The Holy Spirit vs. Mothers

Easter is over and the next big Sunday on the calendar is Mother's Day in May. I have told students here at Fuller that Mother's Day is one of those Sundays that you must deal with in the local church. Recently someone challenged me on that thought. It has to do with the Lectionary and the Church Liturgical Calendar - two things you may not be familiar with in your church. We aren't in the Church of God. Maybe we should be.
The Lectionary is a resource churches use to help plan services - themes for preaching, themes for worship, scriptural texts, even appropriate art images. It is a resource created across denominational lines by numerous scholars to help assist churches and pastors on the local level. If you have never seen the lectionary, here is the link: http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/
If you look at the site, the first thing you will notice is that the entire site is based on the church calendar not the community or secular calendar. It may be a shock to some but there is a different calendar used by the church than the one used by Hallmark Cards. The Church calendar is based upon the seasons of the church - Advent (Christmas), Epiphany (the visit of the magi and the beginnings of Jesus' ministry), Lent (preparation for Holy Week), Easter (season of the resurrection concluding with Pentecost), Season after Pentecost (beginning with Trinity Sunday and going through Thanksgiving - it is a general season of various themes and celebrations). Interestingly, there is no July 4th, Labor Day, Father's Day, or (uh oh, here we go) Mother's Day.
This year, churches are caught in a bind. Pentecost Sunday occurs 50 days after Easter. Let's see. Easter was on March 23rd and 49 days after that is Pentecost Sunday and that is May 11th - Mother's Day. So, what do you celebrate? Mother's Day or the coming of the Holy Spirit? Most churches outside the liturgical circle will opt to either postpone their celebration of Pentecost or they will ignore it all together. But few if any churches will ignore Mother's Day. I wonder if that is a good thing?
What it means is that we are much more culturally centered in the church than biblically centered. Our concern is to celebrate whatever the culture is celebrating. That's why we hang flags in the sanctuary on July 4th weekend or make Children's Day a bigger Sunday than Pentecost. The problem is that the church is really designed to be counter culture. We have values that are different than what the culture commends. As Christians, we are not driven by consumerism; we believe in racial and ethnic equality; neither work nor family are our top priorities; we do not glorify the state; we believe in ministry to the poor and to those in need, whatever that need may be. The church has created orphanages, hospitals, AIDS clinics, food distribution centers, homeless shelters, battered wives homes, along with places to learn the faith and houses to gather in to worship the Lord. None of these are market driven nor do they smack of consumerism. We are centered on the biblical story and its implications and meaning.
Why then do we continue to use the secular calendar instead of the church calendar? The only reason I can think of is that we think having a celebration of family values and mothers specifically will add to our attendance. In the competitive world of church growth, Mothers beat out the Holy Spirit every time. The sad part about all of that is the theological statement we make. We think church growth is all about our programs to attract others. The reality is that the Holy Spirit is the only one who brings growth to the church. Quite ironic, don't you think?

