I’m not sure why that is. The lectionary texts are printed in most Lutheran church bulletins, and so if they want to follow along they only have to flip over the announcements, and there are the four texts, one each from the Hebrew Bible, the Psalms, the epistles, and the gospels. One problem this creates is that then no one opens up his or her own Bible. And in some churches when the lectors get up to do the readings, they don’t open up a huge lectern Bible; they just read off the bulletin insert. We seem less like a People of the Book and more like a People of the Bulletin Insert.
“If you are going through a trial or test,” Creflo insists, “God has already guaranteed and promised that you can win. So win! Amen!”
In my fundamentalist Church of Christ upbringing, however, we brought our Bibles to church, boy howdy. As a matter of fact, if you were a particularly righteous woman, you would carry your Bible in a quaintly quilted Bible cover with a lacy handle — like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember my father’s Bible being clothed in a zippered leather cover complete with an inlay of a sword on the front. When we’d be late for church and my dad couldn’t find his Bible, he’d yell, “Has anyone seen my sword?” I’m sure calling a Bible a sword comes from a verse, but I can’t remember which, but the whole sword thing is a bit too Knights Templar for my taste. My friend Seth, who always can outdo my crazy “growing up Christian” stories, claims that as a child her family would do “sword drills” where her dad would grasp a Bible by the spine and shout out a verse, like “Leviticus 15:16,” and then the kids would race to grab the Bible and look up the verse as quickly as possible. Full contact competitive Bible looking-up game, yep, a little crazy.
Seth’s coming at one o’clock in the morning for the Bible trivia game show slot. I don’t stand a chance.
Dollar:
There’s nothing you’re going to be facing that you’re not going to have the ability to win over. “Well, brother Dollar, I used to be a drug addict, and somebody came up to me with some cocaine.” You know what? God wouldn’t have allowed him to come up to you with some cocaine if you did not have the ability to resist him [congregation: Amen]. “Well, but you don’t understand now. I love me some women, and if a good-looking woman comes up.” Well, you know you can resist her. She can shake till her girdle pops loose and it won’t bother you a bit because you have the ability to resist. Somebody shout, “I have the ability to resist!” [I have the ability to resist!]
Me: “I have the ability to resist this cherry danish, but I am choosing not to.”
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Suddenly there is simply not enough coffee in the entire world for what I’m trying to do here. Twenty-two and a half hours to go.
Advertisement: Taffi Dollar’s book: 21 Days to Your Spiritual Makeover, $19.99.
“Creflo Dollar ministries is dedicated to changing the lives of others,” the announcer says. “To help us to continue to make a difference, consider making a financial gift and start changing the world one person at a time. It is people like you who make it possible to spread the word of God.”
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Ann gives her own response: “I think he seems sincere and contextual. He has a word he speaks to his audience, a word of comfort and how to get through trials and temptations. That is a theological difference for us — where God is present in an almost manipulative way. I call it parking space theology.”
Me: “Yeah, God involved or intrusive in a moment-to-moment way. The language is so different from what we are used to. But I think he speaks in ways that are meaningful to people, or he wouldn’t draw such crowds. We Lutherans have such theological pride.”
Ann laughs, “Yeah, that’s kinda true.”
I add, “It can make it really hard to hear theology that we think doesn’t stand up. It makes me wonder, what would Creflo Dollar think of my preaching? If I was preaching in my context and he was watching in his living room, what would he say?”
THE ROUNDUP
Old Testament passages cited: Nineteen.
New Testament passages cited: One.
Cost of products offered: $19.99 for Taffi Dollar’s book.
Running total after 2Vi hours: $423.99
God: Much like a manipulative boyfriend or girlfriend who tests you to see how much you really love him or her.
Thought for the half-hour: Send Creflo Dollar my preaching tape. Ask for comments.
John Hagee Today
(At the Ethan Allen Middle East Apocalyptic News Desk) 7:30 a.m.
My guest Rev. Michael Fick is pastor of Epiphany Lutheran Church in Denver, his first call out of seminary. He was raised in a conservative Lutheran church with little liturgy, so now he enjoys pastoring at a progressive Lutheran church seeking beautiful, meaningful liturgy. He’s interested in the future of the urban neighborhood congregation and ponders how to explore emerging models for worship and church in a multigenerational context.
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Michael is a good friend and regular member of our Lutheran clergy poker game (along with Jay and Annie of 5:30 a.m.-6:30 a.m. fame). He’s so smart and funny that it hurts me a little bit every time we’re together. This morning he’s maybe just a bit too excited about signing up to watch what he calls “The 7:30-8:30 John Hagee/Rod Parsley sucker punch.”
Turning to Ann Brock, Michael says, “I just love it when Hagee gets the big Borders in Time posters behind him and goes straight up John Nelson Darby dispensationalism. That’s my favorite.”
Dispensationalism: A certain reading of the Bible that looks for signs of the end times, especially concerning ages, eras, and borders in time. Darby is the guy who made up the rapture, which a whole lot of people think is actually found in the Bible. See Left Behind series for details.
Oh, this is going to be fun, which is good because I find the pro-Israel stuff on TBN to be tedious and boring. I know I should care, but when it comes to Middle Eastern politics, with its few millennia of backstory, countless characters, and plot twists, I feel that I’m as likely to understand what’s going on as I am to get what’s happening with Lost based solely on episode 16. I wish, I really do, that I could watch Hagee and know exactly where he’s going wrong politically, but I’m ill equipped. He could say Elvis is the prime minister of Israel and I’d have to go with it. This is humiliating, but I felt it best to just put it out there.
From the international media center in San Antonio, Texas, a special presentation from John Hagee Ministries. Today Pastor John Hagee introduces his latest book, In Defense of Israel.
Music, desk, and chair all suggest “news program,” as opposed to sermon. Hagee is using the half-hour to pitch his latest book, which he calls his “twenty-second major book — and it covers the waterfront when it comes to relationships between Christians and Jews.” He’s sitting on a set that screams both “nicely appointed” and “Ethan Allen”: dark wood,
