Wow.  I’ve been bogged down with an awful lot of busy work lately.  Having a two-point charge, CPE, a wife with a large family, three active children, and a partridge in a pear tree can keep a fella running.  There have been days lately where there are three places I’m supposed to be at the same time.

So I’m sitting at Annual Conference.  I wondered what it would be like to walk into the building given my newfound notoriety.  I was aware that with my recent posts I was bringing not peace but a sword – and that has been affirmed.  I know there are members of the BoOM who agree with what I have stated, and there are those who disagree with me strongly and may have even been offended by my assertions.  I was approached by one member of the board who told me that the Bishop is dedicated to looking critically at the ordination process in our Conference and making the relationship between the board and candidates less adversarial and more helpful.

Thanks be to God.

It is a different experience to walk into Annual Conference without the degree of anonymity I used to enjoy.  Oops. Fame (or infamy or notoriety or whatever) has its costs, I suppose.  But I’m glad I rocked the boat.  A healthier conversation has emerged regarding the troubles candidates have in navigating the obstacles on the course to ordination.  Hopefully we can put an end to the dissemination of inaccurate, outdated information and begin to recognize the gifts, graces, life situations and experiences of individual candidates.

I’ve been asked if CPE was a complete rehash of my own experiences.  To be honest, it was very much like a refresher course in counseling and pastoral care.  It never hurts Albert Pujols to take batting practice or to work with a hitting coach, so it couldn’t hurt me to do more on-the-spot crisis ministry.  It was helpful to me in that regard.  And I have no doubt that some clergy candidates benefit greatly from the experience of CPE and should be required to take it.  I used it as an opportunity to practice the ministry of non-anxoious presence, to hone my “in the moment” prayer verbiage, and to sieze teaching moments with the other residents.  And our groups gave me a safe space to complain and moan about my ordination woes.  The experience did affirm, however, that I was correct in my appeals to the board.  The experience was, to a large degree, redundant for me.

Don’t get me wrong.  I liked it.  I met tremendous people.  I enjoyed learning the ins and outs of the hospital.  Two residents were Seventh Day Adventists, and I enjoyed having the opportunity to learn more about their denomination and beliefs.

During the first week I found a quote from Thomas Merton that I held onto for the experience.  The quote came from Learning to Love as he reflected upon his personal turmoil regarding his affair late in his life.  That quote got me through CPE, and is getting me through being a bit notorious in the big room today.

“Hence, the only thing to do is to take all of it with a good heart and joy, and not fear the pain that must come with it.”

Amen, Brother Thomas, Amen.

Back when I heard Zan Holmes speak, he responded to questions about Rev. Jeremiah Wright (because that controversy was in the news at the time) and Holmes stated, “I would really like to hear the rest of the sermon, not just those 30 seconds.  In the African-American preaching tradition, the sermon revolves around naming sin then proclaiming grace.”

Well I, for one, hope that’s not only in the African-American church tradition, but I can say that I’ve heard too many sermons that do one really well but forget the other.

In my last post, I named sin as I saw it.  I was harsh and angry.  And I won’t back down from it.  I believe that if the experiences of candidates in the ordination process is one of hazing, being bullied, or abused then somebody has missed the mark somewhere.

I feel sick to my stomach when I read Matthew Kelly’s comment to my previous post.  He writes,

“In my own conference, there was a slide during the day long orientation to the BOMEC application process that literally said “we are trying to remove notions of ‘grace’ and ‘hope’ from this process”

Okay kiddies.  Get out your hymnals and open to Amazing Grace.  Tear that page out, wad it up and throw it in the trash. Grace Greater Than Our Sin?  Same Deal.  My Hope is Built?  Burn it.  No hope.  No grace.

No gospel.

I can understand a degree of stringency about deadlines and faithfulness to the process – but to intentionally remove all notions of grace and hope? That’s about as un-Christian as you can get.  And worse, there was no indication in Matthew’s comment that anyone stood up to say that was wrong.

