Today I listened to a sermon, 30 minutes long, 27.5 minutes of hell fire and brimstone, 2.5 minutes about love and grace. I think the speaker used more bible verses than I’ve ever heard in 30 minutes (apart from when someone reads a big slab of the bible).
I sat there somewhat confused, somewhat dumb founded. I expected this from a 80 year old tranditional old school preacher from the 50ths. But in 2016, haven’t we moved on and expanded our vision of God, Jesus & the bible?
I saw two encounters after the message with people coming up and saying to the speaker “what a brilliant message” (or words to that effect). This is actually an interesting contrast to another setting when the pastor spoke each week about the love of Jesus, the common comment he got was “it would have been better if you were wearing a tie”. Do older foke like to be reminded more about hell & judgement day, than love and grace?
Is there something that resonates well with some church people about hearing how they are in and part of the “Jesus club” and the rest of the world is going to a place full of fire and torment? I guess it’s just like mass media, bad news sells, and the church can sometimes be a place where as much as the lingo is “deny the world” (or whatever the Christian ease is these days), sometimes it’s just a carbon copy, just selling didn’t things.
I love this short clip from Jay Bakker’s latest tour: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wvgoGvjJXrg
Side note: I shared this clip with a gay friend the other day (who is neither here nor there when it comes to faith, at least from what he has told me), and he pointed it out it’s more Americans that take this stuff literally as opposed to other parts of the world. I have no hard data to back this up one way or the other.
Now I have no idea what today’s speakers motives around sharing his message for the day was. Whether he was being deadly serious, or just pushing the boundaries of how far he can take a message. If he was being serious, good on him for knowing what he believes and not being afraid to share it. If it was a bit of an experiment, I’d like to hear how he thought it went. I personally tired an experiment when granted 360 seconds to speak in front of 110 once, I told them (a church) that I denied the resurrection of Jesus, then simply sat down (and after a couple of seconds, played a clip to explain what I meant. It was more a shock thing than anything else. Strangely I’ve never been asked to speak or share since).
I would like to be involved in a side project of looking at “what does faith look like in a modern world?” I’d like this to follow the work along the lines of Peter Rollins or Michael Frost (Who spoke in Melbourne earlier this year and I missed out). I have a venue in mind, a local jazz / music venue. To start the ball rolling I need to have a conversation with the owner of the venue to see if we can do a monthly gathering once a month on whatever her slowest night is. Who knows, she might say no, but at the same time, she might say yes. I’m probably working on too many projects at the moment anyway.
Standard disclaimer applies: Most of these blog posts reflexes Andrew’s thoughts at the end of a long day. In hindsight, he only ever agrees with about 90% of what he has written/said. If any material offends you, sorry, but that’s too bad, but in retrospect and growth, some of it will offend the author, and that is ok.”