The Presbyterian Polis - Connecting Churches to Churches

Surprise. Take. Eat.

Jan Edmiston, pastor in northern Virginia, writes a very insightful, personal blog about being a pastor and a mom. Well worth reading everyday. Here are two that I think capture her spirit very well.

There's No Place Like NYC.

Take. Eat.

I won't spoil the story. Enjoy.

Missionaries impacted by falling dollar

While we each deal with the rise in fuel costs, our brothers and sisters who are missionaries serving outside of the US are dealing with more difficult financial reality.  As the dollar drops in value in relation to other world currencies, missionaries who depend on raising their support from US sources are finding their income diminish.

An article in the Charlotte Observer describes this dilemma.

Every month, Phil Davis receives a deposit of American money in his Czech bank account. And every month, he sees that deposit shrink.

Since the pastor and his family moved from Charlotte to Prague three years ago to start a church, the falling value of the U.S. dollar has brought home a sobering reality: The money they raised to support themselves and their work overseas does not go nearly as far as it once did.

The dollar's decline has stung most expatriates who are paid in U.S. funds, but missionaries serving internationally are particularly at risk. Many depend on money raised years before they left, when exchange rates were more favorable.

Read the whole article. It raises a question I have yet heard discuss by any blog or church event where I've been. Of course, I don't think this dilemma is limited to missionaries. But they are more vulnerable because they live on a fix income that is shrinking.

Faith-based Venturing

I've been around youth ministry since I was a freshman in high school. It has changed over the years, and one of the best ways it has changed is the shift to a more mission/service focus. I saw this begin around 1990 when students arrived at the college where I was chaplain. They came with the desire and expectation to do service projects. Their primary service had been soup kitchens, homeless shelters and Habitat projects.  This was before youth group mission trips began to flourish.

A dozen years ago I became involved with another youth program that helped me see a very different approach to working with kids. That program is Boy Scouts.

Both of my sons went through scouts, and both earned the highest rank in scouting, the Eagle rank. What I saw in the process of working with them and numerous other boys was an approach that developed leadership skills. In fact, as a person who has spent a quarter century engaged in leadership development work, the Boy Scout leadership development program is the best I have ever encountered. The emphasis on scout troops being boy-led means that the kids learn how to work as a team, make decisions and manage organizational details. Most youth organizations provide a program of activities for kids. The programs may be personally and culturally broadening, but they don't teach leadership like scouting does.

Since I first came into contact with scouting, I have wished that there was a way for scouting and church youth ministries to work together.  Many churches charter scouting units, but don't treat them as ministries.  If we could help our young people learn to lead within the context of their faith development, we could then see them grow into being people who make a tremendous difference in the families, churches and communities.  I believe the answer to this need has now been met.

Recently, I met a scouter named Stan Belyeu. He is an IBM engineer has developed a program that incorporates the Boy Scout Venturing program into a church's youth ministry.

Venturing is a youth development program of the Boy Scouts of America for young men and women who are 14 (and have completed the eighth grade) through 20 years of age. Venturing's purpose is to provide positive experiences to help young people mature and to prepare them to become responsible and caring adults.

What I like about Stan's program is that all the strengths of scouting that are truly compatible with a traditional youth ministry are there.  Here's how he describes the approach.

• The Venturing method is used as an additional, complementary resource for a church’s youth ministry.
• The youth group retains its primary identity as a “youth ministry.”
• The new or existing youth group is registered as a Venturing crew.
• A faith-based Venturing crew can either standalone in a church or coexist with a conventional Venturing crew.

Faith-based Venturing improves the health of a church. It will encourage and empower youth to dig deeper into their faith and to be more effective leaders. It brings an added level of excitement and interest to a church youth group.

Stan is not just talking about borrowing some activity ideas from scouting. He is recommending that youth ministry register as Venture crews. It is up to the leadership of the ministry to incorporate the appropriate aspects of the scouting program into their church's ministry. Along with the program activities come, Boy Scout insurance, access to scout camps and the best training program for adult youth leaders that exists.  Scouting's Youth Protection guidelines are the best there is anywhere. Check them out.

Stan Belyeu's approach is ideal for small to medium size churches where there may be inadequate local support for the church's youth ministry. The local scouting council provides all sorts of resources that can assist the church in the development of its program for youth.  He has written an excellent introduction that can be downloaded here.  His contact info is contained in the paper.

From my perspective the best aspect of this partnership is that young and adults in churches will be exposed to the Boy Scout leadership system. It really is the best I've seen at enabling young people to learn how to handle the wide range of responsibilities involved in organizational leadership.

If you can provide kids the opportunity for leadership and faith development in the context of service/mission experiences, then your church is doing what it needs to do for its youth.  Take a look. Talk with local scouters and the professional staff at your local council office. It could be just the thing to strengthen your church's work with kids.

The Camel's Nose

There's an old metaphor that says that once thee camel's nose is inside the tent, the rest of the camel won't be far along. This is what I thought when I read the following headline in The Presbyterian Outlook last week.

San Diego Presbytery no longer “primarily a governing body“

Read the short article to find out what is going on. The presbytery isn't giving up its governance responsibility. It is however reorienting the mission as a governing body to be a missional body.  I had heard rumors over the past few years about San Diego Presbyery "leaving en masse" the PCUSA. Couldn't be farther from the truth. However, what they are doing is the right direction to go in for presbyteries that are finding it increasingly difficult to operate.

So what, precisely, is San Diego Presbytery up to? The task was to determine how ...

1. Lead as a presbytery in a post-denominational setting

...

2. Create a new way of being a presbytery

...

The post-denominational setting of the communities we serve provides an opportunity for us to learn together to be missional churches supported within the Presbytery of San Diego. A missional church is “a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission in the world.” (Alan Hirsch) Our presbytery will focus on education and gatherings that leads to missional  transformation.

You can find all the relevant documents here. They are very much worth reading and passing along to yoru Presbytery staff.

Is San Diego's development the camel's nose? Time will tell. It is clear to me that taking a missional stance is the only sustainable approach to the future.  Whether it is a local congregation, presbytery or the denomination as a whole, becoming missional is the key.

Where do pastors and churches learn about missional approaches? You can start with the Presbyterian Global Fellowship and Allelon.

Quick Takes: Beauty Matters

Don't be surprised if your church's airplane hanger facility is a turn off to the unchurched.

Here's an article that points to the importance of the beauty of Gothic church architecture.

This caught my attention because I happened to sit on the back row of my church on Sunday, and spent part of the service enjoying the architecture of the room. The window to the right is in the chancel.

As I sat there, I realized just how beautiful this room is, and how it contributes to an atmosphere of worship.

My freshman year in college, I took an art course on Cathedrals and Castles of Europe. It was a great way to begin my academic career as it broaden my awareness of what was out there.

The cathedral that I was most taken with was Amiens in northern France, not too far from Paris. Here is a picture of the nave from above. What we learned in class was that in medieval Europe, prior to the advent of the movable type press, 500 years before Luther's revolution, the cathedral was part of the vernacular of the Gospel.  It was part of the message. It said something about who God is. To an illiterate peasant, Amiens and other cathedrals like it would say, God is great and up there. You are small, down here, and yet connected to Him.  It was a way to connect the smallness of the individual to the greatness of God.

Today, church architecture has a different motivation. It is not about the qualitative difference between God and man. It is about the reverse. God is accessible whenever you want him. You can carry him around in your hip pocket if you want. He is our spiritual concierge.

One of the other ideas that the medieval worshipper was to gather from this treatment of a worship space was light. Look as this next picture from Amiens. This view is looking toward what is called the choir.  The way these cathedrals were designed was on a cruciform axis with a nave and a set of transcepts. The pulpit, seen here in this picture, is at this intersection, where also the altar would be. The congregation would sit or stand between the front door and here. In many of these cathedrals, there would be a chapel in the back, in Amiens case, where you see the light coming through the windows. And there would be a large, ornate metal screen which you can also see in this picture.  The large windows, up high on the clerestory would let light in from above. So the architecture sends the message that the light of God comes from above.

Today, we've lost most of that sense of connection because the classical motif has been replaced by the entertainment complex motif. Fortunately, my church is counter-cultural in this regard. It is a simple tall-steeple Gothic church built in the 1880's. It's classical form transcends the vagaries of American popular culture. As our worship form has become more eclectic, not less traditional, but more globally traditional, the space has actually become more important as the setting for worship. 

As I sat on the last row underneath the balcony overhang, it was a cloudy day. About half way through the service the sun came out and burst through the stained glass window you see here. The camera in phone doesn't capture the three-dimensional nature of this window. I sat there looking at the beauty of this window captured by not only the beauty of God, but also the depth of that beauty.

Beauty matters because it is representative of God's goodness in the world.  Whether it is a medieval cathedral drawing our attention upward to see God as the all encompassing great being that he is, or in a modern church where the beauty of a simple window points us to the beauty and wisdom of God's love in creation, we meet God here, in this place. The question is who is the God we meet.  And what do people who walk in our church's think we think about who God is?

He is Risen!

Today marks God's great affirmation of life.
May you find the grace to live it fully and joyfully.
Together in Christ we live.
AMEN!

Love Christ, love the church, but the institution is another thing

Sky Jethani writes here and here about the distinction between the church as a community and the church as an institution. It is an important distinction as increasingly the institutional nature of the church is being rejected in favor of a wide variety of notions about community.

The modern church is a product of the same cultural forces that created the modern corporation. Americans have mastered the processes of organization so that virtually anything can be successfully produced and marketed, including religion.

What happened on the way to the creation of the modern organization was a loss of human connection within those organizational structures. We could say then that the organization lost its soul.  This is the situation that people who reject the institution of the church are claiming as their reasons for embracing community.

The reality is that every community if it is to develop sustainable vitality must develop some organizational structure. This is precisely the same thing as the institutionalization of organizations.

The solution? Actually it is fairly simple. It goes to the character of the individual who is willing to invest themselves in making the church more than a hang out, more than a social gathering point. At the heart of the character issue is the question of individual purpose or call. When that call is tied to a community's purpose beyond their own aggrandizement, it ultimately means that organization will result. It is how we achieve the things we want.

What I'm saying is that the issue of community versus institution is the wrong one. The deeper issue is the character of a person's relationship to Christ in terms of their call to ministry and service. When people gather together who share a common sense of call, organization develops that enables them to grow deeper in their friendships as well as in the impact of the life of their community.  The problem with institutionalism is that it lost the soul of personal call, and became a place of personal convenience. It salvation is to rediscover Christ's mission for the body and for those who are members of it.

The beauty of the brain

Brain science is making fascinating strides in understanding the functioning of the brain. Here's an article in HR magazine (recommended by Ellen Weber of Brain Based Business) that places this science in the workplace.

What is interesting to me is how this science is changing the perception about people whose brains are "wired" differently than the average person.  I know people who are bi-polar, others who have Asbergers and one friend who has Autistic Spectrum Disorder. These are fascinating people whose brains function differently. Much is being discovered about the capacity of people with these neurological disorders to learn to function in a normal world.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard trained brain scientist who had a stroke and speaks about it in this TED video. It lasts 18 minutes, and worth every second of it.

What I gain from this is an appreciation of the depth of God's goodness embedded in his creation. The brain is an incredibly complex organ, and as Dr. Jill shows, can recover from a damaging stroke. Her story is amazing, and makes me more grateful to God for the men and women who are conducting the science which allow for brain recovery to happen. I am also grateful for the opportunities presented to those with autistic like disorders to live a more normal life because their differences are better understood and appreciated because of their work.

HT: John La Grou for linking to Dr. Jill's video.

A Provocative Comment

Sue comments on a posting from last fall - Theory-based or Experienced-based.

The only evidence you have for anything whatsoever is everything that is arising to and as your present (NOW) time conscious awareness.

Everything else is conjecture. Useful enough in terms of a collective consensus for getting the necessary practical things of living done.

And what happens to all of your seemingly concrete certainties when you (whatever you are) enter into the formless state of dreamless deep sleep.

Are you still a Christian in the this formless state?

What, therefore has what may or may not have happened in Palestine 2000 years ago, got to to with living creatively and intelligently and with great passion NOW, and in every moment.

When was 2000 years ago?
Where was or is Palestine?

Sue, to put it simply. Theory-based religion is a human-created faith. It is belief in intellectual ideas as the basis of the faith. We convince ourselves that our "perception" is absolutely true. As a result, our faith is faith in our own certainty. I suggest that you can never know anything absolutely, in fact when you think you do, you are merely practicing conjecture. 

On the other hand, our only real security is in Jesus Christ, who 2000 years ago lived, died and was raised from the dead. My faith is not dependent upon an historical proof that this happened, because I know that none exists in any absolute, perfect sense. Faith is dependent on actions of trust. The Scriptural record informs my thinking about who God is, and gives me a partial sense that I can trust God each day. By trusting, living faithfully in the midst of uncertainty, I find God to be a good and gracious Lord who is dependable.  Therefore, everyday is a test of faith as it really is.

I came to faith because I became aware that God exists. I remain a Christian because I have met the risen Christ in thousands of circumstances. My point is that if Christianity is simply a collectlon of ideas in which we place our faith, then it is a philosophy that has value but no certainty. Faith implies trust, and living in trust. 

I realize this is no way to create and develop a religion, but I believe this is what it means to live by faith. Religion requires certainty to sustain itself. That certainty is born in creeds, confessions, and theological systems that are used to interpret reality. So, I am making a distinction between living by faith and what we consider religion. I'm not suggesting an antithetical distinction here of opposites. I am making a distinction between two different functions of our spiritual life that have value.

Faithful to our Baptismal Vows

I love infant baptisms. It isn't because the baby's are cute and frequently do things to disrupt the service.

I love baptisms because of what they stand for. They are not only a statement of inclusion, but a statement of communal responsibility. We pledge to the spiritual welfare of the child being baptized.

John Richardson writes about the failure of our baptismal responsibility in his Presbytery Outlook article - College Ministries: I am a big, fat liar.

It is worth reading and passing around your church and presbytery.

Here are three things you can do to fulfill your sacramental responsibilities.

First, if you have students from your church who are a way at college. Organize a gift campaign. For special events, send them a box of food and other thoughtful items. Also put them on your newsletter mailing list.

Second, go find the closest college, go to the student affairs office, and ask about what the college or university offers in the way of campus ministries. Get the name and contact information for the chaplain or campus minister, and ask them how your church can help.

A little effort goes along way. Build relationships, and students will realize that the church is a place to belong. Be creative in organizing opportunities for interaction and service. You never know what will come from your outreach to the campus.

Third, encourage your presbytery to include campus ministry in its annual budget. The money needs to be more than token support. If you consider campus ministry a mission outreach just like those to other countries, then you'll begin to understand the kinds of things you can do to make a difference.

If you have questions about what to do, ask your local campus minister or chaplain. They can give you all sorts of insight. Don't wait until you think you can do something. Just do something, and then build on that slowly. In so doing, you will begin to fulfill the baptismal vows that are so important to the future of our church.

“Soil(ed)” - An Ash Wednesday Meditation by Rev. Andrew Henderson

My good friend, Drew Henderson passed this along to a number of his friends. I asked if to post it here.

 Soil(ed)
A meditation offered by Rev. Andrew Henderson, Associate Minister for Mission and Outreach,
Covenant Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, N.C. on  Ash Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17
2 Corinthians 5: 20b-6:10

From dust you came and to dust you shall return.

From dust you came and to dust you shall return.

From dust you came and to dust you shall return.

There is nothing to deny in this statement. This is not a complicated sentence, or a complex idea. Whether you are convinced of Dawinian theories or more attuned to creationism, this description of life is disturbingly and beautifully true.

I’d like us to consider a few ideas.

First, biochemists and environmental scientists tell us that the elemental composition of our bodies is not too different from the earth in terms of the proportion of liquids and solids, water and carbon, as well as the evident sympathies between global ecology and human metabolism. We are of this planet. Our matter is like its matter. And as we study the relative health of the planet and our people, we see a symbiosis between the planet’s wellness and our flourishing. In other words, we are of this planet in an embedded, embodied way. We are close to the substance of dirt, in many ways, we are not unlike the soil. From dust we came.

In contrast, as we die, our bodies, fade and come apart. And if they bury us or cremate us, we all return to the earth - We become soil. Even if you spend thousands of dollars to protect your decaying parts, everything will come apart. Why we fill acres of land with caskets and stone is lost on me. We were God’s to start with and he will receive us according to his will. A bronze box and pastoral scene will neither serve us or Him. To dust we shall return.

But what of this message of Ash Wednesday tells what transpires between creation and decay is the matter of life and living? The will and warning of this way of worship comes from the pressing Word from God for humanity not to forget the nature of her origins. Life came to us from outside our imagination or command. It is not our toy. It is not ours to abuse or neglect. It is not a game or a shadow. It is not a veil of suffering or a vehicle for ecstasy alone. Life exists and very few Americans or Europeans appreciate that we simply ARE. We are alive.

And as the children begin to ask their parents, adults will ask for a lifetime, “Where did I come from? Who made me? Why did I come here? Why is the world?”

What sits quietly between the statement of where we came from and the statement of to where we shall return is what one philosopher calls the “foundness” of life. We find ourselves where we are. That we are breathing, alive, somewhat aware and thinking.

How is that?

Why is that?

Why is it that at one day, before sometime in October of 1966, I was not. I did not exist. And within a few months, my mother “found” me inside of her. I was known, expected, anticipated, cared for and loved. But back in July of 1966, no one knew me, named me or called my name. At least no one I know that I can call on the phone or have a picture of. But the witness and testimony of God to humanity tells the world that he knew us back in the day. He knew us before creation and imagined us in his heart and mind. We are his handiwork, shaped from the matter and substance of the earth.

But there is, if we are frank with ourselves and our understanding, a point that we cannot find in archaeological digs, nor in the bones of hominids from Peking to the Olduvai Gorge, or within the double-helix of the genetic code, nor within the dynamics of our own cognitive perception.

I know that my parents wanted two children. There was a child who died in utero before me. If he had lived, I would not be here. When I was born, I was born six weeks premature and given a sixty percent chance to live. But I made it.

From the imagination of God you were formed from the base compounds he invented for our living and thriving. If you can hear me, you are sitting between the dust of creation and the dust of death. You were marked for life and death in your making it out of God’s imagination and coming to fruition here amongst the rest of us. From dust you came and to dust you shall return.

There is just one stretch of life we are handed between genesis and terminus. It was not yours to start with so do not sit lightly with it today. You were made for something and if you can find the Maker, or he finds you, you will know that you were made to show, share and prosper his life and peculiar power for others.

Jesus Christ changed the nature of how and why we are.

His battle and victory over death and decay are for us and for all of creation. It is from the ashes that the children of God emerge and it is there we shall all return to. But in between these irrevocable markers is all of us, running along, playing with our time and our bodies and our lives as if there was no great gift to start with or an impending exit to come.

Ashes are not our enemy, but our destiny. But that is not to ever allow the propagation of a culture of violence, neglect or war. God is the giver of life, alone. It is our calling, in god to protect life and the living.

God and his creative spirit are for us. But we are dirtied with our own wandering, deceit and separations. Our distracted and disruptive hearts lead us constantly away from the fold of grace. Our sin reminds us that we are not just messy, not just dirty, but that we are incomplete mounds of clay trying to shape ourselves when we have no natural skill at making ourselves whole. We only have delusions of sovereignty and grandeur. We have lost any real sense of the difference between the creature and the creator.

This difference can be considered now or at the point of death.

You choose.

God is with us and for us in this moment.

He believed in you enough to make you happen. What would you do to say thank you for bringing you out of the soil? Who would you become if you found yourself planted in the soil of his garden? You are privileged to be in between dust and dirt, different from both and at various states of life.

Go forth and sin no more. Grow in Grace.

Be fertile ground for life and flourishing.

Come down and bear fruit in your soil.

From dust you came and to dust you shall return.

A Guide to 5am Sermon Preparation

Dennis, again, prompts a more expansive response than a comment deserves.

He writes,

I've heard several pastors share about sermon preparation, but this is the first time to hear of a single hour on a consistent basis. How much time were you spending in prayer, and how many were praying for you and for the Church? I know these make a difference as well.

Let me say this. I take no credit for where I am. What I've experienced I neither intentionally sought out or desired. But it came to me none-the-less, and I can only credit the grace and love of God for its happening.

Dennis, you ask how much time in prayer and study?

I have no idea. I'd begin on Monday with a thought. At the time I was not following the lectionary, but I was planning my texts out several months in advance. So, I knew what was coming, and would read broadly about the texts.  On Monday, I'd take something I heard the previous day and see if there was some connection to the next Sunday's text. If there was a more academic issue, I'd research it, but sometimes I didn't have time for that. I'd pray and think, pray some more, and just try to have the idea at the forefront of my mind during the week.

I never tried to not write my sermon until Sunday. It just worked out that way. It was not a conscious choice. As I heard from one of my seminary professors years ago, "If God can speak to you on Sunday, he can speak to you on Tuesday."  I agree with that, but that isn't what happened.

Here's my explanation for why this situation occurred.

First, it wasn't my choice. I was led to it. Partly because I didn't want to stand up on Sunday morning and either bore the congregation or look like an idiot.  So, and I take credit for this, I held what I did to a high standard. It didn't matter how many people were in the sanctuary that morning. I was committed to giving them my best. In other words, at this point in time, my best could only be produced on Sunday morning. Don't take this as my recommendation. It isn't. It is what happened though.

Second, you have to understand that when I started this interim, that I had not preached on a regular basis in 16 years. That is a long time to be out of the pulpit. However, the lessons learned early in life were still there, along with the weaknesses in my performance. Too academic, too focused on the form of the sermon rather than the impact of the sermon. The practice of preaching on a weekly basis became a laboratory for not only improving how I preached, but forcing me to grow spiritually.

Third, in retrospect, what I see happened is that I made a gradual shift from the sermon being preached at the congregation to one that was more of a conversation with them. Increasingly, what I had to say was about how the text impacted me. It wasn't a narcissistic look-at-me sermon. Instead, it was here is what I'm learning, and this is why it is valuable.

