Pew Potatoes
Submitted by pastor joe on Mon, 07/14/2008 - 07:00.What on earth is a pew potato and is it okay to be one? This week Ryan and Joe talk about the need for involvement in your local congregation, a new Facebook App for the fshbwl, they'll tell you about a 27-Hour Service that never happened (but they'll talk as if it actually happened), and Joe continues to ask, "Where's the scandal?"
Links from this episode:
http://facebook.blogfuse.com
Discover Facebook Application
http://fshbwl.com/fishfood/ask/virtual-living
http://fshbwl.com/fishfood/swim/episode16
http://fshbwl.com/fishfood/ask/did-jesus-introduce-resurrection
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Facial reconstruction...
I'm listening to the Swim and I just heard the note about the facial reconstruction. I have one of the leading plastic surgeons in Florida in my community here in Tallahassee...you know...just if you wanted...
in Christ,
jW
...of course, saying that, I now have no excuse my my own lack of facial reconstruction...hah!
looked good
Actually, I thought my face looked great ... granted, nobody saw it, but what they saw certainly didn't look bad at all!
Scandals and Christianity
Yeah, I don't think there's a huge scandal with the whole resurrection thing either. I think this proves less about the relationship between Christian theology and Jewish theology than it proves something about the relationship between the Church and the world.
For some odd reason, it appears that the world thinks that a concept of resurrection amongst Hebrew rabbis would be so shocking to Christians that they would be shaken to the core. Most of the Christians that I know today are really happy to find even more correlations between the Old and New Testaments. If we found some other archaeological item that said something like "there will be this guy named Paul who writes alot about God" from King David's time - would we be upset? Nope. At least I wouldn't.
However, I think this does show something of the flavor of one of the chapters of Dan Kimball's best seller, "They Like Jesus But Not The Church". One of the people in that book was shaken to the core when they got to college and heard of the resurrection stories of this idiot false god named Mithras. Hearing that was enough to shake his faith - but it wasn't because there was some stupid false god, rather it was because his church had disallowed anyone to ever talk about anything that would be scandalous.
In effect, it showed (and shows) little faith in Jesus to think that sounds somewhat "scandalous" will destroy the faith of someone. (Note: there is something to be said about age-appropriateness, however. I wouldn't go telling Mithras stories to 5 year olds.) In fact, to treat Jesus like that almost sets HIM up as the false god who needs our protection, rather than us being the ones who needs the protection of HIM the true God.
in Christ,
jW
Christian education
Beautiful point there Jay. Actually, it's one of my biggest beefs with a dominant philosophy of Christian schooling ... the keeping the kids out of the world approach. You know, block 'em off, don't let 'em be corrupted, and keep 'em safe ... so they can head off to college and have their whole world rocked.
A far better model seems to let them engage in the world, but to help them process through the experience along the way. Now, this processing could happen within the safe confines of a Christian school, but that school would have to be intentional about bringing the world in rather than keeping the world out.
I'm a product
I'm a product of the Christian education experience. I have never gone to a school that wasn't at least Christian if not Lutheran. (Scary, huh?)
The interesting thing about my experience is that I realized that there was much missing from my life because of the segmented population that I was being educated with. Always having been someone interested in culture (probably since I've always had to adjust to them in one way or another and have no "home base" culture), I always struck out on my own to find out about cultural norms in my surrounding culture.
This wasn't always a good thing. There are still people who know me from high school and college who say "YOU are a PASTOR?!?" and then begin to cry. Sometimes they're tears of joy. Not always.
All that to say this - my education about the world outside of my Christian education bubble was an entirely extra-curricular thing. For those who are not in the Christian education bubble, perhaps there is something congruent and opposite: establishing Christian cultural opportunities outside of Christian education.
If I went outside of my experience to learn about secular society, how can we invite people out of their secular experience to learn about Christian culture.
I think the Fshbwl does try to do this. There are some other avenues for people out there as well. But local churches don't seem to seek to do this until they're at my level - campus ministries. Is this good? necessary? or something that we need to address as members of the Christian culture?
in Christ,
jW
a need
In my opinion, it's rather obvious that this is something we need to address. After all, isn't engaging the existing culture part of what it means to live in exile (Thinking Jeremiah 29 here)?
Definitely a need. All to
Definitely a need. All to often I meet people who are turned off by the 'institution' of Christianity because it is now defined as a culture or subculture; and they don't fit in that culture so why be Christian. The great thing about Christianity is that it is beyond culture fixations. Certainly we can use culture and should be aware of it but Christianity shouldn't be a culture.
I must say as a guy who knew you in college jW, I think it's great that you're a pastor!
27 hr service
Just curious if you are going to post yesterday's 27 hour service? The new format you talked about sounds good. I started listening to the service yesterday morning and then realized it was the same one from last week.
I was once a Pew Potato, and it seems much easier to be one in a larger church. I now belong to a smaller church (130 members) and when they found out I was a computer guy I was quickly recruited to take over the church's web site. Anyway, it seems the larger your church, the more more idle members you'll have. I'm not sure what my point is on this, just an observation I guess.
-Jeff
a learning experience
We got Sunday's service all put together but had some serious issues getting it uploaded so, that's why it wasn't live for Sunday. However, when I looked at it today, I think it might have been God getting in the way of uploading because it was really rough.
As a tip to anyone out there, don't HD video too close to your face ... it can get scary because you see everything!
We'll have one ready to go this next Sunday, sorry for bombing on the first week for the new version!
Truth: If I wasn't a
Truth: If I wasn't a Pastor's Wife, I am pretty sure I would be a "Pew Potato". There are still times where being really involved and occasionally in the spotlight makes me very uncomfortable. But, I have grown to love my church family...and we have found our best friends THROUGH the church. Now when I miss worship, I feel that my week is lacking. However, I do think when people are involved in a church that they should do what they LIKE to do, rather than what they feel they SHOULD do. This is the key. Otherwise you end up with a lot of resentment.