ECG Dispatch 3: Knowing Jesus a Little too Well

Yesterday afternoon's break-out session focused on helping your ministry write and articulate a vision. It was a good workshop with a great leader, Erica Liu from Pres House at UW-Madison. They are very lucky to have her!

As part of the workshop, she led us through a mini-visioning process to introduce some of the steps. One person at the table described their context and a ministry priority and that was the focus for the group. The observation was made that it is hard to vision when you only know a very little about the context and community and their priorities. Erica pointed out that although they is certainly true, it can be good to have new ears in the conversation because we know so much about our own contexts we often make lots of assumptions on what everybody knows.

I wonder, how much of our "church growth and evangelism" challenge is actually a challenge of our own creation? A challenge built not out of resistance to the gospel from outside the church but assumptions about the gospel from inside?

Consider young adults. Survey after survey shows that the current young adult generation are both deeply committed to community and open to spirituality. If ever there was a ripe harvest for the church since the implosion of Christendom in the 1950's, this should be it. So why do we have such a hard time with the YA generation?

More and more, I think the problem is less about YA (or anyone's for that matter) resistance to "tradition" than about our assumptions about the vision of the gospel. We assume that the point of the gospel is providing a foundation for the church. That's pretty orthodox modern view Augustine/Calvin stuff. Most YA I know see the church as providing a foundation for teaching and living the gospel rather than the gospel providing an excuse to have a church. More and more we see that for YA it is the gospel that is the point.

Why then do we think that "if we don't get more young people the congregation will die" is not a persuasive vision for the future? Isn't the whole point of the work of the gospel (reaching out to the world) ensuring that the church will survive for another generation? In too many churches that assumption is the uncritical basis for a vision for the future.

Assuming that the gospel is propelling us into the world to love and serve the people of God so we might realize the vision of not seeing the thing we love die is an assumption we cannot afford to keep making. Not just with young adults but the whole of our communities.

So, what to do. If I had that answer I would charge to read this blog. One thing I am going to try is to make sure that when my congregations start to vision for the future, there will be someone in the room who doesn't know Jesus in exactly the same way we do and might just press back on some of the assumptions bred by outer familiarity.

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Location:PC(USA) ECG Conference

ECG Dispatch 2: On the Other Hand, Please Do Stand so Close to Me

This morning's plenary focused on living out (rather than merely describing) the life of Christ in the world through the church.  The thesis was pretty straight forward and did not break a lot of new ground for most listeners, but some things need to be repeated until we finally get it!  The idea of living into living a Christlike life was summed up in six words:

• Presence: We need to physically move to the places we hope to evangelize. 
• Proximity: We need to reach out and touch and share with people who are not always just like us.
• Prevenient: We need to remember that God's grace has been at work in the life of another long before we get there.
• Powerlessness: We need to remember that God id not coerce the world into loving God but took on the mantle of powerlessness.
• Passion: We need to remember that Jesus suffered for his message.
• Proclamation: We need to let our lives as well as our words proclaim the glory and grace of God. 

On the whole, I was with her.  I do get a little concerned when we get to far afield in the "Passion"bit and too closely relate our suffering to Christ's suffering.  What I heard this morning though was a little closer to Moltmann's idea of the Crucified God which is a beautiful theological model.  (Well worth the read.)

What struck me in particular today was something that may not have been an intended theme and may even be counter to what the speaker was trying to communicate.  So if this is wierdly off the wall, it is not her fault!

In describing what it means to take on the powerlessness of Christ, she spoke of Philippians 2 and the idea of kenosis or emptying oneself.  That was the basis of the fourth "P"in the list above.  Just as Christ emptied himself and took on powerlessness so must we.  I agree.  I also think that there is something to be said for the kenotic nature of the second "P" however.  

To really draw near to another person- to diminish the distance between us physically- requires a sort of interpersonal and spiritual kenosis; a giving up of personal space and personal security.  We tend to think of being Christlike in almost exclusively spiritual terms, however there is something Christlike about holding a hand or standing shoulder to shoulder or walking toward rather than away from another person.  

Perhaps the most important question for us to ask when thinking about reaching out beyond the walls of the church is not "who"are we trying to reach but "where"they are.  If we are going to live the witness of Jesus Christ, we need to be ready to unload the baggage that keeps us physically as well as spiritually at arms length from others.  We need to close the gap between the body of Christ in the world and the world we seek to serve the way God, in Christ, closed the gap between heaven and earth.

