Or at least that’s what James K.A. Smith suggested in a recent post, and I must admit I’m inclined to agree with him.

Speaking to praise bands he says,

“I sometimes worry that we’ve unwittingly encouraged you to import certain forms of performance that are, in effect, “secular liturgies” and not just neutral “methods.” Without us realizing it, the dominant practices of performance train us to relate to music (and musicians) in a certain way: as something for our pleasure, as entertainment, as a largely passive experience.”

He goes on to discuss how the tendency to turn the worship experience into a concert (regardless of whether the concert is folk, rock, or Gospel) encourages passivity in the congregation and a consumerist understanding of worship. It becomes something we take in, not something we take part in.

Luke Larson recently pushed back on Smith’s post, and there are no doubt areas of it that could be challenged or at lease nuanced. But still, after years of participating in worship at evangelical churches and schools, I think Smith may be on to something.

What do you think? Is the form (not musical genre) of corporate worship inherently neutral? If so, why? If not, what might the worship-as-concert form be teaching us?

In it Ed reflects on how ALS has changed the way he views his task as a pastor, moving from speaking to thousands to one-on-one, and how it may in fact be the later that has greater value.

You can watch the video here.

“The two terms, ‘spiritual’ and ‘theology’, keep good company with one another. ‘Theology’ is the attention that we give to God, the effort we give to knowing God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures and in Jesus Christ. ‘Spiritual’ is the insistence that everything that God reveals of himself and his works is capable of being lived in ordinary men and women in their homes and workplaces.

‘Spiritual’ keeps ‘theology’ from degenerating into merely thinking and talking and writing about the feelings and thoughts one has about God. ‘Theology’ keeps ‘spiritual’ from becoming merely thinking and talking and writing about God at a distance. The two words need each other, for we know how easy it is for us to let our study of God (theology) get separated from the way we live; we also know how easy it is to let our desires to live whole and satisfying lives (spiritual lives) get disconnected from who God actually is and the ways he works among us.” – Eugene Peterson

I’ve long been wary of pragmatic books on “spirituality,” mostly because of how often they seem to be frivolous self-help affairs that wrap their message in God-talk while being utterly detached from anything resembling the witness of the Scriptures or, more to the point, the Word-In-Flesh.

But I’ve come to realize there is an opposite danger, one I’m particularly prone to as an avid reader of books on biblical studies and theology. That danger is one of detachment from day-to-day life, of talking about God and other people’s experiences with Him without that changing the way I live and love.

On a whim I started reading Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, and I think that Peterson’s concept of Spiritual Theology is exactly what I need to bridge that gap. A spirituality that is intensely theological, and a theology that is spiritually furnished to change not just my mind but also my heart.

So, that in mind, I’m putting together a reading list. I plan to read the rest of Peterson’s Spiritual Theology series, and I’ve also added Foster’s Freedom of Simplicity, Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, Williams’ Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, and Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination and The Practice of Prophetic Imagination.

No doubt this will shape the content of my post for quite some time. If you have any suggestions for additional reading, or would perhaps like to work through one of these books together on the blog, let me know!

Grace and peace.

I find myself especially interested in his push back on the idolatry inherent in the way we use God-talk as a talisman in our quest for a narrative that tells us why we are right/ good and they are wrong/ evil.

Not because right and wrong, or good and evil, don’t exist. But because we all too easily assume that we are “on God’s side,” that we are playing the role of the good and the right in the story being told. And we then craft a narrative about faith, or love, or politics that uses God-talk to reinforce that assumption without ever really allowing the living God to challenge our actions and our beliefs.

“When something needs to be fixed, when I need something to change, my first and abiding instinct is to read. I think I can read my way to a solution. Or at least an evasion.” – Lauren Winner, Still

As I first came across that quote from Still I was struck by how true it is of me. Reading is often my plan of first resort, whether I’m trying to solve a problem, understand a complex issue, or process the varied events of this life.

So, with a daughter on the way, I’ve started to worry myself over my ability to be a  good parent, and I’m looking for recommendations for parenting books. I’ll say from the start that many of the books I’ve examined so far, both secular and faith based, have seemed deeply flawed in all sorts of ways. But I imagine there have to be at least a few worthwhile volumes out there, so I’m turning to you for help.

