Christianity

Until I come up with a good way to post my site updates automatically on the front page, I'll write a brief entry to let the blog subscribers know what's new. I've just posted the start of a new, ongoing list (and accompanying Google map!) of preachers online that I think are worth listening to. Take a look!

Links

• The Map
• Explanation

The List

Links

• The Map
• The List

Motivations

As I reflected on my lack of spiritual vitality earlier this year (2007), I concluded that it would help to have more Christian input into my mind. Once a week at church and an occasional devotion wouldn't cut it. To keep my mind on spiritual things, I needed to hear the Christian message more often. One easy way for me to do that is to listen to online Christian audio, so I set out to collect some.

Procedure

As things usually go with me, the project quickly expanded beyond all reasonable proportion, and instead of gathering two or three sources I could rely on for insight and inspiration, I decided to find as many as I could, searching in a comprehensive and semi-systematic fashion. And by comprehensive, I mean searching every city (above a certain size) in every state in the US. And then expanding to other English-speaking countries after that. That's what I'm shooting for anyway. In reality I'll search until I get tired of it. At some point I may expand the project to include speakers that aren't attached to a church.

My overall procedure is to take the states in the order of their importance to me and search for churches by city, starting with the largest. I didn't start out this way—I tried alphabetically first, so the map began with some random churches in Alabama—but officially the first state in the list is Illinois, and the first city is Chicago. And then along the way I've thought of churches in other states I knew I wanted to include, and I've listened to sermons at my friends' churches from around the country, so I've interrupted my orderly progression to add some of those.

Normally I would keep a list like this in my bookmarks, but since the data was geographical, I thought it would be fun to make a Google map out of it, which I have linked to above. My bookmarks are holding the raw results of my search, and to make my decisions, I'm taking more detailed notes in a Zoho Creator database.

Benefits

In addition to collecting more listening material than I could ever possibly take in and stimulating my thoughts and feelings on spiritual matters, this project has come with some unexpected side benefits. One is that I feel more connected with different parts of the country. If Birmingham, Alabama, comes up in a conversation, I can think, Ah, I know something about Birmingham. I've listened to some good preachers there. If a natural disaster sweeps through, I can wonder how my churches there are doing. If on a Sunday I'm traveling in an area that has churches on my list, I can visit one of them and gain a more personal connection. If I have a friend who needs a church, I can refer them to my list, if I've covered their area; or I can take the project on a detour through their city to see what I can find. For my friends who go to churches on my list, it gives me a little more of a connection with them and more topics for conversation.

And finally, this project lets me exercise one of my joys in life, which is to find hidden treasure and share it with people who might not have found it otherwise. Some of the preachers in the list are well known, but there are pastors out there who are unknown but still good, and they deserve a wider audience. So by posting my discoveries online, I can hopefully give them a bit more exposure and put a few more people in touch with their unique perspectives and good preaching, and the happiness and well-being in the world can be increased. :)

Criteria

This list is extremely subjective. While there are a few things I look for, I don't apply a rigorous and objective rubric to each church. The question that determines whether a church makes the list is, Would I listen to this preacher regularly? If the answer is probably or yes, they go on the map. (If it's maybe, I come back to it later and listen to a sermon or two more to decide.) So this is not a list of all the good churches in the world or even all the good preachers, just the ones I have personally found to be especially worth listening to so far. Obviously someone else would have a different list. Also, since most of these decisions are based on a single sermon, I will take a church off the list if I change my mind about it on later listenings.

I do keep my ears open for a few basic characteristics. I prefer speakers who have a more natural speaking style, as opposed to a highly affected one. I gravitate toward thoughtful pastors who are speaking to audiences who already have the basics of Christianity under their belt and who are looking to live it more effectively. I like hearing preachers who express the Christian message in new ways, rather than delivering the same old content with the same old language. And I appreciate a balance between exegesis and application. If it's unbalanced, I'd rather it be on the application side. I am also a conservative Protestant, so you will see a clear bias toward this category in my list, which also I think comes from the fact that they seem to care more about preaching and getting their message out into the public.

Since there are potentially thousands of preachers who fit these criteria, I also keep a few limiting questions in mind: Is this speaker unique enough to stick in my mind? Is he or she easily ignorable (by being overly academic, rambling, or boring in some other way)? Does the speaker express a lot of opinions I disagree with without adding anything to my understanding? Is this speaker annoyingly liberal or conservative? I am more tolerant of conservatism, but I will turn them off if they're too simple minded for me. And although I am fairly ecumenical, I skip over churches that don't fit into what I would consider orthodox Christianity, so no Mormon, Christian Science, or Unitarian churches. Seventh-Day Adventists are a little too iffy; they're out too.

