All posts by Rod White

Our evangelism nightmare: Hypermodern voices take over the airwaves

Doing Theology, Film/TV, The Mission, , , , , , , ,

I heard Dwight Schrute, I mean, Rainn Wilson, on NPR as I was driving around somewhere. What he said is stuck in my head. He is known for being an outspoken follower of the Ba’hai faith — it is the “outspoken” part that is stuck. At one point he said that people “threw up in their mouth a little” when he started talking about his life with God at parties. So it is not easy for him to talk about what he believes. He does it, but it is not easy.

Wilson’s claim to fame, The Office, began in 2005, about when we moved into our South Broad location. It makes me wonder if that TV show was riding the zeitgeist of dodging people who make you “throw up in your mouth a little” — like White Goodman (above) and Dwight Schrute. Christians (and I guess the followers of the Bab) started getting on the list of people who make you vurp — at least the ones who talk about their faith as if they actually believe it.

Old evangelism stories are out of date

I was telling old stories to Aaron the other day about talking to people as if you actually believe that Jesus will raise you from the dead, and such things of faith. At one point he looked a little uncomfortable. I don’t think he was vurping, but he reminded me that things have changed a bit since I was his age. Some of my stories seem out of date when I start talking about the Jesus movement, which might as well be the French Revolution as far as twentysomethings remember it. We are experiencing more of an evangelistic nightmare than easygoing chats about Jesus.

Twentysomethings were born into a profound philosophical discussion. Their churches, for the most part, were holding on to a Christianity that was conformed to philosophical paradigms from modernity like rationality and hierarchy. In the late twentieth century, postmodern thinkers came to the fore and staged a short-lived rebellion. They taught everyone to consider their “values” and argued that values have the meaning we assign them, but no meanings that last; we cannot discern truth but we can play with the nonsense. They wanted to emerge beyond modernity — stuck with its faith in progress and commitment to empowering the individual. We had “emerging churches” for a hot minute to match that movement.

The dialogue out there is all hypermodern

You can Google all this, of course. But you might not bother because you have become what many call “hypermodern.” Modernity and postmodernity are both the the past for you. They are, essentially, irrelevant because you believe that what took place in the past took place under “lesser” circumstances and is irretrievably different from now. You think artifacts from the past (like the Bible or “faiths”) that clutter the cultural landscape are to be reused to generate something better.

Wikipedia quote: Hypermodernity has even more commitment to reason and to an ability to improve individual choice and freedom. Modernity merely held out the hope of reasonable change while continuing to deal with a historical set of issues and concerns; hypermodernity posits that things are changing so quickly that history is not a reliable guide. The positive changes of hypermodernity are supposedly witnessed through rapidly expanding wealth, better living standards, medical advances, and so forth. Individuals and cultures that benefit directly from these things can feel that they are pulling away from natural limits that have always constrained life on Earth. But the negative effects also can be seen as leading to a soulless homogeneity as well as to accelerated discrepancies between different classes and groups.

So if you feel like people will consider you a Dwight Schrute at a party if you talk about Jesus, you might be right. You are acting like an historical artifact (Jesus) has meaning. You seem to be fighting the inevitability of change. You are saying that life on Earth has meaning and we don’t have to fight its constraints as if we should have power over it. You are standing out against the backdrop of gigantic institutions enforcing soulless homogeneity on us in the name of progress. And so much more.

It is an evangelism nightmare. Hypermodernity assumes everyone is an idiot if they are not hypermodern, like the cartoonist from Charlie Hebdo who responded to people praying for Paris after the recent attacks (above). For him, religion is modern, the past. Paris is freedom and joy, the future. Religion (a modern umbrella under which all “faiths” belong) is the seedbed of terrorism = faithful people are in bed with terrorists = You make me sick you Christians!

Jesus does not need to make people vurp

What to do? I’d hate to terrorize a party! I hardly want to stand in the way of progress. I don’t even understand all this philosophy.

Four suggestions, for now.

  1. Talk this over. Things ARE changing fast. We need to keep talking about what is happening, like I am talking right now about how Aaron was schooling me.
  2. Remember that Jesus is present, even if people try to make him an historical artifact. Even if people have repeatedly subjected him to the latest philosophy, the Lord rises in each era and has been incarnate in them all. You don’t have to argue the Lord into existence.
  3. Have a story and tell it. Jesus is going to be found in a loving relationship of trust in which God can be spoken of as the lover God is rather than a mere philosophical argument, a value, or political statement.
  4. Pray. Like right now. Jesus will be revealed and you will be inspired to live a life of creativity, free of shame and free to share.

“I can’t see you in it” : A heart is more than a performance

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, , , , , ,

Sorry to talk about Heidi again. But I learn so much from reality TV – like Project Runway. The producers are certainly not trying to teach me how to live in Christ, but they just can’t help it. For instance, one of the things the judges on PR frequently tell designers is this: “I can’t see you in this dress.” Or “You seem to have lost your voice. I can’t tell what you are saying. You’re collection does not tell a story.” I have watched enough clever people on this show by now that I totally know what Zac Posen is talking about when he is frustrated like that (God help me).

