I’m not sure whether to be amused or disgusted by the Catholic church’s recent offer of plenary indulgences to its parishioners. The indulgence practice was, obviously, one of the major reasons Luther split from the Catholic church. As I am Lutheran (more or less, depending on who you talk to since I didn’t go through [...]
Archive for the ‘church’ Category
indulge me
Posted in church, theology on February 9, 2009 | 1 Comment »
from the mouth of babes
Posted in church, life on October 26, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Children make me laugh, generally when they respond loudly and distinctly during children’s sermons at church. This cracked me up in church today:
Pastor Gary: Sometimes we act in ways that God doesn’t like. Like being angry…how many of you have been angry before?
Mattie: I get very angry right before I have to go to school.
Gary: [...]
grace
Posted in church, theology on July 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The last verse of the hymn we sing every Sunday after holy communion struck me today as a beautiful description of community in Christ:
Send us now with faith and courage to the hungry, lost, bereaved,
In our living and our dying, we become what we receive:
Christ’s own body, blessed and broken, cup o’erflowing, life outpoured
Given [...]
people will believe anything these days
Posted in church, culture, life, pop culture on July 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
One more week of piano camp left, huzzah! Large groups of children…so over it. Give me one kid at a time and I will happily teach them. Heck, give me a piano lab full of adults and I’ll be just as happy. But too many children make me tired. I’m not cut out for this [...]
we don’t need no stinkin’ change!
Posted in church, culture, language, theology on April 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Another interesting quote as I sit here at Steve’s reading and writing about North American German Lutherans. This one is from an article entitled Singing from the Right Songbook: Ethnic Identity and Language Transformation in German American Hymnals by Otto Holzapfel:
Songbooks and church prayer books are among the cultural goods that persist most conservatively in [...]
this is the song that never ends
Posted in church, music on April 14, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Occasionally, historical accounts can be quite amusing. Take this one, for example—Charles Burney’s description of some seriously long-winded singing in The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces (1775):
I visited the Thumkirche or cathedral, belonging to the Lutherans, where I found the congregation singing a dismal melody, without the organ. When [...]
naive charity
Posted in church, life on April 8, 2008 | 6 Comments »
A word to the wise—even if you are of a charitable and kind nature and wish to help out your church colleague on the brink of fatherhood, it is still unwise to take on the gargantuous task of feeding 330 people at a dinner theater. Unless, of course, you have all the time and energy [...]
killing time
Posted in church, culture, language, pop culture on April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
While waiting for yet another couple of cheesecakes to solidify to the point that I can turn off the oven and go to bed, I have been browsing random books on the bookshelf. Nerdy, I know. Anyway, I came across this quote from the articulate Rodney Clapp that relates to my previous post on cultural [...]
a plethora of cheesecake
Posted in church, life on March 31, 2008 | 2 Comments »
There is being helpful, and then there is being crazy. Elise and I are the latter. Volunteering to cook for the ASU Lutheran Campus Ministry dinner theater sounded straightforward—pasta with a wine-tomato meat sauce, salad, bread, and cheesecake, enough for 300 people. Simple, no?
No. Sixty-one pounds of cream cheese and nine dozen eggs is never [...]
culturally evangelical
Posted in church, culture, theology on March 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »
A caveat: This blog serves the purpose of providing a space to practice articulating my thoughts clearly in writing as I embark on the experience of writing a masters thesis. Several of my readers identify themselves as evangelicals, and so I wish to state that I mean no offense to them directly—this is merely my [...]
