some thoughts on preaching

I just finished reading Dan Kimball’s The Emerging Church: vintage christianity for new generations. It’s one of those books that has been on my shelf for some time. I’m wishing it hadn’t taken me so long to get around to it! I don’t agree with all of what Kimball suggests, but I think he has some great points about the challenges for Christianity in reaching “new generations”.

I especially found his chapter on “preaching without words” interesting. Among the points that Kimball makes are these:

• While a more modern/traditional mindset moves through a faith process of FACTS influencing BELIEF which influences BEHAVIOR, Kimball suggests that in post-modern/emerging cultures the faith process shift looks much more like EXPERIENCE influencing BEHAVIOR which in turn influences BELIEF. Acknowledging that change means that we need to rethink the ways we seek to communicate the message of the gospel. Kimball concludes that we can no longer assume that the spoken word – in a 20 minute message - is what impacts people the most. “Art preaches, Scripture preaches, Music preaches, Even silence preaches”, says Kimball.

I’m wondering what our worship service would be like if we followed a model that saw EXPERIENCE and BEHAVIOR preceding BELIEF?

• Kimball says that for emerging cultures there should be an importance placed on developing a culture which encourage questions and thinking. In the emerging church, he says, we need to “cultivate a culture that allows dialogue. The church needs to “learn to ‘struggle with the scriptures’ through the example of midrash” that allows for thinking through scripture using a variety of interpretations.

I’m wondering what our worship service would be like if we not only allowed but actively promoted questions, dialogue, and doubt instead of blind obedience or unthinking acquiescence to a set of beliefs?

• Finally, Kimball maintains that emerging churches are more comfortable with an image of the “preacher as shepherd and fellow journeyer instead of a message giver and problem solver”

I’m wondering what our worship service would be like if we preachers would be vulnerable enough to allow ourselves to be experienced as co-journeyers rather than the ones who have the answers?

more thoughts on discipleship and the church

Last week my blog post referenced the Iowa United Methodist School for Ministry event and some of my thoughts about two of the speakers, their comments on acts of service and small group discipleship, and how those relate – or often don’t relate – to our understanding of Church and worship.

On her blog “Salvaged Faith”, Katie Z. writes this week about “making members, making disciples”. Katie’s ponderings about how and where we often define discipleship happening is well worth taking a look at. You can follow Katie's blog at (http://salvagedfaith.blogspot.com/.

acts of service & acts of worship

Two of the speakers at the at Iowa Conference School for Ministry got me thinking today about faith formation, worship, service and the ways that they are connected.

• Taylor Burton-Edwards says that for 1500 years it was small groups – things like John Wesley’s Societies - NOT congregations where faith development most effectively occurred.
• Melissa Rudolph reminded us that acts of service are what inspires this generation to seek a higher purpose. They may most likely not come to faith through the door of worship, but through the door of service.

A recent article in USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/news/sharing/2009-04-13-millenial_N.htm) connects with this as well. The article is about the upsurge in civic involvement among the Millennial Generation. It makes the case that the young people in the under 25 age category are the most civic minded generation in the last 80 or so years.

So, as I’m trying to put these pieces together I’m intrigued by one of the main topics of conversation on the USA Today discussion board about whether mandatory volunteerism is a good or bad thing. And I’m wondering, does it…

• force people to volunteer, and therefore may not be of lasting value past the requirement of their school years
• provide a structure to what is a deep held longing to live out their desire to make a difference in the world
• model civic participation that will create a lifestyle of service

Not sure what to do with any of this today. I’m wondering about doors of service and what it would mean for the Church if we saw this as an important avenue – maybe the most important avenue for younger generations - towards faith formation. Any thoughts?

new wine & old wineskins

I walked a labyrinth at 6:00 a.m. this morning from my kitchen table. I’m trying to be intentional each day during this Holy Week with a different Spiritual Practice. My original intention this morning was – maybe still will be – to find an accessible labyrinth that I could walk meditatively sometime later this week. While I was online trying to locate a labyrinth within an hour’s drive more or less of my home I came across several online labyrinths. I’d seen a couple of them before. I’d even “walked” a few at other times – or at least I had been a casual observer of them before, but this morning I fully engaged the experience of doing an online labyrinth walk. It was far more meaningful than I’d anticipated.

Doing a version of the very ancient practice of labyrinth walking through a technological adaptation unimagined even a few years ago got me thinking about the ancient-future worship model that often holds deep meaning with Postmoderns. I was reminded as well of a worship serve I attended with a few friends a couple years ago at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Seattle where close to 500 mostly twenty-somethings each week gather for a 9:30 p.m. Compline service (http://www.complinechoir.org/) that is chanted almost entirely in Latin. There seems to be something very meaningful about practices that reach deep into our faith traditions and yet encourage us to live out those traditions in new and relevant ways.

I came across a quote about worship and worship practices this past weekend from Brian McLaren: “… we need to explore an alternative to (1) using symbols that make no sense to people and (2) getting rid of symbols: [we need to be] (3) using symbols and finding ways to make them enticing, attractive, and penetrable for people unfamiliar with them.”

So, on this afternoon of Holy Week I’m wondering what are some of the Spiritual Practices that you have found most meaningful on your faith journey. Do you resonate with ancient-future worship practices? What symbols of our faith could we make more “enticing, attractive and penetrable”?


For those wanting to explore further: A search of “online labyrinths” will provide lots of options. Four that I’ve found really helpful are:
(http://www.gratefulness.org/p/labyrinth.cfm)
(http://www.gracecathedral.org/labyrinth/interactions/index.shtml)
(http://www.labyrinthonline.com/)
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/paradigm/)