Praying for the Future

The pressing question of life is not, "what was it?" or even "what is it?" but "what will it be?" And for the Christian that means asking about God's intentions and discerning what role the believer might play in participating with God in bringing God's intentions to fruition.  The study of the past is helpful in that it helps us understand the basic trajectory leading to where we are and a comprehensive knowledge of what is is the essential for realistic decisions about the future.  However, it is the deliberative decisions we make that matter most. 

The Authority of God's Grace

In Numbers 14, God is contemplating destroying the people.  Moses dissuades him from this course of action saying essentially--if you destroy this people, they will say you weren't capable.  God's grace is God's grace for you is evidence that God and God alone is judge. 

Psalm 32

In twelve days our sermon will take Psalm 32 as its basis. This Psalm begins with a wisdom statement expressing the goodness of having sins forgiven (vss. 1-2).  It then develops into a testimony about personal experience (vss. 3-5).  It makes a call to others go also confess their sins and know the blessing of God’s forgiveness (vss. 6-7).  It includes words of God calling the sinners to learn of God’s way and demonstrate responsiveness to God’s call (8-9).  It concludes with proverbial statement (10-11). 

Response to NRA's Press Conference

The NRA polarizes people. Some assume the worst from the NRA and others assume that the NRA speaks near-100% truth. Admittedly, I have been in the first group more often than not. Therefore, I made a conscious effort to watch the entire Press Conference the NRA conducted today concerning the outcry for gun control laws in the wake of the recent Elementary School tragedy. I have to confront my own prejudices like everyone.

Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre spoke about our practices of placing armed guards at banks, sporting stadiums, around national buildings, around important people and then questioned why we do not do the same for children. He pointed to the problems of violent movie and video game content and music videos. He criticized the media for their unwillingness to report about this content. He criticized politicians for their unwillingness to take what he called the “hard stands.” In the solution section of his speech, He called for congress to make the resources available to put an armed police officer in every school. Further, he pledged the NRA’s commitment to providing expertise and training. He indicated the need to look at access control, building design and adequate training. Finally, he introduced former US Congressman Asa Hutchinson as the NRA’s National Director of the National Shield Our Schools program.

Since you can read his comments verbatim, I will not try to summarize anymore. There are places where I agree with Mr. LaPierre. I have seen first hand the significant good that campus-based police officers do. They offer much more than security. Like everyone else, I wish that our police were better funded and that we could provide a police officer for every school down to the elementary schools. Second, I agree with him that gun control laws become the point of focus too quickly and too easily.

We do disagree. And in saying I disagree with him I want to also admit that I am guilty of making similar mistakes in different directions. All men are sons of Adam and brothers of Cain. Adam uttered the first lame excuse of human history by blaming someone else for his sin. His son Cain uttered the second lame excuse of human history implying he didn’t have the responsibility to be his brother’s keeper. Both of those tactics show up in the discourse around gun violence discussion along with other issues. So, by pointing these out in LaPierre’s speech I would simultaneously confess to them in my own.

LaPierre is right when he says that the NRA too easily becomes the target of the blaming. Yet, he too gives in to that temptation by blaming a host of others-media, politicians, makers of violent video games. Others, I agree with him, who share some of the responsibility for the problem. I think I would have found him more persuasive if he had admitted that the NRA has contributed to the problem. If he had admitted that the easy availability of guns, which the NRA has protected, is one among many contributing factors to gun violence, I would have found him persuasive.

The biggest disagreement I have with him concerns whether or not we are responsibility for our brothers’ and sisters’ welfare. His speech had an undercurrent, fatalistic anthropology. He repeatedly used the words “monsters” and “bad guys” as though we simply have to consign ourselves to live in world where people choose to do bad things because they are hopelessly bad people. I believe that there are some people who become hopelessly bad. And when that happens, I believe we all share part of the blame. I believe that we help form one another.  And should not consign ourselves to the inevitability of evil buy actively seek to counteract it. 

