That's what they keep saying. And when the Pope suggested otherwise, by quoting a long-dead Byzantine emperor (who was being held captive by Muslim armies when he wrote), modern-day Muslims got pretty ticked off.
How ticked off are they? Well, they killed a nun in Somalia, they bombed a church in Nablus, they burned the Pope in effigy all over the world. That was for starters.
And more recently, according to CNN, an al Qaeda franchise vowed a war against the "worshippers of the cross":
"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said an Internet statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda, according to the Reuters news agency.
"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement."
But we figure they must not be serious. After all, jihad is spiritual combat, not real war. And Islam is a religion of peace.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
See, I am Doing a New Thing
Interesting debate growing within evangelical church-growth circles: Should sermons be plagiarized?
An Ohio pastor named Steve Sjogren recently published an article entitled Don't Be Original -- Be Effective, in which he proposed that rather than write their own sermons, pastors should copy (verbatim) sermons preached at growing megachurches. Choosing originality over effectiveness, Sjogren says, is the sin of pride.
In response, a professor named Ray Van Neste says that this approaches reduces preaching to a matter of performance, when in truth it is something far more important:
Our people do not need a performance. They need to gather with their brothers and sisters to hear their own pastor, who knows and loves them, and to hear the overflow of his heart resulting from his own wrestling with the text that week.
So, you may ask, what does the Egg think on this? Those of you who recall our furious rampage against college students copying papers from Wikipedia may be surprised to hear that we find Sjogren's idea . . . well, defensible at least.
The title is catchy, and there's a grain of truth in it. Given the choice between originality and effectiveness, who wouldn't choose the latter? You could even argue that we owe it to our congregations. And for the record, most good preachers are students of preaching, perfectly willing to borrow a trope from Chrysostom or Donne, from Wesley or Willimon. Some of them make a big deal about mentioning it, others don't, and the sermon isn't better or worse for their decision.
The devil of course is in the details -- what does it mean to be "effective"? Sjogren seems to take for granted that it means "prone to create larger congregations." There are at least two problems with this idea: (1) many factors other than preaching create large congregations -- favorable demographics, skilled team-building, a clear vision for ministry shared by pastor and parish alike; and (2) "effective" preaching, for many Christians, simply isn't measured by the number of rear ends on the pews. It is measured by eloquence, by faithfulness to the community's confession of faith, and by relevance to the life of the particular group of people assembled in that particular place. By that last measurement, a sermon preached by somebody else, to somebody else, in some other location, will never amount to much.
Effective preaching is also measured, in our experience, by the degree of trust that it inspires -- trust that the preacher is honest, and can be relied upon to speak honestly about the Gospel. Outright plagiarism will sooner or later erode that trust, no less than deception regarding sex or money or any of the other things that pastors get themselves into trouble with.
So, with a heavy heart, we have to conclude that ripping off sermons from better preachers than oneself is really not a good idea. Because people don't want to hear a stranger's take on the Gospel. They want to hear their pastor's. They want -- they need -- to hear the Gospel from the person who baptized their baby, who confirmed their kid, who buried their mom and who may well bury them, too. And if their pastor's sermon isn't really their pastor's sermon -- if it is somebody else's ideas, even words, passing through their pastor's mouth -- then they aren't going to trust their pastor.
And if you do not trust the preacher, how can you trust the Word that is preached?
An Ohio pastor named Steve Sjogren recently published an article entitled Don't Be Original -- Be Effective, in which he proposed that rather than write their own sermons, pastors should copy (verbatim) sermons preached at growing megachurches. Choosing originality over effectiveness, Sjogren says, is the sin of pride.
In response, a professor named Ray Van Neste says that this approaches reduces preaching to a matter of performance, when in truth it is something far more important:
Our people do not need a performance. They need to gather with their brothers and sisters to hear their own pastor, who knows and loves them, and to hear the overflow of his heart resulting from his own wrestling with the text that week.
So, you may ask, what does the Egg think on this? Those of you who recall our furious rampage against college students copying papers from Wikipedia may be surprised to hear that we find Sjogren's idea . . . well, defensible at least.
The title is catchy, and there's a grain of truth in it. Given the choice between originality and effectiveness, who wouldn't choose the latter? You could even argue that we owe it to our congregations. And for the record, most good preachers are students of preaching, perfectly willing to borrow a trope from Chrysostom or Donne, from Wesley or Willimon. Some of them make a big deal about mentioning it, others don't, and the sermon isn't better or worse for their decision.
