“Never try to find a place to speak, try to have something to say.”

qb

And what relevancy does using this term and throwing it around with any authority have with regular, day-to-day folk who do not aspire to be theologians or do not feel the professional call to ministry?

I mean, the call to ministry has become more and more professional, has it not? That is certainly evident in the salaries of those who are in the ‘ministry’ … especially if you compare what an American pastor/minister claims compared with the salaries of those of us working in other countries (and no, we are not ‘missionaries’ in the American sense of the word).

The more I try to relate to people, the more I question how to openly use the language of the methodology. To many, the following terms (not in alphabetical order, and certainly not complete) sound pretentious, ambiguous, scary, alienating, and WAY boring:
* missional
· Hermeneutics
· Apologetics
· Emergent
· Contextualize
· Evangelical
· Pluralism
· Agnostic
· Anabaptist
· Orthodoxy
· Postmodernity
· Transubstantiation
· Apostasy
· Redemptive
· Restorative
· Canonical
· Rubrics
· Doctrine
· Niebuhr
· Reductionism
· Theocentristism
· Vestibule
· Transcendence
· Paradigm (I just got blasted the other day by a friend, and educator here in the UK, who said, ‘O, you Americans!’ when I used that term – I had no idea.)

Some of these terms are thrown around more in one country than the other (US/UK). We can certainly use these terms in within the boundaries of certain circles. But some of these terms do not help us relate to people we want to love on. Even in the books I read, I have to be careful socially in ‘sharing’ the latest great recent read. If I am currently reading Yoder, not many at my church have the faintest inkling who I’m talking about. If I say I’ve just been reading the latest book by NT Wright, no one has a light bulb moment until I say, ‘You know, Bishop Tom’. That is understood much more, because Bishop Tom Wright is frequently and popularly heard presenting the ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 (BBC).

I am not trying to be unkind here. But the emergent movement has crossed the Pond more recently than when it ‘emerged’ in the US. Church people here are already very sceptical of any new ‘methodology’ or ways to ‘do church’ that come from America, and when I just open my mouth, my accent gives me away. I find it very difficult to serve here as I served in the US. Even the concept of ‘music ministry’ as we know it in the US is different, because it is not even a ministerial concept here. New religious ideas and worship practices have to be introduced softly, softly here. Indeed we are blessed to have theologians like Bishop Tom, but in the UK church people are not quite as exuberant about expressing even a modicum of their religious faith as openly as in the American Bible Belt, where everyone proudly displays religious paraphernalia on their desks and workstations in their places of business. Most people don’t have the luxury of attending their local diocesan cathedral; they are stuck with their parish church. If you leave your parish church, then you have to also leave the people and the community and parish you live in to do so. It makes fellowship/discipleship extremely prohibitive in this culture.

Apologies for this being so long – guess a nerve was struck. Blessings with your church’s growth. You would probably be really depressed if you came to visit my church and probably feel like you couldn’t get back home to America quickly enough.

(You’ve moved on to a new topic, thanks to the time zone!)

I saw 4 horsemen and heard Johnny Cash singing on my way to church this morning, now I know what it was about.

Peace.

I have found that if I force my sermon into the mix and don’t allow the Spirit his way (otherwise know as putting out the Spirit’s fire), I suffer in the pulpit and so does my audience.

I have never wrestled so much as in sermon preparation. Some of our office staff say they here “strange tongues” coming from my office as Friday gets nearer.

Peace.