We belong in a system of responsibility for one another. He said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” I cannot concur that the only way to respond to the potential for violence is armed protection against it. We should set aside the histrionics about whether we want an armed police officer responding should someone be breaking into our house. Armed protection is necessary. But just as the NRA claims that laws are insufficient so too I would say that armed protection is insufficient. It takes the transformation of hearts and minds, the development of habits of wholeness, and in a single word it takes conversion. When we admit that we ourselves have sinned because we are sinners and we make a conscious decision to turn from sin and turn toward God, we contribute to the conversion of our system. When service and witness together enable others to make that same move, we help repair our system. A good guy with a gun is necessary to stop some bad guys with guns. But the real answer is for the bad guy to enter a redemptive relationship with a good God.

There’s an analogy that the Baptist preacher and founder of Koinonia Farms, Clarence Jordan, used in talking about the impact Christ has on people. He talked about a mean dog. What the law does is chain the mean dog to a tree (he was talking about Old Testament law). What Christ does is actually change the nature of the dog. Similarly, in issues like this I think we have to come to agreement that laws by themselves are incapable of making the necessary changes. People’s violent natures must be changed. And that’s a transformation of the heart.

Sunday, December 16, 2012 Sermon

Sermon from Sunday, December 16, 2012 Based on Luke 1:67-79

Election Day Communion Service

Election Day Communion began as an initiative among a couple of Mennonite pastors and and Episcopal Priest.  While Citizenship tends to bring out the best in us, politics tends to bring out the worst.  For Christians, Christ animates the former and forgives/reforms the latter.  Election Day Communion is a day to come to the Lord's Table and in self-examination place before God the temptations of self-interest and judgmentalism and combativeness that we may have let get the best of us during the election season.  It is a day to Remember God's grace through Jesus Christ.  

Another name for Communion is Eucharist which means Thanksgiving.  Election Day Communion is also a day to give thanks for the nation's freedoms, our citizens' character, and our shared commitment to community.  

On Tuesday, November 6 (Election Day!), at 7:15 pm, First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 910 S. Collins, Arlington, TX 76010 will host an Election Day Communion Service. Political campaigns separate some people from other people. Analysts will describe how our voting patterns “break down” on the basis of age, ethnicity, economic status, gender, religion, and ideology. Yet, Christ prayed that his followers would all be ONE (John 17:21). The purpose of our unity is to express to the world the truth of the Gospel. Our Election Day Communion Service is designed to say that beyond all the yard signs and coffee shop debates, the one who unites us as Christians is more important than the ones who divide us into political parties. Everyone is welcome. Service will last approximately forty-five minutes.

Speech Class CSE

Concluding Thoughts on Extemporaneous Preaching

At the beginning of the summer, I launched on a project to utilize extemporaneous method of sermon preparation and delivery.  This is where I compose an outline of the sermon and do not compose an entire manuscript. I had thought I would update the blog more regularly than I have but, there really wasn't that much to say.  As we've reached Labor Day Weekend, I've decided the experiment is over.  Here are my conclusions.