The written text of the sermon, what I wrote at 5am, became more like a conversation.  I'd sit and visualize the congregation sitting there with me, and I'd begin to write as if I am speaking. I'd write until I had said what I needed to say. One Sunday, I was confused by what I was suppose to say, and so the sermon was not written until it was delivered. By then, the congregation trusted me sufficiently to allow me to speak more directly and less formally.  I don't recommend this as a practice. It can be very self-indulgent.

The underlying idea for me, and has been throughout my ministry, is that I am no different than the person in the pew. The only difference is role, not value or importance.  I believe that this is where my preaching was taking me. Taking me more to being one of them, rather than the expert who tells them what to do. As a result, the sermon shifted from being a lecture to being a conversation with them.   

Fourth, the other thing that I began to do was end the sermon with some tangible thing that the congregation could do to act on the message. I made sure that what I recommended that I was prepared to do as well.

For example, at the end of one sermon where I spoke about the defining moments in our lives I said the following.  At the end of the service, the Lord's Supper was served by intinction.

As we share the Lord’s Supper, and as you sit before and after you have received the feast, pray for each person as they receive the elements. Look at them and just pray something. God will place upon your mind the words to say. If you don’t know what to pray, just pray that they comprehend “the breadth, length, height and depth of God’s love.” If we pray for each other in this way, not knowing what to pray, but praying none-the-less, I believe we will find that our awareness of what God can do in the moment begins to open up to us.

Then, as you leave today, think of each encounter with another person as a defining moment. Your kindness and interest in them is an act of Christ’s love. Listen, observe and respond to what God puts in front of you.

Fifth, what I learned through this process was that being open to Christ's Spirit means living in the moment. Each moment can be a defining moment. I take no credit for this change. Apart from a willingness to let it happen, I did not seek this out, nor would I have done so. I didn't know to do so. But in the end, preaching at this small church every Sunday for 21 months changed my life and my ministry. And I credit God's love expressed through the members of that church for allowing me the space to grow into my next life as a minister and follower of Christ.

Can there be experience with Christ apart from the church?

Dennis in his comment here provokes some deeper reflection in me.

One of the thoughts that has been lurking in my mind for some time concerns the difference between that real presence that is random, varied and unpredictable and the multitude of practices and cultural obligations that come with membership in a church.

It is just a question I have. But it is a question that I think is important.

In other words, can there be a genuine experience of the love and grace of Jesus Christ apart from the church.  I'm not talking about some emotional ecstatic experience virtual out-of-body experience, but rather something that is more humble and grounded.

Recently, I heard a speaker talk about the importance of being present with people. My daughter has been after me ever since to be more present at home. I tell her it is a two way street. The deeper issue is when what we mean by present is that certain quality where many of the anxieties of the day slip away and we are able to just be present with whomever is there.

This began to happen for me a few years ago while I was serving as an interim pastor of a small church. As the weeks progressed into months, I found it more difficult to write a sermon each week. At some point, the sermon began to write itself between 5 and 6 am on Sunday morning. The content was there as usual, but something was different. I can only attribute it to a growing sense of Christ's presence, not in some freaky, emotional way, but quite the opposite. I was less anxious, less needing to manufacturing my authority and self-confidence. Most of all I became more free to allow situations to evolve without my need to control it.  With this came a growing sense of humility and groundedness that I can only explain as a gift that came without my asking.

Oddly, enough as my compulsion to control circumstances diminished, my meaningful activity level increased. Now to get back to my original question, is this experience of Christ connected in any significant way to the church?  Or, is this experience a by-product of the church's existence?

My sense is that they function in two different universes, and often meet in the same physical location, but not always. God's spirit goes and does what he will.  The church on the other hand is not the same, except in some spiritual, universal, invisible body sense. But for most of us the church is a place where our experience of the presence of Christ can be nurtured.

In the church, it is quite easy to fall into the trap of doing as the way to be a Christian. When we do so, we are confusing doing the correct spiritual things with living into the presence that is made available to us in Christ. I guess, what is important to understand about this from my perspective is that I can take no credit at all for what has transpired. I didn't seek it, but I welcomed it when it came. I am grateful to the God who pursues us with his grace and love.

21st century Justice and the church

In my last post, I referred to the political perspective of a conference on justice and the church as "narrow, biased and antiquated".  I realized later that I probably should clarify what I mean.

There are more than two streams of justice thought alive in the church. The stereotypic ones are those focused on peace-making and those focused on a strong national security. One is pacifist, the other more militaristic. Both are inadequate views of justice. More so as the world becomes increasingly flat; see Tom Friedman's The World is Flat for a fuller explanation.

From my perspective, I don't accept these simplistic abstractions. They are products of a political culture that wants to divide people in order to accord power to the most radical of the proponents of the ideology. And the church has played into this trap, and as a result it has become the handmaiden of political ideologues for whom the church is simply a source of money and influence. It is in large part why I am an political independent.

So, what should justice in the church be in the 21st century?

It is distracting and futile to wring our hands about the disparity between the global rich and poor.  It is a reality. Penalizing the rich doesn't help the poor. It is about the transferring of wealth from one wealthy elite to another. The only solution is development. By development I mean creating the social, education, health and governmental infrastructures that enable small to medium size businesses to develop.

However, for this type of development to take place, ending the violence and conflict inherent in tribal societies will require military intervention. If you read Atlantic Monthly writer Robert Kaplan, you'll know that about half of the US military's work is in humanitarian aid. 

Lastly, if we are to be a just society and a just church, it will begin with our own lives being models of justice. In reality, this is not something that we can do out of our own strength. It is a product of God's leading us to be the people we are call to be. It starts with our own humility that typically is hard won and rich in the kind of suffering that brings wisdom.

The Fly in the Ointment

This weekend I attended a conference on political justice and the church.  I was a bit surprised by three aspects of it.

An Antiquarian Justice Paradigm
The first aspect was how the justice paradigm in the church has really not changed much in forty years. While appeals to moving away from the left-right, conservative-liberal divide were appealed to, I found the political perspective quite narrow, biased and antiquated.  A left-leaning Democrat would have loved the message while a right-leaning Republican would have found little to cheer. As an Independent, former Democrat, I found this disappointing. I expected more than simply a forty year old religious/political paradigm dressed up with contemporary issues.

The Missing Context
I was also surprised that the focus of change was totally on the individual. There was no consideration for the context that all of us live in.  The impression left is that if you change your lifestyle, the world will change. The reality is that institutional structures and social systems determine to a large extent the choices that we make. The rejection of capitalist institutions doesn't change the world for the better.  The naive epigram of Margaret Mead - Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - plays into this notion that all change is basically individual change. The reality is that while nothing happens apart from individual initiative, it isn't simply individual or small group initiative that matters.

The problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and society.  We are social beings and we group according to our values. Those values get institutionalized in organizations, and those organizations determine the values of society. If you want to change society, you must change the institutions. You don't change them by destroying them. We can complain about consumerism and greed, but it does nothing to address the social context that has been institutionalized in society. This is why, in my opinion, that people who desire change gravitate toward political office. They see government as the seat of power, and through wielding power they can change society.  As a result, gaining and holding power becomes the focus of political office.

If Christians want change in the world, then they must address the institutional nature of global organizations. Lasting change comes from within. Revolutions rarely last and rarely benefit those who are supposed to be the beneficiaries. It is a false and deceiving promise to say otherwise.  If you want change, become a part of an organization, and take on the responsibilities of leadership. Do not sit back and complain from a self-satisfied position of thinking that individual or personal change is all that matters.

Christ: Abstract Construct or Real Presence
The third issue that surprised me is more complicated. It is a deeper issue of spirituality and the Western intellectual tradition.  I'll try to be clear and succinct.

The Western intellectual tradition has flourished on the ability of people to think abstractly. In order to do this, we objectify, or separate ourselves from the reality of the focus of our thought. This ability to abstract reality is the strength of the scientific tradition. The fly in the ointment of this strength is that we find it easily to think in such a detached manner than we are personally disconnected from reality. Truth, knowledge and personal responsibility get severed into different intellectual areas.  In the church, the Neo-Platonic tradition characterizes issues in idealistic, dualistic terms. As a result, we simplify the complex in order to manage it. We exclude or reject that which doesn't fit in our idealistic paradigms.  This is a condition of both the left and the right. It is a basic human intellectual function. In an attempt to find meaning and order in a chaotic world, we compartmentalize into simple, idealistic, often dualistic categories so that we know who we are and where we stand.  When the parts don't cohere, we become intellectually schizophrenic and either retreat into harden categories or we seek to find coherence by looking connect diverse threads of thought into a whole picture.

This idealistic tradition of abstraction ends in classifying people in various typologies. We have rich-poor, liberal-conservative, Reformed-congregational, traditional-progressive, and on-and-on.  One of the effects is that we treat people as abstract constructs that must fit into our idealistic paradigm. We end up denying their individuality because they are characterized by their gender, race, political affiliation, or national origin. We don't really deal with them as real people, just these intellectual constructs that allow us not to deal with the messy reality of true difference.  We think that because we have come to a logical, coherent understanding of the issue that we have changed. Just because I understand racism, doesn't mean I'm not a racist.  Just because I can give you a biblical argument against consumerism, doesn't mean that I'm not a greedy, selfish consumerist. The power to abstract is the power to deceive, to lie, to spin and to tell stories that remove us from obligation to live with integrity. The question of whether that is the result is a question of character and spirituality.

This is part of what I was thinking as I sat through the conference over the past two days. What provoked this line of thought however was more an emotional reaction to what I was hearing.  I felt cold and despairing. I felt no love for the people in poverty or under oppression. All I felt was despair and personal guilt. I was afflicted with how much I must change, and yet without any real hope that those changes ultimately make a difference. In other words, the hope we claim in Christ just becomes another abstract construct that we have derived from our abstract reading of Scripture. I don't see this primarily as a failure of our intellectual tradition, but more of our spiritual tradition in the West.

I am now old enough to have come to a better understanding of the complex relationship between our emotions and our intellect.  From my own experience as an obsessive devourer of intellectual content, I have come to understand that what lies behind much of that obsession is the desire to control, to master my life and surroundings, to never to be found incompetent or lacking in strength. That drive still exists in me, and has never been satisfied, but is now leading me to desire greater humility and a greater sense of Christ's presence.

Lurking in the back of my mind was a question about God's real presence (no eucharistic allusion intended).  Is the Christian faith simply an idealistic intellectual construct, or is it a spiritual reality that is just out of reach of our minds, and that can only be discovered on some emotional level?  I'm raising a question for which I don't have a final, definitive answer. As I have thought about this in the grand tradition of Western intellectual abstraction, I've reached the conclusion that God is not one whom we can contain intellectually. We see in part, and know in part, and only are given a glimpse of the whole picture through the lens of experience.  As a result, humility combined with conviction is essential.

This fits within the broader discussion of the relationship between Christian community and the institution of the church. In this sense, one is more an experience of the real presence of Christ, while the other is a more abstract, idealistic formal conceptualization of that community in institutional form. The conversation that is taking place about this relationship is healthy.

For me though, what underlies this conversation is the human tendency, mastered in the West, to abstract out reality so that it may be controlled. We talk about community as this thing that is better than the institution of the church, but from my perspective, what I read and hear of community just seems to be a looser form of the institutional church we've always known. As one "seeker" pastor told me years ago about his more casual, community-focused church, "We are church for people burned out on church."

Where I'm taking this discussion is to the question of what is the true nature of spirituality and the real presence of Christ in our world. All I can tell you from my experience is that it is not abstract, not idealistic, not dualistic, not controllable, very emotional, very liberating, very expansive, very real, very personal, very relational, very clear, and full of peace, joy, confidence and daily purpose.  The result has been greater opportunities to serve and make a difference.  I'd be lying if I said that I have a formula and a plan, and did it purposefully. All I can say is that I allowed it to happen to me.

It is out of this experience that I find that what our idealistic, dualistic, abstract life as the church is simply another example of how we try to control all aspects of life. It is self-deceiving, condescending, patronizing, and destructive of our real connection to one another and to the real presence of Christ in our world. If we want to care for people in need, it won't come in any sustainable way by focusing on our guilt and our need to change. It will come by trusting God and responding to the opportunities to serve that are presented to us every day.

At the end of the conference yesterday, we were asked to frame a word that described our response to the message.  As I thought about this, I realized that it was "available." Available to God to be present with whomever is before me. They are real people, living real lives. They aren't simply rich or poor, liberal or conservative, one race or another.  He or she is simply a person who has his or her own individual life to live with all its complexity.  We enter into the relationship through our stories and established our relationship with common values that unite us in a real community.

As we slog through this political season, the abstractions of politicians and their comrades in the church lead us to the impression that our only hope is in these brilliant men and women who are greater than you and me. Already, I'm fatigued by their unreality, their lack of real presence and the constant message of panic and demise.  I don't really want to know their promises or their past opinions. What I want to know is how they have suffered, come through it, and built something that is lasting and sustainable. I want to see tangible representations of their humility and clear sense of a noble calling to public service. As politicians, their lives are lived in the abstractions of words and concepts. I want to know about their concrete achievements in life

I am convinced that our hope is not in abstraction but in concrete action of personal engagement with the people that God brings into our path. We can't abstract our own release of control. We can only learn to practice listening and focusing on the person who is right there, right now, trusting that God is present in that encounter. Through that practice of real presence, Christ's presence intrudes and widens our perspective and lengthens the horizons that are before us. It touches us in ways that we can't control and comes at us in ways when we least expected it.  From my experience, this is where change really begins.

Emergent and Traditional

I've felt for some time that the traditional mainstream church has the potential to be the place where real transformation in Western Christianity can take place. For this to happen, all sorts of changes need to take place. One is the end of the battle royal between the left and right, between progressives and fundamentalists, and for the middle of the church to move out of a survival mindset into a open, more missional one. There are lots of people writing on this and are pushing the envelope of Protestant thought and culture in ways unforeseen just a decade ago.  I find it healthy, and leading to a stronger church in the future. However, we are going have to go through a season of turmoil as the traditional middle comes to see that it can accept new perspectives and changes in how the church functions without diminishing its historic foundations.

One of those who are writing with great intelligence is David Fitch, a pastor/ theologian from Chicago, author of The Great Giveway.  In a post today, Fitch publishes an interview with two twenty-something guys who are from the Emergent church world that is worth reflecting on.   Fitch, whose church is attempting to challenge every notion of how a church is to be led and organization makes the following comment about these guys.

... an interview with two twenty-something emerging church type guys. They were leading a house group at Jack's church. They were also teaching a class and talking about church in ways that was all new to the rest of the more traditional Baptist church. Their words really illustrate the deep cultural shift taking place among the sons and daughters of evangelicals. ... Yet it continually shocks me how many churches are unaware of the depth of this shift taking place. ...  If you are looking for some clarity on these issues, I offer this somewhat lengthy interview ...  And if you have time, can you answer this: How would your local church receive these two guys, Matt and Jose, and what they have to say?

These ideas are not necessarily new. What is new is the commitment to let these ideas transform the church as an institution. For this reason, I believe these ideas that I've heard for over thirty years, will finally take root in new forms of the church.  Here's a portion of the interview.

MATT: …In the evangelical world…we throw terms like repentance around and how we just try to sell the gospel to people… going door to door, using the four spiritual laws, which are half-truths anyway. They are ridiculous. They’ve only been around about 10 or 15 years anyway…selling the gospel becomes like selling fire insurance. You just have to believe, intellectually that Jesus is God, and that he died for your sins, and then you are saved and can just sit around for the rest of your life. And I think this is all just so ridiculous because God wants us to move, and go, and do something. It has nothing to do with simple belief. Your beliefs may start something, but actions come out of your beliefs and that’s the point. The evangelical system says, “believe the right things, adhere to the correct intellectual things and you are going to be saved.” And “saved” to evangelicals is the idea that you are going to heaven later— then life becomes a kind of a waiting room. But they don’t realize that God wants to save you from traumas of the past. God wants to save you from what’s going on inside you right now, psychologically, physically, emotionally, spiritually, it’s every part of you that God wants to renew you. And evangelicals forget about this. They make an empty system where all you have to do is have a little bit of faith—whatever that means—and then you will be saved. And it’s just like becoming a mere shell of a Christian and totally miss the point.

JACK: Do you see decisions to follow Christ as connected to the background of the seeker?

MATT: Right, it’s about the filters we all have. It’s the parents we grew up with, the culture, the time, the atmosphere, just everything about us. And these filters move into our theology too. Moderns think, “We’ve got it! ! It’s been over 2000 years and we finally have a good grasp on the Bible and what it means, and we have archeology and all this other evidence and facts and we’ve now finally got it!” Unfortunately, they don’t realize that maybe their idea of God and how to understand him and their theology, is like just one way. They don’t understand that it’s not the only way but just one way of thinking which came from somebody before, right. Their idea isn’t the best one, it was just a new one when it came out for the first time—when they had to fight against the modernist interpretation of scripture. And now, we’re doing it in the postmodern age. And people today are saying, “No, you’re just wrong, and you’re heretics” and stuff. But the modern viewpoint and how they interpret scripture isn’t the only way or the best or the most evolved. The world is changing. I mean, God doesn’t change, but He is changing us, right.

And here's there take on the intersection of their emergent/postmodern perspective with a more tradition church .

 

JACK: Do you see a need to try to bridge the gap between the young postmoderns and the older traditional members of the church?

MATT: Yes. It would be really bad if we had this group of people who were postmodern and emergent and this group modern and traditional. This would be divisive. This is why people often leave churches. Some people feel unwanted and just leave. We have to have an understanding at some point. And we don’t want another denomination. The emergent church is not a denomination. It’s a new way of understanding church within every denomination. This is huge. It is something about the faddish aspect of the emergent movement that it becomes a denomination.

This perspective is worth hearing and discussing. In response to Fitch's question, I think these two guys would definitely find a place in our church. 

Technorati Tags: David Fitch, Emergent

Blogger for Moderator? Yes, of course

Here's a sure sign the church is entering a new era. Bruce Reyes-Chow, pastor and blogger from San Francisco has been nominated by his presbytery to run for GA moderator. 

Understanding that the Moderator is “to be a sign of the bond of unity, community, and mission in the life of the church; and that that Moderator serves as an ambassador of the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace, telling the story of the church’s life and upholding the people of God through prayer”, (OGA Document H–1.4) we believe Bruce Reyes Chow is the one called to this position because: 

• The church needs an infusion of positive energy.  Bruce Reyes Chow (BRC) brings an active and engaging presence that draws individuals from all sides to the Table and that encourages the building of trust.

• The church needs empowering, Christ-centered leadership.  BRC’s pastoral style and personality draws individuals into a deeper relationship with Christ that empowers leadership of all backgrounds, racial-ethnicities, age, and theological persuasions.

• The church needs someone who understands the many facets of ministry in the PCUSA.  BRC has given 20 years to the church – 8 as an elder and 12 as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament – serving with excellence on presbytery committees, GA committees, GAC committees, ecumenical groups, planning teams, consultant panels, as a speaker, as a preacher, as a teacher and more.

• The church needs someone who is not afraid to speak the truth. BRC is authentic in his role as a Minister of the Word & Sacrament and is eager to engage in open, honest conversation about the state of the church, the cultures in which we live, and the world.

• The church needs a Moderator who can be a healthy presence to our congregations throughout the denomination.  As the organizing pastor of a congregation in the ‘.com’ world of urban, San Francisco, BRC has a much needed perspective about the past, present, and future of the church.

• For more more information about Bruce’s opinions and convictions,you can also visit his personal/pastoral blog at www.reyes-chow.com.

 

Go read his blog, sign up for his RSS feed, and engage him in conversation. Tell you friends and colleagues about him, and send a link to his blog to your commissioners. Let's see what a Moderator 2.0 looks like. 

Technorati Tags: Bruce Reyes-Chow, Moderator, Presbyterian Church (USA), General Assembly, PC(USA)

Len Sweet's 10 Paradoxes for the Future

Len Sweet offers up some thought provoking ideas in The Top Ten Paradoxes that Will Rule The Future in the latest Next-Wave Ezine.

He starts with a trip back 55 years to Crick & Watson's discovery of the Double Helix.  He sees this image as a metaphor for the paradoxical nature of everything, including Christianity.  He speaks of orthodox Christianity as filled with paradoxes.

The Double Helix as the "secret of life" applies as much to our spiritual life as to our physical life. In fact, in book after book I have argued that the essence of orthodoxy is paradoxy, and that every Christian must learn how to put on the spectacles of paradox and become a paradoxalist.

His point is more than valid, yet our dualistic cultural of harden categories of right and wrong, truth and untruth, don't fit into a paradoxical perspective. Yet, Sweet makes an excellent case for this perspective.

*The 5 biggest stories of the last fifty years are still playing themselves out: 1) the demise of Marxism-Leninism as a potent ideology outside of China; 2) the rise of the Internet as the primary delivery system for communication and information; 3) the discrediting of Freudianism as a reliable guide to human choices; 4) the slow death of postmodernism; 5) the resurgence of political Islam or what is called Ïslamism. Any one of these can reassert itself at any time.

Simplified, Sweet's dominant stories are 1) political, 2) technological, 3) psycho-spiritual, 4) philosophical, and 5) religious.  I would add two more.  The Baby Boomer social revolution beginning in the 1960's.  The rise of science (genetics, environmentalism and biotechnology) as both a social and religious phenomenon.   

*The most predictable thing about the future is that it never conforms to our expectations.

This simple truth is why looking at the future through the lens of paradox may make more sense that one might think.  Here are his ten paradoxes.

1) Do little large.

2) To move up, move down.

3) Learn to fail so you can succeed.

4) Your only control is in being out of control.

5) It's more important to know what you don't know than what you know.

6) The more you think out-of-the-box, the more you need well-built boxes to think.

7) A graying globe requires greening.

8) Only locavores can globalize.

9) When fast replaces vast, go slowly with the holy.