He is talking about insecure or lazy people doing what the design book says, or mimicking something they think will please the judges, or channeling someone else’s brilliant idea. That’s not good enough. To win the show, you need to be a creative designer who takes something in a new direction, hopefully one in line with the latest zeitgeist or your own aesthetic that you hope will become fashion. You need to show up, not just sew things. You need to create with a vision, not just plug what you’ve been taught into the design you imagine someone else thinks is right.

Fortunately, I never have to sit in the judge’s seat and rate the work of people in our church, or the church in general. (I’m plenty judgmental, but that is a sin, not an obligation). Because if our work got on the runway, I am sure I would need to say about some of it, “Your heart is not in this. Where is your inspiration? What makes this as creative as your creator?”

It is the age-old question to ask oneself, isn’t it? Some Pharisees came to Jesus questioning why his disciples did not bother to ritually wash their hands before they ate. Their question was not about hygiene, it was about keeping the rules for how to be ritually pure. Jesus did not answer, but asked them why they scrupulously kept other traditions that violated the law itself. More to the point, he quoted the prophet Isaiah

“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.” Isaiah 29:13-14

Like failing Project Runway designers of religion, the Pharisees were running out a collection that looked well-sewn and skillful, but it did not have any heart. They could apply the rules someone else had made up, but they could not create any rule-breaking new rules that reflected a heart-to heart relationship with the creator.

Jesus was trying to teach them to do that, just like he is trying to teach us. We live in a very rule-oriented society right now. For instance, Spectre which is all about who makes and follows the rules. The most recent James Bond film, is all about a shadow organization (like an ISIS that will sneak into Paris) which is out to destroy Democracy and the hero who breaks out of the bureaucracy to thwart it.

Box office could be half a billion worldwide by yesterday.

Spectre , the fictional organization, appeals to  fictional people who want tough laws and armed forces that enforce them. James Bond is all about breaking the rules to protect the heart of democracy — and at the end he finds his own heart this time around! Not to be too judgmental, but there are plenty of people in our church who would love a little more Spectre. They ask things like, “What are the ‘best practices’ for doing this? What are the regulations that apply to this? What is the protocol for doing that?” Or they are afraid of the people who might ask those things. Organization is good, but the organism is a lot bigger than what organizes it — especially the church, since it is held together by the Spirit of God!

People can do a “program” like the Sunday meetings or caring for children or even debt annihilation and not really be an effective, living part of what they are doing – nothing requires them to apply their heart. They could come to the meeting and not really even inhabit it.  I think some people perform the roles that keep the church organization going so they can stay committed to it in theory — but they don’t create it or inhabit it. The Project Runway people say “I want to see you in it” — and they are just talking about a dress! How much more would God say, “I want to see the true you in my church” since the whole point is for us to become more like Jesus all the time.

It has always been a temptation to follow the rules and not the Ruler, so we will need to deal with that just because we are human. In this day, however, it is even more tempting  to get better rules when we are all scared about getting blown up by a barbarian. Rather than growing an expansive heart like God’s, we can hide behind a big wall of laws and law enforcers until we can’t even see ourselves as anything better than law abiding.

The workplace: What if I gave it all at the office?

The Mission, , , , , , , ,

We are hurtling into the future like never before. The change makes us anxious about whether we can keep up and makes us less likely to take risks, since the whole world seems risky. Just keeping the house together can feel like a challenge. For instance, what if a supermarket is your workplace? All the Pathmarks are shutting down as part of the A&P’s bankruptcy and the consolidation of regional supermarket chains into giant multinationals. Our Pathmark in Gray’s Ferry was across the street from a new Bottom Dollar, so we had two stores for a while. Then Aldi bought Bottom Dollar (it’s rival) and Pathmark went bankrupt. ACME (pronounced akamee, if you’re new) bought a few Pathmarks but not ours. So now we have no stores and have to travel somewhere else for food.

The workplace is no less challenging for many of us. For instance, one of the blessings and curses of new technology is that work is mobile. I am writing on the laptop I took on my weekend away — I was never far away. Work is so demanding and we are so afraid of the forces that will take it away from us, that we give it total loyalty at all times. Social observers say that the workplace, mobile or otherwise, is the dominant place where people work out life now; it replaces family, friendship circles, church and other organizations that used to be the major ways people found an identity.*

The all-encompassing workplace

An example of an all-encompassing workplace is what many people say is the best place in the country to work: Google. An employee reviewer says, “The perks are amazing. Yes, free breakfast, lunch, and dinner every weekday. Aaaaaamazing holiday parties (at Waldorf Astoria, NY Public Library, MoMA, etc.); overnight ski trips to Vermont; overnight nature trips to the Poconos in the summer; summer picnics at Chelsea piers; and on and on and on. The company is amazingly open: every week Larry Page and Sergey Brin (right) host what’s called TGIF where food, beer, wine, etc. is served, a new project is presented, and afterward there’s an open forum to ask the executives anything you want. It’s truly fair game to ask anything, no matter how controversial, and frequently the executives will be responsive. * No, nobody cares if you use an iPhone, Facebook, shop with Amazon, stream using Spotify, or refuse to use Google+.“ There’s no reason to leave.

So let’s say you want to build the church and have a mission to the 10,000+ 18-35 year olds that move into Philadelphia every year. If home life is hard that is one thing. But who can compete with Google or with every other employer that thinks they are doing you a favor by making it possible for you to never leave work and making other things work like your family? Doesn’t the church want you to be under the umbrella of its family (since God is our father and Jesus our brother)? Isn’t Jesus the leader who calls us to work in his “harvest field” since the night is coming when the work of redeeming the world is finished? (see John 9). Doesn’t just bringing up that sense of competition make a few of you readers squeamish or resistant? Don’t leave yet, let’s try to talk about it!