1. Pastors who preach each week really should learn to preach from an outline at least occasionally.  We all encounter weeks when time constraints prevent us from composing a manuscript.  Too often, I have sacrificed exegetical and spiritual reflection in order to make time for manuscript composition.  If I had trusted my extemporaneous abilities, I would have devoted the time I did devote to composing a manuscript to actually preparing content. 
2. For me, preaching with minimal notes really is better than preaching from a manuscript.  When I preach from a manuscript, my eye contact is poor, my delivery is stiffer, I have frequent head bobs (looking down at script, looking up at congregation).  Even when I have written a manuscript, generally if I run through the manuscript two or three times before Sunday morning services, I can preach with minimal or no notes.  
3. ALWAYS COMPOSE THE OUTLINE!  I have used three methods of preaching--manuscript, extemporaneous (working from an outline), and memorized.  Often when I composed a manuscript, I would simply begin writing without thinking through the entire structure of the sermon.  That's not bad per se but it is what I would call free-writing--a helpful preliminary exercise but, not the best route to final form.  Sermons do not have to be Point 1, Point 2, Point 3 sermons in order for preachers to think through the structure (often called form by the homileticians).  Thinking through the sequence of ideas and also which ideas need the greatest attention happens best when I work from an outline.  Sometimes, the idea needing the greatest explanation will come later in the sermon.  When I outline, I am able to discern that and if I choose to compose an entire manuscript I can isolate that important idea and expand it as much as needed.  Too often, when I write sermon manuscripts from beginning to conclusion, I can tell I'm running out of time or space in the manuscript and actually shortchange what should receive the greatest attention.  I should have been practicing this all along but biggest learning from this experiment is ALWAYS COMPOSE THE OUTLINE.  After that, I can decide whether to rely on the outline alone or complete the manuscript but the outline itself is essential.  
4. Writing is a way of thinking.  Speaking is a way of thinking.  Writing a sermon manuscript should not be abandoned any more than preaching extemporaneously should be neglected.  Both skills are ways of accessing and reflecting on the text.  For this morning's sermon, I wrote a manuscript for the first time in three months and found that some of the best insights came as I worked at composing each sentence.  
5. The keys to good extemporaneous preaching are humility and confidence.  Humility to say to yourself--you're not really that good a writer.  Confidence to say--you're not really that bad at talking simply and directly.  
6. The biggest area of weakness for me when working from an outline (extemporaneous) is the transition from one point to the next.  I also know that my writing suffers from the same problem.  One of my seminary professors once wrote about a paper that I had several good pearls but no string connecting them.   That is too often the case when I'm preaching extemporaneously.  Frequently, I end up treating each point as a discrete idea (mini-sermon) rather than thinking through and verbalizing the thematic thread that connects them.  Thinking through and in some cases actually writing the introduction, the transitions, and the conclusion so that the sermon has coherence is an important step in the process.  

Reflections after Reading Jeremiah 1-30

The decline of the church has been a topic of conversation for several years among scholars and writers who discuss these matters. Diana Butler Bass a church historian who has become one of the more helpful commentators on contemporary Christianity . Diana Butler Bass writes and reports extensively about this decline. Part of the evidence she cites is that 1 in 10 Americans considers themselves "ex-Catholic" according to 2008 Pew Research and only a quarter of the population attends a worship service in a "typical week." Her assessment is both honest and hopeful. She said in a recent TCU Ministers' Week Lecture, "System fail does not mean Gospel fail."

 Richard Douthat in his much discussed article for the New York Times entitled, "Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?" identified the Episcopal Church's liberalism as the reason for its decline. Douthat argument rests on two assumptions. Assumption 1--the Liberal trends were made to appeal to people. He wrote "Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace." Assumption 2--the conservative retrieval or return to traditional Christian configurations is the answer.

Both writers maintain description of the church and it's position in the world in terms of a left/right, progressive/conservative, liberal/orthodox dichotomy. Forecasters often identify the demise of the church and it's potential for recover, reformation or revolution in the church's capacity to respond to new needs and expectations of people. Yet, I wonder how the issues might look if we spoke of our situation in terms of a portion of biblical narrative rather than the categories available to us through culture.

I have recently been working my way through Jeremiah and I am frequently reminded of these discussions and others as I listen to Jeremiah's words to an exiled Judah. No, our exile did not come out of a violent experience of culture. No, we have not been physically displaced. We cannot compare the severity of our growing displacement with the oppression experienced by the 6th Century BC Jews. At the same time, because we lack these salient confrontations with reality, we also may not see clearly what is taking place. We are like the exiles in that increasingly we find ourselves at the margins of the culture.

Increasingly Christian faith enters the American public as a stranger in a strange land What lessons might we learn about living faithfully in exile? First, we can accept the changing situation as a context for readdressing the level of your faithfulness. In the early portions of Jeremiah, the Babylonian captivity is understood as God's act to bring about the repentance of the people. Even going as far as declaring the Nebuchadnezzar is God's servant (Jeremiah 27:6). Today, we might not believe that God orders national affairs in order to discipline and chastise God's people (maybe some people do, I don't). Regardless, learning to see our situation through this biblical narrative means asking questions about the nature of our faithfulness in the midst of this changing situation.

