Presbymeme II

Bruce Reyes-Chow, who is to the Presbyterian Church what Jesus was to mankind, but without the whole divinity thing [ducks in anticipation of things being thrown at him], and who also happens to be our very serious and distinguished moderator, is at it again with the memes.  I had the honor of being tagged by my fellow heretic, Maria Anderson.

The Rules

• In about 25 words each, answer the following five questions.
• Tag five presbyterian bloggers and send them a note to let them know they were tagged.
• Be sure to link to this original post.
• Leave a comment or send a trackback to this post so others can find you.

1) What is your favorite faith-based hymn, song or chorus?

It would be cheating (or at the very least, waaay too self-promoting) to list any of my own songs. So I won’t do that.  But I do think that hymns are solidly in the folk-music stream, so I count many of them as favorites.  Sadly, my all-time favorite hymn is NOT in the Presbyterian Hymnal:  Are Ye Able?

2) What was the context, content and/or topic of the last sermon that truly touched, convicted, inspired, challenged, comforted and/or otherwise moved you?

So I guess it’s symptomatic of both my Presbyterian denomination and my postmodern self that I just can’t answer this question.  I don’t know that a “single sermon” has ever really been able to do that for me, although my former pastor, Philip Lotspeich, had some great ones.  But in all honesty, it was through our relationship that my life was transformed, not the sermons.  And I’m so not looking forward to my “Speech Communications In Ministry” class next semester, or any preaching class, for that matter.

3) If you could have all Presbyterians read just one of your previous posts, what would it be and why?

One that got me into a good amount of trouble when I wrote it:  Masturbation Church.  Because when it comes to the church, it’s time to just be honest about things, and get over our petty concerns about what’s *appropriate* to talk about in public or not.

4) What are three PC(USA) flavored blogs you read on a regular basis?

• Tribal Church, by Carol Howard Merritt
• Pomomusings, by Adam Walker Cleaveland
• Presbymergent, by a bunch of weird, heretical Presbyterian types

5) If the PC(USA) were a movie, what would it be and why?

I’m jealous of Carol, who already had the perfect answer with The Namesake.  Still, I think we’ve got a little bit of Monty Python’s Life of Brian going on, too.  We often seem to be right next door to what’s *really* going on, and pretty clueless about it.  Still, at the end of the day we’ve been a part of some pretty amazing history, done some things to be proud of (even if unintentionally) and in the midst tough circumstances (like being crucified), we can still whistle and sing “Always look on the bright side of your life…”

Ok, so now we get to pass this on.  I tag Dannah, Sarah, Adam, Andrew, Russell, and Drew. (Yeah, we all know by now that I can’t count.  Big deal.)