Martin Elfert

I had a dream last night in which I discovered that @AJemaineClement was a member of Pink Floyd (a band famous for its Flight of the Conchords-esque humour and understatement). The concert was pretty good. But, sadly, the dream ended before the psychedelic version of Mutha’uckas.

@masonmennenga A seminary classmate had a book on their shelf with a similar sexual ethic or sexual theology. I kept on waiting for the author to fess up that they were writing satire. And they kept on not doing it.

some christians are going to be so pissed when they find out song of songs exists

Similar to Alice Munro, @1JessWalter conveys so, so much in the space between the words. "Show don't tell" may be a bit of a cliche - but when an artist shows this much and tells this little: Well, it's wondrous. From Walter's beautiful short story collection, "Angel of Rome."

@emollick @nytdavidbrooks My big knock on the feedback sandwich is that is teaches us to distrust praise - to tense up after a compliment and say, "Oh no! What's coming next?"

The “feedback sandwich” (start with something positive, then the negative thing, then something positive) is a bad way to give feedback. Plus, this shows it often backfires - not changing incorrect behavior while also upsetting the recipient! Don’t manipulate, be transparent 🥪

@masonmennenga Totally. The fundamentalist and the anti-theist are in deep agreement that scripture is either objective history or hogwash. And, I'd add, they both insist that those of us who don't accept that binary choice aren't really Christians.

fundamentalist many atheists christians 🤝 believing evolution disproves the existence of god

@josh_a_scott Indeed. I would even - to use an old-fashioned word - call it heresy. "If it were up to me I'd say 'yes' [to marriage equality, to women's ordination, you name it] but God says 'no,'" necessarily means that the speaker is more generous and more loving than God.

TLDR: How we interpret the Bible says more about us than it does about God. I think some people place unquestioned authority in the Bible so they have something/one else to blame for their beliefs and actions. Don’t blame me, blame God. It’s not the flex they think it is.

@josh_a_scott I have a colleague who - wonderfully - says, "If it turns out that I am mistaken about the nature God's love, my goal is to have overestimated, rather than underestimated, how loving God actually is." That feels like a good goal - a Christ-like one, really.

I know that I’m wrong about some things. I just don’t know what they are. But I am confident that the problem isn’t that I’ve gone too far into love, inclusion, and compassion. Where I’m wrong will be because I haven’t yet gone far enough.

@AmysMargin I reckon that there are good intentions here - that folks reckon that brevity is the antidote to tedium. But rules such as this are too reductive. We have all heard 10 & even 5 minute speeches that were impossibly tedious - & 90-minute ones that kept you rapt the whole time.

@danielwinvw It is the worst technology.

Their absolutely correct boomer ass, to be clear.

@mattnightingale And the inadvertent comedy is how many of their horror stories - What if a gay guy hit on me? You may as well put a stripper pole in the church! - look an awful lot like sexual fantasies.

@MartinElfert Exactly. They just cannot stop sexualizing us.

Oh, for sure. "Might as well throw up a stripper pole and have women dance for the congregation at this point." Just cracks me up. Yeah, that's the same thing. Totally.

@mattnightingale That would be offensive & absurd. It would be evidence a stunted moral imagination, one that cannot hold the many, many ways that two people express their love for one another.

@mattnightingale Folks will always misunderstand - & caricature - their neighbor if they hold onto the idea that sex is what primarily defines them. We know this with straight couples: *no one* goes to a straight 60th wedding anniversary & says, "Boy, you two have done a lot screwing."

Brock Boeser is now pace to score 324 goals this season.

@StJohnsPriest @dvdpeters I had a clergy colleague who went for Halloween as a projection screen. That is a costume choice that sits on the knife edge of hilarious and painful, that is just a little too true.

@dvdpeters And sadly the priest is the convenient target for people mad at God and dealing with personal pain. We get to carry that cross

Like the quote about managers I’m haunted by the thought that parishioners don’t quit churches, they quit clergy

@dvdpeters It is haunting. Particularly because there is so often so little for us to learn from or to do differently: if your sin is not being the previous rector, there is no fixing that.

@TexasBishop (The comments on this thread illustrate the impossibility of being in leadership post-2020: there are folks disillusioned that we took too long to reopen & make masks optional; and there are folks disillusioned that we reopened & made masks optional too soon.)

@TexasBishop So well said. This is a 3 steps forward, 2 steps back moment for everyone in the gathering business - Taylor Swift excepted. Our place's attendance is appreciably up over a year ago & still down from early 2020. I suspect that is common tale.

I would like to suggest that the numbers and decline in TEC are real; however, we will not know the difference between 2019 numbers and the post COVID era shift until the numbers are in for 2023. A) we did not measure 2020 and 2021 in the same way. B) this does not deny decline but points out that 2 COVID years are not a realistic view of where we are. C) a focus on closures of churches overlooks new growth.

@jdflynn Right. And remember the story of the curmudgeon on the church steps. Fighting to be kind, he tells the pastor, "Well, your sermon was brief." To which the pastor replies, "Yes, I avoid being tedious." At which point the curmudgeon can no longer resist: "But you *were* tedious."

I understand the point being made, but I do miss the lengthy, substantive, biblical preaching of my Protestant days. And I love the lengthy, inspired preaching one often hears in Black parishes. The “seven minute homily” idea doesn’t capture those realities.

@kaylajohnsonatl I think often of that famous scene "When Harry Met Sally." Imagine if we Christians lived with such joy, curiosity, generosity, & purpose folks looked at us and said, "I want what they're having."

There is not a single conservative “Christian” on this platform that has made me want to know their version of Jesus more, and I’m a life-long believer. Imagine if I wasn’t…

@_nomadic_soul 100%, yes. If you tried to reconstruct the Gospel based on what Christians talk about most often, you could not help but conclude that sex was Jesus' primary concern - and that, say, poverty was of little interest to him.

I believe a very strong case is to be made that Christians should reserve sex for committed monogamous relationships. It’s where I’ve landed. However, I believe Xians make consensual sex outside marriage too big of a deal & non-consensual sex everywhere not a big enough deal. +