The Deterioration of the News Media

I have watched with deepening sadness the media's fixation with Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and his sermons. For years I have listened to the Republican Party rail at the bias of the news media. I have heard conservative talk show hosts and politicians talk about the unfair treatment conservative public figures receive at the hands of the liberal, left-wing media. This belief has spawned a whole new news network (Fox) and created media stars out of Bill O'Reilly and Shaun Hannity. I have watched Fox News primarily because I was concerned that the news was not being shown "fair and balanced" on other news outlets. In my mind, they were the corrective for a liberal bias. The news media was out of control. I believe that was a correct concern then - and I believe it is a correct concern now. The story of Jeremiah Wright is a prime example.
I have met Jeremiah Wright (last winter in Minneapolis at the Academy of Homiletics Meeting where he was the Keynote speaker for the Academy). I have heard him preach numerous times on tape, where he is used in many seminaries as a prime example of the black preaching tradition. He is without question a dynamic and powerful speaker (you can hear that even in the clips and snippets that are being aired on the news networks). And, I disagree with much of his theology. Wright is an unabashed liberal in an extremely liberal Protestant denomination (UCC - the United Church of Christ). When he spoke at the Academy, he spoke about and to the liberal members of the gathering. He preaches a strong social gospel message and is a vocal proponent of Black Liberation Theology. I have embraced neither. However, to say that he is out of step with Christianity or that he is saying things that are so offensive that Barrack Obama should distance himself from him and that his judgment as a Presidential candidate is up for grabs is nonsense. What it does confirm is that Obama is a black liberal. Is that news? What it does confirm is that black preachers and black churches still believe that America is a racially prejudiced society and that the only way blacks will ever attain full citizenship and the equality that has been promised but not delivered by the government or the society is if blacks speak out against injustice. Is that news? Wright has said some very stupid things, charging the government for creating HIV as a plague against blacks, for instance. Of course, the government did inject blacks with VD during WWII at Tuskegee and denied it for years. So, as foolish as it sounds, there is precedent for believing it. Do I believe it? No, I think it's stupid. Do I think Wright is an idiot for making the claim. Hmmm. Not in the light of Tuskegee. Is it news to anyone that a black leader thinks that the white establishment would do horrible things to blacks? Wright has lived through the terrible days of the 50's and 60's where lynchings were common and nobody in the community did anything to stop it. If you grew up in that culture and prejudice, you could believe just about anything from those in power against those oppressed.
If Wright had said these things as a stump speech for Obama the media should be all over it. But as a 15 second sound bite from a sermon preached years ago? Is that "fair and balanced"? The media views these kinds of black ethnocentric preaching statements as being out of touch with reality. The reality is that this kind of sermonic activity is done in black pulpits all over the country in both liberal and conservative pulpits. Are they all this extreme? Probably not. Are those sermons filled with similar sentiments? Absolutely. Why? Because the white church pulpits are silent about these issues most of the time. We have left black churches to educate white churches and left them to get themselves out of a social mess that whites created. That's sad. And the weakness of the church today is in no small sense related to the ongoing issue of eleven o'clock still being the most segregated hour in American society. That was sad in the 50's and it is sadder today in the 21st Century.
So, in order to be "fair and balanced" here is what Fox linked their front page story on Wright to today. It is the statement of Trinity Church defending their retiring pastor. It is something you should read.

Chicago, Ill. (March 15, 2008) - “Dr. Wright has preached 207,792 minutes on Sunday for the past 36 years at Trinity United Church of Christ. This does not include weekday worship services, revivals and preaching engagements across America and around the globe, to ecumenical and interfaith communities. It is an indictment on Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound bite,” said the Reverend Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ.
During the 36-year pastorate of Dr. Wright, Trinity United Church of Christ has grown from 87 to 8,000 members. It is the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination.
“It saddens me to see news stories reporting such a caricature of a congregation that has been such a blessing to the UCC’s Wider Church mission,” said the Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC general minister and president, in a released statement. “ … It’s time for us to say ‘No’ to these attacks and declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends.”
Trinity United Church of Christ’s ministry is inclusive and global. The following ministries have been developed under Dr. Wright’s ministerial tutelage for social justice: assisted living facilities for senior citizens, day care for children, pastoral care and counseling, health care, ministries for persons living with HIV/AIDS, hospice training, prison ministry, scholarships for thousands of students to attend historically black colleges, youth ministries, tutorial and computer programs, a church library, domestic violence programs and scholarships and fellowships for women and men attending seminary.
Moss added, “The African American Church was born out of the crucible of slavery and the legacy of prophetic African American preachers since slavery has been and continues to heal broken marginalized victims of social and economic injustices. This is an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached the Christian tenet, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Before Dr. King was murdered on April 4, 1968, he preached, “The 11 o’clock hour is the most segregated hour in America.” Forty years later, the African American Church community continues to face bomb threats, death threats, and their ministers’ characters are assassinated because they teach and preach prophetic social concerns for social justice. Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America."

Narrative Sermon Elements

There are a few basic elements that I teach about narrative preaching. I tell my students that I approach narrative from a storyteller's perspective. Whatever training I have in narrative is really training in storytelling. So, with that as a minimal background, here are some basic steps:

1. STORY - Story occurs when you take basic facts and put it into a communicative form. In the case of narrative preaching, what you are looking for is series of basic facts that come from a text of scripture. The easiest texts are those passages that are already narratives. The bible is full of stories from Adam and Eve in the Garden to the saints before the throne in Revelation. After choosing a story text, you have to put the biblical narrative into some kind of communicative form. For instance, if you tell the story from the point of view of one of the characters, you are choosing a particular form (first person narrative) to share the story. There are many other forms (I listened to one preacher read a letter from Mary to her cousin Elizabeth) and they are only limited by what you feel will fit the communication of the story.
2. STORYING - When telling a story about a past event (as biblical texts are) your goal is storying. Storying is enabling the listeners to suspend present reality and move into a different historical reality. In other words, you have to be able to tell the story in such a way that the listener finds herself transported back in time to the biblical event. Normally, this is a tall task for a novice storytelling. You have to research and find a good story; you have to gather facts and determine the plot twists; you have to learn how to keep things in tension and then resolve the story. Fortunately, the dynamic of the biblical event gives you all these details in such a way to weave a powerful story. If you can communication form that enables you to story, you can find a way to move to storying.
3. STORYTELLING - The crucial step is when the storyteller learns the key to storytelling. Telling an effective story means that you have to actually enter the story. You can't tell effective stories from the outside of an event. For instance, the telling of the birth of your first child or the day of your wedding is a far more powerful story than retelling a recent news article you read in the paper. When you tell a story you have to get inside the event. It's like what an actor does when he goes on stage. You can't say your lines as though you are reading them from the wings. You have to go on stage and immerse yourself in the character in order to perform the story. By doing so, the audience gets "caught up" in the event and experiences the story as a type of "first-hand" event.
   

