Monday, July 31, 2017

The Day After #1--Reflections on Sunday

A fellow blogger used to do this Monday Morning Quarterback kind of thing where he would blog about how worship went the weekend before. I think this might be helpful. Only I am calling mine "The Day After", reminding myself of the apocalyptic movie of my youth. I think I will review with less of a tick-tock and more of a general summary.

The Night Before
I am preaching in a different way than I ever have before while here at FBC North Platte. I am not sure that it is working, although my wife says it is.

Until about 2 years ago, I was generally a manuscript preacher. This means that I wrote out my entire sermon. I was trained to use sermon manuscripts in seminary, and Jene Bridgewater was one of my preaching mentors, and she always used a manuscript (usually finished an hour before worship).

Over time, I began to experiment with an outline that was shaped like a bulletin, and was only one page long. The first column visible was a cover, and the next three columns were the outline for the sermon. This allowed for a more conversational style, and more eye contact with persons in the congregation. I have continued this practice in North Platte.

When I came to North Platte, I prayed about what to preach, and I repurposed some sermons that had outlines with them. Now, after 6 months, the congregation likes to have a note-taking outline each Sunday. Sigh.

With this outline, a Powerpoint is also expected for the message. This had been the case for some of my sermons in Hot Springs, but when there were Powerpoint notes, they often were my sermon notes as well.

When I started this three part routine, I began by trying to put together the preaching outline first, and then derive my bulletin outline and Powerpoint from the prepared message. Lately this has turned around. I develop the Powerpoint and the bulletin outline first, and then draft the preaching outline the evening before, having it derived from how I put together the other two versions of the sermon. I think this works well.

This last week, knowing that people occasionally have a hard time knowing where we are in the bulletin outline, I took the bulletin outline of the message, and expanded on that with other material to flesh out the sermon. This seems to be a better process than vise versa, and the three-fold approach helps me to be more familiar with the material

Sunday School
I am sitting in with the children's class. I want to make kids ministry a priority here, even if we don't have a lot of kids yet. And, it avoids have to choose one adult class over another, or having to bounce around from class to class. It also allows us to use the two-adult rule.

We use an "internet" curriculum. It is not bad, but I think, as far as curriculum goes, we can do better. Especially if we want to grow the program.


Worship
I am still figuring out worship here at First Baptist. Historically, the service has been rather formal and somewhat traditional. Recently, there has been some movement toward contemporary worship and a more informal organization of the service. This more contemporary part of the service has been well done for the most part, but it is hard to sustain the momentum and depend on this every Sunday.

This last Sunday was a perfect example. We had nobody available for praise team. We attempted to have a mix between a more formal, scripted service and a less formal service with limited information. As we make changes, people still struggle to adapt. And I struggle to adapt to their "structure", and make it something comfortable for me.

There were hiccups, and not everything we tried worked (especially the children's song on video). Eventually we will get to a place ( I hope) where I don't feel like I am trying to implement other folks' vision for worship while also trying to do something that fits what I feel comfortable with.

The Sermon
People here in North Platte are Midwestern reserved. So I never really know how it is going. There are lots of times I feel like going to a manuscript would help me to craft my words better. And keep in better step with people's note-taking efforts.

I tend to move around a lot with my messages these days. I am not sure how that is working either. In the last three weeks, in part out of a recommendation from my Executive Minister, I try and make my way from the platform, down the stairs, to the floor, and then back up to the pulpit before I finish.

Even as I preach with notes, I tend to look at my notes less. This means that there are times the sermon does not flow the way it was planned, but it makes for a more heart-felt conversation between myself and the church.

I had a senior-pastor that discouraged the conversational tenor of my messages, telling me I could do conversational preaching if I wanted, but it would not work and it would not last very long. I always have that in the back of my head.

The sermon was on the armor of God. I finished the message with the refrain "Are you ready for the battle? Are you ready?"

After Worship
We had folks over for lunch. We are trying to be hospitable, and to teach the church to be the same way by setting a good example.

It was a good time, although toward the end of the dinner I got to speaking to much and listening to little. Which meant some of the other folks were eager to leave sooner than they might have been otherwise. Not a bad thing. I just need to reign myself in and facilitate a broader dinner conversation.

I like having people over for meals. And, practicing hospitality is something Scripture tells us to do.

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Beginning to Blog Again

I started blogging for three reasons. First and foremost, I needed the practice in writing, and having the discipline of developing an online journal would help in that process. Secondly, I wanted a way of recording my thoughts and opinions in an articulate way before they escaped me. Third, before Facebook was open to the public, blogging offered a unique way to network socially.

Since December 2004, I have slowly dropped off in my writing production on Friar Tuck's. Part of this is due, I am sure, to the rise of social networking. I am also confident that part of this lack of blogging discipline is due to different priorities in my life from when I started the practice. However, another reason is that I have not done as well at time-management and reflection to have this as a priority.

Also, the nature of blogging has changed. In the early days of this blog, it was highly confessional. That was a good thing and led to some raw, honest, powerful conversations. As my ministry profile has increased, and my personal life has expanded, it has been harder to share more openly about what is going on in my life. Moderation is good. Just like our President doesn't need to tweet his every thought, I don't need to blog all of mine.

However, I do feel convinced that my personal journey and my ministry journey will be benefitted if I choose to blog more often. So I am going to try and make at least one post a day for the next month or so, and see if I can make blogging into the powerful tool for intellectual growth and professional development that it once was.


Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Book Review of Teach Us To Want by Jen Pollock Michel


Image result for teach us to want
Teach Us to Pray: Longing. Ambition, and the Life of Faith
by Jen Pollock Michel
ISBN 978-0-8308-4312-1
IVP Crescendo
Reviewed by Clint Walker

I actually finished this book about a year ago. I then had the distinct privilege in going to a presentation about the book by the author. I have been very impressed. even though I am just getting around to writing the review.

Teach Us to Pray is a wonderful, readable, and also intellectually powerful study of the Lord's Prayer as a prayer that trains our desires. Deeply conversational and confessional in nature, Michel takes the Lord's Prayer step by step, at times leading her readers toward conviction of their sinful and unhealthy desires, and at times positively encouraging the readers, reminding them that God made human beings to be desiring creatures.

Throughout Teach Us to Pray Michel reflects and tells stories well. The book is very quotable, and so at the bottom of this post, I will have some quotes I have harvested from the book. Although written by a woman for a line of books directed at women, the book is easy to connect to for people of both genders.

This book deserves to be read for years to come.

"We pray best when we need God most" (p. 197)

"Holiness is formed in us more unspectacularly and more incrementally than we expect--wherever the practice of small everyday faithfulness is required of us" (p. 198)

"Storytelling and story keeping: these are acts of faith. They preserve faithfulness." (p. 189).

"We easily dismiss desire, arguing that the goal of Christian life is obedience" (p. 23).

"The Bible is not just information about God: It is the living voice of God" (p. 47).

"Holy trust believes that whatever God chooses to give is enough" (p. 84)

"To say that God is good is not the same thing as saying that life is good." (p. 101)

"Clarity and certainty are not the soil in which faith grows." (p. 112).

"Desire expressed in prayer risks on grace" (p. 118).

"In asking for God's provision we're admitting our inability to self-sustain" (p. 127).




Book Review of Little Prayers for Ordinary Days by Katy Bowser Hutson, Flo Paris Oaks, and Tish Harrison Warren and illustrated by Liita Forsyth

Little Prayers for Ordinary Days by Katie Bowser Hutson, Flo Paris Oakes, and Tish Harrison Warren IVP Kids ISBN 978-1-5140-0039-8 Reviewed ...