Popularity: 3% [?]

the prayer list

by

john w frye

* * * * *

the thin shiny staple pinched the pages together–

the pages of the prayer list

of those diagnosed with inoperable cancer

of those with evaporating marriages

of those wandering alone in the empty land called “me”

of those looking for jobs

and those looking for escape from addictions

of those seeking relief from pain

through medication or through running from responsibility

tiny, shiny thin staple

gripping so much struggle, uncertainty and strangling fear

pinched tight on pages

and roaming terribly free in people’s lives

lord, have mercy

christ, have mercy

Popularity: 2% [?]

Phyllis Tickle time.

I had the opportunity to hear Phyllis Tickle at Baker Book House on Ocotober 17 discuss her newest book The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why (Baker).

Phyllis is a delightful lady. And unusual…how many Anglicans do you know who have a strong Southern Baptist influence? She is a profound communicator who can take you spellbound through church history in a short time (I heard her at the National Pastors Convention 2008 do just that). She is funny, too, and her wit can defuse some of the tension that the findings of her research create.

What research is that? Every 500 years (give or take a few) the world itself goes through “a great emergence.” Phyllis emphasizes that “emergence” is not a religious term. It defines global changes. Think back 500 years and you land in the era of the Renaissance and its subset the Reformation…now known, as Phyllis points out, as The GREAT Reformation. Did you know that a book was published in 1970 titled “The Emerging Church”? How old were Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones in 1970?

Phyllis’s contribution is how global emergence filters into and transforms Christianity. On this topic Phyllis’s expertise and wisdom (she is 74…she told us) takes center stage. How does “the great emergence” transform our view of “church,” “authority,” and long-held “denominational distinctives.” A fast-spinning spiral of chaotic change is magnetic to some and feared by others. Emergents of all types jump into the fray and seek to discern how God is at work in the change. Traditionalists in all expressions of Christianity, on the other hand, flee to the corners of change and shout loudly about “slippery slopes” and “heresy” and “apostasy.” Aren’t we glad that Martin Luther and John Calvin didn’t give into “the traditionalists” of their day?

In the arena of ideas Phyllis can be trusted and followed. Julie and I use her 3 volumes on praying The Divine Hours.

I thank Baker Book House for hosting such a significant author as Phyllis Tickle. 

*photo credit:  Dave Baker

Popularity: 4% [?]

“And it was night.”

Doesn’t that sound like a bolt out of the Hemingway blue? A terse, stark declaration; a burst of this-ness.

Hemingway could have written it. But it was actually written by John the Apostle.

John 13:10– “As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.”

John is doing more than telling us a time reference. We are given a reality reference. Darkness and light, day and night, good and evil are very real for John. That Judas eats with Jesus and then becomes an agent of Satan and betrays Jesus into the hands of evil men for a handful of silver coins–is that a broad daylight kind of activity? No. “And it was night.” It was dark and it was evil. People love darkness more than they love light because their deeds are evil. Yet, why are we instinctively afraid of the dark?

Night.

Jesus writhes in agony on a cross. The sun hides. Darkness smothers the land. Evil reigns supreme. In the empty nothingness of death, Jesus is laid in a pitch-black, stone-sealed tomb. Night. “And it was night.” Evil night.

Think about it. Night had to be redeemed, too.

Scooped up into the redemptive work of Jesus, Christians now recite all over the planet that it was night that brought us day. “On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it and said…”

Why is this night different from all other nights? On this night, night was conquered. In this darkness, light blazed. In this season of evil, love definitively won the day.

I think Hemingway would have liked John 13:30. He might have even bragged, “John the Apostle taught me how to write.”

“It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference.” Just a few sentences of Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

Pastor enters politics!

[note: Since I entered the race, I have taken a 6 point lead in the polls. I want to thank all "the little people" who are making my candidacy a referendum on the pathetic condition of current USAmerican politics. God bless you; and may God bless Michigan (State).]

I’ve had it. I am mad. I am hungry for POWER. I want to rule over others and control their lives. Too much individual liberty and personal freedom is ruining our great country. Democracy is a failure. It is now time for real, manly rule.

I know I have to take baby steps. But hear me. I am on my way to the big house. Oops, I mean the White House. When I get there I will rule with a silk-covered iron hand. I will clean up the messes made by our phony balony leaders in D.C. who are lining their pockets with tax-payers money. My money and your money.

Pastors of the nation, unite! Leave your pulpits and run for public office. We can change, I mean, really change America! No more gospel of kingdom stuff. It’s time to act! And act now. Why pray when we can have political power.

I am John Frye and I approve this message.

(note: written entirely with tongue-in-cheek)

Popularity: 3% [?]

Remember those small cardboard pictures we got as kids that when you slightly tilted them a new picture appeared? Like an elephant would suddenly become a giraffe with just a tiny move of the picture.

The elephant in the room, or more accurately, the parakeet in the room is the Bible. Scot McKnight’s The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible addresses some popular ways the Bible is assumed to be read accurately, but actually is not. One of Scot’s main suggestions is that everyone of us, I repeat, everyone reads the Bible selectively. We intentionally avoid the blue parakeets perched throughout the biblical text. What does that mean? “Take up and read.”

What I appreciate about Scot McKnight is that he is both a recognized New Testament scholar and a down-to-earth-friend of people in local churches. As a scholar and teacher, he presses us to think for ourselves. Too many other Christian leaders these days are reluctant to let people think for themselves. They believe that people are too stupid, too easily carried away by every wind of doctrine that they need an evangelical elite to tell them what and how to believe. Not Scot. He studies the issues, gathers his data, keeps in touch with average people and then writes. His books end up being not only a stimulant for conversation and Christian formation, they honor the readers as thinking, discerning people. Scot does not spoon feed his audience. He respects them. This is especially true of The Blue Parakeet.

A searing topic of the day is the role of women in ministry. Scot works his ideas about the Bible toward that topic and expands the issues, combs the Scriptures, challenges our thinking, and directs our practice. Scot will not sit idly by and let worn-out arguments and slippery slope fear relegate our sisters in Christ to “second string” status (my words).

I imagine some militant neoReformed types and bloviating fundamentalists will scream the loudest and write the meanest about this excellent book by Scot McKnight. It will be fun to watch.

Popularity: 4% [?]