Ok…so, whew…I think this will be the last one of these I do.
Author: Rob Woodrum
I serve as a pastor among the people of Eastgate Christian Fellowship in Panama City Beach, Florida. I'm not very good at it, but it's what God has called me to do...so I do.
Slogan Theology
So, in perusing some of the blogs and boards I visit frequently, someone posted a link to The Advertising Slogan Generator. It’s one of those fascinating little online oddities that help wile away the hours for bored office workers.
Here’s how it works: Type in any word into the field provided, and the program spits out a clever slogan. I’m assuming the whole thing is designed to tickle the disenfranchised, those who are desensitized to marketing. It’s sort of a “man behind the curtain” thing…revealing that most advertising slogans are so inane that random generation of words are about as effective as what Madison Avenue offers us regularly.
So I typed in Jesus.
And here’s what I got.
You know what’s really sad about that? As absurd as those slogans are…I could easily imagine a best-selling book with those titles. We Americans…rather, we American Christians seem to love slogans. In fact…I would almost go so far as to say that mainstream church culture has a certain “slogan theology”. That is, we like the aspects of Jesus we can easily sell.
Meditate on the revelation of God, the Bible? No way…just ask “what would Jesus do?”
Struggle over God’s will through anguished prayer? Heck no, pray the Prayer of Jabez!
Lay down your will, surrender your rights and live sacrificially for the Kingdom? Not a chance…instead, live “Your best life NOW!”
But why stop there? I could write quick books that have catchy titles now that I have the slogan generator! How about these:
“Tired of the same old grind, tired of not getting ahead?…You need to MOVE AT THE SPEED OF JESUS!”
“That old timey religion got you bored? We’ll teach you what we’ve learned about presenting a cool version of the gospel, because WE DO JESUS RIGHT!”
“THE WORLD’S LOCAL JESUS, 7 steps to innovative neighborhood outreach from your cell group ministry”.
Slogan theology.
You heard it here first folks.
That’s because:
Bible Survival part 3
Once again…sorry for the choppiness of this video…some of it is editing, some of it is because it got wonky during the digital capture…hopefully it won’t distract too much.
Here are the links I mentioned:
David Guzik’s Online Commentary
Bible Gateway – I forgot to mention in the video that you can listen to an AUDIO version of the Bible at this site as well, for those who don’t like to read!
Bible study tools on Crosswalk
If you just can’t bring yourself to read at all…you can still listen to teachings on the Bible online at a LOT of different church sites…Eastgate’s included.
Some other teachers I would recommend are:
Mike MacIntosh , Jon Courson , Joe Focht or you may like Mark Driscoll
There are so many teachers who have their instruction online the list could be endless.
Have fun!
Bible Survival
Ok…I’m sorry for the late entry today. I’ve been working on this video here and there throughout the day…sorry for it’s length, and for the choppy editing (though in some way, it may achieve a certain stylization by chopping it up the way I did)(Seriously though…I had to chop it up to remove all the extrenious stuff that just made it even longer).
Beatitudes
In his book, “The Pursuit of God”, A.W. Tozer writes:
“The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the ‘poor in spirit'”
Where is that voice today? Where are the leaders calling us to this kind of abandonment to God and His will? Tozer, in his day, was almost a lone voice calling out a warning about the dangerous, self-oriented path that evangelicalism was taking. Those voices are still there today, still warning…albeit, mostly from the fringe.
I’m not feeling good today (not just mentally, I think I have that sore throat-flu thing that’s been going about smacking people lately…and given my propensity for asking people to hold hands at Burning House meetings, it’s no wonder). But anyway…I’m not feeling good, which is my excuse for writing such a biting satire below. It’s not that I’m trying to be difficult…it’s just that I’m frustrated at what we are passing off as Christianity these days. Please feel free to take exception to my words.
THE MODERN EVANGELICAL BEATITUDES
Blessed are the rich,
For they show off God’s power to prosper and get more stuff.
Blessed are the entertained,
For they shall be numbed to the realities of life and responsibility.
Blessed are the loud,
For their picketing, protests and demands shall make politicians fear them.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for self-help formulas and platitudes,
For they shall find a cornucopia of books to make them feel good at the Christian bookstore.
Blessed are the condemning,
For their signs and bullhorns prove they are right and all others are wrong.
Blessed are they who are steeped in doctrinal training,
For they shall have an answer for everything, and no more shall mystery be tolerated.
Blessed are those who promote the war on terror,
For they shall always know war.
Blessed are those who work toward legislating Christian values and morals,
Who force the Christian way of life on all, regardless of individual choice,
For theirs is the kingdom of this world and it’s ways.
Doodling Thoughts for the Day
Sorry for the delay in posting…holidays you know.
The Power of Tradition
You know…Christmas is a wonderful holiday. I know that many have said that a war is being waged on Christmas, citing the new trend of shoppers being greeted with “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas”…and other strange little insignificant issues that people seem to love obsessing over. In reality though, Christmas itself is a strange mish-mosh of pagan and Christian symbols, replete with syncretism and outright mythology.
One interesting bit of mythology is the ordinary Nativity Scene. A typical Nativity Scene looks like this:
It has Mary, Joseph and Jesus, which is a good place to start, but what’s really interesting is all the stuff that has been added which is, as far as we know, pure fiction.
