The Onion has done it again. Recently they had a great story about a Padres game getting “sunned out”, and now they’ve got this great story about a planned merger of two San Diego institutions. I can’t wait to go visit. I want to be a writer for The Onion in my next life.
Once again I stumbled across a cool piece on the God’s Politics blog hosted by Sojourners, this time by the always provocative and oft prophetic Derek Webb of Caedmon’s Call. I suppose the article, entitled “Following Jesus vs. Social Activism” , doesn’t say anything that I haven’t heard or thought about before, but in it Webb does speak frankly about the ridiculousness of following Jesus. To quote the first sentence and a half of the article, “Claiming to follow Jesus is a ridiculous thing to try and do. He’s a really hard guy to follow…”
Agreed.
Webb goes on to talk about how we are to understand following Jesus when the things that he asks us to do (love the poor, love our enemies, etc.) scandalize the very core of who we naturally are, particularly given the fact that, in his words, we are violent to the core.
Fortunately, he writes, Jesus has given us the key to understanding who he is and what he wants us to do. It’s not obsessing over the finer points of private morality that Christians so often obsess over (although it bears mentioning that we, too often, see private morality and social activism as a zero sum game (wikipedia it if you don’t know what that means…yes, I did just put a parentheses inside of a parentheses), when in fact, biblically, they most certainly are not), but instead the key is that we learn to love God and love our neighbor. It’s that, um, simple. Thus, in Webb’s words, the work of following Jesus is loving and caring for those whom it is difficult. It is that love that ought to frame and contextualize all of the other commandments we keep.
One aspect of ministry that has grated on me since the beginning is the fact that, when you’re a pastor, you hear about everyone’s junk. Don’t get me wrong, I count it a joy and privilege to be able to counsel people through difficult circumstances and walk with them as they seek healing, but often what I’m referring to doesn’t happen in that context. Sometimes people get convicted about their own behavior and tell me themselves (which I much prefer), but more frequently I get members of our church that come to me out of concern for their friend that has recently started killing kittens or binge drinking or building a nuclear warhead or making not awesome relational decisions (ok, I made up a few of those). When people come to me themselves, that usually indicates some desire to change, and that is a lot easier to deal with. It’s hearing the stuff that people in my church do when they aren’t at church that gets difficult to deal with. Frankly, and this just me being honest, loving in those circumstances is a challenge, and yet I understand that is the love that Jesus is talking about, and that tragically people often don’t think they are going to get from pastors and other church folk. And let me be clear about one thing: it’s not because I think they’re bad people. In fact it’s precisely the opposite. I think they are really good people. I think they are people that God has gifted with tremendous potential, and at times I see that potential beautifully on display. So when I hear about them denying that potential, it breaks my heart. I know they know better , and often the disappointment is crushing. I love being able to care for people people on the soul level…people are never products, or employees, or tokens to fill a role in the church, they are people…but caring for people on the soul level can be extremely painful sometimes.
And it makes me wonder: Have we, as the church, lost the picture of what it means to follow Jesus? Have we lost the picture that Derek Webb (well, and Jesus before him) paints of simply loving God and loving our neighbor? It’s easy to point the finger and blame others, but are there systemic issues that are leading to these sorts of circumstances.
Is that why we, too often, fail to live up to our potential? Is it because we have sought to primarily find our identity is something else other than who God has made us to be? Have we found it in hollow spirituality that centers around a passive hour or two on Sundays? And if so, how do we go about changing the church from simply a community that gets together on Sundays to a community that gets together on Sundays and embraces community throughout the week that is bound by an unconditional love for God and a love for neighbor? The potential for good is that sort of model is mind blowing. Now I’ve deviated quite a ways away from the point of Webb’s article, but I’ll close with a paragraph from it that expresses what we, as Christians, are proclaiming in the world when we enact a love for God and a love for neighbor:
“How do we tell the whole story of the coming reign of God, a new way of being human and relating to God and God’s creation? We put our hands to it. We proclaim a day coming when there will be no more thirst by giving water to the thirsty. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more disease and death by caring for the lives of those whose bodies are broken. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more war by preemptively sowing the seeds of peace.”
