What are you excited about for the upcoming month?
There is a lot going on in November. One of my responsibilities as a pastor is to help people understand Scripture in a healthy way. Without a healthy hermeneutic, we will read the Bible only out of our context, our pain, our anger, and our story--which is another way of saying we’ll use it in any way we want. So I’m excited about the second installment of the Story of Scripture on November 8th. We’ve had ridiculously good feedback on part one--the style of the class, the way it’s put together, and the opportunity to take a 4-week journey after each part makes for a really rich learning experience.
We also know the Bible can be a very messy document. There’s this place in the Bible that says, “The secret things belong to the Lord Our God.” When we forget that’s in the Bible, we think the Bible is exhaustive, when it’s really normative. What it tells us, it tells us truly, but it doesn’t tell us everything. We need help to learn how to deal with the really hard, knotty places of the Bible. Pete Enns is an author and scholar who loves Jesus, loves the Bible, and is not afraid to wade into very difficult questions. He is not trying always to find common agreement, he’s trying to provoke common thought. So we are glad to have him here to provoke our thinking and talk about his latest book, The Bible Tells Me So, in a luncheon on Sunday, November 9th.
I am also excited about our upcoming Enneagram seminar. The longer I pastor people, the more I realize that part of the hardest part of pastoral ministry is helping understand how they get in their own way in life. So any work we do that helps us understand ourselves better is God’s work.
The upcoming “How We” series came about as we were strategizing last year. It comes right out of our pastoral experiences. You know the Holy Spirit is at work when people are asking, “How can I read this Bible better? How can I pray?” People who are new to faith, or wanting to revive a sleepy faith, often want to start with foundational categories of prayer, bible, and worship. I’ll be teaching this with Julie Van Til, and it’s for anybody who wants to learn more about those topics.
What books have you been reading lately?
The bulk of my reading is driven by the pastoral responsibilities of pastoring and preaching. Reading Pete Enns’ book was great because I’m constantly talking with people about the hard parts of the Bible. The best book I have read this year is a small book called Being Christian by Rowan Williams. I think he is going to go down as the most brilliant Anglican theologian since Anselm, and yet he is wonderfully pastoral at the same time. I’m always looking for new ways to say old truth, and this book hits the sweet spot. My favorite book on baptism is Jim Brownson’s The Promise of Baptism, which I go back to in order to talk with people about baptism and end up reading half the book. When I’m preaching in the Old Testament, I always get the privilege of going back to read Walter Brueggemann--commentaries on Genesis and Joshua. Richard Rohr’s book Eager to Love, about Saint Francis of Assisi, is also provocative and challenging to live with more simplicity.
Important question: How many games to you think it’s going to take the Giants to win the World Series?
I think 5. We are compassionate with those we conquer and want them to enjoy at least one home win. We did that last night. But enough is enough. Close it out on Sunday October 26!
What have you been up to lately? What’s on your mind?
Terely and I enjoy restaurants, plays, and speakers on various topics. We enjoy our last child in the nest and contemplating life as empty nesters. We are knee deep in a kitchen remodel so there’s a lot of flying dust in our home. Much of my life is spent doing the three P’s--pastoring, preaching, and praying. I’ve loved preaching these rich Old Testament narratives, and I’m really excited about the energy going on at the Mission campus. Our new initiative in the Tenderloin is starting to take shape which has a lot of people excited. The attendance is up in the church at large from a year ago. We are growing. We are baptizing adults on Sunday. I am part of a CG that meets on Wednesday nights, and find a great deal of camaraderie and support by being part of that group. The Lord is good.