Scary Video Clip

Through Fox News, I came across this video link of Tom Cruise expressing his commitments and beliefs about Scientology. I find it illuminating and scary. If you are interested, here is the link.

http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress

Interruptions

Today, the Winter Quarter at Fuller has begun. As I write this I am in class (I am the TA for Dr. Doug Nason in the basic homiletics course for M.Div. students). I spent the day writing on my paper for last quarter. I am having a fascinating time looking at the historical issues surrounding Erasmus (a contemporary of Martin Luther) and the effects of his work on contemporary issues in preaching. I believe it has implications for creative preaching and narrative preaching for today's preachers. I doubt many others are interested in this, but I am. This afternoon I had several uninterrupted hours of working on the paper. I enjoy this. It is why I am doing what I am doing. I find it a joy. I love to revel in the study and the research. To me, it is fun.
About 3:00 or so, one of our neighbors knocked on the door. She is a wonderful young wife and mother, student and community leader. She just lost her grandmother over the holidays and got back from the funeral in the Midwest yesterday. Frantically, she asked for help. Her son (a 2 year old) had just fallen asleep and she forgot about a doctor's appointment - she is pregnant expecting her second child. She wanted to know if I could take care of her sleeping child until either she or her husband returned. But... I was writing a paper. I really enjoy writing a paper. So, I thought, maybe he will stay asleep and I can take my stuff up to their apartment and keep on studying. So, I said, "Sure!"
Mom left, I went upstairs with computer and books, started working and heard the sound. Maybe it was a child outside or in another apartment. If I pretend it isn't there, it will go away. It didn't. So, I left my table sanctuary and tiptoed down the hall to the child's room. Maybe he would go back to sleep. (I am such an optimist!) After half an hour of attempting food, toys, TV, games, conversation, ignoring, bribing, and praying Dad arrived to release me from my dilemma. It was then that the most interesting thing took place. As soon as Dad arrived and he was safe, I became his friend. He stopped crying and smiled at me and said, "Hi!" repeatedly with joy in his voice. As I left to return to my apartment, I realized several things about what all this means.

1. If Joy is a function of being and feeling both safe and secure, then Happiness exudes from that to those around us. The poor little guy was OK once he realized that Dad was there. I went from someone he didn't trust to someone he really enjoyed. His experience of Joy at the return of his Dad changed an unhappy situation to one where he exuded Happiness to those around him - especially me!



2. It is more enjoyable to be happy than sad. Not a profound thought but one that many seem to ignore as they go through life. I have a friend right now who is determined to be sad and make things miserable for those around her. She has many reasons to choose to be happy but seems content to be sad and angry. Apparently, the obviousness of the idea that is better to be happy than sad is not that clear to many.



3. Our perception of others is often flawed because we see them through the eyes of our own situation and our own sin. When we are unhappy with someone (Mom and Dad aren't here) we make life miserable for someone else (me!) who is only there to help. This happens in relationships we have with others all the time. It also is a fact that our relationship with Christ affects our relationship with others. Isn't it amazing how others change once we are in right relationship with the Father? And until that happens in both ourselves and others, there will be kinks in the relational tubes that connect us to one another.



4. Life and the relationships surrounding it are more important than being alone and uninterrupted. You can learn a lot from books and writing, thinking and studying, but eventually it all has to find its way into the real world of people and relationships.



5. Its better to study alone than just listen to someone else cry. Hmmm. That doesn't sound very pastoral. Well, that's OK. Its still true, especially if you are a student.

Stress the Halls!

Why are the holidays so stressful? Let me hazard a few guesses.

1. Fantasizing: I think an amazing amount of people fantasize about what the holidays are going to be like. We paint the rosiest and most amazing portraits of what it will be like on Christmas Day and the days leading up to it. Many families gather together from around the country and the fantasy of what it will be like often does not meet the reality of people who are struggling with life, failing at finances, or stressed out from work or school.
   
