Issue #8 — Lost Sheep, Worship, and Culture
a great short film and a few podcasts about worship and culture
Welcome! I hope you not only watch the short film below, but also read the podcast descriptions and dive into at least one of them.
What I’m Watching: Lost Sheep
This 7-minute short film is worth the watch. It's a "paper stop motion" film which means the creator painstaking crafted each frame by moving the paper ever-so-slightly. It's not only a visual masterpiece, but also a stunning, albeit simple, story. As you can imagine from the title, biblical metaphors abound. It’s perfect for children and adults alike.
What I’m Listening To: a Few Podcast Recommendations
Recently, many of us at Faith Reformed have been talking about our theology of and approach to worship. These two podcasts may help you think about worship.
Ron Man on Biblical Foundations of Worship — his approach is nonsectarian (i.e., not from any one theological perspective like Reformed or Wesleyan), but he highlights something often emphasized in Reformed circles: the pattern of Revelation —> Response. To understand more, listen in online (with transcript) or on spotify. Sometime, I would like to read his book: Let Us Draw Near: Biblical Foundations of Worship
Kevin J. Adams on the Gospel in a Handshake — Kevin leads Granite Springs Church in Sacramento. It is a church in the Reformed tradition that has had amazing success with new Christians while utilizing liturgical worship. His book and this podcast are about how to hospitably guide spiritual novices and Christian veterans to the grace embedded in timeless liturgy. If nothing else, please listen to the first 3:30 of this podcast. Again, you can listen online (with transcript) or on spotify.
I have also listened to some great conversations about culture:
Karen Swallow Prior on Imagining Evangelicalism — This podcast really clarified a few things for me about the state of the Church in America and what might help us as we move forward. KSP, as she is affectionately known, recently wrote The Evangelical Imagination. In order to properly understand what she means by 'imagination,' you need to understand Charles Taylor's notion of the social imaginary, which is the way ordinary people imagine their surroundings and the possibilities in the world. For instance, a tribe in Papau New Guinea imagines the presence of witchcraft in a way we do not and cannot. Likewise, we imagine a vacation at a lakehouse in a way they do not and cannot. KSP argues that evangelicals in American have a constrained social imaginary. You can find the episode online here.
The Sexual Revolution — Although the podcast episode "The Sexual Revolution: Why Louise Perry changed her mind" is ostensibly about the Sexual Revolution, the first 40 minutes are not about the sexual revolution at all. Rather, it's about the Christian roots of so much goodness in Western society. This is, in turn, connected to the sexual revolution because when feminists push back against the negative repercussions of sexual revolution of the 1960s, they often go right back to Christian ideas regarding sex and marriage. You can listen online here.
What are you listening to these days?