 A second recurring theme in Jeremiah that I find both instructive and challenging is Jeremiah's confrontation of prophets who give answers that sound good but are in fact not from God. One particularly poignant example occurs in Jeremiah 28 where the prophet Jeremiah confronts the prophet and priest Hananiah. Jeremiah listens to Hananiah predict that their captivity will last only two years more and agrees that he too wishes that it were so. However, Jeremiah later comes back to Hananiah and confronts him with the conviction that he did not receive that message from God and because he has proclaimed in the name of the Lord a message the Lord did not give him, the Lord would deal harshly with him. The moral of the story could be understated as: be careful of those who promise easy answers. More to the point, the moral is the way forward is not in assessing public opinion and responding to market demands.

A third message I receive from my reading thus far is the we have hope but that hope functions on God's time-table not ours. I'll admit that my reading of Jeremiah was getting tedious. It felt hopeless and heavy. Around chapters 29 and 30, Jeremiah's tone begins to make a turn toward the hopeful. The principle difference between Jeremiah's message of hope and the easy answers of the prophets Jeremiah condemns seems to concern timetable. The "false prophets" proclaim that deliverance is coming soon. Jeremiah's message is that deliverance is coming after seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10). Our situation is long-term but temporary. In Jeremiah 29, Jeremiah gives an interim ethic that belongs to people in a time of exile.

 Finally, Jeremiah's message is theocentric. Jeremiah 30:22 contains this promise, "So you will be my people and I will be your God." The problem I see with so much of the current discussion about the decline of the church is that prescriptions different commentators tend to give still function on an existing continuum. Either we should return to a form of Christianity that existed in the past (that we imagine existed in the past) OR that the way forward is to continue forward with a progressive agenda. All of this seems to me to be pots trying to tell the Potter how to mold the clay. On the other side of whatever contemporary trend we are in, God will have faithful people who have yielded themselves to God's re-forming and they will have a remarkable experience of new life. As a post-script, I would say that we as Christian should remember that God's work does not culminate with reorganization, reformation, or revolution. God's work culminates in resurrection--new life emerging out of the tombs of real and painful death.

Responding to Denominational Decline

Today, Diana Butler Bass responded to a New York Times column by Ross Douthat. They were both offering interpretation of the numeric decline in denominations in relation to political leanings and/or movements in “liberal” denominations.  I would offer two additional pieces of statistical information for the discussion.  First, Bass is not a sociologist trained in statistical analysis.  Second, Douthat is not a sociologist trained in statistical analysis.  I suspect that a sociologist grounded in statistical analysis would say that there are too many confounding variables to deduce a correlation between one aspect of a denomination’s character (like it's perceived political leanings) and its rise or fall in attendance or membership. 

I do wonder to what extent the denominational numbers matter.  To me it’s a bit like the reporting of box office receipts for a movie or the number of viewers of a TV show.  Those numbers do not tell me whether I will enjoy the film or not.  Numerical decline of denominations tells us very little—if anything—about what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.  Personally, I have found that the harder I try to fulfill the expectations of a category—Progressive, Liberal, Evangelical, Emergent, Missional—the less faithful I actually am.  And when I think I've got some responsibility for the "scores" of the groups to which I've been trying to uphold, my faithfulness goes down even more.  I’ll admit that I did try for many years to make sure I really was an Evangelical.  It’s not without some grief that I say, “I’ve given that up.  I’m ready to just be Christian.” 

Bryan Feille once asked the question, “What’s the difference between tradition and traditionalism?”  By “tradition” he meant the theological sense of one’s cultural-historical faith stream (i.e., Stone-Campbell, Reformed, Western).  Tradition is a theological resource if it is part of the dialogue.  It becomes traditionalism when we feel that we must adhere to our cultural-religious stream no matter what.  For example, when the Stone-Campbell way of doing things overrides any other considerations.  When we choose to be ecumenical simply because we think that’s what in our DNA to do.  So too with contemporary categorizations: if they help our conversation, great.  If we perceive that the loss of membership in some cultural grouping is an actual loss of something precious, then we risk relinquishing our own discernment processes.  We hand them over to the trends advocated in our grouping.  Faithfulness involves discernment.  The groups to which we think we belong can be helpful as theological resources but become the sole mechanisms of decision.  The political or apolitical nature of a person and/or congregation’s discipleship must emerge out of their discernment—out of their attempts to be faithful in a complex world.  That shouldn’t be conditioned by what it might do to the scoreboard for our group or denomination.  I would argue that the conversation between Douthat and Bass is the wrong conversation to begin with. For the average reader of news media about religion, the issue of denominational decline is news only in the sense that movie receipts and TV ratings are news--quantitative trivia not qualitative value.  The question for them needs to be how to respond faithfully in a world where cultural assumptions toward religion in general has changed--how to provide a faithful witness in a pluralistic context.   

