snail mail from Eugene Peterson: advice to church planters

Eugene Peterson is amazing...at age 78, he has just released his 467,878th book, and of course it, too, is a classic (excerpts here).

And how cool that he still writes real letters, answering real questions, like in the personal letter to JR Briggs below, responding to JR's letter/question asking "What are the non-negotiables of being a church planter?'

"The one great advantage you have as a new church pastor is that you are forced to start small. Nothing is imposed on you. Determine that you will know every person, their names and whatever of their lives they are willing to let you in on. Be in their homes. Invite them into your home in small groups for an evening or lunch. The killing frost in too much new church development is forming programs that will attract people or serve their perceived ‘needs,’ getting them ‘involved.’ The overriding need they have is worship and that is the one thing that is lowest on their ‘needs’ list. Insist on it: keep it simple – learn to know every last one of them relationally. And call them to worship – and not entertainment worship, but a community at worship. Americans these days are not used to being treated that way, personally and apart from promotional come-ons. Religious entrepreneurism has infected church planting all over the country. When it is successful numerically (and if you are a good salesman and smile a lot it probably will be) you will end up with a non-church.”
-link, Eugene Peterson

A previous letter to JR and the church he pastors, in response to
"What would you want to say to a group of committed followers of Jesus who were starting a new faith community?”:

“…I have a strong conviction that one of the primary responsibilities of the pastors is to use language that is appropriate to living the gospel relationally on the ground, locally, in place with the people you are living and working with… The most conspicuous ways in which the gospel is communicated is by preaching (kerygma) and teaching (didache). They are essential. But pastor and congregation train one another in using a much more relational and personal, informal and unstudied language as we work wit people primarily not to proclaim or teach them about God but ot get it into their everyday, around the house, around the workplace lives. I call this language paracletic (from Paraclete, the Holy Spirit). It gets its content from preaching and teaching, but it gets its tone and syntax from this local and relational setting and encounter. This is the language of conversation – not telling people the truth of God and not explaining the things of God, but letting those languages be translated into the vernacular of our ordinary lives when we are not preaching and not teaching. Which is the way we use language most of the time and most naturally.

And the only way you can do that is with people whose names you know and whose stories you know. This is what is unique about the pastoral vocation. And this is the great opportunity of a newly developing church. You can preach from the pulpit and teach from the lectern but when you walk into the church parking lot or stand in the checkout line at Wal-Mart you are using the language of the Word made Flesh in the places where people spend most of their time, where you spend most of your time.

And now you are forming a congregation where that conversational gospel is possible. I am so glad for you.”
-link, Eugene Peterson

Rob Bell "I invite you to become thoroughly unbalanced like me."

Excerpts from "Crafting an Experience: How to fully engage listeners," by Rob Bell:

What we need are people who will approach the text and say, "God, what do you want to unleash here?" The guiding principle is the text, and you've encountered the living, sacred Word, and you're going to explode if you don't share what's happened in you, as opposed to Well, I guess I have to start it this way. You don't. I have to have an intro. Prove it. Maybe some teaching people have no idea where you're going until the last minute, and maybe that's why it works.

When Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, everybody thought it was going to be a Pharisee who stops, and a Samaritan stops. Get it? He has them. He's working them over.

Sometimes I intentionally have three teachings going at the same time. I want you to be wondering, That has nothing to do with what you're saying now. I have no idea And then at the end, oooh. If you don't get that oooh, you're in trouble.

...
These are questions I ask myself. How can I make it as hard as possible for somebody to sit with a holy stare? How can I make it so you have to engage? How can I create an experience such that it becomes harder and harder for people to stay spectators? What's happening in this text? What could I have people do? What could I have them say to each other? What can I have them feel, hold, or look at? Is there something I could hand out?

If people can smell it, the kids can chew it, if you can create as many different dimensions as possible—many of us are tactile—if we can feel it, it makes more sense.
..

