It looks like today is just going to be chock full of YouTube videos. Here’s a great little Youth Ministry video that nicely complements the Ignatius one I posted a while back.
Category: Christianity
Coffee idolatry
JT’s Between Two Worlds is one of the pillars of the Christian blogosphere. Today he shared a little link to this article on sacred cows – and coffee in particular.
While I can appreciate where the author is coming from – I do like my coffee. More than most. It stings a little to see coffee lumped in with U2.
What you find on many websites is some kind of description like this: “I love reformed theology, U2, anything by Steven Soderbergh, and a fresh cup of joe.” Or maybe: “My interests are theology, issues of social justice, Beastie Boys, and an Americano from (fill in neighborhood coffee shop here).” Or perhaps: “Can’t resist a good Bonhoeffer quotation, Edwardsean philosophy, and a venti mocha with light whip.”
You get the point. Here’s the thing about this situation: there’s nothing ironic or unique about liking coffee. We all like coffee. Coffee is good. Made well, it’s really good. It’s kind of like saying you like bread. “Anything by Piper, Band of Horses, and Pepperidge Farm rocks my world.” Everyone likes bread. And everyone likes coffee.
Ouch.
On the question of Worship
I read this somewhere the other day. I thought it was prescient and worth recording for posterity…
The problem with the modern church’s understanding of worship is they see it as a noun not a verb.
Brilliant.
Preach, when necessary use wordle
I’ve been a little bit lax in my blogging this weekend. I spent yesteday being a husband, a spectator and a friend. I went shopping with my wife, went to the NQ Fury’s A-League debut, and then hung out with a friend as part of his bucks day.
I also did a bit of sermon tweaking. Here’s the resulting wordle from today’s sermon effort. I did use a few seconds of the binocular soccer video in my talk.
I think I was better this time than last time, though perhaps not as good as my best time. I was repetitive but with a little more creativity in my repetition…
Here’s how the video tied in (for the curious)…
The Pharisees are just like these Japanese soccer players – they’re running around trying to keep everything in equal focus. The big things and the small things. They’ve got no perspective. They’re swinging, and they’re missing. They’re keeping all the rules – but they can’t get the bigger part of the game right. They can’t hit the ball. They aren’t scoring any goals. They’re losing.
But they’re worse than the Japanese soccer players in that video. These guys are running the game. They’re the coaches and they’re strapping binoculars on everyone else. It ruins the game for everybody.
The heading, despite being an obvious reference to the graphical content of this post, refers to what I think is one of the great fallacies of modern evangelism. The idea of preaching solely by actions is nice, but fundamentally wrong.
Ten plagues for all your houses…
One of the other things I may miss out on this Sunday if pain persists and I’ve seen the doctor is my role in our puppet driven kid’s talks at church.
That would be sad. I have been enjoying being Ernie. As in Bert and Ernie. Children like puppets. It’s a fact.
Children also need to learn about the plagues in Egypt. Because that’s important. Sadly this has been difficult to achieve with puppets. Until now. I give you the “Plague Puppets” courtesy of some Hebrew children’s resource site (perfect for your Old Testament needs)…
Putting things in perspective
I am, depending on swine flu, preaching this Sunday morning. I’m doing the fourth woe in Matthew 23. I’m going to use this video as an illustration. If I’m allowed out of bed.
Oh yeah, the doctor said it was too early to diagnose me clinically yet. So I have to wait to see if it gets worse.
Here’s the passage.
“23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”
One for the books
I’m a sucker for a good bit of other person promotion. And it’s probably time I mentioned Goannatree anyway.
It’s a good place to read intelligent scholarship from a Christian who is into literature, the arts and all sorts of culture.
This week Goannatree is running a book giveaway to encourage lurkers out of the woodworks – and probably to score a swag of new readers. So get along, check it out. You won’t be disappointed.
Facing the music
Another post, another YouTube video…
As I mentioned earlier, Matt Redman, who is responsible for a few cringe worthy "worship" songs, is undergoing a bit of a Copernican revolution. He has realised that some of the soppiness in his songs can be a little bit over the top, and not quite Biblical.
I’m glad he uses the framework he does to assess his songwriting (and that of others).
"In the Bible you don’t see a lot of people coming up to Jesus and saying you’re beautiful"
Mor(e )on Christian music
Two interesting tidbits to add to my crusade against cringe worthy Christian music…
The first, is an opinion piece in The Age where an atheist journo went along to a PlanetShakers experience*… it’s got all the echos of the South Park episode I mentioned a few weeks back – just so you know I wasn’t exaggerating the issue here’s a quote…
“Christian pop, ’80s power anthems, Metallica meets Cheap Trick. A mosh pit for Jesus was jumping with teenagers in rapture and a balcony of Planetkids went off for Christ. Music blared from the stadium sound system while the screen seduced us with slick videos edited so fast the phrase ‘‘subliminal image" kept popping into my head. Lyrics flashed up: "Come like a flood and saturate me now." I wondered what Freud would have made of the disproportionate use of such words as ‘‘come’’, ‘‘touch’’ and ‘‘feel’’, and the phrases "move within me" and "being filled". My favourite was "King of Glory, enter in".”
