Third Sundays are almost always the best around here.

Why?

That's when the raucous Good Shepherd worship choir leads our singing.  I love their energy, their precision, even their black shirts and blue jeans.

Here's what it looked like in September:

X-Ray">http://vimeo.com/74630608">X-Ray - Diagnosis (09.15.13)

I spent a couple of hours on Wednesday going through some resumes & cover letters we received after posting a notice online about a job opening at Good Shepherd.

While I have gone through this process several times over the last 15 years, yesterday's experience was more enlightening for me than any others have been. 

Several common threads kept occurring in the applicants' material, so I want to collect the most important suggestions and offer them to you below.

So . . . should you be now or in the future in the middle of a job search, especially a ministry job search, please remember the following:

1.  Use www.spellcheck.net or the spelling program that is built into your word processing software.

2.  Make sure you correctly spell the name of the person who will read your resume.  In my case, I'm not likely to take applicants seriously who address their cover letters to "Dear Talbert."

3.  Don't write "here" when you really mean "hear."

4.  Include the starting and ending dates of all your previous positions.  When candidates simply include a list of earlier jobs with no dates on them, prospective employers assume the worst.

5.  Allow other folks to describe you as "creative," "hard-working," "visionary."  Claiming it for oneself in print makes a resume reader think your resume is more aspirational than descriptive.

6.  Make sure you know when it is "its" and when it is "it's."  Same with "your" and "you're."

7.  Avoid clichés.  Towards the end of my resume time I had read about so many exceptional self-starters that I swore I would hire the first person who confessed to being an average employee who only works when others tell me to.

     

A friend and I have been trying to read Paul's letter to the Colossians every morning for the last couple of weeks.  Since the New Testament epistles were designed to be heard/read/experienced in one sitting, we thought we'd give it try that way.

It proves to be much more fruitful than simply reading a devotional chapter a day, as you are able to get Paul's point and his passion in totality rather than in isolation.

Anyway, Colossians 1:22 has this interesting expression:

But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation . . .

Why that emphasis on physical body?  Why not just "body"?  Or why not just "sacrifice" or even "cross"? 

To answer that question --  and to understand the Hebraic mindset that was always looming in the background of Paul's thinking -- you need to understand the role of the body in New Testament faith.

For far too long, American Christianity has assumed that the ultimate goal of the Christian faith is for its followers to become disembodied souls at death.  You die, your body goes in the ground or urn, and your soul ascends to heaven where it cavorts on clouds and strums on harps for all eternity.

Nope.

That's the American hope, not the New Testament hope.

Instead of eternal souls, the New Testament grounds its hope in resurrection bodies:  that at the end of all days our spirits will be somehow, someway become reunited with a glorified and perfected version of our earthly bodies.  Here's our Paul words it in I Corinthians 15:42-44:

⁴² So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown ^[a]a perishable body, it is raised ^[b]an imperishable body; ⁴³ it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴ it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

Which sheds light on Paul's reminder to the Colossians that their reconciliation to God is due to what happened to Christ's "physical body":

Because what happened to Jesus' body will ultimately happen to ours.

His resurrection is the downpayment on ours.

The Christian faith isn't about spiritual escape; it's about physical restoration.  When you look at the New Testament through eyes that are a little more Jewish and a little less Greek, you see the inherent earthiness in it.  It is raw, gritty, physical, and bodily.

What implications does all this have for our lives today?  Paul, again, this time in Romans 12:1:

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, ^[a]acceptable to God, which is your ^[b]spiritual service of worship.