Aug 31, 2005 

The Soft Revolution

A friend just pointed me to this interesting LA Times article on the rising popularity of Sufjan Stevens, Iron & Wine, and other similar artists.

2:49 PM | | | links to this post

Aug 29, 2005 

Refractions of Fujimura


http://makotofujimura.com/

Thought I'd pass on another pleasant find I recently made. Japanese-American artist Makoto Fujimura has a blog entitled "Refractions" that you can find here. Mako is a thoughtful artist based in New York and Tokyo, I believe. He has been associated with my denomination's The Village Church, in Greenwich Village, New York. He is the founder of the International Arts Movement. He also has an art website here. I can't figure out how to link to it, but be sure to check out Mako's essay "Fallen Towers and the Art of Tea" in the essays section of his art website. I read it when it was first published in Image journal. It is a meditation on his experience as an artist working near the Twin Towers on 9-11.

Makoto Fujimura posts pictures of his art on his blog and also discusses his faith, his art, and their intersection. Good stuff. He, like Sufjan Stevens, is a good example to me of a believer creating worthwhile and lasting contributions to the world through his artistic endeavors.

5:49 PM | | | links to this post

Aug 24, 2005 

Kicking Santa's Helper

If you've ever wanted to strike an elf or throw something sharp at the Teletubbies read this. It's one post that promises some belly laughs.

10:51 PM | | | links to this post

Aug 11, 2005 

Division and Descent


"Life in Community"

"Division and Descent" was the title of my second and final sermon at Cross Sound Church. (We're transitioning back to St. Louis and Covenant Seminary from Bainbridge Island over the next week.) The text for the sermon was the account of Pentecost found in Acts 2, with a good bit of the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 thrown in for vital background. I argue that the world's attempts at forming community, global and otherwise, lead inescapably to division and fragmentation, but that the Lord is committed to knitting mankind back together in and around his Son Jesus in the church. It's a "normal" sermon in comparison to the previous week's movie sermon. I debated whether or not to link to it here at all, and decided in favor of doing so in light of the fact that I do not see any opportunity in the foresee-able future to have one of my sermons posted on the internet again.

So if you're interested, click on this link to hear my sermon on what it means to be a Pentecostal church. Whether or not you choose to do so, you may enjoy clicking on this link to download the bulletin for the worship service that morning which includes some Scripture passages and prayers relevant to the topic, as well as some cool quotes I dug up discussing Babel, Pentecost, language and unity. These links ought to be good for at least another month or so.



4:54 PM | | | links to this post

 

Children's Church



After my "God's Story for the Children of the World" sermon, which had to do with faith/imagination, fairy-tales and becoming child-like (amongst other things), I received an e-mail from the mother of a young girl who had helped make copies of the sermon after the service. The e-mail explained that the little girl had taken home a copy of the sermon and made her "friends and family" who had been unable to attend listen to it as part of her own make-shift church service. When I opened the attachment I saw a picture of the congregants at the child's church service, reproduced for you above (notice the tape player). I can't think of a better illustration of the point of my sermon.

4:52 PM | | | links to this post

Aug 4, 2005 

God's Story for the Children of the World


http://www.misakophoto.com/


"God's Story for the Children of the World" was the title of the sermon I gave last Sunday, July 31st, at Cross Sound Church (PCA) on Bainbridge Island. The sermon was significant for me in a number of respects. For one, it was the first time for me to preach at Cross Sound after serving here for three months, so there was some mutual intrigue at the worship service between me and the congregation. (I will also preach this coming Sunday, a week before we are to leave here to return to seminary and St. Louis.) Secondly, there were a number of family members in attendance, all of whom had never heard me preach before. My Mom, Dad and Stepmother were there, along with a cousin and my Father-in-law. It was quite a privilege to have them in attendance, but was quite intimidating to say the least. Lastly, it was my first time to preach on a movie.

The last Sunday of each month Cross Sound hosts "God in the Movies" Sunday. What they do for this is strip down the liturgy, encourage the members to invite unchurched friends, and deliver a sermon on a movie. Actually the sermon is more of a "dialogue," in their own words--a dialogue between a passage from Scripture, clips from a movie, and the local context. The idea is to "explore how the storyline of a film reflects the storyline of the gospel." This is a terrific idea and very creative and winsome. I would much rather do such a thing on a Sunday or Wednesday night (or better: Friday night at a pub), but I do hope to incorporate such an event into a church's outreach life someday. Cross Sound can do this on Sunday morning, by the way, because they actually meet for worship every Sunday in a local movie theater.

So the film I chose was Finding Neverland. (It had to be PG or G, otherwise I would have done Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.) This movie is thoughtful and well done, providing much to explore. A good critique of the movie's deficiencies can be found on this page. But my job was to connect, not critique, so I did the best I could with the movie. The hardest part was selecting three independent movie clips from the film. This put me in the position of choosing from the film's various themes and then trying to edit them in such a way that the story-arc was properly communicated. Then I needed to find a Scripture passage whose story-arc matched the arc of the film. Then I needed to decide how to tie these together and APPLY all of this to the group of people in attendance, which was expected to be made up of believers and unbelievers. Wow, was it a lot of work! But it did end up being fun, I have to admit.

You can listen to the sermon by clicking on this link to the Cross Sound website. It should remain up for another month or two. And I think it's an interesting listen due to the mere fact of what's taking place: the "dialogue" thingy. One doesn't often hear this sort of amalgam. Be warned that it is a 9MB mp3 file, though. If you do go to listen, be sure to also download the bulletin from July 31st here. It has a related picture, the Scripture passages, some other related prayers and catechism questions, and some especially cool and relevant quotes, all of which I dug up.

I used the whole of Genesis 15 as my text, and three clips from Finding Neverland: from 42.11 to 48.50, 1.06.31 to 1.17.15 (with 1.12.41 to 1.16.25 spliced out), and 1.23.40 to 1.30.08. Roughly. The theme had to do with recovering child-like faith and hope in a cynical world; it also had much to do with stories. Lastly, if you enjoy the sermon, be assured that you will also enjoy this and this. Happy listening!

8:24 PM | | | links to this post