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UMC

the church sermon for a new era?

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via cartoonchurch.com

My friend Steve Wilke sent me this TED Talk asking for my opinion. So here goes..

The talk is given by Salman Khan who has started his own online academy of learning by putting videos of lessons online for people to see. He tells the story of how that got started and some of his thoughts on how this can, and should, affect future education.

I happen to think it is a fabulous idea & as with anything, it has me thinking of the church.

I began to think of some of the historic congregational traditions of the early american church was that after the sermons were given there was a time of question & answer. You can imagine for yourself the reasons for that practice. It was inevitably shuned and stopped. The Quakers have their “un-programmed” worship which people sit in silence and only when someone is inspired by ‘the light’ do they break the silence to speak. Others may stand and speak building off that theme, but they do not have to. That, and how Solomon’s Porch does their gathering, is about the closest practice to what I am suggest as an idea for a new way of spiritual formation through the practice of sermon.

What if, we put our sermons out into the digital sphere for our congregation to digest throughout the week, at their own pace. If you wanted you can send out a message and then some reading supplement later in the week. And then, during Sunday worship service instead of the preacher preaching, the preacher took questions to teach for clarification & challenge. The gathered community can participate bringing together the myriad of ideas they have been inspired by after reading the scriptures, listening to the pastor’s exegesis and/& sermon online. Who knows the power, or chaos, that would happen when 50, 200, 2000 come together prepared to share..

I don’t have a pulpit to practice from, but it would be a really awesome experiment. Maybe do it for a summer series or some challenging theological concept (like the trinity).

What thoughts might you have about this idea?

 

 

graphic via cartoon church

What Flavor Doritos would Jesus Be?

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I threw out this news that Doritos/Pepsi did some crowdsourcing to get their slate of Super Bowl commercials coming up at the beginning of February. One of the Doritos commercials has the Catholic church upset because it uses the symbol of communion/eucharist with ‘the body’ represented as Doritos. Now, Catholics have their view that they really are partaking of Jesus’ body and blood when they take the bread & wine. So I get why they wouldn’t want to taste a Jesus that leaves a terrible after taste and gives you bad breath for the rest of the evening, not to mention leaves a residue on your finger tips.

But, if Jesus was a Dorito, what kind would he be? Someone seems to think Jesus would be Spicy Sweet Chili.. My only hope is that he doesn’t taste like Late Night All Nighter Cheeseburger, talk about a bad idea. I think we can all agree we don’t want Jesus to be this doritos flavor.

In more serious discussion, what are alternatives to ‘the body & blood’ that are acceptable? This was part of my discussion with Josh Hale, Katie Dawson, and others over twitter. It was a fun conversation, but had me thinking, this is one of our sacraments, we should know what is acceptable in use and what isn’t..

So I’ve begun a list: What are the acceptable forms of bread? and what are the acceptable forms of juice? and why

Accepted

  • tasteless wafers – you need to suffer through this
  • small stale cubes of bread – you need to suffer & break a crown
  • homemade bread – no suffering needed, grace is good
  • hawaiian bread – it’s all gonna be okay man’ now lets go surfing
  • welch’s grape juice – its cheap and sugar content gets kids to drink it
  • homemade wine – only available in kentucky
  • cheap wine – need to make you cringe when tasting, it is blood by the way
  • **cornbread – its just too dang good

Not Accepted (apparently, some of this list is on protest)

  • buttermilk biscuits – perfect for morning services, imho
  • popcorn – cheap & easily prepared. microwave before services and just pass around the bag
  • grape soda – no sodas for the kids, bummer
  • angel food cake – too many calories to be seen as suffering
  • goldfish crackers – only allowed for church child care programs
  • good wine – not in the budget
  • sweet tea – Jesus wasn’t a southerner, unsweet, getting closer
  • frozen biscuits – you even ask?..
  • cookies – Jesus might have been oatmeal cookie.. academia still sorting that out

** – has to be served with milk

What are your Accepted & Not Accepted list? don’t forget the ‘why.’

Naming it.. We’re stuck in between Pastor Roles

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The other month I was a church communications conference and had the privilege to meet Dr. Craig van Gelder. Now, Craig (cause we are close buds now) wasn’t on my radar per se, but we were both speaker peeps at this thing and he sat in on my session & I on his and we got to chatting in between times. I really enjoyed the guy.

Anyways, his main keynote went through a history of roles for the pastors of churches. It was rather fascinating to see how he broke it down. How I’ll break it down for you is this, in the earliest histories of the church the pastor was a “resident theologian” (the guy who did all the study and translation for the individual church) or maybe the “civic leader” (you see this in movies how the pastor is always one of the town leaders, or main leader). Fast forward and you get into the 20th century and the pastor role has shifted to the “pastoral counselor” (we want mainly pastoral care as well as a good sermon). But today’s church has moved into more of this “entrepreneurial pastor” role (we want a pastor who can build, and build big.. as well as give a good sermon).

All this swirled in my head as I started reading this posting by Mark Meyer on what the church can learn from business. Mark has some fine points for record, I wouldn’t argue out that they are thoughtless or anything like that. I will say, they do reflect this new culture of pastoral leadership, this ‘entrepreneurial pastor’ type.

The problem here is that many of our pastors and those who have grown up to be a pastor came into the calling with a ‘pastoral counselor’ identity. They want to give guidance and assistance to people, they were not necessarily called to build big temples and have huge audiences (though some believe they were, that’s fine). The trip here is that our congregations are stuck in some limbo that they can not name. And it is that tension that exists because people don’t know how to examine and name that cultural set up we have.

Truth be told, business is taking over way more church practices than church needs to take from business (the base of Stick Sheep, go read it!). Churches are already well versed in business world practices, they’ve been around for a few centuries or more.. not sure many businesses that can claim that. Mark’s issue & many others is just that the church doesn’t want to become entrepreneurial again..

So I’m naming it, in my own UMC we’re stuck in this in between of a culture of pastors taught to be pastoral counselor when yet, our culture is telling our congregations that we want a pastor who will come in an be an entrepreneur. It’s a real pickle to be in and has been the torture of some really great pastors.. that unfortunately were not called to an entrepreneur.

a Life Giving Christmas

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Friends at United Methodist Communications sent me a copy of their media pack for “A Life Giving Christmas” as part of their ReThinkChurch campaigns. I thought it’d be something pretty lame that I wouldn’t want to pitch, but it really isn’t. I wouldn’t go so far as to say its the next best thing, but for a four week period of Advent this has a little bit of everything to generate some ongoing communications & hopefully transformations.

In the digital media package you receive a four week series of resources;

  • Sermon Starters: Not full sermons, but a lot of ideas and add on to plug into service. Starters are also lectionary based
  • Questions to Toss out into Facebook & Twitter: Those are social mediums, so doing more than being an extra version of the newsletter is best practice. You may not care for the questions, but they should remind you to have conversations digitally in the in-betweens of the week.
  • PDF’s for Door-hangers, Direct Mailing, Bulletin Covers or Inserts
  • Videos to show as part of worship or put online for teasers before services..
  • Presentation software slides

All these things come at a cost of just $25, which, if you need something to plug into the four weeks of Advent still, then this could be some of the best $25 you’ve ever spent. I have to say it is good value for the price..

The big drawback is that we are already at Advent (one more Sunday till) and many of us have already got stuff in the hopper. So implementing this would be a hard time line to keep faithfully. However, I know many of you have plans to make plans still out there lingering. It is you who could pull that together. It might be that you want to download it now & use it next year.

Another option to check out is to look into Advent Conspiracy. “A Life Giving Christmas” has a similar social action angle.