Five Thousand Words - Soft Launch

After a few months, here is the soft launch.

Five Thousand Words Website

"You can sit and watch it"

"You can sit and watch it."

This is what my 3 year old son said in response to the question we asked him about what I am to do when he plays "church".


"You can sit and watch it."

My son attends worship regularly, and while only being 3 years old, I think that he has and understanding of worship that is similar to what many people might consider worship to be.  If is something that one can sit and watch.  

 Currently, I am reading "Preaching in the Inventive Age" in which Pagitt addresses that the sermon is, which is dominated by monologue delivery, is something that contributes to the understanding that church is that place where you can "sit and watch".  

Pagitt argues for a "progressional dialogue" with clergy and laity in the preaching moment.  I cannot tell you how great this book is.  If you preach, you ought to consider Pagitt's book.  

Here is a link to all my highlights so far.  And for those of you who are like me and would just like a sampling, here you go!

• "This dependence on preaching as speech making has become a form of communication I call "speaching""
• "Speaching is not defined by the style of the presentation but by the relationship of the presenter to both the listeners and the content: the pastor uses a lecture-like format, often standing while the listeners are sitting. The speacher decides the content ahead of time, usually in a removed setting, and then offers it in such a way that the speacher is in control of the content, speed, and conclusion of the presentation"
• "Preaching has so uniformly been equated with speech making that any other means of sermonizing is thought to be trivial and less authoritative."
• "There are those who assume that if more people are allowed to share their understanding of teaching, theology, and faith, then there's a greater risk of the church losing truth. But the history of heresy shows that it's most often the abuse of power-not an openness of power-that creates environments ripe with heresy. The church is at a greater risk of losing its message when we limit those who can tell the story rather than invite the community to know and refine it"
• "I have come to believe that there's a kind of dehumanizing effect when, week after week, competent people aren't allowed to share their ideas and understanding; when, week after week, one person is set apart from the rest as the only one who is allowed to speak about God; when, week after week, people willingly, or by some sort of social or spiritual pressure, just sit and take it; when, week after week, they're taught that the only way to be good learners is to be better listeners."
• "It's simply untrue that people need their information in small, bite-sized or even "pre-chewed" pieces. The issue may not be that we have too much information or that we aren't presenting it in compelling ways but, perhaps, the information we've chosen is not all that interesting. New methods and exciting delivery will do little to solve that problem. A better or more tech-savvy speach is still a speach."
• "What I know to be true is not negated by others knowing more or other things. Truth is progressive, not regressive or zero sum. When someone knows something to be true, it doesn't remove the legitimacy of other truths but adds to it. We may not agree with the conclusions people draw, but we're better when we're moved to additional ways of seeing the world."

Gaining and loosing the gift of prophecy

In Romans 12, Paul writes these words:

"For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching;the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness."

One of the striking phrases to me in this section is the idea of one receives "prophecy, in proportion to faith".  It is striking to me because it is often understood that prophecy is either something you have or you do not have.  Much like brown eyes - you either have them or you do not.  

However, if we are to consider that we are to grow in faith then does that mean that we too can proportionally grow in prophecy?  And if we diminish in faith then do we proportionally diminish in prophecy?  

Recently I completed reading "The Prophetic Imagination" by Walter Brueggemann (which you can find my Kindle notes here).  And in my reading of this book, with the Scriptures as well as what I recall from Seminary, it has awoken an awareness in me that prophecy is something more of a skill that we cultivate than a trait that we possess (or do not possess).


First off let me use Brueggemann's words to clarify what a prophet is:


While the prophets are in a way future-tellers, they are concerned with the future as it impinges upon the present.


The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us


It is the task of the prophet to bring to expression the new realities against the more visible ones of the old order.


As we grow in the faith of Christ and live into the call of God in our lives...
As we understand the message of Jesus and how he rooted his message in a rich tradition of prophets...
As we undertake spiritual disciplines and grow in the fruits of the spirit...
As we mature into the beings God desires us to be...

We grow in the skill of prophecy.

MLK did not just wake up one day and "discover" he was a prophet.  No.  He cultivated a love of Christ for years before he stepped into that role of the prophet.  Even Jesus was 30 years old before he stepped into public ministry!  Becoming a prophet takes time.  And it is clear in the Biblical witness, it is something that we can all grow into.