bring your brain to church

I got an appropriate email from a congregant following Sunday's sermon asking for some clarification on the message. There was a fear that I was preaching an anti-intellectual message given that I took the Sadducees to task for asking a "dead" question (Mark 12.18-27).

I’m a student of theology and enjoy thinking about doctrine and how things work and so forth. I suppose I was making a distinction about the origin of questions, not the substance of them per se. I would argue, and maybe I did that morning, that any question asked as a purely academic exercise without an underpinning of devotion or without a foundation of a relationship with God or without a desire to know the Divine is a dead question. It’s not the question so much as the asker and where that person is that determines whether or not a question has merit.

By that standard, potentially any question could be dead. As well, any question, if asked from a place of seeking, could be alive (to stretch the metaphor—perhaps to its breaking point). The Sadducees engaged in an intellectual dual to tear down, not to build up, to close the Gospel, not to open it.

hipster Christianity: point, counterpoint, counter-counterpoint

The raging debate about Hipster Christianity continues:http://thewartburgwatch.com/2010/08/19/tthe-wall-street-journal-weighs-in-on-hipster-christianity/


As an aside, I can't think/write/vocalize hipster without being reminded of Kramer from Seinfeld being called a "hipster doofus."

hipster

Following the thread from the previous post, a church member submitted the post available at the following link:
http://www.maurilioamorim.com/2010/08/hipster-vs-polyester-christianity-and-the-cultural-trap/

Game on the field

During the invitation on the Sunday before last, a regular visitor to Calvary came to the back and gave me an anecdote to the message.



He said that friends of his had been to Cowboys Stadium to watch a game. With the massive television above the field, their attention wasn't on the actual players on the turf but rather they were fixated on the screen.



He related that to Calvary. Amidst some bands and worship shows, the message of the Gospel can be lost. He said that his family liked Calvary because the game on the field was always front and center.



Everything else aside, that's cool.

trendy church

Apropos of today's message, I present the following link for your edification: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111704575355311122648100.html

good news

Some tidbits from the recent meeting of the Coordinating Council:
*one year ago our note on the Welcome Center addition (and other renovations of Calvary) stood at about $1,000,000.00. As of Sunday, it was down to $656,000.00! That is excellent. Some of that drop is from the Numbers 449 campaign. Some is from the budgeted principle we pay each quarter. Some is from fulfilled pledges dating back to Fall 2009. I do not think that we will pay the debt off in 2012, as this timeline might suggest. However, we are well on our way. Thanks be to God.
*we had a number of children go to Passport Camp in late July. While there, I am told, some members and chaperones of other Baptist churches asked Calvary adults how we did it. They wanted to know how we as a primarily middle to upper middle class Caucasian church had incorporated such a diverse demographic of children into our church. These churches had the heart to do this but had not succeeded. How did we do it? I don't know the response that serve as an adequate answer. I think we struggle with whether we have done it or not. It may look like a finished process to others but does not appear so to one on the inside. However, sometimes as one on the inside, we don't see the totality of the road travelled but only the distance that still lies in front of us. We have come a long way. We have further to go. God has remained faithful to this point and we trust in that steadfastness tomorrow and beyond.