When I hear people talk about what is wrong with organized religion, or why their mainline churches are failing, I hear about bad music, inept clergy, mean congregations, and preoccupation with institutional maintenance.

I almost never hear about the intellectualization of faith, which strikes me as a far greater danger than anything else on the list. In an age of information overload, when a vast variety of media delivers news faster than most of us can digest–when many of us have at least two email addresses, two telephone numbers, and one fax number–the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those who intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know God in their bodies.

Not more about God. More God.

~ Barbara Brown Taylor

My blog that was formerly found at waynebcox.com has now migrated here to its new location. Welcome! For all former readers, welcome back!

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The season of Advent began yesterday and so Christians have entered into the traditional season of expectation and waiting for the coming of Jesus!  It will be for many “the most wonderful time of the year;” however, as you know, it can be a season that brings great anxiety, pressure, and even depression.

Last year, in a message at The Bridge Community, I spoke on re-setting the rhythm of our lives to the contemplative waiting of Advent.  The message was entitled, “A Pre-Emptive Strike on a Consumerist Christmas” and I hope we can all avoid the hectic and sometimes debilitating pace of the “Christmas season.”  (You can listen to the message here and you might want to begin listening at the 10:00 minute mark — this is where I begin talking about a new approach to the season.)

I want to share a great practice for slowing the pace this Advent season.

Here is an idea you can try out during your personal prayer time in the next four weeks.  It’s also a great experience for families. You can easily make your own Advent Candle to help focus your prayer and devotional time during this season.  Get a tall, slender candle – something like a 12 inch dinner candle. Then take a ruler and felt tip pen. Start about an inch from the bottom so there’s enough candle to stand up. Then mark all the way up the candle, twenty-eight evenly spaced segments.  The candle in the picture is, of course, store-bought, but it gives you the idea!

You can then use your felt tip pen to mark the dates.  Starting at the top with November 28, all the way to December 24 at the bottom. Then, choose a time every day when you can burn one segment of the candle. A slender candle evenly spaced will take 10-20 minutes, depending on the length, width and quality of wax.

What to do while the candle burns?  You could use the time to sit in silence, or read, or pray.  You might make a family commitment to sit together silently, praying for one another.  Advent is traditionally a time of waiting:  perhaps you can pray every day for a person or place that is waiting … for news, or peace, or healing.

If you’d like a daily schedule of scripture readings for Advent, here is a good list to work from. I hope you’ll join in with this “new” tradition!  It’s actually very old, but it’s been a new experience for me and my family, and we’ll be doing it again this season.

I originally wrote about this idea on The Bridge Community blog here.

Related posts:

1. Authenticity and Hypocrisy from the “Pulpit”
2. Meditative Prayer
3. Prayer for the Week: Suffering

Hey everyone – I’m grateful you’re reading this and that you’ve ever read anything from me here!

In the next week or so, I’ll be moving all the posts and content from this site to a new location: claypotchronicles.com. That makes sense, huh?! Since I began blogging almost two years ago, I’ve always used the name, “Clay Pot Chronicles” as a way of acknowledging that these are the musings and ramblings of a cracked vessel (some might say, “crack pot” after some of what I’ve written!). Even when I was pastoring The Bridge Community, I know several folks from that community read the blog and allowed me to explore ideas and thoughts here without holding anything against me. Thanks!

Since I’ve stepped away from leadership at The Bridge, I’ve started a new job as graphic/web designer and managing partner for Louisville marketing agency, The Content Squad. I thought this might be a good time to reinvent my website. This space, waynebcox.com, will become a blog where I’ll share thoughts on new media, web design, inbound marketing, and general personal opinions. I’ll still blog occasionally about issues of faith, culture and allegiance to Jesus in a pluralist society, I just won’t be doing it here any more. I’ll devote claypotchronicles.com to that and I sincerely hope you’ll join me there.

If you’re interested in my take on web design and new media communications, then by all means, stick around! But, if that’s not your thing, I’ll undersand if you unsubscribe and unplug from the conversation here.

Related posts:

1. Beginning of the Blog

Dallas Willard talks about the relationship between grace and spiritual disciplines. What a rich 5 minute discussion!

If you make it at least to the 2:15 mark, you’ll hear this insightful, freeing nugget:

Grace is not opposed to effort; it’s opposed to earning. Effort is action.  Earning is attitude.

