Preaching Re-Imagined

As I mentioned previously, I was given the opportunity to preview Doug Pagitt's new book Preaching Re-imagined. First, a few words about what this book is not. It is not a how-to manual. You will not find in this book the ten steps to a new preaching style, or how to start a sermon discussion group, or something of the sort. This is also not primarily a theology of preaching. You're not going to find a lot of biblical exposition of relevant preaching texts or anything like that. And, in truth, most attempts to construct a theology of preaching do little more than import assumptions about the typical form of preaching onto texts related to the proclamation of the gospel. More on this in a bit.

What you will find in this book is a discussion of what I'd think of as the philosophy of preaching - the what, the why, the who, the how. It's an extraordinary book, really. Anyone who has read theopraxis for any length of time probably knows of my convictions about imagination, or lack of it, in first world Christian thought. When Doug chose the term "re-imagine" for his books, I think he chose wisely, because this book truly displays the imagination that I think is needed to begin to recapture the life, the vibrancy, the community that should be a part of every local body.

Doug makes some assumptions in the book that I think are warranted but that perhaps not everyone would share. The basic assumption is that preaching as has been commonly practiced in first world Christian congregations is foundationally flawed, primarily in its reliance on a single voice to communicate truth in a congregational setting. The second assumption, which goes hand-in-hand with the first, is that preaching is primarily concerned with the spiritual formation of the congregation. Doug lays out what I think is an excellent philosophy for what he terms "progressional dialogue," which is an approach to preaching that includes the voices of the congregation. It's hard to distill his thoughts into a few short sentences, but perhaps a way to think of his approach is by way of contrast: if the preacher in a traditional approach is something of a solo artist, then the preacher engaged in progressional dialogue is more the conductor of a grand orchestra with many voices. This can happen in many ways, and impacts everything from preparation to room layout. The important component, I think, is to incorporate as many voices as possible in as many ways as possible, so that the sermon becomes a vehicle for articulating the journey of the congregation, rather than a speech directed at them.

An excellent book in all ways - the writing is both clear and vivid, the author is both passionate and rational, the content is both challenging and encouraging. I recommend it highly, and I'll be interacting with some of Doug's thoughts in more detail over the next few posts.

Where I'm Headed...

The recent Pat debacle has me a bit burnt out on the subject of politics, so I'm putting on hold my continued explorations of Christian nonviolence. In truth, I think there's been a lot of good reflection on the subject this week already - Pat has demonstrated the absurdity of the most extreme kind of take on the subject, so I'm content to set the subject aside for a bit. I'm still reflecting on it as well and will no doubt revisit it later.

I want to spend a bit of time thinking on the subject of forms and structures of worship. This is prompted by my reading of Preaching Re-Imagined and will, in fact, start with my review of the book. As I mentioned in an earlier post, though, I think that one of the reasons that critics and advocates of the emerging church have difficulty engaging in dialogue is that there are some underlying theological assumptions that typically go unaddressed. I want to think through some of these assumptions as they relate to forms of worship and talk about what an emerging theology of worship might look like.

Some Thoughts for Pat

Fair warning - rant coming.

I'm trying to say this as politely as possible. Can't someone keep Pat Robertson from talking? I'm stunned that a person who claims to represent Christ in front of a watching public would openly advocate assassinating a foreign leader. Pat, if that was a joke, to say it was in poor taste is like calling you a moderate. For crying out loud, man, have you read the gospels lately?

This is what I've been writing about. This is what I've been saying when I talk about the church practicing a different kind of politics. This is what I've been concerned about in terms of the church failing to embody a prophetic critique of political structures, failing to practice a different way of being human because we follow Christ. This is the sort of thing that can only be said when the body of Christ forgets who we are, when we fail to take Jesus at his word, and when we fail to call others to account for misrepresenting him.

Pat, you do not speak for me.

In the words of another, whose words I take to be of much greater value, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

UPDATE: Pat has apparently been misinterpreted - he didn't really mean assassination. That was the nasty folks over at AP taking his statements out of context yet again. That's odd, though, because the quote from the article reads like this: "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it." Pat, nobody's buying it - put down the microphone and step away from the cameras. Or better yet, fess up and apologize, admit that you said something wrong and say that you're sorry.

Besides, I can picture Jesus advocating kidnapping just as easily as I can picture him advocating murder - which is to say, not at all.

