Here are my thoughts.<\/p>\n
It seems that so much of what we value these days we feel a need to capture \u2013 to pin down, to have available to us \u2013 like a butterfly on a display board. And like the butterfly, the only way we can \u201csave\u201d it is for it to be dead. Oh, certainly, we can then study it and even appreciate it \u2013 all of which is good \u2013 but we can no longer interact with it, because it is no longer a living thing.<\/p>\n
Like good conversation, what happens in a church between preacher and congregant is not static. It is something that is in the moment. It is alive.<\/p>\n
While that may not be so obvious from the pew, it certainly is from the pulpit. Sharing one\u2019s thoughts with folks who are engaged and connected, is an entirely different experience from talking with those who are bored or disinterested. Think about a time when you\u2019ve had a story to tell to someone. If that person is disconnected, it is easy to lose the desire to continue the story.<\/p>\n
But what about from the perspective of the person in the pew? How is the time devoted to a sermon anything like a conversation? Sometimes the preacher who is willing to risk it will actually open up the sermon and invite response. But more frequently being on the \u201creceiving\u201d end of a sermon is like attending to a conversation partner with respectful listening. There is more conveyed than just the words. Mood, emphasis, intent \u2026 all those things expressed by tone of voice, pace, eye contact, body language contribute to what the hearer hears.<\/p>\n
As in a conversation, a good sermon doesn\u2019t end when the preacher concludes. A good sermon elicits rumination, reflection and response. Because it is a living thing, parishioners take the ideas and concepts they have heard into their real world lives. One of the greatest affirmations a preacher can receive is to have a parishioner say, \u201cI keep thinking about \u2026\u201d or \u201cremember when you said \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Which brings me to the butterfly on the board. With podcasts and YouTube we now have the capacity to access unending numbers of sermons and church services and theological or religious talks. We can learn from a vast array of sources. We can have a number of ideas about any number of topics to consider. But is that \u201cChurch?\u201d<\/p>\n
Demographics would tell us that \u201cChurch,\u201d in the old sense of gathering with others, is becoming an antiquated thing \u2026 that we, as a culture, are less and less inclined to come together for worship, or much of anything else, for that matter. Remember the book published in 2000, \u201cBowling Alone?\u201d<\/p>\n
There are threads that, in the past, tied together our social and political and spiritual lives. It seems those ties are fraying. We see this in our increasing isolation, our disinclination toward public discourse, our ambivalence about commitment. When those ties snap who will we be?<\/p>\n
In our culture of individuality, the focus of Church membership has become about the status of our personal relationship with God. While that is well and good, many question if we need to be part of a community for that.<\/p>\n
But there is much more to being part of a Church. Gathering as a community is about practicing, if for only one hour a week, living in the peace and unity (the Shalom) we believe God wants for all humanity with others aren\u2019t like us. And what happens between preacher and congregation is a little piece of that.<\/p>\n
Gathered, we don\u2019t just think about peace and compassion and inclusion and forgiveness, we do them. Perhaps we do them imperfectly, but we do them. We practice living \u201con Earth as it is in Heaven.\u201d And no matter what we believe about the theological underpinnings of everything else at \u201cChurch,\u201d the ties that bind us are strengthened.<\/p>\n
Then we leave, having experienced what it is to live without the pins that hold us to the boards of our separate lives. And in a way that listening to a podcast or even reading a book cannot, the Life in which you and I and all Creation shares will have been nurtured and renewed. We Christians call this living \u201cin Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leigh Waggoner is priest at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
are my thoughts. It seems that so much of what we value these days we feel a need to capture \u2013 to pin down, to have available to us \u2013 like a butterfly on a display board. And like the butterfly, the only way we can \u201csave\u201d it is for it to be dead. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6323],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-115245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-thoughts-along-the-way"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115245"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=115245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}