1. Bruce Reyes-Chow, our esteemed Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) started up another meme, called Presbymeme II.
2. Neal Locke, a member of our esteemed Coordinating Group here at Presbymergent, “tagged” literally EVERYONE at Presbymergent to respond to the meme.

Now, I’m not sure if you simply wish to respond in the comments section here, or if you’d like to post your own responses as separate posts here in Presbymergent, or if you’d like to go post it on your own blog and leave us a link here, but one thing is for sure - we’ve been tagged.

The information for Presbymeme II is below. I’ve gone ahead and posted my response over on my blog, pomomusings. Let’s all join in the fun!

The Rules

• In about 25 words each, answer the following five questions.
• Tag five presbyterian bloggers and send them a note to let them know they were tagged.
• Be sure to link to this original post.
• Leave a comment or send a trackback to this post so others can find you.

1) What is your favorite faith-based hymn, song or chorus?

2) What was the context, content and/or topic of the last sermon that truly touched, convicted, inspired, challenged, comforted and/or otherwise moved you?

3) If you could have all Presbyterians read just one of your previous posts, what would it be and why?

4) What are three PC(USA) flavored blogs you read on a regular basis?

5) If the PC(USA) were a movie, what would it be and why?

Saturday: Secular Sabbath or Christian Cop-out?

Wow. Mark Bittman’s article in Sunday’s NY Times, “I need a virtual break. No Really.” is a fascinating argument for “secular sabbath” in our technology age. Add that to Weekend Edition’s latest This I Believe essay on “Leaving Work to Watch the Sunset” by Laurie Granieri and you have a rather compelling case against America’s workaholism (and who says I’m out of the US media market).

I’ll mostly stick to Bittman’s Times piece for this post, but do check out Granieri. Bittman writes of his struggles to give up technology for one day a week. He used to be a tech-addict, checking his email last thing before bed and first thing after waking, until he made a pledge not to use any gizmos on Saturday. That means no computers, no email, no ipod, and no cell phone. And you know what? He survived!

Not only that, Bittman now flourishes on Saturday. Though he continues to struggle with the practicalities, Bittman concludes:

I would no more make a new-agey call to find inner peace than I would encourage a return to the mimeograph. But I do believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life - or at least my version. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

Bittman’s secular sabbath journey should perk the ears of Christians. Not only are we as inundated with technology as everyone else, we’re commanded to take sabbath. Oh, and it’s not one of those Bible verses that’s real easy to reinterpret and read past–it’s a freaking commandment! Do not steal. Do not kill. Keep the sabbath.

The best and most challenging book I’ve read on sabbath is Marva Dawn’s “Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting.” In it, Dawn argues for a pretty strong sabbath keeping. She explains that at sundown each Saturday night, she lights a candle and prays to mark the beginning of the sabbath. She then, with a quite strict definition, does not work until (I think) sundown Sunday night (or it might be Monday, let me know if you’ve read it). Dawn often has sabbath dinner parties because they’re not work but rejoicing in the relationships God encourages. She studies the Bible and prays. On the sabbath Dawn does not check email–heck, she doesn’t even read the paper. Dawn writes that to make her transition to sabbath keeping, in early days when she thought of something about work, she would write it down and slide it under her locked study door so it would not bother her until the next day. Now, though, she’s progressed and rarely needs to do so.

What I find fascinating, however, is the relative quiet in the mainline church about sabbath keeping. Theology of sabbath may be more spoken of today compared to twenty years ago, but in many ways it’s still taboo in mainline denominations. We’re living in a world where a NY Times article on secular sabbath makes the most-emailed list in hours, and mainline Western Christianity fails to encourage the keeping of a commandment.

All this said, I don’t think making prescriptions for no email one day a week is necessarily the answer. I don’t think turning off a cell phone for a day will solve much of anything. I don’t think reading the newspaper in paper form rather than online is going to make a big difference in my life. I differ with Bittman’s complete no-tech day not out of principle but out of practice.

I try–hard–to take a full day off from work, a sabbath each week. Often this will mean I stay up Friday night writing Sunday’s prayers so I don’t have to look at them on Saturday. But come Saturday morning, I’m online bright and early–ok, maybe not early–to check email, play scrabulous, read the paper, blog. For me, the distinction is in between work and play. Writing prayers for corporate worship is work. Emailing friends, chatting on the phone, scrabulousing, is play. Play connects me to people, is personally fun, and is part of a larger giving glory to God and enjoying God forever. And as long as these online connections don’t negatively affect my in-person relationships, I think I’m doing alright. Sure, I’d read more novels if I didn’t read blogs on Saturdays, but I think reading blogs is a healthy leisure activity and I can barely afford the novels I read as it is.

