This weekend, Becky and I went to a lecture sort of a thing and book signing by author and chef Anthony Bourdain here in Santa Cruz. Anthony has a TV show called No Reservations on the Travel Channel that Becky intensely loves and we watch it together often. I am not personally into cooking shows, but this is one where he travels around the world and enters into cultures of both cooking and people which is always really fascinating. Anthony is also a fellow former New Jerseyian.
Fellow Vintage Faithian Shannon Marie was there and recorded her experience. I wrote about Shannon once here and also is a fellow Morrissey fan.
Anthony spoke for about 30 minutes or so, telling stories of different travels. He definitely is gifted in drawing in people as he tells his stories. Then he had open Q and A for about another half an hour or more. It was a fun night out with Becky and our favorite TV chef.
Yesterday, in all three worship gatherings I spoke again in our "Hot Theology" series at Vintage Faith Church. When we did our survey of questions from our church that people from our church turned in. There was a series of questions about problematic Bible passages or ones which seem really crazy reading them. So the message was more of one about hermeneutics and the importance of looking into the time period something was written, to whom was it written, what was happening at that time etc. Of course prayer as well. But we went back and walked through the scene from the TV show West Wing that I showed about 2 months ago when I spoke about "Don't Close Your Mind - Be a Theologian" (the clip is on that post) and the applied what I was saying and broke down the different parts of what Martin Sheen said in that scene.
This upcoming Sunday, we wrap up the series with a message on hell. As I shared in the last post here, I feel that hell and judgment is not something to necessarily be using as manipulation or to tweak out people irresponsibly. But at the same time, I am feeling that we can subtly shift to focusing so much on the gospel and the impact of the gospel on this life (which is incredibly important) that we can neglect also teaching on the afterlife and judgment and exploring what Scriptures teach (or don't teach) about hell. And interestingly, the topic of hell was something that people in our church asked about to teach on during this series.
More interestingly, last night a friend of mine came to our evening worship gathering. He was working at a coffee house when I originally met him. He has never been to a church worship gathering in his entire life. So last night was his very first time being at one. I felt obviously somewhat conscious of what he was thinking and experiencing being there. Also, as we talked about next week being about "hell" - I was wondering what in the world he would be thinking. Are we crazy fundamentalists for talking about hell? Would he split and not want to talk to me any further? What happened afterwards, is that he told me he was definitely coming back next Sunday as the topic of hell was very intriguing to him. So this week, I now prepare for a sermon on hell. Not an easy thing to talk about, considering I believe the Scriptures teach there is judgment and eternal separation. Six more days till the sermon on hell.
