One month celebration
A great big thank you for joining me here; plus an invitation to what's next
Gentle reader,
It’s been a month since I moved Church Blogmatics here to substack, and I’m having great fun writing here. There’s an energy to this space, including an implicit invitation to play and to experiment. And it’s a treat to be in conversation with you.
I know that agreeing to receive emails, in a world of so many emails, is no small thing. And I’m grateful whenever you choose to spend your time with my words. If you’ve subscribed to receive these posts, I’m honored, and I look forward to getting to know you as we discuss the things of God. I set a goal to grow the subscriber list to 1000 subscribers in this first month. 263 of you were subscribed at the old Church Blogmatics site, and 737 folks have joined here at substack. I’m delighted to share that we are now a community of 1000 subscribers!
Image by Svetlana from Pixabay
I’m grateful for these endorsements from fellow writers on substack:
“This will be one of my go-to Substacks! ”
Scot McKnight, Scot’s Newsletter
“Beth Felker Jones is one of the most thoughtful and integrated voices in the realm of systematic theology today. She brings clarity, humour and incisive explanation and commentary whenever she writes.”
Liam Byrnes, The Lectio Letter
“Beth is an amazing theologian, full of insights, wisdom, and learning for the churches today. ”
Michael F. Bird, Word from the Bird
If you’ve missed any posts so far or want to revisit one:
Ace this quiz: An exercise in theological education is a quiz with no wrong answers, meant to get us talking about bearing good fruit.
“Prayers, dear ones, for fruitful theological education. For good seeds to bear good fruits in your lives and communities. For our theological imaginations to grow legs and berries and melons and root vegetables and communal realities that point to the good kingdom of the good Father, Son, and Spirit.”
A catechetical offering in partnership with my theology cat: On the question of the catly vocation and the glory of God is faux scholastic dialogue on catly possibilities and a theological assessment of famous cats. If you want to see more of my cat, he shows up most days on my Instagram and other socials.
“Mysteriousness is no impediment to a vocation to glory, for the one who is glorified is, in the divine nature, Mystery.”
That fertile stink: Where oh death is thy victory? Where Oh death is thy sting is a meditation on family, grief, and the resurrection of the dead. If you read to the end, there is a manure spreader.
“We’re prone to embroidering shrouds with false and flimsy ghosts, prone to telling untrue stories of our dead, rewriting them in our own image or in the image of some saccharine version of sanctity. But the dead are flesh and bone, and that flesh and bone is beloved of God, who made flesh his own, for our sake.”
The most popular post so far, The Bible and the end of patriarchy: The scriptural story of God's love for women, from creation through redemption tells the Bible’s story of flourishing for all people.
“Sisters, a sinful world says otherwise. A sinful world acts otherwise. But God made us. God loves us. God has good work for us to do. And God is tenderly inviting us into redemption in Christ our Lord.”
Analogy school part I: A theological gem for the banishment of idols introduces theological language as analogical using an example drawn from my cat and a marshmallow.
“So, here is a ward against idolatry. We must take heed lest we fall to the fashioning of false gods made in the images of our own sad, sinful ideas about goodness or power or righteousness.”
Analogy school part II: The gift of making meaning for humans who are human digs further into the richness of analogy. Part III, coming on Thursday, will work more with analogies for God.
“Analogies are far more adequate to sensate, embodied, experiential, and relational truth than plain language could ever be…Analogies are great for humans, because we are the kind of creatures God has created us to be: sensate, embodied, communal, experiential, and relational.”
Valentine mailbag: The sentiments here are a mess; can you help sort them out? Offers a sorting game involving Valentines from famous theologians.
“Christian love is strange. Given that God is three-in-one Love, how could it be otherwise?”
An invitation to the fasting buffet: On preparing a holy Lent, with book recommendations, because that's how I prepare for everything contains Lenten reading recommendations and some thoughts about fasting.
“Lent, for me, is a time of heightened consciousness of the coincidence of gift and loss. It’s a season of difficult blessing, one I don’t particularly want to prepare for and one in which whatever I’ve tried to prepare usually fails. I’m bad at fasting and clumsy with repentance.”
Substack is full of treasures, and I want to share a few I’ve found delightful this month:
“The Doctrine of Last Things: God throws a raucous party—the wildest, really; everyone’s invited and he’s always bringing out better and better wine. Joy unspeakable!”
“Was Brigid, then, a pagan or a Christian? Maybe the boundary line is more porous than it might seem. Why could the shoulders of this early Christian saint not also have carried a load of pre-Christian meaning? After all, the Irish are said to have converted to Christianity without any blood being shed. Maybe they saw something that they already recognised, born now in a new and final form: a mustard seed sown by Brigid and her women, beginning to flower into a tree.”
“So besides enjoying a little peek into the unhinged underbelly of Jwitter, I hope those of you who are newer to this stuff might have gotten some of what’s also happening here: This is how Jews Do The Thing. We have existing legal principles, and then a novel situation and have to apply The Things to the new thing and figure out how to determine what the path forward would look like based on the information we already have. (Same as the fish and meat thing!!)”
“When an elderly relative suggests that all young people do these days is glue their hands and their eyes to smartphones and post ill-considered opinions to Twitter, I smile—I know that’s not what it is at all. Or at least, it needn’t be…This view ignores the fact that we, like most things, contain multitudes—that we can be at once sickened by the effects of filters and apps like Facetune on teenagers’ mental health, while also getting a lot from the community and inspiration social media can provide.”
If you’re enjoying my writing on substack, you can find my published books, here, on Amazon. Also, please check out The Pastor’s Table, a podcast hosted by the excellent Mark Quanstrom and Tara Beth Leach, for which I serve as “theologian in residence.” We hope it’s a refreshing conversation about the work of ministry, one that doesn’t assume you run a megachurch (or that you should!), one that includes women, one where we try to learn together.
If you’re a pastor or other Christian leader who wants to study the vital connections between theology, ministry, and Christian life, check out the new D.Min. in Theology program at Northern Seminary, directed by yours truly. Applications are open now!
Sharing challenge! Right now, Church Blogmatics has readers in 43 states and 36 countries, which is very cool.
I’d love to find readers in all 50 states, so if you have friends in New Hampshire, Vermont, North Dakota, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, or Alaska who would enjoy these posts, please share with them!
And, always, I’m grateful if you share or forward to folks in any state or country. Thanks for celebrating with me. It’s a joy to be in conversation with you, and I look forward to the months to come.
On Thursday, I’ll be posting Analogy School Part III. If you’d like to catch up before then, scroll up to find Parts I and II.
I’m also planning some new features for the future, including author interviews, an occasional “curio cabinet,” and forays into some creative work. I’ll continue to try to bring you good conversation about good theology, which testifies to the good God who made this good world and you.
Grace and peace,
BFJ
As always, I’m grateful if you comment, forward, or share. I’m always thinking of new ideas for Church Blogmatics. Please comment about topics you’d like to see covered in future posts.
This post contains associate links.