If you’re a parent, or work closely with parents and children, what parenting books have you found to be especially helpful?

Peter Enns responds to Kevin DeYoung.

Craig Keener asks, Are Miracles Real?

Tim Gombis on how Jesus Transforms our Corrupted Assumptions.

New studies reveal that women, long a majority in the pews, are stepping away from the Catholic Church.

Jenell Paris’ Memo to the Masses sparks an interesting discussion of how bloggers often inadvertently give a wider audience to the very things they oppose.

Kathy Keller explains the benefits of raising kids in the city.

Scot McKnight on The Story and Daily Life.

Andy Unedited shares What Publishers can Learn from Airlines.

“Simplicity is the first cousin of contentment. Its motto is, ‘We brought nothing into this world, and we can certainly carry nothing out.’ It recognizes that we are pilgrims. It concentrates us on what we need, and measures this by what we use. It rejoices in the good things of creation, but hates waste and greed and clutter. It knows how easily the seed of the Word is smothered by the ‘cares and riches of this life.’ It wants to be free of distractions, in order to love and serve God and others.”

Brilliant. Quite a challenge to actually live out in our culture, but brilliant in spite of and even because of that inherent challenge.

And as we read this quote and discussed what that looks like in our lives, I was reminded of a section from Eugene Peterson’s Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places that might be worth adding to the conversation.

“In our present culture all of us find that we are studied, named, and treated as functions and things. “Consumer” is the catch-all term for the way we are viewed. From early on we are looked upon as individuals who can buy or perform or use. Advertisers begin targeting us in those terms from the moment we are able to choose a breakfast cereal.

For those of us who are reared in North American culture, it is inevitable that we should unconsciously acquire this way of looking at everyone we meet. Other people are potential buyers for what I am selling, students for what I am teaching, recruits for what I am doing, resources for what I am building or making, voters for what I am proposing, clients for the services I am offering. Or, to reverse the direction, I identify myself as the potential buyer, student, recruit, resource, client, and so on. But it is consumerism either way.

I have no complaint about this at one level. I need things, other people offer what I need; I am happy to pay for and take advantage of what is offered whether it is food, clothing, information, legal or medical help, leadership in a cause that is dear to my heart, advocacy in matters of justice, or victims-rights that I care about. I’m quite happy to be a consumer in this capitalist society where there is so much to consume.

Except. Except I don’t want to be just a consumer. I don’t even want to be predominantly a consumer. To be reduced to a consumer is to leave out most of what I am, of what makes me me. To be treated as a consumer is to be reduced to being used by another or reduced to a product for someone else’s use. It makes little difference whether the using is in a generous or selfish cause it is reduction. Widespread consumerism results in extensive depersonalization. And every time depersonalization moves in, life leaks out.”

Yes, there are differences between the various candidates for president, and the two main parties, but lately it has seemed to me that those differences are greatly exaggerated.

Points of dissimilarity, such as their stance on defining marriage or who gets which tax cuts, are pushed to the front to obscure the fact that they are all just offering us variations on the same narrative.

Almost every candidate, and the party platforms of both Republicans and Democrats, promise us year after year that they will grow the economy and secure America’s “special place in the world,” which is of course a not-so-subtle reference to our continued military superiority.

And this sounds right to us because we have convinced ourselves that our narrative, nationally and personally, is defined by consumption and war – what Walter Brueggemann calls “therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism” in The Practice of Prophetic Imagination.

Consumerism and militarism have come to play such an essential and interconnected role in the American story that Wendell Berry can justifiably refer to them in terms of impersonal forces, The War and The Economy, in his novel Jayber Crow.

“The War and The Economy were seeming more and more to be independent operations. The War, I thought, was just the single Hell that is always astir in the world…And the nations were always preparing funds of weapons and machines and people to be used up whenever The War did break out in full force, which meant that sooner or later it would … Also, it seemed that The War and The Economy were more and more closely related…The War was good for the Economy.”

We’ve decided that economic advancement at any and all costs, and America’s military superiority over any and all rivals, are worthwhile goals that somehow increase our peace, strengthen our communities, and advance the common good.

