A Glimpse of the Kingdom of God

Random acts of kindness, going the extra mile, you call it what you want. I call it a glimpse of the Kingdom of God - a little vision of the way the world is supposed to be; the way God intends it. Here’s a moment of true grace.

from sports.espn.go.com posted with vodpod

Youth Culture Findings

Linky-poo

Understanding youth culture in a postmodern age keeps growing increasingly difficult.  Generations change faster than ever, and our frames of reference grow obsolete at a breakneck pace.

We here at A Man Called Preach won’t let you down.  We’ll keep you on top of the trends.  Check this piece from Dan Kennedy at McSweeney’s.

BY DAN KENNEDY

- - - -

Someone born in 1980 has never seen MTV as a music channel or as a destination for music knowledge or information, and has never watched a movie in a movie theater. Or seen a stove.

The average teenager today is engaged in sexual activity with at least two different partners for about 72 hours per week. And you can double that figure—for both cumulative time and number of partners—when LSD rave parties come into the picture.

A baby born this year will be controlled by tiny radios by the time it’s 11.

Teenagers rarely use telephones to communicate with their friends anymore; if they want to talk to someone, they’ll just meet people in witch cults in the mountains outside Olympia, Washington. Cell-phone service providers generally frustrate them, so they resort to making drugs or breaking into homes that appear to be vacant.

Teenage girls most identify with—and aspire to be similar to—singer-songwriter Sting, and enjoy using marking pens to write the phrase “Pee or fart on me” on unconscious peers.

(Follow the link at the top of the page for more.)

Also be sure to check out the rough drafts of the Parables of Jesus, HERE.

Friday Five - Bad Songs

The Jayhawks’ cover of Grand Funk Railroad’s “Bad Time.”  I like the Jayhawks’ version better than the original, but then again I like the Jayhawks better than Grand Funk - so no surprise there!

Johnny Winter - Bad Girl Blues.  Man I love the sound of that National Steel Guitar.  And I love blues songs that are basically dirty jokes.

Tom Petty - Yer So Bad.  I haven’t posted enough Petty, who is one of my all time faves, in my Friday Fives.  This video features the late Charlie Rocket, formerly of Saturday Night Live.

Johnny Cash - Bad News.  This song is a little weird.  I can’t tell if that laugh is sinister or high or both.  Love the Dobro, though.

Clapton - Bad Love.  Love the Robin Trower-esque wah guitar in the intro.  But Clapton is always awesome.

(Edited because Bad Love and Yer So Bad could not be embedded.  They are now linked.)

Gospel Telecaster

Here’s the song that turned me around.  I used to be kind of neutral toward Bruce Springsteen.  I thought he was overrated and overhyped, but undeniably talented.

Then I heard this song and I “got it.”  Bruce is the man.  He has stated that there is a common thread between front porch music, whorehouse music, field music, bar room music and church music.  Here he bridges the gap with a proclamation of hope and good news.

I dare anyone else to write a gospel song this good, this effective, this chillbump-inducing.

That’s a Fender Custom Shop Telecaster with Joe Barden pickups.  Anyone who feels like buying me one just like it can feel free to indicate so in the comments or by email.

The Other Big Will

I really like reading Will Willimon’s blog.  (Is it okay to call him Will, or should I refer to him as Bishop?  I get the sense from his writings that he might prefer to be called by name). I tend to like his books as well.  In my biblical theology class we were required to read Resident Aliens and to engage its peculiar take on eschatology: that the end has already happened and the world as we once knew it is gone for good.  I found that to be a refreshing if challenging break from the Left Behind / dispensational theology of contemporary Christian culture (with which I disagree) and Johannine realized eschatology.  But I digress.

This morning Bishop Will really hit a home run.  As he reflected on the revitalization of older churches (a personal passion of mine), he dropped this bomb:

Warning: Dick Freeman, Thomas Muhumba, and Dale Cohen would have me add: No existing, older churches can be revitalized without risk, commitment, and a determination to be faithful to the mission of Christ no matter what.

If your church is in decline and not growing, it is because your congregation has decided to die rather than to live (alas, there is no in between when it comes to churches).

That last sentence just slays me.  It is prophetic and true.  It stirs up strongly mixed feelings.  I wanted to jump up and shout AMEN! and I wanted to squirm.

As a pastor my first instinct is to point out how that statement is easier to make from the Bishop’s position, or from academia.  It’s easier for a bishop or a professor to say that to a bunch of pastors than it is for a pastor to say to her dying congregation.

And yet, a pastor began the process of saving my home church by saying pretty much the same thing.  At a church council meeting Red Andricks said, “I wasn’t sent here to hold this church’s hand while you die.  If that’s all this church wants from me I will call the bishop and move on.”

Harsh, angry, prophetic words.  It reminds me of a sign that a counselor friend used to keep above her desk.  It read, “The truth will set you free.  But first it will PISS YOU OFF!”

(Truer words have never been spoken.  If you want to make someone angry tell lies about them, but if you want to make them REALLY angry tell the truth about them!)

And the church was not happy with Red’s words, primarily because they were true.  But Red’s leadership prompted serious growth in that church.  In a dying southern Illinois town that church grew from around 50 every Sunday to nearly 200 in a matter of a few years.  Maybe not the most stunning numbers to all of you, but when 200 is ten percent of the town’s population and too many jobs have moved away (and too many high school graduates follow), it’s absolutely astounding.  The church is not only a grown entity in terms of numbers but also in their religious commitment, community service and mission, spiritual growth, and priesthood of all believers.  They grew because they decided to do it right.

And because they decided not to die.

