All posts by Rod White

Parenting as a community

Building community, Marriage and Family,

Some people saw “parenting” in the title of my post and never got further than the title. They are not a parent at all, or not a parent of young children, so they are skipping this post because it is “not about me.” At some level, that’s OK, since we don’t have to be universally responsible for everything. But children are not just a subject, they are not merely an activity, they are members of the body of Christ.

Children are not of age to make a covenant, so they are not those kind of members of the body. But they are members by virtue, generally, of being present with their parents. As a result, they are the special charges we are all given to nurture into faith until they can make an adult decision to walk with Jesus with us. If you ignore them, or you don’t think they are watching you ignore them, you will not only miss your opportunity and shirk your responsibility to care, you may actually prove to be a detriment to their development. (Did you listen to Into the Woods last year?)

We are parenting as a community. One way or another, we will all be parenting when children are around in the church. This is how it should be. We are the family of God, after all. The church is either a great environment where everyone, children included, can be connected to God and form a secure attachment — or not. We want to be a church who…

  • encourages everyone to care for our weakest people: the children,
  • helps parents with their difficult and crucial ministry to their children,
  • helps parenting households in an individualized society to develop practical ways to share their burdens
  • opens doors for including new parents in the systems we come up with to share the load.

How are we doing with village parenting?

At recent meetings of Circle of Hope, we openly talked about how we are doing with nurturing this environment. For the most part, we thought we were doing pretty well. But we were criticized for letting children be invisible, and for letting parents get stuck in being isolated, as is often the society’s habit — since we are supposed to be self sufficient individuals, and, by extension, self-sufficient families.

Adults tend to go through our meetings looking for connections that please them and opportunities that satisfy a main question they ask of every circumstance: what’s in it for me? Advertisers have been appealing to this self-interest so relentlessly since they were born, that it is hard not to see it as a natural reaction. So they often look  over the heads of the children (which is easy to do, right?) assuming there is nothing down there for them. They miss that children not only have things to offer as people, if you listen to them like they are listening to you. What’s even better, caring for children develops the love of God in us. Caring for the vulnerable and enlightening the lost are the main activities that expand our hearts to receive more of the Holy Spirit and become our true selves. It never makes sense to overlook a child.

A few years ago we began talking about “village parenting.” Mainly we were talking about the parents getting together and living as the community they are in regard to their children. Parenting can be so hard for most of us that we need our extended birth family and our extending family in Christ to come alongside. Many people don’t have a birth family who is available, (or who they want to be involved and making they mess they made the first time), so their family in Christ is very important. Many children do not have a functioning family or a family in Christ, so we are a great place for them to learn to attach to people and to God when we invite them in. “Village parenting” is an important skill for everyone to learn. It takes a village to raise a child in Christ.

Hillary Clinton made the point about villages and children in her famous book. She got her image from an African proverb but we got our point from Acts 4:32-35. We rewrote that passage for parents and have been working on doing it ever since. This would be ideal:

All the parents were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that their personal resources for parenting were the only resources they had, but they shared with each other. With great power the parents continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus in their families, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy parents or children among them. For from time to time those who had resources of time, materials, organizing and imagination shared them. The little they had individually became more in God’s hands, so that all the needs were attended to.

Even if you are not a parent, you’d want to get in on that, wouldn’t you?

God is our Father. Jesus is our brother. Last night Peter was telling us at BW that the Spirit is consistently delivering pure spiritual milk to us newborn babies who long for it. Following Jesus is all about family. A lot of people who may be insecurely attached to their own parents and who may not have a secure attachment to God as a result, like to make following Jesus into something they can control or do in their typically avoidant way. But Jesus redirects our outlook from our preoccupations and points back to the children, even the troubled child still unfinished in us or the newborn babe anxiously longing for spiritual milk. We need to be like a child ourselves, a loving, longing child of our loving, longing parent. When we are parenting as a community, all of us, not just the people with children, we are in step with God, who has made us with great instincts for love, which are often unleashed by those needy little people among us.

5 reasons some people are tired of being a Christian

Building community, ,

More and more people are just plain tired out from being a Christian. They feel a change in their world. They are uncomfortable about adapting.

I think they are feeling a nostalgia for a time that may have never existed: “Christendom” — a time when the state and the church had some kind of joint rule of the society. (If it ever really worked like that, it was a LONG time ago).

The privatization of the church accelerated after WW2 when science took over truth at government expense; now the day of the church being consulted about society is over.

I am not sure I feel that nostalgia, since when I became a Christian I changed my allegiance to the Kingdom and didn’t worry about how I fit into the “public.” But a lot of people did not see their conversion like I did, so they are hurting. Here are some reasons they are tired — and why you might be tired of being a Christian, too.

Click the pic to find your city.

 

  1. Leaders are fighting to fill the post-Christian vacuum

Regardless of how it happened, the church as an institution in society is not as important as it used to be. (Of course we have always thought that being a mere institution under the umbrella of “society” was wrong anyway!). I celebrate the end of the unholy alliance — it marginalized Jesus and distorted the Gospel. But the end of it does leave a cultural vacuum – and a lot of Christians spend a lot of time getting sucked into the debates over ideas, theology, and the relationship between faith and a changing culture.  If they are Americans, they tend to think their culture is crucial and their ideas extremely important. So their leaders talk about what to do now all the time (like I am) and get them to fight for the soul of nation (like I hope not to do). Conflict makes people tired. Any time there is some kind of cultural vacuum being flooded with a mixture of new and old ideas, there will be conflict. We hate conflict.  It makes us tired — tired enough to switch on the tube and binge again — or something.

  1. Christian tribes are splintering and dying

Christians have been breaking off into tribes since the early days. Early disciples had debates about whether to follow Jesus or John the Baptist (John 1-3), Paul, Apollos or Peter (1 Cor. 3). 1500 years later the Church experienced the magisterial and radical reformations. Since that time, the Church has splintered off into somewhere around 40,000 denominations. Even broad categories such as “progressive” or “evangelical” even Mennonite are now seeing an emergence of splinter tribes who often shoot their own people for aberrant views. People tend to take their thinking from the present democratic philosophies about identity that is creating tinier subgroups every day which then get hardened by niche marketing. This leaves many people feeling like there’s no place where they can just exist and wrestle in emotional safety – most of the time they expect to get shot so they just become masters at hiding. It is tiring to be on the run.

