intersections

apocalypse: the revealing of GOD

Join us this Summer for a journey into popular culture as we search for glimpses of God's kingdom. Click here for more info. Download poster here.

Video: Holy Saturday worship

The video includes excerpts of our Holy Saturday worship service which I have written about here and here.

All of our Holy Week resources, including sermons and the program and liturgy we used for Friday, Sabbath and Sunday, are compiled at the Hollywood Adventist Church website.
Easter 2009: Holy Saturday on Vimeo.

A Prayer for Holy Saturday

This is the prayer I wrote to close our Holy Saturday worship service today.
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Loving God.
We have such fond memories of you.
The way you used to comfort us when we were sad.
The way you gave us such confidence in the face of uncertainty.
We miss you!

We had hoped that you were the one
    to fulfill our dreams and give us the desires of our hearts.
We are deeply disappointed and broken this morning by the realization that
    our hopes were misplaced.
We have dreamed for the wrong things.
We have prayed the wrong prayers.

Where shall we go from here?
We are lonely and in pieces.
If you can hear us…
If you can hear us now...

We’re not even sure what to ask for.
Amen.

Holy Saturday and the Death of God

"Cross"-posted at the Spectrum Blog

In Hollywood, our Lenten journey is nearly over. Today is Holy Saturday. For Adventists, every Saturday is Holy because we remember those words in the very beginning of the story, "So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation" (Gen 2:3). Each Sabbath is a wonderful pause in the creative work of God. Indeed, the pause itself is creative, like a musical rest or dramatic pause in theater. The absence of speech or activity is, itself, creative and moving.

But this Sabbath is different. As Eric Severson has said, "The gaping silence between Good Friday and Easter Sunday cannot be explained as a welcome pause or an artistic hiatus.... Holy Saturday is blunt and bleak and uncomfortable."

Worship in the Mission-Shaped Church

This past Saturday afternoon I taught a workshop, with the help of friend and staff intern, Scott Arany, for the West Coast Worship Conference. The workshop, entitled, Worship in the Mission-Shaped Church looks at the formative role of worship in shaping congregations that understand themselves as mission; as part of God's mission in the world.

Some a few people asked for a recording so here it is. Enjoy.

Download "Worship in the Mission-Shaped Church"

An Ash Wednesday Meditation

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent, which begins the long 40-day journey to Easter (not counting Sabbaths). I barely remember celebrating Easter growing up. I never heard of Lent until I was much older. Today I can’t imagine the experience of Easter without the long, arduous journey of repentance and confession the church calls Lent. And for the first time I am officiating two Ash Wednesday services in my church in Hollywood. This is new for us. Some will say that this is not biblical (I’m not even going to get into that here). Others will say that this is foreign to our tradition. To that I would say that the actual practice of Ash Wednesday and Lent is, indeed, foreign to our tradition, but the Wesleyan commitment to soul-searching, confession of sin and sanctification is very much a part of my Adventist upbringing and theological heritage. I believe the practice of Lent locates this tradition in a concrete practice and helps me (and I hope, my community) to redeem the time and make Easter about something besides Easter eggs and bunnies.

Come to Los Angeles for re-church, stay for the West Coast Worship Conference

March is shaping up to be a busy month!

As you must know by now, re-church and the Hollywood Adventist Church is hosting a gathering called Beyond Evandalism. Get all the juice here.

But if you plan it right, you can hang out in Southern California a bit longer and take in the West Coast Worship Conference (WCWC), March 5-7 in Simi Valley, California.

I'm excited to be working with my friend and fellow staff member at the Purple Church, Scott Arany, to do a workshop for the WCWC. Here's our workshop description.

So much of the debate around worship degenerates into a battle over consumer preferences (electric guitars vs. organs, hymns vs. praise choruses). Churches compete to hold the attention of an often dwindling audience such that stylistic considerations and excellence of performance too often dominates the worship conversation.

This workshop will look at the theology of worship in a missional framework with an eye to overcoming surface level debates over style and form to the more important question of the formation of a worshipping community as a place where God would be pleased to dwell. We will share how seasonal rhythms of the church year, scripture, prayer, art, music and sacrament have begun to form a missional imagination at the Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church in which our life in God invites us to be the healing presence of Christ in the world and our life in the world drives us back to our life in God.

Aren't you just dying to attend after reading that?

Thoughts from my retreat

I've just come back from St. Andrew's Abbey where I've spent two days in silence, prayer and reflection. It's a challenge, not just to make the time, which is hard enough, but the work of spending that much time in silent reflection is a serious challenge. This is my second time at St. Andrews. Six months ago, when I was there, I wrote in my journal:

I have come out into the desert to be alone, to be silent and to listen.

This time I wrote virtually the same thing without realizing it:

I'm once again here to be silent and still, starting on the outside and seeping all the way down. I'm here to listen, to pray, and to think.

This work is sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter. This time the loneliness was overwhelming. Being alone is not the problem. I love to be alone. It was something much deeper. Coming face to face with your soul and finding there a darkness that is difficult to penetrate. Henri Nouwen describes it as a "suffocating loneliness" in his book, Reaching Out.

Part of the experience of the monastery, for me, is to enter this loneliness and there, meet God. Very rarely do we allow ourselves this time, and for good reason. My experience felt crushing. It's still hard, even now that I'm home. I encountered things about myself I'd prefer not to acknowledge.

I've probably turned you off to this experience by now, but that is certainly not my intention. In fact, I highly recommend it. I have personally committed to spending two days on retreat every six months.

Below is a short video of the monks of the abbey praying the Vespers Office on Tuesday. Enjoy!

Two days at a Benedictine Abbey

I spent two days this week at the Benedictine monastery, St. Andrews Abbey, in Valyermo, California. I was so hungry for solitude and silence. So, I went out into the desert to be alone, to be silent and to listen. For nearly 1,500 years, monks have lived by the Rule of St. Benedict. For over 50 years monks have been adhering to this way of life on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

Five times a day the monastery bell (right) called us to prayer. Vigils at 6 AM. Lauds at 7:30. Mass at noon. Vespers at 6 PM and Compline at 8:30 PM. Between these times of prayer are three freshly cooked meals eaten in community. This Abbey practices a Great Silence from 8:30 PM until 8:30 AM. No one speaks, except in prayer and as absolutely necessary, for those 12 hours.

When I wasn't praying with the monks and eating, I was reading, thinking, writing in my journal, walking around the beautiful high desert surroundings and taking pictures.

You can see  a number of the pictures I took here.

If you've never spent any time at a monastery, I highly recommend it. In particular, I recommend St. Andrews Abbey. The Benedictines are by far the most welcoming I have encountered. St. Benedict, in his rule, explicit instructs that "All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ" (RB 53:1).

So much is running through my head right now. How I will again commit myself to set times of prayer, how my family needs a 'rule' to live by. In what sense my congregation can be a people ordered by a rule of life and in particular how what we traditionally think of as "elders" could be so helped by taking vows not unlike St. Benedict's Rule.

In closing, if you're interesting in Benedictine spirituality, I highly recommend the rule itself, of course. But I also highly recommend Joan Chittister, OSB, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily. This is the book I spent most of my time reading while in my retreat.

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)