So at the end of the day, Bittman may be on to something, but his complete sabbath from technology seems a bit extreme. I might just be rationalizing, or fooling myself, or plain wrong, but at least I can blog about it.

The author writes:

But through all the reading, listening, discussing, observing, and thinking I have done I have come to the conclusion that there is no Emerging Church. There are Emerging thoughts, and some semblance of a methodology but across the board I haven’t encountered a church that I would visit and from observing their gathering (service) I would call them emerging.

He goes on to list some values:

• Missional Mindset
• Relational
• Accepting
• Critical thinking

These are values, not a church. They “contribute to the character of the church body.”

I think he makes a great point. What do you think?

Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org

One other note: when you do write posts, please remember to select a general category for the post, as well as inserting in some Tags directly below the area where you write the post. These can be more specific, and they help connect different posts with each other, as you’ll see if you click on the “Related” link under the post title.  Thanks!

How and to what extent does your congregation utilize new media as an implement for evangelism?

I know that we blog, and that we’re open to integrating media into new forms of worship. This is good. But that we have connectivity within our respective fellowships doesn’t speak to how deeply we utilize internet media as a tool for bringing those outside our churches/faith communities into relationship with us.

I’ve been encouraging my little church to view our suite of web-based materials as a support for relational and affinity-based outreach. Between our website, a Google groups, a YouTube channel, and my own compulsive text and video bloggery, there’s a tremendous level of congregational and pastoral transparency.

The issue, as I see it, is moving those essentially passive media into a more engaged and active mode. The potential seems great, but I’m not sure what to do other than working to teach and empower my flesh-and-blood congregation to view our blogging and vlogging as a vital resource for our outreach efforts.

For those of you who’ve been actively using new media as part of your congregational life…how have you seen this played out? Are there any good best-practices resources in this area?
——-
As a side note, as I reviewed the Categories to tag this post, I noticed that neither “Evangelism” nor “Outreach”…nor any other variant of those concepts…seems to be present. Hmmm.

For more on Troy’s news - here is his blog, the online article, and a photo/audio show which focuses on Troy at 11:54.

For more on Bruce’s news - here is his blog, and the announcement of his moderator adventure, part 1 & part 2.

Influential? Not influential? It’s difficult to know. As with Bruce and Troy, my prayer also is that, most of all, we presbymergents are faithful to Christ.

One of these affects the posting procedure. It is only a minor change. When you login, you will still go to the Write menu and choose Write Post from the dropdown. Simply type in your Title and then type your post and choose the appropriate Categories that you post fits in.

The last step is to choose make a selection from the Post Status box on the right. If there is a + sign, then you’ll need to click that to make the selections available, and then simply select “Pending Review” as an option, and that will notify the Editors that a post needs to be looked at. That will help us get posts up on a more regular basis.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. But really, the only change is that you should select “Pending Review” from the Post Status box. We look forward to more content that is contributed by the presbmergent community (we currently have 183 members of the website!).

I’m all for creative forms of exegesis and figure somebody smarter than me has already set something up. Can you help me out?

Unexpected joys . . .

• Feedback and continued conversations around issues/thoughts raised during Sunday services;
• Input and interaction between folks who may not otherwise participate;
• Access point for some many who have a hard time connected in other ways: stay-at-home moms, introverts, etc.
• Finding out how damn smart and thoughtful folks are;
• Being reminded that I need not always lead, drive or instigate the conversations;

Has anyone else been doing this? Would love to see some other blogs our there in case we can “liberate” some design or content ideas. Blog on ya’ll!

Tutorial
1. Login to WordPress here.
2. Select the Users Tab and select “Your Profile.”
3. You will then see Your Profile and Personal Options, as well as various boxes to fill in for your first and last name.
4. Fill in the First Name and Last Name boxes.
5. IMPORTANT: Below the Nickname box, you’ll see a drop-down menu that says Display name publicly as. Click on the drop-down and select the option that displays your name as FIRST NAME / LAST NAME.
6. Click on the button on the right that says “Update Profile.”

Then whenever you Write a Post on this website, below your post, it will give your full name as the author of the article. Again, this probably takes a minute at most to do, so I’d encourage you to do this.