Featured artist(s): Ben +Vesper. Music from Mike Farris, Peppershaker, Pierce Pettis and more. Welcome to the feast for the senses that is Episode 11!

Welcome to Episode 11 of the Habañero Hour, the occasional music/interview podcast of Brent Thomas and Mark Whiten where we dissect and rearrange the idea of “Christian” music. We introduce you to artists we know and love and we talk to some of them along the way as well. We hope you enjoy and we’d love to hear from you.

Episode 11 Tracklist:

1. “120z Double Shot” by Peppershaker
2. “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” by Mike Farris
3. “New Nature” by Elephant Micah
4. “Many Moons” by Ben + Vesper
5. “State of Grace” by Pierce Petis
6. “He’s A Comin’” by Lightning Splits The Bark
7. “The Big Conversation” by Ben + Vesper
8. “Rock of Ages” by Vesper
9. “Traveler’s Psalm” by Andy Zipf
10. “Terre Haute” by Woven Hand
11. “The Great Physician” by Deas Vail
12. “Human” by Civil Twilight
13. “LivInIdleness” by Ben + Vesper
14. “Meet Me Down By The River” by Corey Crowder

• Download Episode 11 of The Habañero Hour
• Subscribe in iTunes
• Connect with us on Facebook
• Connect with us on Twitter
• Connect with us on Last.fm

Sometimes this and sometimes that but oftentimes but not always, the Town Crier. He scours the dregs to bring you the diamonds. It’s a thankless job and that’s not really why he does it but it might help if you did actually say thank you once in a while. I mean, seriously, do you think he just has all day to sit around and look for things that you might find interesting?! Like he’s your personal Yahoogle or something. Come on. You know better than that. Or do you? I’m beginning to wonder.

Watch this piece saying that if you want Flash on your iPhone, consider jailbreaking it.

Read Time’s piece considering the mainstream-ization of marijuana in CA.

Listen as Neue interviews Mark Driscoll.

Read as Justin Buzzard considers the death of the telephone call.

Read about the pastor who says that he hates homosexuality but is attracted to men.

Browse a list of 100 Pixar characters.

Read about the man who plans to tweet the entire Bible in three years.

Read about the perils of “Hipster Christianity.”

Read as Jared Wilson imagines what it might be like to ask Brian McLaren if he wants a glass of milk.

Read about a study trying to understand how technology affects our brains.

Read as the Barna group considers how often Americans “change faiths.”

R.I.P. Jazz photographer Herman Leonard.

R.I.P. Clark Pinnock.

R.I.P. Andy Hummel, founding member of Big Star.

R.I.P. Michael Been of The Call.

Street Fighter fish throw.

Read about the National Jazz Museum acquiring the Savory Collection.

Read the Wall Street Journal article saying that Christians may go around the world trying to help people, but they’re not sharing their faith.

Read one designer’s thoughts on making smoking more difficult for smokers.

See some unwelcome facts about fast food.

Read about a judge protecting Fred Phelps’ “right” to protest military funerals.

Read about the man who wants to help renovate America’s image abroad by redesigning our currency.

Read about young people moving away from wrist-watches and e-mail.

Browse this list of 15 things that should be free.

See Coral Ridge’s new logo and read the explanation.

Read as Christianity Today reviews Doug Burr’s O Ye Devastator.

Read Christianity Today’s review of Thad Cockrell’s To Be Loved.

Browse a brief history of the Internet.

Read the Resurgence’s profiles of “bans,” guys who aren’t men but boys.

Read about the brewing controversy between Marvin Olasky and Jim Wallis.

Read as the NY Times wonders why it’s taking so many young people so long to grow up.

Browse this gallery of bad band tattoos.

See a preview of Bob Dylan’s upcoming art showing.

I love music. And I listen to a lot of music. I listen to enough music with enough of a critical ear that it’s very rare that I’m blown away by an artist who almost instantly becomes part of my regular listening.

Several years ago, my wife and some good friends and I had the chance to go see Bill Mallonee (formerly of Vigilantes of Love) play in a yoga studio in Dallas. As we sat down and prepared for the music, we let out a collective sigh as we realized that there would be an opening artist. One man climbed behind a keyboard and other other, with a wisp of white hair and dark-rimmed glasses, positioned himself on a chair with his guitar and a stomp-box. The moment they started playing, our love affair with Doug Burr’s music began.

It’s often difficult to write objectively about music. It’s even more difficult to write objectively about an artist you admittedly love. So it is that I sat down to try to review Doug Burr’s latest album O Ye Devastator.