2. Schedules: We don't think about schedules and how they affect us until they go awry. Holidays are all about scheduling. When will we arrive? Where will we stay? How long will we be there? When will everyone else arrive so we can get started? Who made up this schedule, anyway? Let's face it, we all married people different than who we are and then we had children who grew up and married someone different than they are who have children who are . . . well, you get the picture. All these folks in a close space with differing traditions, personalities, schedules, and interests. It has the potential for great stress.
3. Unfamiliar Territory: Most holiday celebrations occur on unfamiliar territory. Either we go to someone else's home turf or we have people in that change the dynamic of our home and household. Either way, we end up in unfamiliar territory. What do we do? Well, we either bite our lip and go with the flow (at which point when we finally get alone or on our way home, we swear we will never do that again) or we have the blowup - like the Colonel (Al Pacino) does in "Scent of a Woman" where he blows in and blows up the Thanksgiving Dinner.
   

Well, with all that, how do you cope? How do you make the holidays less stressful? I hazard a few hard fought suggestions:

1. Lower the Expectations: Don't go in thinking this is going to be the best Christmas ever. It's hard to top the first one for drama and impossible to exceed the one you think of from your past that was the best Christmas you ever had. Let it be what it is. A gathering. Enjoy the moment. If it exceeds your expectations, all the better. If it doesn't then at least it wasn't so far below your hopes and dreams that you find yourself fighting a deep depression or resentment.
2. Spread Out the Attention: Let others have their time in the sun. Like worship, Christmas is not about you, is it? If you don't have to be catered to, it will be amazing how much less stress their is around the season. If others have a desire for something to take place, fine. If that makes them happy, let it make you happy, too. If you aren't at the center of your plans, you might have a better time.
   
3. Get to Know One Another: One of the problems families often have around the season is that they gather for one of the few times during the year. In reality, you live separate lives. Cell phones have sure helped us to stay in touch but it is nothing like conversation face to face. The problem is, we don't know what to talk about when we get together. So, since we have different experiences that aren't the same and don't relate, conversation becomes tough to maintain. Here are few ideas:
• Be OK with periods of silence when together. After all, when you were all living together there were many periods of silence. They weren't awkward then, don't let them be now.
• Ask questions instead of telling about yourself. If you really want to know what is going on with someone else, let them do the talking. Tray a few of these:
• What was the best thing about this year for you? For your family?
• What was your best Christmas growing up?
• What one tradition did you and your family have around the holidays (good one to ask the in-laws)?
• Who is the most interesting person you have met in the last few months? Why were they so interesting?
• What is the best thing about your church? What's the most challenging thing? What would you like to see changed about your church? How do you plan to change it?
• If you could have seen one thing during Jesus' life with your own eyes, what would it have been?

Well, I hope these help. Everyone could use some help at Christmas. After all, even Mary and Joesph had to go through the stress of traveling (while pregnant), getting stiffed on their hotel reservations, early delivery, and strangers coming to visit at the most inopportune time. Merry Christmas!

Analyzing Narrative Preaching

My sermon today was a narrative version of the story of the Angel appearing to the Shepherds. One of the things I am attempting to understand is exactly how I do these kinds of sermons from a technical side of things. If I am going to teach others how to do this, I have to know some of the things that seem to come naturally to me (but may not to others). So, here is what I learned today in telling a narrative sermon:

1. My mentor tells his homiletics classes that repetition is extremely necessary in sermonic presentation. I agree. One of the major keys of narrative storytelling is the ability to have a repetitive line or concept that holds the story together. For instance, my opening line of the sermon today was, "It was a night like any other night." I not only repeated the line numerous times during the story but developed it further with two other variations. After moving from the job of the shepherds to the appearance of the Angel, I used the line, "But when the Angel appeared, it suddenly became a night unlike any other night the Shepherds had ever experienced." My final transition was to talk about the appearance of the host of angels and I used the line, "When the angel hosts appeared, that night became unlike any other night in the history of the world." The key here is to use both the mnemonic device for memory and the development of the idea as a way of building tension and plot. Eugene Lowry, in his landmark book, "The Homiletical Plot" talks about the stages of narrative as follows:
• Upsetting the equilibrium
• Analyzing the discrepancy
• Disclosing the clue to resolution
• Experiencing the gospel
• Anticipating the consequences
• He describes these as:
• Oops
• Ugh
• Aha
• Whee
• Yeah
• When I look at Lowry's process, my developmental repetitive phrasing helps move the plot along from the Oops phase to the Ugh phase. In other words, it was how I upset the equilibrium of the story (that at first it was a night like any other night) to analyzing the discrepancy (that is was a night unlike any other night). This moved to the issue that disclosed the clue to resolution (the birth of Christ). Whatever may be the case, you must find some device that allows you to build the story dramatically and create a tension between what seems obvious (it was a normal night for the shepherds) and what is hidden (the Angel's appearance broke the fabric of the space-time continuum between eternity and the now).
  