Gave it all at the office

What if you feel like “I already gave what I have to give at the office?” Or “I’ll let you know what I feel right after I answer this call; it’s about work?” Maybe you’re thinking, “I have a hard enough time seeing my children and now you want me to be like family with a bunch of other people?” Yes we do.

The sense of competition is compounded for many of the people in our church because they managed to get a job that actually does good – maybe it is not good in the name of Jesus, but it is good. What’s more, they are either in charge of or working in an environment that is good for them. They lead. They are affirmed and successful. They are building or have built something that feels useful to them. They may have been good for a cause – just think of all the dear friends we have who have poured their heart into education, homelessness, counseling and so much more. They really give it at the office.

As a result, these good people often leave the church to others who do it for their job, or to a “B-team” composed of people who don’t have quite so much to do. Or they take roles in the church that they should have because of the gifts they have been given and then don’t really do them because they have to find a new grocery store or because work has an emergency. This week someone told me their relative has meals delivered because he and his wife discovered they would make more money if they spent their cooking time creating billable hours.

I am not trying to solve all the problems of being a radical in a rapacious world with this blog post. But I do want to bring up the perennial questions of practical devotion to Jesus before we have to reduce church down to fit into the life that is being forced upon us. Does the Lord speak to you and do you listen? Is the church the Lord’s vehicle for redeeming the world or is it making progress with your unmarked-by-Christ good deeds? Is your vocation who you are in the body of Christ or is it how you get paid?

At every age, answering those and many other questions is how we form into Jesus-followers and make it possible for others to meet God — and at every age, they are hard to answer. 20somethings are often good at jumping into being radical but they are also good at freaking out over their insecurity. 30somethings often struggle with a sense of being tapped or trapped; it’s a difficult decade for seeing things spiritually, even if you want to. 40somethings are at the beginning of their best contributions to the work of faith or are beginning to slide toward death, getting  by, turning off, avoiding the problems they now know about.

Answering the big questions about vocation

At some point you have to be and build the church or attending the meetings seems kind of extraneous to life. Sitting in a cell or Sunday meeting gets old after a few years if you come to get too much instead of using them for the mission – to give your gift, make a disciple, build a missional community. For the 20somethings the meetings can’t just be ways to find out who you are, they have to become what you do because of who you are. For the 30somethings they can’t just be the obligations of staying in the game, they have to become what you are building. For the 40somethings they can’t just be the habits of being a church person, they need to be the basis for giving the gifts you have.

Circle of Hope really forced the issue of commitment this year when we made extravagant plans together and then had the audacity to implement them all. We were doing well as we were but then we changed a bunch of stuff and called people to take a new look at who they are and who we need to become as a church. It was like shutting down the grocery store. What’s more we asked everyone to give a bit more money (or some!) in order to pay for the new ideas and give us the capacity to imagine what’s next, plus we asked for the necessary time to make something great happen. That sounds a lot like competing with the workplace for preeminence.

Jesus is famous for upending what is usual and demanding preeminence. When he healed the man born blind he got into a lot of trouble with the powers that be. (You read John 9, right?). The man who was healed got in trouble too! The physical act of the Lord’s work caused the transformation he was after. But his work not only healed the man, it resulted in a conversation about spiritual blindness with the men who dominated their world. Those men thought they were doing good and holding the fragile society together in the face of its enemies. Jesus upended it and said, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Regardless of Google and even the nonprofits that think they buy all our time, Jesus is the Lord who calls us to his most satisfying and necessary work. We are his hands and feet, the church is his vehicle. He is the light of the world in us and the night is coming.

*Overcoming Workplace Pathologies: Principles of Spirit-Based Leadership, by Gilbert W. Fairholm

Confession: I am ready to move

Spiritual direction, ,

I feel like I have a secret to confess: I am glad to move out of my office.

I will miss my titanic window, for sure, and those great bookshelves my friends built for me (and some of the books I am leaving to Rachel!). But I am glad to move on. True, I don’t get too attached to places (except Philadelphia, apparently), but it’s more. It is time for a second and third act of this great play God is writing with my life. I am looking forward to it.

For some reason, when I say something like that, I feel like a traitor to the good memories that the office holds in my mind and others’. Even though I am excited to move into what is next, there are reasons for feeling a bit guilty:

  • We shared a lot of emotions in that office — it was good. We fought, confessed, imagined, revealed, rejoiced and wept. The emotions made it a sacred place where I trusted someone and we loved. How could we not want to stay in that?
  • We are spatial — we don’t transplant that easily. We don’t float around in the air, we need our feet on the ground. If we don’t plant somewhere, we wither. After I posted the picture above on Facebook the other day someone said they finally believed I was moving out. Before they saw the evidence, my move (and my changing) seemed surreal; but now it is real. I feel the same way at times. I sat in one of my nice, new chairs in my new place the other day and I did not know where I was yet. It was a little scary. But we don’t want to get so planted that we can’t replant, do we?
  • We remember — those memories make our identity. These days it is popular to say that we get our sense of self by being “storied.” Whatever narrative we tell about ourselves, that is who we are. I don’t believe that, but it has some truth to it. I think I am part of a much larger story than the small one about me. But what we remember about the time we shared in my former office will always be part of who I am. Someone also posted on Facebook wondering if my move meant I was finally returning to California! Memories can last a long time. If we let God knit them into his love and truth, I think they have the eternal value we like to give them.
  • We experienced God in that office — it was convincing and convicting. Our experience of the Lord’s presence made the place special. One of my therapists gave me a book one time to explain away my Christianity (really!). It explained how people experience the “numinous.” He would say our experiences of spiritual things in a place make us think the place is sacred (which is why rocks end up getting worshiped). What we experienced in that office is more than that. I had many experiences that made me think of that oddly-painted place as a “thin” one, which makes me very happy to have been there when God was humble enough to be proved to us.

You can see why old men often die “in office,” especially pastors. Their physical offices begin looking kind of seedy and worn like their physical bodies and the clothes they won’t throw away — like professors at Hogwarts. But they hate to move. The place becomes so magical or at least so familiar, they can’t bear to leave it. I have to admit I feel some of that, too. I have loved the work I got to do in that office! And I especially love the people I got to laugh, cry, strategize, learn and pray with there.

But they can find their way to the new office. It is a block away and the chairs are better. And they will get used to the new me – not that new, of course, but newly deployed and inspired. We will enjoy sacralizing a new place. (It used to be a dance hall in the 30’s, so it probably needs some of that). I hope we all enjoy the freedom of moving with God and the Spirit moves us — even if it means planting in the next places the Lord extends us.

Koinonitis and the bubble diagnosis

Building community, Film/TV, , , ,

I heard the bubble diagnosis again the other day. A friend told me they needed more time outside the “church bubble.” I did not pursue the thought too much so I am still wondering, “Did they feel like Pauly Shore in Biodome?“ They seemed to be taking an anthropologist’s view of the church and decided they needed some breathing room from the subject tribe.

Whether they were just inspecting us or not, I think they mostly make sense. If your congregation becomes a bubble and you are relationally stuck in it, something needs to change. Worse, if the rules of your religious social system are strangling your relationships with people outside of it, that could be toxic to you and to it. It could be “koinonitis.”

The leading cause of death among organic, relationship-based churches is koinonitis. The word is a spin-off from the Greek word koinonia, which means “fellowship,” or life in common. Fortunately, koinonitis has become a popular topic among us for the last few months. If we don’t see it lurking around every bush, it should do us some good to think about it.

Luke reports that the first church, “Continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship [koinonia], in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42, NKJV). Koinonia is the corporate experience of God in the midst of the body of Christ. It’s the common sharing of the Lord’s life, the shared life of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is primarily a shared experience. We often think of the Holy Spirit as someone we encounter as an individual (perhaps in our beloved contemplative prayer). But in the New Testament, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is almost always given in the context of a shared-life community where other believers are actively involved. There are, for sure, individual spiritual experiences. But the highest spiritual encounters are those that we receive with and in the Body of Christ. This is the meaning of koinonia.

Our church is blessed with deep understanding of the rare experience of koinonia. You could see it at our Love Feast last Saturday and hear about it in so many of the stories new covenant members told about why they want to take what has become the strange step of making a covenant.

When koinonia becomes koinonitis

Koinonia, however, can devolve into something quite pathological and poisonous. It can develop the disease: koinonitis. Koinonitis sets in when koinonia is ruled by the group’s processes rather than by Jesus. When the processes strangle the presence of Jesus the church dies.

In some places devolution happens when the community emphasizes being a community so much that the church turns insular, ingrown, and self-absorbed. For them, koinonitis is too much of a good thing. It is “fellowship inflammation.” Like high blood pressure, koinonitis is a symptomless disease. The church is typically unaware of it until it suffers a stroke.

In other places (and I think in our church) koinonitis can set in when the family system develops unhealthy patterns of relating. For instance, among us, there are people who protect others from relational or spiritual pain and impose a “niceness” or tolerance that keeps anyone from saying, “The Emperor has no clothes.” Jesus does not rule, the rule that you are not supposed to say anything that could spoil our sense that “everything is copacetic” or maybe “everything is awesome” rules. Koinonitis can set in when there is no reconciliation needed because people who cause “problems” are the ones who need to reconcile. They are bad because they violated the appearance of koinonia.

Like high blood pressure and dysfunctional family rules, koinonitis is hard to spot by the person experiencing it, but it is easy for outsiders to see. Here are some characteristics of this disease:

  • The church lives in a bubble. It has unwittingly built a barrier of difference around itself, not built of its vision, necessarily, but built of relational habits. Relationships get deified to the point where the members don’t feel comfortable having anyone else included who differs in mindset, beliefs, or jargon.
  • Even though the church desires to grow, in reality, it has an “us-four-and-no-more” mentality. The group has devolved into an ingrown toenail—an exclusive huddle of navel-gazers who are shortsighted by the view of their own bellies. (Have to give Frank Viola credit for that description :))
  • There is little to no numerical growth in the church over the long haul. People who visit feel awkward and out of place. More people leave than stay. The church can go on for years with little to no growth, yet few members wince. The thought never occurs to them that they may have something to do with the low volume. They say they don’t want to be about “numbers.”
  • A sense of cliquishness is noticeable by those on the outside. Visitors feel welcome to attend the meetings, but they don’t feel wanted. The church views them as intruders that may fracture the group’s warmhearted fellowship.
  • The church has little impact on the surrounding culture. Because the members are so absorbed with one another, they seldom reach outside their four walls.