  1. With another presidential campaign looming, despair is rising.

When the first presidential candidate officially kicked off the 2016 presidential cycle, some people wanted to cry. It seems like the last election just ended a few days ago. Some people care about this circus and some people decidedly don’t. The people in the middle get squeezed from both sides. Christians join right in with the quadrennial feast of lies and judgathons and judge, ostracize, and write-off other believers on the basis of which candidate they prefer. Politics married off to Jesus divides his people – the people called to live in unity and love. It is tiring to feel judged.

  1. The current of Christless culture is getting stronger and most people are not used to swimming upstream.

One of my acquaintances posted this on Facebook yesterday: “Two days ago we were walking down 40th St and walking towards us is a young Dad and his maybe 6-7 year old daughter, and as we pass each other the little girl turns to me and says, “Hey sugar.” Then yesterday at work our customer’s special needs daughter told me I looked like Jesus Christ with tattoos. I don’t know what else to say besides, Yoga?” Hot AND beatific – and all due to Yoga. He was being funny (since he just started Yoga). But it is a new era. Ex-Christians have their own churches.

Life in much of the Church was so tied to the old, modern culture that it was never counter to culture. Now that it is essentially excluded from hyper-modern culture, people don’t know what to do. They used to own the culture and bought the false belief that somehow Kingdom priorities were aligned with the priorities of empire. Not so. Passionate Jesus followers who want to live and be the words of Jesus are finding themselves at odds not only with much of the dominant culture, but at odds with the church, which has spent almost 1800 years trying to make the world work as part of the government. Counter cultural faith is beautiful – but it can be tiring. Most Christians don’t have much stamina built up for going against the current, in their brains, hearts or habits.

  1. Authentic, real-world relationships and community are hard to find. Virtuality doesn’t cut it. Consumerism is boring.

Being countercultural and at odds with both post-Christian culture and institutionalized church, leads to  isolation all around. Some Jesus followers are finding churches who are doing wonderful Kingdom things and who are refusing to collude with empire (I hope we are one!). Others are not finding churches like that and have to settle for “online” community because they’re often ostracized from a local body of believers. Unfortunately, for whatever benefits one gets from an online community, they are hardly a replacement for real world, show-up-at-your-door-with-food relationships.  Live this way long enough, and it’s a straight shot to Christian burnout.

Are you feeling like any of this? What are the things that are leading you to how you feel? What suggestions do you have for easing the trouble a radical Jesus follower might face?

[Much of this was suggested by Benjamin Corey]

What does it take to make a church happen in your 20’s and 30’s?

Leadership, The Mission, , ,

Our church will be talking a lot about children for the next month or so. Not only do we love them, we know a lot of them. (They seem to be popping out all over like tulips). We want to strategize for raising them together.

Many people who have raised this generation of twentysomethings are second-guessing what they did. We can probably learn from them as we raise the next generation, since many of us are their children! A lot of Gen-Y/millennials (destructive labeling) seem a lot more helpless than expected, more than a few can’t work well enough or get along well enough to keep a job, and they expect a lot to be delivered into this very moment (like emotional delivery by drone). There may be reasons for this:

  • They may have been told they are special – for no reason. They didn’t display excellent character or skill, but were treated as if they had. Now they assume they are innately special and are frustrated if they have to prove it by doing something.
  • They may have been told to dream big – and now any small act seems insignificant.
  • Their parents may have made their happiness a central goal. Now it’s difficult for them to generate happiness — the by-product of living a meaningful life.
  • They may have been given every comfort – and now they can’t delay gratification. (Mickey Goodman)

Surprisingly enough, at our last Imaginarium, when we asked the question, “What is God saying to us?” we started talking about the same things. We are the “young” people who are learning new traits from God and one another that allow us to serve our cause. And yes, we think we are special and at the same time doubt anyone who says someone or something is more special than someone or anything else. We are often bumping up against the reality that we actually have to do something to live up to our ideals. A lot of what we talked about matches the quotes above. Here’s my summary of our rich dialogue:

Being and building the church is often hard — trust God

In the great scheme of things, we can’t instantly change the world. We have to take small, first steps – which seem like no progress at all to many of us.

One of us planted a tree in their back yard. Someone actually came into their yard, yanked up the tree and stole it! They had to figure out what to do with all their anger. They had bought the house, taken the step to plant something hopeful and now they had this irrational, cruel opposition. It was tempting to move out. Instead they managed to let it go and plant another tree.

stewingThe church has forces yanking on it every day. If it gets planted where anyone can see it, it might be  sitting duck for cruel opponents. We have to deal with that. The fact is, if it were easy to grow the church, that would probably mean we were doing it wrong. But easy is expected, nonetheless. The fact is, frustration might be good for us. We tend to think, “I don’t deserve this frustration. Look at how great we are!”  — sometimes we stew in that rather than acting in trust.

We need to risk being led by Jesus and leading people to Jesus. Even when we are ill, over-scheduled, or in the middle of chaos. We need to note how our distorted vision of our capability gets disrupted and take another step. We need to act on our few best ideas.  We need to admit that change = resistance — even our “second act” meets resistance although we all agree it needs to happen! We need to see that the domination system is likely to step on our sprout.

Encountering resistance to meaning is challenging — stay vulnerable

Happiness is not a commodity we can earn or deserve, really. It is a by product of living a meaningful life, a life for God, a life for others, a life for the common good, a life in line with with what we were given to be.