2. Another principle that I noted today was how narrative constantly gives opportunity to talk about quality issues of theology. Telling the story of the angels and the shepherds gave opportunity to talk about Temple sacrifice of lambs; the meaning of light and sound as the revelation of God to human beings; the reality of Jesus and the Angels as eternal beings that moved from an eternal place to a finite earth in order to accomplish a divine mission; the theological depth of the birth of Christ.
   
• The reason I bring this up is that it seems that many think that narrative does not allow preachers to preach either expository-like sermons with doctrinal or theological issues nor does narrative allow for theologically sophisticated messages. Nothing could (or should) be further from the truth. Preaching the word with 3 point sermons or telling the biblical story narratively allows you to share the deeper things of Christ if you are looking to do it. It must be intentional, but that's how it should be.
• Fred Craddock in his book, "As One Without Authority" criticizes expository sermons as doing harm to the text. We remove the text from its context in order to make some kind of alliterative, stylistic meaning out of it (The Pattern of the Shepherds; The Purpose of the Shepherds; The Perception of the Shepherds - or something like that). The real dynamic is that narrative, story based sermons allow you to stay in the story while making the points about doctrine and theology rather than leaving the story to wander through some made up idea about the meaning of the text that is really no more than your idea of how this concept should be viewed. Narrative allows you to stay with the scripture, even in the scripture, while you apply the power of God's thought (theology) to the words of the text (homiletics).
  

More To Come Later!!!

What They Dont' Tell You In Seminary

I told someone today, "This is one of those things they don't teach you in seminary!" Let me tell you why.

The little church that I am the interim pastor for (Foothills Church of God) had quite a traumatic day today. We have a Preschool at the Church. This morning, at around 6:20am one of the teachers arrived to open the Preschool. After pulling up into the parking lot, she was accosted by 4 men. They carjacked her SUV and drove to a bank ATM machine where they forced her to remove funds from her bank account. Meanwhile, some of the parents a few of the other teachers started arriving around 7am. Finding the church still locked (highly unusual), they got out and looked around the parking lot. They found a purse and some of the contents of it strewn around the parking lot. One of the teachers called the home of the lady who was supposed to have opened earlier in the morning. Quickly the situation escalated into a very nervous and worrisome event. The mother of the woman who was missing came flying down to the church. She was nearly hysterical. Children and staff were arriving. A call was placed to 911 and another call came to me. All I got out of the call was, "We need you pastor, come quick."
By the time I arrived, the police were there and the staff was crying and peeking out from doors and windows. The parents and staff that had discovered the purse and things were being interviewed by the initial officer. What do you do?
Well, all I know is that they don't teach you this stuff in seminary! I took several steps to try and deal with the immediate situation. I got the Preschool director to go in and get her staff to calm down and concentrate on the children. Nothing was going to be accomplished by having the children in a panic. I immediately went over to the husband and father of the victim to console them. I then talked with the officer to see if we needed to close the Preschool. He suggested we wait for the arrival of a detective who would be in charge of the case. He arrived momentarily and we discussed our options. We closed the Preschool and some parents and the director began calling parents to tell them that we would be closed for the day and reopen Monday. Meanwhile, the officers began to arrive in droves. We closed the parking lot and the police put up crime scene tape. For the next hour I walked up and down the street and talked to parents who were arriving to bring their children to daycare. I assured them that things were going to be OK and that the incident had occurred before any of the children had arrived.
After an hour of anxious waiting, a phone call came and all kinds of activity started up. A few minutes later, one of the officers told me that they had found the woman in a remote part of a place called Chino Hills and that her abductors had kicked her out of the car (unharmed) and left her in such a wooded area that the police were having to send a helicopter up on the mountain to retrieve her. The good news was that she was all right.
We told the staff and everyone was relieved. By then, some of the parents began arriving to pick up their kids. I continued to go up and down the street assuring everyone that everything was indeed OK. Later, I gathered the staff together and told them what a good job they had done that day. By then, the Administrator had arrived (she was taking care of her grandkids quite a distance away and then got caught in traffic trying to get to the church) and we talked with the staff about how to handle things on Monday. Some of the staff were still arriving and were shocked by the news. I spent the next hour in pastoral care, assuring everyone that this was a crime of opportunity and unlikely to be repeated by either the criminals or others. By the time noon had arrived, the police CSI had come and gone and all the children were picked up. The staff left and I headed out for lunch, grateful for all that I have learned in seminary and over the 3+ decades of pastoring - none of which prepared me for today ... and yet, with the presence of the Holy Spirit, everything I had learned in seminary and in pastoring helped me get through the morning. I ate lunch, came back to the apartment, and took a nap. Not a bad day. Thank God.