ECG Dispatch 1: When Hymns Tell a Half-Truth

Posting anything about conference worship is a dodgy thing. It is important to be honest, but at the same time it is wise to remember that the people who lead are doing so sincerely and faithfully. So let me begin by saying thanks to the group who gave their time and talent to lead worship last night and today. Turning a critical eye to our shared worship life is good, but not personal.

I came to this conference trying to approach worship as a visitor. It is my first time to this particular gathering so I dod not know what to expect but I had some preconceived ideas about worship. They were quickly set aside.

My assumption was that worship would serve as a "teaching moment" for conferees. It was never said that this was the case, but it is often the way at gatherings like this. If that was indeed the case, I learned four things:

1. Presbyterian worship consists of a prayer, 25 minutes of praise band singing and a sermon. (a VERY good sermon at that mind you. Say what you will but we Presbyterians can flat out preach.)

2. If you do not already know the songs you are on your own.

3. There is no evidence at all that the PC(USA) has literally just published a new worship book/hymnal.

4. The PC(USA) has two theological priorities (based on the songs) and they are a) substitutionary atonement for salvation and b) an uncritical happiness about Jesus.

There was no confession of sin, no opportunity to pray beyond praise for how awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome Jesus is and how happy happy happy happy happy we are for that.

There is nothing wrong with the music we were singing. It is not my favorite but that is taste not content. The trouble is that we sang SO MANY songs that had only a very narrow theological message. Worshipers only got a glimpse into the breadth of theology in the church. If I had walked in from the street, I would not know it was a Presbyterian worship experience.

Both opening worship and morning "praise" were disappointments. After 15 years of parish ministry I felt like I was worshiping from the outside.

If there was a teaching moment there for me it is this, we cannot overestimate the strangeness of worship to someone unfamiliar with our worshiping communities. Part of being hospitable is helping the uninitiated become part of our traditions.

It makes me think about Thanksgiving and my mother's table. It is not uncommon for there to be someone there for the first time. Whether it is extended family or a friend who was unable to travel to see family at year, we like having someone extra at the table.

Part of our Thanksgiving ritual is saying grace and two traditions are part of that. First, we are hand holders. Second, my sister giggles. Part of welcoming new people to the table is telling them the first and explaining the second. We hold hands just because we like to. My sister giggles because she thought my prayers got a little long and ponderous and though they are shorter now, she still laughs. Part of being hospitable to our guest is helping translate our table.

When a stranger/visitor/seeker experiences our worship, do we have tools in place to help translate the movement, words, assumptions, theology of worship or are we leaving them to their own devices? More importantly, are we telling them the whole truth? Is life in Christ always and only awesome awesome awesome and full of happy happy happy days?




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Location:Gulf Blvd,St Pete Beach,United States

Big Tent Day 2 Part 2: A Holy Spirit Thing

I just finished a 90 minute workshop titled "How to Start and Grow New Immigrant Worshiping Communities led by Angel Suarez of the PMA.  It was disappointing at first that there were only three participants who were not already leaders of Immigrant Worshiping Communities.  The disappointment abated, however, when we realized that the three of us got to have a unique experience: just us for 90 minutes with PMA staff, a local presbytery staff person and pastors of communities representing south Asia, Haiti, west Africa, Indonesia and Latin America.

To put it mildly, I learned a lot.  I think I took more notes in that 90 minutes than in my first Barth seminar!

The conversation was incredibly helpful and I had some of my assumptions about ministry with an immigrant community affirmed and some turned upside down.  I learned how I was overestimating the challenges in some areas while underestimating them in others.  I learned strategies and models for ministry, some theological context for doing ministry with immigrant communities and heard stories of worshiping communities represented.

Beyond all that, though, I learned that the Holy Spirit can find a small group of Presbyterians even when they are tucked back in a corner of the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, KY.

At the end of the meeting, after all of the conversation, one of the pastors in the group asked if they could pray for the three of us who came to the meeting and for our ministries.  That is when a pretty extraordinary thing happened.  A dozen or so brothers and sisters in Christ from around the PC(USA) representing congregations made of immigrants from around the world came together in that moment, laid hands on us and prayed.

I am not one to throw around Holy Spirit language.  I am pretty staid and almost rigid in my Calvinist reserve sometimes.  But in that moment, sitting in that room, feeling my colleagues hands on my shoulders, back and head and hearing the prayers being offered for our ministry, I felt the Spirit in that place.