How to be healed if the diagnosis fits

I don’t think we, generally, fall into most of these descriptions. But what should we watch out for? As an organic, communal people, we are prone to the disease. (And at least one person feels like they need to get out of the “church bubble.”). So try these things:

  1. Keep looking in the mirror. Some of us can’t help being a mirror; thank God we have not broken all of them, yet! Koinonitis is like acne. You can’t see it unless you look in the mirror. It is a kindness if someone shows us our reflection – if they do it kindly, and persistently so we will actually listen.
  1. Get an infusion of new blood. In John 15, Jesus pictures Himself and the church as a vine tree. If you look at any vine, the branches extend outward as the tree grows. So long as the tree is growing outwardly, it will live and continue to grow. Jesus Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches. His nature is to grow outwardly. When a church suffers from koinonitis, it becomes a vine that stops growing outward, even perversely grows inward (an “unvine”). For that reason, the prognosis of koinonitis is living death Revelation 3:1. A new-blood infusion can reverse the symptoms.
  1. Get out there. When Paul planted a few churches in the major cities of a province, he considered the entire province to be evangelized (implied in Romans 16:18-27). Why? Because he planted churches in strategic centers and expected them to naturally evangelize their surrounding districts. Paul had built into the foundation of the church God’s heart for the world. The best thing we can do to prevent koinonitis is to explore ways to naturally develop relationships with people “outside the bubble” so to speak, and to find fresh ways of telling our story to them, including showing it to them acts of compassion and healing.

If getting out of the bubble means the vine is growing, that’s great. But if getting out of the bubble means you despise the miracle of being part of the community God has formed, that’s not so good. If getting out of the bubble means you want to be free of being in covenant with both the bad-rule-makers and discomforting mirrors, that’s not so good, either. Living within the constraints of love might feel like being in a bubble some of us want to pop. But every act of love or feeling of obligation is not “creeping koinonitis.” Neither thinking something is “awesome” nor saying something is “not of the Lord” is always bad just because one is not cool and the other is too hot.

We’re an organism of diverse parts enlivened by the Spirit. We are a work of God in progress. Like all organisms we can get a disease and die; we can wander into an environment that starves us and could kill us. We need to keep listening and obeying as God keeps us safe, renewed and useful in the cause of redemption.

Seven mental ruts where unhappiness runs: Offramps from the Bible

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, , , ,

There are things we think and do that everyone knows lead to anxiety and depression. Even though they are somewhat obvious, we still need to list them periodically so we can retrain our rutted brains. If you feel stuck in self-destructive behaviors, unhealthy relationship patterns, behaviors dictated by fear, or you feel like changing your life is a hopeless cause, then one place to start is meditating on changing your mind. If you are a cell leader or a people helper, sympathizing with what is making you feel uncomfortable around someone rather than reacting to it might help them find an alternative way of life.

Our minds can be just as rutted

Here are seven things we might say from the depths of a mind rut for which we need an off ramp. Following each statement are some of those basic things the Bible writers teach as good for making our ways straighter and smoother.

Continue reading Seven mental ruts where unhappiness runs: Offramps from the Bible →

Lack of sincerity: What to do when your words get twisted

A life in the Spirit, The Mission, , ,

Last week Rachel played a video of Jerry Seinfeld receiving the 2007 Comedian Award that 1.2 million of you have already seen on YouTube. In it Seinfeld makes fun of the award he is receiving. “I really don’t want to be up here” he said, “I want to be in the back over there or over there saying something funny to somebody about what a crock this whole thing is.”

I appreciate his honesty. In his own way, Seinfeld has been a prophet. One line from his recent Clio Award speech kind of sums up his message: “We live in the world and we know everything stinks.” He has been standing in the back of our rooms talking about how stupid everything is for a couple of decades now. Even more, he drew the so-called Millennials into the back-story of the comedian lifestyle and encouraged most of them to have their own self-conscious lifestyle of being comedic. As a generation, they are prone to standing back and observing how stupid everything is. What’s more, as an “audience” they are so tuned in to people doing “bits” that they are also aware of how you are doing a bit in the middle of a conversation, and are likely to be observing you observing and critiquing how well you are critiquing. Always performing, they might be more interested in how you say something, or how they can make fun of how you said something, than in what you are actually trying to say.

Sincerity is hard to find

So it is no wonder that our pastors suffer so. They are all from the Seinfeld generation and they know that some (if not most) the people their age have been trained by Seinfeld to stay removed and cleverly observe what they have just done. Even if they get a compliment or some affirmation it may be accompanied by a joke, “That’s a really great speech for someone who makes speeches for a living.” Sincerity is always suspicious. If you are putting yourself out there for anything but a self-deprecating joke you are not to be taken seriously.