10) Moore's Law makes Murphy's Law all the more relevant.

Some of these are not only paradoxical, but counter-intuitive. Here are my thoughts on a few of these.

3. Failure/Success: When success comes too quickly, it is quite possibly that you don't know why you have succeeded. Success without wisdom is empty.

5. Knowing what you don't know. All I can say is read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan. If, after reading them, you don't realize the importance of what you don't know, then you also don't understand #4. on being out of control.

6.  Box. No matter how much people hate institutions, including churches, they are necessary support systems for human community.

Sweet says he is going to write more about these paradoxes over the next several months. Stay tuned looks interesting.

Hope and the Character of Persistent Resilience

Hope. It is a theme that I hear increasingly discussed. 

It was the theme - Hope has a Voice - of the Montreat College Conference last weekend. 

I was there for part of it.  I was glad I was because I got to hear students from Virginia Tech who are involved with the Presbyterian Campus Ministry and the Blacksburg Presbyterian Church speak about the tragedy of the shootings last April. 

It was a story that was told with great finesse and pathos. It was as much the story of one freshman woman - Heidi Miller - who was shot and the people who are her friends at VirginiatTech and how they handled the tragedy.  She tells of how hope mattered as she faced her assailant.

“I learned that lesson for the first time in those first few moments I switched from being student at my desk to a student lying on the floor playing dead wondering whether I would ever make it out of that room in Norris Hall alive. Because that morning, as the smell of gun residue and blood penetrated my nostrils and blood seeped through my jeans and three bullets entered into my body, hope seemed far away — because he left the room, but came back in, he would run out of bullets, but then he would reload.” 

… “Evil was standing there embodied in this person standing four feet away from me, then it came -- hope found its way into that room.”  It first appeared when she began to move her left foot. “I realized that I wasn’t paralyzed and that my nerves still reached my foot despite the three bullets that had just entered my left side.”

Here's what I thought as I listened to their presentation.

1. Hope comes in human form. The stronger our care for one another is, the greater sense of God's care for us, and from that comes hope.

As Matt (Drumheller) stood around in the nearby hospital “waiting and waiting,” there came on a gurney “my friend Heidi (Miller), laying in a dazed, post-surgery state. She smiled at me.”  It was like “…God was standing right there beside me saying, ‘She’s alive.’”  Drumheller told the crowd, “God was right there beside me, beside all of us.”

2. Hope is a product of persistent resilience. What does this mean? We never give up. We never believe that all hope is lost. We continue to work and to strive for a better future.  Even at the darkest moments we believe that God is there.  I see this in these students. I see it in other people who have persisted in the face of disease, tragedy, disappointment, and all sorts of crisis in their lives.

From Heidi Miller:

 

During and following a hospital stay, the support of family and friends continued to renew her hope, along with the hard work of physical therapy.  “ …and my faith was there to remind me that somehow this was all going to find a way to work out, and inside myself I found a way to hang onto the person I was before but also make room for this new facet of my life.” ...

 

This past fall semester was an “emotional mountain” for her to climb, she told her peers. “There were times when things got hard, really hard, but I had to keep pushing along.  …  Hope was hard to find at the times when I found myself facing rock bottom.”

3. Hope is a belief that whatever the story is today, it is not the whole story. And much of the rest of the story is determined by our own attitudes, decisions and actions.

Again from Heidi:

 

Looking back on the whole experience she reflected, “That morning of April 16^th in my French classroom in Norris Hall I saw evil in its purest form. I faced someone who had no hope at all.” She has not tried to psychoanalyze the killer.  But, “the only way I can conceptualize it in my head [how] this happened is that he had no hope, no hope at all, and that is where his hopeless path led him.”  This is as close as she has come to an answer, she says, “and I’ve come to terms with that.”

Heidi closed her remarks by quoting from her first post-incident journal entry, 12 days after the shooting: I never thought that this journal would go from being about the frivolous trivial things that occurred during my super awkward freshman year to a journal chronicling my life as I recover from the physical and emotional trauma of being shot. I am glad I had at least one year of innocence in college.  I know that somehow it will teach me and has taught me way more about life than I ever thought I would learn by the end of the year. The rest of my life won’t be conventional. That could be viewed as a bad thing, but in my mind and one thing that I am not ashamed to talk about now is how I know now more than ever that I am destined for something greater in life, something else is out there for me to accomplish and I have more motivation than ever to seek out those goals.

 

Hope is not some abstract notion but a gift we receive from God. It is a portion of grace and love given as we face the future. As these students learned, and was affirmed to me, that God is with us, even at our most darkest moments.

Jack Haberer has an excellent article in the Presbyterian Outlook on their presentation. Share with people who will be encourage to have hope when everything seems against it.

The quotes are from Jack's article.

Everything Must Change comes to Charlotte

New Ideas. Fresh Perspectives. Inspiring Conversation.
Deep Reflection on the church today and the mission of Jesus Christ in the future.

I'm looking forward to hearing Brian McLaren speak when he comes to Charlotte next month. Register for the Charlotte event here.

Watched Brian interviewed by Allan Roxburgh on these Allelon videos here, here, and here.

Questions for the turn of the era

As a new year arrives, I've been reflecting back over the past year.  What is interesting to me is the amount of change that is happening in the world of the church. It isn't  the typical type of change. People joining. Pastors leaving. New programs starting.  Rather it is change at a more fundamental level.

What I'm seeing is an increasing level of questioning about the institutional nature of the church. What I find fascinating is the change in the question itself.  It is now less a matter of whether Roman Catholic/Anglican/Methodist forms are more biblical than Presbyterian connectional or congregational independent ones. Rather it is more a question whether any institutional form can be considered biblical.

As this level of questioning has intensified, it raises for me the question as to whether we are witnessing the end of Protestantism.  I know it seems silly as we see the proliferation of Mega-churches and huge Protestant denominations.  But I think this maybe more a last ditch effort to preserve Protestantism's prominence.

If you spend any time reflecting on churches, one of things that I believe you will see is that increasingly churches are diluting their message and programs to that which is the lowest common denominator. One of the phenomenon's that I see in the midst of this is a growing resurgence of a call to committed community. It reminds me of a similar line of discussion that was present a generation ago. Today, there is a greater degree of urgency, and much less obligation to traditional institutional forms of church. In essence, a purging of institutional forms is happening, and the preeminent form of the past 500 years, the Protestant congregation and denomination, is feeling the effects of it.

As I have reflected on this perception that I have, I keep returning to a line of questioning that developed in my work with leaders and organizations, including pastors and churches. Four simple questions that look beyond institutional questions to a more fundamental understanding of the purpose of the church.  I'm  not looking for a perspective that proof-texts Scripture to argue an abstract conceptualization of the church. No, I'm thinking more of a set of questions that will reveal what I'm to do in the minute after I've answered the question.

The Four Questions that Every Leader Must Ask focus on clarity of thought that leads to action.  If a church or a denomination were to ask these questions, they would ultimately find that institutional questions are secondary to those that identify the church's impact upon people.

The questions can be framed in many ways.  We can ask the questions this way. What should be the impact of the institutional form of Protestantism? What should be the impact of a Christian community? If you look at the diagram to the right, you'll see that the impact question is focused on three separate dimensions that leaders must address. One is the dimension of ideas, another relationships or community and the last organizational structure. When you can answer what the impact of each dimension should be, then you'll begin to understand how to integrate the three so that each dimension's potential impact can be realize in coordination with the other three. 

Is this an impossible scenario?  Only if the church is unwilling to change, to adapt to a change in perspective. The value of asking these questions is not to get a correct answer, but rather to foster an environment where the Holy Spirit may speak through people to illuminate a church's potential impact.

Many churches are looking back to move forward. Many of my seminary classmates have left Protestantism to join Roman Catholic and Orthodox congregations.  Other people I know have left the institutional church all together and cling to a faith that finds no place in the contemporary church.

Myself, I love the church, but at the same I believe God drugged me kicking and screaming into it. I am both a traditionalist and entrepreneur who loves change to preserve tradition.  Make sense?

Much of the church's cultural baggage, the boredom of church services and belief systems, and the process-obsessed institutional structures lack relevance to contemporary life.  As I see how people I know deal with the institutional church, and how my client churches address questions about the future, I realize that we are at the beginning of an era of change that is unprecedented in the past 500 years.

I won't say that we are witnessing a new Reformation.  I really don't think that what is coming has any continuity with the past, except the past that is the eternal story of God's engagement with his creation.

Here's one example of what I'm seeing.  I'm in the midst of reading The Starfish Manifesto by Wolfgang Simson (HT-Bill Kinnon).   It is a free ebook written from a Pentecostal perspective.  Simson expresses many of the ideas about mission that I find in many, many places, including many Presbyterian churches.  I don't agree with everything he writes. We come from different traditions that are vastly different.  However, what seems to be an important thread in his work, as for so many people writing about the church today, is the separation of the individual believer in Jesus Christ from the institutional form of the Body of Christ. 

Here are two ways that I understand this change.

First, that the Christian church in the future will not be sustained simply by institutional forms, whether buildings, confessions, rules of order, seminaries or theological systems.  What will sustain the future of the church is the spiritual character of individual believers.  This is the hunger that is at heart of all change in the church today.  It is a hunger for an authentic life of faith.  Not just words or ideas, but faith that lives in our words and deeds.  It is not a joining impetus but a contribution passion.

Second, that the Christian church will be sustained by our common life, by our relationships of service and friendship. For example, at my old traditional downtown tall-steeple Presbyterian church, a men's ministry has begun.  The overarching desire of the men who have joined is for fellowship where trust and transparency live.  It is not an institutional program, but a coming together of men who desire authenticity in their relationships with other men. This is a window on the future of the church.

So, what do we do with the institution of the church? 

First ask the question, what should be its impact?  More than anything, the institution should exist to nurture individual calling and the fellowship that is needed to sustain it. No more, no less.

Second, we should ask who should the institution impact?  This isn't a question a planning committee answers, but rather asks of the congregation in a many that allows for reflection and vision creation.

Third, we should ask what opportunities for impact do we currently have with our present institutional structure. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Institutions are human creations, and adapt to human initiative. If the impact that the church should have cannot be met with the current institutional structure, then change it.  Of course, this requires leadership.

Lastly, we should ask the hard question of the problems that our current institutional forms have created for us. When we understand what are the impediments to impact, then we understand where we start to change.  It may not be easy, may not be able to be accomplished overnight, may alienate and confuse people, but in the long run, the impact that the church have will be realized.

As the new year turns, we are presented with an opportunity to talk with people about these sorts of issues. Asking the Four Questions That Every Leader Must Ask is a good place to start.

If you do try, let me know how it goes.  If need to know more, just ask.  Asking question is where all the right kind of change starts. 

May God grant you and me the opportunity to have a greater impact than we did this past year.

RandomKid December 2007 Newsletter

RandomKid is an organization that my daughter has been involved in for about a year. I wrote about the organization here.   It is a unique organization because it is focused on kid initiated, kid directed projects.  Check out the project page of their website.  These aren't adult projects where kids can participate. These are projects that kids have thought up, and through the support of their parents, families, friends and RandomKid, are either making a difference or a looking for the funding to start.

Here is their latest newsletter. I post it to bring encouragement and opportunity. Share it with kids that you know. Maybe one of them has a project idea that RandomKid can help them start.

RandomKid Newsletter
National Task Force Visits the Gulf

Watch NBC Nightly News This Sunday, December 23*for a Special Report on RandomKid's Water Project. 

December 2007

I’m really excited for you to read what we have to share with you in this newsletter. RandomKid’s National Task Force to Rebuild the Gulf, a group of 10 kids from around the country, had the opportunity to visit the largest chapter of Habitat for Humanity, tour and volunteer in the gulf, thanks in large part to a grant from Target Corporation and a kind invitation from the Mississippi Gulf Coast chapter of Habitat for Humanity.  Our mission was to witness the progress that’s being made, the work that still needs to be done, and report back to kids across the USA to encourage continued support.

There are still nearly 60,000 people living in FEMA trailers over two years after Hurricane Katrina.  Faith has helped them all get through a tough time. It is a message we hear from everyone over and over again. They also are being helped by Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army and the countless volunteers that go down there to rebuild homes. But none of this can happen without money. We can’t allow ourselves to be tired of the story because it’s old news and we want to move on to something new. We have to commit to helping every last hurricane survivor back on their feet.  It is the patriotic thing to do, and our human responsibility to help people who can’t help themselves. We need to show them that the power of their faith can also be seen in each of us, their fellow Americans who care.

All but one of the articles here were written by the RandomKid Task Force kids.  One column was written by our newest Board Member, and dad of one of our Task Force members, Ed Brenegar.  Please take a moment to see the gulf from a kid’s point of view.  We hope you’ll help.

Happy Holidays!

~Talia Leman, 12-year-old CEO, RandomKid

“The Gulf trip was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life! I got to meet new people and help out in the Gulf.  After being there, I’ve come up with a new idea on how to children in that area.  I LOVE being a part of RandomKid!” –Task Force Member, 10-year-old Emma

Having Hope and Faith on the Gulf Coast
By Task Force Member Shelby of North Carolina

Nasheka Chatman and her three children met with the RandomKid Task Force on a warm Fall day in Biloxi, Mississippi.  Chatman has been living in a FEMA trailer with her three small children and her husband for over two years now. The FEMA trailer that the Chatman family is currently living in is 10 feet by 40 feet, or about the size of your garage.  They are very cramped and there is not a lot of privacy. When Nasheka was asked how she has gotten through everything over the past two years, she replied, "with prayer, lots of prayer." Chatman says she has had lots of support from family and friends. Of all the things that this family lost, what they miss most are family pictures. She wants other people to know that Habitat for Humanity was "sent by God. The people were sent by God." Nasheka's children, ages 4,6 and 7 have put lots of thought into what colors they will paint their new bedrooms.  The family is moving into their Habitat house on November 12th and they are going to celebrate by making a sign for the front yard that says, "Thank You Jesus for our new home." Chatman reminded us that, "People on the Gulf are doing okay. We still need you're help, but we are okay. People here are strong in their hearts." When asked what other Katrina victims should remember, she thought for a moment, then added, "Don't give up on your dreams [of getting out of a FEMA trailer and into a new home]."

“They will remember this trip for years to come.  So will I.   Nicholas is already brainstorming new ideas.  He can’t wait for the next conference call!” –Task Force Mom, Kelly

Leaving Louisiana
By Task Force Member Nicholas of Massachusetts

As the jazz music dies; the scent of beignets disappears; the wrought iron architecture ends; and the skyline of the French Quarter blends in with the horizon, the memory of the destruction comes back to mind. The bus rattles and shakes along the highway. We pass abandoned homes and empty lots – painful reminders of the past. I can’t help but think of everything lost during the storm. There are so many still left with so little. It makes me feel like I need to do more. Money is really necessary to help others. I am reinvigorated. I am inspired to take up the task where I left off. I will once again look for new and creative ways to get others interested in the Gulf Coast disaster. So many have forgotten. But not me. I want to help the poor people of Mississippi and Louisiana. And I will.

Click here to DONATE  to RandomKid’s “Rebuild the Gulf Fund.”  100% of your donation will go to our “Rebuild the Gulf” program, 90% of which goes directly to building a Habitat for Humanity house in Biloxi, MS.

“Being a RandomKid parent has been an amazing experience!  I feel blessed and renewed as I see our children...our FUTURE... at work, giving so selflessly of themselves and their time!  I feel like I’m along for the ride of a lifetime as I see what these children are able to accomplish through their hopes, dreams, and energies!”  -Task Force Mom, Eldonna

A "Taste" of the Gulf
By Task Force Member Emma of Iowa
(Editor's Note:  These are reflections written after a day when the task force got to experience many of the wonderful, unique things about the Gulf  Much of their time was spent in the New Orleans area on this day, and Gulf Port / Biloxi the other two days.) 

Our day started with a LONG bus ride!  During the ride we rode on the bridge over Lake Ponchartrain.  It was really scary because the bridge went on and on for miles over nothing but water!  It was a funny feeling!

When our ride was done we ate brunch at Court of the Two Sisters in New Orleans!  It was really good food, and they had a jazz trio playing that was fun to listen to.  I tried crawfish for the very first time (I don't think I'll try it again for awhile!), and I also tried grits (I'll pass on those next time too!).  But the omelets were super, and so were the desserts!

After brunch we went on a ferry ride across the Mississippi River.  It was really cool! Even cars could drive right onto the ferry so they could cross the river! That was a strange sight!

After the ride we went to the Swamp Fest at the Audubon Zoo.  It was neat seeing al those animals!  It's hard to believe that alligators can be so dangerous because they looked really lazy and didn't even move a muscle!

Next we went to Cafe du Monde (that's where the picture of the task force above was taken), and ate bengiets.  They tasted like funnel cakes at our State Fair, only better!  I ate three! We then had about an hour to walk around in the French Quarter and do things. It was really fun.  My mom and I had a street artist draw our caricature!  We look kinda funny in it...he gave us real big heads and big teeth!

Then we went to the "old" Brock Elementary in Slidell that had been destroyed by Katrina.  We interviewed the principal, Rose Smith.  The school was all boarded up, but they're working on the inside and hope to be in by next school year.

We then saw the current school the Brock students are in.  They all have double-wide trailers for their classrooms.  It was neat seeing all the things they've been through and knowing that they have never given up hope.  Their trailer classrooms were actually very, very nice and big.  It was a nice feeling to know the kids can have good classrooms until they get back in their real school.

At the end of the day we ate at the Southside Cafe.  It was really good food...I had fried oysters!  I like oysters anyway, and these were yummy!

After that we went back to our stadium and went to bed.  It was a good, busy, and tasty day!

“We are honored to be hosting these children here in the gulf. They have proven to be a driving force in bringing awareness to our gulf rebuilding efforts, and we hope that their reports from the gulf will inspire many more children around the country to continue to help rebuild the thousands of homes that were destroyed by the 2005 hurricanes.” ~Kent Adcock, Director of Business Development & Community Relations for Habitat for Humanity of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Carabiners:  A Kid’s Idea and a RandomKid “Micro Loan” are Catalyst to Gulf Trip
by Talia Leman, RandomKid CEO  and Task Force Member 

It all started with our carabiners. You know, those cool clips you can stick on your backpack, key chain, and just about anywhere else (They make GREAT GIFTS—HINT HINT!!   Click here to buy some!). Click here to read backstory on carabiners.

Kent Adcock with the Mississippi Gulf Coast Chapter of Habitat for Humanity received a carabiner at Habitat for Humanity’s “1000^th Home Celebration.”  He thought they were pretty cool, and called us up to see if we’d partner with them to sell carabiners with their logo and our logo on them at a big event with professional golfers in November.   Next thing you know, he invited the task force to come!  But we still had a big hurdle:  How to pay for everyone to get there.  That’s where Target Corporation comes in.  Hooray for Target! They helped the entire task force come together in the gulf.  The Task Force has worked  together for over a year, and finally met in person for the first time.   We stayed in the Salvation Army’s VolunteerVillage in Biloxi, MS.  The Salvation Army ROCKS!  We met a really great kid named Conner there.  He and his family moved to Biloxi to help the Salvation Army after the 2005 hurricanes, and they’ve been serving volunteers in the MS Gulf Coast now for a year and a half.  I am happy to say that Conner is the newest member to our task force!

In Closing

by Anne Ginther, President of RandomKid

There are many more stories to tell.  "RandomKid National Task Force to Rebuild the Gulf" members met kids who had to swim through their house to get to safety, parents who lost everything.  Can you imagine having survived such a disaster and then living in temporary housing for over two years, knowing that there may be thousands ahead of you on the building list? 

GOAL:  Break ground on a  RandomKid / Habitat for Humanity house in Biloxi in 2008 = $25,000 needed!

The children on the Task Force were so moved by what they saw, that they have decided to set a goal to raise enough money to break ground on a MS Gulf Coast Habitat for Humanity house in Biloxi in 2008.  These kids have already raised a lot of money with their entrepreunrial ideas.  They need to raise $25,000 more to be able to break ground on a house.  Please help these kids make their goal, and help a family into their home.

Please click here to donate online using any major credit card, or make out a check to

"RandomKid - Rebuild the Gulf",

and send it to: 

RandomKid

P.O. Box 2064

McKinney, TX 75070.

In the coming months we'll share more of stories, photos and video from the Task Force trip.  We'll also introduce you to the new things they are doing to help our fellow Americans in the gulf.

We thought we'd close with some favorite quotes from Task Force member Shelby:

*Be the CHANGE you want to see in the world. -Mahatma Gandhi

*A big shot is a little shot that kept shooting.-Unknown

*You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however. -Richard Bach

Thank you for not only helping the gulf, but helping KIDS realize their power to help others.

Sincerely,

The RandomKid National Task Force to Rebuild the Gulf:

Ellison, Tiron, Shelby, Tonisha, Sarah, Talia, Lanna, Emma, Tonisha, and Conner

Anne Ginther, RandomKid President

RandomKid Quick Links

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Final Comment:
I written about RandomKid previously here . You are going to hear more from me about RandomKid. I've just joined their board. I believe in their mission. I endorse their - our - mission because it is about the Kids and their ideas, and their leadership and their impact.   

Your financial support will help kids make difference.  I hope you'll consider making a donation.  You are not only investing in the future, but making a difference today.

Celebrating a Chesterton Christmas

GK Chesterton wrote some great stuff about Christmas. Here's some past postings and one from Bill Kinnon that feature Chesterton.

Did Shopkeepers Invent Christmas? - Bill Kinnon

Christmas Paradox

A Chesterton Christmas

More to come in days that follow.

Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer - A Review

The other day I came across an interview of Frank Schaeffer and his new book. I wrote about the interview here.  The next day I picked up Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and have just finished reading it.  Occasionally a book comes along that is like opening up a window upon your life so that you can see familiar things in a new way. This is one of those books.