But instead we have unending wars and a whole “security” industry in our airports and public spaces, disintegrating communities from urban centers to the rural farmlands, and the shrinking of the “greater good” to nothing more than our collective ability to consume more year after year.

People are made for more than this, war and consumption may be parts of the human experience but they are not the most important parts. Such a view reduces our humanity, ignoring our souls, our loves, our neighborhoods, our environment, our art, our virtues and vices, our story.

As Gospel people shouldn’t we be offering a political vision of what it means that Jesus-is-Lord that is more than just a baptism of Right or Left wing promises of economic growth and national security?

I’ve seen this play out in pop-theology quite often, and even promoted as the only faithful hermeneutic for approaching the Scriptures by some theologians. But even though it has a certain surface level appeal, I’ve come to believe this is an inherently problematic way to frame the issue. For one thing, it often takes for granted that a “literal” reading that is obvious to us in the 21^st century would be anything like how the original readers would have understood the text; for another it begs the question what do we mean by “literal” in the first place?

In this clip from BioLogos N.T. Wright and Peter Enns discuss the term literal, and how interpreting the Biblical text might not be quite that simple.

In response Skye Jethani took a look behind the dangers to ask why. Why does contemporary evangelicalism seem to have such a preoccupation with megachurch pastors who expand their “brand” by writing and speaking at all the relevant conferences? He suggests that this can be attributed, at least in part, to what he terms the evangelical industrial complex.

“There is an evangelical industrial complex that helps create, and then relies upon, the existence of celebrity leaders. Have you ever wondered why you don’t see pastors from small or medium sized churches on the main stage at big conferences? Or why most of the best-selling Christian authors are megachurch leaders?

Here’s one possibility (the one people like to believe): The most godly, intelligent, and gifted leaders naturally attract large followings, so they naturally are going to have large churches, and their ideas are so great and their writing so sharp that publishers pick their book proposals, and the books strike a nerve with so many people that they naturally become best-sellers, and these leaders are therefore the obvious choice to speak at the biggest conferences. As a result they find themselves quite naturally becoming popular, even rising to celebrity status.

Is this possible? Yes. Does it happen? Sometimes. Is it the norm? I don’t think so.

Here’s the other possibility (one I’ve seen from the inside): Through any number of methods–powerful gifting, shrewd marketing, dumb luck–a pastor leads a congregation to megachurch status. Publishers eager for a guaranteed sales win offer the megachurch pastor a book deal knowing that if only a third of the pastor’s own congregation buys a copy, it’s still a profitable deal. The book is published on the basis of the leader’s market platform, not necessarily the strength of his ideas or the book’s quality. Sometimes the pastor will actually write the book, and other times a ghost writer hired by the publisher will do the hard work of transforming his sermon notes into 180 pages with something resembling a coherent idea.

Wanting to maximize the return on their investment, the publisher will then promote the pastor at the publisher-sponsored ministry conference or other events. As a result of the pastor’s own megachurch customer base and the publisher’s conference platform, the book becomes a best-seller.”

On the flip side, Bob Hyatt discusses the intentional pursuit of obscurity in his Out of Ur essay The Dangerous Pursuit of Pastoral Fame.

“Over the last few years, I’ve thought long and hard about “my platform” as a pastor, a writer, an occasional speaker. And as I’ve done so, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a danger to my soul in pursuing more exposure, more name recognition, more money to be made from thinking, writing, and speaking about ministry issues. Especially while I am still in full-time, paid ministry to a local community.

I want to be clear, though: I have no issue with writers/speakers who sell lots of books, go on speaking tours, and generally promote their works however they can. But there’s something very “off” in the proliferation of pastors who are mixing ministry in and to a local community with “building their brand.” I think a good case can be made that the self-promotion that’s inevitably needed to build a brand in today’s world in incongruous with the servant-leader model of pastoring and the attitude of humility that ought to accompany it.

The Celebrity Pastor certainly isn’t a new phenomenon. But the extent to which some take it today, I think, is.”

What do you think? Is the growing pushback on the celebrity pastor phenomenon justified? If not, why? If so, how can we work towards something better and what would that look like?