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an evening with bishop nt wright : round up & audio

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Ntwright2

last night erin & i headed down to west end, along with quite a few hundred cross cultural types to hear from n.t. wright, the bishop of durham. he’s on a book tour for "surprised by hope" which i am to read sometime this year. i was stoked to hear of his coming and by the turnout last night, quite a few others were as well. it was a nice evening out catching up with many friends. even erin had fun meeting up with the various friendships through blogging. being at the methodist church it was nice to see some metho-types in the audience as well. after-wards we went out for drinks at the broadway brewhouse, with the joneses for a new draft beer to town. the new beer, boulevard brew, out of kansas city. it is quite good, though it probably won’t take over from my early 20’s drink of choice back in nj.

back to last night. i am still processing. i don’t know if i have knowledge and language command to navigate what i heard in teaching and not making it sound like some purgatory realm. one thing erin & i liked was nt’s distinction that we are not building the kingdom but building for the kingdom. his analogy was a rock sculpture shape a rock, and that is what they do, but it is the architect who puts into its place where the true beauty shows.

many friends have already started to throw down their thoughts. so i give you a round-up of those conversations

another fun thing. i received an email from a older gentleman asking my response to his comments on the tennessean article i was quoted in. for the record, my church is "first" united methodist, not "faith" united methodist. common mistake.. not really, but oh well.

some of my conversations in the being interviewed were that. 1. this isn’t such a hard concept to grasp as we have always had a teaching of holiness movement and means of grace that is intended to be kingdom building 2. it isn’t so hard to imagine methodist’s interested in anglican folks as we are only 300 years removed from those anglican traditions of church. not to mention, we are a revival movement from that church body, so any revival in that church is probably something we are going to be interested in. but as with any of my "news" spots, my one liners are lame or total bs.

i do take down some audio of the bishop’s talk. the sound system was not in fine form. john, who was operating the system and a old family friend told me after-wards someone came in and messed it all up after he had it perfect. he was so mad. so the audio isn’t the best volume quality, but if you can plug into some speakers you can hear just fine.

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  1. of all the things i have to say about this post, the most burning one seems to be that i love yuengling, too!

  2. of all the things i have to say about this post, the most burning one seems to be that i love yuengling, too!

  3. I am interested in your Purgatory comment. I have been preaching/teaching/thinking the same stuff he said since seminary and I’ve never heard that reaction. Mostly I get people concerned that their loved one isn’t “with Jesus.” And that is the one area that Wright seems more sure than I am, that “intermediate state” between death and res. He takes that image of “paradise” very seriously, but I wonder about the implications of any conscious existence apart from a body. Hmm….

  4. I am interested in your Purgatory comment. I have been preaching/teaching/thinking the same stuff he said since seminary and I’ve never heard that reaction. Mostly I get people concerned that their loved one isn’t “with Jesus.” And that is the one area that Wright seems more sure than I am, that “intermediate state” between death and res. He takes that image of “paradise” very seriously, but I wonder about the implications of any conscious existence apart from a body. Hmm….

  5. hey thomas,
    sorry for just now getting back to you. i suppose part of my hesitancy is my growing and starting ministry in a heavily catholic (and jewish) population. that was a common framework that people used and were confused about.
    purgatory as most folks know it as some intermediate state, not quite banished to hell, but not yet to heaven. the feeling though is that it generally leans more towards the punishment side (ie. apart from God or love) so dealing with those is a matter of semantics and ones own idea, plus their own acceptance. i don’t feel comfortable in my skills at the mo’ to discuss that without being able to separate the two.. that’s just what i was getting at.
    it might be a time that a purgatory concept is past its due and no one cares to talk of it any more. so it’d never come up… but i did think of it in the process of his talk.

  6. hey thomas,
    sorry for just now getting back to you. i suppose part of my hesitancy is my growing and starting ministry in a heavily catholic (and jewish) population. that was a common framework that people used and were confused about.
    purgatory as most folks know it as some intermediate state, not quite banished to hell, but not yet to heaven. the feeling though is that it generally leans more towards the punishment side (ie. apart from God or love) so dealing with those is a matter of semantics and ones own idea, plus their own acceptance. i don’t feel comfortable in my skills at the mo’ to discuss that without being able to separate the two.. that’s just what i was getting at.
    it might be a time that a purgatory concept is past its due and no one cares to talk of it any more. so it’d never come up… but i did think of it in the process of his talk.