It is no wonder we have cells full of cell leaders who don’t want to get in line to be the next leader. I don’t think their inhibition is about their conviction or hope or even their supposed fear of commitment. I think it has a lot to do with the requirement to be publicly sincere. Once you come out as someone who cares about Jesus and others (“No, really, I mean it,” we have to say) they fear they will run into “that guy standing in the back” who is going to start observing everything they do and twisting everything they say. In the old days, people would throw the liar out. But these days, self-consciously lying for effect is a respected art form. Like Seinfeld said in his Clio speech, “I love advertising because I love lying.” Then he looked at the laughing audience and dared them to figure out whether he meant it or not.

Jesus vs. Jerry

So leaders of the church need to learn a lesson from Jesus that may be more relevant now than ever. One place to start is John 8, where Jesus has an amazing dialogue with people who are standing back, observing and then attacking him. In one of the funniest moments in the Bible Jesus says “Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” His detractors immediately say, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?” Whoever is going to stand for God is likely to get similar treatment, only it will not be as straightforward or as unintentionally funny. It will be about twisting what you say for a moment of amusement.

Jesus’ words were most famously twisted by the devil himself. His response provides a good example to follow by anyone who is enduring the same, relentless attack by someone not interested in hearing what you say but very interested in mocking it. Someone was talking about their fear of being mocked the other day, and I suggested they at least begin responding to their fear by trying on the mentality of Jesus.

  1. He doesn’t live by what people say about him. The devil tempted him to make bread from stones, a bit like Seinfeld admittedly makes a living from doing nothing. ”If you are the Son of God” the devil began accusingly –- he’s always good for making every moment conditional rather than true. Jesus told the tempter he could live off what God says. Just avoiding this temptation by never taking on the mantle of leading or caring won’t make it go away. People will keep twisting. Our response either exposes them or saves them.
  1. He knows he is being tested. It is OK to see someone’s snide remark or sarcastic, meaning-diminishing comment as a temptation or even as an attack. They may as well be telling you to prove your worth by jumping from the pinnacle of the temple. Jesus told the devil not to test him. Perhaps you should speak back to a Seinfeld-trained person and tell them not to test you. We can at least not facilitate an atmosphere of insincerity by letting everything be undercut by people trying to convince us that everything is a joke, including us.
  1. He is ready to confront the tempter. “I don’t mean anything by it. We’re just talking. Don’t be so serious.” There are a lot of ways to make something nothing, and people expect us to conform to the nothingness. Practice saying it so you are ready: “Why are you twisting what I am saying?” The pastors and cell leaders, especially, need to discern how to say, “I am giving you my heart and you are not receiving me. I am telling you the truth and you are undermining it.” It might be kind to add, “Is that what you meant to do? Or do you just do it because Seinfeld taught you?”

Why we are Catholics and why we are not

Doing Theology, , , , , , , , , ,

What is a better term for “multidenominational?” The other night at our quarterly Doing Theology a few of us searched for a good word to describe how we identify with the genius of every stream in the broad river of Christianity, even the Catholics.

My journey into Christianity made me very fond of Catholics. For instance, I think of Francis of Assisi (who we celebrated yesterday) as one of my first mentors.

I was a history major in college. While I was exploring medieval European history I ran into Francis. I found him to be amazing. He cut through the nonsense of the Church and lived with Jesus. He was just what I needed, since I almost left Jesus because of the Church’s nonsense, especially the Catholic part.

I was so poor in college, I never missed the free movies they showed on campus. One night, someone showed Brother Sun Sister Moon, which is all about Francis of Assisi and his friends. Watching his rebellion against war and self-serving authority, and seeing his utter obedience to joy and Jesus helped seal my deal with God. I almost became a Franciscan and have been an almost-Franciscan ever since.

As a result, I am a Francis-kind of Catholic — even through I think the rules say I don’t qualify. Whenever the priest offers me communion, I take it like I am a member of the tribe. I figure I am more of a Catholic than a catechized fifth grader and, besides, I don’t care about most of the laws any more than most of the Catholics I know. So I’ve done a lot of travelling with the Catholic Church over the years. I even went on pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostella, which is one of the most Catholic things a person can do.

So why aren’t I and why aren’t we Catholics?

Well, in a way, we are Catholics. But the other night we explored seven main reasons we have to start with the radical Anabaptists rather than stand on what became the Roman Catholic Church. Here they are:

  1. The relics of Maria Gorretti  came down our block. –- Venerating relics of remarkable people might be respectful and aspirational but it is more likely superstitious.
  1. The Pope’s titles don’t make him our leader. — Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, Servant of the servants of God — only the last one sounds remotely like Jesus to me. All the power-grabbing by the Pope got started in the 300’s when Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official church of the Roman Empire. Over time the leaders of the church became state officials. By the 1200’s the forgery called the Donation of Constantine was used to verify that Emperor Constantine had transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope. To be generous, the church was often trying to do good in a troubled world by ruling it, but the leaders ended up being just like all the other powerful people.
  1. Canon Law is a new Mosaic Law. A woman was quoted in the Inquirer not liking Pope Francis because he “does not follow the law.” But many women do not like Pope Francis because he does follow the laws of the Catholic Church that make women second class citizens. Part of Canon Law is the ancient takeover of Roman law, which was needed if you are ruling, but too much of it is edicts by a supposedly infallible pope with absolute power.
  1. Their doctrine of original sin goes extrabiblical. The influential Augustine (400’s) insisted that the guilt of the first sin is transmitted, through sexual intercourse, to all generations. The consequence of Augustine’s view is that every act of sexual intercourse is somehow tainted, and therefore needs legitimation–which is achieved primarily by procreation. He won the argument which made women despised members of the church and imposed celibacy on priests. We don’t need a science for sin. It happens.
  1. Mary was a real person. Perhaps the development of Mary that turns the Trinity into a Quadrinity is the antidote to male dominance. But the good in that heresy does not balance out the bad effect of making her a model for virginal holiness that has no relation to actual history and little to do with normal women. The mother of Jesus is a great example, but as the “Theotokos” she is hard to defend. Add the “immaculate conception,” and her “assumption” and she is even harder to defend.
  1. Purgatory is not needed to purify us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a “purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,” which is experienced by those “who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” (CCC 1030). Selling indulgences to “buy down” years in purgatory sped up the advent of the Protestant Reformation.
  1. The Mass should not be a continual sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The teaching is: “Christ… commanded that his bloody sacrifice on the Cross should be daily renewed by an unbloody sacrifice of his body and blood in the Mass under the simple elements of bread and wine” (Catholic Encyclopedia). In his book The Faith of Millions, John O’Brien, a Catholic priest, explains the procedure of the mass:  “When the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power greater than that of monarchs and emperors: it is greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim. Indeed it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary.” The scripture clearly says the sacrifice happened once for all. The repetition of the drama might welcome us into the ever-present nature of God’s grace, but that is a very generous reinterpretation of clear teaching by the RCC.

So why am I and why are we catholic?

Given all these problems, why are we so multidenominational that we would like to  think of ourselves as Catholic enough to feel like family?

  1. We like Franciscans and other teachers. Actually, we love them like brothers and sisters. Before all the modern arguments after the Enlightenment that divided the world (and our discourse) into this or that, one identity or the other, there was one church. The divisions of postmodern Christianity are worth talking about, maybe even worth getting emotional about, but they are not worth dividing up about.
  1. The RCC is a big tent and a lot of Catholics don’t know or follow all their laws and untenable beliefs, either. The Pope even has a novel veneration of Mary the Undoer of Knots that makes her more palatable. One of my spiritual directors was a Catholic priest; we did fine. Besides, the Anabaptists had and have some weird ideas and excesses, too. We have to work things out together, not get presumptuous about how right we are or cut people off because they seem abnormal to us.
  1. The RCC cannot claim universality under the pope; we are under Jesus. Catholic means “universal.” I am part of that church too — even the catechism grudgingly affirms that. That’s why we are trying out the idea of being multi/trans/ uberdenominational rather than just negatively acting nondenominational.
  1. The nuns in our region are really helping us out with our spiritual development. We have been so well taken care of by the sisters at Cranaleith and the Franciscan Spirituality Center we have to respect their faith.

One of the people who was doing theology with us last Monday went to Catholic school for his whole youth and knew almost nothing about the doctrines we were exploring. I get the feeling that many of you who got this far also did not know or care much about what I just enumerated. So why bother? Well, one of the other people at the meeting said they were going to pay attention to our “transhistorical” blog more because they realized that there is a lot of stuff influencing what the present church is like. Not knowing stuff, or pretending that history begins right now isn’t truthful enough. Finding a little pod of like-minded people and becoming impermeable with them is not loving enough.

Rachel at one month

Building community

My granddaughter Hannah regularly appears in a Moment Garden carefully tilled by her mother. The title of my blog today sounds like I am starting one of those for our new pastor Rachel! But I am not, even though she is precious, just like you, and even though I would actually like to start a garden for both of you.

I am writing because I want to make sure there is enough celebration of who she is and what she has done! We are so comfortable with each other we just mix and match and ooze around in our pack without too much fanfare. We can forget how significant it is to risk leading the church. The church (especially ours) is an entity reliant on the love and sharing of its people. It does not sell products to sustain itself. So a leader called out to lead and so be dependent on the church for their livelihood is subject to a month like September when we got about 2/3 of our sharing goal.  Rachel is risking that.

And lest we forget, Rachel is a woman. That should not be such a big deal since the distinctions and enmities between male and female are of no account in Christ. But it is a big deal (still!). Being a woman pastor is still odd. We just had the Pope come through and remind us that in most places a woman pastor is forbidden like forbidding it is in the Bible! We called her to lead us and she said yes. That is a big deal and I think everyone reading this should be proud of themselves for making it happen.

Rachel could have done something else, you know. She had a career as an HIV/AIDs worker and therapist that was more convenient and lucrative than being our pastor. She could have not disrupted her marriage and family by adding a demanding workload and unusual expectations to them. She could have done what she knew how to do rather than taking on a rare set of requirements a pastor discovers as she goes along. Thank you for giving yourself to us, Rachel. Thank you Jeff, Zach and Cori for supporting her!

Rachel is great. She is brave. It is not easy (or even recommended) to take on a role the founding pastor had. Even though I am still pastor, I am not pastor like I used to be. It takes some courage to sign up for that. Rachel did that. Rachel is warm and wise. When we asked the Leadership Team to share some words about our pastors last summer people noted her empathy and thoughtfulness. She connects and listens. I know from working with her for several years that she is calm, devoted, teachable and faithful – a great pastor. She is a good pastor for me — and I am not that easy!

