Aesop says (of fable fame)

"We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office."

Said on or around 600 B.C. There indeed is little new under the sun.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

True and terse description merits citation. So as I was reading Moshin Hamid's sophomore novel, I came across this:

It was a testament to the systematic pragmatism--call it professionalism--that underpins [the U.S.]'s success in so many fields. At Princeton, learning was imbued with an aura of creativity; at Underwood Samson [a prestigious New York finance operation], creativity was not excised--it was still present and valued--but it ceded its primacy to efficiency.

An Observer in Olive Branch

Took a very early flight from Madison to Memphis last Sunday morning. I was in my rental car by 8:45 a.m., so had adequate time to drive around and consider which church I might attend.

I never have Sundays like this. Either I am preaching and presiding at church, or I am with family somewhere and already know where to attend worship. It is extremely rare for me to be so free that I have to choose, and so disconnected from locale that I don't know how to start the choosing.

So I decided to experience things from the flip side. What if you just woke up in southern Memphis and decided to go to church, but didn't know anyone. What would you discover?

Well, first of all, most of the churches are some kind of Baptist. I am not familiar enough with baptist tradition to explain exactly how they differ one from the other, but there are many of them.

Second, it is kind of intimidating driving into the parking lot of an unknown church and especially an unknown denomination. And to do so alone. I'll admit: I bailed more than once on churches I thought of going into.

Then, I decided to pull into my hotel (Olive Branch, Mississippi), just to make sure I knew where I needed to be later. The hotel hosts TWO churches. That is, a congregation meets in a convention room at the hotel, and another congregation meets at an outbuilding across from the hotel. They both have adult bible studies meeting in rooms around the hotel at 9 a.m., worship at 10:15.

I sat in on one service. Nothing surprising to support. Frontier worship of the contemporary variety.

What did completely surprise me was that the hotel had two mission start congregations. So, I asked the front-desk clerk about it.

"Oh, that's nothing. We used to have five!"

"Five?"

"Yes, but three of them now have their own buildings, so we're down to just the two."

Plus a group of Pastor-Theologians, none of whom are Baptist.

ELCA Book of Faith Initiative

Ironic isn't exactly the right term, but it is kind of funny when a Christian denomination decides to have a special "emphasis" on the Bible.

See the ELCA Book of Faith Initiative.

I'm supportive of the initiative. We're hoping to have a special emphasis kind of like it in our congregation next year. Nevertheless, I wish I could identify the "word" that labels the sense of the program that is humorous in some way.