There actually now are churches where the person preaching the sermon on Sunday is not physically present, but is seen as a 3-D projection, or hologram.  Some mega-churches now have “video venues” that are off-campus satellite locations, enabling those at a distance to be “in church” and to witness a sermon by the well-known preacher.  This differs from the experience of merely watching a worship service on television in that the folks get in their cars and go somewhere rather than sitting at home.  They also get to participate in the offering.

A couple thousand churches have these off-site video venues, and some predict the trend will increase significantly over the next several years.  According the an online Slate article, “the most ambitious pastors are predicting that, thanks to video, they'll have branded outlets nationwide and more than 100,000 followers—twice as large as the country's biggest megachurch today. Gigachurches are the way that next-generation celebrity evangelists are building their empires.”

“Gigachurches?”  “Celebrity evangelists?”  If a celebrity evangelist is salivating at having 100,000 “followers” in a gigachurch setting, or “empire,” it seems to me someone is missing the point.

The notion that “success” in the church is found in huge numbers of people attending worship services is very short-sighted.  At what point does a congregation cross the threshold of success?  Is it an attendance of 500?  5,000?  10,000? 

What is the effect of the celebrity evangelist’s preaching on all those people?  Is each one engaged in significant ministry in the name of Jesus?  Have they merely been pacified with affirmations of a consumer-oriented, individualistic lifestyle imbued with North American values and priorities?  Are the video venue attendees encouraged in their passivity by being spectators of something that someone else is doing in a remote location?  Do people leave the worship service talking and thinking about God or about the preacher (or his/her image that was on display?). 

Personally, I have known of churches with fewer than 50 people who ministered effectively to the needs of those in their immediate community.  There have been countless pastors who never achieved celebrity status – nor sought it – whose words and example deeply influenced others.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t require an appearance fee in order to show up.  Jesus said something about “wherever two or three are gathered in my name…”

And frankly, I’m finding it difficult to see the positive influence on our society and culture of the celebrity evangelists and their hordes of followers.

He was about six feet tall, carried a lot of excess weight, and seemed always to be dressed sloppily.  A description sometimes heard seemed to apply:  He looked like an unmade bed.  He was a fellow student at my college, and the only name I ever knew him by was Mousey.  He and another fellow I did know by name, Larry, challenged my friend Jeff and me to a doubles ping-pong match.

Jeff and I played a good bit of ping-pong in those days.  We figured, with Mousey being who he was, and with Larry being about half Mousey’s size, we stood a pretty good chance.  After all, Jeff and I were in good shape, we were strong and had quick reflexes.  We played the game regularly.  No problem.

We were correct.  It was no problem --  for Mousey and Larry, or really just Mousey.  I never saw anyone play ping-pong like Mousey.  The match wasn’t even close.  A few times afterwards, I saw Mousey play and beat two people at a time -- while he was sitting in a chair.  The guy had ping-pong covered!

Watching the Olympic games recently, I saw a lot of world-class athletes performing at a very high level.  All-time Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps is described as being the prototype for someone in his sport.  His body is perfect for what he does, so maybe there shouldn’t be much surprise that he excels.  Yes, he works very hard to perfect his skills, but he is the right person in the right place to succeed, according to expert analysts.

Some of the women gymnasts, especially from China, are so tiny (and young), it’s a wonder they can do such amazing things, requiring so much strength.  They showed the world what they could do.

You can’t always tell about a person, just based on his or her appearance. 

In the text coming up this Sunday from Matthew 15, we find a woman who was, according to the standards of the insider religionists of the day, “not worth nothin.’”  Jesus himself even applied to her the description of “dog.” 

Yet, it turned out that her faith was recognized by Jesus as being greater and more appropriate than those righteous folks who made the rules for everyone else. It even was more effective than the faith of Peter, as displayed in the preceding chapter.

Blessings ensued because of the quality of the faith of this person, so easily dismissed by those who were “superior” to her.  Read the story to capture the details.

On Saturday, there will be a forum featuring presumptive presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama.  The event will be held at The Saddleback Church, a megachurch in Southern California.  The pastor is Rick Warren, and he will moderate the discussion.