That’s not to say that numbers don’t matter.  As a local church pastor, I can’t worry a about declines in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) as a whole. I can—indeed must--accept responsibility for the decline in average worship attendance at First Christian Church, Arlington, Texas—which has been painfully significant during my tenure.  In terms of faithfulness, here’s where I think we stand: I serve a congregation of people willing to love and support one another.  It is a congregation deserving of growth because it is a congregation that does good for the people who are here.  It is a body of faithful Christians who can be entrusted with the care of new Christians. The biggest reason we have declined is that I haven’t paid enough attention to growth.  I don’t think that’s because of my politics, theology, or denominational leaning.  There are several reason for this decline but the one I bear the greatest responsibility for are the following: (1) we have not created an invitational culture—one where people invite other people to worship with them; (2) we have a small and ineffective response to visitors after people visit; (3) our services—both traditional and contemporary—rely too heavily on insider language. Denominational declines are ultimately the aggregates of thousands of local churches that are in decline.  Each of those local churches have unique reasons for their decline and must make their own decisions about how to respond. These are the confounding variables that the analysis of Bass and Douthat do not account for, in fact cannot account for, in their analysis. 

Transitions

Earlier this summer, I made the decision to present as many of my presentations--mainly preaching--in an extemporaneous manner and to chronicle my experiences.  

One of the difficulties with extemporaneous preaching is transitions.  This has been the case even when using a normal organizational pattern in public speaking.   In basic public speaking transitions have a formulaic quality.  There's an introduction, body and conclusion.  In the body of the speech, main points are covered.  Usually there are 2, 3 or 4 main points.  The transitions occur between the main points.  Typically, the speaker should summarize the main point, draw it to a close and then move to the next main point.  I teach my students to be very obvious about this.   They are to signpost.  Signposting is using a word like "First, Second, Third." After they signpost, they state their main point as a propositional statement. 

Preaching, at least as I am trying to do it, is not nearly as direct.  Stating the main conclusion and the propositional supporting points at the beginning of each main point doesn't always happen.  It is frequently better to withhold the conclusion until much later.  Aesthetically delaying the conclusion of a main point bBuilds suspense

More accurately delaying making the "points" in a sermon reflects the way one comes to theological insight from a text. This is the idea of inductive preaching as taught by Fred Craddock in As One Without Authority.  Craddock explains in preaching, the pastor is a servant both of the Word and of the People.  The preacher invites the two to come together rather the dictatorially spelling out the "truths" to which he or she expects consent from the congregation.  A sermon that orally reproduces the process of thinking sends the message that faith is a process--we don't come at the text with all the answers already in place; the ideas form through reflection, wrestling, study, etc.  This means that sermons, as least as I typically conceive them, do not have easily discernible "points" in the same way that a speech might.  Instead, they have what David Buttrick calls "moves."  

Under normal circumstances, remembering to do all that you need to do to make a transition work is difficult.  On sample outlines, I used actually write in the transition lines.  When you're trying to build observations and reflections to reach a conclusion that will serve as a transitions, it is difficult to be patient with your own recollection and delay reaching the conclusion.  In short, to sustain effective extemporaneous speaking, I would have to learn ways to effectively transition from one point to the next.  

