Preaching Re-Imagined, pt 1.

Even before I opened the book, I knew that it was going to be different than most books I had read. I had read and loved another book by Doug, so I assumed that he would bring something fresh with this one too. And right off the bat, he does. The first "section" contains the usual introductions. The whats and whys and whos of the book. But the first thing that reminded me of the authorship of this book was that within the first section there is a "How to Read this Book" heading. Doug writes books differently. The first book I read of his was a book about his church, Solomon's Porch. The margins of the pages had journal entries from people within the church body. That was a weird, yet refreshing way to read a book about a church. This "How to..." section falls right in line. He explains that Section 2 has sentences and phrases which have numbers attached at the end. The numbers can take you to that particular chapter found within 4 different sections. He writes this to explain things:

For example, you might not be interested in the story of how I became a preacher but would prefer to go right to my suggestions of rethinking the role of the pastor. If so, you can skip point number five and go right to point 23.

I was really intrigued by this and found myself flipping through the book to figure out how this actually works. Doug explains that his reasons for this is because he wanted to write a book that felt more like a conversation rather that a "stagnate place of information" (my words). In this first section he shares a few phrases that seemingly elude to phrases that will become a foundation to the book: "progressional dialogue" (a phrase that he made up), and "speaching" (also made up, to refer to "the style of preaching that's hardly distinguishable from a one-way speech.")

I'm an underliner, a margin-writer, and a dog-earer, and Doug encourages this. He writes that the "book should not be left in its impersonal, published form. If it is, then it hasn't done its job of engaging you in the conversation." I like that. I can handle that.

Here's some things that I underlined and bracketed:

I find myself wanting to live life with the people of my community where I can preach-along with the other preachers of our community-but not allow that to become an act of speech making. Instead I want it to be a living interaction of the story of GOD and the story of our community being connected by our truth telling, our vulnerability, and our open minds, ears, and eyes-all brought together by the active work of the Spirit of GOD as we "Let the message of Christ dwell among (us) richly as (we) teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit, singing to GOD with gratitude in (our) hearts." (Colossians 3:16)

These words remind me about the desire I have to be apart of a community that doesn't just rely on the history of faith to give us something to sing about, but creates expressions based out of our own personal history. I love the phrase "living interaction of the story of GOD and the story of our community... ." It reminds me that the purpose of the community is to find it's place within the redemptive story of GOD, and if the community isn't doing that, then it isn't doing what it is supposed to be doing. Here's one more quote:

The church is best understood not as the exclusive proprietor of all the things of GOD, but rather as the home base for those committed to living in rhythm with GOD. It is a means by which we extend GOD's hopes, dreams, and agenda in the world, not an end goal in itself. Nor is preaching an end in itself but one of the many ways we as Christians ought to seek to tend to the things of GOD.

These two paragraphs have given me much to think about within the past day and a half. Let me know your thought if you have any. I think I'm off to bed and on to Section 2.

book review.

Earlier this week I was waiting in anticipation of a little box from Amazon. I had ordered two books that had caught my attention. The first, The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, is a book that I am excited about reading. I haven't read any of Hirsch's books, but I continue to hear intriguing things about him and his vision of the church. The second book, Preaching Re-Imagined by Doug Pagitt, drew my attention because I've been thinking about the way that I preach/teach. I've read Pagitt before and love the way he talks about his church community.

I wanted to blog through one of these books. I don't have a format for it. I just want to put some thoughts down and try to generate some conversation with it. With in the last week I've seen three other people blogging about The Forgotten Ways, so that helped me decided to work through Pagitt's book first.



I'm looking forward to this. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

thoughts about the two videos....

i've been sitting on this video for a while. i couldn't quite figure out how to put both videos in one post. if you know how to do this, let me know.


a few thoughts from the video:
1. i forget that Billy Graham was young once. the majority of videos and images of him show him as a frail old man. he was once young and vibrant. it's true
2. i think Billy was acting as Jesus would with this interview. Jesus was often found hanging out with the "people," you know those "bad" people. Billy was quick witted, honest, and bold with his words. he didn't shy back or avoid anything Woody was asking.
3. a long time ago i read "Just As I Am" the autobiography of Billy Graham. watching this video reminded me of some of the early chapters of his life.
4. when i am in my 80's and look back on my life, and if i see that GOD has used me in 1/10000 of the ways that GOD used Billy, i will feel greatly blessed.

::enjoy::

sometimes books pull me away from stagnation...

i've been trying to force myself to take time off. this isn't an easy thing for me. Lauren's been helping me though. yesterday morning i didn't work; not turning the computer on helped greatly. i spent a few hours reading "The Doctrine of Reconciliation" by Karl Barth. reading Barth makes my head hurt. i think i'm going to set a new years resolution to start this book over, and finish it in 2007. i like setting new years resolutions. i usually complete them. i'm also thinking of starting to work on a book.

as i was reading Barth i was reminded of a few other books that i'd been wanting to read, so off to Barns and Noble. thirty minutes later i was heading home with 1984 by George Orwell, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything by Brian McLaren, and Organic Church by Neil Cole. i haven't bought any books lately, so my splurge seemed justified in my mind. i started reading Organic Church yesterday. in one of my classes at TIU one of my professors used the term "organic ministry." when this bas ook came out last year it made it's way to my "should eventually buy" list. i made it through a chapter and a half during my walk to work. i had to stop reading a few times to think. i had two thoughts that i want to work through. feel free to give some thoughts.

1. in thinking about ministry with Satellite: i wonder if Satellite should be in the ministry of planting home churches rather than small groups? as i was thinking through this and this first thing that popped into my head was the announcements that Gabe gave on Sunday. most of the announcements were for things going on hosted at the Ninja Den. why cant the Ninja Den be a church? granted the biggest reason for this not to happen is that people might not like the idea of home churches. but my guess is that the thoughts they have about them are just preconceived ideas because i don't really know anyone who has been a part of a home church.

i'm really intrigued by this idea. the more i try to understand my calling i think that planting churches might be part of it. which is becoming increasingly ironic because of the growing frustrations i have with the North American church. which is even more ironic because of my job.

2. i want to be able to put all of my time into ministry. it's hard for me to have a job that takes my time away from ministry. i've been questioning the thought of raising support. this scares me a lot. the fear of raising support is what kept me from going on staff with Young Life. I've been thinking about this possibility quite a bit lately, but as i was reading Organic Church yesterday i had a new thought along the lines of raising support. what if the support i raised wasn't to do ministry for the church, but for some other element of ministry? maybe i would be raising support as a missionary. i've got to think this through some more to develop what it is that i could be doing.

well, there you go.
enjoy.