So now we can all sleep a bit better, sure in the knowledge the a salmon-colored book will soon adorn our bookshelves, whether in bits or atoms. Yes, my friends, the so-called Blue Book will be available as a free PDF or an ebook, or as a traditional book, suitable for use in holy processions. At this time, 7WD has not learned if the ebook version will be free. We suspect not.

While I have your attention, let me reiterate what I said here three years ago. Calling a book “blue” when it is not, in fact, blue, is the height of ridiculous insider church-speak. If it’s not blue, let’s not call it blue. Instead, how about report book. Or something. Let your blue be blue, as Jesus (almost) said.

That is all.

UPDATE: The offical color is Pantone 169M. It’s a bit more pink, less orange/salmon than the swatch above. Couldn’t find a good swatch to use as an example here. You’ll just have to buy the book to see it.

It’s easy to miss the point of Easter. The truth is, the lilies, trumpets, dresses and beloved hymns usually don’t help us out. And don’t get me started on eggs. Amidst all the familiar and cherished traditions, we can lose sight of the simple and startling claim at the heart of Easter: a person who was dead came back to life.

So it is today. We say that Christ is risen. We say that Christ is present when the church gathers. But what does this mean for us? What would it be like if we really, truly believed the things we say on Easter Day?

Christ’s new life means that we are free. Death is just about the worst thing that can happen to us, and if we don’t need to be afraid of death, we don’t need to be afraid of anything. We are free to live as God calls us to live.

Christ’s new life means that God’s love is stronger than any evil in the world. All the forces of fear and evil lined up, and the worst they could do was crucify Jesus. But life and love got the last word. We know that God’s power is real.

Christ’s new life means that we can carry on God’s work. After Easter, Jesus dwelled with his followers for a time, and then charged them with continuing to be his hands and feet in the world. We reach out to heal the world in Christ’s name, not through our own strength, but through God’s strength. We do all these things not to get on God’s good side, but because we already are on God’s good side. We do all things not to please God, but in celebration of what God has done for us.

What does an Easter faith look like? It looks like the truth that Martin Luther King, Jr., preached. It looks like the reconciling love that began bringing justice to South Africa. It looks like the selfless love that brings mission workers to developing countries. It looks like generosity when those of us with financial riches share what we have for the good of the world.

This Easter season, let us all live fearlessly, as if we believed the things we say. Let us go forth in the name of Christ! Alleluia! Alleluia!

If you are so inclined, please hop over to Episcopal Relief & Development and make a donation. They’ll put your money to good use.

From HappyPlace. Go check out the whole set. Tip of the Easter bonnet to Nicole Seiferth, who alerted me to this signtastic gem.

Anyway, that’s the real point of this blog post. But today GraphJam had a cartoon which seemed timely. Perhaps if you are preparing for Palm Sunday you’ll welcome a few seconds of levity. And then there are opportunities to ponder the question: are there, in fact, vending machines in hell?

Wave of the candy bar to GraphJam and Pleated-jeans.

Church buildings aren’t inherently bad, but they certainly aren’t inherently good either. Too easily, they distract us from the real point of church (as many of us learned as children). With help from George Herbert, I’ve written about church buildings here on 7WD. More specifically, I’ve had things to say about restrooms.

Call me crazy. I think the Episcopal Church might be better off if we more often had to do our thing outside the red doors and stained glass we love so much.

Of course, for Episcopalians, that giant Bible with all the highlighting is going to be a prayer book / hymnal combo. And more would probably sell if they could figure out how to stick an iPad into an eagle lectern or something.

What tickles my funny bone is that the URL for this thing is “…gamestands.html”. Game stands. But all kidding aside, using an iPad for preaching is no game. It offers few advantages over paper, except that I won’t get pages out of order. I also like that I can tweak my sermon in my office between services, and the iPad is automagically updated. This seems to me the way preaching should work in our tech age.

One of these days, I’ll rant more about preaching and rave about using my tablet for preaching and teaching.

Wave of the giant Bible to pastorgear.com and a certain bishop who sent me this link. Also, Forward Movement is not going to sell furniture. That references was for illustrative and humor purposes only.

