Open Source Sermon
Logo courtesy of Steve Knight
Greetings denizens of the internet. My name is Rob and I’m performing an experiment. Can the collective intelligence of the net produce a preachable sermon? Maybe the digital age is incompatible with such an ancient format. Then again, maybe the lurker will join hands with the hacker and usher in an age of peace and enlightenment. Maybe I’m just lazy and want some free content and editing.
Here’s the rundown.
- Project: Craft the world’s first open-source sermon.
- Deadline: Sept. 28th.
- Principles: Biblically based, Christocentric. (not that all contributors must be, only that the final product must be)
The Process:
- Select a topic: Anyone may suggest sermon topics in a comment to this post. Please submit as often you like and comment on other’s suggestions. I’ll choose the winner with consideration both to the principles of the project and the general consensus of contributors. Deadline Aug 9, Noon, Central Standard Time (GMT-6).
- Select a text: I’ll post the topic, and perhaps some initial thoughts, and we’ll open up the comments for suggestions. This time we’ll be searching for Biblical and non-biblical texts that speak insightfully to the topic. I’ll choose a primary Biblical text, and perhaps some secondary ones (Biblical or otherwise) using the same criteria as before. Deadline Aug 23.
- Write and Edit: I’m thinking a wiki is the best option for this step. I’ll post a link here, and then it’s off to the races. The only promise I can make is that your edits will be edited, by me and by others. If you want credit for your contribution, add your name (real names only, please) to the bottom of the document. Deadline is Sept. 20 when I will close the wiki to public edits. I will then present the final result to my senior minister (a former rhetoric and homiletics instructor). If he agrees the sermon is worthy of the pulpit, then the experiment is a success and we move to the next step. If not, I’ve still got a week to write something from scratch.
- Final edit and polish: I’ll take the last week to add finishing touches, modify phrasing to fit my style, and of course practice. Deadline Sept. 28, 9:45 A.M.
- Preach: All contributors will be recognized from the pulpit or in the bulletin. Everyone is of course invited to come listen live. Sept. 28, 10:00 A.M.
- Distribute: We’ll put the sermon text, audio, and video up on this blog under a non-commercial, share-alike Creative Commons license.
Thanks to Idan for the pointing me in a cool new direction!
I just can’t do this right now. I lost my brother ten days ago without warning and with no known cause in his prime of life. Tuesday I’m having major surgery that will take several months of recovery and off from work on a medical leave. It might be a fun idea in another time? Hope you are well. Ruth
Comment by ruth picker | August 7, 2008 |
You’re nuts. I’ll take part as best I can… as I am nuts, too.
Comment by Joel | August 7, 2008 |
Thinking about your invasive species post, what about a sermon on the church’s role in caring for the environment? You could talk about what having “dominion over” the earth means (or whatever your preferred translation would be–KJV certainly is gets quoted often).
Not sure if I can help with writing, but at least I can share an idea for a sermon. This is a cool concept.
Comment by Christy Tucker | August 7, 2008 |
I’m game, and I have a subject, too!
Seeing as the Vatican recently acknowledged the fact that aliens can exist, why don’t you do the sermon on that?
Comment by Jason/Andon | August 7, 2008 |
I would love to contribute to this in some way. It sounds interesting. Not sure if I could come up with a topic that would not be ridiculous or irrelevant, but I may be able to help with some of the other steps.
Comment by Jason Hanson | August 8, 2008 |
Ridiculous or irrelevant doesn’t bother me. Think of it like brainstorming. Maybe one of those silly ideas will trigger a really good one. One of my favorite sermons from 2nd Congregational came from the youth group. I asked them what they wanted me to preach about, and they said “Zombies!” It was a blast trying to make it work, and the kids were locked in during the sermon. How often does that happen?
Comment by revsmilez | August 8, 2008 |
From an email from a friend:
“I believe that this is a wonderful and crazy idea, and one in which I would like to participate. The topic and text might be from Psalm 2.1-4, The Laughter of God. I like the idea that God is said to have a sense of dark humor aimed at the pitiful flailings of conflicted humanity.”
Comment by revsmilez | August 8, 2008 |
I am in!
As for a topic, one area of interest to me that I have never heard explored in much depth (let alone in a sermon) is the relationship between Christianity and narcissism. More specifically, I have a theory that a very large part of the Christian message can be summarized by the phrase “don’t be a narcissist”. It is telling to me the Christ’s 2 commandments involve us loving God and loving our neighbors. In other words, we are commanded to take God’s love and reflecting it in other directions, both back to God and to our neighbors. Implicitly then, we are commanded to not keep that love within ourselves.