I understand that the Board’s primary responsibility is to the Annual Conference and to the churches served by the Conference.  But far too often it seems we forget about that last part.  I’ve heard lots of pastors complain that all entities within the Conference exist to serve the Conference.

I’m not asking anyone to hold my hand and baby me through the process.  I’ve told the board on more than one occasion that my personal growing edge weakness (let’s call a spade a spade) is in administration.  If the board’s primary purpose (actually, sole purpose according to someone very well known within the denomination) is to make pastors for our churches, then they would look at our individual strengths and weaknesses and require us to fill in those gaps.  For many young pastors, CPE is a great option and perhaps a necessity.  For others (like me), some administrative apprenticeships would better serve to make us effective pastors for the Annual Conference and the churches it serves.

I do not believe that the board is out to get me.  I do not believe that the people who serve on the board are evil or bad.  I do not believe that they conspire to make us fail.  But I do believe that they may have forgotten that young, energetic, effective leadership is exactly what the UMC needs right now.  The way the process is being handled now, it is serving to take young, effective, energetic pastors and turn us into bitter, jaded, cynical, angry pastors.  Something in the system is sick with sin.

But God’s grace is good.  God’s grace is redemptive.  Don’t remove grace from the process.  We are people, not checklists.

With sin, we’re in a heap of trouble.  Without Grace, we’re screwed.  If we shut grace out of the process, our proclamations of grace from the pulpit will ring hollow and serve only as clanging gongs or noisy cymbals.  Redemption is only possible through God’s grace.

The Greek word skandalon is usually translated in the New Testament as “stumbling block,” but according to Fred Danker (the D in BDAG) it might be better translated as the trigger of a trap – the part that sets the trapping mechanism in motion.

There has been an awful lot of debate about the ordination process in the United Methodist Church.  Of course, some of that was due to General Conference this past year, but where two or more United Methodist pastors gather the conversation is there also.  And to a person everyone I have spoken with is frustrated with it.  The process is seen as cumbersome, ineffective, inefficient, run by the “old boy network,” and downright nightmarish.  True tales are told of disillusionment (see John the former Methodist) as well as divorce and other serious familial problems, financial burdens, as well as burnout, depression and lingering anger and resentment. Nobody gets through it without some grievances and scars.

Here’s my grievance.  I have thought and prayed long and hard about whether to go public with it, but I have decided that if the board stands by their decision they should have no problem with it being known.

I am a therapist, or at least I used to be.  My Bachelor’s degree is in Psychology, my first Master’s degree is in Rehabilitation Counseling.  I have a decade of counseling and therapy experience.  I have spent countless billable hours in session with persons who suffer from alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, Borderline Personality Disorder, histories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, chronic and acute suicidal behaviors, learning disabilities, developmental disabilities, ADHD, complicated grief, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and more.  I have specialized training from the Albert Ellis Institute for Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy.  I’ve worked in inpatient facilities, outpatient facilities, schools and homes.  I was a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in the state of Illinois.

Then I discerned a call to the ordained ministry.  I gave all that up and entered the candidacy process.

I have incurred tremendous debt and uprooted my family to attend seminary.  In the middle of seminary my family moved again so that I could serve a student appointment.  We moved a third time when I graduated for my commissioning appointment.  I have attended the required Residence in Ministry sessions in which I have sat through lectures (some for a second or third time) that were often boring or ill-prepared.  And I have gladly accepted the itinerant system of pastoral appointment.  I attended Sexual Ethics and Boundary training twice: once on campus at Eden after being informed by the Conference that said training was acceptable, and once at IGRC headquarters after they rescinded their word without even informing us.  We were given nasty letters threatening action if we did not attend the next upcoming workshop.  I once was informed that the Board of Ordained Ministry lost my psychological evaluation.  (Yeah, all that confidential information?  Not safeguarded at all.)