Warren and Saddleback present themselves as the religious “middle,” and suggest that they represent most Christians in the country.  The forum with the two candidates is part of an ongoing series of discussions featuring a wide-range of experts and analysts in varieties of fields important to the lives of Americans.

To learn more about the forum, click here.

The questions for the discussion with Obama and McCain will cover four areas:  Stewardship, Leadership, Worldview, and America’s Role in the World.  Warren will interview each candidate for 50 minutes, asking the same questions.  Obama will appear first, according to a coin toss, and McCain will not be allowed to hear the questions asked of Obama.

A panel of writers has offered their suggested questions for the candidates.  What would you want to ask McCain and Obama?

If you respond to me with your questions, I will post them (without giving your name) on the blog.  Either click the Post Comment button below, or email your questions to me at ghblog@yahoo.com.

I think if I got to know Mike Huckabee, I probably would like him.  He was a contender for the Republican presidential nomination until Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) rounded up enough electoral votes to carry the upcoming nominating convention.

Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas for nine years, has written a number of books, has been a leader during every phase of his life, served as a pastor for a few Baptist congregations, and plays in a band.  He is perhaps a year or so younger than I.

He seems like a personable fellow, and while we see many things differently, I can imagine getting along well with him and enjoying his company.  He once even described his experience as a pastor as trying to be the “captain of a ship” on which everyone pulled together on a journey of faithful witness and service, only to discover that most of the folks simply wanted to be “passengers on the Love Boat.”  

But, I’m a little concerned by Huckabee’s establishment of a “think tank” called the “Vertical Politics Institute.”  Maybe I am over-reacting, but even though Huckabee says the organization is “vertical” because its focus is not “left or right politics,” I have to wonder if there isn’t a hidden agenda.  The institute will fulfill an “educational” role “in states where there may be ballot initiatives that involve things like the fair tax or marriage issues or sanctity of life issues,” according to the man himself.

Those are sounding like target issues of the religious right, and the image of a “Vertical Politics Institute,” makes me suspect that someone’s version of God’s intentions, desires, will, or scriptural mandates is the expression of what is found when one goes “vertical.”  I have to wonder if Huckabee, or the Institute, will define what God wants, and then “educate” others about it.  If that is the case, danger is all around.

As good a guy as Mike Huckabee seems, neither he nor anyone else speaks for God.  I believe people can pray, study, meditate, discuss, and do all kinds of things to open themselves to the leading of God, but to identify and codify somehow God’s will for a diverse society and nation, usually in a way that reflects the dominant culture’s worldview, is nothing short of idolatry.

And I do know God doesn’t like that.

The phrase “The Lost Boys of Sudan” applies to youthful refugees from the long ongoing religious and ethnic war in their home country.  Many of the Lost Boys attempted to flee the violence, and those who survived grew up in refugee camps in Kenya.  If you happen to watch today’s opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing, you will see one of the Lost Boys.  He will carry the flag for the U.S. Olympic team.  His name is Lopez Lomong, and his is a story of the triumph of the human spirit.

Lomong, a 1500 meter runner, was kidnapped at age 6, taken to a windowless cell holding other abducted boys, and fed a diet intended to slowly kill him and the others (millet mixed with sand).  A couple of the older boys had figured out what was going on and helped young Lopez eat just enough to survive, subverting the intended effects of their “meals.”

One night, the boys slipped through a small opening and crawled until they were far enough away to stand up and run.  They ran virtually around the clock for three days until they reached the Kenyan border, where they were arrested and put in a refugee camp.  Lopez Lomong remained the refugee camp for ten years.  But, with the help of the United Nations, the boys were able to receive one meal each day.  The only meat they were given during a whole year was a chicken at both Easter and Christmas.  They learned to ration for themselves the meat and to make a thin soup.  Every last fragment of the chicken was protected and savored.

He once earned a small amount of money in Kenya for watering cows.  Rather than spending the five shillings, he held onto it for a long time.  Subsequently, he and some of the other youths at the camp heard about the 2000 Olympics occurring in Sydney, and that there was a television in someone’s home several miles away on which they could watch the competition. 

When they arrived to gather around the small black-and-white TV, they were told that the cost of watching each event was five shillings.  Lopez paid to watch Michael Johnson sprint to a gold medal, and was inspired by watching Johnson display emotion at the medal ceremony flag-raising.  A seed for a dream was planted.

