Three Words for Scripture: A Sermon Delivered Sunday, September 15, 2013

[This text is still formatted and edited for delivery as a sermon.]

Is scripture SACRED? 

Is the bible different for us from other literature; Shakespeare's plays, for example; the books of other religions; Harry Potter?

Do MIRACLES matter? The bible is full of miracles. Can we ignore them? What do we make of them?

Whose WORD is the bible? Is it human words? Is it God's word? How do we come to one view or the other? Should we?

The SACRED; MIRACLES; the WORD of God; three words to help us consider the place of the bible in our lives and our church. 

What next for Waterloo North Mennonite Church?

The discussion series at WNMC concluded with the following question:

Should our congregation consider the scriptural and theological rationale for an “open” communion?

Please see the foregoing post for one perspective on what "open" means, and what an open communion might look like.

What do you think?

Anabaptism, 2063 A.D.

This past Sunday we concluded the last session of our discussion series at WNMC with an effort to tie off a few loose ends and conceptualize how a future Mennonite- Anabaptist congregation might address the various themes that have been canvassed.  The metaphorical vehicle we used was time travel - at trip to 2063 A.D. to visit a hypothetical congregation and consider what practices it might be following that remain rooted in Christian and Anabaptist conviction and tradition, and yet represent innovation.

Revisiting Baptism - Waterloo North Mennonite Church, June 2, 2013

I apologize in advance to readers of this post who were not present at the WNMC Class and panel discussion, because I will not be able to provide a lot of the context and content of what took place this morning. My purpose is to publish this post promptly, in order to permit participants in the class who did not have an opportunity to speak this morning to provide on-line comment in a timely manner, if they would like. Unfortunately, that means I cannot provide much more than an outline of the discussion, but here goes.

From Pagan to Christian: Part II – The Religious Marketplace

The previous post described the culture of the Roman Empire within which Christianity originated as religiously cosmopolitan.  Types of religiousity included atheism, polytheism, pantheism, monotheism, animism and mysticism, as well as philosophers and proponents of religion who sought to identify truths representing the essential unity of all religions.

What drew people to religion in this cosmopolitan religious environment? Not surprisingly, the motives were varied. In Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity, Luke Timothy Johnson ventures to identify four general categories of religiousity or religious interest, in Greco-Roman culture, including desire to “participate in divine benefits”, hope for “moral transformation”, a desire to “transcend the world”, and the use of religion to “stabilize the world”.  

From Pagan to Christian: Part I – The God Fearers

During the years in which Christianity was born and began to grow, the Mediterranean basin represented a diverse, multicultural, and multilingual social environment subjected to a dominant political and military order (the Romans), and loosely united by an increasingly pervasive yet heterogenous cultural ethos that was an amalgram of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and even Jewish influences. Religion in the Empire featured a smorgasbord of choices, but often there were also threads of commonality connecting various traditions. Categories of religiousity included atheism, polytheism, pantheism, monotheism, animism and mysticism, as well as philosophers and proponents of religion who sought to identify truths representing the essential unity of all religions.

Images of the Church: Our First Session on Sunday, May 12, 2013

Thank you to everyone who participated in this morning's session. You will find the substantive content of the presentation reflected in the preceding post. What follows here are copies of sketches made on whiteboards by various participants in response to class discussion and the prior presentation on "How the Mennonite Church got to the 21st Century".  I have elaborated somewhat on the sketches. However, if you were part of a group that presented the sketch, feel free to provide clarification and detail in the comment section.