Through the night of doubt and sorrow
Onward goes the pilgrim band,
Singing songs of expectation,
Marching to the promised land.
Clear before us through the darkness
Gleams and burns the guiding light;
Brother clasps the hand of brother,
Stepping fearless through the night.
One the light of God’s own presence,
O’er His ransomed people shed,
Chasing far the gloom and terror,
Bright’ning all the path we tread;
One the object of our journey,
One the faith which never tires,
One the earnest looking forward,
One the hope our God inspires.
One the strain that lips of thousands
Lift as from the heart of one;
One the conflict, one the peril
One the march in God begun,
One the gladness of rejoicing
On the far eternal shore,
Where the one almighty Father
Reigns in love for evermore.
Onward, therefore, pilgrim brothers,
Onward, with the cross our aid!
Bear its shame, and fight its battle,
Till we rest beneath its shade.
Soon shall come the great awaking,
Soon the rending of the tomb;
Then the scatt’ring of all shadows,
And the end of toil and gloom.
8.7.8.7.D – Bernhardt S. Ingemann, 1859 trans. Sabine Baring-Gould, 1867 Tune: HOLLINGSWORTH – Matthew L. Harber, 2010 #689 in Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, 2012
iPads in the Pulpit – Bible Design Blog
iPads in the Pulpit
Posted by J. Mark Bertrand on Thursday, August 22, 2013
Excerpts:
[A previous post] “got a lot of people thinking, which is to say, it got them riled up.”
An iPad in the pulpit, Barrett contends, sends a different message than a physical Bible to the congregation, because people associate the iPad with media consumption. The physical book we now think of as the text, whereas we still distinguish between the e-reader, a technological device for consuming the text, and the text itself. When the pastor flashes his iPad, we see the device, not the Bible.
…. “many culture critics [argue] that the use of e-books contributes to the problem of illiteracy. The way we experience the text via a Bible app leaves us with less of a sense of the big picture, how the whole book fits together. And because the virtual text is disembodied, its symbolism seems at odds with Christian theological values: “as physical beings who gather together as an assembly in a tangible place,” isn’t it strange to replace the physical book with a multi-use e-reader? Might not the physicality of baptism and the Lord’s Supper be set in uncomfortable relief when the proclamation of the Word loses its physical touchstone? Not to mention, the use of e-readers removes the physical proclamation inherent in carrying a physical Bible into the world. People see your printed Bible and react to it very differently than they do to your iPad.
The convenience of Bible apps is a good thing.
Thanks to smartphone Bible apps, people have access to the text at times and in places they ordinarily wouldn’t. Most of us don’t carry printed Bibles everywhere we go. I can’t count the number of times prior to the advent of smartphones that I wanted to check a quotation, look up a cross reference, or simply read but couldn’t thanks to the fact that I didn’t have a physical copy of the Bible near to hand. Those days are pretty much over. Because the technology is still relatively new, people who don’t ordinarily take an interest in the Bible seem to get excited about it …
But e-readers are not an unqualified good.
My hope for e-books is not that they’ll go away, but that in the future they will get better, eventually surpassing physical books. They have a long way to go, however….
The downside I see with the use of Bible apps is not the software itself, but the larger context of the media consumption device — not the e-books, in other words, but the e-readers. When sermons bored me as a kid, I found myself flipping through the color maps in the back of the Bible. If you bore me while I’m holding my iPad, I have more sophisticated means of distraction at my fingertips.
I use the ESV Study Bible app in church from time to time, mainly because I appreciate the notes but don’t have a special load-bearing harness required for carrying the printed edition. (I exaggerate, but the thing is heavy.) While I’m not one of those people who forgets to switch his phone to silent mode –– my phone lives in silent mode –– I can’t seem to open it without a flood of notifications spilling across the screen. I’ll admit I’ve found myself glancing at incoming e-mails when I was supposed to be following along with a reading.