I wrestle with the Bishop’s words this morning because I need the spine to say them myself.  It is hard as an itinerant preacher who finds himself potentially serving congregations who decided to die 30 or 40 years ago.  But sometimes the doctor has to say, “this is going to hurt, but I have to do it before you can heal.”  Maybe pastors have to claim the prophetic voice that can say, “this truth is going to piss you off, but it’s going to set you free.”

Weed Eater Ecclesiology

I have for the past few years had a contentious relationship with my gas-powered weed eater.  It doesn’t like to start.  It doesn’t like to run.  It likes to flood when I’m trying to start it.  I constantly have to remove the spool to rethread the string.  It is greasy, dirty and it drips onto my garage floor.

But when it finally starts it’s great.  It has sufficient power to knock down some very heavy weeds.  If you can get the thing started (and that’s an ever-increasing IF, dear readers) the sidewalks, the landscaping and the foundation of the house will look beautiful.  Beautiful enough to keep me from setting the thing on fire and dancing on its ashes.

My utterly quotable brother-in-law Tim (I’m so jealous of his ability in that realm) says, “every two-stroke engine has its own magic formula for getting it to start.  You have to figure out how many times to hit the primer bubble, how high to set the choke, how many times to pull the cord.  The hard part is finding that magic formula and remembering it.”

Some churches are like that too.  If you can get them started awesome things will happen.  The challenge is getting them started.  You gotta prime the carburetor,  hit the choke, pull the cord a dozen times, set it to half-choke, pull a dozen more times, realize it’s flooded and leave it alone for a couple hours or a couple days, clean out the air filter, yank that starter rope until your arm threatens to fall off, hear it sputter to life, mess with the throttle just right until the thing runs well, then get to work and pray it lives to work another day.

Some churches will make you want to drop them in the yard and walk away mumbling and cursing to yourself.  Some churches seem content to hang in the garage, slowly dripping fuel and oil onto the concrete floor.

And some pastors need to have the mindset of a tinker, unafraid to take things apart, clean ‘em up, examine them, put them back together and see what happens.  Is there a possibility that you take it apart and discover that it’s either too broken to go back together or that you at least need professional help to get it started again?  Yep.  (Thank God for connexionalism in the UMC - that’s what District Superintendents and the other pastors in the covenant group are for).

Some churches can be exceedingly frustrating.  And as pastors we have to be unafraid to head down to Lowe’s to get some needle-nose pliers, a decent set of Allen wrenches, some vise-grips, a new air filter, some carb cleaner, a spark plug, and get to work experimenting.

Because as frustrating as some churches are, once you get ‘em running again the results can be beautiful.

Speaking the truth to power

Man, if this is typical of Boston Legal I may just have to start watching.  Oh, that our pastors had enough guts to speak such hard truths.

Infamous

Theresa “reverend mommy” Coleman has been Willdeueling all of her friends on facebook.  Seems she likes my original ukulele tune Goat on a Stick and has been posting it on everyone’s funwall.

Willdeueling is a little like Rickrolling, except I’m not a pasty, redheaded English singer who sounds like Michael McDonald, and my song has zero production value.  It was recorded LIVE in my living room by my Kodak digital camera with its cheezy tiny mic.

So look out for rampant willdeueling.

I’m just not comfortable with being famous for that.

Indefensible! Inexplicable! INCONCEIVABLE!

Suddenly I hate Wal-Mart a little less now.

A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Preach

To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free…” - Bob Dylan, Mr. Tambourine Man

One of the ongoing projects of this blog is to link my understanding of songwriting (and great rock songwriting is one of my true passions) with the art of creating sermons.  And my chief influence for thinking critically about the songwriting process is Bob Dylan.  Dylan is marvelous at writing socially conscious protest songs, moving love songs, poetic songs with nonsensical but deeply evocative lyrics, humorous songs, blues, and everything in between.

Today I want to look at Dylan’s poetic style, and specifically at one of his transitional songs that moved him from straightforward storytelling to swirling, evocative poetic imagery.  An early draft of A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall appears on Live at the Gaslight, 1962, so it has been with him essentially from the beginning. Yet it marks a significant step in his career because it transcends folk music as it was traditionally defined and delves into painting powerful, emotional word pictures that evoke a primal, emotional response.

Here are the lyrics, taken from Bobdylan.com:

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’,
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’,
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’,
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’,
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’,
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’,
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

“A dozen dead oceans.”  Okay, literally we have only named five but Dylan sings of a dozen.  Clearly he moves us out of a literal world and into a world of perception.  This, in my reading, is what “John” does in Revelation.  Most of the imagery is undecipherable on its own, but taken together it paints a stark picture of a world in which judgment is coming.  The “darling young son” (in my reading) seeks in the final verse to find redemption in a community that sees the world in a different light, stands firm in its convictions, and proclaims its message to anyone with ears to hear.  But none of this is done in so many words.  It’s not spoon-fed to us.  Bob assumes our intelligence, and in so doing he manages to abduct our imaginations.

When is the last time you heard a preacher use an image as nonsensical but evocative as “a roomful of men with their hammers a-bleeding?”  Have you ever heard a sermon with swirling imagery that makes no sense literally but grabs your attention and doesn’t let go?

Dylan doesn’t just sing a song here, he creates a world and holds it up for us to see.  Sermons should do that.  We, as preachers, are called to do our best to see the world as God sees it - broken and offered redemption - and to draw the congregation into that vision.  And maybe we occasionally need to lure our listeners in with evocative poetic imagery like white ladders all covered with water, young men wounded by love and by hatred, bleeding hammers, clowns crying in the alley, bloody black branches.

Let the images tell the story.  Sometimes stories are told better with poetry and metaphor than with narrative and verbs.