Last Sunday night (May 4), we did something interesting at my church. In the year and three month history of Seven24, we’d never done anything quite like it. I’ve been so tied up with school and what not recently that I haven’t been able to reflect on it until now. Before I tell you what we did, I must preface it with the following:
Several months ago I read the book Preaching Reimagined by Doug Pagitt. While reading the book I blogged about it extensively (take a look at my archives if you are interested), and it would certainly be fair to say that Pagitt’s thoughts, along with some other factors, have certainly changed the way I approach preaching. Pagitt says that most of what passes for preaching in today’s church is what he calls “speaching”. It is essentially a monologue of considerable length, which the audience listens to passively. His argument is, basically, that speaching ‘doesn’t work’. Its boring, it’s not engaging, and most importantly, it is largely ineffective in producing life change (more on this in a minute). What he advocates (and practices at his church) is what he calls ‘progressional dialogue’. Progressional dialog is a more interactive form of preaching. It involves the entire congregation, or at least all those who want to participate, and allows everyone to learn from everyone’s experiences, not just those of the up front “speacher”.
While wrestling with some of these ideas, I’ve also been in conversation with some other people in my life that are beginning to get frustrated with preaching (or specahing, as Doug Pagitt would call it). Some that I’ve talked to complain that preaching “doesn’t work”, meaning that it fails to really facilitate life change. I’ve seen this to be true in my own life, as I probably listen to three or four sermons a week, and very rarely can I say one of them makes a real, tangible difference in my life. In reality, good preaching becomes entertainment, bad preaching becomes drudgery. And, furthermore, as I give more and more sermons, I find my ability to listen to sermons is diminishing. I remember my college pastor warning me that something like this would happen (I believe his exact words were “the hardest thing to do once you’ve been to seminary is listen to a sermon”). All that to say, I’ve been struggling quite a bit with the relevance/importance/efficacy of sermons in our worship services. In a sense that is hard for me, because even though they are a lot of work, I like giving sermons. The question, though, is not “what do I like?”, the question is “how do we as a community best become the church?” And it is that second question that has forced me to look seriously at how effectively traditional preaching accomplishes that goal.
So here’s what we did last Sunday (and if you were there you can skip this paragraph): People walked in, and instead of having our band play music, we gave everyone a Bible and a sheet of paper with some instructions, and told them to find someplace to sit either in the room or someplace nearby. With almost complete silence in the room (there was some really quiet background music), people were instructed to study the passage in Mark that we were focusing on that night by themselves. They were told to read the passage (Mark 10:32-45, in case you were curious) through slowly a few times, and then reflect on what they thought the passage meant. I provided a few purposefully vague questions to loosely guide people’s thinking, but I pretty much left them on their own. After a half hour, we came together, and I got up like I normally would to teach, but this time I had no notes, no podium, no sermon. Instead of teaching, I facilitated a discussion. We talked, as a community, for about 15 minutes about how that experience was for people, and then we talked for another 25 minutes about what people saw in the passage. There wasn’t a single time (other than the very end when I spoke for maybe four minutes) that I spoke for more than two minutes uninterrupted. It was awesome. People shared insights and questions, and we were even able to talk a little bit about application. It was progressional dialog to the max, and I thought it was a very cool time. Most everyone that I talked to afterwards seemed to like it as well, and I really felt like it was a great experience for our community. After we were done the band came up and we closed with some music.
Now, as great as the night way, I see problems with it. Should there be no authoritative voice of truth in the church? Should we simply trust that the Holy Spirit speaks through everyone and let everyone have equal voice? There are certainly those who would say no, but there are plenty who would say yes as well. Also, there is the reality that a person who studies a passage for several hours and has some level of training will be able to draw out greater insights than someone looking at it for a half hour. That being said, the insights that an individual may draw out themselves in that half an hour, can in many cases be much more formative that any insights a professional speacher would share.
