A little sermoneering for the lull. I'm still backloaded with a lot of stuff to listen to and precious little time to absorb it all. But with titles like these, it's hard to resist the urge to share:

From Scum of the Earth Church (luv that name!), comes the best sermon title of the year:

» "Subverting The Zombie Empire" (mp3)

There's even a great reference to one of my favorite movies - Shaun of the Dead. So naturally, that's high on my recommended list.

Lastly, there's a sermon I lucked out on picking up from Joshua House in Columbus, OH.

» "Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back" (mp3)

This one obviously spoke to the Greg Boyd fan in me, so I went back and did a little research. The pastor (Ken Wilson) mentioned he's from the Ann Arbor, MI version of Vineyard Church, and as luck would have it, this sermon was the distillation of a five-part series he and Charles Park delivered in Ann Arbor. And this is where I'm at right now - smack dab in the middle of this series. Still, they're also high on the recommended list.

» He Wants His Religion Back - Jesus is our Center (Ken Wilson) [mp3]
» He Wants His Religion Back - The Gospel is our Message (Ken Wison) [mp3]
» A Church for Your City: Reclaiming the Jesus Brand (Charles Park) [mp3]
» He Wants His Religion Back - The Bible is our Book (Ken Wilson) [mp3]
» He Wants His Religion Back - Love is our AIM (Ken Wilson) [mp3]

Where Greg Boyd began in 2004 with his Cross & Sword series to deconstruct much of the existing faith & politics understanding in the church and followed up more recently with his Beautiful Mess series to build up a more Christ-centered alternative, Wilson seems to capture a little of both sides in this series. Since I've already read Boyd's book, listened to the sermons several times over and even ordered the DVDs to take them in one more time, it's refreshing to hear another take on how this course gets charted.

And speaking of Boyd ...

There's a two-part Q&A with him and Paul Eddy discussing some of the New Age concepts that are getting a new popularlization via Eckhart Tolle's book, "The New Earth" (thanks, Oprah!). Boyd's written review of the book is here. I've yet to spin it through my MP3 player, but Boyd and Eddy are a great team to listen to. For proof, I'll recommend a listenening of their Q&A on Spiritual Warfare (mp3).

With all of that, plus the usual hectic workload, plus the minor semblence of a social life ... you might imagine why I've had too little time for blogging lately.

Yeah, so no YouTube this week. I guess I could consider that a fasting of sorts.

Just a minor note for what's ahead this week. There seems to be an interesting confluence of events that mean I've finally got to break down and write up a bit on Phil Cooke's "Branding Faith." For one, Greg Boyd's sermon from this past weekend was on celebrity culture and how it's even affected the church community. As always, loads of thought-provoking material from Boyd. And it's obviously a topic that ought to register with anyone familiar with Lakewood & Joel Osteen. Going through the sermon for about the third time overnight to pick out a snippet to use. Bear with me while I attempt to do what might seem like work when it comes to this mere hobby of blogging.

Another tie-in was a guest-message at Rob Bell's church this past weekend. Shane Hipps gave a message entitled "Spirituality of the Cellphone." What caught my attention in the first listening was that Hipps was a marketing professional in his previous life (pre-seminary). Loads of adverts and cultural references woven into his message, so the connection to both Boyd and Cooke.

So with material like that, I've gotta get cracking.

An excerpt from the latest set of messages I've been listening to by Rob Bell.

Feel free to download the series to examine the deeper meaning of Street Donkey vs Wild Donkey

A few days ago, I mentioned a clearance on VHS and audiocassettes of Joel's packaged message series. At $2 a clip, it was pretty difficult to leave that section of the bookstore unattended to. I initially figured that it might be a long while before I broke down and either dragged my tape player over to the computer at home ... or had enough free time alone at the office to drop a tape in and listen while I worked. Well, that was before I went through about three of the five series in a matter of days. So last weekend, I decided to drop a few more bucks down on some of the older material. Good thing, too. Among the pleasant discoveries was that the Grand Opening DVD had been included. I've been long overdue in picking that up. Considering that it captures my own initial visit to Lakewood, I figure I owe it to myself to have it on record. But I also managed to download the episode of Praise the Lord that was recorded at the Grand Opening on Sunday. The Crouches even manage to interview Nancy Pelosi and Israel Houghton afterwards. But still ... a DVD is a DVD. One pleasant discovery that I noticed on the DVD that I may just not have caught while watching the PTL episode was a performance done by Dakri Brown and the ensemble. It's a great clip of Jemine Leigh as well as some that are still familiar faces during praise & worship.

The other series I managed to pick up on audio tape are as follows:
» The Power of Words
» Living a Life of Peace
» Living an Abundant Life
» Living Stress Free

If they keep that shelf loaded up over the next week or two, I may have to eventually drag a list of my complete inventory to fill in some blanks.

I took one to the office while I slaved away on a lazy weekend. What I think makes them so relatively easy to listen to in the background is that so many of the older sermons found their way into Joel's book. Having gone through the devotional version several times over, the audio doesn't seem to require as much attentiveness on my part.

The ironic part of all this is that I'd once thought to get the audio version of Joel's book. Upon listening to a sample clip of it, however, I concluded that the style of delivery on the audiobook was just too stale for me to listen to. Catching many of the same points in the sermon series, however, strikes me as a far better means of delivery.

One other sidenote while I'm on this topic. From time to time, the mail at my apartment is delivered to the wrong apartment number within my complex. So from time to time, I get someting incredibly late. Turns out one of those late deliveries was a decent-sized package from Lakewood. Unable to imagine what it could possibly be, I ripped through it first. Seems it was a nice thank you letter, apparently for folks who had volunteered throughout the church ... and one nice gift to go along with it. The gift? Well, more like The Gift ... as in the Christmas CD with Lakewood's choir & band along with the Houston Symphony. Now, I've already had my copy of that CD and not complained one iota about the bargain it represents to me. And the online bookstore is selling them for a mere $5 each. But since I've got one extra copy on my hands, I figure I'll make The Gift someone else's gift in order to spread the blessing a little further. Want a free copy? (Yes, I'm even shipping on my own dime) Drop me an email and I'll pick at random from whoever emails me before Friday. Did I mention there's a really great Aimee Beard song on there?