RoboPreacher

just let yourself, give into the flood-tide (Go do!) what we’re doing For the next four posts I will be working through the four basic parts of a service (Gathering, Word, Meal, Sending). The idea is to mine the resources available about each part of the service and ask relevant questions. And as I said last week, much of the formal material isn’t that helpful… a ritual within a ritual That being said, the sending, or propelling, is the end of the service. After God’s people have gotten together, read a little and noshed, it’s time to go. They’re thrust through the thresholds into the world. There should be a momentum to this propelling. The reason the sending is a specific ritual is because as these people are going, they find they’ve been changed. As with all liminal moments in life, a ritual is appropriate. The sending, then, is a specific ritual that is located at the end of the larger ritual of worship. The sending requires a ritual because after the s...

it’s a broken poem / started up yesterday this is an excursus, of sorts I used to think that the rigid way worship was conceived had to do with the seminary I went to; two things, though, changed my mind. the first is relatively innocuous, but informing When I was planning a worship service for chapel I had kind of had it with the authoritarian grip on chapel services. So rather than submitting the boilerplate worship service I tried planning something different. Not radically different, but different. After sharing my reasoning, the Dean of the Chapel was on-board & helping me plan the particulars. For as rigid as the authority figures can be, it turns out there is still room for deviation. the other observation should have been more obvious sooner If other seminaries are more flexible in worship training, how come every Lutheran service is basically the same? Well, there are probably many reasons why worship is so generic, but one has to do with th...

 for you will not be distracted “Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition its bad name.” ~Pelikan in seminary we talk about all sorts of things that don’t matter For instance, did you know that worship has a four-fold shape? If you did, congratulations! If you didn’t, oh well… See, that’s thing, we learn this stuff that has little to no contemporary relevancy. well, let me nuance that a little It is important to learn the foundations. I had this great journalism professor in college, and she was fine with breaking layout and AP rules. There was one catch, though, you had to know what rules you were breaking and why. Ultimately I think that is why it is good to know the foundations. Tradition has power, real meaningful power. Rote enactment of tradition (i.e. traditionalism) is, well, boring. not only is it boring, it begs ir...

from first corinthians 13 Today we are all here to witness Brett and Audra declare their love and fidelity to one another. We are here to celebrate their wedding with them. The wedding… And I must admit, when we first began discussing this wedding I was taking at how chill and relaxed Brett and Audra have been about the whole thing. In fact, when I asked what the reading would be Brett said; First Corinthians 13 should be fine. “ Should be fine ?!?!” Where were the exaggerated emotions, I wondered? Where was the bridezillah?!? But laid back they were. So, along we went, cool and calm. Then yesterday I received an email from Brett with some details for the wedding. In that email he apologized that he hadn’t sent the email earlier and added, “ There has been a lot on our minds. ” There has been a lot on the two of your minds, huh? I imagine there have been a few stressers pulling this thing off… Yet; here we are, and the whole thing has been going swimmingly, if I d...