Of Faith and Food

I've had a weekend that's in some sense revolved around food. On Friday, we took advantage of a free evening and went out as a family to a little Italian restaurant in the area that offers some exceptional food at very reasonable prices. I've also spent a lot of time in the kitchen, something that I love to do but seem to not have the time or energy to pursue as frequently as I'd like. I had a lot of fun, and although the basil-infused lemonade was something of a disappointment, the spicy chipotle apples were fantastic, so in the end I suppose I came out ahead. Cooking is a creative outlet for me; it's what I do because I can't play jazz. It's what I do with my improvisational impulses.

I've been thinking about food lately and how food and spirituality are related. I think it's interesting that scripture in some sense begins and ends with food - a tragic sampling of forbidden fruit and a lavish celebration of re-creation. I don't think there's anything particularly interesting about the food itself, which passes without mention in both cases, but it underscores in some sense how central the whole business of eating is to our very existences. Food sustains life, connects us socially, drives economics, shapes us spiritually. What we eat, how we eat it, with whom we share it - all are subjects that find a home in scripture.

I need to think about this more diligently. Food for me is too frequently about either convenience or enjoyment, when in fact it is much more complex, much more central to who I am as a person. Food is about hospitality when I share my best with my neighbors and friends. Food is about justice when I am full but others are hungry. Food is about stewardship when I waste the abundance that I have been given. Food is about love when I provide for others in my community who are unable to provide for themselves. Food, most of all, is about worship when I receive with a thankful and humble heart.

I wonder how much has been written on a theology of food? I'm sure there has to be some bits floating around somewhere - it might be worth a bit of investigation.

Doug Pagitt...

...is a capital fellow. About a month ago, he mentioned that he was looking for some folks to review his new book, Preaching Re-imagined. So I responded with a brief email, truly expecting to never hear another word - not that I thought Doug was insincere, but let's be real - my little site isn't exactly burning up Google or anything, fun that it may be. When I got home today, what did I find waiting for me but a nice little package from Zondervan (which prompted quick explanations to the wife, as I'm on Amazon probation ;). I started the book tonight, and although I'm only about forty pages in or so, I'm quite impressed. I think the question of the role of preaching is one of the areas where emerging churches vary significantly from more traditional approaches, especially those found in the Reformed tradition. Although that discussion hasn't really materialized yet (at least in an informed way as opposed to random sniping), I look for it to gain more prominence as the praxis of emerging churches comes into closer scrutiny. That won't happen, I think, until evangelicalism starts to get past its fetish with epistemology, but I think it's coming nonetheless. At any rate, more to come on this - I'm looking forward to digging further into this book. I want to finish my thoughts on war, but following that I think I'll take up some of these form-related questions for a bit, beginning with my thoughts on Doug's book.

A Theology of Peace p. 1

In my last post I threw out a few thoughts on what troubles me about much of our approach to war and violence in Christian thought (specifically American, but I suspect that many followers of Christ in other contexts have, do, and will struggle with this as well). What I didn't do was to put any alternatives on the table. I want to give this topic a bit of a go - I think that it's something that's on many minds and hearts of late, and personally something that I've been trying to work my way through for most of the year thus far, after encountering John Howard Yoder's incredibly challenging work The Politics of Jesus. I want to talk about how I'm trying to think about this, with the disclaimer that I'm not settled on some of these thoughts and that I'm still in process on this. Along the way, though, I think I've come upon a way of thinking about ethics in general that is helpful in broader contexts, which I'm going to talk a bit about as well.

I think that any attempt at approaching Christian ethics at some point has to take into account what Jesus himself did and taught. This sounds so obvious as to be insulting - but in truth it's not. For all of the talk about relativism and situational ethics and absolute truth that gets floated in evangelical circles of late, unfortunately there is possibly no more relativized, situationalized, and subjectivized portion of scripture than what seems to me the most direct statement of Jesus' ethic in all of biblical revelation. I'm speaking, of course, of the sermon on the Mount. I'm not going to get into all of the many ways that we've found to ignore what Jesus teaches here - it's exhausting and frustrating and, frankly, not worth the effort. I think the easiest way to understand what's going on in Jesus' teaching here is to take it at face value, to believe that he wasn't being rhetorical or facetious or trying to raise the bar of Law so high that we'd realize we need grace after all. I think when he talks of loving one's enemy that he means it, and that we should probably pay closer attention than we often do.