Residence in Ministry, which takes precious time away from both my family and my pastoral ministry, has been a complete waste of time.  Nothing we have done truly addressed the process of ordination.  Nothing.  Mostly it has served as a platform for advertising workshops and denominational programming.  Heck, they even changed their minds at the last minute on which book of the Bible our ordination sermons and Bible Study had to cover.  We were never taught how to  fill out Charge Conference forms, annual statistical reports, or any of the stuff we get in trouble if we don’t do.  We never worked on the ordination questions, never discussed models of writing the Bible Study.  But we did sit through lectures encouraging us to attend the Upper Room’s Academy for Spiritual Formation and the Congregational Development Leadership Institute.  We did case studies and book reviews as though we hadn’t gotten enough of that in seminary.  We handled family emergencies by phone because of the threat that if we missed any of this essential stuff our ordination would be pushed back a year.

Because of my extensive experience as a professional clinician I was encouraged by a member of the board to apply for a waiver of the CPE requirement.  I did.  I was shot down twice.  To a person, every board member I have spoken to privately has agreed that my experience should qualify.  Since my clinical career I have received a quality theological education and integrated my experiences, psychology and theology into pastoral ministry.  But since my clinical experience all took place before theological education rather than afterward the board has decided that I need CPE before I can be ordained an Elder.  Seems redundant to me.

And therein lies the problem.  As I see it, the United Methodist Church is so wrapped up in maintaining the system and its procedures that we have forgotten about the people whom the system is supposed to serve.  The Board of Ordained Ministry has not created a pathway to ordination, it has created an obstacle course. A skandalon.

And when we serve systems and processes rather than people, we have a problem.

Someone once described two kinds of reformation:  cleaning out the fridge by taking out what’s gone bad, and cleaning out the fridge by taking everything out and putting back only what’s good and will be eaten.  In the United Methodist Church we have rearranged the magnets on the door and called it reform.  Probably because we’re afraid that if we open the door what we find will stink.

The mission statement of the IGRC Board of Ordained Ministry reads like this:

“The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.” (Matthew 28: 19-20) The annual conference is to make disciples for Jesus Christ by equipping its local churches for ministry and by providing a connection for ministry beyond the local church; all to the glory of God. The Conference Board of Ordained Ministry is charged with coordinating much of the formation and continuing formation of the spiritual leaders who are licensed, consecrated, commissioned, or ordained for the ministry within the Illinois Great Rivers Conference.”

Shouldn’t that continuing formation take into account where I have been and how I have been formed prior to candidacy?  Do they review that mission statement when they meet?  Do they remind themselves that their job is to guide people through the process, not to impose the process onto the people?

So I submit myself to the process.  I will bite the dang bullet and do CPE regardless of the toll it will take on my ministry, my family and my wallet.  The clinician will receive another clinical education.  I will smile politely whenever someone tells me (as they do frequently when they find out I was a counselor) “your previous experience really prepared you in a unique way for ministry!”  I will bite my tongue rather than say, “Well, the Board doesn’t see it that way.”  I will do my best not to be angry and cynical and bitter.

I hope to be ordained as an Elder in the United Methodist Church.  And I hope to be named to the Board of Ordained Ministry and perhaps to General Conference.  I smell what’s happening in the fridge.  And I want to clean it out.

Taking a page from Tripp Fuller, a Baptist blogger with whom I agree more often than not, I’m going to make some New Year’s resolutions.  Tripp’s ideas are good ones so I’m going to modify them for myself in order to be conversant with his blog and intentional about my own.

First, the personal resolution: exercise.  I’ve lost a ton of weight but I really need to get into shape.  Not because I want to look good, but because I have low HDL cholesterol – which is a risk factor for heart problems.  I really need to build some muscle mass and bring that HDL up – and exercise is really the only reliable way.

