Phillip:  What does ++ mean when you write ++Akinola?

Jason: There are several different groups of “continuing Anglicans” in the U.S., with varying degrees of recognition around the world, but technically none of them have the full recognition of the Anglican Communion.

The Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of America, for example, have an agreement with ++Akinola in Nigeria, but is not recognized by most other provinces and their Presiding Bishops aren’t invited to the Lambeth conference, and so on. There are other groups, too: the Anglican Mission in America is a “mission” of Rwanda and ++Kolini, but again (I believe) has not been invited to Lambeth, and is therefore not a real alternative in at least one major sense.

Those are the major ones, but there are many others, usually with even less claim to the worldwide Communion than those.

In my case, I’m not Anglican-until-death, and I fully expect to be Presbyterian someday, but not today. Or maybe I’ll join up with an Acts 29 church plant, of which there are several near my house. The point is, I’m part of Trinity, and as long as they’re part of the ECUSA, I will be too. If they leave, so will I. When Bill Lovell someday retires, it is unlikely I will be happy enough with his replacement to remain a part of the church, but I can’t see the future, so I don’t know for sure.

Ben Myers’ series by guest bloggers, “For the Love of God: Why I Love…,” continues with no. 20 by Byron Smith. This one gets a loud “Amen!” from me: Nietzsche. As I mentioned yesterday, though Nietzsche embraced the title ‘Antichrist’, much of his critique of western christianity stands in the prophetic tradition that exposes the motives operative in our beliefs and actions that we hide from ourselves. It is a form of theologia crucis, an investigation into our ongoing evasiveness and duplicity, our flesh that loves darkness rather than light and therefore hides its secret motives. This occurs both in the individual and in the community. Where Nietzsche does not help so much is in what must come after the critique. His remedies are blind guesses or wishful thinking; they lack real hope. Nevertheless, Nietzsche as devotional reading can be good for the soul if his hermeneutic of suspicion is applied to our own beliefs and actions, a testing of the spirits, a fiery trial that challenges our allegiance and where and in whom our trust truly lies. If our only encounter with Nietzsche is for the purpose of refuting or discrediting this “antichrist” then I believe we silence an important gadfly for self-examination, a spur toward a “faith that produces steadfastness.”

Jason:

The only thing that comes immediately to mind is the Reformed Episcopal Church.

I believe that is the denomination that Wannabe Newbie Anglican is part of.

MOD: Anglican Mission In America

Phillip, Douglas, anyone else saddened by the whole ECUSA thing:

If an ECUSA person wants to stay in a church rooted in the worldwide Anglican communion, but cannot stay with the ECUSA, what are their options within the US?

You guys and your 20-minute sermons! I’ve heard 20-minute sermons that bored me silly, and 60-minute sermons that didn’t bore me at all. Overall I tend to favor shorter sermons as being more likely to be fully remembered, but it ain’t a magic bullet.

Douglas: It’s all true, every word. The “mother Jesus” was mentioned at a meeting I attended Monday night, and is definitely a sticking point.

On the ECUSA: The other day I suggested that time might heal some of the more raw wounds from Convention, but what I didn’t take into account was this: Many orthodox folks had decided that 2006 was it. Either the ECUSA would fully embrace the Windsor report, or they would not. Anything short of dramatic repentance was simply unacceptable.

Since obviously the ECUSA has not repented one whit, but has rather engaged only in a series of delaying tactics intended to let the Anglican church catch up to the surrounding culture, that was it. This group of orthodox bishops and parishes needed no major trigger event, though several (the new presiding bishop, “mother Jesus,” and others) small and medium trigger events were supplied. Instead, the very lack of a trigger event was enough.

And so +Iker of Fort Worth read on the Convention floor about how his diocese have petitioned ++Rowan for alternate Episcopal oversight, and Christ Church Plano voted to leave the ECUSA, and various other actions are apparently in process around the country, and there is no smoking gun.

Just a strong odor of gunpowder and a pile of dead bodies.

Jason: I’d be much more comfortable with the idea of sitting down to watch a movie and then discussing the themes of the movie from a Christian perspective than I would using clips within a sermon. A clip depends on context, and showing a clip within a sermon means that a certain percentage of people are going to spend the rest of the service remembering the rest of the movie or wishing they could remember the rest of the movie, and miss the point entirely.

