Ministry as biography

Written by

 Just preached at two services over in the East Neuk 
of Fife. Despite warm comments, and genuine 
appreciation,there is still, and always, the sense 
that words cannot "stretch to the measure of 
eternal things". The last phrase is P T Forsyth's. 
Sometimes I think that other brilliant, infuriating 
genius, the one from Denmark, should be heeded 
more:

"Order the parsons to be silent on Sundays. What is there left? The essential things remain: their lives, the daily life with which the parsons preach. Would you then get the impression by watching them that it was Christianity they were preaching?"
Soren Kierkegaard, Journals, Ed. Alexandre Dru (New YOrk: OUP, 1938), p. 402.


Biography as theology - and as ministry.

Comments

14 responses to “Ministry as biography”

20 April 2009

Geoff Colmer

Hi Jim! Who’s the artist? With appreciation, Geoff

Reply
20 April 2009

Geoff Colmer

Hi Jim! Who’s the artist? With appreciation, Geoff

Reply
20 April 2009

Jim Gordon

Hi Geoff. Thanks for asking – the artist is Cornelis Monsma, about whom there is a great deal on the web. This painting is called “Transfiguration”. A good word to ponder when thinking of ministry as our humanity transfigured in Christ.

Reply
20 April 2009

Jim Gordon

Hi Geoff. Thanks for asking – the artist is Cornelis Monsma, about whom there is a great deal on the web. This painting is called “Transfiguration”. A good word to ponder when thinking of ministry as our humanity transfigured in Christ.

Reply
20 April 2009

Geoff Colmer

Thanks Jim – what a fascinating artist! I love his use of colour and I can see the Chagall and Van Gogh connection. Last week I used the excuse of a meeting in London to go to the Picasso at the National Gallery – it was informative, but overall I felt underwhelmed.

Reply
20 April 2009

Geoff Colmer

Thanks Jim – what a fascinating artist! I love his use of colour and I can see the Chagall and Van Gogh connection. Last week I used the excuse of a meeting in London to go to the Picasso at the National Gallery – it was informative, but overall I felt underwhelmed.

Reply
20 April 2009

Endlessly Restless

Good thought – and I love the painting. I’m just preparing a bible study series for our teenage group on the Sermon on the Mount. I might use the Keirkegaard for the ‘let you light shine’ bit. After all, it should apply equally to us non-clergy folk!

Reply
20 April 2009

Endlessly Restless

Good thought – and I love the painting. I’m just preparing a bible study series for our teenage group on the Sermon on the Mount. I might use the Keirkegaard for the ‘let you light shine’ bit. After all, it should apply equally to us non-clergy folk!

Reply
21 April 2009

Jason Goroncy

And from the same book: “Faith shall be known by love. Now people have of course tried to make love into something invisible, but against that Luther protests with the Scriptures; for to the Christian love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ’s love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.” (p. 317)

Reply
21 April 2009

Jason Goroncy

And from the same book: “Faith shall be known by love. Now people have of course tried to make love into something invisible, but against that Luther protests with the Scriptures; for to the Christian love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ’s love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.” (p. 317)

Reply
21 April 2009

Jim Gordon

Hello again Jason. You know you know a friend when you guess beforehand a comment on the post is coming! Thanks for the further Kierkegaard quotation – “endlesly restless” who comments on this blog will be able to use it also, with his class on the Sermon on the Mount. Did you know Denney tried to persuade Hodder and Stoughton to do a Kierkegaard anthology in English translation – and that denney quoted Kierkegaard in the chapter on Preaching the Death of Christ? Good to hear from you again. Grace and Peace.

Reply
21 April 2009

Jim Gordon

Hello again Jason. You know you know a friend when you guess beforehand a comment on the post is coming! Thanks for the further Kierkegaard quotation – “endlesly restless” who comments on this blog will be able to use it also, with his class on the Sermon on the Mount. Did you know Denney tried to persuade Hodder and Stoughton to do a Kierkegaard anthology in English translation – and that denney quoted Kierkegaard in the chapter on Preaching the Death of Christ? Good to hear from you again. Grace and Peace.

Reply
21 April 2009

Jason Goroncy

Do you think that Forsyth may have had a hand in Denney’s efforts with H&S? He was, of course, one of the few in Britain who was reading Kierkegaard.

Reply
21 April 2009

Jason Goroncy

Do you think that Forsyth may have had a hand in Denney’s efforts with H&S? He was, of course, one of the few in Britain who was reading Kierkegaard.

Reply