All of this leads me to a few questions: First, to those of you who were there: Did you like doing church that way? Did you see any problems with it? Would you like us to stuff like that more often? Did you feel like you left having learned something? Any other thoughts or comments? Next, to the rest of you (especially my fellow professional holy people): Have you ever conducted a service like that? Do you think it is a good idea? What are some advantages or disadvantages of this model as opposed to the traditional music/message/music church model? Is this something that you personally would be more inclined to engage with? Any other thoughts?
As you can tell, I have more questions than answers at this point…I’m just wrestling through how the church can be a place that is truly forming the community of God.
Two weeks ago I started this post with the intent of finishing it up that evening…needless to say that didn’t happen, but now I’ve got a few minutes before I leave for class so I’m going to try to finish it up here.
I left off in 1:9, having just looked at the phrase, “…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding…”, and I had talked about how the practice of community with God and the practice of spiritual disciplines fills us with a sort of “spiritual wisdom and understanding” that can then be applied outwardly in our daily lives. Continuing on now with verse ten…
“…so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work…” wow, that’s a lot. That being said, it nicely answers the question “what’s the point?”, or, more specifically what is the point of the things that we do in our lives to ‘grow in our relationship with God?’ The reality is that truths that we pick up from the Bible, from theology books, from sermons, etc., isn’t meant to just be brain candy, but instead is meant to inform the way that we live our lives (yes, I know, I’m the first person ever to come to that conclusion…that’s a profound insight ;-)). I mention that simply because I think the temptation exists to see our spiritual lives as a sort of lesson in obligations that don’t really mean anything. When we fall into that trap, spirituality becomes stale and religious, and we deny ourselves the privilege of allowing God’s Word to actually inform our lives in the real world.
Perhaps the word that most catches my attention in verse 10 is the word “worthy”. That seems crazy to me that Paul is even implying that “walking in a manner worthy of the Lord,” is possible. And yet that is his prayer for these people, that their lives would be something worthy of their Savior. That is a high calling, to be sure. Paul goes on to say that evidence of a ‘worthy’ life is that it is ‘bearing fruit in every good work’. We must remember that, as it says in Ephesians, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Thus our commission is not to condemn the ‘works’ of others, nor is it to embrace a sort of hollow ethereal spirituality that makes us feel good but doesn’t really make any sort of difference in our lives. Instead, our call is to simply do good works. Failure to do so is failure to tap into the purpose of our lives. This shouldn’t be something that causes us guilt, but instead it should be something that is at once empowering and liberating.
The verse ends with the phrase, “and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Part of the Christian life as well is actually increasing in what we know to be true about God. I can say with absolute certainty that I think differently about God now than I did when I was a silly 18-year-old fundamentalist (and that is being generous). I feel I have a better understanding of God’s heart for social justice, God’s heart for peace, and God’s heart for issues including but extending far beyond personal holiness. Furthermore, I understand God’s Word a lot better than I did then. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m making progress I look forward to continuing to increase in the knowledge of God for as long as I have breath. But, just as increasing in the knowledge of anything else takes some effort, it takes effort to increase in the knowledge of God. it doesn’t just happen.
So then the final answer to the question of “what’s the point?” is that there is external value in cultivating an internal relationship with God. Such a relationship is meant to inform practically the way that we live, and it is my strong conviction that when we fail to do that we fail to fully engage ourselves in participation in the Kingdom of God. That being said, it is pretty phenomenal to know that God does call us not only to be filled with the knowledge of his will, but also to put it into action in a way that both pleases God and blesses the world.
To both of you that regularly read my blog, I apologize for the lack of substantive posts recently. I’ve got a lot on my mind that I’d like to write about, but unfortunately this is a particularly busy school week for me, so blogging has taken a back seat for the time being. That being said, I did want to make a few brief comments about some different things that have caught my eye.
1) One of the books I’m reading for my political theology class this week is called, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today, by Charles Marsh, a religion professor at the University of Virginia. In it there is an amazing quote from a book called A Theology for the Social Gospel by Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch writes:
“A Kingdom theology involves the redemption of social life from the cramping influence of religious bigotry, from the repression of self-assertion in the relation of upper and lower classes, and from forms of slavery which human beings are treated as mere means to serve the ends of others…the redemption of society from political autocracies and economic oligarchies; the substitution of redemptive for vindictive penology; the abolition of constraint through hunger as part of the industrial system; and the abolition of war as the supreme expression of hate and the completest cessation of freedom.”