I believe that Mars Hill (Seattle) has a monthly Film & Theology night, and that seems about the best way to do something like that to me.

P.S. I had no idea that movie was out on DVD. I saw it years ago on a third- or fourth-generation VHS. I’m gonna have to rent it. And no prize necessary. :-)

Michael Buckley and Wired Magazine say stay away from Superman, but Harry Knowles says it’s finally the serious film it should have been all along.

Dr. Mohler on Baptists and Believer’s Baptism.

After reading Annie’s post, I’m officially requesting that I be allowed to move to the Crawford home. No offense intended, but I only get walked once a day around here, and it’s no way for a dog to live. Annie understands me. In fact, I think she’s the messiah. Rescue me!

Anybody remember this cereal?

“Pull up a stool.”

“A mountain of natural health.”

Don’t talk like that while I’m trying to eat my mini-wheats.

The fabulously beautiful planet Crawford is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting web-tourists a year that any net imbalance between the number of times you eat and the number of times you excrete while in their home is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there, it is vitally important to get a receipt.

On a more serious note, here’s another take on the follies of the ECUSA at the now-blessedly-over convention.

I am loathe to even hint at a snicker at the expense of my kind hosts of just a couple of months ago, but that is one quotable post. I think this needs to find its way into a commercial somewhere:

Fortunately, guests of the Crawford home are neither expected nor required to exhibit evidence of their “exit episode” should they tarry for awhile after their “joyful time of entrance.” However, it is making me think of instituting some new house rules around the Hunter home. And I think I sniff a new BHT rule here that will do much to promote blogospheric wellness: “Here at the BHT, the spirits soar, the mind is educated, and the bowels—the bowels are born again!”

I have inquired at the Bronx and London Zoos as to the daily bowel evacuations of primates. It is not once, twice, or three times, sir, but four. At the end of an average day, their cages are filled with a veritable mountain of natural health.—Dr. John Harvey Kellogg

Hi folks,

I’ve been frantically finishing my papers for class. I had to get them emailed today, which I did at 11:59 pm. I usually am running down to the wire, but I outdid myself tonight.

I don’t know if anyone missed me, but I won’t be so scarce. I’ve tried to keep up a bit by skimming some of the easier posts. Sorry, Joel.

I guess I need to get up to speed before I can say something productive, so let me just share that during a study break I flipped by TBN and saw Pat Boone wearing the brightest lime green jacket I have ever seen. If I had hi-def I probably would have gotten a seizure. I have been a fan of his ever since he got kicked off TBN for his heavy metal record, even if they did let him back on. No jn, seriously.

Hi Warren,

Where in west-central Illinois are you from? I grew up in Dunlap, north of Peoria.

I tell you, men, stop reading Fide-o and James White, and read Annie’s blog. Posts like this address many of the problems in the BHT at a level we generally won’t admit is relevant. For example, here’s just a single sentence I think could help many of you to be less contentious and cranky:

You should have as many exit episodes as you have joyful times of entrance.

Seriously men….isn’t it time some of you admitted what the REAL problem is?

As an English teacher, I want to say that rarely has the language been employed so well. You go girl….uh sorry….well…

Michael: “I would use clips in teaching or evangelistic presentations like OBI chapel, but if I were in an actual worship service I wouldnt use one. And I agree. Speak for 20 minutes.”

Or, show the clip, then speak for 15. 8-)

I think I’d have a hard time sitting through a 40 minute sermon, unless the speaker was really good. It would remind me too much of college. Stick with the short, gospel proclaiming, applicable sermon on Sunday, and save the details for a pastor’s Bible study some other time in the week.

Cyberbrethren is a great blog for all things Lutheran, especially beautiful photographs. These two posters are coming out in the fall, and I want the second one immediately. Beautiful and historically unique. There’s a nice picture of Josh’s favorite Lutheran and his church on the site today.

David Crowder Band’s new CD is an iTunes exclusive. First time I’ve seen a Christian band as an iTunes exclusive before (but that doesn’t mean that they are the first).

MOD: A Collision is a magnificent record. Clay loves it. If Clay loves Christian music, something is good. B Collision is acoustic versions of the same songs. Mainly buy it because a certain pyro used a pic of Crowder to make fun of the emerging church.