That said, here’s a little something for all of you St. Valentine’s Day lovers. Enjoy!

Two samples. You can try to figure out which is which.

Please visit my flickr site and leave comments or feedback. There a lot there, but there are several collections to visit if you like travel photos, Episcopal Church stuff, or Anglican Communion stuff.

There is great urgency, and now is not the time for a decade-long series of incremental tweaks. We need to start with a clean slate and be bold. That will require some agreement as to the mission of the church, which will not be easy. But there is one easy thing the next General Convention can take care of in ten minutes, just to prove that we have our priorities straight and can get things done quickly.

Our canons are in the wrong order. If you haven’t perused the canons of the Episcopal Church lately, head on over to this page, where you can download them. We don’t need to rearrange every canon, but I think we can fix the order of the Titles within the canons.

At the moment, we’ve got the cart before the horse. Let me explain.

In the present canons, the order is this:
Title I: Organization and Administration
Title II: Worship
Title III: Ministry
Title IV: Ecclesiastical Discipline
Title V: General Provisions

Looking that this, one could reasonably assume that “Organization and Administration” are the most important things we need to codify in our canons. But that’s just not true. Here is the first sentence of the current canons:

At the time and place appointed for the meeting of the General Convention, the President of the House of Deputies, or, if absent, the Vice-President of the House, or, if there be neither, a presiding officer pro tempore appointed by the members of the House of Deputies on the Joint Committee of Arrangements for the General Convention, shall call to order the members present.

Hardly a rousing beginning, and it concerns only the thousand or so people who will be sitting in a convention center once every three years.

Consider this canon, which begins Title II, concerning worship.

All persons within this Church shall celebrate and keep the Lord’s Day, commonly called Sunday, by regular participation in the public worship of the Church, by hearing the Word of God read and taught, and by other acts of devotion and works of charity, using all godly and sober conversation.

It concerns every Episcopalian. It concerns the most important thing we do as Christians, namely the worship of Almighty God. It concerns the mission of the church. As a bonus it has that lovely turn of phrase about “godly and sober conversation.”

And then just for grins let’s have a look at the beginning of Title III about ministry. It starts, “Each Diocese shall make provision for the affirmation and development of the ministry of all baptized persons…” Now, granted, much of Title III concerns ordained ministry. Because most ministry that happens in the church is lay ministry, the present canon’s focus on ordained ministry needs to be corrected, surely. Even today though, Title III has plenty of bits about lay ministry, including provision (widely ignored by many diocesan Commissions on Ministry and bishops) for the training and licensing of many lay ministries.

Suppose this was the order of our canons:
Title I: Worship
Title II: Ministry
Title IIII: Organization and Administration
Title IV: Ecclesiastical Discipline
Title V: General Provisions

We’d start with things that are most important and that affect everyone. We’d move to ministry, the extension of our worship. And only then would we get to legislative structures and internal discipline.

While I think General Convention is incredibly important, it is not the heart of our life as a church. In many ways, it is the best and fullest expression of gathered Episcopalians, but it is only for a privileged few. Try this test. This summer, wait two weeks after General Convention. Pick a random congregation in your diocese. Go there. Pick ten random people sitting in the pews on a Sunday morning. Ask them to name one thing that General Convention has done that will bring them closer to God. My guess is you’ll be lucky of one of the ten people can manage this.

For those who are able to travel to General Convention, it can be fantastic. It does, I would argue, affect all Episcopalians, but there’s currently a massive disconnect between the eight legislative days of General Convention and the spiritual needs of Episcopalians or even the missional needs of the world.

Fixing all this will take time. We’ll need to consider unintended consequences of potential fixes. It is important to guard against consolidation of power in undesirable places or the taking of power from others. I have found much with which to agree in comments from our various leaders and leadership bodies. And lots of others have contributed to this conversation. No doubt there will be much ink (or pixels) spent on this topic.

While we’re sorting all this out, let’s start by fixing our canons. Let’s get this one simple thing done, and place first things first. We don’t need to do more than rearrange.

What will it accomplish?