Over the last couple of days as I heard the same old song about changing church culture and the need to change the church, about membership decline and all the plans we have to stem the tide, about how this curriculum or that program promised to turn things around, I began to get a little disheartened about the church.  Sometimes we seem to act like the first class passengers who didn't want to get in the lifeboats just yet because the deck on the Titanic was cold.  Then this happened.

In that awkward annoying Holy Spirit way, God reminded me that despite our best efforts, God is nowhere near done with the Presbyterians.  If I God was done with us, the small turnout in that workshop would have been the story.

But it wasn't.

And that is pretty damn cool.

Big Tent Day 2: Pick Your Battles

A recent opinion piece on National Review Online has caused some stirs in the PC(USA) and some quiet chatter among attendees at the Big Tent event in Louisville.  The piece responds to a decision of the PC(USA)’s new hymnal committee as reported in the last issue of First Things.

The committee, by a 9-6 vote, chose not to include the contemporary hymn “In Christ Alone” in the new 800+ song hymnal hitting pews this fall.  The rationale offered publicly by the moderator of the committee is a discomfort with the line “till on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” The lyric refers to St. Anselm’s theory of penal atonement arguing that the salvific power of Christ is as sacrificial lamb slain to satisfy God’s anger.  Jesus died for our sins and in our place.

I can think of few more thankless jobs than serving on a hymnal committee.  I can’t manage to keep the people in worship happy week to week and I only have to pick three at a time!  So I want to start by saying I think the hymnal committee made far more good choices than bad and have produced a hymnal that will serve the church well for many years.  Theirs was a hard job and they did it pretty darn well from where I sit.  The church owes them our profound thanks.

On this one song, though, I have to say I think they dropped the ball. 

“In Christ Alone” is a good song for modern church music.  It is not the usual pedantic academic attempt to write in the 19^th century tradition nor is it a fluff piece like most 5-3-8 contemporary Christian worship songs (five words, three chords, sung eight times).  There is theological substance to the song and there are not many contemporary songs you can say that about.

Still, the committee felt this was the place to draw the line on substitutionary atonement.  I agree with the committee that there is a problem when the church’s ONLY language of atonement is Anselm’s model, however I’m not sure this decision was the wisest course for a few reasons.

First, substitutionary atonement is still present in the hymnal.  If the problem is substitutionary atonement, the decision lacks consistency.  “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” remains in the hymnal along with its words on the “imposition” of Jesus blood. 

Second, substitutionary atonement is still present in the theology of the church.  Although much has been written and argued in recent years against a reduction of atonement to nothing but substitution, the PC(USA) has taken no steps to declare Anselm’s model outside the orthodoxy of the church.  For some in the church, myself included, who hold to a multi-fold understanding of atonement, substitution is one of many parts that create the whole. 

Third, and really most importantly in this context, excluding this hymn for this rationale picked a battle that just didn’t need to be fought.  The PC(USA) has been under constant bombardment in recent years for perceived departures from orthodoxy.  Most of the theological criticism is baseless and rests on Glenn Beck style “logic” and extrapolations of conclusions from scraps of irrelevant evidence.  David French’s adolescent rant on National Review is a case in point. 

French takes the committee’s decision on a Jonathan Swift worthy flight of the absurd to conclude that because this one hymn was not included in the hymnal, the PC(USA) has abandoned orthodoxy on the theory of the atonement.  French writes, “The core of the dispute is the mainline break with orthodoxy on the very nature of God and mission of Jesus.” Of course, the core of the dispute was disagreement among 15 people about the inclusion of a song in a hymnal.  

When it comes to these ridiculous debates with hysterical commentators who want nothing more than to tear down the mainline church, I have learned one important lesson in my ministry; there are no victims of their vitriol and venom, only volunteers.  And it is time that we quit volunteering to be their punching bags.

Hindsight being 20/20 and acknowledging the unfairness of Monday morning quarterbacking the committee’s decision, I think it is worth asking, “Would saving the church yet another round of bomb throwing be worth including this rather benign hymn that is already being sung in many of our churches?”  In other words, is this really the battle we want to pick and is this the place to pick it?  It is a question we do not ask often enough in the church. That is especially true when we tackle issues on a national level.  We have had groups tackling issues from peace in the Middle East to hymns we sing in church and there are important issues that come up in all of those conversations.  There are important things that the church needs to say and there are some battles worth choosing.  But not all of them.

