Meditations on the Typewriter

  Like some ancient creature that does not know it
is long extinct, the typewriter plods along.  Once
 the cutting edge of technology, the MacBook Pro of
 some past age, it stands now only as a curiosity -
 a relic of forgotten years.

 Yet, when animated by human flesh and muscle, the
keys still miraculously snap shapes on to blank pages -
Preserving thought and idea for some future mind not
yet born to read and ponder.

 All the trinkets of the now, with their bright pro-
mise of a better world, have not deepened the mind or
 made tender the human heart… although now our rage
and violence can be communicated at light speed to
 thousands of others who live vicariously through light
emitting diodes.

 But still, somewhere, hands guide ink over paper or
push keys that force metal forms over inky ribbons.  Words,
at times, need to be slowed . . . backspaced . . .
 corrected . . . easing out in a trickle, not a flood.

Slow us down, O Lord.  To write and read and live deeply
may be better than to live quickly.  Too many words may
 be worse than none at all.

 May the value of words not be measured by volume, but
 by their depth.

-Tom Lawson

Resistez

Sixty-nine years ago today...

The small speaker crackled with static, and then they heard it.  “Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne blessent mon coeur D'une langueur Monotone.”  The poem by Paul Verlaine was well known.  Many listening had learned it in childhood.  The melancholy words spoke of the long slow weeping of autumn’s violins. 

This time the words held sensus plenior (fuller meaning).  This time they were announcing, somewhere out there in the darkness, ships were plowing their way through the waters of the English Channel  – among them a thousand Higgins boats – the landing craft that would bring soldiers of the Allied Expeditionary Force onto the beaches of Normandy, beginning the liberation of France. 

Dancing in Church

Around the year 1900, Plymouth Brethren missionary Dan Crawford asked a Congolese woman why she got up and started dancing in church,  "Oh! it is only the praise getting out at the toes."

Dancing is a form of art that you do.  And I mean that in an absolute sense.  You dance.  You become the art.  It is not something you do to someone or something else.  People can play a piano, beat a drum, paint a canvas, lead a choir, carve a statue, or write a praise song.  But, for people to dance you do not have to have a piano or a drum or a canvas or pen and paper.  You just need willing and able to move your own body.

Banning Prostitution in the Church

A man once mistook me for a hooker.  I know what you're thinking.  No, I was not dressed in drag and I was as surprised and ultimately pretty offended by the mistake.  Perhaps more surprisingly, it all happened over the telephone.

The Solicitation

There I was, peacefully sitting in my office grading exams when the phone rang.  The man introduced himself.  He was an elder at a rather large and very well-known church.  The conversation began with small talk but quickly got around to the exchange of money for services.

Disappointing Church

I am part of a disappointing church.

They weren't a disappointing church at first. They were once welcoming, warm, loving, spiritual, worshipful, and generally fun to be around. That was then. This is now. Now they are a disappointing church. I've had time for a good long look behind the scenes, and some of what's there just isn't very pretty.

The Theory of Relativity

"Lord, listen, if you won't make me skinny, then just make all my friends fatter than me."

We see ourselves through the lens of relativity. Relatively speaking, we are people of faith. Relatively speaking, we are active in church. Relatively speaking, we like to study the Bible. Relatively speaking, we are pretty much the kind of Christian that the Christian people around us pretty much think is the kind of Christian a Christian person pretty much ought to be.

The Future of Today's Christianity by Galli and Crouch

The current issue of Christianity Today (online or paper edition) has an article well worth digging out and reading in its entirety.  Here's a excerpt:

Telling Victoria Secrets

Is there a untapped connection between retailers like Victoria's Secrets and evangelism?  I'll let you decide.  Before I start, here's a promise: the story below is entirely true.  

How Charles Finney Ruined Worship Part 3: Worship and Church Growth

In this final post on the subject, I will explain how the changes introduced into Sunday worship by Charles Finney will ultimately damage both worship and evangelism in many American churches.

By 1850, Charles Finney had fully incorporated his three-stage revival structure into the Sunday worship of the First Congregational Church in Oberlin, Ohio. His "new measures" for revivals were already widely known through his writings. Most American churches had no set structure or liturgy for Sunday worship. Merging Sunday night revivals into Sunday morning worship was an idea whose time had come.

Treading Very Thin Ice: Cheap Grace Redivivus

This may step over the edge into the abyss of controversy...  But, does anyone seriously think, on balance, the majority of large and dynamic American churches face the constant danger of being overly legalistic and narrow?  I have no doubt I can dig up quotes and stories to support that idea.  But, it's obvious that's not representative of where things are heading.

How Charles Finney Ruined Worship 2: Reviving Worship

No man will change American evangelical worship as thoroughly or as radically as Charles Finney.  How widespread and thorough are these changes?  So thorough, in fact, that what many Christians today expect and would defend as biblical worship rooted in the first century is, at a fundamental level, unbiblical worship rooted in the nineteenth century.

How Charles Finney Ruined Worship 1: Sola Scriptura

In order to understand how it is that Charles Finney ruined worship, we need to look at what happened at First Congregational Church in Oberlin, Ohio in the 1840s and 1850s.

But, for us to understand how Finney changed worship, we need to first understand what the Sunday worship of ordinary Americans would have been like before Finney changed it.