The Fun Part

The Fall Quarter has come to an end. As of last Thursday, I am officially on Christmas Break. When you're a Ph.D student, this is when the fun begins. At Fuller, your seminar is broken up into two phases. The first phase is the seminar itself. In my case, I spent the Quarter reading and studying with my mentor, Dr. Clay Schmit, on the Theology of Preaching. It consisted of reading a series of books on preaching. Almost all of them were revelatory. The first two books have influenced my thinking in such profound ways that I think it may have helped to clarify what I will do with my dissertation. Another of the books has made me ask questions about basic areas of preaching that are extremely important to me - questions about performance theory and the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the preaching event; questions about the role of the listener in the formation of the sermon and the whether the key theological issue in preaching is the Cross or the Resurrection. As I indicated, the books where revelatory.
But now, the second phase of the seminar begins. After all the classwork and reading is done, the final requirement is to write a research paper. The paper is usually between 30 and 40 pages and centers on an area of interest to the student that arises out of the seminar. During this period, you probably read more than you do during the Quarter. I currently have about 35 books surrounding me that I am using for my research paper. Unlike a term paper, I am not trying to show the teacher that I know something about the subject. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I know more about the subject I am writing on than Clay does (that's not a slam at him, either). This kind of research is designed to be concentrated detective work. You are looking for new connections or understandings that others may not have seen or made. For instance, in this paper I am looking to understand a historical character by the name of Erasmus. He was a philologist (a grammarian) who helped put together a quality Greek manuscript of the New Testament and helped to correct the Latin version of the Bible (called the Latin Vulgate). By the time I am finished with the paper, I hope to know more about Erasmus and about the implications of his translation of one word from the Gospel of John (how he translated the Greek word logos in John 1:1 - "in the beginning was the word (logos)". In the Vulgate he changed the translation from the Latin word verbum to the word sermo. The implications of that simple change of one Latin word for another changed the life and work of Erasmus. It may also help to change the way in which preachers and homiletics professors understand preaching.
And for me, this is where the fun part begins. I enjoy both the reading/research part and the organizing/writing part. I have already written 10 pages in the last two days. I have barely scratched the surface. By the time I'm finished with this, I may know more about Erasmus, sermo and verbum than 99.9% of the people in the world. I guess this is what it means to be a scholar. Sounds like fun to me!