Schaeffer's book is a memoir of his life as the son and youngest child of Francis and Edith Schaeffer. The Schaeffer's were missionaries to young people who were trying to make sense of the world during the 1960's and 70's.  They lived in Switzerland, and young people came to their chalet to ask questions and listen to Francis talk about art, music, philosophy and the Christian faith. Their L'Abri community became synonymous with an open, compassionate, intellectually alive engagement with Jesus Christ.

I never went to L'Abri, but I read Francis Schaeffer's books, listened to his lectures on tape, and heard him speak once at a conference in Atlanta. His books Escape from Reason, The God Who is There, He is There and Is Not Silent and True Spirituality introduced me, as a college student, to a way to think deeper and more concretely about the Christian faith. They weren't the typical dense abstract theological monographs that fill seminary shelves. Nor were they sweet spiritual tomes about a Christian spirituality that is more fantasy than reality.  They were about how to think in a world that was not longer explicitly Christian.

Later I came to understand that Francis Schaeffer's philosophical and cultural stance was one man's perspective. Yet, he established for me a standard of judgment that has continued with me until today. That perspective is both spiritual and rational and at its heart humanistic as can only be understood from the perspective for what it means for us human beings to be created in the image of God.  In this respect, though I'd never thought of myself as a Schaefferite, I can easily say that his writings were the most formative for me as a college student in the early 1970's.

Frank Schaeffer's book is a glimpse behind the curtain of the family whose writings influenced me so. It is a memoir about the family, not an intellectual treatise about his parents' intellectual thought. His experience as a child and later a young man is very different than mine. But his journey through the evangelical sub-culture of his parents is very similar to mine.  I loved reading the book because there are so many moments in Frank's life where there is a counterpart in mine. This is especially true as he became more involved with his father's work as the filmmaker behind the How Shall We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? series.

While not intending to be an analytical critique of modern evangelicalism, it is a serious critique of the movement from one who was at the center of its ascendancy in the 1980's.  Evangelicalism is rooted in early 20th century Fundamentalism. Schaeffer writes:

Fundamentalists never can just disagree.  The person they fall out with is not only on the wrong side of an issue they are on the wrong side of God. ... A church split builds self-righteousness into the fabric of every new splinter group, whose holy reason for existence is that they decide that they are more moral and pure than their brethren. This explains my childhood and perhaps a lot about America, too.

This is not the Christianity that I grew up with as a child in my home Presbyterian church.  It wasn't the Christianity that I discovered in college or for the two years, post-college, as I did youth ministry.  It was the battleground I found when I went to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1978.  When I arrived there, The Battle for the Bible was in full force.  The divide was between the systematic theology department and the New Testament department.  The issue wasn't precisely inerrancy, but close. It was more about the interpretation of the Bible, between an interpretation based on a formula or system and interpretation based on tools that let the text speak for itself, sort of.  As a student, it was a great environment to be in because we were experiencing the fault-line of American Christianity.  That fault-line is between Christianity as a program and doctrine to defend and Christianity that is simply about how one lives as follower of Christ.  This is easily seen in Frank's description of his parent's way of ministering to the "students" who came to L'Abri.

I saw my parents' compassion was consistent. Their idea of ministry was to extend a hand of kindness, and to truly practice the rule of treating others as you would be treated.  It was such a powerful demonstration that it gave me a lifelong picture of what Christian behavior and love can and should be.

My parents were not advocating compassion that someone else would carry out with tax dollars, or at arm's length, but rather they opened their home. The result was that those gathered around our table represented a cross-section of humanity and intellectual ability, from mental patients to Oxford students and all points of need in between.  My mother and father marshaled arguments in favor of God, the Bible, and the saving work of Jesus Christ. But no words were as convincing as their willingness to lay material possessions, privacy, and time on the line, sometimes at personal risk and always with the understanding that if they were being taken advantage of, that was fine, too.

This is far different from the evangelical world that Frank and his father would find themselves in the late 1970's and early1980's, as they became the leading advocates for the pro-life, anti-abortion movement.

Dad and I were mixing with a new set of people who had not known much, if anything, about my father. If they had even heard of Dad before he came on the pro-life scene in the mid-to-late seventies, they probably hadn't liked the sound of him.  These people include Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, James Kennedy, and all the rest of the televangelists, radio hosts, and other self-appointed "Christian leaders" who were bursting on the scene in the 1970s and early '80s.

Compared to Dad, these slick media figures were upstarts.  They were "not our sort of people," Dad often said. What people like Robertson and Falwell got from Dad was some respectability.

Dad had a unique reputation for an intellectual approach to faith.  And his well-deserved reputation for frugal ethical living, for not financially profiting from his ministry, for compassion, openness, and intellectual integrity, was the opposite of the reputations of the new breed of evangelical leadership, with their perks, planes, and corner offices in gleaming new buildings and superficial glib messages.  Empire builders like Robertson, Dobson, and Falwell like rubbing up against (or quoting) my father, for the same reason that popes like to have photos take with Mother Teresa.

What I slowly realized was that the religious-right leaders we were helping to gain power were not "conservatives" at all, in the old sense of the word.  They were anti-American religious revolutionaries. ... The new religious right was all about religiously motivated "morality," which it used for nakedly political purposes.  ...

The leaders of the new religious right were different from the older secular right in another way.  They were gleefully betting on American failure.  If secular, democratic, diverse, and pluralistic America survived, then wouldn't that prove that we evangelicals were wrong about God only wanting to bless a "Christian America?"

What began to bother me was that so many of our new "friends" on the religious right seemed to be rooting for one form of apocalypse or another.  In the crudest form, this was part of the evangelical fascination with the so-called end times.  The worse things got, the sooner Jesus would come back. But there was another component: the worse everything got, the more it proved that American needed saving, by us!

My own experience was at the far periphery of these evangelical leaders. I knew many people involved with their ministries. But my immediate evangelical environment was not apocalyptic, but missional. It was much more in tuned with the message that Francis and Edith Schaeffer had been presenting to guests at L'Abri for a generation.  I graduated from seminary in 1981, spent a summer doing refugee ministry in Pakistan, and then became a community minister for a large Presbyterian church with strong evangelical roots in Atlanta. When I left that church four years later, my immediate, day-to-day contact with the evangelical culture ended.  Twenty plus years later, and now having read Schaeffer's memoir, I now have a better understanding of my own reticence towards evangelicalism. 

A few years into this journey into the American evangelical subculture, Frank Schaeffer quit it.  He closed the film production company and gave up the money, the fame and the constant contact with these mega-stars of the evangelical world.

I was surprised by how quickly I was forgotten, how calm the waters were, as soon as I paddled out of the center of the evangelical right-wing whitewater. From one day to the next, I went from daily calls to be on some TV show, or be on the radio, or to be a participant in this or that symposium, march, seminar, or publishing venture, to blessed silence.  It was a relief.  It also confirmed what I already knew; that evangelicalism is not so much a religion as a series of fast-moving personality cults.

There is an element of truth in all segments of American society.  We raise up the celebrity personality because it relieves us from having to be responsible.  As long as I follow Reverend So-N-So, I don't have to deal with my inner demons. I just close off my inner life and live in the glow of celebrity.

I've seen this clearly throughout my adult life.  My perspective has always been relationship first. In that sense, I've never been a fundamentalist, and most likely not even an evangelical.  What I am is anyone's guess because I don't find liberal Christianity any more appealing.  Schaeffer articulates something I have have seen, but didn't have a broad enough context to understand in the way he does.  In commenting on his own childhood as a homeschooled child, he points to a difference that he sees in the approach that many homeschool families have taken.  As a homeschool family, our values are much closer to the Schaeffers' than to those he criticizes.

Where homeschooling had meant freedom for me - albeit chaotic, crazy freedom - homeschool leaders ... were pushing homeschooling as a means to isolate and brainwash a generation of children.

The evangelical homeschooling movement was becoming profoundly anti-American. And Dad and I had done our part to empower them.

At the heart of this mindset is something quite troubling to anyone who has spent time studying the early Greeks, traveled through the great cities of Europe or has spent anytime in an art museum.  Schaeffer writes,

The idea of public space, the ideas that led to the building of my father's and my favorite places, for instance all those civic works in Florence and the piazzas we so happily strolled, was the very idea that the evangelical homeschool movement unwittingly wanted to destroy.  They wanted no public spaces (physical or intellectual) to be shared by people of all beliefs. They wanted only private spaces, where they could indoctrinate their children from "interference."

What is ironic about his critique of evangelicalism, about it being anti-American and a destroyer of public spaces, is that this is a critique that can also be placed at the feet of their arch rival, the liberal church and political class. If he is correct, then our society is under a greater threat from within than from any terrorist bomb. It means that our strength as a nation is not longer a shared strength, a common strength, a universal strength. It means that we each have rationalized our way to a belief in the supremacy of the individual over society.  When this happens, we no longer have the moral will to join together to do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time.

Following his departure from the evangelical sub-culture, Schaeffer directed four films, wrote some novels, write several non-fiction books about being the parent of a Marine, and joined a Greek Orthodox church. 

Perhaps I converted to the Greek Orthodox Church (rather than simply abandoning religious faith) because spirituality is a way to connect with people and might even be a part of a journey toward God. (If there is a God.) According to Jesus, community is spirituality: "Love one another."

To me, the Greek Orthodox Church is not the community but a community. Community is an antidote to the poisonous American consumerist "me" and "I want" life that leads to isolation and unhappiness. ...

When I left evangelicalism, it certainly was not because I was disillusioned with the faith of my early childhood. ... I think my problem with remaining an evangelical centered on what he evangelical became.  It was the merging of the entertainment business with faith, the flippant lightweight kitsch ugliness of American Christianity, the sheer stupidity, the paranoia of the American right-wing enterprise, the platitudes married to pop culture, all of it ... that made me crazy.  It was just too stupid for words.

Crazy for God is a book that anyone who today wants to understand the continued wars of theology, politics and culture in the church.  It is one man's perspective. However, it is a man whose journey has much to teach us about how the truth of the Gospel is something lived out in one's relationships.

My own journey through evangelicalism is now better understood because of Frank Schaeffer's memoir. My theology, my faith, my understanding of my call is basically the same as they were over thirty-five years ago when I discovered Christ's reality in this world.  I realize better why I've eschewed the attachment of labels to my faith. Apart from being a Presbyterian, all I can say is that I am just a guy who daily discovers God's grace and love for me. I think Frank would understand that as well.

UPDATE: Here's Frank Schaeffer's CSPAN BookTV presentation.

UPDATE 2: A review from the Boston Globe.

UPDATE 3: Books and Culture Review

Stepping back in time with Frank Schaeffer

In my previous post, PastorM comments on an interview that Frank Schaeffer gave to John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute. For me it was a fascinating trip back to my youth when I was a big follower of Schaeffer's father, Francis, evangelical philosopher guru and counter-cultural interpreter. His intellectualism was attractive to me. He turned me on to philosophy, and fed my interest in art, film, music and popular culture.  In that respect, I am a Schaeffer offspring.

I was raised in a traditional southern Presbyterian home.  I never heard the word evangelical until I became involved with Young Life as a high school sophomore. Then in college, I had a brief involvement with Campus Crusade for Christ.  A more engaged involvement with InterVarsity immersed me in Schaeffer's thought. Later after two years on staff with Young Life, and three years at evangelical Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I came back into my southern Presbyterian world as an ordained minister in late 1981. From that point on, my "evangelicalism" began to diminish. At the same time, cultural evangelicalism began to become more politicized, more right-wing, Republican conservative and more focused on the kind of moralistic dualism that Frank Schaeffer describes in his interview. I saw it in seminary, and saw it as I began the first years of my ministry.

Frank Schaeffer's perception of evangelicalism is very similar to mine.  I tend to think that it lost its humanity, and thereby its spiritual authenticity. And to be fair, I'm not referring to the whole movement, but to those leaders, organizations and churches who carry the mantle of leadership of it.  I have many evangelical friends who are examples of the best that evangelicalism has to offer.

Evangelicalism became a social/political movement of big names and big organizations. It was a movement of money, power and influence. Its message became more about what it was against than what it was for.  It is the easiest way to build a national movement. And that is what it did.

When I was in seminary, many of us were Schaefferites. We looked at culture as a repository of values.  It is still true today. Just look at any of the reality shows on MTV. The young people they feature are not exemplary examples of leadership and citizenship, but are lost souls.  They are not like the kids that I know who spend their off hours looking for ways to raise money to build Habitat houses or support a poor child in a jungle village in South America. Popular culture remains both a mirror and transmitter of values. And for us who were influenced by Francis Schaeffer, what we learned is that we had a responsibility as followers of Christ to be involved in the culture.

The difference is that for many of us that involvement is carried out at a more personal, local level. We want to build relationships of caring, trust and openness. We don't want to treat people as abstract objects of our political agenda. We don't want to be treated that way either.

In my opinion, evangelicalism got in trouble when its national leaders were not held accountable for their words and actions. This is both a moral and an organizational structure problem.  This inadequate, ill-equipped system paved the way for the blind acceptance of consumerist, health & wealth Gospel, bigger is better models of being the church. 

More than the intellectual learning I gained from Francis Schaeffer was the experience of listening to tapes of his lectures with 15 or 20 people, and sitting for hours talking about these ideas. Today, the inter-personal nature of the shared faith of the church still rings true as the one of the most authentic experiences of the church that I've every had.

UPDATE: Here's my review of Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer.

HT: IM

Looking for the Real Jesus in Life

When I'm with clients, strange things happen.

This week, I spent an hour and a half with a seriously paranoid business executive.  His twisted view of life was very disturbing.

I've met with egotists, the chronically depressed, the lost, the forelorn, and people that everyone thinks is normal, but are hiding all kinds of trauma.  Many of these people are angry and in control. Some are on the edge of breakdowns. 

I'm not a depressed, pessimistic or fatalistic person. I'm a glass is half-full kind of guy. I look for the positive, for opportunities to learn, grow, develop and being transformed.  That is my personality.

I also recognized that to be a human being is to live with suffering. For some it is more physical, others more emotional or psychological, and even for others it is social, spiritual and intentional.  Suffering is reality. Jesus is peace. Yet, those words don't help when we are not just morally broken, but broken at the level of our DNA.  Good theology doesn't have much effect there. It would be nice, but it doesn't work that way.

Read these two postings from Brant, here and here.  Here's a real man. Not perfect, not complete, not a failure, not a celebrity-level success, just a man who is trying to maintain order in his relationship with himself, his family and his God.  He takes meds to do it.  If I was him, I'd do it too.

What concerns me as I need to walk out the door to church in three minutes is that we plaster over reality to convince ourselves that Jesus has saved and healed us.  My experience is that we don't get healed that way. We get healed by facing up to our brokenness every day. It requires honesty and humility.  It requires coming to the end of our rope.  It requires seeing Jesus not as an abstract theological concept, but a divine person whose life has been passed to us.

I don't have Brant's issues, but I know I suffer from many of the same expectations of success, productivity and completeness. All I can say as a consolation to myself is that the more in touch I am with my own suffering, the more I am able to see it in others, and be a friend who offers hope and healing.  I know this because I've seen healing to come to people just because I was there.

So, as hard as it is to say, Praise Be To God for Our Suffering that lets us find that same depth of life in others, and consequently know the surpassing comfort of Christ.

HT:BT

Objectivity and Truth

Going back almost 30 years to seminary, I recall one of the major topics of discussion in our New Testament classes was the issue of the nature of objectivity in interpretation and the truth of the Bible. The idea of truth as this fixed thing never made sense to me. It didn't because it presumes that I or anyone has the capacity to stand outside of truth and objectively make the judgment of what is true and what isn't.  It always struck me that this definition of truth was an alternative faith object. Instead of faith being in Christ, based on the witness of Scripture, my faith was to be dependent upon the Bible being true. My trust was suppose to be in the Bible first because that is where we discover Christ   

All this came back to me as I read Virginia Postrel's posting on the new book, Objectivity, by Loraine Daston and Peter Galison. Virginia provides two long quotes from the book that are worth considering. 

Our classroom seminary discussions often focused on the subjectivity that we each brought to the task of biblical interpretation. Even the Gospel writers were subjective interpreters of the life and ministry of Jesus and the early church.  While this may seem to be a logical, rational perspective to have, it was not the only one. Objectivity or biblical truth was sacrosanct; a reality apart from human interference.

From my little corner of the church, what I have seen is a Bible that lost its character as an inspired text in a historical context, and became an encyclopedia of proof texts. This latter form which became so popular in evangelical circles as inductive bible study became the standard means of interpretation.  It lost its historical character and therefore its rootedness in the time of its origin. This notion of objective truth came to mean a single truth that was available to all who followed the appropriate methodology.  As a result, we became less a biblical church and more a church of epigrams, pithy sayings that inspire warm thoughts yet lack reality.

It is odd therefore, that the branch of Christendom that most hailed a high view of Scripture lost its grip on the Bible as it came to us.  Is it the word of God? Yes. Is it a document of objective truth as 19th century science understood it? I don't think so.  Daston and Galison describe a type of objectivity that I suspect actually only exists in the abstract.  And the Bible is far from being simply an abstract repository of objective truth.

Truth lives in the person of Jesus Christ, who lives by his Spirit in the individual and collective lives of believers throughout the world.  Truth is not the idea of God's love, but the actual love of God for sinners. As long as truth remains abstract and objective, it remains in the control of we human beings. Even as it does, it remains truth as I see it and determine it to be so. It is defined, contained and without amendment. It is my possession and the possession of my church.   The intellectual history of science of the past 2500 years should tell us that our human perception is never whole nor complete. Therefore, whatever it is that I think to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth is still partial and subjective.

Bonhoeffer's After Ten Years for our time

For past couple of months, I've been drawn to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  His short book Life Together has been a helpful perspective in a church world torn between artificial triumphalism and institutional cynicism.   It's about how real people engage one another through their faith in Christ and in their relationships with one another.

Lately, I have been reading portions from The Cost of Discipleship and Ethics trying to grasp who this man was. I find his perspective on the Christian faith and the church totally different from most of the people I know and read today.

A couple days ago, I ran into United Methodist pastor colleague Tony Sayer at the bookstore. After a wide ranging discussion that lasted over an hour, I told him I was reading Bonhoeffer. His eyes lit up. He's a Bonhoeffer devotee and after some discussion, suggested I read a piece Bonhoeffer wrote in 1942, not many months before he was arrested by the German Gestapo. So, I went home, dug through a box of books and found my 40 year old copy of Letters and Papers from Prison. The copy I have is not the expanded edition that is now available.  I've ordered it and its on the way here.

The essay that Tony suggested is After Ten Years.  It is his reflections on his work and life in the context of the rise of National Socialism under the Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler.  His thoughts are not historical, but more personal and spiritual.  I find them quite relevant to our time.

Bonhoeffer speaks of the radical evilness of evil of the Third Reich and the multitude of failed attempts to confront it.

The failure of rationalism is evident.  With best of intentions, but with a naive lack of realism, the rationalist imagines that a small dose of reason will be enough to put the world right.  In his short-sightedness he wants to do justice to all sides, but in the melee of conflicting forces he gets trampled upon without having achieved the slightest effect. Disappointed by the irrationality of the world, he realises at last his futility, retires from the fray, and weakly surrenders to the winning side.

Worse still is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. The fanatic imagines his moral purity will prove a match for the power of evil, but like a bull he goes for the red rag instead of the man who carries it, grows weary and succumbs.  He becomes entangled with non-essentials and falls into the trap set by the superior ingenuity of his adversary.

Then there is the man with a conscience.  He fights single-handed against overwhelming odds in situations which demand a decision.  But are so many conflicts going on, all of which demand some vital choice - with no advice or support save that of his own conscience - that he is torn to pieces.  Evil approaches him in so many specious and deceptive guises that his conscience becomes nervous and vacillating.  In the end he contents himself with a salved instead of a clear conscience, and starts lying to his conscience as a means of avoiding despair. If a man relies exclusively on his conscience he fails to see how a bad conscience is sometimes more wholesome and strong than a deluded one.

When men are confronted by a bewildering variety of alternatives, the path of duty seems to offer a sure way out. They grasp at the imperative as the one certainty.  The responsibility for the imperative rests upon its author, not upon its executor. But when men are confined to the limits of duty, they never risk a daring deed on their own responsibility, which is the only way to score a bull's eye against evil and defeat it. Then man of duty will in the end be forced to give the devil his due.

What then of the man of freedom?   He is the man who aspires to stand his ground in the world, who values the necessary deed more highly than a clear conscience or the duties of his calling, who is ready to sacrifice a barren principle for a fruitful compromise or a barren mediocrity for a fruitful radicalism.  What then of him?  He must beware lest his freedom should become his own undoing.  For in choosing the lesser of two evils he may fail to see the greater evil he seeks to avoid may prove the lesser. Here we have the raw material of tragedy.

Some seek refuge from the rough-and-tumble of public life in the sanctuary of their own private virtue.  Such men however are compelled to seal their lips and shut their eyes to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep themselves pure from the defilements incurred by responsible action.  For all that they achieve, that which they leave undone will still torment their peace of mind. They will either go to pieces in face of this disquiet, or develop into the most hypocritical of all Pharisees.

Who stands his ground? Only the man whose ultimate criterion is not in his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these things when he is called to obedience and responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God. The responsible man seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God.

I find this a relevant discussion concerning  the future of the church. There are so many attempts to address the central crisis of our age - the purpose and function of the church in the 21st century. Much of this crisis is institutional, justifiably so. Yet, that is not really where the problem begins.

Instead, the problem begins with what does it mean to live as a Christian. This question is what I find in Bonhoeffer that challenges my whole perception of what it means to be a Christian. It shows itself in how dependent I am on structure and tradition.  What comes to mind as I read Bonhoeffer is not the crisis of the church against the culture of an evil regime like the Nazis, but the church in conflict with Christ at its very core.

The various approaches to address the National Socialist threat that Bonhoeffer describes above reminds me of the various approaches that we are trying to use to fix the structure and function of the church. Bonhoeffer speaks of the lack of civil courage in Germany during these ten years, though not the lack of bravery and self-sacrifice.