The cover image of Devastator serves as the perfect introduction to the music found inside. A mournful bride peeks out from behind the veil. The beauty of the day is tinged by here eyeliner which makes one wonder if she’s been crying. There is a heaviness in her eyes that darkens the veil behind which she hides. Over the course of four albums, Burr has explored the seemingly contradictory themes of this image.

Burr’s work has continued walked the tightrope of faith and doubt and sin and redemption. 2003’s The Sickle and the Sheaves was a hopeful work drawing heavily on gospel themes while 2007’s On Promenade used the Van Gogh brothers as a centerpiece to explore themes of longing and doubt. In case there was any question about the depths that Burr was setting out to plumb, in late 2008, he put The Shawl, a collection of Psalms. The message was clear: Burr was compelled to explore the borderlands of faith and doubt in a way many artists shy away from. Salvation is seen brightest against depravity and you must see both to see the whole. Devastator not only continues these explorations but shines the light brighter on the darker side of hope.

The tone of hope-tinged blackness is immediately set with the album opener A Black Wave is Comin‘ as Burr wonders against soaring strings that betray the ominous tone:

So what do you see my lover

and what do you see my friend

I don’t know, I don’t know at

Midnight comes a snow

I can’t see, but I hear a little hymn

Whereas the Van Gogh brothers serves as the couplet centerpiece of On Promenade, here it is a mother and child who are caught in the jaws of depravity. Chief of Police In Chicago sets the stage as a police officer informs a brand new mother that her child has tested positive for a gene found in criminals. You’ve Been A Suspect All Your Life captures an exchange between the mother and child in which the mother tells her child “You’ve been a suspect all your life:”

And I don’t have the strength to see you this way

And oh, how this city would change your name

Oh, but you are the apple of my eye

No exoneration until you die.

This potent mixture of love and loss, of hope and faith and doubt is carried through songs like At The Public Dance in which a man is at once drawn to and repelled by the woman he pursues and Do You Hear Wedding Bells in which the celebratory notes ring “wreckless and drunk in the air like maybe they don’t know what kind of streets they’re stumblin down or they just don’t care.”

Throughout the album, the music accentuates the themes perfectly. Soaring strings and wistful pedal steel frame the questions of life and the struggles life and faith.

This is not what most people think of as “Christian” music and that’s what makes it so right. It is one of the most honest albums in one of the most honest catalogs I have come across in a long time. If it’s true that we should judge an artist by their catalog rather than their singles, then Burr is gradually positioning himself as one wise beyond his years. He is not afraid to remind us that there are black waves on the horizon, we are caught in the middle of forces we may not understand or be able to control, but there is always the ray of hope shining through, as he reminds us in And When We Awoke:

And when we awoke

The sea still foamin’ red

The bells have all begun ringin’, swingin’

Oh, sleeper, lift your head

Sleeper, lift your head

Burr is content letting some pieces of the puzzle remain unplaced. Are you? This is, by far, one of my favorite albums of the year. Highly recommended.

Watch a recent interview with Burr:

• Hear Doug Burr walk through the album track by track

One of the reasons that I feel Jim Belcher’s Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional is an important book is because it gives a voice to many guys, like myself who feel caught in the middle. I am not “traditional” (as Belcher identifies it), though I share many of their theological concerns. Nor am I “emergenting,” though I share some of their concerns.

One of the areas I feel the pinch of being caught “in between” is dialogical preaching. Doug Pagitt’s Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith has done us all a dis-service by coloring the way many people view dialogical preaching. Matt Chandler has summarized dialogical preaching as “going from nothing to nothing.” But this isn’t a fair presentation or an adequate consideration. Pagitt’s understanding and practice are world’s apart from, say, Soma Communities, who also practice dialogical preaching.

I wonder how much of our current understanding and practice of preaching is actually cultural. It seems to me that we have removed it from the synagogues in which it brewed and the Rabbinical teaching methods in which it marinated (both of which were heavy on dialogue). We actually have more biblical snapshots of dialogical teaching than we do of what we would consider “preaching.” The examples where an individual stood in front of a large crowd of primarily already-Believers and talked at them for 45 minutes to an hour without ever taking questions are few and far between, yet that is exactly what we have come to hold up as our tradition.In Acts 20, before the poor sleepy boy fell out of the window, we’re told that Paul “talked with them” (Acts 20:7). Acts 17:2 reminds us that it was Paul’s custom to “reason with them.” Ephesians 4:11-13 reminds us that it is the role of the teacher to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry rather than do it for them.

While I think there’s much more to be said (and that probably needs to be said) about some of the biblical foundations of dialogical preaching, that’s not my aim today. Instead, I hope to just clear up a bit of confusion. In other words: what are we even talking about?! Here are a couple of things to consider:

Dialogical preaching is not conversation: At least not in the way most conversations are conversations. Most conversations are two-sided in the sense that both parties (at least in theory) have equal rights to be heard. It’s a give and take. One party has the power to change the direction of the conversation at will. So, even though one participant may have intended the conversation to go one way, the other participant had other intentions and neither of them found resolution. They conversation didn’t go where either of them intended.