Preparation

After a too long absence from writing here, I return to the keyboard afresh. I am in Minneapolis writing this after having attended the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Homiletics Meeting. This gathering of professors of preaching from around the world (I know of at least 7 different countries represented) is a time of both scholarly pursuit and networking. During the Meeting, professors and Ph.D. students present scholarly papers that are open to any Academy members to read, critique, and question. Next year, I will be presenting a paper (hopefully) dealing with some of the issues that I will be dealing with in my Doctoral Dissertation. It will be a chance for well qualified and published scholars to ask questions of and critique my thinking. I will be required to give a defense of my positions and arguments. Sounds both challenging and exciting to me!
This year, I spent time making connections and networking with members of the Academy. This is crucial since, after all, these will be the men and women who will be on or chair search committees looking for professors of Homiletics for their various seminaries and graduate schools. Knowing them gives me a foot in the door when submitting my resume. Some of these men and women are the leaders, movers, and shakers in the world of preaching. I spent time with Richard Lischer from Duke Divinity School, maybe the leading homiletical theologian in America; O.C. Edwards, retired from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, who has written the definitive History of Preaching for this generation; Eugene Lowry, now retired from St. Paul School of Theology in Missouri, and the leading voice in the area of Narrative Preaching. To one seeking a career in Homiletics, this is like a baseball player meeting Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays. Maybe more importantly (and amazingly) they now know who I am. Let me explain.
I don't know that I am now or will be in the future a scholar of the rank of these gentlemen I have listed. I think I am smart and continue to have a thirst and capacity to learn. However, I do have confidence in my performative abilities. After all, that's what I have been doing now for more than 30 years. This year at the Academy, the Performative Studies Group (one of many small scholarly groups that meet to hear papers dealing with the area of Performance Theory as it relates to preaching) received permission to take an hour at the Academy meeting to share some of their performative arts. One of the members, Todd Farley, is both a professor of communication at Calvin College and a professional Mime (he studied with the great Marcel Marceau). He performed a magnificent Mime piece about the meaning of God's call. Another professor of preaching, Dr. Jana Childers, did an oral interpretation of Daniel 5. Dr. Charles Bartow, professor of homiletics at Princeton Seminary, shared a series of poems he had written (even if you don't like poetry that much, his performance of them is riveting). My mentor, Dr. Clay Schmit from Fuller, performed several musical pieces - he is an excellent baritone. And there, on the same stage, was this unknown Ph.D. student sharing a "midrash" (a story based on a text of scripture). It was only 6 minutes long (about the prophet Elijah and his home town of Tishbe) but it was a hit. Over the next several hours members of the Academy sought me out to ask me about what I had done and how to teach others to do the same. One professor wants me to put some of these stories on DVD and send it to her to use in class as a teaching tool. Others bought my book. One who sought me out was Dr. Eugene Lowry. Not only was he complimentary of my performance, but he offered to help me in my dissertation. We will be communicating over the next couple of months and I may get the chance to study with him for my Dissertation (that would be a huge "coup" and make my Dissertation far more important and respected.
All in all, for someone attempting to make a place for himself in a crowded and competitive field, it was quite a week. Maybe God really does have something for me to do in this pursuit of Homiletics. I don't think I'll set the world on fire or win a Pulitzer Prize, but I might help a few young preachers catch fire and change their world. That would be enough of a prize for me. Thank, God, for an opportunity and a vision. They feel pretty good on the inside.

How Do You Know What You Know?

In the course of studying in seminary, one of the philosophical issues that confronts every seminary student (and undergraduate students as well) is trying to figure out how you know what you know.
One of the ways we ask this question has to do with how a child learns. Is a child's thinking determined by nature or nurture? Is our understanding and ability to think determined by our birth, our DNA, the inherent things within our creation and the things we inherit from our parents? Or is our environment the biggest factor in our understanding of things? Do we learn from others, experiences, the things that happen to us and around us? If you accept that both nature and nurture affect each of us in various ways (I think most of us would think that), then other questions arise that theologians and philosophers want to understand.
For instance, how do we learn? How do we come to perceive things? What are the factors that determine how we come to know what it is that we know? Most of the foundational textbooks that I have read for any of my seminars attempt in some way to answer this question. The term for this exploration is called epistemology. A fancy word for the pursuit of understanding how we know what we know.
To begin to understand how important this is, you should know that every realm of study from business to politics to science is concerned with the "epistemological question." Every area of educational discipline is concerned with how we know what we know. Theology is no different and, in many ways, it is the inspiration for the thinking that has taken place over thousands of years. If you have ever heard of Plato and Aristotle, then you have heard of the two men who helped to frame the debate that goes on to this day. If you have not read these two giants of philosophy, let me try and tell you what they said

• Plato believed that human beings seem born to ask, “Why?” His idea was that if a human being knows the truth they will do it.
  