This is just a brief glimpse into the whole world of narrative. More to come.

Ideas Are Fun - Ask Any Preacher

When I mention to people that the average term paper I write for each seminar is between 30-50 pages, they roll their eyes and go, "Better you than me." I smile and feel sad for them. I love writing these term papers. Let me tell you why.
As a preacher you live for "the idea". All the work you do in a preparing to preach on a biblical text is ultimately to find what Haddon Robinson calls, "The Big Idea." You read, search, think, pray, and write to find a single concept around which your understanding of the text can hold together. Saturday night can be a very scary time if you still haven't found that one idea. But the opposite is true. When you find that idea, the rest of task of preparing a sermon is a wonderful experience of seeing all your hard work fall together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. After 30 years of looking every week for that one big idea, you learn how to appreciate the fact that new insights, larger understandings, ideas in whatever form they arrive are things to celebrate. Ideas are fun.
As a student working on term papers, the same thing applies. You are looking for that one big idea around which to write your paper. The only difference between a sermon and a research paper is how deep you go to get into and then through the idea. Term papers are ideas looked at in greater depth. A dissertation (usually between 200-400 pages) is merely taking a big idea and doing as much in depth thinking and understanding of it that a year's work of time and effort can produce. All I know now is that 30-50 pages rarely gives you enough time to fully research and think through an idea. As a matter of fact where I am know in the process the term papers I will be writing from this point on are one part of one idea. The last four seminars I will take for my program will allow me to do directed readings that will result in a term paper and that paper is one chapter in the dissertation. So, if the dissertation is one big idea, these term papers are designed to be one part of that big idea.
To me, the discovery of big ideas is about as fun as it gets. Putting that understanding down on paper is providing the same kind of satisfaction that you get from preaching, but the work stays with you for a much longer time.

One Last Word on the Passing of Horace Sheppard, Sr.

There have been several people who have found this blog and commented on the passing of Bro. Sheppard. I received an email today that had a way to respond to Sis. Shepphard and send her a message. The following is what I wrote. I don't think she will mind me sharing it:

Dear Sister Sheppard and Family,

I am one of those thousands upon thousands who came to know the Lord through the ministry and preaching of Bro. Sheppard. He preached a Youth Convention at Boyertown in 1971 and challenged the group by asking to shake the hand of the first young person that would come to the altar to accept Christ. It was my hand he shook and my life that was changed. After college at Penn State and then at Anderson, and after several years as an associate pastor in North Carolina, I came back to pastor the Boyertown congregation. Not yet ordained, I finished the process while at Boyertown and the District ordained me during Family Camp. Horace prayed the ordination prayer over me. After receiving my Certificate of Ordination I noticed that it had been signed twice by Don Murphy (he held two positions that asked for his signature) I approached Shep to request that he sign the certificate. He did. The other signatures have faded over time but Horace's remains bolder and brighter, just as he stands in my mind.
I am 6'4" tall, white and upwards of 250 lbs. Horace used to put his arm around my waist and introduce me as one of his sons. With all due respect to Horace, Jr., Paul, and Kenneth I could not have been more proud to be introduced as his son, at least as his son in the Lord. My wife and I are currently living in Pasadena, Ca. where I am attending Fuller Theological Seminary and working toward my Ph.D in preaching. My three mentors have been Dr. Massey, Dr. Hines, and Horace. I promise to pass on to the next generation what I can of those things that I learned sitting under Shep. Please know that he will continue to live on not just in the memories of all of us who loved him and were touched by him but he will live on in the lives of the next generation of preachers that I will be able to influence in the classroom.
Tomorrow, the Church of the Foothills where I am the interim pastor will be remembering you all in prayer. I only wish I could have been there for the funeral as a witness to the incredible influence he had on me and my ministry. God Bless you all.

Jeffrey W. Frymire
Pasadena, Ca. 91104