Most of these criteria can be overridden by others in particular cases. Sometimes I can overlook an affected speaking style if the preacher is especially reflective. Or I can forgive a simple message if I feel inspired by the speaker's sincerity. And I also look for certain specific preaching styles that I wouldn't normally listen to because occasionally I do feel like listening to them. Sometimes I'm in an "old time religion" mood, for example, which is normally when I turn on Family Radio, even though Harold Camping is kind of a heretic. And of course my friends' churches get special consideration. ;) Though they are not automatically included. -.- Even if they're the preacher.

The List

The list linked to below corresponds to the placemarks on the map. It should be updated often while I'm on this project, except when I take breaks to concentrate on other things, and the changes will be reflected on the Recent Changes page and in the corresponding "all updates" feed. The churches on this page are arranged by state, then by city, then by church name. The Google map list is arranged in the order in which I added them.

The List

Version 1.0, 3-20-05

Ever since I was about ten, religion has been overall the most important thing in my life. I had grown up with Christianity all around me, and I was baptized at seven, but ten was the year that religion somehow became magnetic north to me. Some people, when they say, "Religion is the most important thing in my life," mean something like, "I am totally in love with Jesus, and I would do anything for him." When I say it, I mean just that I can't avoid taking it seriously. Sometimes that has meant I'm excited about Jesus, and sometimes it's meant he utterly baffles me, but it always means that I see religious issues as the fundamental issues in life and that they are something I have to deal with in whatever way seems necessary at the time. Thus, the prominent position of this section on this site.

Over the years, my interest in Christian things has settled into five main areas: evangelism, apologetics, spirituality, theology, and hermeneutics. Here's the quick run-through. You can read the subsection intros for more.

I think I was a miniature evangelist even in elementary school, in my low key way, but in junior high that phase really kicked in. And since I was trying to evangelize my skeptical friends, evangelism led into apologetics. Apologetics was very distracting, and in the process of studying God, I forgot about talking to him, which led me into a vexing spiritual dry spell. Not to fear, however, for I had a spiritual reawakening at the end of high school and became super-enthusiastic about spiritual growth and the idea of a personal, conversational relationship with God. This was also when I began my habit of journaling.

Then I went off to Wheaton College and entered The Crisis, which you can read about in the spirituality intro. It basically involved hearing opposing accounts from two different Christian groups of how Christianity is supposed to be lived. The effect of this crisis was to teach me that the world is more complicated than I thought and that I really didn't know how to be the kind of Christian I wanted to be. It also reaffirmed for me that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I was confused, and no one I talked to had answers that satisfied me, so I concluded I had to find my own. During this time my journal developed into my more organized "thoughts pages" as part of this effort.

Other things happened at Wheaton. For one thing, I began working through my theology. This came partly as a result of discovering Reformed theology my freshman year. I was also involved in an Internet evangelism ministry, which kept evangelistic issues churning in my mind. And working at the Billy Graham Center library gave me exposure to various evangelism and missions movements. My church was another influence, of course. Teaching Sunday school there made me aware of ministry issues, as did watching the church dissolve.

The process of sorting through my questions was aided by grad school. I did my masters at Wheaton in biblical exegesis, and it fed my latent interest in hermeneutics, which is the theory of interpretation. And as is usual in higher education, I learned a lot but came out with even more questions than I had going in.

My last year of grad school, all of these puzzles and others convinced me that it was time to work on my critical thinking and research skills. (Most of that project will appear in the philosophy section.) One side effect of this decision was to bring apologetics back to my attention, this time as much for myself as for anyone else.

In my quest to figure out the world, Christianity certainly gives me the most to think about. It even infiltrates my other subjects of interest. I like to integrate ideas anyway, but Christianity is a special case. I see it as a basic perspective from which to look at everything in life. So there are Christian views of art, money, politics, work, play, computers, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Similarly, there are Christian uses for all these things; and conversely, insights from other areas can inform our understanding of Christianity. I didn't come up with this idea of integrating Christianity with the rest of life, but it's one that to me just seems right.

Christianity Introduction

Christianity links

On Being an Agnostic Christian (added 5-13-06)

A long essay on the current state of my faith, mostly dealing with the conflict between belief and doubt. It provides a context for much of what will happen in this section.

OBAC: The Severely Abridged Version (added 6-6-06)

If you don't have time to read the original, try this one.