Second, the Church resolution: EPIC preaching.   When I preached on Mary and Joseph presenting baby Jesus in the temple, I focused on Simeon’s words, “for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples…”  I was struck with the image of a Japanese hibachi restaurant where the food is prepared in the presence of all who sit around it, and that a true worship experience is to sense God’s salvation cooked up in the presence of the people.  I want our worship to be more Experiential, Participatory, Image-rich, and Connective (to borrow Len Sweet’s formula, which is a good one).

And finally, the Blog resolutions.  Tripp lists these four ideas, which I think are good ones:

1. Question of the Year: What is Religion?
2. Gospel of the Year: Matthew
3. Theologian of the Year: Paul Tillich
4. Doctrine of the Year: Ecclesiology

So here’s my list:

1. Question of the Year: What is Worship?
2. Gospel of the Year: Matthew (hey, it’s Year B!)
3. Theologian of the Year: John Cobb (I’ve got some Cobb I haven’t read, and this should be good motivation).
4. Doctrine of the Year: the Trinity

So if I post, like Tripp, on each of those four questions twenty times in 2009 I should have eighty worthwhile blog posts.

Hopefully I can get around to adapting 12 songs  (or even collections of verses) by the Wesleys with new original music.  One per month should be doable.

And maybe I will succeed with RPM ‘09 (I failed in “08, but I got a couple of good songs out of it!) Oh crap, that’s in like a month!

I’ll continue playing Friday Five games and blogging about good CDs and musical discoveries.

I recently replaced my old cell phone with a Blackberry, which is one seriously cool device.  I’m connected everywhere I go – phone calls, emails, text and pix messages, twitter, blogs, news, weather, it’s all with me instantly.

The folks at LifeChurch.tv (about whom I know nothing theologically) have released a great, free little app for Blackberry, iPhone, and the good old computer called YouVersion.  It’s a portable, connected Bible.

The good news:  The application is free, contains several English and non-English translations (including the TNIV, The Message, the New Living Translation, KJV, and others), and has great features like bookmarking, verse sharing, and others.  The interface is friendly, fast and readable.

The bad news: no NA-27 Greek, NRSV or RSV.  So I use The Message, which I like to read because its unfamiliar language often provokes thought and prayer.

If you are a connected pastor, consider downloading this little application and you’ll never be without your portable Bible again!

I’m not talking about the John Lee Hooker album (which is GREAT, by the way).  No, I’m talking about spiritual gifts.

As part of our most recent Residence in Ministry retreat we were required to read the book Equipped for Every Good Work by Dan Dick and Barbara Miller.  Having read Dan Dick’s excellent Vital Signs, I was intrigued at the prospect of a spiritual gifts assessment from a United Methodist perspective.  The results were surprising to me.

First, the book was better than I expected it to be.  I almost expected a spiritual gifts book to be cheesy in some ways (and in some ways it was).  But in other ways it was an exercise in self-awareness and perspective, and it gave me strategies for leadership in the local congregation.

Second, my highest score – and one that came as a big suprise to me – was in healing.  It wasn’t just my high score, it was one mere point from the highest possible score.  I’m not sure I would have ever considered myself a healer, at least not as my primary spiritual gift.  I don’t know what I expected it to be, but healing wasn’t my first idea.  Of course, my second highest score was in miracles and I sure didn’t expect that one either.  

If I were to describe my gifts and graces on my own, healer and miracle worker aren’t the first things that come to mind.  But let’s look more closely at how Dick and Miller describe them.  These descriptions are from the handouts available at the book’s website (which makes using the book with a congregation exceptionally easy).

 

Healing—the gift of conducting God’s healing powers into the lives of God’s people. Physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological healing are all ways that healers manifest this gift. Healers are prayerful, and they help people understand that healing is in the hands of God. Often their task is to bring about such understanding more than it is to simply erase negative symptoms. Some of the most powerful healers display some of the most heartbreaking afflictions themselves.