AUTHOR: Yeah, B Collision is the exclusive.  I didn’t realize that A came out last year.  Tells you how much I pay attention.

I would use clips in teaching or evangelistic presentations like OBI chapel, but if I were in an actual worship service I wouldn’t use one. And I agree. Speak for 20 minutes.

Phillip, you don’t have the title, but you nailed it. The movie is called Circle of Iron (aka The Silent Flute.) Carradine played four characters, and his buddy Jeff Cooper was the main character.

My loving bride recently bought me the newly released DVD for my birthday to replace a worn out tape. (As much as she dislikes the film, that’s saying something.) It’s a horrible movie, but a guilty pleasure.

As for the promised prize, I’m sure you’re getting warm fuzzies right now from all that unending respect. 8-) Other than that, you’ll have to let me know if there’s anything you like that may be found at a large, alternative, Christian music festival.

Michael, I appreciate the quick reply. I also see your point. If someone is just preaching a feel-good non-gospel message based on a movie clip, I’m right there with the chorus of people crying “throw it out!” I have to confess that I’ve also been guilty of using clips more because I liked them than whether or not they made a scriptural point. (I’d also chalk it up to inexperience, but that would just be whining on my part.)

Still, I don’t mind using them if they serve the scripture I’m discussing. (as opposed to tring to dig up scripture to fit the movie – another thing I’ve been guilty of)

I agree with you that scripture is a saving story. It is so much a saving story that when I first began to speak or preach, I didn’t realize that I everything I spoke about eventually ended up at the gospel. Today, I do so intentionally.

It is hard to use video clips well in a sermon, and I’m the last person who will claim to be good at it, but when it works, it really works. Of course when it fails, you may as well let some self-help guru run your church.

I’m not sure if/when I’ll use them again, especially since my reading and our current alt. worship service are drifting toward a mix of simple-church/early-church/Celtic/Anglican/missional ideas. Instead, I’d rather just get a bunch of people together outside of worship and show a movie, then sit around and talk about it, letting any gospel connections come out in the course of the discussion.

Jason: Was it that weird David Carradine martial-arts thing? I can’t remember the name, sorry, and I’m probably way off anyway. I just can’t remember where else I’ve seen Roddy McDowall and Christopher Lee together in a movie with odd dialog like that.

Jason: This is a tough subject. I will give you a brief answer.

I supervise between 10-15 regular chapel preachers. There are probably 3 or 4 of us who could use a clip and still use scripture. The rest have already stated to me- plainly- that they would like to preach FROM THE FILMS, with scripture as the supporting text.

We’ve had a number of outside groups come in and use clips. Scripture vanished. One guy preached 4 messages- prepacakaged btw- from Remember the Titians. Only one even referred to a text.

When I announced I had the projector, our preachers were lining up with the moralistic movie clips they wanted to use.

In another angle, our school has a rule that students cannot watch movies higher than PG without permission from the administration. Of course, I’ve had many groups immediately want to use Matrix, etc. This raises issues for our administriation (not really for me) of hypocrisy.

I’ve been through this with preaching from CCM lyrics as well. Many of my preachers- and they come from all backgrounds- will preach from anything other than scripture. They believe scripture is boring, and movies/music are interesting. Since we are dealing with pagan teenagers, they are probably right.

I have no problem with the use of clips as illustrations, though it is an awful lot of trouble to make a point. I am not impressed with what it does to preaching. The fellow who is coming to do my next Spiritual Emphasis Week is skilled at this, and keeps the message in the Bible, with clips as illustrations.

I believe most preachers in most situations will preach the clips, and the Biblical Gospel will not be heard.

Scripture is the saving story. Scripture doesn’t illustrate films. Films and art may shed light on the Gospel, but getting that relationship right is hard. People in church need to hear lots and lots of scripture, in context, with Christ at the center. This fascination with making church into the theater and a verse here and there to Christianize it is not what we need.

I am passionately committed to having students experience preaching FROM the Bible, and going from here remembering Biblical preaching, not films or entertainment.

Michael, I gather from your most recent podcast that you aren’t a big fan of movie clips in sermons, but do you, or does the rest of the pub for that matter, ever consider using them? I don’t use them in our current format, since we’re a lot more low key, but there was a time when we used them almost every week. I would add, though, that when we did use them, it was never at the expense of the scripture that we were using. If anything, it would take away from the time any of us spent talking. That wasn’t all bad, though, since it forced us to spend more time on applying the scripture to life and less time slogging through grammer. (The movie clip always functioned as an analogy to the application of the Bible passage.)