Two Reactions to the Supreme Court Decision Yesterday

“This opinion may allow the government to compel people to pay into the system, but it can’t compel any of us to abandon our most deeply held convictions,” said the Rev. Rob Schenk, director of an evangelical group called Faith in Action. “This is a moral, spiritual and ethical crisis. People of conscience will need to make difficult decisions, including engaging in conscientious objection or even respectful civil disobedience, which may bring painful penalties with it. It’s time to be prayerful, brave and strong. From here on we will need help from God and from one another.” from CitizenLink an article entitled, "Supreme Court:  It's a Tax" written by Karla Dial. 
Kathryn M. Lohre, NCC President, "Christians believe that human beings—all of them—are infinitely-valued children of God, created in God’s image. Adequate health care, therefore, is a matter of preserving what our gracious God has made. That is why churches (and other religious communities) have established so many hospitals and other places of healing. And why we are convinced that health care is not a privilege, reserved for those who can afford it, but a right that should be available, at high quality, to all." "NCC welcomes U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding individual health insurance requirement" from www.nccusa.org

Dying Denominations

Awhile back, Derek Penwell wrote a blog post inviting Christians to reassess the priority we place on the death of denominations.  In this article, he wrote, “Today, denominational loyalty seems a quaint bit of nostalgia, like the gilded memories of neighborhood soda fountains and day baseball.”  Can we roll our eyes now?  The social impact of denominational loyalty is more substantial than soda fountains and baseball given by themselves the number of universities and hospitals started by denominations.  The past accomplishments and social goods gained by denominations do not by themselves justify denominational continuation.  Plenty of long-standing, historic institutions are proving that they must either radically revision their function (as in the case of public libraries) or face the inevitability of their obsolescence (as in the case of the US Postal Service).  If denominations no longer serve a useful purpose, they no longer serve useful purpose.  We can have a dignified burial.  But the obituary should have a broader view of their accomplishments than the one Penwell envisions—that they once provided a shopping guide for people looking for a congregation where their needs were met.

Denominations have provided the institutional structure for education, hospitals, nursing homes, children’s homes, emergency relief, global missions, new church development, ministerial education and accountability, discipleship ministries for young people in the forms of camps and conferences, bible curriculum, political advocacy (occasionally), ecumenical cooperation and the list goes on.  We do indeed need to accept that each of the things I just mentioned is being done differently today.  Few of the large institutions like universities, hospitals and nursing homes can rely on denominational funding solely and consequently balance denominational governance with other stakeholders. Churches of Christ have shown that global ministries can be sustained without a denominational structure.  Ecumenical institutions are facing the very same shifting cultural realities that denominations face.  Ministry education and accountability and church camps, if they are as necessary as I think they are, can be built beyond the formal denominations that have been their loci thus far. I not going to be that person who just thinks denominations have to stay alive because “we’ve always done it that way.”  However, we do need to take stock of what the “it” we’ve done through denominations really is.

The decisions we have to make are indeed bigger than whether our denomination needs rebranding.  These decisions include a lot of things that are important but not readily visible to the typical church-goer.  In a most cases, I don’t think we should spend too much time trying to explain it to everyone. When I go to the doctor, I don’t ask for a lecture on the state of the professional organizations to which he or she belongs.  I want the doctor to be board certified.  I do not want a comprehensive knowledge of what board certification really entails.  It matters to my doctor and therefore indirectly to me.

When parents pass away, the children or grandchildren have the painful task of going through the house and deciding what needs to be kept and moved and what needs to be thrown out.  If denominations are dying, we the children of denominations have that very same task.  If we dismiss our support for denominations too quickly we may discover that we did not make plans for how to accomplish some essential functions at a time when it’s too late to do anything about it--that we threw out something we really did need just because we didn’t think we needed it at that exact moment.  I’m of the opinion that we can be both realistic and faithful as we do so, but I don’t think it’s faithful to point at the denominational house of our parents and say, “all that’s in there are a few quaint memories.”       

Speaking Notes

Here are the speaking notes that I used to present Sunday's sermon.  There was a full manuscript that I worked through a couple of times on Sunday morning.  This is what it would I had on a piece as notes:

Familiarity breeds neglect—love, compassion, peace, service.  Grace—pictures of grace—frilly lace, a red stamp “paid in full.”

Romans would cause us to rethink it. 

Bible teaching:  (Grace begins and ends with God)

p. 916, “God’s righteousness.”

Understanding 3:23. 

God created us for relationship; we only have relationship by God’s initiative. 

Paul challenged the belief that people could achieve God’s righteousness on their own. 

            Nature of Law. 

            The Effect of Law

            The goodness of law

The agency of Jesus Christ

            note a—the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

            Atonement

Differences in our typical understanding

            Grace begins with human need. 

