The Christian Imagination

There’s an interesting post and discussion over at ThinkChristian.com about preaching: Doing Away With Preaching.

He quotes another article wherein the author says: “Preaching as it is practised in modern churches is extra-biblical, a poor form of communication, and creates dependency.”

Here’s the comment I posted: I don’t think the problem is with preaching per se. It serves a purpose, especially as the number in the community grows. The problem is over-reliance on preaching combined with what is often a passive audience mentality in the hearers. In the West, we live in an over-communicated society where we often don’t take time to reflect on or talk about what we here. For a sermon to be effective, there has to be a context where we do more with it than just passively listen to it and then go on to the next thing afterwards.

My opinion is that preaching is overrated in how important it is, but that’s not to say it doesn’t provide value. We also have to remember that it’s only one part of a church service, and that God works in ways that go beyond rational communication.

I once read a book by Juan Carlos Ortiz where he started wondering why they discussed one topic in the sermon, another in Bible study, etc. So, they switched the focus on their entire church to focus on one topic for a certain length of time.

We live in an age where we take in lots of information but spend very little time doing anything with it. If we expect a 30 minute sermon on one topic once a week that is often not thought much about once we leave the building to have any real impact, we’re kidding ourselves. It really comes down to what the individual decides to do with what they hear. Perhaps, though, the church community could do more to support living out sermons in our daily lives in ways that are meaningful.

Mass communication is never the most effective method of communicating meaning to individuals, and perhaps part of our love for it is that it’s easy. It will always have a place, but it doesn’t absolve us of individual responsibility for our lives nor of getting involved in committed relationships.

I am looking forward to 2008, for so many reasons. I move into a new apartment next week, and it looks like an exciting year to be in business.

Here’s what to look forward to with The Christian Imagination:
1. A new design: This design has always been temporary. Look for a new design sometime in 2008.
2. Weekly Spotlights: Highlighting a person or organization that focuses on faith and art.
3. Each week, I’ll try to have one post related to pop culture, and one Bible-oriented post.

It’s been about 5 months since this started, and I’m still getting into a groove. I’m having fun, so let’s keep doing this.

Seth

I received an email forward last week. Like most email forwards, I scanned it briefly and then deleted it. This email was about the ‘real meaning’ of the 12 Days of Christmas, and how it is really a song with hidden Christian (Catholic, specifically) symbols and meanings. At Christmas this year, someone had printed it off and brought it to share. So, suspecting it to be false, I did what I often do: Go to Snopes.com and do a search.

Snopes had this to say. It is, of course, false. I am continually bewildered by people’s desire to believe forwarded emails, all the more since they rarely even refer to a concrete source. It’s not like 20 years ago where we had to make an effort to do research. Putting most any email title into Google is often enough. What’s it take? 1 or 2 minutes? Instead, people click forward, and misinformation continues.

The question I have is: Why do so many Christians mindlessly pass along these emails? Do we want to believe so hard that we’re willing to believe anything that seemingly supports our belief system? Are we afraid to find out that some of our assumptions are wrong? Do we think source materials are overrated? I really don’t know. I remember years ago being at a church meeting and they were passing along the Procter & Gamble supports Satanism email and agreeing how they were going to boycott all the P&G products. I told them that I thought it was a hoax, but they confidently pointed to the referred to video and other evidence in the email and told me I was wrong. I went downstairs, searched Yahoo, then confirmed to them that indeed, it was a hoax. Even then, they still didn’t want to believe they could be wrong.

Sometimes I’m really scared for Christians in America. Some of these emails are rather benign, but some of the supposed pro-Christian emails that are forwarded just make Christians look like idiots. There are Christians who get bent out of shape over how ’somebody’ is attacking the Christian faith (ACLU, O’Hare, Liberals, etc), and then will demonize the supposed enemy over nothing. It’s embarrassing. If someone wants to forward photos of cats, fine, but if you’re going to forward an email that makes claims for my faith, please don’t add to the misinformation out there by forwarding an email before doing a quick search on Google. Thank you.

Everyday Joe’s Coffee House, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, has released a 19 song CD compilation in MP3 format:

“One part of the vision of Everyday Joe’s is to give back to the community as much as possible…whether that be monetarily, through in-kind donations, not charging for the use of the building, and now, through a free CD compilation for you.

Love, Everyday Joe’s- vol. 1: No More Gloom is now up for download by clicking here. This is an idea that had been brewing in our minds for some time and to see it come to fruition is fantastic. All the music on the album was donated by musicians who have played here. This will only be available for a limited time (until about Jan. 1) so don’t dilly dally. Get downloading!

Songs were donated by: Aboyandhiskite, Winderous Igloos, Eric Peters, Josh Dillard, Luke Flowers, Trace Bundy, Eva Holbrook, Kate Hurley, The Blackthorn Project, Tim Coons, Listener Project, The Apprentice, Jeremy Lister, Jonah Werner, Andrew Osenga, Katie Herzig, Aaron Strumpel, and Sleeping At Last.”