In 2001, the United States arranged to bring to this country 3,500 of the Lost Boys and facilitated their placement in foster homes.  Lopez joined the Rogers family in New York State, and a whole new life and world opened up to him.  His first meal on American soil was at a McDonalds, where he ordered chicken.  When he didn’t finish eating it, he carefully wrapped up the leftovers to save for later.

Life was strange and wonderful in his new home, and Lopez, 16 years old at the time, discovered, for example, that students actually wrote their school lessons on paper, rather than learning to write in the dirt on the ground.   It was all new, and he eventually became a U.S. citizen in 2007.  Exactly one year later, Lopez Lomong made the U.S. Olympic team.

There is so much more to the story of this young man and his remarkable journey, but he has shown courage, persistence, and inner strength under extreme and difficult circumstances.

Today, the world will get to know him, and will learn what he stands for.  He has never forgotten where he came from, or the political and economic realities that have led to innumerable deaths and exceeding suffering among his people.  His choice as the flag-bearer for the U. S. Olympic team is a statement by him and his teammates, directed at China’s complicity in his home country’s horrors.

I recently joined Facebook, the online “social network,” and set up a personal page.  On Facebook, only those you allow to be your “friend” are able to see your profile.  I have enjoyed playing with this new toy, looking for people I have known and never or rarely see, or with whom I have limited opportunities to communicate.  I already have connected with several, including a high school buddy I lost track of when we graduated and went separate ways 36 years ago!

Behind sites like Facebook, I think, is the reality that many people are lacking a sense of positive relationship with others, individually and in community, and there is a genuine need for that.  

Dick Meyer, author of Why We Hate Us:  American Discontent in the New Millenium, observes, “The social scientists who study human happiness have found quite clearly that as Americans have grown more prosperous, well-fed and sheltered, healthier and long-lived, they have not grown happier.  That, to me, is the great puzzle of our times.  But one part of the puzzle is also clear:  the greatest variable in happiness is the quantity of human relationships.  Here, more is better.”

Meyer suggests that as we make the many choices available to us:  where to go to school, where to live, how to pursue our vocations,  even what our bodies will look like (cosmetic surgery is very popular), we end up losing connection to a community in which to be grounded and in which to build meaningful relationships with others.

Meyer is one of those non-religious folks who seem obsessed with religion, and he maintains that our society’s easy mobility, and our narcissistic approach to most aspects of our lives, including faith, contributes to the decline of organized religion and its institutions:  The communal benefits of churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. have eroded significantly, and people are feeling the effects in terms of happiness and emotional well-being.

He may have a point.  Many people have no denominational identity or loyalty, and look for a church that reinforces their personal opinions; some congregations claim to want to attract new people – new “members” – but when it comes to inclusion of these folks, they do very poorly, recycling longer-term members in leadership roles; a consumer-oriented mindset regarding churches is becoming the norm.  Community is difficult to build under these conditions.

So, failing that, and other efforts at community, people look elsewhere.  The need for human connection and relationship is deeply-felt, but sometimes it seems more and more remote.

Recently, I watched the new movie Swing Vote, starring Kevin Costner as Bud Johnson, a small-town loser whose elementary school-aged daughter tries to get him to vote in the presidential election.  When a snafu occurs (I won’t go into detail, in case you plan to see the film), the entire election result comes down to Bud’s vote, which must be re-cast ten days later.  The campaigns of the two candidates focus attention, advertising, speeches, policy statements, and events entirely on trying to convince Bud to select their man.  Hilarity, conflict, etc. ensue.

A noticeable aspect of Costner’s character is the liberal use of language normally considered inappropriate in polite society.  He swears a lot.  I suppose some of it is designed to show the frustration of a person like Bud, his anger over many matters in his life, and his inarticulate ways of expressing himself.  Some of it, of course, is funny, but it was a little extreme in the movie, I thought.

One of the legendary cursers of all time was the late baseball icon Ted Williams, who apparently could string together whole sentences of colorful images to include noun, verb, adjective, adverbs, and whatever else could be diagrammed on a chalkboard.  At least one person who reads this blog had first-hand experience hearing Teddy Ballgame let it fly when points needed to be made.  I never had the opportunity, but admit I’ve been curious about it over the years.

