Let me just begin today’s ramblings with the weather update. I shot this live and on location.
Shepherds and God
Yesterday I preached on the unlikeliest of messengers of the Good News, the shepherds. The reality that God used smelly, grungy, uneducated, disrespected and disregarded shepherds to be the heralds of the birth of the savior is not only encouraging it is transforming. The story of a savior for all sounds so different coming from someone with nothing than someone with everything.
As we think about our lives and our ability to serve as messengers of the Good News, we can celebrate how fallible we are. It is true, the parts of our lives we are so ashamed about and which we have paid so dearly for time and time again, are a great testimony to God. They show the immensity of the Good News. It is even Good News for us!
Does that mean we should go out and do some stupid stuff to improve our story of how God uses even us? By no means, Paul says. (Read Romans 6) But with all the guilt and struggles we face because of our sin and dysfunction, it is so beautiful to be reminded by shepherds that Jesus came as the savior to all and that includes us. And our past does not prevent God from crafting our future as a messenger of the Good News. So sing forth and shout praises off the hills and over the waters. Let our voices join together in proclaiming the coming of the Savior. Jesus is Messiah for all! Amen.
Some Linkage
Rick Warren was asked by President Elect Obama to give the invocation at the inauguration. This is a profound honor and seems to elevate Warren to a position of national prominence similar to the one Rev. Billy Graham has had for 50 years. I am glad for Rick and I am sure he will do a fine job. I won’t comment on this idea of him as America’s pastor, however. Other people are doing plenty of that. Here there are complaints about him at the inauguration. Here is some discussion about recent interviews he has done and the reactions he brings.
The Runaway Pastor is a novel and blog written by a pastor not too far from me. You can download the first 7 chapters of his novel at his site and he has some really interesting parables on there as well. It is a really fun read and brings up interesting questions regarding the role of the pastor and the pitfalls of ministry.
Andre Jones, one of my faovorite bloggers, considers the very important question of whether the Wise Men had mullets. Intrigued, aren’t you..
For those of you interested in hearing from two brilliant thinkers about the upheaval of emergence that is taking place within the church right now, check out this incredible conversation between Phyllis Tickle and Peter Rollins. These videos are well done and the conversations are short and thought provoking.
December 23, 2008 at 9:31 am
The videos of Rollins and Tickle are very interesting. First, I think it’s funny how much time the Emurg… people spend talking about what end should be on that word, yet claim they are not interested in labels. But more interesting are the ideas Rollins brings up in these videos. I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on these videos, Greg. All four videos is a lot to process in one blog post.
December 23, 2008 at 10:20 am
The silly debate over labels and names seems to be winding down as everyone has just moved on.
What is really interesting about Tickle is her work that resulted in her book called the The Great Emergence. She does a wonderful job of looking through the history of the church and finding that there are regular times of transformation that take place within the church every 500 years or so. She believes we are in such a time right now. She does not think this change is limited to some loose association called Emergent Village nor it is primarily North American based.
She adds some larger perspective that is very helpful in trying to understand the shifts we are experiencing and how they may produce lasting results.
Maybe I can do some specific posts to talk about some of Peter Rollins’ ideas. He is a great writer and I have 3 of his books, so I can probably bring some other pieces in to expand the conversation.
December 29, 2008 at 6:49 am
If my math is correct, the church is only 2000 years old. This means we have only had 3 of these big shifts. Is that enough of a pattern to say that this change will continue to happen every 500 years?