Yes, it’s been two weeks since I’ve blogged.  The reason is simple: I coach my son’s baseball team and attend my daughter’s swim meets both which fully occupy the month of June.  They both end next week which will allow me time for a few literary outbursts before I head to Lake Cumberland for our family vacation.

I have a series of articles that I want to write on Communication & Conflict Resolution.  I teach these two sections in Oasis’ Marriage Mentoring/PreMarital Mentoring Ministry.  They have seemed to be very helpful for those beginning the marital process as well as those experiencing difficulty inside the covenant.  I think you’ll enjoy them.

I also have some continuing thoughts on the Lakeland Outpouring that I’ll get back to.  I just got tired of battling the controversy via email.  I’m ready to look at some other issues again. 

Thanks for being patient…  baseball and swimming will always be more important than blogging as long as my kids are involved.

http://www.newmanmagazine.com/e-magazine/061208/Shack.php

Louie Giglio is one of my favorite communicators and i love his first name. Check out this clip…then show your kids!

http://www.youtube.com/v/_e4zgJXPpI4&hl=en

While I am aware that things need to change in our approach to church, I must admit I stopped listening to all the “experts” years ago. God knows His bride and I believe He is teaching us how to court her and take excellent care of her. I think we need more books on how to hear God not how to write reactive books centered around the misinterpretation of statistical indices. Note, I said God is teaching us not George Barna.

A former student of mine at KCU recently wrote a blog that I thought was very insightful. However, because of all the crap he took for it, he removed it. Which is not his normal m.o. I thought it was brilliant as are many of Brian Jones’s blogs. It’s worth reading.

Brian Jones on Barna

This was written by my good friend in California, Rick Kamrath.  Enjoy it.  I think he’s a dynowriter.

From time to time, our church will invite speakers from a more “Pentecostal” background. We can usually understand what they are saying even though they “talk funny”. Actually, they don’t just “talk funny”, they move differently, too. I won’t even get into their looks.

You see, Pentecostal preachers often use “devices”. They pull little tricks on you to help you. They will read a scripture and will drop out at an important word, allowing the congregation to do the big “finish”. “Whosoever BELIEVES in Him should have eternal….”: “LIFE!!!” That’s always fun for us because we all take “partnership” in the message.

Another thing they do is tell us to repeat an important word in their message. “What I’m saying may become redundant… everybody say ‘REDUNDANT”!

Here’s a good one: sometimes they’ll direct us to turn to our neighbor and say an important phrase. I’m going to let you in on a little secret of mine. Whenever a preacher does that, if I’m sitting next to my wife, I turn to her and say something completely off-topic and usually it’s, “I wish to have sex with you right now”. I always realize I’m failing to reinforce the message, and I also realize that I’m missing a chance to bond with others I’m sitting next to. But YOU must realize that my priority is to keep my wife from boredom and put a smile on her lovely face.

I’ve saved my favorite device for last. It’s when the speaker quotes a verse but deliberately inserts a wrong word. They’ll pause until they raise their eyebrows, queuing the flock to shout out in pandemonium, “uh-UH!!!” or “NO!” or the correct word of the verse. I always like that one because it lets our visiting preacher know that we read our Bibles and we aren’t to be trifled with. I also like it because it shows that the speaker is a little frisky and we’re in for a good time, even if they are otherwise naturally humorless.

These devices aren’t really manipulative. Really. They’re just little traditions which have as much to do with helping church folk pay attention as they do letting the speaker know their congregation is “on fire”. The louder we respond, the more “on fire”. Most of ‘em never learned why we do it, they just learned to do it. Including the preachers.

I know about this because I used to be kind of a Pentecostal. It’s just the territory I landed in when I got to know Jesus, so I picked up the culture of the citizenry. The church was a full-on Pentecostal church which found itself in a collision with the beginnings of the Jesus Movement. So for years, I would sit with ex-hippies and yell things like “preach it”, “that’s right”, and “amen”.

There are a few reasons I don’t yell out those phrases like I used to. The most obvious reason is that I’ve since landed in another territory. One that’s even more ripe for movement of the spirit while being more culturally-relevant. You see, even though I was kind of Pentecostal, I wasn’t BORN Pentecostal. I was born German. Born in L.A. of all German ancestors. And even though I often get very excited about the Lord, I’m really a “reserved” kind of person. I don’t LIKE to turn to my neighbor and say, “God loves you and so do I”. I’d much rather practice a little domination and say, “I will conquer your will tonight”, and with that brief moment of humor-filled rebellion, I’m good to go for the rest of the message. I’m glad to be in another “territory” because as Christians, I think we’re “weird” enough, we don’t have to invent ways to become less “culturally relevant”. “Biblically weird” is good, “hyper-weird” is perplexing.

There isn’t any other forum in which I yell out “that’s right” or “amen” at the speaker. I never practiced that in school, and I wouldn’t do it in a P.T.A. or city council meeting. The speaker would be thrown off his game because he wouldn’t expect such a thing. But sometimes, our Pentecostal guys do. And hey, you didn’t hear me say “that’s NOT right” when you spoke bad theology two minutes ago, so why should I “amen” NOW? What happens is the speaker gets thrown off their game because their dead set in this habit of getting immediate affirmation.

“I can’t HEAR you!!!” “Hel-LOW?!?!” They cup their hand to their ear, another raised eyebrow. It becomes incumbent upon us to decide whether we ought to become their enabler, or whether they quit this thing cold-turkey. Mental chaos. Just go on with it, we came to hear YOU, mister.

Actually, I don’t mind when people do the “amen” thing in church. I just smile in my heart at my Pentecostal compadres. It’s just that I think we ought to try switching to better devices which are available to rivet the congregation.

Like shortening the sermons.