Interviewing the Interviewer

ByFaith magazine has an interview with Ken Myers. I've mentioned him before here and you can visit his site at Mars Hill Audio. This interview does a succinct though thorough job of explaining how Ken views the roles that theology, tradition and culture currently do play in our lives. He goes on to explain how we need to reconsider some of our assumptions and live more thoughtfully. He hits on youth culture, liturgy, and a host of other topics. As always there is much to consider in what he has to say and if you want to hear more from him and those he carefully chooses to interview please visit his site, he has several free podcasts, and if you like what you hear please consider subscribing to his bi-monthly audio journal.

Here are a few quotes:

"I’m convinced that one of the reasons the church has been culturally inert is because we don’t have a lot of laymen who are interested in the whole big ecosystem of culture and all its interrelated aspects. Culture is the way our humanity in all of its forms and expressions is lived out, so understanding culture is necessarily interdisciplinary. You can’t do it in a piecemeal way."

"One of my favorite subjects lately has been the relationship between the fifth commandment and youth culture. The fifth commandment seems to me to presuppose that human societies flourish most when there is intergenerational continuity and unity. So the very idea of youth culture is an attack on the assumptions about reality that are embedded in the fifth commandment.

We are not limited in our reflection to simple deduction from scripture; we must integrate our deductive work from scripture with our inductive reflection on creation, which I think is what wisdom requires.

Liturgical negligence comes from the assumption that it’s just a formal consideration, and the church can be concerned about content. I think historically churches have thought that the maintenance of certain forms served not just the interests of orthodoxy but the interests of holy living."

"Paul says we’re given gifts for building up the body; that seems to me to counter modern individualism. But churches now tend to be configured as providers of religious goods and services, and are often told to think of themselves that way. That’s a commercial model, rather than a communal model.