Even so, fallen men have used Christianity as a tool to BREED group narcissism. In my humble opinion, both the “conservative” and “liberal” wings of modern Christianity are guilty of this, albeit in different ways (“we have the only way to Christ and you have to be just like us to be saved” and “we are so much more tolerant than you”).
It seems to me there is a possible sermon that could be written about how both of these views ultimately fail and what the intended Christian life, the one that is true to Christ’s commandments and discourages narcissism might look like.
Just a thought… no matter what the topic I will be interested in helping.
Best,
Ryan
Comment by Ryan Morgan | August 8, 2008 |
jeez that sounds like alott of workk! but i guess its kinda cool.
idk how much help i would be, but i can try were its needed.
im srry about ur brother ruth.
Comment by Ellen Restyanszki | August 8, 2008 |
What Joel said… you’re nuts! I love it. Let me know what I can do.
P.S. With tongue firmly in my cheek… may I respond to Ryan?… “I’m an emergent, you’re BOTH irrelevant.”
Comment by Randy | August 8, 2008 |
So. . . I guess the laughing theme was the one you chose? So now it’s on to Scriptures and secondary sources? Good theme, and very interesting idea, although i would put nothing past you, Rob. You should send this idea to Rob Hoch so he can use it in class :) I will try to help if I can although I am scheduled to have a baby within the next week and Brian just got home on Monday :)
Comment by Corrie Chez | August 8, 2008 |
Hmmm… I’ve been thinking about food and our relationship with God a lot lately. Someone recently said that God still doesn’t want us to eat pork and I’m not sure if that’s true. I’ve also read a couple of women’s books that talk about women being in bondage to food, which I know is a problem, but they paint such a broad brush saying eating is bad…
Comment by ruhama | August 8, 2008 |
I’m interested. I’ve never done anything like this before, but doesn’t it happen all the time when people “borrow” other people’s sermons from the internet? :-) Actually, I’ve known of a couple groups of pastors who meet regularly to prepare sermons. The end result belongs to each individual pastor, but there are many contributions from others.
Comment by Rick Walston | August 8, 2008 |
The Laughing idea was mentioned twice but I do like the environment issue. In general regarded as a liberal issue for mainstream evangelicals but it is at the core of the Christian message. It is both pratical and spiritual if I may say so. Pratical in the sense of our responsibility toward creation as God instructed us to take care of the earth in Genesis 1: 28-on. Spiritual in the sense that our management of creation, hence the environmental issues plaguing us, reveal whether or not we truly undertstand what it is to have the character of God. We are made in his image but how far has this image been debased that we forget our responsibilities not only to him and others but the world he has created? Everything he has made was pronounced good and to be restored (Col 1: 15-20). What do you guys think? All this being said with respect for others for others’ opinions on the matter and much caution.
Comment by Martine Haglund | August 8, 2008 |
as human beings, we naturally feed information off of each other. Its just another way of learning and passing on knowledge to other people. I wouldn’t call it “borrowing” or anything like that. Its just they way we work.
Comment by maddie | August 8, 2008 |
I think it’s a good way of taking the pulse of the people you are speaking to. And I think it’s a good way of looking at a topic from a number of different points of view.
Give it a shot.
Comment by Pierre | August 8, 2008 |
Ought not the topic be: “the body of Christ” for such a “first” of this type of sermon?
We are spiritually linked together–what does this mean for the cyber-community. St Paul’s analogy in 1 Cor. 12 taken to a whole new level. Each member is a part of the whole–”the mac users cannot say to the pc users I have no need of you, nor the TSR-80 user say became I do not have a dual-core processor I do not belong . . . ”
if we are wanting to make God laugh . . . perhaps this might fit the ticket!
Comment by rick | August 8, 2008 |
Im very open minded to the idea, however time may be an issue for me. (Iraq time is +8 hours and i have a set work day) If your posting a text version I shoould have no problem being a part of this little experiment.
Im a little blank-minded as for topics at the moment but I will keep thinking about it….
Comment by Jake | August 8, 2008 |
Jake: don’t worry about it. We’ll use this blog and a wiki for all the contributions, so you’ll be able to log on and help out whenever works for you.
Keep those ideas coming, folks! We’ve got until tomorrow at noon. Suggest topics or comment on other suggestions. We’ve already got some cool options, but so far no consensus. Keep thinking.
