The Exposure Will Do Me Good
I begin with a story I heard Dr. Frederick Douglas Haynes tell before a sermon he delivered one year at the Evangelism Conference of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
There was a preacher that decided he would attend the Westminister Dog Show. He not only attended, but he brought a dog he found in the streets outside of Madison Square Garden.
This dog was a mutt and he went into the arena and did some things you might expect a mutt to do. The dog used the arena floor to empty its bowels. It ran wild and did not show proper respect for the event.
Those running the event pulled the preacher aside and asked him why he brought such an animal into that high event that was the Westminister Dog Show?
The preacher responded, "Well, I thought the exposure would do him good."
That is what I see about my time at Duke.
Today, Jim Wallis came to talk about his work and the latest book he published entitled, "Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus." (You can find it on Amazon and with most booksellers.)
He was presented to us by William Willimon, who is a professor at the Divinity School. Willimon once was the Dean of the Chapel at Duke and a bishop in the United Methodist Church. One of the big things about Willimon is he was declared by Baylor University in 1996 as one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English language.
I met Willimon after the talk and I told him was a "scholar in residence" through the Baptist House Studies. But I went on to say that really am nothing more than a "shade tree preacher" that has served churches for 34 years. He downplayed my description by saying that they needed people like me.
Wallis stated that the country was facing an existential crisis. There were forces at work in the nation to try and keep the changing demographic from changing democracy. He continued by saying that denying people the right to vote based on skin color is an assault on democracy.
The point he wanted to drive home was that we, the church, must decide if Jesus matters?
That is a critical point not just in this moment in time, but for all time.
I listened to him talk about how fear leads to hate and I flashed back to what Yoda said to Anakin Skywalker in "The Phantom Menace: "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
We seem to be following that path now.
I spoke to Wallis after his speech and told him that we need to have a moment where, to borrow from Marcus Borg, that we meet Jesus again, for the first time.
An issue that we Baptist have and have not reconciled is our understanding of who the person of Jesus is to us. For most that I have known, Jesus is a person that we accept as savior for his work upon the cross and we leave him there. With our "fire insurance" paid, we just live our lives believing that is all we have to do.
The problem is that Jesus taught a way of being and a way of doing. What I see missing is our lack of being and incarnating Jesus into our present day. That lack of doing those two things creates a vacuum that gets filled with lots of stuff that is a part of our current problems relating to our polarization as a people.
I am doing some deep thinking about this and will be working on this in my days away and in my study. Hopefully this exposure will do me and my congregation some good.
The person presenting
There was a preacher that decided he would attend the Westminister Dog Show. He not only attended, but he brought a dog he found in the streets outside of Madison Square Garden.
This dog was a mutt and he went into the arena and did some things you might expect a mutt to do. The dog used the arena floor to empty its bowels. It ran wild and did not show proper respect for the event.
Those running the event pulled the preacher aside and asked him why he brought such an animal into that high event that was the Westminister Dog Show?
The preacher responded, "Well, I thought the exposure would do him good."
That is what I see about my time at Duke.
Today, Jim Wallis came to talk about his work and the latest book he published entitled, "Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus." (You can find it on Amazon and with most booksellers.)
He was presented to us by William Willimon, who is a professor at the Divinity School. Willimon once was the Dean of the Chapel at Duke and a bishop in the United Methodist Church. One of the big things about Willimon is he was declared by Baylor University in 1996 as one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English language.
I met Willimon after the talk and I told him was a "scholar in residence" through the Baptist House Studies. But I went on to say that really am nothing more than a "shade tree preacher" that has served churches for 34 years. He downplayed my description by saying that they needed people like me.
Wallis stated that the country was facing an existential crisis. There were forces at work in the nation to try and keep the changing demographic from changing democracy. He continued by saying that denying people the right to vote based on skin color is an assault on democracy.
The point he wanted to drive home was that we, the church, must decide if Jesus matters?
That is a critical point not just in this moment in time, but for all time.
I listened to him talk about how fear leads to hate and I flashed back to what Yoda said to Anakin Skywalker in "The Phantom Menace: "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
We seem to be following that path now.
I spoke to Wallis after his speech and told him that we need to have a moment where, to borrow from Marcus Borg, that we meet Jesus again, for the first time.
An issue that we Baptist have and have not reconciled is our understanding of who the person of Jesus is to us. For most that I have known, Jesus is a person that we accept as savior for his work upon the cross and we leave him there. With our "fire insurance" paid, we just live our lives believing that is all we have to do.
The problem is that Jesus taught a way of being and a way of doing. What I see missing is our lack of being and incarnating Jesus into our present day. That lack of doing those two things creates a vacuum that gets filled with lots of stuff that is a part of our current problems relating to our polarization as a people.
I am doing some deep thinking about this and will be working on this in my days away and in my study. Hopefully this exposure will do me and my congregation some good.
The person presenting
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