I went to church three times today, and it is only Monday.
I didn’t go anywhere, and I am glad because it is cool, overcast, and drizzling rain. I turned on my computer and watched three services of worship: Providence Baptist in Hendersonville, Southeast Christian in Louisville, and St. Peter’s-by-the-Sea Episcopal in Gulfport.
Providence is where I pastor, preach, and worship. I watch the recording of our service each week because, years ago, the great Caywood Ledford suggested it might be a good thing.
He didn’t say it quite like that, but what he said was something like this: “After every Kentucky basketball game, I listen to the recording of my play-by-play commentary to catch my mistakes, practice my pronunciations, and polish both the substance and style of my delivery.”
Ledford died in 2001, not quite a decade after 39 years behind the microphone in Memorial Coliseum and Rupp Arena.
In his honor and for the good of my congregation, I try to improve my own delivery: welcoming people to worship, lifting our concerns in prayer, reading the Holy Scripture, and preaching the gospel. It is important that we ministers do it well so as to effectively comfort and confront our people and also to gain a hearing for the Good News of Jesus.
After that and before lunch, I tuned into Southeast Christian Church in Louisville. Southeast is one of the largest congregations in the United States (whereas mine in one of the smallest). The lead pastor there, Kyle Idleman, was preaching, the first time in three months.
He took the microphone and talked about what he called his “sabbatical” but what most of us would call a “suspension.” Last summer, the elders of the church had challenged his leadership and questioned his decisions. Idleman pushed back, it seems, and they responded with “We think you need some time off.”
I follow all this because I have family in the church and on the staff, and Kyle Idleman was (at my invitation) a plenary preacher for the inaugural National Festival of Young Preachers in 2010.
What does such a high-profile pastor think, feel, and say after such a public reprimand? I wanted to know and so did a lot of other people. I watched, listened, and made some notes, but mostly I confessed that I didn’t know nearly as much as I wished.
Idleman said in his sermon that among the things he did during those three months was read 11 books, write one manuscript, and contemplate starting a business. If that one book is his personal narrative of all that happened behind the scenes of this public drama, I will be the first to read it.
After lunch, I opened the website of St. Peter’s, down on the gulf coast. The images reveal a beautiful white building with a bell tower. The pastor said (during his appeal for an offering for the homeless and helpless) the church had enough money stashed away to rebuild it all if another hurricane came barreling through the neighborhood.
What made the service appeal to me was the title: “Fish & Whistle: A John Prine Mass.” It was held early Saturday evening on August 20, 2022.
The pastor is not a recent convert to John Prine like I am. He therefore knew all the words to both the Episcopal liturgy and the John Prine songs. Such as, “Fish & Whistle,” “Angel from Montgomery,” “In Spite of Ourselves,” “Please Don’t Bury Me Down in the Cold, Cold Ground,” and of course, “Spanish Pipe Dream.”
They sang “Boundless Love” during Communion, which I though quite appropriate, as it describes our relationship with God as much as between two lovers: “Surround me with your boundless love. Confound me with your boundless love. I was drowning in a sea as lost as I could be, when you found me with your boundless love.”
St. Peter’s inspired St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Fayette, Alabama. This Saturday they are hosting a Christmas Communion service featuring the music of John Prine. Their pastor, and a clip from the St. Peter’s video, will join me in TheMeetingHouse this weekend.
But to further inspire you, I am linking the John Prine Mass video and my recently published article which will explain my interest: “Eating That Gospel Pie: The Religious Rhetoric in the Songs of John Prine.
Now I need to get back to my reading: Salvation on Sand Mountain! That’s all about snake-handling worship services in northeast Alabama; and I will write about that next week!
I went to church three times today, and it is only Monday.
I didn’t go anywhere, and I am glad because it is cool, overcast, and drizzling rain. I turned on my computer and watched three services of worship: Providence Baptist in Hendersonville, Southeast Christian in Louisville, and St. Peter’s-by-the-Sea Episcopal in Gulfport.
Providence is where I pastor, preach, and worship. I watch the recording of our service each week because, years ago, the great Caywood Ledford suggested it might be a good thing.
He didn’t say it quite like that, but what he said was something like this: “After every Kentucky basketball game, I listen to the recording of my play-by-play commentary to catch my mistakes, practice my pronunciations, and polish both the substance and style of my delivery.”
Ledford died in 2001, not quite a decade after 39 years behind the microphone in Memorial Coliseum and Rupp Arena.
In his honor and for the good of my congregation, I try to improve my own delivery: welcoming people to worship, lifting our concerns in prayer, reading the Holy Scripture, and preaching the gospel. It is important that we ministers do it well so as to effectively comfort and confront our people and also to gain a hearing for the Good News of Jesus.
After that and before lunch, I tuned into Southeast Christian Church in Louisville. Southeast is one of the largest congregations in the United States (whereas mine in one of the smallest). The lead pastor there, Kyle Idleman, was preaching, the first time in three months.
He took the microphone and talked about what he called his “sabbatical” but what most of us would call a “suspension.” Last summer, the elders of the church had challenged his leadership and questioned his decisions. Idleman pushed back, it seems, and they responded with “We think you need some time off.”
I follow all this because I have family in the church and on the staff, and Kyle Idleman was (at my invitation) a plenary preacher for the inaugural National Festival of Young Preachers in 2010.
What does such a high-profile pastor think, feel, and say after such a public reprimand? I wanted to know and so did a lot of other people. I watched, listened, and made some notes, but mostly I confessed that I didn’t know nearly as much as I wished.
Idleman said in his sermon that among the things he did during those three months was read 11 books, write one manuscript, and contemplate starting a business. If that one book is his personal narrative of all that happened behind the scenes of this public drama, I will be the first to read it.
After lunch, I opened the website of St. Peter’s, down on the gulf coast. The images reveal a beautiful white building with a bell tower. The pastor said (during his appeal for an offering for the homeless and helpless) the church had enough money stashed away to rebuild it all if another hurricane came barreling through the neighborhood.
What made the service appeal to me was the title: “Fish & Whistle: A John Prine Mass.” It was held early Saturday evening on August 20, 2022.
The pastor is not a recent convert to John Prine like I am. He therefore knew all the words to both the Episcopal liturgy and the John Prine songs. Such as, “Fish & Whistle,” “Angel from Montgomery,” “In Spite of Ourselves,” “Please Don’t Bury Me Down in the Cold, Cold Ground,” and of course, “Spanish Pipe Dream.”
They sang “Boundless Love” during Communion, which I though quite appropriate, as it describes our relationship with God as much as between two lovers: “Surround me with your boundless love. Confound me with your boundless love. I was drowning in a sea as lost as I could be, when you found me with your boundless love.”
St. Peter’s inspired St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Fayette, Alabama. This Saturday they are hosting a Christmas Communion service featuring the music of John Prine. Their pastor, and a clip from the St. Peter’s video, will join me in TheMeetingHouse this weekend.
But to further inspire you, I am linking the John Prine Mass video and my recently published article which will explain my interest: “Eating That Gospel Pie: The Religious Rhetoric in the Songs of John Prine.
Now I need to get back to my reading: Salvation on Sand Mountain! That’s all about snake-handling worship services in northeast Alabama; and I will write about that next week!
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