Pastor Ed Young of Fellowship church has issued a seven day sex challenge, that’s seven straight days of sex for married couples for his entire church of 20,000.
What do you think?
I know one thing for sure, there’s going to be a baby spike in about 9 months.
In our seminary, expository narrative preaching is emphasized quite a bit.
Where traditional sermons have multiple points that are supported in a variety of ways, in narrative preaching the stories and metaphors are the points. The key is that with any good ’story’ tension is created and held for impact until nearly the end of the sermon.
I’ve been thinking about this ‘methodology’ and I think it can be taken a step further.
There is… umm… a sexual art-form known as tantric (I had to look it up to verify) that is known to be a spiritual encounter involving a prolonged engagement where tension is held to the end, but there may also be ‘releases’ throughout the experience as well.
I think this form of preaching might be more helpful in our culture of short attention spans while weaving a captivating story till the grand finale… Tantric Preaching. You heard it here first.
This is a repost from my old blog, but worth retelling.
Several weeks ago my wife caught me in the act. I never thought I would do something like this, let alone have Yvz see me this way…
One of the deciding factors in us purchasing a ps2 recently, was my wife’s obsession with the game Karaoke Revolution. I wasn’t all that impressed with it at first, but I found it grew on me with time. We like choosing the hard songs like ‘Under Pressure’ and ‘ABC’ and singing in duet mode together with all the overlapping parts.
But then it happened. Yvz caught me one sunday morning playing on duet mode by myself. Exposed with both mics in my hands and singing both parts, I quickly explained to her how this took the game to totally new levels of excitement and challenge. She sighed and didn’t say anything, as if she was wondering why I was even explaining myself.
Then it hit me as we were driving to church. I screamed, that was Karaoke Masturbation! (Keeping in mind that I had been thinking about nothing but sex for weeks in preparation for the “Passion & Purity class I was leading).
I had been doing something by myself that was designed for two. Underneath it all, what it said to Yvonne was that I didn’t need her. What once was our pleasure, had become mine alone, to be enjoyed at anytime I wanted.
Sex before God is unselfish and sacrificial, a mingling of the souls, a sacred song sung by two.
To follow up the Mosaic Movement Resources as promised, here’s some articles, audio’s and video’s for you Rob Bell fans. I’ve been downloading all of their sermons since back in 2002, but again, to be on the safe side, all links here are just what’s currently available on the web.
*Note, I only link to resources that are already available on the web and I don’t have a practice of distributing or re-distributing any content.
For those of you who aren’t up to speed on Rob and Mars Hill, I’d say their the Mac of the megachurch world. clean and simple. Rob Bell’s an excellent communicator who does his homework, especially with contextualizing ancient Jewish culture. Their church is legend for exploding by word of mouth as Bell preached through Leviticus the first year.
Nooma video’s have been the latest craze. People thought I was being silly for spending money on them a few years back. You can borrow them from me if you’re in the area.
I’ll try to keep this resource page up to date, let me know if there’s anything worthwhile that I’m missing. Feel free to share this link on your sites/blogs.
Full videos from the Nooma series (I’m surprised it lasted this long, looks like some of the videos have been removed. Feel free to let me know if you find alternative links).
Full Nooma clips on Googlevideo/Youtube currently – Rain, Trees, Flame, Sunday, Noise, Kickball, Luggage, Dust, Bullhorn, Lump, Rhythm, Matthew, You
First 17 full-length Nooma’s also viewable in high quality on Vimeo here
Rob Bell regarding SexGod on CNN Five downloadable clips from Everything is Spiritual on iTunes Rob Bell interview for the Evolving Church conference 2007 Clip from Sex God tour in Michigan Video not of Rob Bell, but one of the “Way of the Master” guys in response to the Bullhorn Nooma. Video by youthwork.co.uk did an excellent video interview with Rob Bell, asking tough questions on how the church really started, emergent labels, and not becoming Ted Haggard. Hosted by premier.tv here.
Friday night Jake, Isabelle and I roamed the downtown core of Toronto for our youth-at-risk class.
We checked out some drop-in centers (Sketch, The Gateway, Seaton House, Sanctuary), Gay bars (Woody’s, Sailor’s, Churchmouse & Firkin), Other hang outs like Bovine Sex Club, Allan Gardens, The Falls, Hooker-Harveys, Boys town, and other nooks and crannies.
These are some pics I found off the web of a few of the places we checked out. I would’ve brought my own camera but didn’t want to look like a tourist.
From Graffiti Alley (Some good sets here and here)