Dialogical preaching does include dialogue, yes. The preacher (and yes, he is still a preacher) does ask questions, elicits feedback and even interaction (GASP!) during the sermon, but the preacher also guides these questions and even the answers. That’s not to say he plants the answers, just that he has a very clear destination in mind (the point of the sermon) and if the dialogue gets off the tracks, it’s his job to put it back on the rail. Think the Socratic method.

Dialogical preaching is not an extended “tell me what you think this text means to you . . . ” jabfest. If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, chances are that you’ve been to some small group Bible study where the “leader” reads a passage and essentially asks the people what it means to them. The implication here is that there is no right or wrong answer, just what it means to you.

Dialogical preaching is built on sound exegesis. The foundation and even for the most part, the structure of the sermon are identical to most preaching. The preacher has done the hard work of exegesis and is aware that there are, in fact, wrong interpretations of the Bible. Remember above, when I said that the preacher had a clear destination in mind for the sermon, well, apply that here. Though I might ask our church family why an author included a particular line or phrase, the point is not to hear what people think but to equip them. So, good dialogical preaching is not afraid to tell someone that they’re wrong. Yes, you want to be polite about it, especially in a large group dynamic, but the point is to help people work through the passage on their own. So, you walk them through some of the exegetical steps, letting them see them for themselves.

Dialogical preaching is not just verbal “fill-in-the-blanks” sermon follow-alongs. In an attempt to “engage” the congregation, many pastors write up some fill-in-the-blank sermon outlines for people to follow along. Usually, this is meant to help the people follow along, grasp and remember the main points (not necessarily the main point, because these usually accompany bullet-point type sermons). Some people think of dialogical preaching as nothing more than this, except, instead of writing the points down, the people say them out loud.

Dialogical preaching might begin with some more fill-in-the-blank questions to get the people rolling, but if often goes for more application/implication oriented questions. For example, the preacher might ask: “What are some idols that you struggle with . . . ” This is clearly a penetrating question and not everyone is going to answer it out loud, but someone will and then someone else will realize they’re not alone in that struggle and someone else will see that the biblical truth applies to them in a way that they had never realized, but I’m getting ahead of myself. A preacher might ask: “Where are we as a church family succeeding in this/where are we failing/what might it look like for us and our surrounding community if this truth sank deep into our hearts, etc.” These questions are at a different level than the typical fill-in-the-blank sermon outline and when a person comes up with the answer on their own, it’s generally going to be more penetrating than the preacher telling them what their idol is our how we as a local church family fail at something. There is an ownership to biblical truth that is sometimes missing in monologue-preaching.

Though there is much more that can be and needs to be said, I’ll leave it at these two points for now because these are two of the most common pushbacks I receive to the idea of dialogical preaching. Hopefully this helps to clarify, at least a bit.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a blog post I wrote a while back for our church family: “Directional Alignment In Church Planting.” In that post, I suggested that, if I were to plant Church of the Cross over again, I would probably do it differently.

I think we are in a great place as far as corporate growth as a church family but in many ways, I feel like we put up the “structure” of what we thought church should be and then tried to fill it. We didn’t erect a building. But we went very early on to a Sunday morning gathering.

If I had it to do over again, I would postpone our Sunday morning gathering for a lot longer. I would lead with our Community Groups (Gospel Communities On Mission). I would let our Communities Groups be the organizing principle of Church of the Cross.

This is an interesting question for me as a pastor and now as a church planter. When I say “the organizing principle,” I mean, what do we emphasize the most, what do we rally around and around what do we organize; what receives the most of our time, attention and effort? Many churches organize around their Sunday morning gathering. They spend hours planning for it, it is a production, they use it to rally people and then send them to the “other things” that they as a local church do. Some churches organize around “Bible Study.” They really, really want their people to know a lot. Neither of these things are necessarily bad in and of themselves, I’m just not sure they’re really what we should be organizing around.

It’s good to worship and it’s good to know the Bible, but when we consider the fundamental task with which Jesus left His people, I can’t help but wonder how well these organizing principles have succeeded in making disciples who make disciples.

Our Community Groups are families of learning, serving missionaries striving to live the everyday rhythms of life with gospel intentionality (yes, there is much Soma Communities influence going on here). Disciples are made best in community, not just with knowledge or passive sitting and singing for an hour-and-a-half a week.