What do we have going on in Jesus' teaching on the Mount? I think that, on its most basic level, the sermon is all about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, to serve him and follow him and emulate him. I think that we're, in a sense, reading the Constitution of the People of God - it's a profoundly political document that talks, in essence, about how to live as exiles among people who are hostile towards us and have the power to do something with that hostility. This is Jesus the King talking about how his kingdom comes into being - or, perhaps more specifically, about how it doesn't.

What is presented instead is a profound orientation towards power, an amazing, beautiful, challenging, subversive approach that willfully sets aside a stance of hostility and replaces it with an approach of love. It's about loving an occupying enemy that has taken away the nation's sovereignty. It's about not just submitting to the demands of enemy soldiers but to exceed them in love, carrying a load twice as far as was legal to command. It's about not responding to violence with violence but instead absorbing it and subverting it. It's a rejection of vengeance and an acceptance of service in love.

We who are Christians often say that we believe the clearest revelation of God that has been given to humanity is found in the incarnation, in the person of God becoming a man and moving into the neighborhood. If that is true - and I believe that it is - then I think we would do well to allow our approach to war and violence to start with Christ. Everything else, I think, revolves around this.

Gmail anyone?

I find myself in need of an additional email account, and I'm wondering if anyone out there might have any gmail invites still sitting around. If so, and you're feeling generous, could you drop me an email?

War, Peace, and Christ

A few days ago I posted a bit of something about the church and politics (of the more mundane kind) that I want to revisit and perhaps expand a bit. The basic premise from which I'm approaching the topic is this: the church is first of all a body politic unto itself, and any other political expression that the church may have is a derivative of this primary self-identity. Put negatively, the church needs no other authorization, validation, or confirmation of its self-expression, other than submission to Christ in all things. So I've just thrown around a lot of big words that may or may not mean anything - let me unpack somewhat and see if I can make something coherent out of this. I'm going to put on the table something that I've been wrestling with for over half a year now - the Christian approach and response to war. I'm under no illusions of resolving this issue in a few paragraphs. I'm not even going to scratch the surface, to be honest. What I would like to do is throw out some thoughts about how this topic is often approached, and why I think these approaches are exactly the wrong approaches to the subject.

I'm writing this as a thirty year old American male. I grew up during the eighties. I remember living under the enduring threat of impeding nuclear war; I remember learning that the Soviets were the Bad Guys and that we were the Good Guys, and that the only reason we had nukes was to protect ourselves from the Bad Guys. Never mind that we carried the dubious honor of being the only nation to have actually used the things on another country, and civilians at that - sometimes the Good Guys have to do tough things to stop the Bad Guys from killing more people. (It's amazing how crazy this all sounds now.) I tell you this so that you will know the perspective from which I'm writing, and my baggage that I carry as I do so.

I think that, in American culture, most of the discussion around war centers on a few common viewpoints. The most common statement I hear, usually cited in the defense of a posture of war, is that war is necessary to defend our freedoms. Freedom is a big thing for us as a people. It's the reason grown men cried at Braveheart; it's the reason all of our holidays revolve around shopping - sad but true. I'm not particularly interested in discussing the ups and downs of this cultural fetish here - what I am interested in, however, is the argument that's advanced when someone dares to advocate a position of pacifism. Most frequently, the response is that the ability to embrace pacifism is only granted by the freedoms that have been achieved through war. The quote is roughly this: "That's fine, son, but talk to the terrorists about peace when you're living in an Islamic regime. Our troops are what stand between you and slavery, and the only reason you can hold that opinion is because our boys died so that you can be a spineless coward." And here's where I have to voice my objection, because this statement could not be more wrong. We as the people of God do not embody our faith because the state gives us permission to do so, or provides space in which to do so, or defends our right to do so. We embody our faith because we follow Christ, and for no other reason.

I could take this the other direction as well, because there's a pragmatic approach to pacifism that, I think, embraces it for all the wrong reasons (speaking from the position of someone within the Christian tradition). But the point is this - the people of God do not need the validation of the state in order to enact what we believe. Weapons and troops do not buy us the freedom to believe or to worship or to pray or to serve or to act in the ways in which we do. Living in a free society certainly makes it less costly than in other parts of the globe - but we do not exist at the mercy of the state. Jesus' approach to power was to submit to Rome's authority, not in order to participate in it, but to subvert it and transform it. That's what makes his ethic so radical.

I'm not settled in how I think about this topic. I think there is something to be said for the just war approach (although there's been an interesting series of posts at Icthus on that position). The point of my thoughts here is more to illustrate what I take to be a bad approach to the subject, one that actually prevents the church from being the church and instead subordinates the church to another authority that exists in opposition to Christ.