Nehemiah-wallOne of our leaders told the story of planting a tree in his sidewalk. He and the neighbors took a turn at sledging the sidewalk to bits. He saw it as undoing what true haters, the kind that paved his neighborhood a long time ago, have done. They got a tree in the ground. Two new people came to the cell meeting as a result. We are like Nehemiah and his allies re-building the wall around Jerusalem. The joy of the Lord is our strength. There is even joy in being able to suffer, able to sledge.

Unlike the domination system, we are killable. We are like sheep. We meet resistance with vulnerability.  A hospice worker talked about how vulnerable she feels whenever she enters a home where death is imminent. She has to let people know that if they trust her, she can do something. But it is not easy to trust, especially when the homeostasis is disrupted — as it so often is for us.

We obviously go through the same kind of resistance with God and others. Going through our internal resistance is much harder, even, than facing the outer. We do things in old ways and resist letting go of learned behavior.

The fact that it is bigger than just me is not always comforting — look farther than your reaction

Now it is time to relay the importance of waiting for the things we want, deferring to the wishes of others and surrendering personal desires in the pursuit of something bigger than “me.”

Our clean-up day T-shirts gave us a good example of doing something uncomfortable for the greater good. A surprising number of us are T-shirt resistant, even T-shirt phobic! If you grew up in a T-shirt-wearing youth group you may actually want to run from people on the street wearing matching shirts. They look like some kind of overbearing, coercive army.

One person told a story, however, about how he met his neighbor when he was working on his house. The neighbor wanted to know what his shirt was about, after a while of getting to know each other. He was kind of “trapped” into talking about something bigger than himself because he was wearing his earth shirt as a work shirt.

ghosts on grassAnother person said they wanted to be marked. They want to demonstrate solidarity. They want to be in the coalition. They thought our T-shirt redeemed bad T-shirts. We like the idea of adding a colorful part of the big story. We are not the beginning or the end, but we are happening.

Sometimes being part of something big can be really hard — like we might be like a tree that gets ripped out and transplanted. That can be good. But it is not comfortable. Multiplying a cell always feels something like that for someone — getting ripped up. One of us said it was like C.S. Lewis’ image of “spectres” becoming solid as they acclimated to heaven (in The Great Divorce). We might not even know what true comfort is until we obey the voice of God calling us into what is truest about ourselves and our place in the world.

We are God’s children. Perhaps we were ill-raised. But what a great parent we have to usher us into an improved adulthood in faith!

Practical thinking about drugs

Doing Theology, Psychological growth, , , ,

The wisdom or rightness of whatever we are doing depends primarily upon our motivation or purpose for doing it. “Why?” and “what for?” make a difference. Jesus followers know why they are alive and what to live for.

The Apostle Paul masterfully helps us with our decision making about activities that could “go either way” in several of his letters — “Is this action wise or right?” For instance, in his day there was a debate about what to do with food that comes from the temple “store” after having been sacrificed to idols. He writes:

The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. (Romans 14:3-9)

We may not have a similar circumstance in our own time (although some people think eating genetically modified foods might be something sacrificed to a corporation). But lately we have had the debate about ingesting drugs of various kinds; there is a parallel. This is the second half [previous post] of some thoughts we explored in our last “Doing Theology” time; Paul is a good guide to questions we have to keep asking.

This might be a question more suitable to what we are discerning:

Is it right or wrong to drink and glass of wine or smoke a joint?

The Bible seems to teach it depends — who is doing it, where and when? For myself, I rarely drink any alcohol in public and usually don’t serve it  because I am aware that some people should never drink any alcohol and I am in solidarity with them. In his argument about eating temple meat, Paul, likewise, says that even though he feels free to eat whatever he chooses, he abstains when he is around people who are against eating such things because he doesn’t need to do anything — especially if it causes someone to stumble over a debatable matter. He has enough confidence in his freedom not to need to exercise it just to prove he has it. His argument (above) easily applies to most ampliative drugs, since they are unnecessary.

More important to most of us is this question:

Are you using drugs to enjoy the gifts of God to the glory of God and to edify the body? Or are you trying to escape or numb pain? Is your drug use about God and others or just about you?

An ampliative or therapeutic drug is just a substance. It can (at least many drugs can) be used for good or it can be used sinfully or ignorantly. Instead of its potential good impact, it could have unintended or sin-ridden consequences. Like anything, it can take on meanings beyond what it is and have undue influence. Whether you use a drug or not, if Jesus is Lord and extending his kingdom motivates you, then you will be able to work things out – God has accepted you even if you have an alternative approach to someone else’s, or you interpret your needs differently, or even if you are just plain wrong at this moment.

You could use a drug and think “nothing can touch me. I am free and strong!” Or you could use a drug in fear, to escape what you should be facing. You could use a drug and feel holier than everyone else. Or you could not use a drug you need and be a big detriment to everyone who has to make up for how badly you behave. You could use a drug ignorantly or rebelliously and become addicted.

We’ll have to work it out.

How does one decide about using therapeutic drugs or attempting to use ampliative drugs therapeutically?

Here are some important questions to ask on the way to answering that question:

  1. Are you avoiding the hard questions that the drugs might help you avoid?
  2. Will the drug/medication aid your maturity or will it numb the process or even blind you to it?
  3. Are you praying things through or is the drug your refuge?
  4. Do you have friends and therapists to talk to or does the drug help you avoid scary relationships?
  5. Is taking the drug/medication an expression of faith and service or is it running and numbing? Conversely is refusing to take it relying on yourself instead of humbly admitting your need?
  6. Will not using the drug/medication build up or tear down the body?

Questions that help do theology from where you are starting:

How are you presently using drugs of all kinds?

Have you or your loved ones (friends or family) ever been prescribed or used drugs to their detriment? What happened?

What are the most important parts of this dialogue so far for your future health and the future health of Circle of Hope?

What is God telling you about using ampliative or therapeutic drugs?

