The Presbyterian Polis - Connecting Churches to Churches

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.