I could go on, but let me get you into this, too. Circle of Hope should be celebrated for growing Rachel into this role. The Holy Spirit did it, of course, but we had to show up too, along with Rachel. The fact that you can grow people into leaders, then deploy and pay them, then accept and nurture them makes you great, too. If you have not been in too many churches, you probably don’t know how rare you really are. All your pastors were nurtured “through the ranks.” They have been known and grown to exercise their gifts, just as I hope you feel known and grown to exercise the grace you’ve been given. Rachel at one month reminds me again of how blessed I feel by the fact that we’re an actual church, doing what Jesus in us does — and enjoying the flowering of one of our own.

How to recover from bureaucraseizure

A life in the Spirit, Leadership, , , ,

The whole Pope thing came with a giant bureaucraseizure. It is no wonder we had our own temptations to bureaucratize last week. To bureaucratize is a “tendency to manage an organization by adding more controls, adherence to rigid procedures, and attention to every detail for its own sake.”

Being from the land of bureaucratization, I am subject to a malady: bureaucraseizure.

Bureaucraseizure means:

  1. I can be seized by the need to bureaucratize. I might obsess over getting things to work out according to their assigned procedures and I can make more and more procedures in order to make sure nothing uncomfortable happens.
  2. More ominously, bureaucraseizure means I can be seized by bureaucracies, by giant, faceless processes run by “the great other.”  The tendency of our society is to add more controls on us, make us adhere to rigid procedures and provide endless details for us to consider as if they were crucial.

I am not alone in being subject to this malady.

Stories of bureaucraseizure

1) We decided to get new water meter at our project the other day. I was given the mission to procure one. So I called the Water Department, home of fascinating bureaucracy that is usually inscrutable to them, too. Four phone calls into the mission the meter shop told me to go to 1101 Market, 5th Floor, to get a permit. I did. That address is the Personnel Department! But the clerk called a number on my notes and found my contact who said I needed to talk to Vincent Brindisi who was her boss, but he was out on the road. I called him anyway. He answered and happened to be in the neighborhood! He went to the property and personally explained to my plumber why he should already know how the whole process works. I had a bureaucraseizure. All I wanted was a discernible process that did not take me two hours to discover. Instead I got Vinny.

2) Then the Pope showed up and I got bureaucraseized with the rest of us. There were National Guardsmen patrolling Broad and Washington. (Now you know what the government is prepared to do!). I was in Allentown on Thursday, listening to the last static-filled gasp of WHYY when I saw an alert sign telling me about Pope traffic (in Allentown?). At the same time a New Jersey bureaucrat was lamenting  on the radio that only 50 of his 1700 parking spaces had been sold for $44. All I wanted was to be uncontrolled and unterrified for a minute. But I think we have been on orange alert, at least, for ten years. We are seized by forces who can shut down the city for four days.

It is no wonder we become bureaucraseizers. We are constantly being trained. We are trying to navigate some inscrutable bureaucracy that holds the keys to what we need and then some giant bureaucracy rolls over us and floods the whole city with road closures for four days.

Tangled in procedure

At the Imaginarium, l was leading the council of the church, asking for general agreement on direction for quite a number of items. As soon as I laid some things out people immediately became entangled in procedural questions. Almost everyone gave a pass to the ideas — they appeared to be not nearly as interesting as the procedures that might follow their implementation. I was kind of Vincent Brindisi, bumbling around thinking I was fronting the system and they were me wondering where the procedures are!

Afterward, I met with the Cell Leader Coordinators. They wanted better data on the weekly reports they get from the pastors. I finally protested that I did not think there could be enough data to satisfy their itch for assuredness. “At the end of the day,” I said, “you’ll have to feel it.” Organizing data can’t really quell anxiety or achieve wisdom. They felt a bit like big government demanding that everyone fall into line and be justified by filling out the form properly.

Recovery from bureaucraseizure

So everyone is having bureaucraseizures and being bureaucraseized. How to we recover from the trauma?

Pray. Yes, that is the number one Christian answer to everything. Thank God some of us do it. If we don’t pray, we are too weak to withstand the onslaught of bureaucratizing and we begin thinking it is central to how the world works. Jesus upends the powers and sustains us as they flame out.

Relate. It is so wonderful to relate face to face rather than rule to rule, isn’t it? We do well at this. Sometimes we do too well, of course. The Pastors are going through a sea change right now, so they had a four hour meeting on Tuesday. Much of it was about the injustices of recent procedures, I understand. When do we just go ahead and trust God in each other rather than needing to be constantly reassured that nothing bad will ever happen again? It is a hard answer to discern in the moment. Trusting the rule can be easier than trusting a person.

Serve. – We are getting better and better at this, don’t you think? The other day I washed the steps for our tenants. Kind of unexpected for everyone, me being a relatively unlikely washer and the owner. But I overcame the seizure coming on to do what is expected and make them wash their own steps or at least get mad a some worker somewhere for not having it clean already. It was so tempting to ask, “Who’s job is it to keep these things clean?” What bureau is in charge of serving the needy and redeeming the world?

Was Jesus ever tempted with bureaucraseizure? Not in the first century. But every time he calls the water department with you, he gets what it is like to live in 2015 Philly. I imagine he found the popocalypse somewhat ironic, at least, as well. I imagine he agrees that hope comes by praying, relating and serving as the body of Christ assured by the Spirit, not just relatively comforted by how well everything is controlled.