It’s often been said that what you win people with is what you win them to. In other words, if you attract people because you have the bigger, better, flashier Sunday morning production, you just have to keep getting bigger, better, and flashier because that’s what people come to expect and someone down the road would be happy to fill their seats with those butts.

But what we won people with families of learning, serving missionaries? What if we organized around gospel communities on mission?

Sometimes even the Town Crier needs a break and sometimes he comes back. He took a break and now he’s back. At least for now. Very few things are permanent. Don’t put your hope in the Town Crier, he will always let you down. He might bring some interesting things to your attention in the meantime, but sooner or later, he will disappoint you. He may pass along something you don’t like. He may take a break for a while. Blah blah blah.

Read this report that the next iPad is likely to include a camera.

Read about the class-action lawsuit against Apple over claims that reading on the iPad is “just like reading a book.”

Read Ed Stetzer’s post reminding us that every church, no matter what size, has tremendous potential for kingdom growth.

Read James Grant’s post on the future of evangelicalism.

Did Inception rip off Scrooge McDuck?

Read Time magazine’s profile of Wyclef Jean’s bid to be President of Haiti.

Read the LA Times’ coverage of Judge Walker’s overturning Proposition 8.

Read Al Mohler’s reaction to the Proposition 8 decision.

Read about Anne Rice “quitting Christianity.”

Read about the OR county that is shutting down and fining lemonade stands.

See a speed pipe-smoking contest.

Read about the release of the best film never released (up until now).

Browse Paste’s 2009 list of the best brewers of the decade.

Browse Paste’s list of the 30 best beer bars in the country. The only one I’ve actually been to is Gingerman in Austin. You?

Read as Paste reports that the Arrested Development movie script is half-way written.

Read as Christopher Hitchens discusses his cancer.

See incredible pictures of a pilot ejecting just in time.

Did the Old Spice campaign really work?

See 50 examples of great typography.

See some incredible pictures of some worship spaces.

Read NPR’s piece on the “Bed Intruder” phenomenon.

Read about the RIAA going after bloggers who posted Radiohead songs that were once given away by the band.

On August 4, 2010 in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s voter-approved Proposition 8,  which provided “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” sparking yet another round of controversy surrounding the definition of both marriage and equality. Paraphrasing Judge Walker’s ruling, he said that CA voters based their decision on the irrational belief in the inferiority of certain people, thus denying them certain rights.

The rhetoric is, of course, flying. One man on NPR lamented that it’s just “downright silly” that a professionally-trained judge can’t see what any little child can see; that “it takes a Mom and Dad” to be a family. On the other side, NPR featured a woman saying that the end of “Gay Apartheid” was finally in sight.

What are we to make of all of this, especially if we believe that the Bible identifies homosexuality as a sin and defines, as part of the creation mandate itself, marriage as the union of one man and one woman, which I do. Can we admit that, in a legal culture that defends the right to let your pants sag and underwear show as free speech, that, “rights” might need to be redefined?

I don’t get involved in a lot of politics and I don’t think that it’s the role of government to legislate morality. But I’ve been thinking all morning about Judge Walker’s assertion that CA voters hold irrational beliefs about gays and lesbians being inferior. I believe that homosexuality is a sin and that marriage is, by its very definition, the covenant union of a man and a woman but I do not believe that gays and lesbians are somehow inferior.

My point is not to isolate homosexuality as some “worse” sin while turning a blind eye to others. Nor is my point to particularly condemn those caught in the sin of homosexuality, for apart from God’s redeeming hand, none of us is righteous, none of us does good, none of us seeks God (Romans 3:9-18). We have all sinned (Romans 3:23) and we all need a Savior (1 Timothy 1:15). It makes me sad that we have communicated issues of sin in such a way that we are heard as saying that people struggling with a particular sin are somehow “inferior” while, since we do not struggle with that same sin, we are somehow “superior.” This is not a biblical sentiment in the slightest. But that is exactly how we are heard.

It certainly could be the case that identifying anyone as a sinner is perceived as judgmental and as a value statement on that person. After all, it is unavoidable to get into issues of “right” and “wrong” and who gets to say. But I wonder if the way we have chosen to communicate in many of these conversations has actually robbed our message of any meaning. We may say that homosexuality isn’t a greater sin than others but we don’t act that way. We may say that God calls us to love all people, but we rarely live that way.

The fact that we do not point the finger of sin against our own prejudices and judgments certainly makes it possible to hear us as saying that others are somehow inferior. But this misses the message of Grace. We are all sinners. None is superior to another and proclaiming sin is not a value judgment. But that’s exactly what we’ve done. History’s pages are certainly filled with people who have spoken the truth in anything but love. Homosexuality is a sin and we must proclaim such but we must not overlook our own sins in the process.