pat loughery

I’m using Gordon Fee’s book for some of the background in my current sermon//discussion series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. I was deeply impacted by Gordon’s presentations this past summer at the Vineyard national conference (blogged here and thereabouts; poke around). You can also find streaming audio for the conference at http://www.vineyardusa.org, and listen to Philip Jenkins and others.

While doing that research, I found a blog entry on Waving or Drowning that is priceless. Here it is, in its entirety:

Faith As Art

The Whatever Moving Company has another job today, so I can’t talk for long. Here’s one for the artists in the crowd.

I’m still digesting last week. Here’s a quick thought for you that has nothing to do with Galatians. At one point during the week Dr. Fee told us about his son and daughter-in-law, who are both artists. He laughed and said he sometimes wondered where his son got his genes. He then reflected on some of the more arts-based events that had taken place during the last week of summer school.

Then Gordon got quiet for a moment. (The thing you may not know about Gordon Fee if all you’ve been exposed to is his writing is he is a fiery Pentecostal preacher. 71 years old and he still pounds the pulpit and yells with the best of them.) He looked at us and said that if he had any artistic talent at all he’d give up the preaching and look to art to tell the story of the Gospel.

“Here am I,” he lamented emotionally, “stuck with mere words.”

Mere words, indeed.