We give ourselves far too much credit when it comes to multi-tasking. The people in my life who rely uncritically on screens tend to be the most scattered and disengaged, the most shallow. (Sometimes I’m one of them.) This is not because such outcomes are inevitable with the switch to screens. It’s just that they’re harder to avoid, requiring more discipline. Still, some context is helpful. I’ve done a lot of Bible reading in church that had nothing to do with the sermon simply because I was more interested in the text than I was in the sermon….
There’s a larger question: screens in worship. And e-readers aren’t the worst offender.
Our anxiety about small screens in worship seems belated, mainly because the battle seems to have been fought and lost some time ago. For many evangelicals, at least, the idea of worshipping without screens is rather scandalous. Hymnals are remembered as something akin to a medieval torture device. Ditching them in favor of the then-new projection screen is supposed to have liberated worship. Instead of looking down, we could look up. Instead of each worshipper absorbed in a private world, ours eyes could be fixed on the same object.
To be frank, if I could give every pastor in the world an iPad in exchange for pulling down the projection screens, I would do it in a heartbeat. My tolerance for misspelled, unpunctuated lyrics projected onto sentimental backdrops ran out long ago. The conversion of our churches into something resembling a mid-tier sports bar is more than a subtle shift, and the messages it sends are not subtle, either. For every instance of the technology being used well, there must be a thousand examples of it used poorly. In my mind the experiment has failed, only most of us are too deep in to back out now.
Perhaps that knowledge is what makes some of us want to push back against the enthusiasm of early adopters. Once a medium is embraced uncritically and goes mainstream, people come to expect its use. So what if it’s used badly –– that badness has become the new norm. Some people prefer it, just as they prefer other inferior experiences to which they’ve grown accustomed.
To the extent that the rise of the new screens prompts us to go back and examine the question of screens as a whole, I welcome the scrutiny. It seems to me that Bible apps in worship have a lot of potential, but if we adopt them in the same spirit with which we have adopted projection screens, the results will be similar: a flawed norm whose ubiquity tends to mitigate against necessary course corrections. …
Paper as a technology should not be sold short.
One footnote is in order, since this is a site dedicated to the physical form of the Bible. Don’t sell paper short too quickly, as if its the technology equivalent of the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the First World War. While I’m a lover of obsolete technology, my thing for print isn’t an expression of that fondness.
Before there was a digital revolution, there was a desktop printing revolution which made print a more viable and flexible technology than ever, putting the tools of the book into the hands of the people of the Book like never before….. Paper is still the best technology for a lot of applications, and there’s no reason why churches can’t be places where print is done well…My point is, people who feel defensive about printing often do so out of an anxiety that printed books can’t defend themselves. Like the arts, they need some kind of subsidy to survive. I’m not sure that’s the case. All print needs, really, is for people who’ve overcome their uncritical love of screens to recognize that, for all their potential, screens aren’t the solution to every problem. Sometimes paper is better technology. The ideal future would be one in which we use the print where print works best and e-books and apps where they work best without letting the means of delivery or transmission loom larger than the message itself.
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Read more at http://www.bibledesignblog.com/2013/08/ipads-in-the-pulpit.html
What’s on Your Mind? (Acts 2.12-16).
They were all amazed, and were perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” Others, mocking, said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spoke out to them, “You men of Judea, and all you who dwell at Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to my words. For these aren’t drunken, as you suppose, seeing it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what has been spoken through the prophet Joel:
It may seem peculiar to think that the first gospel sermon (after the cross) began with a defense of the apostles’ sobriety. After all, what sermon have you ever heard that began with the words, “These men aren’t drunk”? But if we think about it, this was exactly where this sermon had to begin.
In the search for an explanation of what they were hearing, the some in the crowd came to the conclusion that the apostles were drunk. It’s difficult to imagine how they would have come to this conclusion. (Since when did an uneducated drunk speak perfectly in a language they had never studied? They usually have enough problems with their native language) Indeed, Peter could have stepped forward and begun speaking, but he would not have been as effective.