Here are some “one-liners” we collected at the end of our Doing Theology time. These are not ‘last words,” just the wisdom some people were willing to offer:

  • Talking about drug use more lets everything that might be suppressed get out into the light. Not talking can leave us lost in feeling defective.
  • As a church, it is better to be known as a fertile ground for recovery than as a place where one is free to party.
  • Peer pressure is a big thing in a community. It runs things. We need to remember that what we do influences others.
  • Drinking wine could be joyful if Jesus is behind it. He obviously thought so.
  • We should handle substances relationally, not legally. Our sin addiction keeps us isolated and prone to cutting people off.
  • Avoidance is part of humanity. The Zoloft user could easily tell the alcoholic to get the speck of sawdust out of his eye while she has a plank of dependency in her own.
  • Jesus can transcend the space of our deepest suffering, dependent on a drug or not. We yearn for transformation.
  • Suspicion of one’s personal capacity is warranted. None of us is all that self aware. None of us is capable of competing with the billions  of dollars spent to get us to use unnecessary drugs.
  • The body  of Christ is useful in all healing processes. Just learning how to be the body is healing. The therapeutic dyad central to psychotherapy amplifies this truth.
  • Where does my necessary suffering end and unnecessary begin? I cause a lot of my own suffering. We all need the mirror.
  • Getting connected to something beautiful usually starts before sobriety.
  • How do we get to the place where we can ask the question: “Show me how I work so I can be healed?”
  • Rationalization and spiritualization are enemies of transformation.

What about drugs? Some background for doing theology.

Doing Theology, , , , ,

When we are doing theology we are mentalizing with God and his people. We are not working on the social construction of reality; we are listening for the reality behind what we think we know — the voice of God. In that process we honor the Bible as the trusted basis for hearing from God and we respect people who have done the work to understand the Bible. But we are not just parsing words, making laws, or arguing over theories. We are trying to figure out who to be and what to do. Doing theology is thinking and feeling along with God and conforming one’s thinking and feeling to his or her truest self.

About a month ago we decided to do some theology about drugs. The situation in the United States is so drug-induced that it caused a government report: Epidemic: Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Abuse.  The solutions in the report did not do theology, of course, and they came up with the typical solutions of the the day: education, tracking and monitoring, proper medical disposal, and enforcement. All these solutions will be hard to implement, since drugs, legal and illegal, are a huge business in the United States.

Philadelphia is deeply connected to the drug industry, even historically.  When George Washington lived at 5th and Market he wrote to his gardener at Mt. Vernon, “Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere.” He and Thomas Jefferson traded herbal blends for their pipes. A recent Philadelphia Magazine highlighted how pot is coming. Recently the city recently decriminalized pot. There is now a $25 fine for possession of under an ounce and a $100 fine for smoking in public. And police are instructed not to arrest anyone with under an ounce.  People are lined up to help us become Colorado — let marijuana be legal and cash in.

There is a theological framework for why this subject is important.

What are drugs?

Drugs are not a malevolent force against which we should war. They are not the disease of the users who should be scapegoated. They are chemical substances that, when taken into the human body through ingestion, injection or some other means, modify one or more of the capacities of the body for either ampliative or therapeutic purposes and not for feeding or nourishing the body.

The history of drug use in the modern western world tracks the development that has ended up in our consumer economies. Just before the twentieth century, regulation of drugs by taxation changed to prohibition and criminalization of their use and distribution. Some of the factors leading to this were 1) industrial workers needed more presence of mind than agricultural, 2) governments thought drugs would sap the country’s fitness for war, 3) most drugs came from the southern hemisphere so there were racists fears about foreigners corrupting the young, 4) science discovered more about how bad various drugs could be, 5) Christians and socialist thought they were morally corrosive and made people poor. People are still having these debates.

What is thinking about drugs that might be contrary to revelation?

  • Drugs are a form of technology

They can make body an object of manipulation. The body can be seen as separate from a whole person, just a machine to manipulate.

  • Drugs are used to “progress” out of what is viewed as the tyrannous imposition of creation.

These days people tend to think technology will make everything better. We don’t like physical or psychological pain, so we employ new drug technology to get rid of it. The drugs circumvent what is built into our bodies to order our lives in relation to the world around us and to time. For instance, if I am tired and have a headache I probably need rest, not coffee or an aspirin. Rather than smoking weed to go to sleep, I might need to start exercising and stop watching the blue screen late at night.

  • Power: Drugs are a means by which one manipulates the body according to their will.

As a result of the philosophy of power, there is a big concern over the addict who is out of control and dependent. If one does not have power over oneself it undermines the whole philosophy on which western society is running. Marx highlighted this call for power when he called religion the opiate of the people. It is ironic, of course, that society as a whole is increasingly dependent on drugs.

  • Freedom: Drugs are a consumable that satisfies one’s needs and desires and frees one from suffering.

Ampliative drugs, in particular, are seen as freedom, even rebellion. It is ironic that they are in total conformity to the heart of present western culture. People have become engineers of experiences (maybe with their own meth lab). They don’t waste time waiting to bump into something good in creation, they make it at home. One author calls weekend party animals “bureaucrats of fun,“ administering their enjoyment like a nurse setting a med schedule.  The society thinks taking drugs is a moral imperative: they are a valuable technology through which we can manage and manufacture a better, more fulfilling life.  It must be added that they are also the ultimate consumer product: geared for maximum impact and instantly obsolete, used up – and they are easy: no need for training, travel or time. A good rebellion against “the man” would more likely be never using ampliative drugs, in particular.

I will follow this up soon with some practical advice for thinking about how to use drugs along with some of the thinking of the group we gathered for doing theology.

12 basics for covenant keeping in conflict

Building community, ,

This piece is for everyone who wants to work out a covenant and suspects there will be some conflict if they do. The covenant relationships most common to us are the ones we keep in our marriages and the one we have with each other as the people of God gathered face to face as the church. [Listen to the pastors’ latest video].

A covenant is not the same as the more-familiar contract. A contract is an agreement the partners maintain as long as expectations are met and justice is done. A covenant like God makes is an expression of character – a character devoted to realizing self-giving love and mutuality — true love is more about the character of the lover than the characteristics of the beloved. A covenant is made by partners who promise to give love and commitment without an end in mind for themselves – their goal is keeping a reconciling, growing relationship alive and, if they follow Jesus, breeding love.

