Christianity

High and Holy Labor Day

By Cindy Koch –

There are already too many holidays on our calendar that are a challenge to the Gospel and the pure Word of God. Some holidays are widely scoffed at by Christian communities, like Halloween. When I lived in the Bible Belt, trick or treating would be canceled if it ever fell on a Sunday. Some holidays are in the middle of a church and state type battle, like Christmas and Easter. Do you really celebrate the “reason for the season” and say “Merry Christmas,” or do you trade in your crosses for Easter bunnies? Then there are the holidays that surprise you, where our church and culture just might be celebrating the same thing. For example, that special Thursday in November that everyone takes a day to give thanks for every good thing they have been given. And while we all just love having a Monday off the normal routine (and any reason to barbeque and drink beer), this Labor Day should also inspire a little careful thought.

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Peek-A-Boo Jesus

By Paul Koch –

Does your church play the game of peek-a-boo Jesus? Is the Lord, through whom all things were made, treated as a hot commodity that is high in demand but short in supply? Does he make small, little appearances throughout the worship service only to be hidden just when you think he’s going to do something grand? Is the Son of God the tease that keeps you coming to church but is never fully given for fear that you might not come back again?

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Actually, Greg Laurie, the Bible Is Offensive

By Bob Hiller –

This past weekend, SoCal Harvest church hosted their annual Harvest Crusade in Southern California. For those of you who don’t know, the Harvest Crusade is a massive Evangelical outreach event led by Pastor Greg Laurie. His church rents out a baseball stadium for three days, gets big-name Christian rock bands to play concerts, and packs the house with thousands upon thousands of people. Pastor Laurie preaches the Gospel and, as is the standard at such events, has an altar call at the end. In college, some buddies of mine and I attended it to observe and critique as all self-righteous pre-seminary students are wont to do. We were amazed to hear Laurie preach the Law and the Gospel. Folks were pointed to Jesus! Yes, I know, altar calls are a big problem. Yet, for all the issues I have with these “crusade” type events, I have to say, we heard Jesus preached. And for that, I think we can thank God.

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Discipleship Triad

By Marc Engelhardt –

Allow me to introduce myself since I am new to the blog and I am going to write like I know what I’m talking about. My name is Marc. I am a pastor, and I have been in the field for 9 years (10 if you count the deferred vicarage). I have served both a very large church community and an itsy-bitsy church community (like 7 millennials in worship small). I currently serve a wonderful church community in SoCal. Those palarmes only take into account my post-masters work and not the 10 years I was doing a lot of the same things before I hit the seminary. Put it all together and I have a little bit of experience in a lot of different situations. In those situations, I have been reading and trying out ways to do the very best I can in the discipline of discipleship. I’m a bit of a discipleship nut.

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In Which I Fawn All Over Mike Trout

By Bob Hiller –

As if I needed another reason to love Mike Trout, MLB’s commissioner has inadvertently offered me one. For those of you who don’t follow America’s pastime, Trout is arguably the best player in baseball. For what its worth, if you engage in arguing against that point, you’ll lose. If you’re a pitcher, he is a constant threat. Seven years in, he’s a career .300 hitter, batting .310 this year with 25 home runs and 50 RBIs (those are good numbers for the halfway point in a season, in case you’re wondering). I’m sure his weird analytical stats are money too. His arm is insane, and he is one of the top outfielders in the game. I think I can make a fairly good case that Trout’s swing is an aesthetic argument for the existence of God. He’s great with the fans, and somehow, for all he has going for him, he seems to stay out of the spotlight. At least, that weird spotlight we like to shine on our idols while looking for their warts.

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How’s your walk?

By Cindy Koch –

Have you followed the footsteps of Jesus? Sometimes I think I can be kind enough, sometimes I think I can love like he did. Every once in a while I have a really great day when the sky looks a little bluer and I’m pretty proud of myself for my gentle tongue and thoughtful actions. But then there is the day when I lose it, I am angry at just about everything. How can I possibly get any better? Is this Jesus stuff not really working for me? Sometimes I think I need to take a good hard look at my walk.

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You’re Surprised?

By Jonathan Holmes –

I don’t go on Facebook very often. If I do, it is usually to find jokes and other humorous tidbits, or the occasional theological writing that a friend has posted that might be worth reading. Besides, The Jagged Word, of course. However, not everybody trolls Facebook for the same reasons I do. What, you’re surprised?

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Illustration of the Month: Gifts of Christ

By Hillary Asbury –

I’ve always been pretty sensitive to violence. There are plenty of films and TV shows that I simply cannot get through without covering my eyes, and sometimes my ears. In fact, just the other night, I was watching a show, opened my eyes a little too soon during a particularly graphic scene, and almost wretched. I’m an artist; I’m very visual, and sometimes I think I can’t watch something like that without experiencing it in my mind. I see it happen (or read it), and I automatically go to that place with the character. I know it’s not real, but I react to it as if it is. I wish I were better at handling it, but I find violence, even if very fake, upsetting.

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Welcome to the Church of Don Draper

By Joel Hess –

Mad Men did many things well, but its brilliant dialogue lifted it from T.V. drama to a Shakespearean masterpiece. I don’t know of a show with so many great quotes, outside of Seinfeld. Yet most importantly the scripts magnified the underlying cancer that produces the rotten sores and symptoms we see in society today! Therefore, what more fitting setting for such a show than an advertising firm!