The reality is that Peter had to deal with this crowd where they were, regardless of how ridiculous that position may have seemed. If Peter ignored the accusation, that lingering question was going to be in this crowd’s mind. Considering what Peter was about to say, that would have been a problem. He was about to proclaim a risen Jesus as Lord and Christ. If the crowd thought that Peter was drunk while saying this, would they have taken him seriously? Probably not.
Thus, the first thing Peter did was give an explanation why the men could not have been drunk. Simply put, it was too early to have been drinking (third hour of the day = 9:00 am). But Peter did not stop there. It was not enough to declare their explanation invalid; he had to give them a reasonable explanation for the speaking in tongues. He did so by taking them back to the prophet Joel and pointing out what they were seeing was the fulfillment of significant prophecy. Once he had established the meaning of what they were seeing, he could proceed to declare to them Jesus of Nazareth.
This is an important point for us. When we try to reach people with the gospel, there could be barriers to them listening to our message. They may have preconceptions about us that cause them not to listen to a word we say. There may be questions about whether God’s word is even worth listening to. To the extent practical and possible, we’re going to have to deal with those issues so that the hearer can listen to the gospel message unhindered. It is intellectually dishonest for us to ignore the things that are stumbling blocks for them, preach the message, and then blame their hardness of heart for not being receptive to the word.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Follow the link to read more of Carl Peterson’s blog. It is important to note that while Peter did not address the issue of sobriety in detail in the first sermon (at least not from what is revealed), he does address it specifically in comments to Christians living in a pagan culture — see 1 Peter 4:1-6, especially the concluding phrase, “this is why the gospel was preached” — ESV).
Thine is the glory, risen, conqu’ring Son;
Endless is the vict’ry Thou o’er death hast won;
Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away,
Kept the folded grave clothes where Thy body lay.
Lo! Jesus meets thee, risen from the tomb;
Lovingly He greets thee, scatters fear and gloom;
Let His church with gladness hymns of triumph sing,
For her Lord now liveth; death hath lost its sting.
No more we doubt Thee, glorious Prince of life;
Life is naught without Thee; aid us in our strife;
Make us more than conqu’rors through Thy deathless love:
Bring us safe through Jordan to Thy home above.
[Refrain]
Thine is the glory, risen conqu’ring Son;
Endless is the vict’ry Thou o’er death hast won.
10.11.11.11 – Edmond L. Budry, 1884
trans. Richard B. Hoyle, 1923
Tune: MACCABEUS – George F. Handel, 1746
arr. Butt’s Harmonia Sacra, 1760
#255 in Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, 2012
Footnote 28 — Jan P. Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (Westminster John Knox Press, 2000; trans. Ineke Smit), pp. 21-22.
“As the meaning of a text is only realized through the mediation of the reader, our responsibility for its meaning is greater than the text’s own. Moreover, this meaning is realized in the here and now; we confer meaning around the year 2000, not in 800 or 500 BCE. This may seem obvious, but it needs to be stated clearly. The effect of bestowing meaning on one’s own readings and interpretations has hardly, if at all, been taken into account by established Bible scholarship (the so-called historical-critical school), which assumes its own attitude to be self-evident. This approach sets out to ‘understand the Bible texts within the framework of their own time,’ according to the slogan characteristic of these scholars. This attitude conveys a totally different message: the text comes from far away, dates from a long time ago, and is rooted in a radically different culture. Thus, there is a three-fold alienation which has discouraged many Bible readers, students of theology, and future preachers.
“It is true that the text of the Bible comes from the Near East, that it is almost 2000 to 3000 years old, and that it originated in a culture which differed greatly from ours, both materially and spiritually. These differences should not be underestimated; yet these distances are only half-truths, and if you treat them as unshakeable axioms they will quietly turn into lies and optical illusions. There is a greater, more important truth, which is that these texts are well-written. IF they are then so fortunate as to meet a good listener, they will come into their own without having to be pushed into the compartments ‘far away,’ ‘long ago’ and ‘very different.’ As products of a deliberate and meticulous designing intelligence they have been crafted to speak for themselves, provided there is a competent reader listening closely.