Spirituality

Spirituality Introduction

Apologetics

Apologetics Introduction

Evangelism

Evangelism Introduction

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics Introduction

Theology

Theology Introduction

My Current Theology (added 7-17-05)

Bible translation is a hilarious subject! Why have I been ignoring it all this time? I'm reading this review of the ESV by Rodney J. Decker, and he quotes 2 Cor. 1:9-11 from an extremely literal translation called the Concordant Version of the Sacred Scriptures (1931):

But we have had the rescript of death in ourselves in order that we may be having no confidence in ourselves, but in God, Who rouses the dead, Who rescues us from a prodigious death, and will be rescuing, on Whom we rely, that He will still be rescuing also; you also assisting together by a petition for us, that from many faces He may be thanked for us by many, for our gracious gift.

I want this translation! :D

A little later he talks about the term dynamic equivalence, which is now out of date. It was a translation philosophy that had the goal of producing the same response in today's readers that the text had in the original readers. But really this isn't always what we want. Decker says, "The Corinthians, as one example, responded quite poorly to Paul's letter which we know as 1 Corinthians!" When people say "dynamic equivalence" now, as I did in my earlier entry, what they usually mean is functional equivalence, which is what I meant. Functional equivalence tries to create a text in the target language that functions the same way, in the sense of having the same meaning, as the text in the original language.

We Christians are a funny bunch. We're capable of great profundity at times and great silliness at others. I think this is because we're idealists and have a very complex set of beliefs and goals. These many beliefs and goals have to be fit together and balanced carefully---and also fit into our non-theological observations about the world, such as about human language---or it can be very easy to get way off track.

Take the idea of a literal translation. One of our goals is to take the Bible very seriously and get as close to its true meaning as possible. Yet we have to translate it into other languages, which threatens to pull us away from the meaning as it was set out in the original languages. So some of us get it into our heads that if we use one English word per Greek or Hebrew word and stick as close as possible to the original word order, we can rest assured that we'll have an accurate and hence worthwhile translation. But Greek and Hebrew aren't built like English, so if this philosophy is applied anywhere close to consistently, the reader has to slog through passages like the above! The goal of reflecting the original languages has to somehow coexist with the goal of actually communicating the meaning to your readers.

It is in this spirit of fun that I bring up (what I see as) problems with the ESV and in fact many other issues that I talk about. Most things aren't a matter of life and death for me. I mainly observe and write about them for my own amusement and as a way to learn about the issues involved. In this case, for one, examining the ESV seems like a good way to get myself back into the original languages.

The reason English Bible translations aren't a grave issue for me is that I think almost all of them are basically accurate. You're not going to find out that Jesus really isn't God by reading the NIV or that salvation is really by works. That's ridiculous. Just find a translation you like and use it.

I don't think that evaluating Bible translations is a binary decision---either the translation is right or it's wrong. It's all a matter of degree and to a large extent personal preference. This is especially true because the Bible contains about 31,000 verses. It would make more sense to say a particular version is 98% or 99% accurate based on the number of verses it gets right. Not that translation accuracy is a cut-and-dried issue in the first place.

In any case, the point is that since modern Bible translations are on a continuum from acceptable to pretty darn good and I have recourse to the original languages anyway, I feel free to treat the whole thing as a leisure activity and source of entertainment.

Annnd I don't like to see people gush about something that I don't think is that great, so poking a few holes in people's balloons is another motivation. Okay? I admitted it.

Lately I've become interested in English Bible translations. It started a few weeks ago when I was looking online for opinions on the ESV and found the Better Bibles Blog. They have a lot to say about the ESV that's basically along the lines I've been thinking, except that they've thought a lot more about it (not an unusual occurrance for me).

The translation I've used for ages is the NIV, and during that time I didn't really give other translations much thought. When the ESV came out, it was just another one that I didn't really care about. It sort of got my attention when I heard John Piper's sermon explaining why Bethlehem Baptist Church was making it their official translation, but I still pretty much ignored it.

What really piqued my interest was my brother's curious habits during church. At the time we both attended an Anglican church that used the ESV in its liturgy, and often during the Scripture readings I would see him circling phrases in the reading printed in the worship guide. I thought he was being spiritual until I asked him one day what he was doing, and he told me he was marking awkward wordings. Linguistic analysis---I should have known!

His opinion is that although the goal of the ESV translators was to sound elegant, they ended up just sounding weird. In a later conversation he gave me an example that he thinks epitomizes the problem, Acts 26:29: "And Paul said, 'Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am

Today will be my first service at my new church. I've been there before, of course, several times. But this will be the first service I'm attending it as my new church. I'm going to their Good Friday service at 7:30. They have something contemplative planned, which is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect from them. It's exactly the reason the church intrigues me. It's not Eastern Orthodox; it's not Catholic; it's not Quaker; it's not particularly trendy. It's just a plain old, non-liturgical church from the holiness tradition. Yet they do things like Taize-style Good Friday services. In some ways they're far outside the norm, and they're different in ways that make me think I will feel at home there.