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Pastor Hacking - Keeping Track of Images & Illustration Ideas

Yeah, I'm a geek.

But ministry life requires managing so much information, in so many different modes, you just need to have some good tools to keep on top of things.  The right "geeky stuff" gives me freedom for the essentials of ministry: relationships with God and others.  I'm starting a new blog category, "Pastor Hacks," to share some of the stuff I've found to help make ministry more fruitful & balanced.  Disclaimer: these are "techniques," and as such are profoundly superficial, even if they may be quite helpful and useful.  Faithful ministry isn't about using the right tech or geeking out productively.  But as long as "productivity hacks" or "life hacks" are recognized as tools, not ultimate solutions, there's no reason to flee from them. 

First Pastor Hack is a techie one: a Mac Pastor Hack.  Lots of people have complained about Spotlight, a new feature with Mac OSX "Tiger," being an immature technology.  Sure.  But it's still an incredibly powerful search tool, especially when combined with tagging.  The Mac Finder allows you to add "spotlight comments" to files, tagging them so that they can be easily found with Spotlight's quick search.

Spotlight & tags are becoming huge parts of my sermon preparation.  One of our services, in addition to my twice-monthly confirmation class, make use of PowerPoint/ Keynote slides projected.  Now, I try to keep the slide stuff simple.  I shoot for "elegant," and with practice, I'll get there.  But uncluttered; not a lot of text, and a few, high-quality images.  See here or here for the idea.

Is "Intelligent Design" anti-Biblical?

Here's the claim in a nutshell: wanting to use "intelligent design" as a back door to get "proof" of God into public schools isn't merely bad science and bad theology, it may very well be a direct rejection of the Bible's authority.  Read on for how we get there...

This morning, I'm having fun getting my confirmation presentation together.  This being a Lutheran church, I teach dear brother Martin's Small Catechism [links are to a somewhat archaic translation] on a 2-year cycle.  Tomorrow night, it's the first article of the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth."

Well, I'm dusting off the presentation as I've given it in the past, updating and punching it up a bit with judicious use of Keynote slides.  Key texts we'll be considering are Genesis 1, the text of the first article and the first part of Luther's explanation, and Hebrews 11:3.  Part of the teaching is on how Genesis is a theological text, telling us the "who" (God) and "why" (out of love) of creation, not the "when" (how can you have 7 days of evening and morning starting before there's sun?) and the "how."  With all the "intelligent design" stuff going on, I figured I'd better revisit this, make sure it was clear in light of the current controversy.

That's when Hebrews 11:3 leapt up and grabbed me: "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible."   Did you catch that?  By faith.  That's how we understand that the universe is God's creation.  Not by science.  Not by reason.  Not by evidence perceived by our senses.  So if the folks who want to introduce "intelligent design" into classrooms are aiming to be "biblical," shouldn't this passage pretty much punch a hole in their plans?

Making Goats into Sheep

Fine Lutheran blogger Melanchthon, who sins boldly (but seems to believe more boldly still!), writes an excellent post on the relationship between salvation and holy living, lifting up Dallas Willard and the difference between believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and trying to enagage in mere exercises in "sin management" (a phrase I love).

Now I am, admittedly, a picker of theological  nits.  And so while I wish to praise Melanchthon and not tear him down, I do want to point out a portion of his post that gets my goat.  He writes, concerning the great parable of the last judgment starring sheep and goats in Matthew 25: "When I was a greener Christian, I used to twist this all around trying to figure out how to get it to work in a scheme of salvation by faith alone. (Honestly, I still do sometimes.) But what I do far too rarely (and I doubt I'm alone in this) is listen to it."  What, Christians, even Lutherans, rarely actually listening to a piece of Scripture?  Say it ain't so! 

Well, alas, I can't say that it ain't so.  But I do want to propose that listening to Jesus' words in Matthew 25 will show that there is very little twisting needed to see how the parable of the sheep & goats fits in perfectly with the biblical teaching of justification by grace alone through faith alone.

(Please note: no uncharitable attitude is meant towards Melanchthon in this; I mean to bash no one who blogs the Gospel!)

Blogs Behaving Badly

If you read many "emerging church" blogs, you've probably seen, at least from a link's distance or so, the kerfuffle between a rather vocal "emergent critic" blog and an "emergent" blog.  You can check out the aggregator / link blog that is the source of the controversy by clicking here; I offer these links as neither an endorsement nor a call for anyone to go to the various blogs and complain.

Basically, some emerging church bloggers feel that the emergent no blog, along with other, related ones, take internet postings dramatically out of context, distort them, and do not allow for adequate feedback and conversation in their comments.  The aggregator blog is supposed to be a place where comments can be freely made.  Emergent no's bloggers (and bloggers of other, similar blogs) feel that the aggregator is misleading and dishonest.

I find the whole situation profoundly disappointing.  There isn't much turning of the other cheek.  There isn't much interpreting the neighbor's actions in the best possible light (as Dr. Luther reminds us the Commandments require us to do).  There have been threats of lawsuits - something Paul says indicates we've already lost.

A Little Organic Hilarity

May the Farm Be with You...

Check it out.  Freakin' hilarious!

Store Wars.

Leaning into the Promises

A while back, I finished reading Out of the Question, Into the Mystery by Len Sweet.  Wow.  I copied page after page of "gems" out of it.  I'm not "sold" on his exegesis of the Abraham story, but that doesn't detract from the value of this book.  Get it, read it.  Let it percolate.  This is a much better book than some of his other recent ones.

I'm going to use a term that I don't believe Sweet uses, but he captures the reality behind it so well: functional atheism.  And the scary fact is, lots and lots of Christians and churches fit into this label.  Here's Sweet: "We've developed more of a faith 'perspective' than a faith 'posture.'  We're there in theory, but not in practice" (p. 14). 
 

The Unblogged Life - Pastoral Ministry and Healthy Living

Well, I obviously haven't been blogging much.  Many thanks to those of you who still check back, or who watch the RSS feeds!

Where've I been?  It's not quite honest to say "I've been too busy."  I mean, I have been - in the sense that there has been a ton of other "stuff" occupying my time.  But that's not the heart of it.  It's a facile reason, but not the real one.  I'd rather characterize it as having been living an unblogged life.

There have been a number of very powerful blog posts of late reflecting on the dangerous, sometimes tenuous calling and life of "pastor types."  Scott Williams has had a number; I found a lot to think about in this one.  But poke around his stuff if you haven't already.  And then bounce on over and read this by the Internet Monk.  I won't pretend to approach the degree of reflection, wisdom, or humility either of these guys have.  Nor do I intend for this to turn into a whining session on the travails of pastoral ministry.  But I do want to stop living the unblogged life.