• Also, Plato was deeply suspicious that the world we have before our eyes is not the world that is actually there. To describe this, Plato developed a famous allegory. It's called the Allegory of the Cave.
• Imagine that there are prisoners being held captive in a cave from birth. They are all chained, unable to move. In addition, their heads are chained to face only one direction, they all face a wall. Behind them is a fire that is always lit. Behind that is a raised conveyor along which statues of all various kinds of things (animals, plants, etc.) are being transported. The statues cast a shadow on the wall. The prisoners never see the statues nor have they ever seen real animals or plants. All they see is the shadow of the statues against the wall. The prisoners play a game in which they attempt to see who is best at naming the shadows on the wall. To the prisoners, the shadows are reality. They have never seen anything else. Reality is what they see because what they see is all they know. Finally, one of the prisoners is set free. As he turns around he sees a new reality. As he leaves the cave, he is blinded by the light of the sun. It takes some time but, eventually, he adjusts to the sunlight and experiences another reality of real animals (not statues) and real plants (not shadows). What happens if he returns to the cave? He will not see things in the same way. His reality has changed. He will not be as good as the prisoners in identifying the shadows. Everything has changed because his knowledge and reality have changed. Plato, seeing the prisoners looking at the wall, thinks that this may better represent humanity. We are not seeing what is really there but merely describing impressions, shadows of what is real.
• And that is why Plato didn't necessarily trust that the world around us is as real as we think it is. Therefore, Plato believed that the gaining of wisdom is the only thing that can help us gain a better understanding of what is real. What we see, the world around us, our emotions are all unreliable as a way to know what we know.
• Aristotle took a very different path to explaining what we know. He wrote a book called, Metaphysics (literally, those thoughts which are after or beyond thinking about the physical world). In it, Aristotle points to our senses as a way of understanding what is real. We gain our knowledge of the world around us by probing and testing. Our probing and testing gives us knowledge by way of reason. Reason makes sense of our experience.
  
• The basic difference between the two is that Plato thought that knowledge was transcendent - beyond this world. Aristotle believed that we can know this world through experience of it. And that has been the debate ever since.
  

All of this may sound too complicated to be of any real value. If you feel that way, I understand your confusion. Thanks for making it this far! For me, here is where it gets interesting. If you follow Plato, knowledge must come from somewhere other than human experience and interaction. If you follow Aristotle, knowledge comes from what human beings can experience and discover. For theology, the issue becomes whether knowledge is revelation from God (beyond this world) or discovered by human beings (we are the ones who determine who God is and what God says). While I am still in process of discovering the implications of both Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, this much I know. We know nothing without God having revealed it to us. I know what I know because God is a god of revelation and he has given me the capacity to understand this revelation.

The State of Preaching

I don't know if I've earned the right to make such an evaluation, but here we go. I preached the first service of a weekend revival last night and after the service one of the members of the church engaged me on this very subject. He had spiritually grown up under the preaching of Steven Olford and others and he was lamenting the lack of preaching power and biblical depth in the pulpit today. After the service I went back to the pastor's home and spent the rest of the evening talking with the pastor's family (his wife and in-laws, who are retired Church of God ministers). Part of that conversation also turned to the state of preaching, particularly in the Church of God. Off of this non-scientific "survey" and my own convictions based on very little observation as well as the understanding I have gained here at Fuller both from classes and from teaching students, I want to make a few observations.