I did this message on "The Gospel According to Salsa," and talked about how my wife makes the best salsa in the world. And I will arm-wrestle you about that. Everything in my wife's salsa was living at one point. The tomato was living. The parsley was living. The cilantro was living. The onion was living. But in order for it to be made into salsa, it had to be plucked from its life source. The tomato had to be cut from the vine. All of your food was living at one point, but it had to be severed. It had to die in order for it to make it to your plate. If you're at a restaurant and your food is not dead, leave immediately. But there's this principle in which we have to eat to live.

What's interesting about your food is that everything that you eat—and food gives you life—it had to die first. Death is the engine of life. The worm is eaten by the bird, which is eaten by the cat, which is eaten by the wolf, which is eaten by the grandchildren of the worm. Even in the physical realm, death is the engine of life. That's why a Twinkie isn't good for you, because it was never really alive.

...

Another thing we do is assume a teaching is about me talking. There are times when the worst thing I should do is talk. I heard a teaching the other day; a guy told the most unbelievable personal story. It was an overwhelming story. The problem was, previous to that story was a lot of talk, and immediately following the story was a lot of talk. Mark Twain said, "if I would have had more time, I would have said less." That story was brilliant, but it got steamrolled by the stuff before and after. You don't have to talk the whole time to be preaching.

What I'm learning is there are times when the worst thing I can do is talk. For me, in my message "The Goat Has Left the Building," when the high priest was walking toward his seat, it was sacred moment. I can't explain it. The problem with some of our preaching is you can explain it. You got your four points, your three applications, and this is what the text means.

At the end of the parable of the prodigal son, is Jesus saying, "Okay, here's the deal—God is the father figure"?

What if at the end of Gladiator, Ridley Scott, the director, came out and said, "My intention was that you identified with Russell Crowe"? Great stories tell themselves. What we need are the storytellers...

There are no rules. Other than basic things like doctrine: God and Jesus. But in terms of how you're going to do it, maybe there's no intro. Maybe the whole point of the teaching is it comes at you and people are just, like, wow!

I did a teaching one time on silence where I put the whole teaching on slides and stood there for forty-five minutes. At the end I said, "Let's stand for a benediction." Up came "May the Lord bless you and keep you," and I waved and walked off..

..

I work on teachings for as long as four to six months, a year. You'd think I was obnoxious because if we go out to lunch I'll be diagramming on a napkin.

If you're married and I said, "Tell me about your wedding day," you could tell it to me. You wouldn't say, "I forgot my notes." No, you just tell me.

Those of you who have kids, if I asked, "How old are your kids, and what are their names?" You won't say, "I have my notes some place. I don't have my PowerPoint with me." No. Boom, boom, boom, these are the ages. Why? Because it's a part of you.

What if your teaching was such a part of you it was like telling about your wedding day or like telling about your first job? What would it be like if you could tell it like it was a story you told 200 times?

That's my passion. I have found the harder I work and the farther out I've been working on it, the more freedom I have.

The people who are listening to you, they know when it's become a part of you. They can feel when the speaker is just giving some information and observation, and they know when it is coming right through your soul.

We don't need people who sing the notes off a chart. We need soul singers. We need prophets. We need poets. Our generation needs people who have had an experience. They've got their hair set on fire. They're wild-eyed, and they can't wait. I got to say this, or I'm going to explode.

I've been wrestling with this lately. God makes the world in six days; rests on the seventh. Six days, seven. Six, one. Six, one. There is a rhythm to six days on and one day off. I started thinking about drummers and how drumming is all about the spaces. It's all about hitting it and then backing off. Music and beat and meter and drum are a reflection of how God made the world. If you don't take that day and live according to the beat God has put in creation, your song isn't going to be good. When the drummer is off, the whole song falls apart. Rhythm is something that's built in; it's elemental to life.