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Learning to hate VBS

By Cindy Koch –

Yes, that’s right. I know it’s that time of year when we all send our kids off to a week-long adventure in loosely related Bible themes. I also know that is close to a mortal sin to not participate in at least one VBS a year, at least in my community. But every year at this time I begin to write this blog, then reconsider and delete the whole thing. It’s been building for quite a while now: I have learned to hate VBS.

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Art is a Language we all Speak

By Hillary Asbury –

My favorite thing about studying in Italy was getting the chance to travel and see religious art and architecture around the country.

The history was so rich, and I absolutely relished being surrounded by it. Everywhere I traveled there was a main cathedral, usually at the city center, always referred to as the “Duomo,” not for the often domed architecture but for the Latin word for “house.” As the city’s main dwelling place of God, it was often built imposingly large, made to be visible (and the campanile, or bell tower, heard) from any point in the city. It was a beacon, the center of daily life.

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God’s Ugly, Ordinary Church

By Joel A. Hess –

The American dollar is the ugliest of all currencies. As a kid I was always infatuated with the different paper monies I would come across on my travels and would wonder why ours is so blah. Then I learned how paper money works. It’s just paper! In and of itself, it’s absolutely worthless. Yet despite the American currency’s unattractiveness, it is regularly the strongest of them all. Why? Because it’s so beautiful? Not at all. The flimsy greenish paper is backed by the most powerful government in the world! Its value is based upon the promise of the U.S. government. By itself it’s worthless. Humorously, the more beautiful the currency, the more worthless its value!

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Apologetics as Love of Neighbor

By Bob Hiller –

We’ve all been there: You’re having a conversation about the faith with a person who is struggling to believe, or doesn’t at all. In the course of the conversation, they bring up an argument you don’t have an answer for. In fact, the point is way over your head, and you worry that pursuing the question will challenge your faith in uncomfortable ways. Maybe they are questioning how you know Jesus rose from the dead, or why you believe the New Testament is full of trustworthy documents. They’ve watched the latest Food Network special on the historical Jesus or checked out the latest Bart Ehrman thriller reconstructing the first four centuries of the church, and now they have questions. They aren’t afraid to put you on the spot: “How do you know? Why should I believe?” And all you can say is, “I just have faith that it is true. You just need to believe it! Take it on faith!”

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Sad Songs and Specific Sermons

By Bob Hiller –

In the unfortunately titled but always intriguing Revisionist History podcast, Malcolm Gladwell offers a theory about why country music can do sad songs and rock and roll can’t. He says it is because country music is specific. In the episode, “The King of Tears, he compares “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones and “Boulder to Birmingham” by Emmylou Harris. Both songs were written while the artists were coping with sorrow. The rumor goes that Mick Jagger wrote “Wild Horses” while his then girlfriend, Marianne Faithful, was seemingly dying from an overdose (she lived). He sat by her bedside and sang “Wild Horses couldn’t tear me away.” The comment is general. It can be applied to any number of circumstances. It’s sad, sure, but it doesn’t really churn your guts. (Jagger says it was actually written by Keith Richards, himself, and Gram Parsons).

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OT Encounters: Isaiah 6:1-8 – Triune Forgiveness

By Jeff Pulse –

Our text for Holy Trinity Sunday is from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 6:1-8. The reason this text is chosen for Holy Trinity is the rare triad in verse 3: “Holy, holy, holy.” The Early Church considered this to be a Trinitarian formula (and I would agree). However, during the Arian Controversy, they stepped away from that use as Arias used this text against them as he supported his heretical position. It took a while, but the Church has returned to that Trinitarian interpretation, and thus it is in the pericopal system for Holy Trinity Sunday.

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Can These Bones Live?

By Paul Koch –

As a child, we had one of those rooms in our house in which nobody ever sat. Not that you couldn’t sit there: there was a large sofa, some complimentary small tables and lamps, and of course the well-appointed window dressings. It looked like a delightful living room, or family room, or whatever you called that room. It would have been a nice place to sit, just nobody ever did. However, in that room we had a large family Bible. It was the type that was full of beautiful images from the paintings of Rembrandt to the etching of Gustaf Dore.The image of Ezekiel’s prophecy over the valley of dry bones was by far my favorite. It was dark and terrifying, full of half formed skeletons worthy of a modern-day zombie movie. Standing over them in the background was the image of the prophet himself overlooking the scene with a stern resolve. The caption below the picture was taken from the text itself. It was a simple question asked by our Lord, “Can these bones live?”

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Pointing to Jesus with Michelangelo

By Hillary Asbury –

Michelangelo Buonnarotti’s “Holy Family” is also referred to as the “Doni Tondo” in reference to its round shape (“tondo”) and the family that commissioned it (the Doni family).

It is perhaps one of my very favorite oil paintings in history. It resides at the Uffizzi in Florence, Italy, and the first time I saw it in person, I was enchanted, though I couldn’t say why at the time. I remember being pulled in by the rich colors and smooth brush strokes first, and then being carried away by the sweeping composition.

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