Comment by revsmilez | August 8, 2008 |
The environment would be good to address, but I agree with Rick. Not only does the nature of this type of sermon prep seem to direct it toward an exploration of the body of Christ, but we’ve already had comments about conservatives, liberals, and emergents. Is this where I jump in and say that I don’t belong to Paul or Apollos?
Comment by Jeremy Wood | August 9, 2008 |
This is cool.
Since your trying to put together a sermon with the help of people on the internet I think you should somehow relate your topic to the internet as well. That being said here are two crazy ideas.
“Jesus is my facebook friend!” – maybe talk about Relationships and the internet and God. Could work well on a second level because of the medium your doing this sermon thing on.
“You’ve got Prayers” – this is kind of a spin off from Bruce Almighty when Bruce send all his received prayers to his email. This topic could just focus around prayer. Maybe you could also relate prayer to the internet by talking about high speed internet connections vs dial up.
Comment by Paul Lewis | August 9, 2008 |
like the idea, and reading through the comments, I like the humor of God, and the environment idea as well. I think alot of Christians aviod that topic as they see it as “liberal” and associate it with someone like al gore lol, but we are clearly called to be stewards of the earth and God’s creation. As a farmer, it has alot of impact on how we operate things, and it’s something I’d be interested to see the Church as a whole take a Biblical interest in. one could even take this idea and focus on stewardship as a whole, but thats rather a broad brush I suppose
Comment by Dave | August 9, 2008 |
[...] Deadline day. Today’s the day we choose the topic for the world’s first open source sermon. Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment, to make suggestions, and to critique. [...]
Pingback by Open Source Sermon: Topic « God Must Laugh | August 9, 2008 |
One of the really important portions about life is the JOURNEY.
Michael Card ended up recording one of my favorite Cello songs with John Catchings, called “Joy in the Journey”. “There is a wonder and wildness to life”.
I’m big on computers. Things in the computer world change rapidly. If you want to work with computers you have to keep up with relativity. You can’t just work with the computers themselves, you also have to work with the people who rely on computers.
There’s an article by Eric Raymond that really goes into detail about what sort of mindset you need to be a “keeper” of computers. It talks most importantly about how you need to think in order to serve others and yourself with efficiency.
The main link is here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
But the true points are very well distilled:
1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
4. Freedom is good.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
Funny, that sounds interestingly familiar in a lot of ways.
Most of his writing talks about thought processes and life dedication, but one of the main points for me, aside from self-evaluation, is the concept of freedom.
When we think of the word “free” these days, we tend to think of “buy one get one free” or “sign up now and get two months free” or “buy $25 worth of stuff and get free shipping!”, but that’s not “free”. That’s contingent on something else. That’s a gift at cost under certain circumstances. It’s not free, nor is it freedom.
When I think of “Free” I think of the really early software development days, from when I was in diapers, that I can only read about, but can still experience the spirit of in others.
Richard Stallman, although an occasionally controversial figure, has told a bit of his story to this effect here:
http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/
The evolution of culture and personality over a 20 year period where computers were finally evolving rapidly and hadn’t yet made it into popular culture in the true gestahlt sense.
I think that may be because very few people actually study history in a way that’s applicable to modern life.
It’s great to know that we have mobile phones at our disposal and easily obtainable computers at most workplaces, and the ability to send letters without postage stamps and pictures without film development, but that’s just a part of life, the same way the church is.
We go to church, or bible study, or youth group, we check our facebook, or myspace, or e-mail, or bank balance, and we don’t always think about the crazy folks with ridiculous ideas who made it possible to gather together by finding new ways to gather in secret by drawing the IXOYC in the sand and got the word passed to like-minded people, or made proprietary software developers useless by writing their own way to make mainframes and printers communicate while they were staying up for 20 hours a day in college.
One of the things that gets glossed over the most is how much time is involved in making change possible. It’s a journey, not a happy meal, and there is joy in the journey.
Comment by BardRT | August 12, 2008 |
Sorry it took me so long. Work has been crazy.
Blessings Padre.
Comment by BardRT | August 12, 2008 |
Wow, Bard. That’s intense stuff! I bookmarked both links for later reading. We’ve already got the topic picked, the body of Christ, but I hope you continue to contribute as the process continues. How do you see freedom and journey connecting with the concept of the body of Christ?
Comment by revsmilez | August 12, 2008 |
Well the body of christ is usually the church and its members right? You might say something on how the church has changed and evolved and prospered and how the internet simply represents easier access to the wisdom and peace that has unfortunately been buried in heavy layers of procedure
Comment by DasSmiter | August 15, 2008 |
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