In the course of a long history we Germans have had to learn the necessity and the power of obedience. The subordination of all individual desires and opinions to the call of duty has given meaning and nobility to life.  We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing our duty as a call, and the call as a vocation.  This readiness to follow a command from above rather than our own private opinion of what was best was a sign of a legitimate self-distrust.  Who can deny that in obedience, duty and calling we Germans have again and again excelled in bravery and self-sacrifice? ... The trouble was we did not understand his world.  He forgot that submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends.

He then discusses the ethics of success as no better for understanding where one fits in history.

All the time goodness is successful we can afford the luxury of regarding success as having no ethical significance. But the problem arises when success is achieved by evil means. It is no good then behaving as an arm-chair critic and disputing the issue, for that is to refuse to face the facts.  Nor is opportunism any help, for that is to capitulate before success.  We must be determined not to be outraged critics or mere opportunists.  We must take our full share of responsibility for the moulding of history, whether it be as victors or vanquished.

Bonhoeffer points to a responsibility that is ours given to us by God. The question that I have is what does it mean to be responsible in our time. What does it mean for the church to bear the responsibility for history as he describes it?

To read Bonhoeffer is to be struck hard with the reality that this is a man whose engagement with the world was so complete that his relationship with Christ had come to replace his relationship to the church. For most of us, the church serves as the place where we find God. Without the church there is no faith that is secure and real. This is why, I suspect, that the early Calvinists were so adamant about the place of visual and sensual representations of Christ. That these worldly objects could easily come to replace the living God in Jesus Christ as a result. Is this what has happened in churches? This is what I believe lies behind Bonhoeffer's discussion of folly.

Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than malice.  You can protest against malice, you can unmask it or prevent it by force. ... There is no defence against folly. Neither protests nor force are of any avail against it, and it is never amenable to reason. If facts contradict personal prejudices, there is no need to believe them, and if they are undeniable, they can simply be pushed aside as exceptions.  Thus the fool, as compared with the scoundrel, is invariably self-complacent.

Folly, Bonhoeffer writes, is a moral rather than an intellectual defect.

The fool can often be stubborn, but this must not mislead us into thinking he is independent. One feels somehow, especially in conversation with him, that it is impossible to talk to the man himself, to talk to him personally.  Instead, one is confronted with a series of slogans, watchwords, and the like, which have acquired power over him.  He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very humanity is being prostituted and exploited.  Once he has surrendered his will and become a mere tool, there are no lengths of evil to which the fool will not go, yet all the time he is unable to see that it is evil.  Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation of humanity, which can do irreparable damage to the human character.

But it is just at this point that we realise that the fool cannot be saved by education.  What he needs is redemption. ... the only cure for folly is spiritual redemption, for that alone can enable a man to live as a responsible person in the sight of God.

This redemption is not simply joining a church, becoming a member and joining a program. Rather this is the transformation of the whole person to be one who is totally available to God.  This is what it means to be responsible and free. It also means that many of the "things" of this world become constraints or entanglements that rob us of our freedom. The problem with many prophets and ministries that call for absolute discipleship accompanying vows of poverty is that they are like the rationalist, the fanatic, or the moralist who intellectually or emotionally tries to change the world by sheer will.  It rises from that sense of duty that gets confused and clouded in the multitude of motivations that rob us of our freedom.

What my reading of Bonhoeffer leads me to see that this responsible, spiritually mature person is simply a whole human being.  We aren't to be some super-heroic super-spiritual being whose accomplishments and failures are on some grand scale. Rather, we are to live our human lives as the beings God created us to be. All the things I've quoted from Bonhoeffer above have pointed to how our human lives become diminished in so many ways. The problem with these various paths to perfection is that they result in de-humanizing us and therefore affecting our attitude toward others.  Here is what Bonhoeffer says about those who hold such a contempt for humanity.

There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity.  We know full well that it would be very wrong, and that it would lead to the most sterile relation with our fellow men.  ... The man who despises others can never hope to do anything with them.  The faults we despise in others are always, to some extent at least, our own too.  How often have we expected from others more  than we are prepared to do ourselves!  Why have we until now held such lofty views about human nature? Why have we not recognised its frailty and liability to temptation?   We must form our estimate of men less from their achievements and failures, and more from their sufferings.  The only profitable relationship to others - and especially to our weaker brethren - is one of love, that is the will to hold fellowship with them. Even God did not despise humanity, but became Man for man's sake.

For Bonhoeffer, as we well as it should be for each of us, how we relate to the other individual is where the practicality of our faith is formed. From this simple, basic approach to our relationships with people can grow the ability to demonstrate the kind of civic courage that he practiced in his own ministry.  It simply becomes how we act in love towards others, regardless of who they are.

With a matter of a few months of Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing this letter to friends in 1942, the Gestapo came and arrested Bonhoeffer, and within two years he was hanged for his leadership of the church in Germany.  Eberhard Bethge, friend and biographer of Bonhoeffer, in the introduction to Letters and Papers from Prison,  tells the story of what the man was like during his emprisonment.

Bonhoeffer's last weeks were spent with prisoners drawn from all over Europe. Among them was Payne Best, an English officer. ... Best writes: "Bonhoeffer ... was all humility and sweetness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive. ... He was one of the very few men that I have ever met to whom his God was real and close to him."  And again, "The following day, Sunday, April 8th, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer held a little service and spoke to us in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right worlds to express the spirit of our imprisonment and the thoughts and resolutions which it had brought.  He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said: ' Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us.'  Those words 'come with us' - for all prisoners that had come to mean one thing only - the scaffold.

"We bade him good-bye - he drew me aside - ' This is the end,' he said. 'For me the beginning of life,' ... Next day, at Flossenburg, he was hanged."

We live in a time of great change and ferment in the church. We have church schisms in our own denomination. We have Megachurches that are questioning methods and whose leaders are examples of moral failure in tragic ways. We have churches emerging as communities and communities that are emerging as places of hope and love in cities. All the foundations of the church are being shaken to see what will remain.

What I am finding as I travel this journey of spiritual and ecclesiastical change is that the Christ that gave Bonhoeffer joy and peace at the time of his execution is real. The church is not the whole faith, but one place where we meet God, find nurture and nourishment, focus and replenishment for the lives we are to live outside.  While I am a realist, it is my faith and the experience of it that teaches me to be an optimist. Thank God for the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

RandomKid and Rebuilding the Gulf

This weekend I am in Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi with my daughter, Shelby. She is a member of the RandomKid National Taskforce on Rebuilding the Gulf. Our gathering this weekend is to bring these young social entrepreneurs together for the first time. There are kids 10-15 years old from Louisiana, Iowa, North and South Carolina, and Massachusetts.  Much of their work has gone to benefit Habitat for Humanity here on the Gulf.  Today we flew in, and spent the afternoon with Habitat meeting families who have received or will receive homes, and at home sites. More about them in a later post.

Tomorrow we go to New Orleans and Slidell, Louisiana to see conditions there. Monday we visit a school in Gulfport and spend part of the day at a Pro-Am golf tournament benefiting Habitat. I'll say more, and post some pictures, and soon as I can. I'll also update you on conditions along to Gulf from previous postings over the past two years.

UPDATE: Pictures from Day 1 on the Gulf.

Here the kids are interviewing a family that is about to move into a Habitat for Humanity house in Gautier.

 

These are two Habitat houses being constructed in Biloxi. The one of the left was actually built in Somerset, Kentucky by volunteers from two Presbyterian churches there. Then boxed up, and shipped in a WalMart truck to the Gulf coast. This is increasingly going to be the pattern of construction. Build locally, ship it to the Gulf.

In the afternoon, the kids did some landscaping at a completed Habitat house. Because their ages are 10-15, they are not permitted by Habitat rules to actually do construction work. So, they did some landscaping. Later, a reporter from WLOX in Biloxi came and interviewed some of them for the evening news.

Lastly, the kids of RandomKid are committed to raising $75,000 for Habitat's efforts on the Gulf. The picture on the left is a presentation to Kent Adcock, head of the Habitat operation along the Mississippi Gulf Coast of RandomKid's commitment to Habitat.

One of the ways that RandomKid raises money is through the sale of these house-shaped key chains. You can order them through the RandomKid online store here.

More pictures and stories to come. Stay tuned.

Day 2 is in New Orleans and Slidell, Louisiana.

The Church at the Intersection of the Sacred and Profane

I started writing this post this morning on my phone sitting in the library at church waiting on our worship service to start.  This is a greatly expanded and edited version if you caught the original.

There's a lot conversation taking place about the true nature of the church.  Part of the discussion is about the human dimension in conflict with the institutional.  From my vantage point, I think this is the wrong conflict to address.   These words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship help me to see more clearly that the issue is really how we know Christ. Is he real or a program? Is he a theological construct or a living presence discovered in the daily-ness of life?

Reflect on these words of Bonhoeffer's.

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like the cheapjack's wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices.  Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings form generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits.  Grace without price; grace without cost!  The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.  Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins.  The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part of that grace.  In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.  Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. "All for sin could not atone." The world goes on in the same old way, and we are still sinners "even in the best life" as Luther said.  Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world’s standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That was the heresy of the enthusiasts, the Anabaptists and their kind. ...

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without person confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grass without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

I find this an accurate description of the church as we know it today.  Our debates about ecclesiastical forms misses the point.  Here's a diagram that I use with churches. Regardless of the church or the person, I find that the principal emphasis is on the line between ideas and organizational structure.

What is missing is the relational dimension. By relational, I'm not talking about community. Community can be just as much an abstract concept as church, grace or Jesus Christ. The discussion of community is often about the structure of community. I'm not even talking about the concept of human relationships. We relate to the idea of each, rather than to their reality.  What is the reality of grace, or Jesus or our relationships with people?

I'm not talking about the concept of reality that is open to debate. Rather, I'm talking about what people experience.  What is the experience of the church, community, Christ or relationships?

This reality that all humans experience is the co-mixture of sin and goodness. It is the awkward, frustrating combination of loving kindness with violent self-centeredness. It is the reality we received with Bonhoeffer's costly grace.  Here's what he says.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.  It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son ...

As Christianity spread, and the Church became more secularized,this realization of the costliness of grace gradually faded.  The world was christianized, and grace became its common property.  It was to be had at low cost.

What precisely does this mean?  What does it mean in terms that the average person can understand? What does it mean in relationship to what the church is to be?

What I am about to say will sound odd, but I find the greatest evidence of God's grace in those places of greatest need. Those places of the greatest rawness of life. Here's an example of what I mean.

My son introduced me to a southern rock band named Drive-By-Truckers. One of their early songs - Living Bubba - is a homage to Gregory Dean Smalley, an Atlanta guitarist who died of AIDS. During his last year of life as he was being eaten away by the ravages of his illness, he played over a hundred concerts. Living Bubba is a tribute to this man. Here are some of the lyrics.

I wake up tired and I wake up pi..ed
wonder how I ended up like this
I wonder why things happen like they do
but I don't wonder long cuz I got a show to do

I'm sick at my stomach from the A.Z.T.
Broke at my bank cuz that s..t ain't free
but I'm here to stay (at least another week or two)
I can't die now cuz I got another show to do

Don't give me no pity don't give me no grief
Wait till I die for sympathy
Just help me with this amp and a guitar or two
I can't die now cuz I got another show to do

Don't give me no preachin' no self servin'
I ain't no angel but nobody's deserving
I can dance on my own grave, Thank You!
but I can't die now cuz I got another show...

Some people keep saying I can't last long
but I got my bands I got my songs,
liquor, beer, and nicotine to help me along
and I'm drunk and stubborn as they come
chain smoking, guitar picking, til I'm gone

I ain't got no political agenda
Ain't got no message for the youth of America
...
and come see me next Friday cuz I got another show...

Some people stop living long before they die
Work a dead end job just to scrape on by
but I keep living just to bend that note in two
and I can't die now cuz I got another show...

lyrics by Patterson Hood
music by Drive-by Truckers (Cooley, Hood, Howell, Lane, Neff)

To hear DBT play this is hear the intersection of all the desires of human life mixed with all the pain and disaster that can come with it. It is the intersection of the sacred and the profane.  (Here's a recent DBT concert play of the song. Listen to both links. The intro to Living Bubba is at the end of the first song. Intro, Song. You find more of DBT at www.archive.org. Also, these guys are crude and profane, but also wise and understanding about the hardships of life.)  The stories they tell in their songs point me to people who need to know God's love in some real, tangible way. Abstract theology is no use to them.  They need to know love with some reality. Oddly, the grace of Christ seems more real in the face of songs of drunks, whores, drug addicts, pimps, pushers and people whose self-destructiveness knows no boundaries.  Oh, but for the grace of God go I.  You can read Patterson Hood's telling of Gregory Dean Smalley's story here.

The other day in a comment at Bill Kinnon's blog, I offered three analogies of the church in our time. Here's what I wrote.

I'm constantly amazed at how different my world is from this world you shine a light on. So, I've decided that there are three paradigms operating. Two are dysfunctional and the other is not yet emerging, but is creeping into view.

The first is the mainstream world I inhabit where the governing paradigm is the church as MUSEUM. Pastors are curators, and members docents.

The second paradigm is the church growth world where the governing paradigm is church as ENTREPRENEURIAL ENTERPRISE. Pastors are entrepreneurial marketers and members are customers.

The third paradigm claims to be community, but I'm not sure community is actually possible in our culture at this point in time. So, the governing paradigm may be more, church as COFFEE SHOP. Pastors are baristas and members are visitors connected wirelessly to a wider world than the shop and receiving some modicum of nourishment through their coffee and pastries.

As I have been driving the past two days, I'm wondering if the real problem is that we have traded life for religion. I like this quote from Bonhoeffer.

"During the last year or so, I have come to appreciate the "worldliness" of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a homo religiosus but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus became man... It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a converted sinner, a churchman, a righteous man, or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one... This is what I mean by worldliness -- taking life in one's stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness... How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?"

In this sense, our quest to be religious becomes a block to community and to our commitment to follow Christ wherever he leads.

Bringing this full circle back to what is the church to be in our time. As Christian believers, we find ourselves debating church structure, community and theological purity.  What this suggests to me is that we have lost our connection to the depth of need that people have for knowing the grace and love of God.  We are lost in the church thinking that we already have it together, and therefore we must defend the church against those who would change it.

The Coffee Shop motif may be more apt that I originally suspected. For there, everyone comes, everyone is different, and our needs are simple and commonly shared. There is no great investment in the advocacy of one type of drink from another. We gather, sip coffee and share stories. We find support, maybe friendship, and we go on with life.

The reality is that church structure is both essential and irrelevant. We each can exist without the church. Yet, at the same time, we need it because of what we commonly share, our need for love and grace.

Let me end with a simple prayer: Help us to love so that we might understand just how great and costly is your grace for us. Bless us so that we may be a blessing to others. Lead us to be the church wherever we are. Amen.

Dealing with the people who want to throw you out

Every pastor has critics. Some of them become advocates for your removal.  The social environment of many churches is such that these people are behind the pattern of short pastoral tenure.

If that pattern is to change, then how we handle toxic people has to change. Two recent interviews helped me to understand what I intuitively understood.  The key is in how the leadership manages the social environment of the church.

The first interview is of Robert Kaplan by radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Kaplan is a journalist with The Atlantic Monthly who writes about global conflicts and the American military. You can read the transcript of the interview here. I wrote about him a few weeks ago here.

The second is an interview with David Kilcullen by Charlie Rose. Kilcullen is an Australian military advisor to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq. You can read that interview here.

I've written about the relationship of this to organizational leadership here.

In a socially divisive church context, people turn passive very quickly when a group forms to challenge the leadership of the pastor. Most pastors I know don't want to address these challenges publicly. They don't want to be the focus of conflict. So, they ignore it, try to accommodate the critics, only making matters worse. In an attempt to be fair minded, they set the stage for their departure. 

What I see in the interviews with Kaplan and Kilcullen is an approach to organizational leadership that is instructive for pastors.  Kaplan points to the humanitarian mission of the US military as provide a safe, secure, healthy environment for people to address their country's problems. Kilcullen points to the nature of counterinsurgency as providing a social environment that is protective of the people, and inhospitable to cynical, divisive individuals and groups.

The social environment of many churches is just like the command and control management structures of businesses.  Businesses end up with the same problems. Toxic people who are destructive of the social fabric that is necessary for the organization to meet its goals are problems that must be addressed.  How you address them determines whether they are neutralized or made to be martyrs for a cause.

The equipping function of church leadership extends beyond being prepared to minister. It is also being equipped to function as a full member of the congregation. This means taking personal responsibility for the welfare, health and security of the whole congregation.  In a command and control pastoral leadership structure, the critics have an easy target for their anger. However, if the church's leadership learns to empower the membership to be fully engaged, then the toxic people are surrounded.  Let me give you a couple examples.

Recently, I was working with a church. The pastor was under fire from a couple groups. Individual elders may have known a little about the situation, but nothing substantial. The pastor, still in his first three years at the church, was feeling like maybe it was time for him to go. Between meetings during a Saturday retreat, he told me he was going to resign that afternoon when the Session met with me.  I persuaded him that he first needed to discuss the situation with the Session. So, he did. He told them what was going on and how he felt. Each member around that table affirmed his ministry, told him he was fulfilling what they had asked him to do when they called him, and that they didn't want him to leave. Even those elders whose family members are part of the "insurgents" group seeking to run him off affirmed his ministry to them.  Weeks later, the critics have died down, he is in a much better situation, and the church is beginning to address the real issues that confront them.

In another situation where I was a member of the church's staff, the senior minister, a kind, loving person who deferred all decisions to the Session was under fire because his leadership style was totally opposite of the previous pastor who had been there 33 years and served like a corporate CEO. In this situation, there was competition between groups as to which one would be successful in running him out of town.  He was a deeply spiritual man who believed that God called him there, and that God would call him away when it was time. He survived five years of intense criticism and then he resigned and left town.

In the first situation, because the pastor had been open with them, the Session was empowered to communicate to the congregation by word-of-mouth that the pastor had their support, and they were not interested in his leaving.  Opposition melted away.  In the second instance, the Session had never been developed to be a deliberative body. It was a command and control structure that worked with a particular type of leader.  As a result, the Session was ill-prepared to address issues of conflict within their midst, and by extension in the congregation.

If Kaplan's humanitarianism and Kulcullen's insurgency analogies are instructive, it means that an important aspect of pastoral leadership is providing safety and security for members to act responsibly. When there is no openness, nor a clear sense of what unifies the church, then divisive, toxic people find an opening to establish a destructive presence.

Openness, respect, responsibility and trust are key elements of a healthy church social environment. Consider what is required for the man or woman who sits on the back row to become a vocal supporter and contributor to the church. When the membership is empowered and equipped to take responsibility for the church, then they can address within their midst the critics who are destructive of the social environment of the congregation.  This is all part of why churches are not really membership associations, but communities.

Why the Human Dimension matters

There is great ferment happening in the church. Those that are trying to hold on to the old ways are going to find themselves increasingly isolated.  The move is away from thinking of the church as an institution to thinking of the church as a community. Plenty of people are writing and speaking about this. Let me encourage to participate in those conversations.  However, there is an element in this discussion that is not sufficiently addressed.

I've reached the conclusion that one of the great impediments to change in society, and I include within that realm, the church, is an understanding of the human dimension.  When the time comes I write some sort of critique about modern/postmodern attitudes toward humanity. But not right now. Instead, I want to say something simple and theological.

I have the sense that the church as well as society has lost an understanding of humanity that is based on purpose.  Most of what we believe about human beings is based on the tension that exists between the person as an individual and as a member of a social gathering point, like a church or a family.  In the church, this tension is compounded by our doctrine of sin that virtually envelopes our total understanding of humanity.  As I've reflected on this thought over the past 15 years, since a paper I wrote on human creation and leadership, I'm coming to the conclusion that we have failed to understand sin because we fail to understand God's goodness embedded in his human creation. Or, to say in reverse, we cannot fully understand the nature of sin without fully understanding God's purpose in creating humanity.

Because we are out of touch with the human dimension, we find ourselves failing to understand what the church is to be. And in particular, failing to understand what human community is for.  For me, the last few verses in Acts 2 are a key-hole view of human community.  It is such a complex and fantastical picture, it is virtually impossible to understand how in the world did they make it happen.  I think it is simple. They didn't try. They didn't institutionalize it. They didn't try to create a formula. For a brief moment in human history several thousand people were genuinely transformed by the power of God, so that they became the example par excellence.  And once we began to try to control it, we lost it.

For us individually, what it means to live as a human being is to no longer to live for self, but to live in the moment of dependence upon God. As soon as I wrote those words, I realized that I don't really know what that means. That to say it is to claim some sort of control over my life. All I can say is that living in response to what is presented to me has meant not simply a more peaceful existence, but also a more stressful one. The stress is the recognition that to respond to our opportunities brings conflict to how we manage our time.

Let me give you an example that I'm living with right now.  I have three client projects ongoing. Two will take the better part of the next eight to ten months to complete. The other five to six. Other projects will come along to add to that work load. On top of that, I have three other projects that are all volunteer projects, and are as big as the others. One is the planning of an event to recognize a community leader who is in his last months of life. It is a big event because it involves coordinating involvement with people from across the country.  The second one is the leadership, planning and preparation for our church's senior high youth group mission trip next summer. And the third, is the planning involved in taking 25 Boy Scouts to Yellowstone National Park next summer for a week-long backpacking trip.  Each of these projects require time, thought, and both communication and coordination with lots of people. Each one has a budget. Each one deadlines.  Each one is critical to the functioning of their respective organizations.

This relates back to my thoughts about the human dimension in this way.  The success of all six of these projects is dependent upon the interaction of people. In essence, for any of these projects to meet their goals requires community to be built. It is not simply a set formula that is applied like mixing ingredients to bake a cake. Here's why I think our perception of human creation needs to change.

If we take a sin-centric attitude toward people, we end up with cynicism. We look for reasons to blame project failure on their sin.  If, however, we are to take a creation view, then we'll see that each person is God's creation. Each with gifts, strengths, talents and expertise that can contribute to the success of a project.  If your view of humankind is cynical, it is hard to love human beings.  It is hard to see them as human persons rather than examples of an abstract conception of sin.