Marking Time

A little over a year ago, I wrote this piece, which, although short, still is one of my favorite bits of creative writing. I've been thinking about it a lot this weekend, because early August is sort of a mile marker in my life. Friday, my wife and I celebrated ten years of marriage. Truth be told, it was a fairly uneventful evening, as we're going away to celebrate this coming weekend, a gift from her sister and mother (including babysitting!!!). Still, the day remains significant - ten years ago we said our vows, and today I can in all honesty say that I am a very happy man.

Today my oldest son turned six years old. We had his party yesterday - fifteen kids running around the local park. It was crazy but a lot of fun. I can't believe my little boy is old enough to have his own friends and that already there's a part of his life that doesn't include me. Sometimes I want to lock the door on time, keep it out, keep him small and funny and sensitive and innocent and full of wonder. I want to find Chronos and wrestle him to the ground, demand that he yield to me and relinquish his hold on my boys. But I can't, and scarcely a day goes by that I don't hear his muted steps pacing mine, just out of sight but near enough to let me know he's still there.

August, in the eastern United States, is when summer begins to feel its age, when it realizes that time is catching up with it. Tonight I'm feeling much the same. I sense the years flying by, like mile markers on the highway, the numbers advancing steadily and inexhorably, ticking off a rhythm by which my journey is ordered. In truth, I have much of my journey ahead, and thirty is no doubt a young age to be feeling this way - but I've loved so much of where I've been that I sometimes wish I could travel more slowly.

Peace to you wherever your journey may find you this day.

Questions...

Jim Wallis's op-ed in the NY Times today caught my attention and banged up against all of this church-as-body-politic bit that I'm trying to think my way through. (Hauerwas and Willimon are springing immediately to the fore...) This goes back about six weeks now to something I wrote that brought my nascent thoughts along this line into focus, resulting in my recent obsession to find a way to think through the nature of the church that does justice to the place of the people of God in a broken world. (Apologies to those who hail from other national contexts - I'm going to do something that I try to avoid like warm beer, and that's talk about American politics for a moment. But it's something of a subtext to my main question, so if you have no interest you can skip ahead a paragraph or so. ;)

I like Wallis, I really do. I think he's done much to portray a Christian way of thinking politically that isn't bound to the Republican party, and for that I'm quite respectful. But the more I think about what seems to be the approach of a lot of Christian political thought that finds problems with the current administration, the more I wonder if we're simply lacking in imagination, in the ability to think of ways to be an alternative community outside the bounds of the American political system. In other words, if part of the problem is that Christianity is too often bound in public perception to the Religious Right (and consequently to a secular political organization), then I think we do ourselves no favors by binding ourselves just as tightly to a different organization, creating a Religious Left or what-have-you. The main problem here, I think, is the perception that because we live in Caesar's empire, we must engage in the politics of Caesar.

What I mean is this: I'm becoming fairly settled in the opinion that we must be, first of all, Christians as part of the body of Christ, and that all other allegiances are subsidiary. One primary way in which this immediately impacts how we think about politics is that we cannot, absolutely cannot, look first to any political organization for enactment or validation of our particular politic, of our way of being people together in community. This means that we must, I think, first look to enact our politic as a community, as a people, as the family of God, on display before the systems of the world. In other words, our ability to be the people of God, to seek justice and show mercy and demonstrate love and proclaim truth, is not dependent in any way on the policies crafted and implemented in Washington - or anywhere else for that matter. That's not to say that we shouldn't be politically active - but it is to say that we should be cautious about handing over the responsibility to live as people of God to any other community or group or organization, no matter how great their platform may sound.

I'm not sure I've explained my thinking on this very well - but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Lots of Stuff in My Head...

...not ready to hit the page yet. I've been spending a lot of time this past week reflecting on what I've been writing for the past six months or so. I've been doing a bit of reading as well - I finished Colossians Remixed last week, which was a phenomenal book that really presented a lot of challenges along the lines of what I've been writing and thinking on lately. Now I'm working my way through Resident Aliens by Hauerwas and Willimon - great stuff there, particularly on Christian ethics. I'll have to do a bit of a review on both of these. Also on the list right now is some lighter fare in N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God, which is almost as thick as anything by Robert Jordan, but with much smaller type. This one may take a few weeks.

This should give you a picture into my world - this is what I read between semesters. I think I need a hobby...