The devil of course is in the details -- what does it mean to be "effective"? Sjogren seems to take for granted that it means "prone to create larger congregations." There are at least two problems with this idea: (1) many factors other than preaching create large congregations -- favorable demographics, skilled team-building, a clear vision for ministry shared by pastor and parish alike; and (2) "effective" preaching, for many Christians, simply isn't measured by the number of rear ends on the pews. It is measured by eloquence, by faithfulness to the community's confession of faith, and by relevance to the life of the particular group of people assembled in that particular place. By that last measurement, a sermon preached by somebody else, to somebody else, in some other location, will never amount to much.
Effective preaching is also measured, in our experience, by the degree of trust that it inspires -- trust that the preacher is honest, and can be relied upon to speak honestly about the Gospel. Outright plagiarism will sooner or later erode that trust, no less than deception regarding sex or money or any of the other things that pastors get themselves into trouble with.
So, with a heavy heart, we have to conclude that ripping off sermons from better preachers than oneself is really not a good idea. Because people don't want to hear a stranger's take on the Gospel. They want to hear their pastor's. They want -- they need -- to hear the Gospel from the person who baptized their baby, who confirmed their kid, who buried their mom and who may well bury them, too. And if their pastor's sermon isn't really their pastor's sermon -- if it is somebody else's ideas, even words, passing through their pastor's mouth -- then they aren't going to trust their pastor.
And if you do not trust the preacher, how can you trust the Word that is preached?
Monday, September 18, 2006
Priest Leads Mass on 100th Birthday
This is the best news of an otherwise dreary week.
The Pope has set Christian-Muslim relations back by decades. Muslims have set Christian-Muslim relations back by centuries. President Bush is close to declaring himself infallible.
But Father Kingsley Laws, an Anglican priest who officially retired in 1979, celebrated his 100th birthday by saying Mass at his former parish in Somerset. Mind you, he said the service from memory, because his "eyesight is not what it was."
Neither is mine, sir. Neither is mine.
The Pope has set Christian-Muslim relations back by decades. Muslims have set Christian-Muslim relations back by centuries. President Bush is close to declaring himself infallible.
But Father Kingsley Laws, an Anglican priest who officially retired in 1979, celebrated his 100th birthday by saying Mass at his former parish in Somerset. Mind you, he said the service from memory, because his "eyesight is not what it was."
Neither is mine, sir. Neither is mine.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Violent Buddhists
Sounds like an 80s downtown band, doesn't it?
We at the Egg have always marvelled at the public-relations coup which has caused Westerners to think of Buddhists as sinned against without ever sinning, uniquely peace-loving and non-violent in a way that adeherents of the world's other great religions somehow are not.
In fact, Buddhist history is as jam-packed with blood, betrayal and imperial ambition as the histories of Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. (And don't get us started about those Zoroastrians!) I mean, these are the people who invented kung-fu. In a monastery, for crying out loud. If the Benedictines had invented boxing, all the Franciscan peace activists in the world wouldn't save Christianity's reputation.
So when a group of Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka attacks an orphanage run by the Dutch Reformed church, threatening to burn the staff alive if they don't abandon the place, it so flies in the face of popular mythology that many Westerners simply will not be able to absorb the words. But it happened, according to a recent report (click up top).
In another Sri Lanka story, a peace rally involving Christians, Hindus and Buddhists was turned into a fistfight by a "group of fiery pro-war Buddhist monks."
Maybe Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama should plan an intervention.
We at the Egg have always marvelled at the public-relations coup which has caused Westerners to think of Buddhists as sinned against without ever sinning, uniquely peace-loving and non-violent in a way that adeherents of the world's other great religions somehow are not.
In fact, Buddhist history is as jam-packed with blood, betrayal and imperial ambition as the histories of Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. (And don't get us started about those Zoroastrians!) I mean, these are the people who invented kung-fu. In a monastery, for crying out loud. If the Benedictines had invented boxing, all the Franciscan peace activists in the world wouldn't save Christianity's reputation.
So when a group of Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka attacks an orphanage run by the Dutch Reformed church, threatening to burn the staff alive if they don't abandon the place, it so flies in the face of popular mythology that many Westerners simply will not be able to absorb the words. But it happened, according to a recent report (click up top).
In another Sri Lanka story, a peace rally involving Christians, Hindus and Buddhists was turned into a fistfight by a "group of fiery pro-war Buddhist monks."
Maybe Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama should plan an intervention.
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