I don't think that Jan at A Church for Starving Artists has joined onto the webring yet, although she is a great RevGal and y'all oughta go say howdy.
She had two great questions I thought I'd bring over here. Consider this your Monday meme, in celebration of the upcoming convergence of Halloween and Reformation Sunday (for us protestant gals):
First,
What are you going to be for Halloween?
and second, in honor of Martin Luther,
What 95 Things Need to Change in Church in the Year of our LORD 2005?
Post your costume ideas and your 95 (or fewer) theses here, or at Jan's, or on your blog.
and since my blog doesn't get updated in the blogroll I will shamelessly plug an extremely short, rapidly assembled post I made this morning
Happy Monday!
My blog doesn't get updated, either. Boo hoo! :) So I'll post here.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to be a Hershey's kiss. It will have something to do with foil, and maybe duct tape.
95 things, wow! How about just this one:
1) stop pretending that you (whoever you are) know what God wants or approves of in terms of human sexuality !!! :)
Since C really wants to be a cow, I am going to be Farmer Brown from the book Click Clack Moo. (For those who don't know, the book is about cows that type letters to Farmer Brown demanding electric blankets. They go on strike; Duck provides mediation.)
ReplyDeleteAs for the church:
--put an end to the mindet that a church is where one get's one's needs met, rather than a place where people are trained to be disciples of Jesus Christ in the world
--stop believing that technology or a particular kind of music is going to save the day
--stop blaming the liberals/conservatives for everything that's wrong in one's denomination
--baptize with a great big splash of water; take a big hunk of bread and a swig of juice at communion
--laugh more
--remove the word "program" from one's vocabulary; replace it with ministries
--More Small Groups
--stop putting up with bullies
--for those congregations that have dwindled in their huge decrepit old building that is sapping all their energy and money--pray that the place burns down
We're ready to put Jan on the members list as soon as the code shows up on her blog! Maybe we should re-post the Blogger instructions?
ReplyDeleteI thought so. I get the feeling that she is an alumna of the St. Casserole School of HTML; that is, she graduated thanks to the assistance of her teenaged children.
ReplyDeleteA tutorial/reposting (or sending the instructions directly to her) would be good.
Just posted my 5 (although yesterday I posted on a similar topic and that list works here as well)
ReplyDeleteI'm not organized enough to post again this week, but I have two:
ReplyDelete1) provide full privileges of membership to all baptized members: i.e. marriage and ordination (the gay thing, ya know)
2) Stop making seminarians take both Hebrew and Greek for one year each. Instead make them take two years of one language so as to actually know something worthwhile.
3) If you are going to continue to cut back on spending for campus ministries and college chaplaincies, stop wondering where all the young adults are. I'll tell you where they are: the parachurches ministered to them for 4 years and now they've landed in a non-denominational church since you have made little to no effort to indicate that you care about them between high school and wedding day. Yes campus ministries are areas where you spend and don't get membership returns--but think on it---those returns are delayed and since when did ministry have a bottom line.
I'm sounding kind of snarky today, eh? Sorry.
I don't get updated either, so:
ReplyDeleteI don't do Halloween. I just don't. Well, maybe I have a few times in my life, but I just don't get into it. I'm working so hard to be authentic that I would feel as if I'd gone off the wagon if I was "in character" for a day. Yeah, I know, I'm a party pooper. Oh well...
Hmm. how would i change the church?
1. Dump the theology of scarcity. God's grace is sufficient, abundant, and overflowing. The church should act like it. (Teeny-tiny crumbs, my butt!)
2. Ditto the fear-based theology. Everyone is so afraid of not being liked, comfortable, and in charge.
3. Get over the worship wars. Honestly. The church has survived 2,000 without that crap.
4. Love God, Love yourself, Love each other. Let's give that a try for awhile.
5. Get rid of praise music that is written, arranged, and centered on the first person singular pronoun. (God to worshippers: "Get over yourself".)
Written while suffering a ginormous headache, but there you have it.
PPB: Preach it, sisterfriend. You too, Revmom.
ReplyDeleteYou've covered some of mine...but here are two more theses:
Empower the adult laity through education, and once and for all drive a stake through the heart of the notion that people "graduate" from religious education at their confirmations.
Rediscover the value of traditional everyday spiritual disciplines -- not as a way to "earn points by doing stuff" but as aids for our faith journeys.
On Halloween I will be a non-conformist who doesn't put the porch light on and put out the holiday bling-bling. Not because I have anything against Halloween, but we don't have any little kids in our neighborhood, we live back in the woods, and I also have a tough time handling trick-or-treaters while wrangling my hysterical little dog, who doesn't appreciate the festivities one bit.
ReplyDeleteHalloween--a Hobbit, if I can get our Hobbit feet back from #2 Son's friend.
ReplyDeleteUpdates--I'm going to take that off our Blogroll, since it leaves out Typepad and Journalscape and some Blogger folks. I don't understand why, and I can't seem to fix it. Sorry for that!
This is "our" blog and we can use it however we wish. Don't feel pressured to read everyone; do try and read someone new/unfamiliar if possible. I think this thread shows that a discussion question is a fun thing to do, too.
don't have hallowe'en here
ReplyDeleteand church
I love so many of the suggestions.
I'd second PPB's GREEK OR HEBREW instead a smidgeon (sp??) of both
and the lots of water, lots of real bread and wine for the sacraments :)
This whole post got to me cos I'm so tired of local church politics - I feel hopeless, helpless and thoroughly fed up. It's time to make disciples not give and be everything to everyone - but today - hopefully- just today I feel it's all such a waste of time trying to change anything. Sorry.
I'll blog on this when I can I think.
Good old Luther - praying for his bravery for us, to forge the way ahead as God wants and not be trapped in the past.