I wanted to share with you my favorite sound bite about the true meaning of Christmas. Sometimes you just can’t say it any better than Linus, especially when he is just citing Scripture! I seriously love this clip.
I hope you will watch it with my best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.
With all the talk lately about performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in baseball, I got to thinking: What can I do to give my blog a competitive edge? That’s when I saw wordpress’s announcement - Enhanced Feeds liven up your feed. I learned that you can now digg my posts, you can stumble upon them, or you can simply recognize how deli.icio.us they are! This also brought back to my mind a post I had skimmed about how one blogger started getting tons of traffic simply by being stumbled upon.
In the interest of fully disclosure, I am not really sure yet that I really understand what any of this means, but all the cool blogs have them. I guess that kind of goes back to the steroids mentality, if everybody else is doing it… You should check out digg it, stumbleupon, and del.icio.us. Digg is “a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.” StubleUpon “discovers web sites based on your own interests, learns what you like and brings you more.” Del.icio.us is “a social bookmarks manager.” Based on my very limited experience stumble is pretty fun if you just have time to kill and are wanting to browse random but interesting sites. Del.icio.us is actually the one I think has the most potential benefit for me to personally use. Digg and Stumble seem more like ways that you can bring traffic to my blog by clicking on them. So, by all means digg, stumle, and del.icio.us this post. Who knows, maybe it will be the most popular post I have ever written…
Are any of you familiar with these? If you use them, which do you particularly like and how do they help you?
(Oh, and in case you missed the sarcasm, let me explicitly state that I in no way support the steroids culture of baseball. And for the record, my blog is clean and has never failed a performance enhancing feed test.)
It was my responsibility to give the Children’s Sermon last Sunday in worship. I wrestled with what to talk to them about. I always find Christmas to be a bit of an awkward time to talk to the children, because I have such great memories of Christmas, but my memories are mostly based on the gospel of consumerism, not the gospel of Christ. So, I sometimes struggle with finding helpful ways to talk to young people about the “true meaning of Christmas.”
Last week I decided to read a passage of Scripture to them and share a story. The Scripture passage I read was Matthew 2:1-2, 9-12 which is about the magi visiting Jesus and bringing him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. I asked them what happened in the story. (I was very impressed with how much they got out of the story, they recounted almost every detail.) I asked questions trying to get them to come to a realization that I had during the week that was the motivation for this Children’s Sermon: the magi gave gifts to Jesus, not to each other.
It is interested that the secular meaning of Christmas has become a time to give gifts to other people (and of course receive gifts too!) It seems to me that gifts play two roles in Scripture. First, Jesus is God’s gift to the world. We have all received the gift of the incarnate God sent to save us. Second, the people who recognized this gift for what it was brought gifts to Jesus in worship and thanksgiving.
So, I am coming to a deeper appreciation of the Little Drummer Boy’s struggle: what gift can I bring to Jesus? I have spent more time worrying about and thinking about how what gifts to give to my family and friends. But, in working on a children’s sermon I was reminded that I need to first make sure to receive the gift anew that has been given to me, the gift of God’s loving presence. And then it may be that I need to put more thought into how I will respond to that gift than to any other gift that I give.
I hope and pray that my very life is becoming the gift that I am offering to Jesus in worship and thanksgiving. What gift are you giving to Jesus this Christmas?
This past sunday I preached on Matthew 1:18-25. Maybe it is because I am an expectant father, I’m not sure, but I found myself really drawn to Joseph in this passage. I started out with a basic question: What difference does Joseph make in this passage? Is he necessary? I found that he was necessary and had an important role to play. Here is the sermon:
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Originally uploaded by deeplycommitted
Newkirk United Methodist Church caught fire around 4:30am this morning. The fire resulted in a total loss of the church, as is obvious from this picture. Newkirk UMC is in the Oklahoma Conference of the UMC. Please join with me in prayer for Rev. Jim Hollifield and the community of faith in Newkirk, Oklahoma. The sign in front of the church reads, “Every Day Gives You Another Chance.” May God bring new life out of this tragedy.
I have been wanting to do this for a long time. In light of yesterday’s sad events involving steroids, I want to turn my attention to one of the brightest spots in baseball over the last nearly twenty years, Craig Biggio. So, in honor of Craig Biggio’s stellar career with the Astros, this week’s Friday Shout Out goes out to Craig Biggio. Read the rest of this entry »
I stumbled on some passionate discussion about the shootings last weekend in Colorado. It helped me to think a bit more about what had happened. I have to admit, I thought it was very surreal to hear the senior pastor of New Life Church calling the security guard who shot and killed the armed man (though an autopsy later revealed the fatal gunshot was his own) a hero. I was also surprised that a basic premise of that church was that it was good to have an armed security guard on site, who was prepared to shoot to kill. It strikes me that it is a sad reflection on the church when the best response we have to offer to a sick and hurting world is to take out the sick and hurting people if they threaten us. I don’t have anything to add to the discussion beyond what has already been said, but I want to draw attention to Dr. Ben Witherington’s post, and a response to that post, which I am much less sympathetic to, at the methoblog. In some ways, I can identify the most with Andrew’s post about the shooting at Thoughts of Resurrection, which mostly conveys deep sadness.
When I was getting ready to go to seminary, I remember many people giving me the standard don’t lose your faith pitch. I remember wondering why so many people were worried that learning something was going to damage my faith. I also remember thinking it was slightly disturbing that so many people seemed like they would be more comfortable with an uneducated pastor than an educated pastor. It felt like the unexpressed fear was really that their faith couldn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
I went to seminary figuring that I had a lot to learn. I wanted to get as much out of the experience as I could, so I decided to hear people out on every possible subject. I tried to start from scratch. The one exception was that I was going to consider everything as a Christian. In other words, my identity as a follower of Jesus Christ was not up for discussion, because by this point in my life it had become part of who I was - not something I was trying to intellectually dissect.