The reality we each face is two fold. One is that we must live as human beings in the moment of dependence upon the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ. And second, that we must live with people, in relationship with those person who are both created in the image of God, and are sinners.  So, the last word, on what was to be a brief statement, is that human community requires us to live in the healthy tension of the loss of control and with human beings who are both good as created by God and sinful as their willful acts of rebellion demonstrate daily.  There is every reason to be cynical, if you factor out the perspective that we find in a creation view of God's purpose for each of our lives.

So, the next time you face a person who is contentious or cynical, difficult to deal with, just try to imagine what is the goodness that God endowed them with at their creation.  Then you may be able to see behind their anger and negativity to see what it is that they truly love. Find that out, and human community is possible.

Maybe it is time for us to take back the term "humanism" from the secular humanists who, I suspect, only believe in humanity as a concept rather than in the tension-filled specificity of human relationships.

Understanding God’s Call to the Church

It has been three weeks since my last posting. It doesn't mean that I have nothing to say. On the contrary, I've been thinking about the relationship between pastors, Sessions, members, the past, the present, the future, history, mission, passivity, activism, generations and how all this relates to our relationships with Christ.  The following essay is a work in progress that I wrote for one of my client churches.  It is not intended to be a final word, or even a complete word on the topic of God's call. The passages that I reflect on are one's that I have been using in my work with this particular church. I hope it is helpful.

Understanding God’s Call to the Church

The following essay is my reflection upon a few biblical texts that help me to understand God’s call to the church and its members. My thoughts are directed toward believers in Jesus Christ who are members of a local congregation. This is not a complete theological statement on the nature of call. It is simply a few ideas offered as way to talk about our call from God.

There six texts, some short, some long, and these texts help me to understand that God’s purpose is to take us, his human creation, and live through us. What they show me is that church membership is not an accurate understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Instead to be a member is about how the love of God comes alive in us and through us touches other people. In other words, the genius of God is that he both sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to be God in the flesh in our world, and to die so that we may live, and that he now uses us as that same representation of his grace and love in our world.

Before you go any further, take a few minutes to read through the texts. Don’t try to think about them too deeply. Just read them. Get a basic sense of what they are saying. My comments will direct you back to reading them more specifically.

 

Abraham’s Call
Genesis 12:1-9

What amazes me about this story is that this guy in his later years is called by God to go and start something new. It is not only a statement about call, but about what God believes our potential is throughout the course of our life. Abraham and his extended family go as God called them. And we are the beneficiaries of their obedience.

I also see that God’s call is specific. He didn’t come asking for volunteers. He came to Abraham. He picked him out. I wonder what it is that God would pick us out to do?

Reflection Question: Of all the things that you’ve done through the church, what has been the most meaningful? Which one do you feel made the most difference? Make a note of this here.

The Great Commission
Matthew 28:16-20

 

This Matthew text comes as Jesus is preparing to enter heaven after his Resurrection. He tells the disciples that he is sending them out to share the Gospel with the world. What is interesting about this call to go? The Scripture calls them disciples, which simply means that they are followers or students of a teacher. They have spent their time preparing, without knowing they were doing so. If you read through the Gospels, the disciples were never very insightful about what was happening. They just responded in the moment to what Jesus was doing and saying. So, now Jesus sends them out, and from here on they are referred to as “apostles.” An apostle simply means “the one who is sent.” In this sense, Abraham was like an apostle. He was sent.

To be sent implies that we are being sent some place for a reason. Many of us have no experience with this idea. We have grown up and lived in the same place all our lives. We have been a member of the same church; maybe lived in the same house, know the same people all of our lives. This may well have been Abraham’s experience. And yet, he was sent to a place that was alien and strange.

Reflection Question: The question is not “Where is God sending you?” Rather, are you willing to be sent? Not are you willing to be sent to China or Africa, but are you willing to be sent? Discovering God’s call starts with a willingness for God to use us as instruments of his grace and love. If you are willing to be “sent,” what do you feel you’d like to know first?

The Fellowship of Believers
Acts 2: 42-47

God’s call doesn’t come in a vacuum. It isn’t just an idea disconnected from the life we live here in this world. It is real and practical, and it is worked in relationship with people. This picture of the early church is compelling to me. It is because I’ve never known a group like this. Never know a group this generous and open. Yet, this new fellowship of Christ believers is caring for one another. It leads me to realize that our individual call is a part of the church’s call. God reaches us through other people, and the church exists as a place where God communicates to us what he wants us to know. It may be through a sermon or a Sunday school lesson, or more likely through the interest and kindness of another person towards us.

Reflection question: Think back over the past few months and try to remember what people have said to you about your impact upon their lives. If you can’t remember any specific instance, think instead of those who have made a difference in your life. What was it they did? How did it affect you? What can you learn from this situation?

Unity in the Body of Christ
Ephesians 4:1-5, 7-16

These verses from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians are some of my favorite in Scripture. I see two important messages here. The first is that how we live matters. Paul asks us to live our lives in a way that is worthy of our faith in Christ. This is a responsibility that we each have. This leads to a question of what it means to live a life worthy of the call we have received. It seems that there is a two-step process. First is a call to faith and devotion to Jesus Christ. That call is followed by a call to make our faith real and tangible in how we live. The call that we receive, just like Abraham’s, is a call to live in Christ, doing things that are worthy of our call to be apart of God’s family.

The next question is also in two parts. What am I to do as my call? And then, how am I to do it? Paul is presenting us the idea that the church is a place where we discover our call and are equipped to follow our call wherever it leads. When we do there is a specific impact that comes. “… so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.” There is a two-part benefit to our receiving and following our call. First, the church grows in strength, and secondly, we do too.

Reflection question: If you were to feel stronger about your faith and service to Jesus Christ, what do you feel you need to learn or develop in order to be stronger?

Spiritual Gifts and Love
1 Corinthians 12:1-31
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

These last two texts address two aspects of our call that need to always be kept together. The first is our spiritual gifts, and the second is how love needs to always be at the center of our lives.

My experience has shown me that we discover our gifts and strengths through two sources. One is experience. We participate in an event or activity, and our contribution matters to the outcome. We make the connection between what I did and the success of the event. Then we realize that I can do something that makes a difference. We feel good about ourselves and look for other opportunities to participate. This is the tangible, doing aspect of discovering our gifts.

Think of our call from God like we are learning a craft. We have an inkling of an idea that we’d like to learn something. If maybe woodworking or playing the guitar, but something deep inside of us connects with the idea of doing that specific thing. As we practice and grow in ability, we discover that we may like the idea of doing something, but don’t have the talent for it, or we find that we are actually good at it. Then we want to do more. Our call from God is a discovery process. We don’t know everything at the beginning. We learn what we need to know as we proceed along the path of growth.

The second way we discover our gifts is through the advice and encouragement of others. It isn’t necessarily a close friend or family member. In reality, it probably isn’t. That encouragement typically comes from someone who thanks us for what we did.

Reflection question: Over the past year, what have you done that really made the difference in a situation or in the life of someone, whether in the church or elsewhere? Whose life was touched by your? What situation was made better because of your contribution? And, who benefited from the difference you made? Write these thoughts down because they are indicators of where God’s call may be leading you.

In Addition: I realized later after posting this that this is not a very profound statement of God's call to the church.  It isn't suppose to be. Rather, it is intended to be basic and simple.  It is basic and simple where are the hardest because they exist within the realm of our own abilities. So, may God grant you the courage to fulfill your call, whatever it may be.

History or the future

One of the great assets of Presbyterian churches is our history.  We see the history of our congregations as one of our great strengths.  And it is, but it can also be a great impediment to being the church we need to be in the future. While there is much to say about this, I want to be brief.

When the history of the church takes prominence in the life of the church it creates an environment of preservation. The expectation by the membership is to not change, but to preserve the past in the present. Often pastors get into trouble because they have insufficiently protected the past. I often speak of the pastor as "the curator of the museum of memories."  One of my client churches actually has a museum in their church, and they are justly proud of their 200 years of ministry.

However, they are like many churches. Their honoring of the past has hidden liabilities in it. 

1.  It assumes that new people want to share that history at the level they do.
2.  It breeds a passivism that is critical and defensive.
3.  It is a selective memory that provides a basis for no change or even the addressing of potential change.  The only change is to return to the golden days of the past.
4.  It assumes that the current strengths of the church are the same as the good old days or that those strengths or practices of the past are still relevant for today.
5.  If they know that the church is decline, then the answer is to return to a time with the church was strong.

This phenomenon is no respecter of theology, culture or region.  Even new church developments quickly develop this behavior. So, what is the answer?

1.  Whatever your past strengths are, they still matter. They just need to be interpreted for a contemporary time. 
2.  The preservation of the history of the church cannot be the church's mission. That mission needs to be a call from God to be a loving, redemptive force in the world. Most likely, the strengths of the past were built on a foundation of a vital, healthy church life.
3.  An honest appraisal of the church's current situation is essential if the future is to become a realistic aspiration.  Except in certain situations, I don't find that reliving the issues of the past are productive for creating a hopeful vision of the future.
4.  Membership identity needs to shift from the church to the church's mission from God.  It is a shift from membership to call.
5.  You need to honor the past by looking to the future. This requires a change in mindset to determine what should be the impact of the church in the future. Whatever that impact is functions in the same way that the impact of the church in the past did to create the love, devotion and commitment of people to the church. 

The key to making this shift of perspective lies with the pastor and the Session. You are the leaders of the church, and if you can honestly address this reality, then you have made the most important step forward. All subsequent steps will be easy compared to the one that admits need.

If you want to know more, just give me a call or send an email.

A Place for Asking the Big Questions

Question: Have all the Big Questions been answered?  If they have, does that mean that we are not suppose to ask them any more, just accept the answers and go on with life?

This is what I thought when I read the exchange in Comment about whether colleges are letting students ask the Big Questions any longer.

Start with Gideon Strauss' posting, and follow the links.

The other question that came to mind is whether the church is a place where people can ask the Big Questions.

I find question asking essential to life. It is like breathing air.  My leadership blog is entitled Leading Questions for a reason. Here's what I think.

People who don't ask questions don't have answers. People who think they have answers and don't ask questions don't know what they don't know. And in a world of rapidly expanding knowledge, this is a dangerous proposition.

This is part of the reason why I focus so heavily on asking questions in my client work.

The other day, in a meeting with the Session of a church, I asked rhetorical questions. The only reason they were rhetorical was because I knew they had never asked these questions and therefore didn't have answers.  I was trying to provoke them to think about their church and their faith in a different way. 

Too often when the Big Questions are invoked, the discussion becomes an intellectual debate about truth or logic or historical theology. When the Big Questions are asked, we also need to ask, "What am I supposed to do?"  In many of these discussions, it seems all that matters is being right, or having the correct answer.

So, I'll concluded with this question, "Is it possible to have a complete and final answer to one of the Big Questions, and not be able to practice it in real life? 

For example, "Is there a God?" That is one of the Big Questions. 

If we answer yes, then what sort of life does that lead to, and for those of who do believe, are we living it.

If the answer is no, then what sort of life should we need live?

What this really shows is that every answer leads to another question and so forth.

Ultimately, our mental, emotional and spiritual health is a product of the questions we ask and the answers we live.

So, do you think the church is a place where the Big Questions should be asked?

Worship and Mission - The Ground-Zero of Change

This brief post by Virginia Postrel opened up a window to a world I had not considered, the pre-Reformation world of England. She points to an Atlantic Monthly article by Ben Schwartz on the historical writings of Eamon Duffy. Until this posting, I had never heard of Duffy.  I now want to read him.

What this suggests to me is another reason to believe that we are at a transition point in both the Reformation era and in Christendom at large. Here we have an affirmation of the church prior to the Reformation that, seemingly, is not simply an advocacy of Rome.  Instead, it is something simpler, less political, less institutional, more personal, maybe more spiritual, and that is the practice of worship as experienced by Christian believers.

What is provocative about this notion is the contrast between pre-Reformation and Reformation worship. One is sensory and the other more intellectual.  Is it any wonder that out of the Reformation ethos, the Enlightenment was born. An intellectual movement that essentially believed that life could be ordered by the mind.  Is that also not what transpired in much of the church as "systems" of theology were developed that intended to encapsulate the whole of the Gospel in a systematic order. I can't help thinking of my theology professors' use of Louis Berkof's Systematic Theology as a prime example of Reformed systematic thought. Is this not the source - not Berkof, but this mindset - of much of the controversy that afflicts us today - a belief in the rightness and purity of our systems of theology?  Is this not at the heart of the schism that is dividing our denomination once again?

This transition point begins with changes in worship.  First, religion became personal with the charismatic movement, rising out of the older Pentecostal revivals of the past century.  Worship became personal.  Then following came the shift in worship style. Contemporary music, casual dress, liturgical dance, narrative dramatic presentations all shifted the focus of worship away from the centrality of the sermon. That second shift has taken place as the ministry of the church moves from the pastor or professional staff to the people as they discover their own personal call to mission.  This is the medieval order slipping back into the life of the church.

As I lay in bed tonight, I was thinking about how this fits with what I am seeing as the challenges before traditional mainsteam Presbyterian churches.

The image I have is of a congregation who is essentially passive in their church participation. Everything is focused on the pastor.  There is a not-so-benign belief that the church is about the pastor, focused on the performance of Sunday morning.  Because it is passive, it is also critical.

In so many of my church projects, there is an undercurrent of disaffection with the pastor.  Is it warranted? It depends. Depends on what your expectations are. If your expectations are for perfection and a vicarious uplifting spiritual experience that lasts for seven days until your next spiritual fix is administered, then you'll be disappointed. The result is isolation and alienation of the clergy from the people and the people from a genuine faith lived out through the church.   

Hear me in what I am saying. What we now have is a church of spectator/critics who are alienated from the kind of genuine experience of Christ that is more indicative of pre-Reformation medieval worship. They are not only alienated from the experience, but also from the assurance of Christ's love that comes through the transformation of one's life from passive spectator to active servant of Christ. 

The huge question in my mind is how can a church change, and change before it is too late. It would seem, that it begins with how worship is experienced leading to a change in understanding not primarily the role of the pastor, but rather what God calls me to be and do through the church. As I worked with a church that is in this transition, the trick has been to shift the emphasis away from the pastor to the people. And this is done first with the Session.  Here is the ground-zero of change for the church. It starts here. If there is no true experience of worship, then it is much more difficult to understand our individual call within the context of the church.

Ministry of Hope - A Malawi mission story

Jim Skidmore, a long time friend, sent me this letter from Nancy Dimmock. Nancy and her husband, Frank, are Presbyterian missionaries, just recently relocated to Lesotho from Malawi. This letter tells a story about the Ministry of Hope in Malawi.  that I find is a great encouragement to God's spirit alive in the church. I hope you will share it with your friends, families and churches.

July 21, 2007

The Honourable Deputy Minister of Gender, ChildWelfare and Community Services,

The Board Chairman of Ministry of Hope; The U.S. Ambassador; The Ambassador from South Africa; The Director of Social Services; The staff of Ministry of Hope; Foster and Adoptive parents; All children; Ladies and Gentlemen

I am so moved and honoured by this wonderful occasion. What pleases me most is that it is an occasion which honours and values Children. We lift them up and acknowledge that they are indeed a blessing. They are a blessing to our families; they are a blessing to our nation; they are a blessing to our world. They enrich our lives. They teach us about love and joy and wonder and responsibility and challenge and hope. It is a privilege to serve them.

I do want to correct one misconception. The real founder of Ministry of Hope is Fletcher Matandika. This is important for the sake of truth and for your encouragement. This ministry is local and grass roots. It was started by a Malawian and is being run by Malawians. God gave Fletcher the original vision and motivation to reach out to the needy children in the Matapila area – TA Mazengera. That first Saturday in April 1999 when he had a small tea party and Bible study there were 60 children registered. It has now grown to 6 community based child care centers in villages north and south of Lilongwe, caring for almost 3500 children on a daily basis. And it really is a model of care that can and should be replicated throughout the country. It is a day care program which is commited to meeting the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of children, supported by volunteers in their communities and giving support and encouragement to their caregivers as well. It is my prayer that God will raise up more young men and women like Gift and Shadrach and Jimmy and William and other center supervisors, who will establish these centers of care for children, both in the villages and the cities of Malawi – teaching them that they are precious and full of potential and teaching them to honour and serve the God who loves them so much.

It was in September 2000 that God brought me to the ministry. I had been helping Fletcher behind the scenes with prayer and some occasional typing. One Saturday he asked my husband Frank and I to come and see what was happening. We went and saw him caring for several hundred children. We saw in their faces the simple joy of a full belly and a place to belong, surrounded by people who care. And we also saw an extremely malnourished infant sitting on her auntie’s lap. My husband, who has been working in health and nutrition in Africa for 20 years, realized at once that the baby’s life was on the line. We returned to town and couldn’t sleep. First thing Monday morning we went to the District Social Welfare office and told Amai Chisala the story. To her everlasting credit, she was willing to go at once and see what could be done for the child.

It turned out that the child’s mother had died the previous February of a suspected AIDS related illness. The husband had disappeared. The grandmother was very elderly and infirm. No one wanted the responsibility of the care of the infant left behind. Her auntie had stepped forward at the last minute, but was struggling with her care. She agreed to release the child to the government and Mrs. Chisala brought her to us.

I took the infant to the doctor immediately. He was not encouraging. She was 2 ½ years old and weighed 5.5 kg! He said she had a 50% chance to live. So I said, OK, what do we have to do to give her that 50% chance? And he inserted a nasogastric feeding tube down her nose and into her stomach and told us to feed her every hour around the clock with a rich soya phala. We did this, and after one week, she had regained some energy and interest in life. One day while sitting on my lap during a meal, she reached out and began to eat by herself. After two weeks we were able to take the tube out and she was on her way back to health. She was quite stunted for a couple of years, but now has completely caught up with her age mates. She is a beautiful and healthy 9-year old.

The extended family released her for adoption through Social Welfare and she became a part of our family. Her given name was Alifa. We kept her name. She was the first-born of her birth mother. And she was the first-born of what became the crisis nursery.  Through Alifa we learned about the plight of infants when they lose their mothers in various ways. We also learned how to care for them and learned about the processes and caregivers and government structures and procedures in place for their care. We became connected to the police and the hospitals, working in partnership with them, to provide crisis care for these very youngest in our nation.

The Crisis Nursery was officially established under the Ministry of Hope with the blessing of the Department of Social Welfare in October, 2002. Since that time, we can all proudly take credit for saving over 300 babies who would otherwise almost surely have perished. The wonderful, committed, loving mothers and fathers at the Crisis Nursery, The Department of Social Services, the Victim Support Unit of the police, the hospitals, community-based care center supervisors, Community service organizations like the Rotary Club, the women of the church, lawyers and the judicial system, embassy personnel, many volunteers and of course, the families that have taken these babies into their hearts and homes have all been a part of giving these children a chance at Life. Each of these babies has a story of miracles and hope like Alifa’s. What a privilege it is for each one of us to be a part of those stories.

I hope you’ll bear with me for a few more minutes. While I have the ears of this esteemed audience I have a few words of admonition as well. Those of us gathered here have been given both a privilege and a responsibility. The responsibility is to be the voice for the children in places of policy and power. They cannot petition Parliament on their own behalf. They cannot make policy on their own behalf. They cannot protect themselves or act in their own best interest. We are the ones who must do that. Please, my friends, make their best interest your aim. It can be your justification and your source of courage. Yes, laws need to be established to protect the children, but also to facilitate their care. There needs to be flexibility. There needs to trust and collegiality between us. The needs of infants are acute and need to be met in a timely manner.  Their sense of security and identity are at stake. When a mother is carrying a child in her womb, there are many unknowns and some insecurity. She longs to hold the child and get to know her child and help her child know that she belongs and is loved and protected. This is very much like the fostering period. There are uncertainties and insecurities. The foster parents long to protect their child with their name and their resources and help her know that she belongs and is loved. To prolong the pregnancy by even a few days is agony to the mother. Could we not consider this natural time frame of 9 months to be our working frame to determine the best care for an orphaned child? It is certainly possible if we work together. We can share information and transportation and facilitate each others’ work in a variety of ways to make this happen. The children need for us to make them a priority and to make our decisions in their best interest.

Thank you for your attention to my few remarks. Thank you for all of your hard work on behalf of the babies and children of this great nation. Please be encouraged now with the words of 1 Chronicles 16:8-12

“Give thanks to the Lord and pray to him.
Tell the nations what he has done.
Sing to him; Sing praises to him.
Tell about all his miracles.
Be glad that you are his;
Let those who seek the Lord be happy.
Depend on the Lord and his strength;
Always go to him for help.
Remember the miracles his has done,
His wonders, and his decisions.”

Thank you and may God bless us all.

Nancy Dimmock

If Nancy's letter moves you to contribute, you can do so at,

Ministry of Hope, Inc.
P.O. Box 1462
Black Mountain, NC 28711

The shifting ground under the church

Roger Nishioka, Columbia seminary professor, has been looking at trends in what he terms the "post-denominational young adult" cohort.  Leslie Scanlon in Presbyterian Outlook reports on what his research is showing.

“Pay attention to trends,” Nishioka advised the Presbyterian Communicators Network, meeting in Louisville in early August. “Fads are what toss us to and fro,” often as a way of marketing new products. “But trends are worthy of your attention.” His research, for example, has investigated why so few young adults stay with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), even if they have been baptized and confirmed in the denomination and, in many cases, were involved in their high school youth groups. 

“They’re saying they’re post-denominational,” Nishioka told the Presbyterian communicators. “That denominations really and truly do not matter.” In many ways, the religious distance among Protestant denominations is collapsing, he said. Fifty ears ago, a Presbyterian marrying a Methodist “was a big deal. Now we’re just glad they’re getting married.”

So for many young adults, the issue of denominational affiliation is insignificant. Instead, as they consider whether to become involved in a church, the question is, “Is the Holy Spirit active in this place?”