1. Based on homiletical training of students, almost all of the training for students focuses on exegetical and hermeneutical training. For instance, here at Fuller M.Div. students must complete both Greek and Hebrew as well as Greek Exegesis and Hebrew Exegesis prior to taking Homiletics. In other words you take four quarters of language study before taking one quarter of preaching. The basic homiletics class (called PR 500 here) is a 4 unit class that is required for the degree. After taking PR 500 the student must take 4 more hours in either homiletics or communications. Most students take a Preaching Practicum course or two (they are 2 hours each) to fulfill their last 4 hours (a total of 8 hours is required in the preaching area). All this to say that the students are heaped in language and study habits and are given some practical experience in preaching (most of the time you will preach twice in each class, so you may preach in class as many as six times before graduating. This doesn't count your field ministry experience where you will probably preach once or twice. The disconnect I see here is that we teach them how to put a sermon together but very little performance training.
2. My mentor, Dr. Clay Schmit, is one of the leading voices in the area of Performance Preaching. Many people are put off by the use of the word "Performance" because they associate the word with the wrong things. Actors perform by becoming a character they are not. Therefore, performance is viewed by many as being akin to fakery or falsehood. Interestingly, the same connotation is not given to soloists in the church. We don't mind that they perform a song. Why the double standard? Because we are still questioning the use of emotion in the pulpit. The subject of emotionalism in North American church history is long and complicated. From the Pilgrims stoic, unemotional delivery (described as the Perkins Method by O.C. Moore in his, "History of Preaching") to the firebrand style of George Whitfield, we are unsure as to how much emotion is too much - how much performance is helpful and how much is manipulative. However, any layperson will tell you that not only don't they mind some emotion from the pulpit, they would also appreciate it if a few more preachers learned the details of rhetoric and performance in their preaching. That is why the area of performance studies is growing and I firmly believe it is one of the missing pieces in how we train preachers today.
3. The lack of creativity in preaching is astounding. We all seem to be trying to emulate someone else. We try to preach like Rick Warren or copy the style of a Joel Osteen. We get sermons off the internet and try and preach them as our own. We discover someone else's outline and preach it as though it came from our sweet and brow. Preaching is not only about doing the study required to preach well, it is also about "finding your voice" in the pulpit. You have not been called to be someone else. God saw you as a unique vessel and decided to use you, your gifts, your talents, your personality, your quirky sense of thinking to be His vessel for sharing the Word. When we copy something from someone else we deny the reality that God desires to use us and that God knew what he was doing when he called us. Use your gifts. Be creative. A three point sermon with a poem at the end may have worked for someone else but each preacher must allow her voice to shine out.
   

Maybe these will resonate with some of you. Let me know. There is more to come.

Catching Up

It has been some weeks since I last wrote on the blog. Some catching up seems appropriate. Since my last writing I have been hard at work with some fascinating (at least for me) experiences to share. Here goes:

1. I spent several days with Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie, the renowned preacher and former Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. I became Fuller's official liaison for his "Preaching with Passion" Conference that the Seminary hosted. Dr. Ogilvie is an author (I have numerous copies of his books that he wrote as pastor of Hollywood Presbyterian Church) and a new, signed copy of his latest book, "The Red Ember in the White Ash". His inscription says, "To Jeff: God's man - a preacher with passion and my friend." Wow!
2. I have now given several lectures to M.Div students this quarter. I had to fill-in for my mentor, Dr. Schmit, who was on jury duty. I gave one lecture on "Text to Sermon" detailing how one goes from a passage through the daily process of study that will eventually end up in a sermon (I then spent the second hour preaching the sermon to them so that they might have a model to use and/or critique); Another lecture was on Narrative Preaching where I help the students understand the principles of how to do this genre of preaching. Most of that lecture was based on my book, which is required reading in the course.
   
3. Church of the Foothills (the Church of God congregation here in Pasadena that I am Interim Pastor for) is hosting an Arabic language service this coming Friday. It is supposed to attract a packed house of Arabic speaking Christians who live in the area. One of our Pre-School families left the Middle East after being persecuted for their Christian beliefs in a predominantly Muslim nation.
   
4. I am currently reading a book by Stephen Webb called, "The Divine Voice" which is an absolutely fascinating book about the Theology of Sound. His use of both the bible and dealing with the works of great philosophers and theologians, makes the book a unique read. It is helping to form my own understanding of the uniqueness and the power of preaching.
   
5. Joanie continues to get high marks from her new principal and the leadership of the school. I am so very proud of her and how she is growing in her life. She has been hired by Church of the Foothills to be their Minister of Music. Last week she shared her testimony with the Fuller Wives Support Group that she is deeply involved in. She is doing very well juggling her many tasks and the recovery from her hip replacement surgery continues to go well.
6. This weekend I will be holding a weekend revival in Whittier (about 20 minutes away). It is a big weekend for them and they are focusing on reaching out to their neighborhood, so I pray their efforts will be fruitful.
   
7. I have to register for Winter classes in a few weeks. It will be the last time I register for classes here at Fuller. After the Winter Quarter I will be preparing to take my Comprehensive Exams in the Spring and then I will be taking Directed Readings for the second half of my program as I prepare to write my Dissertation. While I have several years in front of me, it is amazing how time has flown by.
   

