Last Friday I had the privilege of spending some time with Andrew Root ( on Twitter) on the campus of Luther Seminary in Minneapolis, where he serves as Assistant Professor of Youth and Family Ministry.
In addition to hanging out and , I was able to interview him about his newest book, . Relationships Unfiltered is sort of like a condensed, more practical, and less scholarly version of his first book, , which I have called the "absolute best youth ministry book out there right now". Although less heady than Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, Relationships Unfiltered definitely doesn't disappoint.
Anyway, you can listen to the interview below and/or download it for listening on portable devices. Enjoy.
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This post is from a series titled "Advent explorations," an informal but purposeful study of the season of Advent. If you'd like, you can view all the posts from this series here. Thanks for reading!
Catholic theologian (1904-1984) on the Incarnation, from a short prayer/essay on Advent:
Contrary to all our fond hopes, you seized upon precisely this kind of human life and made it your own. And you did this not in order to change or abolish it, not so that you could visibly and tangibly transform it, not to divinize it. You didn't even fill it to overflowing with the kind of goods that men are able to wrest from the small, rocky acre of their temporal life, and which they laboriously store away as their meager provision for eternity.
No, you took upon yourself our kind of life, just as it is. You let it slip away from you, just as ours vanishes from us. You held on to it carefully, so that not a single drop of its torments would be spilled. You hoarded its every fleeting moment, so you could suffer through it all, right to the end.
This comes from a fantastic little book called . Be on the lookout in the coming week for a giveaway of this book. :)
This post is from a series titled "Advent explorations," an informal but purposeful study of the season of Advent. If you'd like, you can view all the posts from this series here. Thanks for reading!
has just begun an Advent-themed blog series which he calls Advent(ures) in Incarnation with a post titled . Towards the end of the post, Kester encourages us to
see this season as the opening lines to the most tremendous joke. It is a joke in which roles are subverted and words are twisted. It is a joke which is shocking in the extreme -- with God impregnating a girl. It is a joke in which something actually happens. A joke in which the apparent tragedy of human history suddenly takes a comic turn.
One of the reasons I was so captured by his thoughts is that I recently read Frederick Buechner's on a spiritual retreat. But before we go any further, keep in mind that when we talk about tragedy and comedy we're talking about them in the classical sense -- to generalize, "the terms comedy and tragedy commonly refer to the ways in which dramatic conflicts are resolved"; tragedy has a sad ending and comedy has a happy ending.1
But I like the way Buechner defines it: "The tragic is the inevitable. The comic is the unforeseeable."2 Comedy is like the person slipping on the banana peel or Wile E. Coyote riding a malfunctioning ACME rocket into the side of a cliff. They didn't even see it coming.
And just when things seem inevitable for Israel -- the people of the Covenant -- God enters into the tragedy of human existence and transforms it into an uproarious comedy in the form of a New Covenant. How unforeseeable is that?
How unforeseeable is it that when Israel was expecting a David-like king who would rule with power and might, restoring God's people to their former glory, God sent a child who lived a perfectly normal existence for 30 years before not only prophesying against power, but opening God's story to Jew and Gentile alike?
How unforeseeable is it that the poor are the blessed ones? That the prodigal is welcomed home? That the least of these matter? That kingdom is actually like a little mustard seed? That the dead would be raised to life? Are you starting to get the joke?
Buechner continues:
Is it possible, I wonder, to say that it is only when you hear the Gospel as a wild and marvelous joke that you really hear it at all? Heard as anything else, the Gospel is the church's thing, the preacher's thing, the lecturer's thing. Heard as a joke -- high and unbidden and ringing with laughter, it can only be God's thing.3
Advent, then, is a time when we place ourselves in the center of the tragedy. We wait, we hope, and we pray. What for? For "God's thing," the New Beginning of God's story. For the comedic turn of events that is Jesus Christ. During Advent, let us remember that, as Buechner says, "The Gospel is bad news before it is good news."
This post is from a series titled "Advent explorations," an informal but purposeful study of the season of Advent. If you'd like, you can view all the posts from this series here. Thanks for reading!
"He is your king, the king promised to you, whose own you are. He and no other shall rule over you, but in spirit and not after worldly rule. This is he for whom you longed from the beginning. This is he for whom your dear ancestors were yearning and crying with heartfelt desire. From all the things that until now have burdened, oppressed, and imprisoned you, he will redeem you and will set you free."
This post is from a series titled "Advent explorations," an informal but purposeful study of the season of Advent. If you'd like, you can view all the posts from this series here. Thanks for reading!
During Advent several years ago, I signed up to receive a daily devotional email from Luther Seminary. These "God Pause" devotions are provided daily throughout the entire year, but special attention is given to the Advent series. This year's devotional is titled .
If you're looking for a brief, daily meditation this Advent, this is the way to go. Not only are the devotions keen and concise, but Luther Seminary graciously (and wisely) provides several means of consumption. You can subscribe (as I do) to a ,1 subscribe to the , or of all the devotions through Christmas.
Happy devotion-ing!
Oh, and what other free Advent devotion-type resources should I know about? What do you use? Let me know!
If you want to do this, make sure that "God Pause Daily Devotions" is the only box checked. [↩]
"The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah." - Jeremiah 33:14
Today, , marks the beginning of the Christian liturgical year. I have grown to love Advent over the past several years, yet somehow most of my affection for this expectant season seems to be predominantly based on intuition. I know I like Advent, but I'm not entirely certain why.
So this year I plan to devote myself to an informal but purposeful study of Advent, a season pregnant with beauty and profundity. As such, I'll be blogging semi-regularly on the topic throughout the next month.
In the book (ht: ), the Advent devotionals are prefaced with these words:
We start a new liturgical year by entering this complex season of mystery. We turn once again to the beginning of the great Story but with its glorious end very much in mind. With ancient Israel, we long for the one who will come to set us free. We try to get ready. We watch for his arrival with expectancy. We let hope gestate within us. Something good is happening to us and to our world. The days are dark but the light is growing. Sometimes we sing, sometimes we groan. We resist the cultural frenzy with chosen restraint and moments of retreat. That's how we remain alert, how we stay open to God's presence. We wait for Christ to come, and in our waiting, we are enlarged.1
The last line is a reference to Eugene Peterson's beautiful translation of :
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Already you can see that there is a lot to unpack and explore, and I hope to do that in the coming weeks. But here's the deal: For those of us who spend a significant amount of our time in front of a screen -- computer, cell phone, television, etc. -- our attention spans are . So in order for us to truly embody the season of Advent, a time defined by waiting, we must turn against our own instincts and re-learn what it means to be still. To wait.
It is my hope that in this humble exploration of Advent both you and I become enlarged in our waiting.
Gross, Bobby and Lauren Winner. . City: IVP Books, 2009. 48. [↩]
JakeBouma.com is a weblog maintained since 2005 by Jake Bouma, an ecclesial junkie and (imprudently) aspiring polymath who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.