Roger notes the following trends.

From tribal education to immigrant education

"... congregations would do better off to consider new folks as immigrants — people unfamiliar with the landscape — than as people already familiar with the tribal ways ...  So if someone stands up and says, “Let’s open the Bible to this familiar story” or “Let’s sing this familiar song,” that can come across as saying, “You don’t belong. The gospel’s not for you. This is just for the tribe,” Nishioka explained. The good news is just for “people who think like us, who are at our income levels, our educational attainment levels, all of that.”

But that leaves out so many."

From mission out there to mission right here

“it is so clear that there is a weariness and a wariness among these young adults that mission is always somewhere far away, out there. … They’re wondering … ‘Do we have any impact right here where we live?’ ”

From reasoned spirituality to mystery-filled spirituality

Many young people today are drawn to a sense of mystery, awe and wonder — to an approach to spirituality that’s based on more than reason, which can make some rationally-leaning Presbyterians nervous.

From official leadership to gifted leadership

... the use of commissioned lay pastors in the PC(USA), a program that bubbled up from the grassroots. At first, some involved with the national levels of the church were skeptical.

But Nishioka thought as the proposal flew through the General Assembly: “Good grief, is it possible that the Holy Spirit is at work in this place?”

What he sees there — and what Nishioka says he sees young adults expecting — is a shift from leadership in the church based on credentials alone to leadership based on gifts among all who are willing to serve.

From long-term planning to short-term planning

In a world in which change comes so rapidly, an important question is how agile the PC(USA) can be, Nishioka said. For example, he recounted how his father, a retired pastor, once served on a presbytery planning committee that took seven years to draft a 10-year plan.

From mass evangelism to one-on-one evangelism

... congregations want to learn “how to talk to people about Jesus Christ in a way that isn’t coercive or manipulative, that isn’t oppressive, but that engages them,” Nishioka said. His friend told him: “We are besieged by these requests” for such training.

From "traditioning" to experience

“This is the most image-conscious and image-driven generation in history,” Nishioka said. “If they don’t see it, they don’t know it.”

And the author Sharon Daloz Parks, in the book Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, says “we owe young adults when they come to worship three images,” Nishioka said. “In worship, young adults should see an image of hope. They should see the image of what cannot be allowed. And they should see an image of life in Jesus Christ.”

From duty and responsibility to "What's in it for Me?"

There’s no question: this is a consumer age. “The influence of consumer culture means we’re looking for what meets our needs,” Nishioka said.

And that poses questions for religious institutions — from seminaries trying to decide what are necessary amenities to include as they build new residence halls, to congregations setting priorities for what to do next.

Recently I gave a presentation to the leadership of a large Presbyterian church where I was asked to speak about current trends that I saw happening in the church.  Reading Roger's list was helpful because I realized that I wasn't too far off his perspective. Here's what I presented.  Our perspectives are different however. He is looking at this from a generational perspective as a seminary faculty member more embedded within network of the denomination. My perspective is almost that of an outsider, consultant to churches, whose vantage point is not from the inside out. 

For this presentation, I was asked in particular to look at trends in the four areas that were most significantly affecting their congregation - Membership, Stewardship, Worship & Communication.  Here are the trends that I see. It is a shifting landscape that requires pastors, members and churches to learn to how to manage the transition that is now taking place.

Transition from 1^st Generation (20^th century) renewal/change movements to 2^nd Generation (21^st century) movements: *This is a representative list, not an exhaustive one.

1st Generation Movements 1940’s to 1990’s

Jesus Movement
Fundamentalists
Non-Fundamentalist Evangelicals
Charismatics    
Lay Renewal
Mainstream Schismatics
Neo-Orthodox   
Liberation Theology       
Social Gospel

2^nd Generation Movements 1990’s to Today

Post-modern      
Post-liberal   
Post-evangelical   
Post-charismatic
Post-Christian   
Radical Orthodoxy         
Generous Orthodoxy   
Emergent         
Missional

MEMBERSHIP Shift

From Member to Personal Call
From Institution to Community
From Consumer to Contributor

Shift to Personal Call

Faith Experience Needs To Be Personally Meaningful & Socially Fulfilling

WORSHIP Shift

Shift away from a Sermon-centric, Music-centric, Sunday-centric & Performance-centric Worship

Shift to an Ancient/Future Liturgy

Music, prayer, scripture, sermon and congregational response are integrated for an experience of God’s presence and communal unity.

Shift from Consumer to Contributor

Consumer Mindset:

Church Serves Me.

Contributor Mindset:

I serve Christ through participation and contribution.

STEWARDSHIP Shift

From a Budget Focus to a Whole Life Focus.
From Annual Campaign to Year-round Program.

COMMUNICATION Shift

From a One-Way, Formal Distribution of Information to a Two-Way, Informal Conversation as a Community.

Communication Technology

Newsletters      
Worship Bulletin          
IM: Instant Messenger
Websites
Email   
Weblog
Podcasts
Live-Streaming Video
Social Network Sites
Parking Lot

Communal Communication

Small Groups 
Conversational Planning Projects
Social Gatherings
Stories and Testimonies
Service and Outreach

Other Trends

The Role of Mission

Faith and Personal Call
From a Sending Church to a Church that is Sent

Global Christianity as the Future of the Church

Africa
1900 – 10 million Christians    10% of population
2000 - 360 million Christians   46% of population
Source – Philip Jenkins, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

Leonard Sweet - Church in 21^st century

EPIC:
Experience
Image-rich
Participatory
Connecting

It is important to understand the changes that are happening in the church. Where there is a lack of understanding, there is also resistance to change.  However, if you look through these two trends lists, you'll find that where the church is changing is in many ways validating through fresh means the values that older generations have had about the church. 

We are in the midst of the greatest shift in the church of the past 500 years. These observations are hints at what is to come. I like Roger am very hopeful and confident about the future of the church.

Note: if you have gotten this far, you may be curious about the reference to the parking lot as a communication technology.  Watch what happens in the parking lot after church. Listen to the conversations.  When communication is poorly developed in a church, the parking lot is where the real honest communication is taking place. Therefore, it is my contention that we need to bring the parking lot conversation into the church.

The Intellectual Gulf

There is an intellectual gulf that exists between the church and the business world. It is deep and wide, and has served to ghettoize the church and marginalize the business world's contribution to God's mission in the world.  Complaints that churches are too consumerist or too business-like is not an argument against the church applying business ideas, but about the poor way that business ideas are applied. That is a leadership character issue along with the intellectual one.

The same could be said of businesses that place profit over everything else. They have narrowed down the essentials to financial numbers. As a result, you get Enron at the most extreme.  The problem, like in the church, is an intellectual one. It is not seeing the nature of the organization in large enough terms to understand the context in which it functions. 

The issue isn't that business ideas are some how better than church ideas, they are not.  The issue is the nature of ideas and their appropriate application. This is a problem for both churches and businesses. Another reason why the actual gulf doesn't have to exist.

This problem in the church is an intellectual one at its core. Our conceptualization of the church, for the most part, predates the emergence of the modern business. There have always been small business owners, and a wealthy class that were church goers. Many of these people served on church boards, and brought their business expertise for organization and financial management to the church.  The problem is not with business people serving as church officers.  It is their ideas of what it takes to operate a successful business, which often are inappropriate or simply mistaken.   

For example, take a business owner who is a poor marketer of his business. He becomes an officer of the church, and immediately becomes an expert on all aspects of the business of the church. This is why this intellectual gulf is serious.  Because there is no accepted common ground, the business person subjects the church to the same mediocrity that he provides his business.  The problem isn't the difference between churches and businesses, but the intellectual ground upon which both operate.

There is little, if any attention, given to organization and management in seminary, we have multiple generations of pastors who lack any background in business ideas. Just working in a business prior to going to seminary or an undergrad business degree is no guarantee that a pastor will have the intellectual grounding to bridge the intellectual divide that separates the business world from the church.

My experience working with churches is that this divide exists, and is widening because the business world is changing.  We have today a growing entrepreneurial society whose rules for business are different than when my father finished college in 1949, and went to work for the only company he ever worked for. If you have been out of school for 5 years, and have read little during this time, then you are way behind the intellectual curve. However, if you are a blog reader, then you are probably on the cutting edge of ideas. If you are twenty years out of graduate school, your education needs to start all over again. It was one of the reasons that I wrote a series of book reviews, available as a PDF, entitled Innovative Business Ideas for Churches.

This posting germinated as I read two PDF's from Tom Peters.

Wherefore The Impact Of Superior Management Practice on Increased Human Welfare and the Pursuit of Happiness and Excellence? (Blog Link / PDF Link)

Why Else Get Out of Bed in the Morning? (Blog Link / PDF Link)

Tom Peters is different than every other management speaker/thinker there is.  He is an idea person who uses the world of ideas as motivational fodder to shake business people out of the self-imposed intellectual slumber.  I like his passion, his expansive reach, and for all his over-the-top eccentricity, he is an intellectual who understands that he doesn't know everything. To read through one of his PowerPoint presentations is like traveling on a bullet train at 150 miles per hour. No way you can catch all the scenery, but to be able to see the landscape change from plains to mountains to rainforest to coast provides a context for further trips to specific places he highlights.

Read these two thought pieces. The value to the church may or may not be immediately accessible. What I find is that Tom Peters' passion for business is equivalent to Paul's declaration of the church's organizational mission in Ephesians 4. If you think that the church's purpose is to provide each person the training and opportunity to serve Christ through their individual gifts then you'll understand that Peters sees business in much the same light.

The link between churches and businesses is not management structures or financial accountability. The link that bridges the intellectual divide is the question as to what it is that people are to do as a member of this organization.

Here's a sample of Peters' thinking.  Read this as if he in front of a crowd of 5000 people.

Passionate servant leaders, determined to create a legacy of earthshaking transformation in their domain (a 600SF retail space, a 4-person training department, an urban school, a rural school, a city, a nation), create/must necessarily create organizations which are no less than Cathedrals in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair (We are all entrepreneurs—Muhammad Yunus) of diverse individuals (100% creative Talent—from checkout to lab, from Apple to Wegmans to Jane’s oneperson accountancy in Invercargill NZ) is unleashed in passionate pursuit of jointly perceived soaring purpose (= win a Nobel peace prize like Yunus, or at least do something worthy of bragging about 25 years from now to your grandkids) and personal and client service Excellence.

Such Talent unbound pursue Quests—rapidly and relentlessly experimenting and failing and trying again—which surprise and surpass and redefine the expectations of the individual and the servant leader alike. The collective “products” of these Quests offer the best chance of achieving rapid organizational and individual adaptation to fast-transforming environments and provide the nutrition for continuing (and sometimes dramatic) re-imaginings, which re-draw the boundaries of industries and communities and human achievement and the very conception of what is possible.

In different words, this is discipleship.

If you find the two essays appealing, then let me suggest that you read his book, ReImagine!

When people in the church say the church isn't a business, I wonder what they actually think a business is. If Tom Peters is right, then what churches are going to find in the future, are not people who are used to being intellectually disengaged, are simply compliant in a passive aggressive way or who have segmented the church's role in their lives into something disconnected from their daily existence. Instead, the church is going to find people who are more entrepreneurial in the approach to life, and expect the church to be that way. If your church isn't then they are going to go elsewhere.  And this is precisely why so many mainstream traditional churches are not able to sustain the level of membership that they had in the past. They are operating on an inappropriate business model, that of the old line bureaucratic corporation of fifty years ago.

Where does one start to bridge the divide? It starts with being intellectually curious. Turn off the TV. Stop reading the same stuff  that you been reading since you last sat in a class room. And most importantly, be tremendously bothered by the fact that what you don't know is going to matter in the future. Start asking questions, and don't rest until the answer leads to a specific action step that your church or business can take. Foster this environment in the church, and the intellectual divide will narrow and close for the benefit of all.

Is this the way you feel about your church?

As I watched this video, I felt that it did a good job of describing the problem that many churches have in communicating with their members.

She is going to leave and when she gets to the parking lot, she's going to call someone so she can ventilate her anger. The most important church conversations are taking place in the parking lot. Its time to bring the parking lot conversation into the church. 

Communication is a conversation, not an ad campaign.

 

HT: Terry Heaton at POMO blog

Theory-based or Experience-based

Sunday:
For a long time, I've been uncomfortable with the dualistic, neo-Platonic thinking that has characterized Christianity since the days of Augustine.  Recently, I've begun to think about the issue in this way.

The Christian faith began as a movement of people in response to Jesus ministry and his sacrificial death and resurrection. The first Christians came to faith in the context of the proclamation of that message and a community of people who found one another. I'm thinking of Acts 2 here, the whole chapter.

It seems to me that not long after the first generation of "Christians" passed, that a shift was made to a Christianity that was more theory than experience.  Was Jesus ministry on earth a theory-based one, or was his ministry one where people experienced God incarnate.  Did Jesus have a formula for how he was going to prepare the disciples for their work after he was gone? Or, did he relate to them at their point of need, so that he mentored to them to be prepared to be apostles?

A Platonic theory-based religion starts with some pure, perfect notion of who God is, what the church is and what it means to be a Christian, and then tries to conform experience around that theory. It is a Platonic thing because Plato saw the things of this world as imperfect representations of the perfect world of the ideal.  What this creates is a dualistic world where we live with the ideal always pressing in on us that we are just not good enough, so to speak.

I'm coming to the conclusion that this dualistic conception is an inaccurate picture of what God has created. First, what God created was good. That stuff is still here, and still good. The impact of sin is through we human beings as agents of sin's corruption. Second, when sin entered in, I'm not sure it bifurcated (nice word) all of creation into good and evil. Instead, I think it obscured a complete knowledge of the world, so that we never see the whole, and even the parts are not absolutely clear. But that is not the same as saying this world is evil and that world of ideals is good. 

This dualism is prevalent in the church as some churches are unable to deal with imperfection.  They demand of others which they cannot provide for themselves, absolute idealistic perfection. What ends up happening is that things like the Bible become idealistic icons that lose their connection to the real world because we must see them in some idealistic state.  Pastors suffer the same dualistic fate as they are unable to be real people with real feelings and real needs, and it is worst for their spouses.

I've concluded that much of the church lives in an unrealistic realm of espousing one thing and living another. It creates anxiety and anger.  The psychological damage from this religious/philosophical schizophrenia is serious.  It forces people to treat those who are different, as subhuman.  In this sense we see people in Flannery O'Connor's words as "artificial niggers." Pardon the phrase.  It is also why we shoot our wounded in the church. They represent what we cannot allow, an imperfect and a flawed humanity. And because we know in our own hearts that we are the same, but can not admit to it, it makes our vengeance towards those who are broken that much more troubling.

So, the conclusion I am reaching is that the church has been victimized by idealized theories about Jesus, the Bible and the church.  It is not a new thing, but an old thing, and a reason why Christianity thrives in cultures of low literacy. (Clarification: It's not a theory to them; it's real, until someone intellectually manipulates them to think otherwise.) Theorizing does not feed your family when you live at a subsistence level. The idea suggests that there is a golden mean that we all must approach, or we are considered to be outside of the norm.  It is seen in the idea that denominations and differing traditions are examples of disunity in the church.

What I'd like to suggest to people is that there is no idealized theoretical world.  We live in the only world that exists. In spite of what we read in Revelation, I have the sense that the new heaven and the new earth will be like the earth we already know. There is no pie-in-the-sky. There is only a beneficent God who loves his creatures even as they fail to love him in return.  And that we come to understand this, not through abstract idealistic systems of theology, but through the kindness and interest of average people who care for others out of their own experience of receiving God's love.  Theology works when it is submitted to the test of experience, not vice-versa.

Does this mean that all theology is wrong-headed. No. It simply means that theoretical systems are idealistic human creations that seek to create a coherent perspective based on a selection of ideas from Scripture and the history of the church.

If you look at the conflicts that afflict us, at the heart of them are claims of truth that start as an idea in search of scriptural justification and end up as a tyranny upon unsuspecting people.

If all this seems far fetched, I encourage you to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan where he addresses this topic in a very different context.  I'm convinced that he is right.  His perspective is a great challenge to all those for whom the church is some idealized image derived from the Scripture. The reality is life is messy, and it is far more dependent upon God's grace and our daily receptivity of it than any preacher can imagine or express.  And I would not have it any other way.

In Addition, the next day: After a 400 mile trip today, thinking about this issue, what I also want to add is that when we trust in our theories, we are putting Christ one additional step removed from us.  Christ has to fit into the theory, whether that theory is Reformed, Wesleyan, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or eclectic.  As I have moved away from the theory-centric faith - its taken about 15 years - what I've discovered is a capacity to live in the moment, being able to tell where God is in that moment. In so doing, I'm more relaxed about doing that which is placed before me. I don't have a formula that I'm trying to conform to.  Instead, I'm trying to understand what believers in non-Western cultures understand, how God is a direct, immediate presence.  By living in the moment, I am basically saying that I trust that God meets me in that moment. I cannot predict what will happen, or what I must do to follow God's lead. All I can do is commit to being present at that moment.

Part of what I'm reacting to is the multiple times I was taught in seminary that experience is bad and sola scriptura is the only norm.  I trust the Scripture. I have a high-view of Scripture, but what I find is that many on both the right and left treat the Scripture as a proof-text for their theories about God, Christ, the church and the faith.  To deny the validity of our experience is to deny our essential humanity. I'm far from being an anti-intellectual. I'm spent the last 35 years challenging myself intellectually, and where it has taken me is away from theory toward experience. 

What I'm trying not to be is a dualist who separates reality into the ideal and the shadow of the ideal.  When we do so, we essentially are saying what we do here has less value because it is less than ideal.  All I know is that the faith that remains as an intellectual construct, is a faith that has not received its just validation. Faith is different than belief. It is the intersection of belief with life, and where we find the Spirit of God meeting us.

What will the church be like if it suddenly gave up the theories and focused on experience. We'd have less religion and more reality. When someone claims that their life is in Christ, it wouldn't be a subject of intellectual scrutiny, but rather a testimony to how they live each day. 

I said above that I believe that the new heaven and new earth will be much like what we have here now. My reason for saying this is two-fold, first it affirms the essential goodness of God's creative act "in the beginning." Second, it affirms the lives we live now, and that we live by faith. Instead of faith being a future insurance policy, it is a transformative experience of grace, changing us from what we were to what we will be.  This is partly why I see all of life as in transition.

In Addition 2, a week later: It occurred to me after rereading this a week later, that a good example of what I am talking about can be found in the Boy Scout approach to leadership development. Scouts is a confessional religion. Each week we recite our creeds - the Boy Scout oath and law - because it is by these values and principles that scouting is founded.  The boys learn the oath and law just like Presbyterians learn to say the Apostles Creed. However, ask a boy what the last principle of the law is, and he'd have to recite in his mind the whole thing. Same with confessional Christians for whom the Apostles Creed is so familiar it isn't.

As a scout progresses through the early ranks of Tenderfoot, Second class and First class, one of the requirements is for the boy is to demonstrate how he lives the Spirit of Scouting through the Boy Scout Oath and Law.  What we do in our troop is ask this question: "Tell me how the oath and the law matter in your daily life. Give me examples of what you are doing that you can directly connect to a principle in the oath and law. I don't want to know what you think you could do. I want to know what you are doing."

What we are fighting is the tendency to rest in an intellectual adherence to theory and formula rather than active application of principles to life.  Life is basically a process of decision and action, followed by reflection, decision and action.  The Ten Commandments were not given as a formula, but as a tool for analyzing how I am living.  The Sermon on the Mount isn't a formula. The Boy Scout Oath and Law isn't just a good theory. The Apostle's Creed not just an affirmation of faith.  These intellectual concepts are intended to be utilized as tools for decision-making and action.  With that comes experience, and with experience, wisdom.

Thanks to Pastor M (see comments) and to Bill Kinnon for their kind comments.

The story of the missional church - Steve Hayner

I've heard Steve Hayner of Columbia Seminary speak a couple times on the missional idea. Here's a article from the Presbyterian Outlook that he wrote that sort of sums his perspective. 

He writes:

 

This way of thinking about how to “do church better” hasn’t worked. The Church in the West is dying. Europe is now “post-Christian.” The Church in the U.S. has not grown (in percentage) in more than 100 years. And many denominations, including our own, are falling precipitously. People are no longer inspired by or attracted to institutional religion. The church is being pushed to the margins.

The question is what model or methodology is best suited to turn this around.  I'm skeptical of many of the contemporary models that seem to be based on old models, just restyled for a new generation.

I believe the missional idea is a key one for revitalization of the church. That said, I don't think it is as simple as it might appear. After all, you may say that your church has supported missionaries and local outreach missions for years.  Isn't that what missional means?  Yes and No. 

Yes, in that it is about reaching out beyond the circle of the congregation. No, because it isn't really about doing another program. It goes deeper to the church's whole orientation to what its purpose is.

It is analogous to those churches of a traditional form that took the radical step of adding contemporary praise music with a rock band to the service.  In the end, what they did was slap a "new traditional" veneer on what they had always been doing. It was a reorientation. It was Extreme Makeover: Worship Edition.

The missional concept has strengths for the mainstream church because it is about the church turning from an inward focus to an outward one, and being open to where the Spirit of God will lead when they begin to see opportunities that they missed in the past.

Bill Kinnon Nails It!

Some times in communicating the truth of something, less is more.

Bill Kinnon has a sound grasp on this as he looks at Calvin & Hobbes and Jesus.

Check it out.

The Joy of Work and a Joyful Workplace

If you read enough of me, you know that I am not a dualist. I don't like drawing a line and dividing things into simple categories. The sacred and the secular is one of that dualisms that I don't find helpful to Christian discipleship.

Dennis Bakke, co-founder of AES, author of Joy at Work and brother to Christian urban missiologist, Ray Bakke, gives an excellent presentation about the nature of work and joy in Jesus Christ.

Listento his podcoast at the Work Research Foundation's website. 

I don't separate sacred and secular into two separate containers. I see them as the contexts where one's call and discipleship are lived.  Share this audio presentation with young people.

