I meant to get to the point, in my previous posts about how much I appreciate the Al Franken show, that it is a kind of surrogate community for me. I do have the blogosphere, and the blogging friends I have gained in the past two years, but here is a different aspect: a voice, and all the great guests he has on the show every day. Just about EVERY book I read over the past 4 and a half months has had the author interviewed by Al Franken.
I also enjoy Katherine Lansford, who interjects and often guides the interview along. The long and short of it is that these conversations are extremely valuable to me. And the comic relief and jokes throughout as Al breaks into his various voices, is just fun, along with the weightiness of the topics.
Now why in the hell can’t the Church do things like this, and have not only that but the relation of this to Scripture and our Christian tradition, and implications for the Church. I hear more about just these aspects on the Al Franken show itself (via his interviews with various progressive Christians like Campolo, Jim Wallis, etc. than in any Church I have been to.
I wish I could live in Washington DC and be able to go to The Potter’s House, a ministry of the Church of the Saviour, and sit and talk with people who have devoted their lives to the Church and working with society and the people who need help, and are also smart, and reflective, and compassionate, and Christian. Why can’t the Church BE that? Why doesn’t it provide that? Where the Church is being the Church, it does. I need to find that.
“Why doesn’t it provide that? Where the Church is being the Church, it does. I need to find that.”
Suggestion: start your own church or influence your own church in similar ways.
Yeah, and one would think that the latter is the preferrable, but when one’s own Church seems so accustomed to a certain kind of Christianity (one which , one might say, is not Christianity at all but a “Churchianity” as I believe Brad has written about…), it might be a hard sell, if not impossible, to change old habits, and to change the expectations on the members so that they’re now required to take this a bit seriously, like,….as in, seeking and living real community.
I am disturbed by the lack of “integration” of Church life the vast majority of Church members exhibit. When one is in “socials” related to Church, like pot-luck after morning service lunches, and there seems to be NOONE talking about matters of the Church, and “what can we do?” or “how should we live as Christians in this context” kind of stuff. It would seem that this would be something people are hard-pressed NOT to be talking about.
It’s like we’re a CHurch, but then, after the service, when we are just talking, none of the talk is about anything related to the Church. That bothers me greatly.
Dale