            Not a bad place to start. . . but . . . Grow up!

If we’re going to understand the magnitude of the word grace, we have to stem the impulse to make grace about us.  Grace is a word that stands for God’s righteousness—that is, the very character of God—embodied in Jesus Christ—the voice, presence, and power of God to reconcile people to God’s self. 

3 tendencies.  Step on toes/form a support group

-Needy

--Resume Christians

--Tragic Shrug/Cheap Grace

How respond?  The rest of Romans answers.  

Backsliding

It's Saturday night.  I have now completed work on the sermon for Sunday--a full 27 hours later than I'm comfortable with.  I had struggled with the text for 12 days.  Worked on creating an actual outline for three days.  I finally had to give in and write a manuscript.  The problem is the difficulty of the concepts.

Romans 3:21-31 is a dense passage in Romans with a number of themes from the whole book coming together and overlapping.  Since my church generally frowns on sermons lasting three hours (17 minutes is par), I opted not to try to be comprehensive with the text. So I chose to take one focus on the text.

What strikes me about it is that "Grace" is generally something we view as very personal and very individual.  "I once was lost"  Grace saved "a wretch like me."  Paul's point seems emphatic that grace emerges from the nature and character of God.  It emerges out of God's righteousness.  This is contrary to some of my embedded theology that always regarded grace as somehow a suspension of God's righteousness.  Grace begins and ends with God and if grace doesn't overwhelm us then we probably haven't understood it.

I gave in because I couldn't convince myself that I was going to be able to say all that clearly without having written the words out at least once.  I'm not claiming that the manuscript I have written is coherent.  I'm just saying, I feared that working from an outline given the complexity of the thoughts I want to convey would have been disastrous.

This tends to be my problem with the prevailing dogma in speech instruction about extemporaneous speaking it over looks the necessity in so many instances to write your thoughts down word for word.  (1) Sometimes people need to write a manuscript in order to get thoughts clear in their own minds--that was the case this week; (2) Sometimes people need to write a manuscript or else risk venturing down too many concepts (chasing rabbits)--a danger with this text; (3) Sometimes people need to write manuscripts so they can carefully choose wording that can will be clear to their audience.  

Quotations

I like quotations, pithy words someone else has written that say things better than I can say them myself.  I recently encountered this quotation from C. S. Lewis, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'" I also like finding quotations in context, being able to read what's around them.  Google Books is a great aid in that effort.

What I found when I went looking for this quotations is this from The Four Loves, "The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too?  I thought I was the only one.'"  Then a little bit later in that paragraph, "It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing an elliptical speech, they share their vision.  It is then that friendship is born.  And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude." 

It's entirely possible that somewhere else C. S. Lewis said, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one" but, I didn't find it. I did find dozens of books quoting it this way without any citation.  This example is fairly harmless as the reworked quotation--if it is indeed reworked--says more or less what Lewis was saying.  Lewis wasn't as absolute in the context I found but, people generally understand hyperbole as hyperbole.  It's is a good example of how some ways of expressing things begin to take a life of their own.  It is is easy to become reckless with quotations in writing and speaking--especially when the quotation is that good.

Assessment

My third purely extemporaneous sermon in a row can be found here.  It was the first sermon in a series on Romans.  The experience around this sermon shows both the benefits and the pitfalls of extemporaneous sermons. 

Benefits

1.  Decreased preparation anxiety.  When I was preparing the sermon in manuscript form, Fridays—sermon writing days—were filled with tossing, turning, and sweating.  The outline is a lot less stressful to create. 

2.  Ability to think about the flow.  When you outline a presentation, you’re able to see clearly how the pieces fit.  That’s not always easy with a manuscript. 

Pitfalls

1.  Sloppiness.  One of the biggest reasons given for preaching from a manuscript is precision.  And this particular sermon lacked a lot of it.  The edict of Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome came in 49 CE not 54 CE.  I used four examples—Augustine, Luther, Wesley, and Barth.  Three out of four were European, not four out of five (I said "four out of five").    

