Dear Partner in Preaching, Well that was fun! Our sharing and conversation via last week’s letter and comments, that is. Let’s do the same this week, and continue building a community of partners in preaching. As to this week… Over the years I’ve learned a lot from marketing guru Seth Godin. And one of the things I’ve learned seems particularly apt in light of this week’s parable. Godin argues in his little book All Marketers Are Liars that it’s not just marketers who lie, but all of us do. What he means is simply that we regularly tell ourselves things that we at least suspect, and sometime know for sure, are not true, and...

The other day I came across this micro-post by Seth Godin, one of my favorite bloggers: Fast, easy, guaranteed. Pick none. That’s the work worth doing. Just ten words that say an incredible amount. He’s playing off, of course, the numerous ways and places that phrase – fast, easy, guaranteed – is used in the world of marketing. To talk about delivery service, or order fulfillment, or completing projects, or whatever. It’s become nearly ubiquitous as a desirable attribute that is intended to grab our attention and secure our business. But immediately after reminding us of this commonplace, Seth – no I don’t know him, but it...

Given that we’re one week away from this colossal cultural phenom, it seems like a good time to ask the question. Actually, my friend, colleague, and Sermon Brainwave buddy Rolf Jacobson has written a fantastic article in response to this question on Luther Seminary’s wonderful and free web resource, Enter the Bible. In that piece, Rolf responds, quite honestly, that we frankly don’t know whether Jesus would shop on Black Friday. Having said that, though, that doesn’t mean we can’t think theologically about our relationship to the day and, even more, to our habits and pattens of shopping and our relationship to money more...

Name the one thing that, if you could get it tomorrow, would make you totally happy. If you’re at all like me, you probably had no trouble thinking of something. Or, actually, if you had a problem, it was limiting yourself to just one thing. And therein lies the key, actually, to our unhappiness. Somewhere along the line, we bought into the idea that if we could only get a little more we’d be happy. A little more money, a little more vacation time, a little better car or house, a little better job, a fancy new gadget… any of these things – depending on who you are – will make you happy. But it’s a lie. A lie constructed by our...