WHAT?!! How can you say that?
Well…just hang with me here. As I said, the main characters are right…but in addition to them, we have three wise men (when the Bible just says “Wise men came from the east”….no number given. There were three gifts mentioned, but that is no proper indicator of how many made the trip. Also, we are told that the wise men came and visited the “young child”…which most scholars seem to think indicates this was 1-2 years after his birth).
Also in addition to Mary, Joe and Jesus is a group of animals. I had always heard the wonderful stories of the animals all bowing down to the Little Lord Jesus and always was fond of them. They are nice…but totally fabricated. There’s no scriptural indication that any such thing happened.
Actually, the stable which houses this nice Nativity Scene is apocryphal. The language the Bible uses doesn’t indicate a western style wooden stable at all, but more likely is referring to the lower room of a family house, where much of the cooking was done, and where smaller animals would be housed and fed during the cold months.
Other things like the Innkeeper (which isn’t in the scene above but is usually part of the story), and even the idea of a traditional western style “inn” are fabrications as well. Joseph was heading to his ancestral home for the census…he would have had family in Bethlehem. The word translated as inn is really quite nebulous in our language, and is also the word used to describe the upper room where Jesus met with his disciples and families for the last Passover meal they shared. The word used for “inn” could just mean there wasn’t any room left in the guest room of Joseph’s family when he came to Bethlehem, so he and Mary had to go to the lower room and bunk there…oh yeah, and birth a child.
It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? All the stuff of tradition that seeps into our understanding of a story, which really alters the original quite a bit. There are a LOT of things, just like the Nativity Scene, that have been reverently placed in the concept of church which have no basis in scripture for their origin. That’s why I still insist that simple is safer. We know Joseph was there….and Mary was too, and best of all Jesus was. All the other stuff is just along for the ride, we can take it or leave it. So with the church. We know Jesus is there…that he died on a cross to save us and draw us together….beyond that, most stuff is based on cultural preference and view. If we hold to the peripheral stuff loosely, we’ll stay with the simple….and to me, that’s where its safe.
Merry Christmas!
(by the by, here’s an interesting site to read about how the birth of Christ may have gone down)Sufjan Stevens Christmas
I don’t have much to post today. I came across this video and want to share it with you since it’s timely. Sufjan Stevens is probably my favorite indy folk artist, and this is a song from his Christmas album. It makes me feel warm and slightly fuzzy, although it may just be that I need a shave. It also remeinds me of Schoolhouse Rock, which makes me sort of nostalgic as well.
Anyway, enjoy:
On Becoming Real
In the book The Velveteen Rabbit, a little stuffed bunny is given as a Christmas present to The Boy (as he’s called in the story). During his time in the nursery, he is befriended by another toy, The Skin Horse. The Skin Horse instructs the toy bunny about what all the toys of the nursery are really waiting for, and that is, becoming real. When the Velveteen Rabbit asks the Skin Horse what this means, here is the reply:
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” …
The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.
Welcome to the world of the Christ Follower, on a journey to know the transforming power of Love.
Is There Music on a Printed Page?
The band Pieces of the Wreck is going to play a little “mini-show” on December 31st (New Year’s Eve). We’ll have our Burning House service, and then roll right in to a Sounds of Thunder/Pieces of the Wreck concert.
It’s sort of funny though, because they are almost the same band with the exception of just a few members here and there. Same bassist, drummer, guitarist…the only thing that will distinguish us is the band name. Heh.
Anyway…this all means that we have to practice, which is always a combination of hilarity and extreme frustration. Last night, we were working on a cover of the Train song “Calling all Angels”. It has been a while since we last did that song, and I had a little trouble at times trying to keep the rhythm, vocally. I had the words right, and the tune was correct, I just had the wrong emphasis going, which put me out of sync rhythmically. When I realized it, I hurried through the vocals to catch myself up…you know, just sort of droning through them quickly with no emphasis or passion at all.
It got me thinking about the Bible.
“Doesn’t EVERYTHING make you think of the Bible?”
“No…well, maybe, I don’t know. Stay out of this.”
Maybe part of the problem that seems inherent in the 21st Century
American Church© is that we’ve worked so hard to get all the words right that we’ve lost the proper emphasis over time. Is it even possible that having all the words just right may not be the most important thing?
If you look at a sheet of music, with lyrics and musical notes printed on it, does that piece of paper accurately convey the song the composer wrote? It does potentially, but not in practicality. How could looking at all the notes in place and all the lyrics written out ever reveal the beauty of a song? Is it even music if it’s not performed?
But when it’s performed, it must be done with more than just the right notes and the lyrics properly in place…it must carry the right emphasis and passion in the expression of it. Think of how a singer can do a cover of another artist’s song. He makes it distinctly his own while not doing damage to the original tune. The cover artist can only do this by retaining the original emphasis, and taking the song into himself and then expressing it with his own passion.
As we come to God’s Word, our interest has to run deeper than just getting the words right. It’s more complex than just parsing out proper context and interpretation. We must take it in, find the rhythm of it, find the emphasis, and then express it as our own life. Otherwise, it’s just words on a page. Is there really any music if a song isn’t performed…is there really inspiration if the Word isn’t lived out?
Just some thoughts over my coffee this morn.
