A mixture of writer's block and performance anxiety has kept me away from the blog for 10 days. Hardly seems like it's been that long, but again I thank those who check back regularly.
I found my church today, I'm sure of it. Shadyside Presbyterian Church has what I'm looking for in worship. The (senior) pastor there is The Rev. Dr. M. Craig Barnes, who is a professor here at the seminary and by the greatest of tragedies is the professor who rotates with Robbins in teaching spiritual formation every other year. The man who preached in worship this morning would make that awful, baneful class perhaps the most interesting, fulfilling experience of the term.
He preached from Revelations. Now before you prejudge that (as I did) and begin to hear a message on hurricanes, earthquakes, the rapture, and bird flu, understand that title of the sermon was "Your First Love." This message had everything to do with passion and drive and mission and purpose, and nothing to do with fear or hell. When Christ walked the world was on fire to follow him, people tore up rooftops, risked being trampled by crowds, and threw away their whole livelihoods to go and follow him. Then only a few years after his death the church at Ephesus was already bogged down in teaching responsibility and obligation and they had lost the passion. Christ rebuked them for this (Rev. 2:1-7) and Dr. Barnes rebuked the Presbyterians.
The whole message is available from the Church's website which I will list as a link on this site, but I wanted to mention the final illustration (which has nothing to do with church history, and is entirely perfect for the context). Call your attention to an orchestra warming up on a stage before a performance. There is a dissonance as all the players choose their own routine. Then the concert master stands, plays concert A, and all the pieces fall into that note and adjust their instruments to match it perfectly. That moment in an orchestral performance is congruent to one hour of your week spent in church. Then we go on each with our own parts to play, but because of our common faith (or tuning) we make great music. This was a particularly apt illustration since "The Shadyside Strings" (the church's own orchestral nonet) joined the choir this morning.
The McClure Lecture Series welcomed Ralph Winter to campus this past week. His series of talks focused on past present and future of world mission. I attended only the lecture about the future of mission in the church. According to Dr. Winter the call of Christians in the world is to no longer ignore the rampage of disease and to play a part in the curing of all disease. Disease is an evil that we don't see because the battles are fought on a microbial level. (He went into great detail here, sounding more like a bioethicist than a theologian.) He also commented heavily on the irresponsibility of pharmaceutical companies in treating symptoms and not working for cures. The end result of the talk was an audience of very confused folks holding BA's in literature and studying theology wondering how they play in the virology game.
This will be a long and difficult week, so I apologize if post are limited or uninspired.
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I found my church today, I'm sure of it. Shadyside Presbyterian Church has what I'm looking for in worship. The (senior) pastor there is The Rev. Dr. M. Craig Barnes, who is a professor here at the seminary and by the greatest of tragedies is the professor who rotates with Robbins in teaching spiritual formation every other year. The man who preached in worship this morning would make that awful, baneful class perhaps the most interesting, fulfilling experience of the term.
He preached from Revelations. Now before you prejudge that (as I did) and begin to hear a message on hurricanes, earthquakes, the rapture, and bird flu, understand that title of the sermon was "Your First Love." This message had everything to do with passion and drive and mission and purpose, and nothing to do with fear or hell. When Christ walked the world was on fire to follow him, people tore up rooftops, risked being trampled by crowds, and threw away their whole livelihoods to go and follow him. Then only a few years after his death the church at Ephesus was already bogged down in teaching responsibility and obligation and they had lost the passion. Christ rebuked them for this (Rev. 2:1-7) and Dr. Barnes rebuked the Presbyterians.
The whole message is available from the Church's website which I will list as a link on this site, but I wanted to mention the final illustration (which has nothing to do with church history, and is entirely perfect for the context). Call your attention to an orchestra warming up on a stage before a performance. There is a dissonance as all the players choose their own routine. Then the concert master stands, plays concert A, and all the pieces fall into that note and adjust their instruments to match it perfectly. That moment in an orchestral performance is congruent to one hour of your week spent in church. Then we go on each with our own parts to play, but because of our common faith (or tuning) we make great music. This was a particularly apt illustration since "The Shadyside Strings" (the church's own orchestral nonet) joined the choir this morning.
The McClure Lecture Series welcomed Ralph Winter to campus this past week. His series of talks focused on past present and future of world mission. I attended only the lecture about the future of mission in the church. According to Dr. Winter the call of Christians in the world is to no longer ignore the rampage of disease and to play a part in the curing of all disease. Disease is an evil that we don't see because the battles are fought on a microbial level. (He went into great detail here, sounding more like a bioethicist than a theologian.) He also commented heavily on the irresponsibility of pharmaceutical companies in treating symptoms and not working for cures. The end result of the talk was an audience of very confused folks holding BA's in literature and studying theology wondering how they play in the virology game.
This will be a long and difficult week, so I apologize if post are limited or uninspired.
<><
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