intersections

Reclaiming Outrage

Part 2 of a sermon given by Rabbi Ron Stern of Stephen S. Wise Temple on a recent Shabbat.

I've really been enjoying getting more involved in interfaith work here in Los Angeles. One of my new friends is Rabbi Ron Stern from Stephen S. Wise Temple (the largest Jewish synagogue in the Western US). Their congregation is one of the newest members in our LA Voice family. Here is a Rabbi who is a true inspiration to me.

Listen to a short sermon that he gave recently, Reclaiming Outrage (Part 1 & Part 2)

How do you relate to Communion?

Each week I write a short column in the church bulletin called, The Pastor's Journal. Here's what I wrote this week. What are your thoughts?

It's Communion again. I don't know about you but the increased frequency of this celebration is beginning to have its effect on me. Approximately six months ago I asked the congregation, just before the sermon, what you would think of having communion more regularly. To my surprise, applause spontaneously broke out.

The reason it surprised me is that I grew up in a Seventh-day Adventist Church that had an ambivalent relationship with the Communion Meal. It always seemed to me that the attendance at church went down significantly on Communion Sabbath. I never understood exactly why. I eventually concluded that it had something to do with the heavy guilt message that usually accompanied the ritual. Many Adventists I know confess that Communion means little to them. On the other hand, I have met other Christians that wouldn't know how to relate to their Christian experience apart from Communion. How do you relate to Communion?

I wonder how you're responding to the increased frequency of Communion? Some of you have approached me to say that you really appreciate it and that it adds a kind of stability to our worship life. I would welcome your input if you care to share. I'd love to hear from you.

In the meantime, I hope that as we talk today about the presence and absence of God in the teaching of John 14:15-21, that your participation at the Lord's Table today will mediate the presence of God to you in a very real and meaningful way.

The Grace of Preaching the Lectionary

Today is Christ the King Sabbath - the last Sabbath of the Christian Year. Next Sabbath begins the new year with the season of Advent.

For approximately 13 months now I have been preaching from the Revised Common Lectionary. There are some amazing online resources that are incredibly helpful in preaching the lectionary. My favorite is a site called Text Week. In addition I have found the New Proclamation series of lectionary commentaries extremely helpful and insightful. But nothing replaces simply dwelling in the text and allowing the text to read your context and speak into the congregation's life.

I have been leading my congregation in the observance of Advent for the past 7 years and Lent for about the last 5 years, but this is the first year I have preaching an entire cycle through the lectionary.

I highly recommend this discipline. It is a rich gift that has been given to the church through the centuries. For myself and my congregation, we have found that God has met us in the text in surprising ways. Without fail the text for a particular week (and this year I have been strictly holding to the Gospel reading for the week) has been precisely what our community has needed. You would have to be here to fully appreciate the grace we have found in this.

The lectionary takes the the preacher out of the driver's seat and places the text of scripture in the central role. Rather than me trying to figure out "what my congregation needs to hear" we simply approach the text with hopeful expectation. I have preached more "difficult passages" this year than ever before in 13 years of ministry.

I frequently explain to my congregation what I am doing, but I'm not sure it has become part of their consciousness just yet. Others observe a change without directly referencing the lectionary. One member approached me with great surprise one day, saying that she heard some other preacher speak from EXACTLY THE SAME TEXT on Sunday that I spoke from on Sabbath. "Imagine that!" I thought to myself.

Next Sabbath begins my favorite season of the church year - Advent. It is also the richest season for Seventh-day Adventists. I will hopefully write more about Advent during the next four weeks. Hope is an Advent virtue, after all.

Anyone else out there preaching the lectionary?
If so, what have you learned?
Is anyone tired of trying to be clever week after week?

New Markers of Missional Faithfulness

A little while back I listened to this Allelon Netcast, in which Al Roxburgh interviews Pernell Goodyear, pastor of an emerging Christian community called The Freeway in Hamilton, Ontario. Since then I've been checking in on his blog. Today I ran across this post entitled, Missional Church? Be Prepared to Lose -

We decided we could likely not continue to measure "success" as we always had - by attracting numbers: money, people, programs, projects, mission trips, souls saved, etc. We needed new markers, as it were, to know if we were becoming more Jesus-y.

I was immediately intrigued. He goes on...

In other words, rather than counting the number of people who come in to consume church programs, etc. we would celebrate people who left to follow to Jesus outside of the church walls. This shift meant several changes in the way we had always done things and the "results" we had always seen (some of which we would never have been able to anticipate ahead of time).

Our impulse to count things and measure our success by our numerical growth in any of these categories belies our addiction to modernity and its relentless commodification of everything. In modernity, if a thing can't be counted, it doesn't exist. We are so entrenched in this mindset that it's hard to imagine evaluating a congregation in another way. Clearly, the Bible is concerned with numbers and even names the numbers of people who were added to their communities of faith, but I seriously doubt they had the same hangups about numbers that we do, concerned as we are about market share, winning and loosing, and staking our identity on the 'unqualified good' of limitless growth.