First, we’ll put our most important canon about the most important thing first. The canon on the Lord’s Day is perhaps the only canon that concerns every person in the Episcopal Church directly.

Second, we’ll show that we can grab the low hanging fruit and make a delicious canonical smoothie. By that, I mean that we can act on the simple things while we are discerning some of the complex things. We do not live with the luxury to do nothing. Our church needs to act fast. More important than that, the needs of the world are too great for us to dither idly.

You often hear politicians talk about staying “on message.” Getting our canons in the order I propose will help us stay on message. And that message is simple: worship is our heart as Episcopalians and as Christians. While organization and administration are important, they must be understand to exist in support of worship and ministry, and not the other way around.

First things first. This should not be controversial. Let’s just get it done.

Don’t let the laughter and the saints wearing sunglasses fool you. St. Paul challenged us to be all things to all people. Lent Madness is helping us connect with people who won’t connect through pamphlets or church suppers. Lent Madness makes us “fools for Christ,” but we’re definitely for Christ.

Read the whole article. And visit Vital Practices often. By the way, let me just say, “Tim Schenck.” He gets touchy if I mention Lent Madness without also mentioning that he created it.

Oh, and if you haven’t “liked” Lent Madness on Facebook, now would be a good time.

Dateline: Somewhere between Hingham, MA and Cincinnati, OH.

Be it known to all present, either bodily or online, that as of Ash Wednesday in the two thousand and twelfth year of our Lord, certain persons, of necessity in the present time, are hereby setting aside a designation of Archnemesis, and laying aside the enmity that has existed from the beginning, until the end of the Lenten Fast. Whereas, to cooperate on Lent Madness for the edification of all Christendom, Father Schenck and Father Gunn shall thereby set aside their feud until the New Fire is lit at the Great Vigil of Easter. After that, anything is possible.

Now I just need to make sure this isn’t a ruse so Tim can gain some sort of advantage.

Here’s some lovely music from a previous year on 7WD.

In my quest to promote Lent Madness, I’m forced to work with none other than the Rev’d Tim Schenck. Yesterday we recorded an interview about the bracket of saints. Watch the video to learn how saints are chosen for Lent Madness. Except for the company, it was a lot of fun to do. I especially enjoyed the video editing. iMovie is great fun.

Monday Madness — January 30, 2012 from Forward Movement on Vimeo.

Check every Monday for a new installment of Monday Madness, the official color commentary of Lent Madness.

Anyway, this photo seems to cry out for a caption. At first, I thought about emailing it to the Mad Priest for one of his often-hilarious caption contests. And then I decided to inaugurate a caption contest feature here on 7WD.

Honestly, this has nothing to do with the puzzling goings-on in the Episcopal Church these days around leadership, budgeting, and mission. I’m too baffled to say something useful or even to have fun with it yet. (If you wonder what I’m talking about, read this, this, this, this, this, and this.)

So be nice or at least gently funny in your captions. And the donkey could be a lay donkey or an ordained donkey, so let’s have no lay vs. clergy comments, please. In fact, best to leave out mention of current controversies — this is a time to laugh, not mock (said by someone who occasionally forgets to do the one rather than the other).

Oh, and check out St. Mathew’s. Might just need to head over to New Zealand to check it out. And I’m totally going there on the Sunday when donkeys, sheep, and goats are in church.

Here’s the thing. Lent Madness was created by my archnemesis, Fr. Tim Schenck. Of course, everyone has a good idea now and then. So why am I working with him? Remember the old saying: keep your friends close, and your archnemesis closer.

Actually, Forward Movement is partnering with Tim this year to kick Lent Madness up a notch. We have a great website set up and a panel of eight excellent celebrity bloggers. It’s going to be terrific fun. And people will get interested in the saints and their stories, which is what counts. Already, someone I know is taking another look at the Episcopal Church because of Lent Madness. “My church would never loosen up and do something like that. And yet you are simply sharing the Christian story in a new way.” Precisely.

That’s why Forward Movement is in. I’m all about us finding new ways to engage people as disciples. Back in 1935, pamphlets were cutting edge. Today it’s Lent Madness. In a couple of months, it’s smartphone apps. This is almost too fun.

Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles

Paul has been called by some modern writers “the true founder of the church” and even “the first Christian.” Although we may reject such statements as exaggerations, they do reflect the enormous importance of this man in the development of our faith and our community in history.

The occasion of Paul’s conversion has long been regarded as a major turning point in Christian history. He had been an enthusiastic Jew, a Pharisee, in fact, and had studied under one of the great Rabbis of his day, Gamaliel. He advocated and witnessed the stoning of Stephen (see December 26) and was enroute to Damascus to assist in the further persecution of the Christians there when his dramatic conversion took place.

From then on his life was totally devoted to the service of Christ, and especially to the conversion of non-Jewish people. His letters and the Book of Acts give us a wealth of information regarding his life and work. He founded churches in Philippi, Athens, Thessalonica, Corinth, and many other important cities of his day. He is generally believed to have died with Peter in Rome, a victim of the persecution of Nero.

O God, grant that we may hold in remembrance your apostle Paul’s wonderful conversion, and show our thanksgiving by following his holy teaching.

Excerpt copyright 2004 Forward Movement. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Image from Wikipedia Commons.

(Geek stuff for 7WD: DNQZJ52GJ5NW. Please disregard. That is all.)

It’s pretty obvious why it’s awesome to run a Super PAC. Basically, I plan to lavishly spend money on my own personal interests — advancing my own political whims — with virtually no accountability. The Supreme Court has handed a golden, diamond-encrusted platinum stuffed gift to every fatcat lobbyist and wannabe influencer in the land in their “Citizens United” decision.

So please start writing seven-figure checks. Not counting cents or punctuation. What can I promise? Total anonymity for you, and plenty of political favor. Oh, and lots of glam for me. But that’s how it works.

Here’s my lobbying agenda:

1. I will support candidates who advance coffee-drinking, unlike some candidates.
2. I will make satirical ads, because I think politicians take themselves entirely too seriously.
3. I will take lavish junkets to “liase” and “investigate”.
4. Any politician who targets the vulnerable — or various clergy tax benefits that I happen to enjoy — will incur my wrath.
5. I’m lobbying for certain business advantages for publishers of pamphlets and material about the Episcopal Church.
6. If other Super PACs can demand Obama’s birth certificate, I’m going to demand other nominees’ divorce decrees.
7. Under the right conditions, I’d consider making a large donation to fund repair of the National Cathedral — because you can see it from all over Washington — in exchange for the rights to run a nightly laser show with my message. And naming rights.
8. Me and my staff will play Super Pac Man. We were going to settle for Pac Man, but then a Facebook commenter pointed out that we are, indeed, a Super PAC.
9. Our snark-laden message will be managed by a Chief Snark Officer. The position has been filled by an able volunteer, who is embedded deep within the Republic of Texas where snark is so desperately needed.
10. Starting with tonight’s State of Union, we will offer Live Tweeting Exclusive Coverage of key events.
11. I’ll do something else, because I don’t like “Top 10″ lists.

OK, it’s a random list, but it’s at least as good as any other Super PAC’s list. Thank you for your donation. Not that I’m coordinating with any candidates, but it’s possible that your donation could lead you to a high-paying job in Washington. Or at a certain lobbying firm / media juggernaut in Cincinnati.

Because this is a America the greatest (or most deluded) country in the world, everything I propose here is legal. Sigh. Maybe someone should form a Super PAC to lobby for campaign finance reform. Strike that, I’ve got a plan a trip to identify the site of my new Super PAC Super Headquarters in a tropical paradise.

Long before 12 o’clock yesterday every seat was occupied in Trinity Church, and when the Rev. Phillips Brooks ascended the pulpit at five minutes after the noon hour, the space set apart for standing room was entirely preempted. For the first time in the history of the parish the public were permitted to occupy the choir stalls in the chancel, while hundreds were turned away, unable to gain admission to the church.

When’s the last time you heard an Episcopal preacher good enough to get that kind of result? Brooks didn’t pack them in because of his great style; he was pretty widely panned in the art of sermon delivery, known for rapid-fire speech more so than any kind of booming voice.

