Theolog

Church shopping

By Amy Frykholm

Church shopping has been rightfully attacked as a consumerist, individualistic approach to faith—as a shopper, I do what “works for me” on a Sunday morning, and I can change churches as fast as my preferences change.

All the same, we’ve nearly all done it to some degree or another. The parish model of churchgoing rarely addresses the realities of our mobility and, though we might hesitate to admit it, few of us would last long in a church environment where at least some of our needs were not being met.

Singing clergy

By Jason Byassee

Those clergy who get to sing are the luckiest. The rabbi at Shabbat services. The Catholic priest who sings as he holds up the consecrated elements, “through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit . . .” A Lutheran seminarian I know closes his office door to prepare for Sundays—he has to get ready to sing. It’s hard to beat a sung Eucharist in an Anglican church.

The point isn’t that these clergy are necessarily good singers: it’s that their community’s vision of worship requires them to break forth in song at certain points. What is it about that that seems, well, more religious somehow?

Blogging toward Sunday

By Michael Pasquarello III
Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44
Sunday, December 2

The church has traditionally considered Advent a penitential season, a time for changing one’s mind and re-turning to God. It’s a time for preparing the way of the Lord, the One who will come to consummate all things in the rule of God. The scripture lessons for the first Sunday of Advent are addressed to a pilgrim people, summoning them to stay awake and alert on a journey that leads to the fullness of God’s kingdom. We are to “remember the future” in the hope that the Spirit will make present the One named in scripture.

Love = love

By Sarah S. Howell

I have a t-shirt that says, “Gay? Fine by me.” I have another with stick figures in three pairs: one, a man and a woman; another, two men; the third, two women, and all with the caption “Love = Love.” I was raised to love people no matter what they look like or what they think or do. I am grateful for that. But I don’t wear those shirts often, because I find myself on the fence on this issue.

The question of ordaining gays has been brought very close to home as a young woman I know who wants to be ordained in the United Methodist Church has come out as a lesbian.

Church can get messy

By Bob Cornwall

Picture a church in your mind.

It’s small, cozy, maybe even cute. But as you look around, you discover that like many homes it’s a bit cluttered. Things don’t seem to match. You look into the chancel and you find three or more styles of chairs where the choir normally sits. On the organ you discover a collection of frogs—not live ones but toys, you’re relieved to find. The carpet is a light mauve that doesn’t match the brownish-orange color of the 1960s upholstery on the pews. Out in the narthex a collection of food and clothing takes up one corner, tables piled with old magazines are in another. In the small fellowship hall/kitchen/class room, excess chairs are stacked along one wall, with a beat-up old piano, an old electronic organ and a TV lining another wall. The walls are covered with old Sunday school posters and papers.

Blogging toward Sunday

By Michael Paquarello III
Luke 23:33-43
Sunday, November 25

The two aspirants to the governor’s mansion in my state ran a race that often sounded more like an old-fashioned prayer meeting than a political campaign. Both seem convinced that the key to victory lay in demonstrating that one was more Christian than the other. As a result, we were blessed by an outpouring of political ads that were more hagiographical than enlightening, more testimony than serious political discourse.

What might have happened if our two candidates had taken seriously the rule of God made known in a crucified Jesus?

Christian politicians

By David Heim

I doubt the religious right is “cracking up,” as David Kirkpatrick suggests in a recent New York Times article (“The Evangelical Crackup,” Oct. 28). At least it would take the results of a few election cycles to demonstrate it. But, like Kirkpatrick, I have been hearing some significant voices on the right that are disillusioned about political engagement.

Somewhere

By Jenny Williams

As a teenager, when I went with friends to national youth conferences, people thought we were really cool because we came from Los Angeles. We all took off our nametags and wrote on them "Hug Me! I'm from California!" And they did.

Now I’m a United Methodist pastor serving two small churches in Lumberport and Shinnston, two towns in West Virginia that are only five miles apart, yet very distant from one another in the pecking order of our county. When I first arrived I would ask, "Are you from here?” thinking that "here" meant West Virginia, or even Appalachia. But to local people it meant the town in which they lived. Often they’d answer: "Oh NO! I'm not from here; I'm from Haywood”—a town that sits in between the two towns in which I pastor.

Blogging toward Sunday

Michael Pasquarello III
Luke 21:5-19
Sunday, November 18

Messianic ministers

During almost 20 years of pastoral ministry I have served three different congregations that experienced such long-term decline and loss that it seemed as if the “end of the world” was upon us: they had lost recognition in the community, members, ministries and their passion for mission. But the loss that was talked about most often was the loss of financial resources.

Whither clergy scholars?

By John Dart

The 2006 meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature in Washington, D.C., registered a record 10,000 attendees—roughly a 60-40 ratio of AAR and SBL members respectively—to hear papers, panel discussions, gab with friends, seek a job or book contract. That’s not likely to happen again, however: after their concurrent meeting November 17-20 in San Diego, the two organizations do not plan to assemble together again on a regular basis.

In defense of the faith?

By Phil Blackwell

At a public discussion on religion, politics and the secular public square here in Chicago, I was deeply unsettled by the hostility toward Christianity that came from some of the panelists and all of the audience participants. Here are some examples:

“Christianity is triumphalistic; it believes that it is better than all the others.”

“Christianity is dogmatic and thinks that it possesses all the truth.”

“Christianity is irrational and fights against creative thinking.”

Blogging toward Sunday

Michael Pasquarello III
Luke 20:27-38
Sunday, November 11

My wife and I were in the Atlanta airport this summer when she stopped at a newsstand to pick up a magazine. On the cover of one, a well-known TV preacher was touted as the pastor of a church, “America’s largest,” that draws 45,000 people per weekend by offering help for life’s questions and problems. The clerk working the register noticed my wife looking at the article and said proudly, “That’s my pastor,” to which my wife retorted, “So, when your momma is sick in the hospital, are you going to pick up the phone and ask him to come over to be with her while she dies?”

The moonlighting pastor

By Jonathan Marlowe

Wendell Berry says that all pastors should receive some training in the skills of a job such as farming, carpentry or some other trade so that when they step into the pulpit, they can tell the truth. The idea is that pastors would not be afraid to be blunt or honest because if they were “fired” for telling the truth they could always do something else, and thus would not be “trapped” in their jobs as professional clergy.

What if we took the point even further by suggesting that pastors have another job while they are pastors?