Amen.
It’s always refreshing to hear voices (that are thankfully becoming more and more prevalent) that advocate a theology that includes but goes far beyond personal piety.
2) A document was released yesterday entitled An Evangelical Manifesto. The following is from the document’s website:
“An Evangelical Manifesto is an open declaration of who Evangelicals are and what they stand for. It has been drafted and published by a representative group of Evangelical leaders who do not claim to speak for all Evangelicals, but who invite all other Evangelicals to stand with them and help clarify what Evangelical means in light of “confusions within and the consternation without” the movement. As the Manifesto states, the signers are not out to attack or exclude anyone, but to rally and to call for reform.”
The document is signed by a remarkably diverse group of 80 well known evangelicals including Dallas Willard, Jim Wallis, John Ortberg, and Fuller’s president Richard Mouw, and is supposedly meant to be a bit of a self-critique. It is currently sitting on my desk, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (although I very much look forward to it).
The evangelical community is most definitely needs to do some soul searching, so hopefully this document will be a good start. I myself often hesitate to call myself an “Evangelical” simply because of the well-earned litany of negative connotations the word has. Right-wing evangelicalism, I fear, has alienated many young people who love Jesus but are frustrated at the disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and the public issues that tend to attract the most attention from the evangelical community. Sadly, in many cases, this leads to disengagement, rather than a creative and theological search for a more holistic, Jesus-centered spirituality. The shame that many young people feel even at what the word “Evangelical” or the word “Christian” connotes can be seen in something as simple as what Christians tend to put on the “Religious Views” field on their facebook profiles. Responses range from “I love Jesus” to “JESUS!” to “grace” to “disciple” to “the cross”, nothing listed. There is nothing wrong with that (I myself have the religious views field empty), but it does reflect, I believe, the sense of alienation that many young people feel.
The entire 17-page manifesto can be found my following the link above.
3) My wife has been studying the gospel of Luke on her own recently, and wrote a great post last night discussing some of the things that she has learned. I have enjoyed talking with her about some of her insights, and her post is well worth reading.
5) I’ve been thinking about pacifism lately. Partially because I’m reading The Politics of Jesus by noted pacifist theologian John Howard Yoder, partially because of some of the ideas from Augustine’s City of God that I just came across which expand the definition of peace far beyond the absence of armed conflict, and partially just because it seems like something Jesus is a fan of (though I’ve thought that last part for a long time). More on this later…
5) And finally…the Padres suck. They really, really suck.
The end
I realize that I currently have two blog posts that I have said I will complete at some point (one of which I said I hoped to finish last Tuesday night), and I will complete them as soon as I finish my church history midterm…but in the mean time, I found a funny article on The Onion that made me happy to live in America’s Finest City. The Onion, by the way, is an absolutely hysterical satirical ‘newspaper’…and as this article helps us to remember, there is an ounce of truth in every joke.
The article in question can be found here, and I promise I’ll be getting back to writing with at least the appearance of depth very soon.
Check out this article about Radiohead’s partnership with MTV on their EXIT campaign, and watch the videos on the page…I’ll be blogging about this later.
This is the second entry in an occasional series of reflections that I am doing on the book of Colossians. The first entry, along with a brief explanation for why I am doing this, can be found here.
I will admit that I often find myself asking the question “what’s the point?”, when it comes to church. Not in the why-do-we-even-bother sense, but more in the what-sort-of-a-difference-is-all-of-the-stuff- that-we-say-and-do-and-talk-about sense. I suppose that comes from my desire to do more than just play church, and to instead really do work necessary to think through what sort of a difference church activity, spiritual disciplines, and other such activities are supposed to make. Whether or not those sorts of questions that were on his mind when he was writing Colossians, Paul addresses them nicely in chapter 1, verses 9-10.
“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
What an amazing prayer that is. Allow me to take one part of it at a time.