2.  Another problem that I experienced with this sermon that I frequently experience is running out of air toward the end of sentences.  When I prepare the sermon for podcasting, I use Audacity.  I can see the wavelengths and notice as the sermon progresses that voice strength gets measurably lower.  Part of that could be fatigue.  This would have been the third time that day I preached the sermon.  Part of it also comes from declining confidence.  My mouth is speaking, my brain is trying to process the next thought, and somewhere in between the two, my volume goes down. I don't know that this is better or worse with extemporaneous sermons.  It doesn't happen with a manuscript but there are many other deliver problems that tend to come with manuscripts (like of eye contact or the frequent head bob, monotone).  The comparison would really need to be between preaching from a memorized manuscript versus extemporaneously.  

OneNote on computer and on iPhone

Here are screenshots of Sunday's outline expanded and collapsed.  OneNote also has an iPhone app.  I can edit the note but it will not show the numbers on the outline.

To the left:  Here' how OneNote Looks collapsed.  You see that right above the "Romans 1:7-17" label is a tab that says "Roman Sermons."  On the right hand side you see a column that has the name of the page.  Pages can be added to each tab and reordered.  The parts of the outline can be expanded and collapsed with a button click.  Formatting the outline--i.e., creating Harvard-style--is relatively simple but not automatic as far as I can tell.

To the Right:   Here is how OneNote looks expanded.  The outline looks and functions
the way I'm wanting  my outline to work. 

Here are how the same outline looks in the OneNote iPhone app.
The home screen shows the notebooks that you have in a SkyDrive (cloud files through Hotmail and maybe some other programs).  Once selected, the notebook shows a list of the pages.  Unlike in the computer version the pages cannot be reordered here.  So far as I can tell, you can't put new notes into a notebook on the iPhone either.  You can simply create unfiled notes--I think.

Finally, the outline above looks like this on the iPhone.  Levels are indented.  No movement, collapsing or expanding.  But you can add text to an existing note.  There is an upgrade option, I'll see later if that's worth it. 

MicroSoft OneNote

After a few years of ignoring OneNote, I was playing with it this afternoon--I recently acquired a full version of Microsoft Office with OneNote.  It does pretty much everything I need an outliner to do. I don't know if it will import/export to OPML yet.  At the church office, we have Apples and I'm still trying to decide between OmniOutliner and Tree. The difference is about $25.  OmniOutliner is about $40 and Tree is about $15.

Memorized Manuscript vs. Extemporaneous Preaching

Sermons from the last few weeks at First Christian Church can be found here.  The sermon "I Will Survive" was preached on May 13.  It was my traditional pattern of crafting a manuscript and then reducing key words and portions of the manuscript to a piece of paper--normal paper printed landscape with two columns, folded in half.  I practice this so that more or less I am preaching from memory.  There were a couple of long quotations  that were  read.  The sermon "Wouldn't It Be Nice" was preached on May 20.  It was preached from an outline only.  There was no manuscript anywhere.  Both sermons were good sermons for me. 

The extemporaneous sermon had problems with fluency at the beginning.  Too many vocalized pauses.  The memorized sermon had problems toward the end.  When I got to the section where I used the "Praise the Lord" refrain, the refrain "Praise the Lord" comes out flat because I was trying to remember the next pair of experiences. 

This past week, May 27, I again preached from an outline.  The sermon was worse than the previous two but, I don't know that the outline was to blame. 

1.  I had convoluted cultural lead-ins--The sermon series has taken "B-Side Hits" (i.e., pop music songs that were originally released on the B-sides of a single that did better than the A side) and compared them to texts from the Minor Prophets (i.e., the B-Side of biblical prophetic literature.  However, I also used Peter Bregman's "Two Lists You Should Look At Every Morning." Trying to incorporate references both to "Focus" and "Ignore" lists and "Everyday" by Buddy Holly got convoluted.

2.  I had too many ideas.  Fred Craddock warns than when preachers preach three point sermons they often end up with three sermonettes rather than one complete sermon.  That was the case here.

3.  I didn't have strong examples or narratives.  The supporting material was lacking. 

4.  Failure to rehearse.  One of the things I'm finding thus far with the extemporaneous approach is that I struggle to find the motivation to practice the way I do when I'm speaking from a manuscript.