Not exactly what I have in mind — but warlocks have an idea about covenant and Hollywood will exploit anything.

A covenant is refined and comes to fullness when it endures conflict. It needs conflict like certain pine forests need fire to rejuvenate. Just like God’s covenant with us in Jesus goes through death to life, our covenants of love with God and others also endure that kind of suffering to become what they can be. So conflict between covenant partners is part of the love. Having healthy conflict is part of the covenant.

  • Conflict is normal: it is a natural, inevitable reality – especially because the world is subject to sin and death.
  • Conflict is nightmarish: it is scary and often mismanaged in painful, abusive and/or destructive ways.
  • Conflict is necessary: it is what God goes through with us; it is needed for producing growth.

12 basics for covenant keeping when there is conflict (as there will be!)

These basic statements are not for judging whether a covenant partner is living up to their part of the relationship. I list them for self-reflection by people who want to master self-giving love by enduring conflict with the goal of enjoying and providing the blessings of covenant in Christ. They are a list of ideals – some we may be good at expressing already and some may show up our deficiencies. If we can learn them, we will be well on the way to showing up for the benefit of our partners, like God shows up for us in Jesus.

So, here’s what you do when you are in covenant (like in marriage or the church) and there is conflict…

  1. Prepare the setting, if possible, and plan for constructive confrontation.

Avoid distractions, interruptions, or non-private discussions; being overly tired/stressed; or being emotionally reactive (Proverbs 16:1-3).

2. Take responsibility and take initiative to directly address the issue.

Avoid running from the problem, using the “silent treatment,” waiting for the other person to make the first move, or allowing problems to accumulate (Matthew 5:23-4)

  1. Attack the problem, not the person, and propose viable options or solutions.

Avoid judging or criticizing the other person and/or their personality, appearance, family of origin, etc., name-calling, power messages or manipulative actions, or attempting to change or “fix” them (Proverbs 15:1-2)

  1. Stay on the subject; focus specifically and concretely on the facts, actions, feelings and events.

Avoid sweeping generalizations, using the “everything and the kitchen sink” attack, bringing up the past, comparisons with others, or irrelevant issues (Proverbs 17:14)

  1. Take responsibility for your part of the conflict and humbly admit when you are wrong.

Avoid being proud, stubborn and arrogant by blaming the other person for your feelings or actions, or denying your humanness and blind spots (Philippians 2:3-5)

  1. Practice active listening and effective communication skills; use self-disclosing “I” language.

Avoid accusatory “you” statements, exaggeration, and extreme language (e.g.: “never, always, all, everyone” etc) or interrupting (Ephesians 4:29).

  1. Be calmly assertive; state your needs, wants, hurts, disappointments and feelings clearly.

Avoid pouting, nagging and complaining: putting words in others person’s mouths, or expecting them to read your mind (Matthew 12:34-37)

  1. Show honor, consider how you speak, be truthful, and practice courtesy

Avoid lying to protect yourself or someone else. Put all of the following on your “forbidden” list: name-calling and sarcasm, belittling or degrading the other person, and abusive, intimidating, forceful or violent behavior of any kind (Proverbs 15:4).

  1. Be considerate; appreciate and understand the other’s needs, feelings, interests and differences.

Avoid the idea that you need to think or feel the same way as the other person. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you have to deny differences in taste, upbringing, viewpoint, customs or coping mechanisms in order to resolve your conflict (Romans 14:19-15:4).

  1. Be willing to forgive an offense in order to cultivate the other’s growth, healing and well being.

Forgive can be functionally defined as “giving up our ‘right’ to hurt back.” Avoid becoming resentful, bitter, punitive, alienated and controlled by vengeful fantasies and actions (Ephesians 4:31-5:2).

  1. Strive for mutual understanding and a “win-win” outcome; develop an “us-we-ours” view of the situation.

Avoid trying to change the other person. Let go of the need to get your own way or to “win” the argument. Stay away from a self-centered “me-my-mine” attitude (Romans 15:7).

  1. Agree to agree. For the moment, you may need to agree to disagree — if there are unresolved issues, arrange to discuss them later. If necessary, get outside help from an unbiased, neutral, objective mediator or arbitrator. But keep the covenant goal in mind.

Avoid the temptation to withdraw from the situation and let the conflict go unresolved, as far as it is up to you. At the same time, don’t pull in biased family members or friends to support you. When arguments escalate or become too intense, suggest calling a brief time-out to allow flaring tempers to cool (Proverbs 15:22, Matthew 18:15-17).

This is primarily taken from a seminar by Jared Pingleton which he has published elsewhere. It is not reproduced, in total, or quoted for profit.

Good Friday story: What do Christians REALLY want?

A life in the Spirit, , ,

The title of today’s post hit me while I was walking the streets with Jesus on the way of the cross last Friday. I was pondering our journey in Capitolo Park, in the rain when I heard a nice singing voice on a loudspeaker in Spanish. I looked around south of Pat’s cheesesteak, but it appeared to be coming from even farther south. I started walking to investigate. I heard the Spanish word for sin, I saw the crest of a Roman legionnaire glinting in the distance, so I started running. Before long I was in a procession behind Mexican Jesus carrying his cross and being periodically whipped by soldiers who were taking their roles as seriously as everyone else in the parade. I stood very close to Mary, herself, and hummed along with the rest of the singers in the crowd.

The police were trying to make it all work. The neighbors were standing on their stoops looking bemused and indulgent. A reporter made it a human interest story on Saturday in the Inquirer. But I was strangely moved when Jesus fell and the soldiers started yelling at him to get up and finally whipped him again with their cotton-rope whips to keep him moving toward His death. What an important spectacle! — few words, just a big visual aid for what the day in history was all about. I was glad I was with everyone for a while before I continued my own more meditative version of the discipline. As I stood out in the middle of Broad St. and prayed for the city, in the rain, in the median, in the line of sight for all sorts of cars wondering why anyone was doing such a thing, I began to wonder what people really want.

