14-21 OR John 6:4-15

I am Nicodemus: scared, grasping in the dark for certainties. For all my learning and skills with words, a disgraced Samaritan woman gets Jesus faster and wastes no time in spreading the news. (see John 4)

Is it because I, scared of what people will think, prefer coming at night, tripping over words and their meanings? Maybe you know how that feels. Maybe you’re Nicodemus, too. Read more

Posted in Lectionary Reflections - Tags: , , , ,

[ Posted in Lectionary Reflections | Tags: , , , , ]

What Space Must the Church Occupy?

by

10 Mar 2012

by Craig Wong 

At a 50th birthday party my dear wife recently threw for me, Pastor Bill Betts waxed eloquent about the “Greek, Roman, and Jewish phases of our lives.” The first phase swirls with lofty idealisms…dreams about our future and the world we hope to change. The second is where we take on the world with concrete energy, striving to make our mark. It is in the Jewish phase, however, when we realize that, when all is said and done, it is our friendships, family traditions, how we’ve lived our lives with one another that ultimately matters. Bill’s words provided food for thought for many of us that day.

Read more

Posted in Signs of the Times - Tags: , ,

[ Posted in Signs of the Times | Tags: , , ]

Anger in Church

by

7 Mar 2012

Third Sunday in Lent
John 2:13-22 (25)

 

“The gesture in the temple is all the more poignant and prophetic when we imagine it executed by a man too slight to carry his own cross without assistance, a man whose idea of a workout is a forty-day fast.”

Garret Keizer, The Enigma of Anger

Read more

Posted in Lectionary Reflections - Tags: , , ,

[ Posted in Lectionary Reflections | Tags: , , , ]

1 Comment

“The Kingdom Will Prevail”

by

1 Mar 2012

Mike Bowling preached this slow church sermon on Mark 4:24-34

I’ve never quite known what to make of Mark 4: 24-25: 24And he said to them,  ‘Pay attention to what you hear; Read more

Posted in slow church

[ Posted in slow church ]

stepping

Following Jesus One Step at a Time

by

29 Feb 2012

Second Sunday in Lent

Mark 8: 31-38

This Second Sunday of Lent we come face to face with the hard news of following Jesus. Last week we read of Jesus in the wilderness facing Satan and wild beasts. That was hard, but that was about Jesus. This week there is no skirting the issue; Jesus is talking to us about what it means to follow him. This is hard and it’s about us. Read more

Posted in Lectionary Reflections - Tags: , , , , , , ,

[ Posted in Lectionary Reflections | Tags: , , , , , , , ]

1 Comment

baptism

Dead in the Water

by

23 Feb 2012

First Sunday of Lent

Genesis 9:8-17
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

Lent is wasted on the orderly, the continent, the well-behaved. Forego some trivial luxury if it makes you feel better, but do it on your own time, please.

Lent is for those whose lives are a mess: an invitation, once again, to acknowledge the fragile illusions in which we place so much trust, to name the destructive power of our deep habits. The traditional practices of Lent – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving – were never meant to make good people better, much less make them more appealing to God.

Lenten practices are nothing less than little deaths, killing off the unnecessary within what we like to call “ourselves,” chiseling away chunks of rough marble hiding the delicate human figure inside. Not that we are the killers or sculptors. We enter the practice the way one enters the waters of baptism: called but never in control, ready at last to drown in the ocean of God’s unearned forgiveness. Read more

Posted in Lectionary Reflections - Tags: , , , , ,

[ Posted in Lectionary Reflections | Tags: , , , , , ]

5 Comments