RoboPreacher

perfect in pow'r, in love, and purity A sermon on that time church came to Isaiah : No matter what, you heard today’s passage amidst uncertainty and unrest . I know we all like to come here put together . But you don’t have to listen to the radio for long to realize it’s all a bunch of whistling in the dark . The breaking news only seems to increase . And sure, the election may be over , but we just appear to get more and more unsure about our future. If you’re anything like me , and I bet you are, it’s all a little unnerving . I like stability . I prefer predictability . And all this ambiguity is more than a little disconcerting! And I bet you agree. Don’t you? What if, though , what if everything that has you unsettled is actually a fine foundation for faith ? That’s right, faith. Now, I know that’s an odd thing to say. And truthfully, I’m a bit uncomfortable with it. However , I can’t deny that it formed the foundation of Isaiah’s call to be a prophet ! … When we he...

where my sorrows still remain The Holy Gospel according to St. John ! Me and the fertilizer plant moved into Burlington around the same time.   * Lest you think I brought it with me, just know that I beat the plant here by about a year ! The thing is though, when I first came I was relatively young and healthy. So I didn’t need a doctor. But I kept being asked who my doctor was.   So, after a year or so, I figured I should finally get one.   But by then, Burlington was bulging with transplants working at the plant. And I assume those workers were also filling the doctors’ appointment books, because all the offices I called weren’t taking any new patients! I had to call three different offices before I finally found a doctor who was willing to just consider taking me! They asked for my health information, and told me I’d get a call later that week to let me know if I’d been accepted. After a few days I got a call back telling me I’d been a...

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...