Category: General

Newfangled Songs…

We played a new song in worship and got the following letter the next week,

I am no music scholar, but I feel I know appropriate church music when I hear it.  Last Sunday’s new hymn – if you can call it that – sounded like a sentimental love balled one would expect to hear crooned in a saloon.  If you insist on exposing us to rubbish like this – in God’s house! – don’t be surprised if many of the faithful look for a new place to worship.  The hymns we grew up with are all we need.

OK, I’ll fess up.  We didn’t get this letter, but a minister did in 1863 in the week following their first time singing “Just As I Am.”  If you want to read more interesting thoughts, head over to Vintage Faith (Dan Kimball’s blog) where I found this.

Pro Sports in Oklahoma!

Growing up in Oklahoma, I rooted for a number of professional teams, but none of them were ever really “ours.”  I rooted on various occasions for the LA Lakers, Cincinatti Reds, New England Patriots, and Texas Rangers.  Most of the time I found myself rooting for players more than teams.  Heck, in high school I even wore a Penny Hardaway jersey when he played for the Orlando Magic.  My poor wife rooted for the San Francisco 49ers.  Alas, none of these professional teams belonged to us.

College sports are great.  I’m a died-in-the-wool Sooner fan and love to watch Sooner football and basketball.  But, I always dreamed of having a professional sports team.  I even tried to like hockey when they said that was all we could ever hope to get.

Well guess what, today is an exciting day in the life of an Oklahoma sports fan.  We’re getting an NBA franchise!!  Clay Bennett and pals are bringing the former Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma!

I don’t care what we call them, and I don’t care how much we win at first.  From now on, I have a pro team to root for.  No fairweather fanship with me; this will be my pro team.  Go OKC “TBAs!!”

Post-Ordination Post

Last Wednesday night’s ordination service was an event I’ll always remember, even though I think I’ll spend a lot more time processing exactly what happened there. Fortunately, I can go online and watch the service if I forget anything!

On Sunday, I wore my stole for the first time. It felt good after having held off for three years during my probationary (yes, yes provisional) period to wear it. I know that everyone feels differently about this, but for me it was a tangible sign of my new identity as an Elder in Full Connection. Strangely enough, I do feel a little different after the whole experience of ordination, even though I can’t quite explain it.

Other than my ordination, Annual Conference was pretty typical this year: hours of reports and lots of coffee with friends. The only other new experience was seeing the beginning of a new quadrennium. There was a little bit of political intrigue as the Board of Ordained Ministry is electing a new Chair person. As for me, I serve on two different committees. I’ve been on the Mission and Service Ministry Team since 2006, and now I’ll be serving as Vice-Chair of that committee. I’m also on the Young Adult Council, most likely because I’m 31.

It feels strange not to think about anything related to preparing for ordination. After all, this has been an important focus for nearly eight years of my life. However, now I’ll be shifting to focus more on my D.Min. I’ll be flying out to Madison, NJ in a couple of weeks to begin the on-campus portion of the degree. I’ll be taking a methods course, an exegesis course on Job, and a course on prophetic leadership. I’m looking forward to the extended time for study, but I’m not looking forward to being away from my wife and kids.

Well, I think that’s it for now. I’ve been reading a terrific book I read at AC called Evangelism after Christendom by Bryan Stone, and his discussion of evangelism as a MacIntyrian “practice,” has me really giving some thought to our conference’s new “strategic plan.” It seems to me that the distinction between goods internal and external to a practice could really help us think more clearly about what we’re doing and why. Maybe I’ll throw a post up on that in a couple of days. Until then, grace & peace!

Appointment Watch ’08

It’s that time of year again. Earnest hobbyists across the denomination have their highlighters and conference journals mapping the annual migration of the United Methodist Elder. Ahh, the sweet smell of spring, U-hauls, and the itinerancy.

After three years of watching this annual migration, I’ve decided it’s a good idea to announce the appointments as soon as they are set. With a quick Google search, I’ve found several conferences who are doing this very thing: Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa. I’m sure there are several others, but I didn’t take the time to look them up.

Even though I’m curious about the reasons these conferences made the move to public announcements prior to Annual Conference, I still think this is a good idea.

This kind of openness in the process can’t help but limit some of the speculation that goes on. It also seems that lay people might want to have access to this information in order to keep track of clergy who’ve served their congregation or even those who answered the call from within their congregation. Finally, most of this stuff ends up making the rounds anyway. It seems that making it public as soon as it’s announced to the churches is just the next logical step.

Any potential problems with doing this?

Now That’s Speculative Theology!

Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes from the Vatican Observatory has some interesting thoughts on extraterrestrials. Here are the major interesting points from the article.

  1. There could be other creatures in the universe and this doesn’t conflict with our faith.
  2. They may or may not need redemption, because they may or may not be fallen.
  3. They may be evil, but they would have the possibility of God’s mercy

Sounds like someone at the Vatican observatory has been reading C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy! Funes hesitated to speculate on the eternal fate of Vulcans, but seemed to think that Klingons are almost certainly fallen.

In any case, here’s my quasi-serious speculative theological question for the day (Jose, if you’re listening, feel free to chime in). If they need redemption, would it be through Jesus? If not, how do you work this out theologically?

Another Oklahoma Weekend

Tornado AlleyThis weekend has been an interesting one. On Saturday, we were at a party for one of my wife’s cousins, who just graduated from high school, when the tornado sirens went off in town. We had a call from city hall telling us debris had been spotted in the sky near where we were. As soon as the sirens went off, we packed all of the kids in the closet as the rest of us alternated crowding in the hall and looking out the windows for the tornado (no, this is not a smart thing to do).

All we ended up having was a little hail and lots of rain. We’ve since heard from storm spotters that there was rotation above where we were, but the funnel never came down. Believe it or not, this is the third time this Spring we’ve been under a tornado warning, and the fourth time I’ve been hailed on in three different towns. Just another Oklahoma weekend. Believe it or not, sooner or later you get used to living in tornado alley.

Of course, it could have been worse, and we are praying for those folks in Picher who weren’t so lucky.

Elected to Judicial Council

For those of you who are following this, several bloggers at General Conference are reporting the newly elected Judicial Council members. I don’t know much about these folks, so I’ll list them without comment (Update: A friend sent me this link which provides a little more information on these folks):

  • Kathi Austin-Mahle (Clergy)
  • F. Belton Joyner (Clergy)
  • William B. Lawrence (Clergy)
  • Joe May (First Clergy Alternate)
  • Angela Brown (Lay)
  • Ruben Reyes (Lay)
  • Jay Arthur Garrison (First Lay Alternate)


A Whole New Blog!

Not long after we started in my first appointment, my daughter turned three. She loved to go to the church with me to play as I worked…almost as much as she loved watching all of her favorite Disney movies: The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and most of all, Aladdin.

One day, as I was working, she got behind the pulpit. She was too small to see from where I stood, but I called out to her from the back of the sanctuary, “Honey, why don’t you preach a sermon?” I heard an excited squeal, as she laughed, “OK daddy!” She then yelled out her favorite line from Aladdin as she preached as fine a Christian sermon as I’ve ever heard, “A whole new world! Amen!!”

I’ll probably never top that message either in the pulpit or the blogosphere, but with that in mind I want to welcome you to a whole new blog!

I’m looking forward to blogging here, and I look forward to continuing the conversation we began back at Catching Meddlers. May this blog play some small part in helping us participate in a”whole new world” – the new creation of our Triune God!