Laura Toepfer has some thoughtful reflections on preaching and Phillips Brooks on her blog today. Check it out.

I’m still pondering the abysmal state of preaching in our church today. At some point, I’ll have things to say here on 7WD. Until then, please share your thoughts, hopes, and ideas for great preaching. We could all use some of it.

Wave of the preaching bands to Creedal Christian for the NY Times quote. Creedal Christian also has some fantastic Brooks quotes.

I know it sounds shocking, but poor fiscal management is not the greatest immediate threat from GOP presidential candidates to me and my friends. It’s not even their complete absence of actual family values and its companion, blatant hypocrisy. Here’s the frightening truth: there is every chance a Republican president will demand the death penalty for drinking coffee.

You think I’m being alarmist, right? Well, read on my friends. Consider some facts: Newt Gingrich was speaking against the opening of a Starbucks franchise when he said that Starbucks is part of a “Liberal cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” Now if you think something is a threat to civilization, wouldn’t you do anything to stop it?

Then there’s well-known serial killer Mitt Romney whose religion is famous for opposing coffee consumption as a moral evil. If you’ve killed once, killing again isn’t so hard. See where this is going? Stay with me: it gets worse.

Ron Paul finds Starbucks useful, but only as part of his culture of half-truth and outright deception. He wants everyone who orders at Starbucks to give their name as “Ron Paul.” It is increasingly difficult to write satire. (Since Ron Paul likes everyone saying their name is Ron Paul, he should watch Being John Malkovich sometime. He’d get a kick out it.)

And let’s not forget Michele Bachman, a likely vice presidential candiate, who is on record saying — on the floor of the US House of Representatives — that Starbucks is the place women stop on their way to get abortions. Sadly and outrageously, I am not making this up.

Rick Santorum has a Starbucks gold card, if media reports are to be believed. But he won’t use it when campaigning, because he thinks people will find it elitist. Ironic, isn’t it, that Santorum is in the (Starbucks) closet? Someone like that could turn his rage in surprising directions!

People like New Gingrich love to label my politics as elitist socialism and the like. As if that makes sense. So in the spirit of fairness, I’m going to turn around and call New Gingrich a moralistic fascist. And you know what moralistic fascists do? They go after people who differ from them. Take, for example, coffee drinkers.

It has happened before. You can read about it in history books, though I realize many GOP folks will dismiss “books” as elitist. History is a social science, so they probably won’t trust that either. On either count “social” or “science” it is suspect. Anyway, for those of you who are still with me, here’s an example from the blog post by Adam Cole:

Sultan Murad IV, a ruler of the Ottoman Empire, would not have been a fan of Starbucks. Under his rule, the consumption of coffee was a capital offense… The sultan was so intent on eradicating coffee that he would disguise himself as a commoner and stalk the streets of Istanbul with a hundred-pound broadsword. Unfortunate coffee drinkers were decapitated as they sipped. Murad IV’s successor was more lenient. The punishment for a first offense was a light cudgeling. Caught with coffee a second time, the perpetrator was sewn into a leather bag and tossed in the river.

This has been a problem not only in Muslim nations, but in western Europe as well:

In Germany, a fearful Frederick the Great demanded that Germans switch from coffee to beer. He sent soldiers sniffing through the streets, searching for the slightest whiff of the illegal bean. In England, King Charles II issued an order to shut down all coffeehouses after he traced some clever but seditious poetry to them.

It’s one step from “Freedom Fries” to “Kill the Coffee Drinkers!” The “War on Drugs” could easily include caffeine, which is, I am told, a drug.

So there it is. When the time comes, vote for Obama if you ever hope to drink coffee again.

Evil coffee illustration from CheezBurger.

Sultan illustration from the NPR blog linked above.

Good to know that if there’s ever a need for a dress-wearing, hair-shirt-liking prophet, the problem has already been solved. John/Jane the Baptist’s diet is almost mainstream. One begins to wonder if he (or she) would have to kick it up a notch to get noticed these days.