A La Carte (7/21)

Same-Name Couple to Wed
“This October, Kelly Hildebrandt will vow to share her life with a man who already shares her name. This is no joke. Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, 20, and Kelly Carl Hildebrandt, 24, expect just over 100 guests at a ceremony at the Lighthouse Point Yacht & Racquet Club in South Florida, where they will become husband and wife.”
Making Silence Together
Mark Dever on leaving times of silence in a church service. “I’m a sound addict. Even as I write about silence now, I’ve got Paganini blasting in my study! But yesterday morning in church during one of our silences, I became aware of how corporate a labor such public silence is.”
Turkish Penitents Compete in a Gameshow
“It sounds like the beginning of a joke: what do you get when you put a Muslim imam, a Greek Orthodox priest, a rabbi, a Buddhist monk and 10 atheists in the same room? Viewers of Turkish television will soon get the punchline when a new gameshow begins that offers a prize arguably greater than that offered by Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

Comments (4)

1
Anonymous's picture

My biggest pet peeve is when the pastor says, “let’s have a quiet time to reflect,” and then the piano starts playing softly.

2
Anonymous's picture

So what’s her married name going to be?

3
Anonymous's picture

Wonder why they didn’t invite a Calvinist to that game show? : )

4
Anonymous's picture

Dever - “To collect our thoughts. To consider what we’ve just heard or read or sung. The silence amplifies the words or music we’ve just heard. It allows us time to take it all in, and to pray. We have silence to prepare ourselves. We have silence between the announcements and the scriptural call to worship. We even have a moment of silence AFTER the service! … Together we contribute to each other’s space to think.”

Having attended Capitol Hill for a couple years when I was going to school in the DC area, I can say from experience that these moments of silence were useful and appreciated. It actually contributed to the whole place feeling more relaxed - there was no urgent need to always be entertained. It was assumed we could use these silences profitably without some worship leader telling us how to think at the 2nd grade level of most worship songs.

And oh yeah, after just having listened to one of Dever’s sermons, you NEED a few moments of silence to rest your brain, say a prayer, or just collect your thoughts (and that’s a good thing).