Occasionally, I’ve overheard one of the geniuses that lives on my block conduct his cell phone conversations while he stood in the middle of the street.  If a certain word, in its varieties of forms, were eliminated from his end of the call, his usage of his allotted minutes of air time would be cut in half.  Money would be saved.                                   

I recall with great amusement an incident involving one of my professors at seminary and his use of language.  He was a kindly old gentleman, extremely hard of hearing, but committed to the faith and to teaching.  One day during a class discussion of some issue that now eludes my memory, he became absolutely infuriated by the thought of whatever it was we were talking about.  He sputtered and turned a shade or two redder as he searched for words strong enough to express his total disapproval and disdain. “That’s…just...(quivering anger rising along with blood pressure)…for the BIRDS!”  I think he felt better after getting that off his chest. 

I could be wrong, but I suspect Simon Peter and some of his first-century fishing colleagues were not unfamiliar with forceful forms of verbal expression.  As we will see in a Sunday scripture text coming up soon, he also was inspired to say something earth-shaking because of his association with Jesus. (See Matthew 16:16) 

Words have power attached to them.  Choose your words carefully, because they always have the potential of instantly changing everything.

Chapter 11 of the Letter to the Hebrews begins with these words, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”  But still, we’d like to see the “things that are not visible,” wouldn’t we?  You know, just to be sure.  Faith can get a little shaky sometimes.

Maybe that’s why people become so wound up over images of holy figures they think they see in strange places.

Recently, I stumbled upon a series of “news” videos covering stories of such discoveries.  For instance, there is the image of an angel in the plate-glass window on the front of a carpet shop.  Of course, it is seen only at night when certain lights are on outside a convenience store across the street.

Jesus recently was spotted in the fur pattern of a cat; in the way a Cheeto was shaped (you know, those empty-calorie crunchy snacks having the consistency of ancient, hardened Styrofoam, and dusted with orange powder – don’t get me wrong, I love them!); in a sonogram image; in a rock, co-existing with George Washington; and on the bark of a tree.  The Virgin Mary was discerned by a plumber in a rust stain in an industrial sink somewhere.  A prior sighting of her occurred in a partially-eaten cheese sandwich, while Mother Teresa was observed in a cinnamon roll.

I guess you can tell I don’t share the enthusiasm some folks have for such things.

If someone wants to see “proof” of God’s existence, or of the validity of faith, I would suggest paying attention to the beauty and complexity of the eco-system, thinking about how provision is evident for the sustaining of human life (as long as we don’t totally foul it up), or observing how people can experience positive personal transformation as they deal with the realities of life, and even find grace and healing in the midst of tragedy and pain.

Perhaps I should slow down on the Cheetos and at least look them over before I pop them into my mouth, but I’m not interested in whose face or form they might resemble.  In my view, our faith is fed in more substantial and eminently more satisfying ways.

I drove past a church that had a message on its sign at the driveway entrance:  “The Ten Commandments Are Not Multiple Choice.”  To me, that is akin to another one commonly seen, “What Part Of Thou Shall Not Don’t You Understand?” signed, “God.”

One only can imagine the crowds of people attracted to such churches. (That’s because they only exist in the realm of imagination.)  How the Christian faith can be expressed with belligerence and the edge of anger is a mystery to me.

At my seminary there were a number of pretty conservative students who were there only because their bishops or district superintendants or someone in their church’s hierarchy required them to earn the Master of Divinity degree.  These guys already understood God, Jesus, and the Bible with a clarity that eludes most others, and were deeply suspicious of professors who challenged them to think beyond their accepted conventions.  Sometimes they remarked how they would “pray” for the professors to be “saved.”  Uh huh, I’m sure.

A little story that seems applicable appears in the current Christian Century, describing the experience of a Sri Lankan Buddhist during his days at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary.  One of the other students, a Christian, declared publically that the Buddhist was “going to hell,” presumably for not sharing the Christian’s outlook and faith.  The Buddhist responded that the Christian likely would end up in heaven, but his “noisy theological disputes” would be so loud and disruptive that he, the Buddhist, would “voluntarily choose hell, where he might compassionately serve suffering souls.”

What part of “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself” (a teaching attributed to Jesus) don’t Christians understand?