A new article by Old Testament scholar Carolyn J. Sharp got me thinking about the importance of writing. The title of the piece is "Voiced in Paradox: Prophecy and the Contemporary Church" [published in Reflections (Winter 2006) pp. 10-13]. Here's a taste:
"Go now; write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, so that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever" (Isaiah 30:8).
"The Israelite prophets shouted God's Word from Temple gate and city square; they pleaded with kings and wrestled with priests. They performed the terror of God's Word using rotting figs, shattered pottery, barley cakes baked on camel dung, . . .
"Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea offered all of themselves in their efforts to become transparent to God's purposes. They knew that trenchant tones and vivid tableaux could fire the spiritual imagination, could draw the believer irresistibly into an encounter with the will of God. But displays of brilliant oratory and dramatic technique were only the beginning. The prophets also wrote. They wrote poetry and stories and exhortations and prayers. They risked writing in order that the power of God's Word might reach peoples near and far, contemporary and yet unborn."
As Sharp points out, preaching--and, yes, with lots of potent visuals--can be vital and effective. But prophecy is maximized and extended, sometimes in unbelievable ways, only when the prophet writes.
The true prophetic voice comes from not only seeing that the world is terribly twisted. It also comes from catching a vision of what must change so that the kingship of God, His rightful rule in the world He created, will more completely have its way.
I'm glad for the true prophets I've met in the blogosophere. Like the prophets I read in the Bible, I like some blogging prophets better than others. Some of them seem clearer, more powerful to me. Still, for each one who speaks a true word for God, I'm thankful.
Brothers and sisters: Write on!
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For a couple of reasons that I won't go into, for the time being I've decided to keep my blog with Blogger. For now, "Frankly Speaking" is staying here.
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I'm planning to start a book club that will meet here in Amarillo. If it takes off like I hope it will, regular participants will have the opportunity to nominate and decide on what books we'll read and discuss going forward. To start, though, I have to make the decision. My choice is a book that I hope will establish the tone and expectation for the group.
I've selected Mark Noll's, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. It's a book I've wanted to digest for a long time now. From what I understand, it's central thesis is that the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there's not much of one; that Evanglicalism has lost a lot of the intellectual rigor that characterized the movement decades ago. I'd like to meet with a group dedicated to being a part of the solution.
I think I would like the pace of maybe five or six meetings in a year's time; a meeting once every other month, but none between, say, Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. During the first year, the group could read and discuss one book from certain categories like:
1. Bible/theology
2. Discipleship/spirituality
3. Fiction
4. Christian mission/world Christianity
5. History (religious or otherwise)
Anyway, if you're within striking distance of Amarillo and would like to receive notices about the club, please send me your email address. You can access "Email me" in the right column here at "Frankly Speaking."
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3 comments:
One thing I think is part of the solution is pointing out what John Ellas (not sure if this is orignial with him or not) the difference between core values and aspirational values. Aspirational values are the things we say are important. Core values are the things we are doing something about. To be a real value, we have to be practicing it in some way, shape, or form. Just thinking about it doesn't cut it.
I don't think programizing evangelism is really the best way to do it because then people say, "Oh, those people over there take care of evangelism." But I do think that making that a part of our small group culture is extremely powerful.
Matt, thanks for your comment. That's a great distinction between "aspirational" and "core" values.
For what it's worth, I don't mean to suggest that a book club is, by itself, going to advance the kingdom. And, the club is not meant to be evangelistic.
One of my primary goals for the club is to simply encourage those who are interested in raising the level of what can be called "intellectually-engaged Christianity" in our area.
Back in the day when Evangelicials established Fuller Seminary and "Christianity Today" magazine, there was a much higher expectation among theological conservatives when it came to what the average person in the pew was expected to know and have read about. (You see this same phenomenon, by the way, among the Churches of Christ in the pages of the Gospel Advocate magazine).
It seems to me that Protestant Orthodoxy in the United States is morphing into just so many varities of folk religion. I certainly see this among the students in the college where I teach.
Christian people can and should be challenged to think through, long and hard, the wonders of the Word and world.
Frank thanks for the good post. And "Scandal" is an important work for evangelicals to wrestle with.
Thanks for the link also for the NT Wright article. I am going to make a link on my blog.
Shalom,
Bobby Valentine
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