Lots of people do not want Jesus crucified and risen. That is for sure. It hasn’t changed much since Paul insisted that his story about Jesus’ death and resurrection was all he really had to give people. People wanted “spirituality” and the idol worship of the state back then, too, instead of Jesus. But what to the Christians really want? They did not want to get out in the rain and make themselves known as followers along the way of the cross, for the most part, certainly not with the Mexicans who were importing their extravagant passion play. I began to make a list in my head.

What do Christians REALLY want?

Mind you, this is not a list for all Christians, or even for the Christians I know. It is more along the line of “these are the things Christians get sucked into when their courage is weakened by their environment and the unique challenges of their personal journey” or “this is what people think Christians really want instead of Jesus that makes them hypocrites.”

  • They want the best for their kids.

Who doesn’t? But if that is all you really want will they ever find out what is best beyond what you can get for them?

  • They want to pay less taxes and control their money.

Thus, Republican candidates can assume the evangelicals will vote for them.

  • They want good friends.

So all sorts of churches have tight communities and don’t even need to mention Jesus to keep them going.

  • They want more personal time.

So many church people resent the church because it appears to eat up too much of the time not dominated by their jobs.

  • They want to argue about church policies

This is for people who are into church, of course. Most people only argue about policies when the church doesn’t have one that benefits them or has one that makes what they want to do look wrong.

  • They want to follow rules

No matter how much the Bible writers fight the constant pressure to makes rules that manage God people still want to tame the Lord and lead God around — you know, whip him into shape.

Does Jesus really care about any of these things? He cares about us, so he ends up caring about what we care about. But, as the Son of God, none of these things make his top twenty list. He doesn’t have a wife and kids (or a house or even a career in the normal sense of the word). He gets tax money out the mouth of a fish. He has great friends, but they were not too reliable last week. He doesn’t work on dichotomies like public and personal. He is frustrated with Pharisees who have created policies about policies. He is a ruler, not a rule follower.

What do YOU want?

I suppose Jesus is so weird his weirdness is a good reason that people just motored through Good Friday and were impatient when a processional of Mexicans messed up their search for a parking space. Obviously, needing a parking space is not wrong and being frustrated about parking is a normal feature of city life. I suppose the problem is more about the desire that creates one’s list rather than the search itself. For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. For the frustration of being annoyed a parker might endure the processional.

What do you REALLY want? The church normally promises whatever people want in the name of Jesus so they can keep butts in the seats. Church ends up all about your kids, your career, your friends, your “you” time, and all brought down to principles, policies and rules that a fifth grader could understand and apply without too much demanding spiritual stuff added in. You’re OK if you attend enough meetings to keep off the absentee list.

But there was Jesus out on the street again last Friday. I felt like my puny, twisted desires were whipping him, too.  I was moved all over again to make myself absent to any of the normal fears that make me desire things I don’t have or desire more perfect versions of the things I already have in order to follow the Savior in the life I have been given. I want to know the miracle of being raised from the death of need so I can more needlessly receive and carelessly love. I want to know Christ, even though it means being one with him in death and suffering with him along this journey in order to know the power of his resurrection — instead of just desiring what I pretend I can get for myself.

We are not Indiana: Gov. Pence please save us from RFRA

Doing Theology, , , ,

It is interesting to be alive as the United States goes “post-Christian.” I still remember sitting around the living room just after graduating from college predicting this day and looking forward to it, so we could get back to telling people the gospel and forming the church without being all clogged up with saluting the flag. We are not quite there yet — and I am not sure if getting what I hoped for (as usual) is going to be what I really want.

We get tagged by Gov. Pence and the RFRA

The example of the day for not getting what I want is the uproar over the “religious freedom” law in Indiana. (Here is a description from the NY Times, complete with a link to the bill). Governor Pence told ABC’s This Week that the new Indiana law is just an expansion of a federal law that is over 20 years old. It is about expanding individual rights for those who feel government has impinged upon them. “This is not about discrimination,” he said. “This is about empowering people to confront government overreach.” The supposedly controversial Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act is based on a 1993 Federal Law of the same name, signed by Bill Clinton. It protects individuals (which includes most anyone or anything that can get a federal id number) from risking a lawsuit by exercising their convictions. Not only can the Christian owners of a bakery refuse to write an inscription on the wedding cake of a gay couple, but the black owners of a T-shirt business don’t have to print the KKK’s burning crosses on shirts, and Jewish owners of a gift shop don’t have to put Nazi symbols on coffee cups.

However, Pence did not answer directly when asked six times whether under the law it would be legal for a merchant to refuse to serve gay customers. “The issue here is still: Is tolerance a two-way street or not?” he responded several times. The governor might have better reason to respond that way if “sexual orientation” were a protected class of people on Indiana’s list. But they are not. So the law leaves room for merchants to decide who is gay and whether they want to serve them based on their orientation. Why a state would want to further injure LGBT people now that they are finally enjoying the light of day is beyond me. Quite predictably, the bill has been roundly condemned around the nation. Seattle’s mayor went so far as to issue a travel ban to Indiana for city workers.

As a leader in the church, people turn and look at me suspiciously whenever religious arguments get adjudicated in the press. Republican Governor Pence says that Indiana is under fire for faith, so I am supposed to either defend him or not because he got on TV. People look at our church and wonder if LGBT people are a protected class among us, as if we were a state government! Once again, people who are not personally dealing with the varieties non-dominant sexual attractions start lumping everyone together into an “identity” and making them conform to the latest version of the political fight. I still don’t think those are our only choices. I am for religious freedom and I think the various RFRA’s, federal and in twenty-one states, make a lot of sense. At the same time I think the application in Indiana is wrong-headed and hurtful. I have the luxury of seeing things that way because I don’t need an RFRA to have religious freedom and I am not Indiana. Governments should be useful and are often dangerous; regardless, Jesus is Lord.