Something to ponder for awhile!

Related posts:

1. A New Way of Thinking About Spiritual Disciplines
2. Cycle of Grace

Since the Bible is about human life in the presence of God, it follows that teaching the Bible confessionally is not primarily a matter of conveying historical information. The teacher’s task is to impart the information and the conceptual framework, but even more, the imaginative skills for wondering fruitfully about the ultimate facts of life: love, sin, redemption, forgiveness — facts that can be pondered and confirmed as true, yet never really explained, and certainly not explained away. The Bible confronts us with facts that are peculiar in this way: the better we understand them, the more we wonder about them. So teaching the Bible confessionally means enabling people to wonder wisely and deeply.

- Ellen Davis

The early church father, Hilary of Poitiers wrote this about his self-understanding as a biblical preacher. I’m challenged by his attitude toward Scripture …

The Apostle, who instructs us on many things, also teaches us that the word of God must be treated with the greatest reverence, saying ‘whoever speaks [let him speak] as uttering the oracles of God’ (1 Pt 4:11). For we ought not to treat Scripture with a vulgar familiarity, as we do in our ordinary speech; rather, when we speak of what we have learned and read we should give honor to the author by our care for the way we express ourselves … Preachers, then, must think that they are not speaking to a human audience, and hearers must know that it is not human words that are being offered to them, but that they are God’s words, God’s decrees, God’s laws. For both roles, the utmost reverence is fitting.

Related posts:

1. The Lord Be With You … And Also With You

A regular part of the liturgy in many Christian gatherings, this phrase is not something that has been a part of my (low-church protestant) worship experience.

I think I’ve been missing out.

As with all “traditions,” words like this can become lifeless Tradition, hardened in stone, uttered in droning tones … thoughtless. However, think of the meaning behind this simple exchange between preacher and congregation!

The Lord be with you …

You simply being here is not enough. You’re willingness to listen, though a helpful start, is not enough.

If this is only a lecture, with me talking and you listening, then you’re going to retain (at best) about 10% of what I say and you’re going to be largely disengaged. However, if the Spirit of the Lord is with you, then you’re right to hope this is a supernatural exchange, a process to enter into with the promise that spiritual realities will unfold! Participation in this exchange might mean the words of Scripture will leap off the page and onto the screen of your imagination in a way that listening to my monologue alone could never do.

… and also with you.

What you’re about to say is not enough. Your study and preparation, though a helpful start, is not enough.

If we are to be moved and experience transformation, you will need the Spirit of the Lord to speak through you. It is his words we need to hear — indeed, where else would we go! (John 6:68-69). If the Spirit of the Lord is with you, then we are right to sit expectantly under your teaching and your words will have weight and authority for us.

If, in our worship gatherings, we could mean these words each time they are spoken, then we might begin to understand the wisdom and power in the “foolish” act of preaching (1 Corinthians 1:21).  It is a supernatural exchange we enter in to.  The preacher is no performer, tickling the ears of an audience. The congregation are not appraisers, judging whether it was a “good message” or not.  Both, when they recall the fact that the Lord is present, are attentive for God’s Word in the proclaimed words.

Related posts:

1. Thinking About ‘The Screen’ in Worship
2. Tears in Worship
3. Reverence for Preachers and Hearers

The opening poem is 4 minutes long, and if you listen at least until 2:30, you’ll be blown over, encouraged, and fortified for the days ahead by these words:

… there’s nothing more beautiful than the way
the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline,
no matter how many times it’s swept away.

Find out more about Sarah and check out more of her art at Project Voice.

Without the empty tomb, resurrection theology reduces to a generalized capacity for goodness somehow to outlast and overcome evil. Such a resurrection hope is only as powerful as the latest experience one may have had with goodness hanging on against such evil. In the grand sweep of human history, there is too much evidence to the contrary to nurture hope in most of us.

That the tomb was empty is a different kind of assertion. It says that–notwithstanding all the evidence in the sad story of humanity that manifests hurt and harm holding sway over healing and wholeness–in this case God has acted to overcome the hurt and harm to Jesus. This case serves as a promise that in the divine reign fully realized, the same will be true for all of us. It is indispensable to say, “He is not here.” Therefore, there is deep hope for the world.

- D. Cameron Murchison

Related posts:

1. Easter’s Wake