Better Than Any Words I Can Write - Malachi at 3 Weeks

Accomplishments

In the age of Reality Television, one interesting feature has come to light for me. The issue of competition has become the foundational basis for nearly all reality shows. Joanie and I have become fans of the show "Top Chef" - we've watched several seasons of it. Hits like "Dancing with the Stars" and "American Idol" have created a whole industry built up around competition between either well known stars in unfamiliar settings (ballroom dancing) or unknowns seeking to become known (to become the next "American Idol"). The one thing they all have in common, like the game show formats upon which they seem to be based, is that they engage the viewer in the "cliff hanger" motif. You never know who is going to win the competition.
The shows on television today that constantly receive the highest ratings are the major sports competitions - Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA Basketball Tournament, NASCAR races like the Daytona 500, and New Years Day Bowl Games, etc. Like Reality TV, they are competition based. This emphasis on competition leaks into the corporate world, into politics, and even into churches that seem to be in competition with other churches for parishioners, bigger budgets, and larger numbers. When High School athletics are on TV and the networks put on shows like "Kidnation" that glory in competition at the lowest ages; when parents fight to get their toddlers into the "perfect" Kindergarten or fear that their children's future educational lives may be ruined by not getting into a prestigious preschool; when young people assign value and importance to other people's lives based on what car they drive or what clothes they wear, competition has gotten out of hand. As my son, Jonathan, once said about Survivor, "How can you say that a bunch of people running around half-naked on a deserted island being filmed by dozens of camera people and then having those pictures sent out over the airwaves to millions and millions of people - how is that reality?"
Somehow we have to change the standard by which we evaluate what is foundational in people's lives. Competition isn't working. Something else has to supplant it that will make a better society... a better world. Maybe the better standard would be accomplishment (the symbol at the top of this post is the Chinese symbol for accomplishment). I think accomplishing something is far more important than beating someone in a competition. A child's crayon drawing is a far greater accomplishment than getting a soccer trophy. It shows development, creativity, and a growing understanding of the world in which the child is living. A soccer trophy means that your child has physically grown or developed at a greater speed than his peers. Eventually the others will catch up and pass them. What will they do then when their competitive edge is lost? Steroids? While I love sports and enjoyed my children playing them, it is not a great judge of their future accomplishments. Some traits from the world of competition may very well help in other phases of life, the ability to accomplish something is far superior to being able to win competitions at an early age.
Here at Fuller you hear a lot of students talk about education in terms of competition. This is especially true for those who want to go beyond the Master's Degree and get into a Ph.D. program. You have to get good grades to get into Graduate School. I understand that. In my own case, my strongest argument for getting into the Ph.D. program at Fuller may have been the high grade point average I accumulated in my Master's work. I understand how competition for spots can be fierce. However, the best thing about graduating with a Master's Degree was the learning that I received during the experience. When I received my diploma, it was the sense of accomplishment that I felt that was the most rewarding thing of all. Getting the grade was merely a way of judging how well I had accomplished the goals for learning in the course. It was not a competition. It was a challenge. I like challenges.
By the way, grades came out today for both the Spring and Summer quarters. I got my first A on a paper for the Ph.D. program. The first two papers I handed in (for the Fall and Winter Quarters of my first year) received A-. For the Spring Quarter I received an A. The difference between the two at this level of education is that an A- is a quality paper. An A paper is not of greater quality but has a deeper and better organization of thought that makes it of publishable quality. The difference is not really a subtle one. These are being graded by professors, all of whom have published several books and numerous articles and papers. They know the difference between a good paper and one that others in the field of your expertize will find meaningful. Getting an A is an accomplishment. No one is ever going to look and see if I got an A or an A- in any of my doctoral seminars. They will only look to see if I have the degree and completed my dissertation. However, it means a great deal to know that I may have reached a place where my thoughts and my work will be valued by others. It may mean that I have taken my first measurable step toward becoming a scholar. At the very least it is an accomplishment. And that feels good!
By the way, I got an A in Latin, too. That's not an accomplishment. That's a miracle.