Jesus does not need an RFRA

“Flevit super illam” (He wept over it); by Enrique Simonet, 1892.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem yesterday he pointedly challenged the authority of both the empire and the religious leaders. They promptly killed him. We might like to remember his example. Alternatively, Republican Christians got themselves into power in Indiana and they intend to use the power of the state to defend their rights. They may save me from getting killed, I don’t know. But they also threaten to delude people into thinking that state law is somehow going to save them. It is not. It is just as likely to threaten your life. The big point of Palm Sunday, that even children could recognize, is that Jesus is the one who saves.

I think the people who are furious over the Indiana law are even more sure that state law will save people — specifically those who just want to love who they love without being discriminated against as a result. For more and more people, the state is god and the laws are the word of the lord. Whoever marshals enough firepower to win the legal fight rules — and people are deploying the weapons of “dialogue” in our country to overturn this law. The media is already holding court sessions for the latest round of social construction. The corporations are already deciding the verdict on Indiana. Charles Barkley gets on TV and pressures the NCAA to move the Final Four out of the state. Tim Cook of Apple denounces the law as an opening for discrimination (which it is). Salesforce.com cancels all events in the state. Yelp issues a warning. Angie’s List says it is rethinking expansion plans.

What Christians seem to miss on Palm Sunday is that Jesus is clearing out the temple of merchants and other powers so God is worshiped, not the regulations, laws and business interests that have come to substitute for God’s direct rule. As much as I am against oppression, I am surprised at how many Christians leave their faith behind in order to worship at the feet of the government (and the corporations who own it) whenever they experience discrimination, begging for freedom and demanding the power to make things right, as if American exceptionalism will actually save the world.

Meanwhile, in the church which, again, is not an Indiana in any way, shape or form, we are walking with real people who experience same sex attraction. Some are ready to strike out against inequality with their allies. Some may want to get married. Some don’t want to strike out or get married. And some would like people who are supposedly defending them to be quiet. The issues of faith , hope and love are bigger than the Constitution. I think criticizing Indiana’s lawmaking is important, but I know I will do more good, ultimately, if I follow Jesus more fearlessly in the face of bad laws. If I expect the powers-that-be to stop doing what the fallen powers of this world do, I will ultimately be less influential for good in that murky arena, too.

When the powers that be want to reduce loved ones down to a “protected class” we need to tell them our kingdom is not of this world and any so-called “class” does not need their permission to express the first fruits of the age to come. If you can’t go that far, you can at least not project your frustration with Indiana on the church. We are not Indiana. We don’t need to fall into a political trap every time it is opened to us. We need to keep creating an alternative and not align ourselves with the pawns of the state who compete for some validation from their false god. Jesus is our hope for love and truth and we should keep speaking the truth in love.

Six good reasons to observe the Holy Week

A life in the Spirit

I have always had a bit of resistance to telling people about Holy Week. It is one of those things that casual people might gum up and mere consumers might defile. It really deserves people who voluntarily seek the Lord  — not people who are pressured into some observance by fear of unholiness and not people afraid of being on the outs with their peers or the people who dominate them. Holy Week is a radical thing to do — not really something to be visited but something to be accomplished, just like Jesus will say at the end of it, “It is finished.”

Walking through the Holy Week with Jesus is the ultimate in taking to heart the great theme verse of Lent, Philippians 3:10-11:  “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,  and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” The discipline is all about knowing Jesus – knowing his death and moving through it with him to resurrection. Powerful.

At the same time, I also hate for anyone to miss Holy Week! So many Christians de-radicalize themselves and ramp down Christianity to fit into their “side-project” category while their schedule is devoted to who they really are. I cannot resist calling everyone into true faith that invades their schedule with as much discipline bent on knowing Jesus as it can tolerate – a true attempt at praying without ceasing and being the body on a pilgrimage together into eternity. This journey is our true life and no one should miss it. We got the strangest compliment the other day; someone said, “That church really expects us to be Christians.” It’s true. I hope that’s not becoming unusual for the Church in general. But it is true; Holy Week expects us to be Christians.

So here are six reasons I think we should do it. You still have a few days to plan to do what you can to become who you might be — and, as Paul seems to say it, “attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

It connects us.

The “Holy Week” of the Christian discipline year is the week immediately before Easter. The earliest allusion to the custom of marking this week as a whole with special observances can be found in the Apostolical Constitutions (v. 18, 19), dating from the late 200’s and early 300’s.

Do it because it is great to be part of the transhistorical body of Christ! Our church also has its own version of this tradition that is as old as our church is. It is great to be part of our own spiritual tradition! Some people think that resisting the tradition makes them something. Could be — not going with the crowd, being “free” or merely being oneself  has good parts, too. But as a spiritual lifestyle, staying singular is detrimental.

We need to identify.

The main discipline of Holy Week is the spiritual exercise of being with Jesus, quite consciously, prayerfully and physically, as he moves through the final week on the way to his great work on our behalf. He is fully indentified with us and we seek to fully identify with him.

Do it to become one with him, to know him and to die and rise with him. We could do this in our imagination in our house, of course, or binge watch it on a movie. Making the effort to go to a gathering connects us to our own problems with being that real, that active, and that committed as well as being all those things with all those people. We exercise our Christ-connected identity in graphic ways and that solidifies it.

It helps us receive Jesus.

The time we spend every day during the Holy Week gives us a lot of meditative space we do not normally have and may not normally discipline in our own schedule. The teaching, worship, dialogue and quiet give us a lot of space to receive Jesus: what he is saying and what he is doing.

Do it because as God came to us in Jesus in the past, he is coming right now and will come back to welcome us into the age to come. These mysteries are very deep and are a little different for us each year. We need to be softened to them and we need time to receive all that Jesus was, is and will be.

We need to develop our faith.

Many of us are just starting off in faith and we need to get a handle on what we are doing. Holy Week lays it out in a deep but linear path we can follow. Exercising spiritual discipline at this level is a formative first for many of us. It challenges who we are as individuals and a body, which is why many people don’t risk it. Others are settled in Jesus and the church and don’t feel so needy anymore – they need to regain some humility, enough to place themselves on the now-familiar path with Jesus and get somewhere.