“It is only natural that the Bible text should have quickly freed itself from its origin. The current rather infelicitous phrase is that the text has been decontextualized: maker, audience, and context have long been lost. Of course, the writers knew that this was to be the fate of their stories, laws and poems – assuming for the moment that they were not born yesterday. Reading the Bible ‘within the setting of its own time?’ A lofty goal, but in the first place this is a perilous enterprise since the setting is not there any more – it was lost about two thousand years ago. Secondly, it is hardly a viable undertaking, as we are not Israelites. The publication of a text implies that its umbilical cord has been cut; from then on, it is on its own. Now, good texts can indeed manage alone, as from the beginning they have been designed to outlive their birth and original context by a long way. The writer knows that he cannot always accompany his text to provide explanations, clear up misunderstandings, etc. He has to let go of his product completely; he should leave it to his poem or story to take care of itself on its own. So he decides to provide is text with the devices, signals, and shapes with which it can withstand the onslaught of time and guide the reading activities of the loyal listener.”
Interesting perspective on recent controversy
After the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, Luke records that an announcement of His birth was made to shepherds in the field at night.
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:8-11 ESV)
There was enough distance that the shepherds said, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” (Luke 2:15 ESV)
We do not know the exact…
View original post 254 more words
Responding recently to an on-line post complaining that Christians recently seem overly concerned with the issue of homosexuality, to the neglect of equal condemnation of other sins denounced in Scripture. I myself have made a similar point before: at least in the context of churches composed of those who claim to believe the Bible enough to take it seriously, heterosexual sins — fornication, adultery, and the often-resultant divorce and breakup of families — are orders-of-magnitude more frequent, and of much more serious concern (to say nothing of greed, hatred, gossip, drug abuse including alcohol, etc. etc.).
But when the focus of public attention — and even the rare instance of secular “moral outrage” — concerns a particular sin, it is understandable that Christians should engage the conversation on that point and at that time. Have you seen the headline: “BREAKING NEWS: Washington DC and Hollywood up in arms over Phil Robertson openly condemning swindlers in GQ interview” ??
In this case, it’s the public media, LBGT propagandists, and others who usually champion free speech and support EEOC regulations prohibiting an employee’s religious views from being conditions of employment (or termination) — not Robertson or Christians — who have limited the outrage to discussion about homosexuality (or, in the case of a few, the comments on race relations of a white male who grew up in rural Louisiana during and shortly after the end of the Jim Crow era).
I have sometimes commented to audiences that I haven’t preached my famous sermon on “The Sin of Bank Robbery” lately — it’s a terrible crime and a sin which endangers lives and life savings, and people need to stop it! Of course, the (slightly humorous) point is that it is largely irrelevant to speak about issues which are not of concern at a particular time or to a specific audience. But then, people often don’t get my weird humor 🙂
The point remains: we can condemn “sin” generically, or preach loudly against sins no one within earshot is practicing, and have the effect (maybe) of merely making ourselves feel good about our “soundness.” A statement commonly attributed to Martin Luther applies here (and while some dispute that he actually said it, I’ll repeat what one historian has said in another context: “If he didn’t say it, he should have!”). Here’s the quotation:
“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
Well said — whoever said it!
HT for this blog to my friend and brother, Jason Longstreth, who says: “As the parent of a child with Down Syndrome, I have become more and more alarmed at the efforts to eliminate these children from our society by aborting them in the womb and/or performing “mercy killings” while they are still children (in Europe). Every one of my children was created by our Father. They are neither defective nor are they mistakes, for they were fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:14) Remember the Lord’s statement to Moses, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Exodus 4:11) They are made in the image of God.”
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