Please read the whole post and look at what they have come up with as new markers of faithfulness. My heart is stirred by these things. However, I have a few questions....

Merry Christmas

Real quick, before my kids start fighting over their gifts...again!

I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. My family and I went to All Saints Episcopal Church (where I'm a member, incidently - a solidarity member) in Pasadena last night for their 8:00 pm Christmas Eve Service & Eucharist. It was amazing. There were no seats left (I think we got the last two) and there were even people in the overflow! Christmas Eve worship is my favorite part of Christmas.

We've been doing the family thing all morning - opening presents, breakfast, more present, playing, fighting, more playing.... Ah, life is good! The turkey is in the oven and my dad is coming over later for dinner.

Oh yes, and I got a Bose SoundDock for my iPod, which is very cool, and a new messenger bag since my other one was falling apart! I got Elysabeth an Wacom Intuos, which I'm just as excited about as she is. What's that, you ask? Ah, click here and your life will never be the same again!

What are you doing on Christmas? Drop a comment below and share the love! In closing here's a great quote I read today:

"O inexpressible mystery and unheard paradox: the Invisible is seen, the Intangible is touched , the eternal Word becomes accessible to our speech, the Timeless steps into time, the Son of God becomes the Son of Man!"  - Saint Gregory of Nyssa

Worship in the Shadow of Idols

Thanks for all the participation on the last post. It was a very personal rant that I felt could be useful as a conversation catalyst - I was right about that. It was also helpful to put to words the way I was feeling. It really helped me work out some things. I want to do several things in this post: share with you how things turned out for me on Sabbath after my post and your comments and share some general observations about the comments. All in all this has been generative and pointing in a great direction. Keep it up!

First, my sermon series took a turn for the better. This past Sabbath and the final two of the series will focus on obstacles to worship in our contemporary context. If you care to see how this past week's sermon (In the Shadow of Idols) turned you you can download it from the Hollywood Church website. You can also subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.

The comments to the last post were so good on so many levels. I think everyone who wrote said some great things. What I loved about all the comments was nobody was saying, "Wow, I can't believe you're struggling with this, here is a three point outline to answer your simple question." I'm getting a picture that we're all in this together, facing a difficult challenge that has no technical solutions. Here's what I'm hearing in your comments and our common struggle...

Preaching is Difficult

It's not so much the act of preaching (which is also hard, at times) but the writing of a sermon, that is so difficult. Ironically, I find that the longer I practice my vocation as a pastor the more difficult it becomes to write sermons. Some things come easier. I'm more adept at interpreting scripture. I have more and better skills with the text, my imagination is deeper and broader than it was 10 years ago.

But 10 years ago things we simpler in my mind - fewer contraditions and more black and white. I had more answers. Today I have more questions. How does one speak into an environment in which people are conditioned to be listening for answers? How vulnerable should I be about my own wrestling? I don't mean wrestling over the veracity of the virgin birth or whether the throne of God literally moved from one apartment of the heavenly sanctuary to the other in 1844. It's probably easiest to describe my struggle by giving an example...from today!

UCC commercial says it well

As a part of the United Church of Christ's campaign, "Still Speaking," they have created this funny and poignant video which I assume is designed to be used as a TV commercial. You can check it out here and tell me what you think. To me it says a lot about the kind of welcome we are trying to give at Hollywood Church to the kinds of people who have been "ejected" from other, less welcoming churches.

Thanks to my friends at Just Pastors for pointing this one out to me. You can read a thread of comments there as well.

Easter Worship and Nationalistic Captivities

Yesterday morning I had another one of those moments when I involuntarily found myself critical of public religion in America. I don't want to be critical. I want to simply attend worship and enter fully into the experience and be blessed by it, but the way in which the Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service started just brought me up short.

First, after a brief welcome, the thing we heard piercing the early morning darkness was the plaintive sound of bagpipes. I really love the bagpipes. I was the song that surprised me. They were playing America the Beautiful. "Why start there? I mused to myself, trying to stay focused on the reason for this time of worship.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to everyone! It's only 11:00 am and we've already had a very busy morning! I awoke at 3:30 am and made my way to the Hollywood Bowl for the Easter Sunrise Service. It was pretty amazing. I really didn't expect it to be so well attended. It was very professional and, for an ecumenical and community service, quite good. I'll post later today or tomorrow about some of my reactions to this service.

We had a nice Easter morning here at the house as well. You can visit the photo album below for some cute pictures of our kids enjoying Easter. Of the few toys my kids got for Easter my personal favorite can be seen in this short video I took this morning. Check it out...it's a pretty good laugh.

Watch 'Easter Toy' (11 sec)