Do it because we need to place ourselves on that path as who we are now. New believers need to get on a new path. Old believers need to get further on the path. We need to move with Jesus where we are going next, not get stuck on the track we’re in. We dare not become content with our level. Holy Week demands a deeper level, since Jesus is out in front of us demonstrating what self-giving love means.

It makes us a deep community.

While spiritual discipline is probably primarily a silent, singular practice with God, we can’t leave that as the full extent of our practice. We need each other. The weak need the strong and the strong need the weak. During the mutual discipline of Holy Week, we dispense with our normal cell schedule. We band together as four congregation who will meet as a whole on Easter morning and then will be sent into our stations on Easter evening.

Do it because it is so descriptive and formative it is priceless! The practice helps us face up to our new faces and to live in the truth and love that makes us one. The story of Holy Week is the story that makes us the body of Christ. Reliving it is remembering our birth.

We want to witness to Jesus.

In a world full of newly-formed detractors and deconstructors, the word of Jesus needs to be told and the way of Jesus needs to be demonstrated. This week of the year cannot be turned into a cute celebration of family/friendship or gift-giving; it is the Holy Week in which Jesus dies and rises. It is the gospel lived out by the Lord and His people. It is the re-creation moment held up for everyone to see. The Holy Week observances are like a march down Broad St. by which we let people know that people of this generation follow Jesus and take his work so seriously they are drawn to emulate it in their small way as they gather to be a part of it together.

Do it because the more appointments we need to reschedule, the more bosses we need to ask for time off, the more friends we have occasion to tell what we are doing, the more trouble the whole process causes to the homeostasis of this present time which as it smothers hope, the better.

You may have more reasons! You may have stories to tell about why you do it. If this is a good place to share, please feel free.

It is the second act — what do we do now?

Leadership, The Mission, , , ,

It is true that Terry Gilliam stole the title “imaginarium” from us and applied it to his devilish movie. The five people who knew about that movie before I just told you may have had trouble taking our “rolling Council” meeting seriously. Nevertheless, the others had a very visionary Imaginarium in February. Recently we have simply answered this question when we meet: “What is God telling us?” What moved the group in February was pondering what it takes to be what we have imagined and what it takes to lead it. We are implementing the vision of our “second act.” Things are loosening up, changing, and growing. What do we do now?

Here are five things that God seems to be saying to us about moving into what is next for Circle of Hope. It is amazing that all this good thinking happened in one hour!

Our “second act” is like when the kids are in high school and we get a miracle baby.

  • It has disturbed the homeostasis. Some of us have to get used to imagining ourselves as parents when we were already settled into our post-reproduction phase.
  • Our system has become pretty secure. It is good to have it disrupted because it needs to be disrupted to expand. Further leaders need to emerge. Pastors need to turn to equipping others and to not being overly in charge.
  • If we follow God’s lead through this change we will win the battle we are in. But there is a remote possibility that we won’t have the faith or follow the vision. We are taking the risk to meet the challenge even though we may prefer avoiding failure rather than risking success.

Many of us are at the tipping point when our attitudes change and we think we can sway something.

  • We have stokeable imaginations. We can get fired up. This is a good trait.
  • What we are talking about becoming in this year’s Map takes prayer. If we are praying all the time, we can see it God’s way and we can be it God’s way.
  • Some of us have felt overwhelmed — like we were foster parents to a giant baby called Circle of Hope. It was like the baby was foisted upon us and we were not exactly ready to parent. We fell in love with the baby and we decided to raise it. Now that we are raising it, it feels like our baby.

One of the main calls to the Leadership Team is to pick up the load. Be responsible.

  • To be responsible probably means a change in how many of us see ourselves. We can’t lead if our faith is locked inside “personal salvation” boundaries — that means faith is something I get for myself and it mainly lives in me. We’re talking about having faith that is about others and about the cause, not locked up in our own survival, preference or good feelings.
  • One of us gave an analogy of this based on how they have changed their gardening practices. In the past their garden was not very thought out. They planted what was given to them or went with half-price plants at the end of the season. This year they have already been germinating seeds under the grow lights in expectation of spring. We need to be the kind of people who foster spiritual seedlings, not just wait for people to find us, not just think of ourselves as afterthoughts or leftovers, and not mess around with “whatever” until the season for planting has passed.
  • To pick up the load means being active as opposed to passive. We can be a movement or a monument (or even a mausoleum if we don’t watch it).

It is tempting to wait and see what is happening, like you’re watching someone else’s show.

  • What? You never saw Disney’s Hercules, either?

    It doesn’t matter if we switch around our leaders and do inventive structural changes if the church is not moved by the Spirit. If there is no movement there is nothing to steer.

  • One of us said. “If I say it, I’m more motivated.” They meant they need to talk about what they are doing because that helps them own it. For instance, people sometimes don’t want to say “I love you.” They don’t want to say it until they absolutely mean it. Some of us, even the leaders, don’t want to say, “I’m going with the ‘second act.'” They are waiting, doubtful.

Our best stuff is in the wings ready to move on stage.

  • We need to stoke what is coming. We have spent three months doing that. We switched our pastors around and founded “the hub” at 13th and Walnut. A new picture is taking shape. We deployed new local site supervisors. We refocused all our pastors more on making deeper and further disciples and less on administration of their locales. We began to refocus Rachel on being the BW Development Pastor. Our Compassion Core Team took up the challenge of getting us ALL out there in compassionate service.
  • We are meeting new people who want to be responsible. They want to build an army for the spiritual battle of our time.
  • A new proverb seems to be developing: The new person is a role you did not know you needed.
  • We even started to catch up with our sharing goals in March.

It is an exciting time to be a circle of hope in Philadelphia. There is certainly no shortage of hopelessness to fill with a bright future! It is exciting to be Circle of Hope, the people of God, too! We are filled with possibilities and we have the vision and leadership to make them happen.