Monday, December 18, 2006

Emerging Church Documentary

I came across this today on youtube. Some interesting sound bites. It is a promo for a documentary on the emerging church. He interviews a number of the big hitters. It is always worth noting when documentaries start to appear...it often marks the beginning of the end. Hopefully not in this case.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Missional Preaching

Jason Clark had a post 5 Tips for Preaching & Teaching in The Emerging Church. His 5th point was

5. Be Sacramental:
Lead people into interaction, conversation, participation, and connection to God, each other, and the world, not just your own ideas.

What caught my eye was the idea of being sacramental. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches were formed in primarily illiterate cultures. This affect the creation of liturgy in that most of the people did not have the ability or luxury to read or study the scriptures. This, in part, led to the standardizing of the liturgies. The protestant churches in America reacted against this seeing it as a way in which the church and state sought to control the populus. It was easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater in that context because the people were more literate and certainly knew the scriptures.
I wonder if in our missional contexts that there again a need for such a liturgical/sacramental aspect of our churches. Since many of those coming to ec's have less and less of a knowledge of the bible and its content there is a greater need to provide divergent streams for people to encounter and understand the gospel. Liturgical/sacramental elements help to provide these multiple streams. For those who are more visual in their approach to the world, icons become encounters with the gospel. For those who are more kinesthetic elements of movement help them internalize the experience of worship. For the auditory the hearing of the word, singing of songs in worship, recitation of liturgy does the same.


Friday, December 01, 2006

Unintended Consequences

I wear many hats: assistant pastor, adjunct professor, property manager, husband, father, etc, etc, etc. I have a hard time multi-tasking. I do it well for a while, but then my life gets too busy and complicated and it all seems to fall apart. Eventually I am able to pick up the pieces and take care of my core priorities. One of the tools that I use to keep all of this in motion is my cell phone. I've been an early adopter in many kinds of technology, but the cell phone has been one that I put off for a long time. I am coming up on the end of my first 2-year contract. One thing that has become apparent to me is the way that the convenience of being able to call anyone, from anywhere, at any time has changed the nature of the way that I related with others, especially on the phone. I've gotten into the habit of having short quippy conversations with people on the phone. They tend to be very practical. After one recent call I realized that I had called a friend, pumped him for the information that I needed and then hung up! I felt horrible afterwards and have made a commitment to no longer use my phone in that manner, but rather to connect with others and build them up. Sure, I will always need my cell phone to get information, but if that becomes the primary function of my call, then who will want to answer when they see me on Caller ID?