Everybody I come in contact with, I say, "Check this out. Think about this. Sabbath and drums." I get something like this, and I can't shut up about it. By the time I get to share it with people, I will have told the person at the gas station. I will have told the person at 7/11—everybody I come in contact with. "Check this out. Sabbathdrums."

I invite you to become thoroughly unbalanced like me.
-Rob Bell, full article here

The Last Temptation of Movie Boycotters, Peter Gabriel, Jesus...and us

Michael Pritzl had some excellent comments in his sermon for us a few years ago about
Christians jumping on boycott bandwagon for the "Last temptation of Christ" movie (Sermon:

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I (still!!) haven't seen the movie (yet!!), and I didn't boycott it, but I do know part of the controversy was portraying Jesus as being actually tempted sexually...which if we read Hebrews, we know for a fact he was.

(If you want more on this, click the word "posts" on this podcast player to hear sermons by a holy heretic, mesasges called "Jesus: A Tempted Apostle" and "Jesus Went to the Bathroom...and Cried!")

Whatever you have heard about the heterodox/ 'heretical' nature of the film; the movie have called it the most satanic film ever (Though Mark Driscoll has another candidate for that honor...see this!)
...read this below from the prologue to the book, as it is powerful and (ironically) could elicit a hearty "amen" from the boycotters if preached in their churches:

This book was not written because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death - because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered. Christ suffered pain, and since then pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment to lead him astray, and Temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and at that instant death was vanquished forever.
Every obstacle in his journey became a milestone, an occasion for further triumph. We have a model in front of us now, a model who blazes our trail and gives us strength.

This book is not a biography; it is the confession of every man who struggles. In publishing it I have fulfilled my duty, the duty of a person who struggled much, was much embittered in his life,
and had many hopes. I am certain that
every free man who reads this book, so filled as it
is with love, will more than ever before,
better than ever before, love
Christ.
-Kazantzakis

Then, I heard Peter Gabriel's wonder-ful, joy-filled "It is Accomplished," from the movie soundtrack; at the point of Jesus death. . Evangelicals have often made these dying words of Jesus too trite and too joyful, as if Jesus was just thrillled, as he lay dying, that he was dying for our sins, when in actuality he also likely felt a whole lot more human than that ( see "The Lord Be With You..,,.Even When He's Not!")
But Gabriel brilliantly (as usual) captures the joy extraordinarily well..)
Play it here:


Kazantkis writes of this moment:

Content, he closed his eyes. And then there was a great triumphant cry:
It is accomplished!.
In other words: I have accomplished my duty, I am being crucified. I did not fall into temptation...

Heretics as we are, we played this song (during prayer time!!) at our Sunday gathering. If that's heretical, talk to me about Sigur Ros. (oops, I forgot the singer was gay!) Or how one of the most profound writers on the temptations of Jesus was both Catholic (gasp!) and struggled with homosexual temptation (!!!)..
(That writer's book is used in evangelical schools...schools that likely boycotted the Last Temptation movie).

And....Uh, on that last temptation, the homosexual one, he was in good company, according to a good Book I read:

"Jesus was tempted in every single way humans are..."
(click here for the shocking source...but warning, it's a dangerous book for religious folk!)

PS: I won't even get started (and don't get Corrie Ten Boom on another item the movie got right:

Jesus died naked.
Even Dallas Seminary professors agree with that.
Professors who likely boycotted the movie..

"Left Behind": the video game (seriously)

"this Christmas, don't be left behind":

"people of all faiths are welcome to worship Jesus Christ in their own way"

Colbert:"In America, people of all faiths are welcome to worship Jesus Christ in their own way":

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creation discharges truth

"Creation not only exists, it also discharges truth …
Wisdom requires a surrender, verging on the mystical,
of a person to the glory of existence."
=Gerhard Von Rad

kitsch for kitsch sake

Kitsch is great as a vehicle for spoofing/satirizing/subverting kitsch, a la U2's Pop Mart..

but straight up nonironic (and thus ironic) kitsch on a church website..?

See this.