“…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will…” The idea of ‘the will of God’ gets a lot of play in church, as it should. On some level, all of us want to know the will of God. Obeying the will of God may be a whole different story (too often it is for me), but I believe it would be fair to say that all of us who believe in the God of the Bible are at least marginally curious as to what his will is, particularly for our lives. While I certainly have not cracked the code on how to determine the will of God (and would be slightly suspicious of anyone who claimed that they have), I would suggest that the choices we make, and the way in which we control our influences effects how accurately we can know and understand God’s will. That, in my view, is a major reason why spiritual disciples such as Bible study, prayer, meditation, and church fellowship are important. It is in those contexts that our curiosity regarding God’s will is transformed into a revelatory searching for God’s will. From those disciplines comes a sort of “spiritual wisdom and understanding” that I believe can hardly be found outside of such communion with God. It is in our willingness to devote ourselves to these disciplines that the rubber meets the road, so to speak. In other words, they are an indicator of our desire to know, understand, be transformed by, and apply God’s will.
Furthermore, I would suggest that this “spiritual wisdom and understanding” is something that can be applied in virtually every arena of life. It can aid us as family members, as employees, as employers, as students, and in virtually any other situation. I am realizing more and more that as a college pastor it is my desire not to get the students in our ministry to do more things, but instead to engage in determining what it looks like to be Christian in the contexts that they already find themselves in. In other words, I want them to work through (as I try to do myself) how being Christian effects the way you go to school, or manage a grocery store, or work in a city parks and recreation office, or manage a golf course, or perform any of the other vocations that are represented in our community on Sunday nights.
And now I’ve got to go to class, so I’ll have to finish this post later…hopefully later on tonight…
“If Pharisees were around today, they’d probably be bloggers. That’s not to say that bloggers are Pharisees, but where else can you flex your theological muscles, criticize, and then stand back and see what everyone else thinks about what you said?”
-A paraphrase of what Reggie Joiner said this evening at the Orange Conference in Atlanta, where my wife is this week. There’s probably more truth in that than I’d like to admit, haha.
I received an e-mail today from Sojourners that I thought I would also share on here. I would encourage you to follow the link at the bottom and urge your congressperson to vote to ensure that hungry people around the world are able to receive rice in the quickest and most cost effective manner. While I understand the need to stimulate our economy, it simply does not make sense morally to pursue economic stimulus in a way that keeps the poorest of the poor hungry. I would encourage you also to pray for our nation’s leaders that they would pursue a policy that would benefit the least of these.
You’ve probably seen the headlines about record food prices, which have led to deadly violence and panic across the globe.
The U.N. Secretary-General said last week that the situation has “become a global crisis,” and the World Food Programme is warning of a “silent tsunami” of hunger. Even here in the U.S., grocery stores are starting to ration sales of rice.
Sadly, this desperate situation is being worsened by our own government’s policies. While we spend billions of dollars on food for the hungry overseas, Congress requires that all of it be purchased from farmers in the U.S. and shipped halfway around the world — wasting money and delaying the food’s arrival.
It seems so obvious: When buying food for hungry people overseas, buy from farmers nearby — it’s simpler, cheaper, and better for the local economy and environment.
But even as children are at risk of starving to death, Congress has shown more interest in increasing profits for big American agribusiness than in ensuring that we feed as many hungry people as possible.
These policies are decided as part of the Farm Bill, a mammoth but little-known piece of legislation that governs our nation’s agricultural policies. So far, it’s been shaped mostly by a narrow group of farm-state legislators and industry lobbyists — and it’s become so laden with pork-barrel spending that President Bush is threatening a veto.
But our lawmakers have one last chance to get it right before the bill goes to the president’s desk. One simple change could make a dramatic difference in addressing the global food crisis.
Click here to tell your senators and representatives to fix our food aid policies.
Thank you for raising your voice, as we seek to follow Christ in feeding the hungry multitude.
Blessings,
Patty, Michael, Elizabeth, and the rest of the team at Sojourners
Please click on one of the links above and fill out the brief form to write to your representative. Thanks.