Secondly, There’s apparently an article somewhere where Matt Redman – cliched songwriter extraordinaire – repents from his ways of writing love songs to God. I’ll find that article when I get home and update this post.
*As a side note – this gonzo journalism thing where atheists try to experience Christian stuff from a true outsiders perspective is an interesting phenomena and is probably worth listenting to for those people trying to catch the atheist cultural zeitgeist. Other examples are the Guardian’s Alpha experiences and the Friendly Atheist Hermant Mehta’s book on his experiences in churches that he went to after an ebay campaign where confident churches could buy the right to try to convert him.
On death do us part
Two death post in one night. This isn’t some morbid fixation (though I am watching Bones as I write)…
I have appreciated elements of the Pyromaniacs writing. They call a spade a spade. And I appreciate that. I’ve never really engaged in commenting on their posts – even though there have been some I disagreed with.
Until this post – where one of the “Team Pyro” guys wrote a long post about the death penalty on his personal blog. I hope the comments around this site never reach the sycophantic levels of rabid agreement that go on over there…
Now, I’m not against the death penalty. I’ve argued for it on previous occasions. But I think we should be encouraging a government that is careful, considerate and merciful. I agree that the law needs to pursue justice – and that that looks like retribution, rather than rehabilitation. But this post doesn’t hit that balance.
It also falls into the trap, in my opinion, of equating America with God’s kingdom.
Ben, from bathgates.net, led the way into the fray and I followed to see what had happened in his wake. It’s not really pretty. But feel free to join the fun.
After this experience, and having read through thoughtful analysis of the “ministry” of the Pyromaniacs on Ben’s blog, I’m much less interested in what the Pyros have to say about anything.
Dialogue with Atheists
I love my atheist friends. Not only do they brighten up my work days with interesting emails, the also get me thinking quite a bit about what we do right and wrong as Christians.
The Internet Monk has entered into his own little dialogue with an atheist – it’s interesting reading.
That old “morality” chestnut comes up. One of the things atheists seem to find profoundly annoying (apart from being generalised and slandered as a bunch, and references to Hitler) is the idea that you can’t be a moral person without God.
This is a communication breakdown. When I say “you can’t be good without God” it’s because I believe in God, believe humanity to be totally and naturally sinful, and believe that God graciously allows sinful people to act morally. Other people mean something different – they mean that you can’t be moral without “believing” in God. They’re different. And I think we need to be careful to express the difference in meaning. Non-theists are capable of moral behaviour. Theists believe that’s because God lets them, atheists don’t feel that compulsion because they don’t believe God is there to do it.
The internetmonk article also brings up the question of indoctrinating children and whether or not this constitutes “child abuse” – which it can’t possibly, if God is there. And I believe he is.
Biblical suspicion
Why is it that as a Christian I am suspicious of anybody who forms their entire worldview – scientific, political and eschatological – on the basis of Genesis, Daniel, and Revelation?
They seem perfectly natural places to go for such issues…
Costello goes back to school
Peter Costello has a piece in the SMH on proposed changes to the discrimination laws, he chooses to focus particularly on the ramifications of changing this legislation for Christian schools.
“At present, discrimination statutes don’t apply to religious bodies and their schools on the grounds of freedom of religion. So a parliamentary committee has recommended options to extend the power of the state over the province of religion. One proposed change is to restrict the freedom of religious schools to choose their employees on the basis of their religious faith.”
I’m not apologist for Christian schools – they can create unhelpful monocultural microcosms that can cause problems for people engaging with the world later in life. On the flipside, they are really helpful institutions where children receive a better than average education at the hands of teachers who actually care about their development…
Forcing religious schools to make employment decisions free from preference to religion sounds equitable – but there’s no way a Christian School would hire an atheist teacher – they’d find other reasons to not hire them. It’s almost impossible to police. So it’s not a concern.
It is dumb though. And it’s the reason that Christians should push for a clear separation of church and state. It cuts both ways.
Alpha beta
We’re running Introducing God at church at the moment. It’s like Alpha, for the Bible minded…
I’ve never done the Alpha course. My opinion of it is largely shaped by criticisms from people I know and respect. But it’s second hand.
For more “second hand” accounts of Alpha you should read this “orthodox atheist” journalist from the Guardian (UK paper) as he blogs the Alpha experience.
“The nearest I’ve come to a religious experience recently is my nightly dose of the Wire. Ain no thang. But I leave St Mary’s looking forward to next week’s session. I spend precisely no time with people openly discussing their faith in a very personal way. Mostly when I think about religion it’s the foolish edicts of preposterous old men in dresses. But sitting down with people who choose to spend a sunny Tuesday evening discussing the meaning of life with strangers seems to be a much more interesting insight into what makes people of faith tick. We shall see.”
Change in the air
I’m gradually making the switch between this geographically and personally specific domain name – and my new, as voted by you, domain – st-eutychus.
All the links and stuff on the page will now direct to “st-eutychus” links.
Eutychus was the young man who fell asleep, and out a window to his death, during a sermon by Paul. Paul felt so guilty that he resurrected him.
The current domain expires in December, and will work up until then. I’ll change the name of the blog when I have a new design ready to go.
Exciting times.