For the first year and a half of seminary, I felt like open-mindedness was the number one virtue that was preached to me. The biggest sin you could commit, or so it felt, was to view what someone else was doing with a clean conscience as wrong or a sin. Now I want to be clear: I learned a lot during my time in seminary. Taking the time to really try to understand where people were coming from on different sides of controversial issues was very important to my development as not just a pastor, but more broadly, as a Christian. (Though, I also have to admit that I am sure I didn’t do a perfect job of understanding where people were coming from on either side of many controversial issues.)
Nevertheless, I did get to know and become friends with many different people with many different experiences. These were positive experiences for me. But they were not life-changing or life-giving. I know many people would disagree with me on this, but for me, trying to understand where everyone else was coming from was not causing me to grow in my relationship with God. In many ways it was an important step in learning to love my neighbor, but I don’t think that just accepting someone where they are at is the goal of Christ’s command to love your neighbor as yourself. (My goal for my own life is certainly not just to accept myself where I am at.)
The most transformative experience for me in seminary was the result of taking Methodist History and Doctrine and reading John Wesley’s sermons. I realized that this was a person who expressed much of what I intuitively felt about God. I always had a deep sense that the Christian life was a life of trying to give all that I knew about myself to my best understanding of who God was (though even that articulation has been strengthened by Dr. Doug Strong, one of my mentors in seminary). This meant that I expected to grow in my faith throughout my life because my understanding of God and where I was spiritually were both continually changing.
Around the same time that I took Methodist History and Doctrine, I was invited to join a Wesleyan band meeting. This was a group of five men who met weekly to confess their sins to one another, to vocalize the forgiveness we find in Christ, and to pray for one another. It was a powerful group that brought Wesley’s understanding of how to practice Christian faith to life for me. So I came to realize that I was Wesleyan theologically, and I was Wesleyan practically. Or, I could embrace a Wesleyan doctrine and a Wesleyan discipline.
What does all of this have to do with being open-minded? These experiences have led me to the conviction that it is crucial in the postmodern matrix to be able to identify where you are standing. Many people seem to get confused by all of the options that face them and just sort of exist in this plurality of choices. But for me at least, I found that I only had something to say, I only could confidently say I had a contribution to make, once I knew where I was coming from.
In other words, there is a sense in which close-mindedness may be more difficult and more important than being open-minded in the twenty-first century mainline church. Now, I would not take this to extremes. We are called to love our neighbor, even when we disagree with them. We would never harm those whom Christ died for with our words or our actions. But, do you see what I am saying? I think there is a sense in which we need to know where we stand before we have much of anything to say. I feel like I have something to offer when I talk with another Christian, or someone who is not a Christian because I am speaking not just as Kevin, but I am trying as best as I can to represent the Wesleyan tradition, which I am convinced is the best path to the life that God created us for.
Sometimes in our efforts to be open-minded we forget that we actually believe something is true about the world. It seems that in far too many places the church has lost its passion for transforming the culture that it is sent in mission to, and I can’t help but wonder if that is because we have become so open to anything and everything that we have lost our voice. We just don’t know that we have anything to say.
What are your thoughts or reactions? I would love to hear your response.
You may not have figured this out yet, but I am a huge Houston Astros fan. Last season was a very painful one, other than the thrill of watching Craig Biggio pad his Hall of Fame resume. (I got to see him play one last time in Houston, which was a blast.)Today the Houston Astros made a huge trade for Miguel Tejada. Here is the trade. The Astros get Miguel Tejada. The Orioles get: Luke Scott, Troy Patton, Matt Albers, Dennis Sarfate, and Mike Costanzo. I have to say I really don’t know what to make of this trade. It seemed obvious that we were going to trade Luke Scott, but I am very surprised that Patton was a part of the deal, since we are a) desperate for pitching and b) he seemed to be the consensus best pitching prospect in our system.It is also somewhat shocking to me to notice how dramatically different our lineup will be from last year. So far, 2 (yes TWO) of last year’s starting 8 offensive players will be starting on opening day, and one of them was making his first start as a Houston Astro (they are Lance Berkman and Carlos Lee). I guess now that Biggio and Bagwell are gone it is starting to sink in more that the Astros really are like any other team, with a constantly changing lineup.I have no idea what people will say about this trade in two years after Tejada has played as an Astro, and is a free agent again. If he produces and helps the Astros contend again, it could be seen as a huge success. If he is mediocre and some of those prospects pan out, I think there is the potential that this could go down as one of the worst trades in baseball history. Not saying that it will, just that it could. Here is one interesting, and funny, take on this trade.Here’s hoping that it works out great for my Astros!
I started reading Ted Campbell and Michael Burns’ Wesleyan Essentials in a Multicultural Society yesterday. In the second chapter, “Biblical Authority in a Relativist World” I came across this excellent challenge:
We need to ask ourselves, though, if we in fact own the authority of Scripture over our own lives and over the lives of our congregations. A practical test is to ask “Do you expect to be changed when you read the Bible?” If one does not really expect to be changed by reading the Bible, then for all our talk about biblical authority, we do not really own it. To own the authority of the Bible is to face the reality, every time we open it, that God will have a fresh, new message for us, one that may challenge us very deeply (21).
I think Campbell and Burns effectively point out how often we as Christians talk about the authority of Scripture without actually behaving as if Scripture really did have authority over our lives. At a very basic level, if Scripture is to have authority over our lives, we need to at least spend time reading it so that we know what it actually says.
I don’t know about you, but this passage convicts me not just to say that the Bible is authoritative, but actually to own its authority over my life.