 

I have described myself on this blog before as a Wesleyan theologian with Process leanings, which makes sense in this context.  One of my pastor friends puts it this way: “if you pray, and you expect God to do something about your prayers, then you are a process theologian to some extent.”  I think that’s right.  I believe God’s will is ultimately done, but that God really does hear our prayers and responds to them in real time.  Sometimes God changes our circumstances, but more often God changes the pray-er.  And sometimes God just says, “No.  Not right now.”  I believe very strongly in a responsive, relational God.  

It also makes sense that my two careers – mental health counseling and pastoral ministry – merge at healing.  I believe both are healing professions.  And in my life as a therapist I was a Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapist, a disciple of Albert Ellis.  This makes sense if I am gifted as a healer, because REBT adds technique and method to my natural empathic abilities.  

A lot of my theology revolves around healing in one way or another.  I often articulate the doctrine of depravity as an expression of our inherent brokenness rather than sinfulness, corruptibility, or badness. Wesley often described original sin as sickness or disease, and Christ as the healer or the cure.  I work hard to articulate that healing takes many forms – including death which is the ultimate healing, our full incorporation into the life of God.   

Miracles—the gift of an ability to operate at a spiritual level that recognizes the miraculous work of God in the world. Miracle workers invoke God’s power to accomplish that which appears impossible or impractical by worldly standards. Miracle workers remind us of the extraordinary nature of the ordinary world, thereby increasing faithfulness and trust in God. Miracle workers pray for God to work in the lives of others, and they feel no sense of surprise when their prayers are answered.

Our worship bulletin has one scripture quote printed across the bottom every week.  It’s Mark 10:27 “With God all things are possible.”  So maybe that one makes sense too.

News reports, including those within the denomination, tell us that the church is dying.  I refuse to believe it.  It’s not denial.  I believe that to write the church’s obituary before we are dead is to deny the power of God to renew, reform and vitalize the church.  In other words, I believe that if you are focused on the numbers and the statistics and you see a bleak future for the church, then you are the one who is in denial.  When our little local church has improved our weekly attendance from 25-30 to 35-40 (and sometimes more) since I’ve been here I am not surprised.  I won’t be surprised when our numbers jump even higher.  God has a future for our churches if we pray, if we work hard, and if we are intentional about making disciples (first of ourselves, then of others).  Maybe I am a miracle person.

One thing I could have predicted is that I am not a director-administrator.  I do know enough about myself to know that.  So it is my challenge in each church I serve to find people who are gifted as director-administrator-organizers who can help me lead more effectively.  All in all, I learned a lot more than I expected from a relatively simple study.

I have always contended that church growth is an inside-out venture.  You begin to invite outsiders into the inner sanctuary by making changes to that sanctuary first.  To state it in negative terms, you can invite all the new people to church you want but if the worship is boring and there’s no spirit there, it ain’t gonna do no good.  They won’t want to come back.  To state it in more positive terms, the worship service must be vital and alive, passionate, spirit-filled and warm if you expect visitors to want to return.

My concept of my job description in worship is as follows: to facilitate an encounter with the living God who invites the congregation to live in an alternate reality we call the Kingdom of God.  There’s a lot to unpack there theologically, but I think you probably get the gist of what I’m saying.

A couple of posts from the Methodist Blogosphere have me thinking this week.  Andy Bryan writes about the futility of growing for growths’ sake, and how focusing primarily on the numbers is a big ol’ waste of time.  I couldn’t agree more.  (I recommend reading the whole post.  It’s great.)

Yes, the numbers are a problem.  But let me explain a little about my approach to that problem.

Problems and solutions are not necessarily related. This saying comes from Scott Miller, a psychotherapist of the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy stripe.  And I agree.  The traditional problem-solving method involves identifying and naming the specific problem and formulating a plan of attack in order to directly address the problem.  A frequent obstacle in the traditional problem-solving method is one of nomenclature.  Therapists waste an awful lot of time in fine-tuning the diagnosis (which is unfortunately necessary for billing purposes).  And we as pastors fall into the same trap.  We obsess about naming the current reality and formulate strategies based upon that named reality (or more precisely, upon that reality’s name).