Ever since I was a part of that ministry, I look for sermon analogies in almost every movie I watch.

I was thinking of movies with monkeys in them.

1) Planet of the Apes
2) Outbreak
3) Monkey Shines

Matthew, the other Jason B got my quote from Road House so fast that I knew I’d have to pick a hard one if I ever asked again. In this case, my own strange mind recalled the movie that made me confuse Joel. It’s hard, so I’ll drop another hint if anyone wants to take a stab at it. The idea for the story came from Bruce Lee.

(BTW, which three movies were you thinking about?)

Sorry, Joel. I knew the connection to the quote was a little “out there,” but it was the first thing that came to mind. I zeroed in on this sentence:

When one misses the point of these prophetic critiques (i.e., according to wisdom in ones own sight, as carte-blanche authorization to condemn fellow believers who arent being/doing/saying/thinking what one is permitted to be/do/say/think), one has prepared oneself for even deeper self-deception, even to the point of malevolent desires towards ones perceived opponents.

From that, I took it that you were commenting on the varied examples of flame throwing that gets hurled from one kind of Christian to another in the area of discernment. If a cartoon bubble could have appeared over my head at that moment, you would have seen an image of monkeys flinging poo at each other, and the lame movie quote followed. As I said, it’s a little odd, but I’m having an odd day. (IT work does that to a person.) Also, I must confess that I only skimmed the Westphal piece, and I’m sure I missed some connection there that you intended.

If I’m still so far off the mark that you’re looking at me funny, that’s ok. I go off on strange tangents once in a while. I’ll reread your post and the link later when my responsibilities for a network aren’t distracting me.

As for the quote, it’s not Ghandi. The movie I’m thinking of isn’t near that good. The budget was quite poor, but as a hint, Roddy McDowall, Eli Wallach, and Christopher Lee all had bit parts.

I’ve never bought the argument that they are not appropriate because someone might see you cut someone off in traffic and thus bring the name of Christ into disrepute.

It’s more like not appropriate…

Then there’s the folks who will gladly honk and give you the finger as they cut you off, with the “Jesus fish” on their trunk and a “When the trumpet sounds I’m outta here!” bumper sticker on their bumper.

Jason, I did Google it because I had no clue and no intention of taking a guess to make myself look smart unless it was one of the three movies I was thinking of.

Boy, was I wrong.

If you had thrown the movie title up there, I still would have had no clue because until today I had no idea that movie had ever been made.

If I’m getting you wrong, please enlighten me.

suddenly realizes how Alex feels when he reads my posts

Jason, I can honestly say, and with no little pleasure mind you, that I cannot for the life of me see the connection you’re making. I know it kind of ruins the moment to ask for more data, but it is I who am in need of enlightenment, Master Blair.
This is probably stoopid, but I would guess Gandhi.

I’m a fan of Mark Roberts, whose web site is probably one of the best anywhere. He’s on this Al Mohler program, about 12 minutes in, talking about the future of the PCUSA.

Joel, as I’m trying to get a handle on your thoughts about Merold Westphal’s article, I’m going to offer my own take on it in the form of a movie quote. It’s an obscure movie quote, and it’s zen philosophy. If I’m getting you wrong, please enlighten me. When I read your post, it’s the first thing that came to mind. It may be a little odd, in which case I apologize in advance.

“The way of the monkey is to play the fool. While you laugh at his antics, he bites you from behind. Unmask his ego, and you expose a coward disguised as a monkey.”

In other words, many of the in-house fights from which we get so much guilty pleasure are like monkeys flinging poo at each other. Does that about get it?

(BTW: The first person in this pub who gets that movie quote without Googling it gets my unending respect, and maybe a real prize.)

Financial spokesman for the Christian Right?

Jim, whenever someone tells you they wish they were young again, send them to that story. They will be suddenly greatful for their aging state.

Can there be many teenage boys who do not recognise themselves in that Onion article? And things must be even more dire today than it was when I was a teen, what with half dressed girls at school (I attended an all-boys HS) and the hardest porn just a click away. I would not want to be a teenage boy today.