Schism and change in the global church

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life held a forum for journalists entitled: Global Schism: Is the Anglican Communion Rift the First Stage in a Wider Christian Split?

Philip Jenkins, a history professor from Penn State, and maybe the most in tuned scholar on Global Christiain, was the featured presenter.  it is a fascinating discussion about the schism that is taking place in the Anglican communion. It is a kin to the kind of division that is happening in Presbyterianism.  So, far, in my presbytery, Western North Carolina, two churches, Montreat and Murphy, have petitioned the presbytery to leave. Negotiations continue.  A third church, Marion First, has filed suit and been given an injunction to keep the church from stepping foot on church property. It is a real mess, and is totally ignorant of the kind of global developments that Jenkins' discusses.

From Jenkins opening remarks:

Christianity is going south very rapidly in terms of numbers. I've give you a quick overview, and I'm going to talk about Africa a lot. Simple reason: back in 1900, Africa had 10 million Christians representing 10 percent of the population; by 2000, that was up 360 million, to 46 percent of the population. That is the largest quantitative change that has ever occurred in the history of religion. A rising tide lifts all boats, and all denominations have been booming. The Anglicans have done very well, and the Anglican Church is going to be overwhelmingly an African body in the near future.

There is much to digest in this discussion, and is worth sharing with some members of the congregation.
A couple reactions.

1. Jenkins writes about the difference between Global North and Global South in regards their understanding of biblical authority.  Here's what he says.

The more fundamental division is about the authority of the Bible, and there are a lot of reasons for this. If you have ever read Akinola's statements, he makes clear throughout: "I know all this biblical criticism stuff; I know all these arguments made about homosexuality." But there's a more basic thing: if you're in a new church in Africa or Asia, the Bible speaks to you as a more immediately relevant, more direct text, than it does for many Global North people for whom the Bible is basically part of the wallpaper.

One big reason for that is the biblical world makes sense [if you're in the Global South]; the Bible reads like it is describing the world you know immediately. But for most Americans and Europeans, if somebody cites the prohibitions on homosexuality in Leviticus, the immediate answer is: "Leviticus also says you can own slaves from neighboring countries; why can't you own Canadians?" It's a good question. If you're reading a text like Leviticus in the Global South, the bigger problem is this: you have to be warned constantly not to take the Old Testament as more important than the New.

You're dealing with people who live in, in many ways, an Old Testament world. Many Africans may not know themselves a world that practices nomadism and polygamy and blood sacrifice, but their parents did. You don't have to go far down the road to see people who are still doing these things.

Just one example out of a great many: I was once talking to some West Africans about the bits of the Bible that made sense to them in ways that could not make sense to Westerners. They said, "We live in agricultural societies, so things like the Parable of the Sower made great sense." Just talking about it, they started getting teary eyed. Then they mentioned Psalm 126. Psalm 126 is a psalm that is widely quoted, and it goes like this: "The man who goes forth into the fields in tears weeping to sow the seed will bring the sheaves again in joy." You understand perfectly well why a farmer would bring the sheaves again in joy; he's celebrating harvest time.

But why do you weep while you're sowing? "It's obvious," they said to me. "Whoever wrote this psalm was writing at a time of famine, like we had a couple of years ago. You've got the corn that's left, and you can do one of two things with it. You can feed your family with it, but if you do that, you're not a farmer anymore [because you have no seeds left] and you have to migrate to the city and become a beggar, and what's going to happen to your children and so on. Or you can take the corn literally out of the hands of your hungry children and use it as seed corn and sow it. That's why a farmer weeps while sowing the corn. It's obvious."

He talks about how the Bible is direct and immediate. This quite different than in the West where the bible is more on a symbolic intellectual construct.  We can relate to the stories, but the stories not born from our culture. This is true for both liberal and conservative Western Christians.

The directness of the Bible in a rural, tribal culture was made clear to me 26 years ago when serving a refugee internship in Pakistan during the Afghan-Soviet war, we shared a recording of the Prodigal Son with the matriarch of a village.  After listening to the Gospel story, she was in tears.  It was clear to me that the Gospel is universal, and based on what Jenkins is saying, may be more suited to the culture of Africa.

2. Throughout my adult life the Presbyterian Church has been in schism.  The great attempt at reunion never really reached its fulfillment.  We are sit seeing schism because as Jenkins says,

Schisms are like revolutions: they're easier to start than to stop, and once schisms start rolling, they do tend to split further.

This certainly true in our denomination. Now here's another fascinating comment he makes about the Episcopal church that relates to our situation.

You're getting some of these splits within the Presbyterian Church. They're looking at what's happening in the Anglican world partly to see what kind of precedent is being set but also to watch for very specific legal issues. The only reason why the Episcopal Church is surviving at the moment is the Episcopal Church has a set-up, which they erected in the late 1970s after a lot of splits over women's ordination, whereby the dioceses own the property, so that if, for example, a particular church wants to secede and place itself under the archbishop of Uganda, you're very welcome to do it, but you can't take any of the property with you.

In the split in our presbytery, property is an issue. But the deeper issue is that the two sides don't understand the other side, and the bad blood runs so deep, that it is virtually impossible to see a genuine reconciliation happening any time soon.

Concluding thoughts: What does Jenkins' perspective mean for the average church? 

First, that our future as a church is South.  It is not a matter of emulating the Global South's churches, but rather establishing relationships whether as a congregation or through a Presbytery, with churches.  Let their unique life as a church impact your local church.  And if you are too small for that to happen, make it happen through your Presbytery.

Second, learn what it means for the Scripture to be direct and immediate for your congregation.  It is about how the Scripture speaks to the daily experience of people. It isn't the Bible as either a set of symbols that determine whose in and whose out, or an intellectual frame of reference that is used as some cultural filter to provide a perspective from which to speak. No, it is more about how the Bible through its stories and lessons, points to the immediacy of God's activity in the lives of people and churches.  It is this experience that lies at the heart of the African churches dramatic growth.

Third, read Jenkins two books, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity and The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. Then allow this perspective to influence how you read everything else that comes across your desk.  Especially, the developments that will take place over the next few years related to church's leaving our denomination.

Bless Be The Tie That Binds ... our churches and communities

Michael Spencer has an excellent posting - Christian Unity in Appalachia - about the collaborative relationship that churches in his part of the world have, primarily because they need each other. I spent seven years in the hills of West Virginia coming to understand the nature of the people and the culture of the region.  Sure there is poverty, but they are not poor. They just don't have the financial wealth that other places have. They have family, tradition, church and community.  What they have is instructive for those people and churches who are able to buy whatever church life they want.

Spencer writes,

Churches and the people in them are quite poor. A megachurch here is any church with a nice facility and more than 200 members. (We have two of these, by my count.)

Because of that poverty, churches do many things together, share facilities, pool their money for community projects and help one another out without many questions of doctrine.

Most pastors are eager to work with other ministers and churches in community causes. The sense of calling to the local community is strong here.

Of course this isn't limited to Appalachia. You can find places throughout the world where poverty and lack of development are met with human ingenuity, faith and sharing.  I spent two years in southwest Oklahoma before moving to West Virginia, and the sense of camaraderie that the ministers had in our corner of the state was significant.  Same was true in West Virginia. 

Just remember, things are not always as they appear.  Small is not necessary insignificant. Remote doesn't necessarily mean out of the way.  And lacking financial resources doesn't necessary mean that your poor. What we have is God's spirit that unites us as the church, and sometimes even unites us across denominational, tradition and theological barriers.  And yes, sometimes in communities.  All because we need one another.  I think this is where it begins, recognizing that we need others.

Thanks Michael for a reminder of the beauty of the church in Appalachia.

Harry Potter, the heroic sufferer

This essay is being posted to both my organizational leadership blog – Leading Questions – and to my church leadership blog – The Presbyterian Polis.

Professional people make mistakes. Some are minor, some idiotic, others catastrophic. Some are innocent, others not, some recoverable, many terminable. All professional people experience the suffering of failure and its consequences. Yet, we are not suppose to either acknowledge it or let it affect us.

Suffering in life takes on many forms. It can come at our own hands when we’ve done something regrettable or through the agency of other people. The question for us who are in the professional world is whether the suffering we experience has any value. Is there something to affirm in suffering, or is it simply an experience to avoid at all costs.

It was this question that came to me as I came to be introduced to Harry Potter.

Harry Potter’s Real Story
I came late to the Harry Potter stories. All the reviews of the films and books had misled me to think that it is a story about heroism and courage of a young boy at a school for wizards. For ten years, I could not muster the emotional energy to become involved in a story that is a children’s fantasy. Increasing, my practical and intellectual interest is reality, the real world where people live and experience life. I’ve lived far too long diverted by spin and pseudo-reality. The world we live in, I find, is filled with fantasy, or rather it is an artificial world of escapist dreams. The diversion of fantasy can have the salutary effect of buffeting us against the suffering we may experience in real life. Yet, it is when we face reality that we discover aspects about our lives and ourselves that living in a dream world doesn’t afford. Ultimately, living in a fantasy world makes it more difficult to face the realities that beg for us to pay attention.

Recently, an XM radio interview with David Yates, director and David Heyman, producer of the latest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, compelled me to enter Harry’s world. The way they described the movie helped me to see that there was more than a children’s fantasy tale in J.K. Rowling’s story. So, over the course of one week, I watched the five HP films in order. I came away from viewing the series with a deep desire to read the stories, and will soon, and to reflect on their meaning for our time.

Harry Potter, the heroic sufferer
Harry Potter was born into suffering with the death of parents, and that experience of suffering continues through his mistreatment by the Dursleys, the peer abuse of the Sliveran punks, and then to the long series of attacks by Lord Voldemort. Of the reviews that I’ve read over the years, what stands out to people is Harry’s courage in the face of danger. It is certainly there, but what makes Harry the most unique hero of time, in league with Frodo Baggins of The Lord of the Rings, is the effect that suffering has upon how he lives his life. His strength in facing danger and tragedy has been born in suffering. During one of the movies, Harry comments that what he is facing is no worse that the loss of his parents and the abuse of the Dursley’s. Suffering is the core of his life experience, and has made him the heroic figure that he is. As the child who lived, he lives not because of some magic ability, but because of the strength of character that comes through suffering.

This dialog with Sirius Black from the Order of the Phoenix film captures some of this perspective.

Harry Potter: This connection between me and Voldemort, what if the reason for it is that I'm becoming more like him. I just feel so angry, all the time. And what if after everything I've been through, something's gone wrong inside me. What if I'm becoming bad?
Sirius Black: I want you to listen to me very carefully Harry. You're not a bad person. You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to. You understand?
[Harry nods his head]
Sirius Black: Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the power we choose to act on. That's who we really are.

I find this a very biblical perspective that goodness and darkness inhabit us all, and that we choose to cater to one or the other. The suffering Harry experiences is because of the darkness in the world. The suffering has a chastening effect on him. It wipes away the illusions about there being some magical resolution to all problems. He understands that he must act. And so he does.

This perspective on Harry’s character reminds me of the ancient Stoics who had a similar reality based view of life. They carried no fantastical optimism into life. They recognized that goodness rises out of suffering. C.S. Lewis, the Christian apologist and Oxbridge don had the idea that suffering produces a reservoir that increases our capacity for love. That is what I am seeing in Harry.

Harry reminds me of Homer’s Achilles whose heroic endeavors are for honor within the community. For Harry, it isn’t some abstract notion of community that he serves. His courage comes from a core of goodness that is released through his friendship with Ron and Hermione and through the teachers who see in him something special. His suffering inoculates him from a fantastical idealism. He lacks the innocent optimism of youth that would certainly have been completely crushed by the Dursley’s. In this sense he is like the ancient Stoic who knows his duty and does it regardless of the consequences. He can never fully feel joy because the suffering of loss is with him all the time. Yet, he knows love from his friends, and their love for him inspires in him acts of sacrifice that completes the bond of their little community.

For me this is what makes Harry the most compelling character I’ve come across in a long, long time. I can’t wait to read the books because I want to see what Rowling sees in this. I don’t think his suffering is merely a literary device. There is a moral purpose to it, and through its power, transforms the community that surrounds him. Hear me correctly, that shared suffering transforms a community, giving it strength to face the most challenging difficulties.

In the Order of the Phoenix film, at the point where the Hogwart’s wizards and witches leave to go to the Ministry in London, Harry tells them that he wants to go by himself. He says this to protect them from danger, death and the experience of his own suffering. Yet, they know because they have been with him so long that their lives are cast together, and they now will share in his sufferings. It is a powerful statement about friendship and community. That it isn’t simply the bond of shared values, but the bond of shared suffering that gives their fellowship real depth and life.

It is this very experience that so many professional people lack. They experience suffering through failure, loss or the cruelty of others. And for the most part they suffer alone. Several years ago, during a series of encounters with men in various professions, I asked them, “If you were to become an abject failure today, who would stand by you?” Virtually all of them could only answer, “My mother.” Tragic that professional people who are endowed with great talent and opportunity are also alone in their personal pursuits. And it is at the point of failure that most experience the suffering of isolation. We lose a child or a parent, and people come to our side to offer comfort. It may not be the precise wording, but I heard once, something like, “Success has a thousand friends, and failure none.”

It is also what so many churches, synagogues and religious institutions miss as well. Communities that avoid identification with the suffering of others, live in an unreal world of ideas abstracted from the real world. Listen to people who speak of the power of their religious experience, it often has to do with the experience of others reaching out and sharing in their suffering just when they need it. It is this shared suffering that makes the message of redemption so powerful for so many.

In The Order of the Phoenix film, near the end of the concluding battle at the Ministry, Lord Voldemort tells Harry that he is a fool and will lose everything. Harry looks at him and tells him that he has what Voldemort lacks, and that is friends and love. And that he feels sorry for him. How many professional people in hearing this exchange will look at Harry with longing for the same type of camaraderie and togetherness?

Frodo’s suffering with Sam
The closest literary example to Harry Potter’s suffering is the story of Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings. Frodo steps forward and accepts the role of sufferer as ringbearer. He is able to do so because a fellowship of men, hobbits, elves and trolls join him in the journey. Ultimately his journey to cast the ring into the fire that will consume it is a lonely one, shared only with his friend Samwise Gamgee. Through out Peter Jackson’s treatment of Tolkien’s mythic story, we see Frodo change as he absorbs the suffering that comes with being the ringbearer. Frodo’s greatness comes from his determination to see his quest through to the end no matter what the consequences. Through suffering and the acceptance of his own mortality, Frodo does his duty and accomplishes what no other character in this story could do. Through the faithful long-suffering friendship of Sam, Frodo is able to bear the suffering through to the end of his quest. For Frodo, this suffering remains a mark forever on his life, a living presence that eventually leads him away from the Shire.

Suffering, Heroism and Community
It is not unusual for contemporary films to feature suffering as a human experience. Often this suffering is viewed as a victimization of a person, rather than an experience that leads to strength, courage and friendship.

As we see in Harry Potter, the core of his suffering is from the loss of parents. Death in our society is treated as inconvenience. It is the most inexplicable experience. Our culture hates to acknowledge our mortality. We retreat into unreality as a way of not dealing with it. Yet as we see in Harry Potter, a story that takes place in a fantastic world of wizards and witches, reality is filled with death and suffering, and out of that experience comes personal greatness and the salvation of community.

In Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Yoda says, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.”  This is the conventional wisdom of our time. So, we run away from the emotions of fear, anger, and hate because we do not want suffering. But what Yoda does not say, and what we see in Harry, is that these feelings are real, and that most of us suffer in silence because we are afraid to let the reality of what we feel out. Yet, when we face suffering as reality, we find the opportunity to discover virtues that bring strength. So, in Harry, we see not a person who has given in to his anger, but rather see his anger in the context of the love and fellowship of his friends. They are the counterbalance that transforms the sufferer from victim to hero.

Finding Strength in Suffering
I can’t tell you will find strength in the suffering you experience. That is for you to discover on your own with people who care about you. Regardless whether your suffering is self-imposed or an affliction from some other source, recognize that your struggle to find strength will make you a person who is able to befriend others who suffer in the same way. Ron and Hermione’s friendship with Harry was deepened by their sharing in his experience of suffering. Frodo and Sam were transformed through the suffering they shared. I don’t believe we can go looking for people to share our suffering. Rather, the key to finding strength is our recognition and empathetic response to other’s suffering. In effect, we must give strength to find the strength that we need.

The embarrassment of failure, the humiliation of a lost job, the emptiness that comes with the loss of a loved one, or the anger that accompanies being the victim of another person’s cruelty can become a source strength for greatness, if we let it. We see this in Harry. Can we see it in ourselves? I hope so.

Wither the Mainstream

A couple interesting postings about the mainstream church worth looking at.

The InternetMonk (Michael Spencer) Mainline Churches: We’re Having a Moment Here and Andy Rowell

A Former Pastor Goes Church Shopping.

So what's interesting here?  Simply, the idea that the mainstream church has something to offer than independent, nondenominational, evangelical, megachurches do not.

I have felt for quite a while that the mainstream church will go through a resurgence as young people grow into middle age and desire greater diversity in their worship experience.  Two anecdotes about the same church.

A pastor of a large and growing evangelical church near where I live told me twelve years ago as they were first getting started that they were a church for people burned out on church.  They were casual and non-threatening in their approach. They followed the Willow Creek model and they grew. I have lots of friends who attend this church. In describing the church as designed for "people burned out on church", my initial reaction was that they were lowering standards to appeal to people who want a low-consequence faith experience.  I may have been a bit judgmental, okay, quite judgmental in my opinion. They continue to grow and now have over two thousand attending worship services.

Their youth pastor is a great guy, and is doing some very innovative work with his program. We were chatting the other day about their Saturday night service.  He said, "It was started to relieve some of the pressure of numbers on Sunday morning. Its more liturgical. Lots more responsive readings. We have about 200 people coming on Saturday nights."  More liturgical.

I think the larger picture is not the numbers but the continuous shifting of the ground under the church. Just because megachurches work from a numbers perspective, doesn't mean that they work in all areas.  I believe we will see a resurgence of the mainstream church as young people, people younger than 40 right now, come into prominent leadership roles.  There is a Facebook group advocating for a young person to be the PC(USA) moderator. I certainly would be glad to see someone under 40 in that role.

If you are in the mainstream, take heart, you day is not over. Realize the strengths of your tradition and share that with people. A better day is returning. Thanks be to God.

Released: Voices from the Virtual World: Participative Technology and The Eccleisal Revolution

Today, Monday, July 23 is the release date for Voices From the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolution .  You can buy the e-book today at  Lulu.com.

A chapter listing with some abstracts and author bios can found at the Wikiklesia site.

Proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Not For Sale campaign on wiping out the global slave trade.

My chapter is The Technology of Congregational Conversation.

Tell your friends, family, pastor and any one else.

A paperback version will be available in a couple weeks, along with an audio version.

Being Missional

Bill Kinnon posted a wry send up of being missional called Missional Shampoo. He's rifting off of Leslie Newbigin's missional legacy.  The reaction to this bit of nonsensical fun has been the appearance of an apparent dispute over the origin and meaning of the word.  Read Bill's post to get the full story.  I'm not really interested in the specifics of the dispute. 

So, why I'm I writing about it?

Lately, I've been thinking about how we arrive at our theological beliefs.  We read a scripture passage, and immediately jump to a generalize conclusion about how God works.  In seminary, we called this proof-texting. We are trained to spot a proof-texter.  What we don't realize is that most of us are pretty good at reading far too much into a text.

The same is true in reverse. Words like missional that are neo-logisms are open to a variety of interpretations.  Hence, disputes arise over whether one interpretation is correct and another not. Or one the original idea and another a corruption of it. Is it okay for a word to change meaning over time?  I don't know. It is the first time I've thought about it.

The reality is that we do not control the meaning of words. Words serve the people who use them.  Some languages are more ambiguous, like English, and so create confusion.  Take C.S. Lewis' famous tract on The Four Loves. One English word - Love,  four Greek ones - Phileo, Storge, Eros, Agape.

Obviously, I don't have a dog in the hunt for the origin of the term missional. Rather, I'm more interested in what it means, and the range of meanings that can be derived from the word.  If one interpretation inspires a person to venture forth to do poverty work in the name of Jesus Christ, I say, Go for it. If another, finds their call in the church, God bless them.

In other words, the term missional applies to both individuals and churches.  And if I may use my Circle of Impact diagram to parse this out.  Missional is a word, and all words are ideas. These Ideas, like Missional, influence not only our Relationships with people, but also how we create the organizational structures of churches.  So, if Missional is an Idea that we together Value in our Relationships, then Missional becomes a key term for understanding our Mission as a church, and therefore the church organizes itself to provide people in relationship a way to be Missional through their Relationships in the church.  When the Idea of Missional and the Value of Missional come together a Vision for the Impact of being Missional can be realized.

The problem with many of these ideological disputes in the church is that they are predicated on a belief that we know what we know, and we know it absolutely.  I think it is safer to say I know a little, and you know a little, and maybe we should figure out what we don't know and go from there.

Let me close with a quote from Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan.

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a larger personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have your read?” And the others – a very small minority – who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary. 

We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. People don’t walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of the competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head. Note that the Black Swan comes form our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously.

Let us call an antischolar – someone who focuses on the unread books and makes an attempt not to treat his knowledge as a treasure, or even a possession, or even a self-esteem enhancement device – a skeptical empiricist.”

What Taleb writes here applies to the church and we church people as much as to any person or human institution. We have all made grandiose statements about God, Jesus, the Spirit, the church and what is and what isn't biblical, Christian and worthy of the church.   We have spoken way beyond our pay grade, and because we all do it we think that it is no big deal. It is a big deal because it goes to the heart of what it means to be an authentic person, an authentic follower of Jesus Christ and an authentic pastor, theologican, church member or, forgive me, consultant.

The real test of the word missional is the impact of the people who are inspired to service by the idea.  So, we need more than shampoo, we need Missional Body Wash to bring the whole body into the Missional world.