http://vimeo.com/17359821“One of the misfortunes in the long history of the church is that we have mistakenly separated love of God from love of neighbor, and – always – they are held together in prophetic poetry.” – Walter Brueggemann
I ran across this video a few days ago. It’s this short little promo for The Justice Conference in 2011. You can read about the work they continue to do here. It started me thinking about how much I have been impacted by Walter Brueggemann. So I decided to post Ten Things I love about Walter Brueggemann.
- I love the sound of his voice. He’s the Bruce Springsteen of Old Testament Lecturers.
- I love the way he moves as he presents. The shrugging shoulders, the waving hands, the sideways head tilt that bobs and weaves. He talks with his whole body.
- I love the way he says the word resources… like reez-orsus.
- I love that he has always written with the pastor in mind, even more so than the academy.
- I love that he never went off to the Ivy League or Duke or Vandy or a tier one program, but stayed for decades at two smallish seminaries (Eden & Columbia).
- I love that he typically uses the moniker “covenant members” instead of “Christians.”
- I love that he has become so trained in on Justice that he’s become nearly as annoying to some as the prophets of old. It’s like he spent so much time on the prophets, he became one.
- I love his 19 Thesis – they constantly guide my ministry. (I’ll post on these soon).
- I love his emphasis on the term neighbors, and how it is intrinsically linked to justice: “Injustice is the outcome of having skewed neighborly processes so that some are put at an unbearable disadvantage.”
- I love that he wrote The Prophetic Imagination. It’s on my list of Top Ten Books Every Christian Should Read. I blogged through TPI last year, here are the links if you are interested:
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