October 21st, 2007 - Persistence and Encouragement / Debi's Stewardship Temple Talk / Sunday Services / How Lutherans Interpret the Bible & El SalvadorThis Sunday Pastor Dayle’s preached on the power of persistence and encouragement. Debi, in her stewardship talk this morning, talked about a decision to reset her priorities and to center her time and treasure on Creator, a place that plants seeds of hope, a place where hope dwells.
There is a powerful love the world that is expressed here. God shines through thoughts and actions in our congregation as is the case in so many times and in so many places. Sometimes our piety appears a bit naïve. At times I pray it remains naïve.
We watched Luke’s El Salvador presentation after the services. The stories and pictures of the government’s repression of the peasants were hard to watch. Debi talked about a hope among those people she and the group who traveled from El Salvador had witnessed that astonished them.
At the first service during the Children’s Time Pastor Dayle asked the children to think about the people who encourage them at times they are sad and frustrated in their lives. She wanted them to give those people a hug. At the second service there was a puppet show of the gospel parable about the widow and the unjust judge. The puppets were different animal characters. The widow was portrayed by a “black widow” spider. It was quite entertaining.
Pastor Dayle referenced the Living Faithfully event in her sermon, in particular a song Marty Haugen taught the hundred and a half people participating called Bambabela . There were so many spirit-filled moments I did not describe at Living Faithfully. The elation of singing this song, with apparently simple direction from Haugen, learned without music, was incredible. An equivalent would be singing a Paul Simon song off Graceland with those learning the song doing the Lady Blacksmith Mambazo a cappella singing.
Bambabela is a South African word that means “hold on”, cleave to or cling to, hang on… The story Haugen told at Living Faithfully was that it was the chant sung on a train or street car that was so full of people they were hanging out the sides. Those inside the train chanted “bambalela” hold on, to those on the sides. He taught us both the African words and his English translation “Never Give Up”.
In the Adult Education we watched the last part of Powell’s How Lutherans Interpret the Bible. This was the part that I vividly remembered from the first time it was shown. Here we were introduced to polyvalence – a technical term used in Part 4 of the series that simply means scripture can have more than one meaning to people.
One of the examples used was the Parable of the Prodigal Son. When asked what reduced the younger son to tending the pigs and starving, most Americans answer “He squandered his inheritance”. Ask an African and the response was, “Because no one is feeding him, the locals do not know how to help foreigners” and asking a Russian the likely answer would be, “There was a famine in the land.” All these are details that are given in the story as factors that contributed to the son's destitution. Culturally we pick up on diffferent details that are significant to us.
There is a powerful love the world that is expressed here. God shines through thoughts and actions in our congregation as is the case in so many times and in so many places. Sometimes our piety appears a bit naïve. At times I pray it remains naïve.
We watched Luke’s El Salvador presentation after the services. The stories and pictures of the government’s repression of the peasants were hard to watch. Debi talked about a hope among those people she and the group who traveled from El Salvador had witnessed that astonished them.
At the first service during the Children’s Time Pastor Dayle asked the children to think about the people who encourage them at times they are sad and frustrated in their lives. She wanted them to give those people a hug. At the second service there was a puppet show of the gospel parable about the widow and the unjust judge. The puppets were different animal characters. The widow was portrayed by a “black widow” spider. It was quite entertaining.
Pastor Dayle referenced the Living Faithfully event in her sermon, in particular a song Marty Haugen taught the hundred and a half people participating called Bambabela . There were so many spirit-filled moments I did not describe at Living Faithfully. The elation of singing this song, with apparently simple direction from Haugen, learned without music, was incredible. An equivalent would be singing a Paul Simon song off Graceland with those learning the song doing the Lady Blacksmith Mambazo a cappella singing.
Bambabela is a South African word that means “hold on”, cleave to or cling to, hang on… The story Haugen told at Living Faithfully was that it was the chant sung on a train or street car that was so full of people they were hanging out the sides. Those inside the train chanted “bambalela” hold on, to those on the sides. He taught us both the African words and his English translation “Never Give Up”.
In the Adult Education we watched the last part of Powell’s How Lutherans Interpret the Bible. This was the part that I vividly remembered from the first time it was shown. Here we were introduced to polyvalence – a technical term used in Part 4 of the series that simply means scripture can have more than one meaning to people.
One of the examples used was the Parable of the Prodigal Son. When asked what reduced the younger son to tending the pigs and starving, most Americans answer “He squandered his inheritance”. Ask an African and the response was, “Because no one is feeding him, the locals do not know how to help foreigners” and asking a Russian the likely answer would be, “There was a famine in the land.” All these are details that are given in the story as factors that contributed to the son's destitution. Culturally we pick up on diffferent details that are significant to us.
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