So we start by asking the question, “how can we get more butts in pews?”  And we answer with things like film clips during the sermon, powerpoint and mediashout presentations, contemporary music, and being “culturally relevant” (whatever that means).  We start thinking in terms of target demographics and results-oriented approaches.

And it has nothing to do with Jesus or the Holy Spirit.  It’s about “butts in pews.”  And I don’t know much about your concept of the Kingdom of God, but mine isn’t focused on butts in pews.

The solution-focused approach does not begin with the problem.  It begins with a clear vision of a preferred future and dreams of moves from here to there.

When I attended a Solution-Focused Brief Therapy workshop I learned a great technique called “the miracle question.”  The miracle question is a way of envisioning a preferred future.  Here’s the question (paraphrased – I’m not sure I ever asked it exactly the same way twice): Let’s say a miracle happens tonight while you’re asleep that solves all your problems.  You wake up tomorrow morning with no idea the miracle happened because it happened while you were asleep.  What might be the first small signs to you that something has changed?

Small signs.

I was reminded of the miracle question for the church by Jeremy Smith at Hacking Christianity when he posted the following:

For our last section on this series, let’s apply this directly to the problem of leadership in churches. Jeremy Pryor, at From Eden to Zion, offers this scenario:

Perhaps pastors should imagine that they are going to have three more years in their parish as pastor—and that there will be no replacement for them when they leave.*blink* whoa. Powerful scenario.”

Catch the parallel?  It begins with a vision of a preferred reality – that of a lay-driven church – and asks for specifics of what that preferred reality looks like in light of each pastor’s (and church’s) current reality.  Answering that question involves creatively formulating small steps toward that goal.

So folks in my congregations can expect to hear that question reformulated for the church’s point of view rather than the pastor.  “Imagine the District Superintendent told you that I have only three years left as your pastor and that there will be no replacement for me.  However, he expects that this will continue as a thriving and growing congregation for many years to come.  What preparations would we need to start making now in order for that to happen?”

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.

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.

This is turning out to be a cool discussion.  So to further unpack my thoughts I want to try and make sense of my utterly romantic view of art and its relationship with the art/craft/science of preaching.

First I don’t want to set up a false dichotomy.  While it would be fun to post with something like “which would you rather hear – a sermon that is theologically and biblically solid but passionless, or a sermon that is passionate but theologically shallow?” such questions are ultimately unsatisfying, simply because the correct answer is obvious.  The key is balance.  Passion vs. ideology is not a true dichotomy – one can be legitimately passionate about one’s ideology.

• The ratio of inspiration to perspiration is often quite different for sermons than for an art project or a musical work.  I’m not under pressure to finish songs – they get done when they get done.  Sermons have to be ready at 9:00 Sunday Morning or we have a problem.
• Ideology certainly plays a part in my preaching.  There are certain theological centers around which many sermons are formed.  I have a theological worldview and undeniable theological commitments (some might label that ideology) that informs my reading and communication of the gospel in the text.
• Art (for the most part) is an enduring form – something is created that can be re-viewed, re-heard or re-experienced.  It is placed on exhibit.  One can go see a sculpture or painting, or purchase a Rolling Stones album or rent a DVD.  My sermons, on the other hand, have the enduring quality of a piece of performance art – once it’s over it’s over.  It exists only for a moment in time.  There are no manuscripts, notes, or (currently) recordings.  The moment passes and the sermon exists only in the collective memory of the congregation.

As one who crafts and delivers sermons I take seriously the romantic-artistic aspect of preaching as I understand it.  Yet I recognize that often the passion generated from and within the sermon comes from someplace outside myself.  At its best the sermon displays the intersection of God’s passions, the congregations passions, and mine – and points a way forward into a reality that we call the Kingdom of God.

At the same time I pray that sometimes God works through the sermon despite all my efforts.