Recent musing:
Over the past few years, I've heard a lot of complaints, often justified, about church marquees with 'catchy taglines' or, less offensively, the sermon title for the upcoming week. Yeah, there's a lot of cheeziness in the phrases that get used, and I'd like to think that somebody in the church notices that (having never been active with a church which has a marquee, I can't really comment), but rather than ripping the marquee as a whole, why aren't we constructive?
What if we were to put on the marquee pertinent scriptural references or the key text for the upcoming week's message (if in a sermon-centric church, which many of these churches seem to be...digression restrained)? ie - if preaching from John 6, rather than "Jesus is the bread of life," put up John 6:25-58. That sort of marquee could encourage participatory worship, pre-consideration of the text, and enable dialogue, working through what we see in scripture; this just seems more bi-directional than the speaker spending hours in the text, while no one else in the congregation touches it during the week, and ties into my thoughts on connecting 'small groups/bible studies' to the liturgical practice of the congregation.
Disclaimer that this may, in fact, be common practice outside Old Town Pasadena, and that it has simply escaped my selective attention. As well, I've had a few posts recently that I thought went up, but do not see, but I do hope to post more than once a month (in this case it looks like four).
Over the past few years, I've heard a lot of complaints, often justified, about church marquees with 'catchy taglines' or, less offensively, the sermon title for the upcoming week. Yeah, there's a lot of cheeziness in the phrases that get used, and I'd like to think that somebody in the church notices that (having never been active with a church which has a marquee, I can't really comment), but rather than ripping the marquee as a whole, why aren't we constructive?
What if we were to put on the marquee pertinent scriptural references or the key text for the upcoming week's message (if in a sermon-centric church, which many of these churches seem to be...digression restrained)? ie - if preaching from John 6, rather than "Jesus is the bread of life," put up John 6:25-58. That sort of marquee could encourage participatory worship, pre-consideration of the text, and enable dialogue, working through what we see in scripture; this just seems more bi-directional than the speaker spending hours in the text, while no one else in the congregation touches it during the week, and ties into my thoughts on connecting 'small groups/bible studies' to the liturgical practice of the congregation.
Disclaimer that this may, in fact, be common practice outside Old Town Pasadena, and that it has simply escaped my selective attention. As well, I've had a few posts recently that I thought went up, but do not see, but I do hope to post more than once a month (in this case it looks like four).