Not every theological battle worth fighting has to be fought right that moment.  Yes, we need to be mindful of our theology of atonement and yes, there are reasons to question the theology of some music.  But I would much rather read about how the PC(USA) is boldly standing against violence in schools, the use of drones to spy and kill and other matters of life and death.  A small church like ours is only going to get so much ink in a religiously diverse world and although it may be tempting to pick every battle that comes along, it may not be the wisest course for us to take.  

The criticism from French and others on this and so many other small issues is overblown and a bit silly at times.  Still, I’m tired of the denomination I love volunteering to stand in front of their firing squad so often.

Big Tent Day 1: Millenneal Musings

Greetings from Louisville, KY and the PC(USA) Big Tent gathering.

Big Tent is advertised as a "family reunion" for Presbyterians and it has been great to see friends from around the church and catch up on news of ministries and families and friends.

So this morning I was having coffee at a place across the street from the Convention Center and struck up a conversation with a few other Presbyterians (easily identifiable by the yellow name tags and the theological pun t-shirts).  Two of the group are recent seminary graduates seeking calls and one is still in seminary.

We started talking about ministry in general and the future of the church and eventually the conversation came around to generational shifts in the denomination (shocker, I know).  Born in 1970 I am right in the middle of Gen-X.  The other three are part of Gen Y or Millenneals depending on which name you use for those born 1983 on.

After a few minutes of talking about ministry in different contexts and the growing number of bi-vocational pastors, one of the three said, "the problem with the church is that your generation thinks the institution is so important."  As a Gen-Xer, I reveled in the irony of that declaration being made by a participant in the largest annual gathering of the institution that is the PC(USA).  Irony is important to my people.

I spent a few minutes doing what so many people have done for me over the years and listened patiently as he worked himself up into a lather about the need to re-imagine what it means to be the church and what it means to be the people of God in an anti-institutional post-denominational age.  And if I am fair, I have to admit he made some good points.  There are some pretty substantial chinks in our denominational armor and this guy had a pretty good bead on most of them.

Once he had completed naming the sins of my generation (an I assume he was lumping the Boomers in with us), I posed a question.  "If not the traditional institutional church, what should the church look like today?"  In other words, he had a pretty good idea what is not working, so I wanted to hear what he thought would work.  That's where the conversation got really interesting.

Some of his ideas were familiar: stop worshiping Sunday morning and start worshiping God whenever the people gather; get more creative with liturgy and stop being so staid; Communion should not be saved for special occasions.  Those I had heard.  I was looking for new information.

What else should we be doing/being to reach the Millenneal generation?

His answer can best be summed up as "be different than you are now." There were not any new suggestions beyond what we needed to stop doing.  And that is the problem with so much of our generation focused ecclesiology.  It is too often based on what a generation does NOT want the church to be/do/say.  Want to attract young people, stop doing X, Y, Z.

I don't mean to beat on Millenneals.  My generation did exactly the same thing.  We came out of seminary declaring all the things we were going to fix that the Boomers and the WWII generation messed up.  It is a right of passage for church leaders to criticize past generations of church leaders.  The difference now is that we are at a turning point in the life of the church and we don't have the time or luxury of generational recriminations.  There is work to be done.  Serious work and we need all hands on deck.

So perhaps to move forward we need to stop romanticizing the wisdom of the Millenneals and demonizing the perceived follies of other generations.   At the same time perhaps we should stop putting the salvation of the denomination on the shoulders of one group;  we need to get past generational differences and rely instead on our common calling in Christ;  we need to stop TALKING about how the church needs to change and START CHANGING it.

I'm glad I got the chance to talk to those guys this morning.  It was good to hear the energy and excitement they have about the church (even the institution!) and to share our different perspectives on the form and future of the church.

I guess this is what they mean by Big Tent.

Why the New Pope Matters to Presbyterians (or Should at Least)

In a few months, a new Pope will be elected. For a billion Roman Catholics, that means the election of a new spiritual leader for the church. For Protestants who do not recognize the Pope as anything other than a fellow follower of Christ, it means little or even nothing.

Who serves as the Bishop of Rome matters (or should at least) to every Christian in the world because, for better or worse, the Pope is the public face of the faith. His priorities for the church dominate much of the worldwide focus Christianity and occupy much of the media attention paid to matters of faith.

So who will it be? Who will the voting members of the College of Cardinals elect to be the next Pope?

Lacking anything remotely resembling inside knowledge, my own thoughts on the papal election come from what is said in the press and what little I have read of the papabile's writings. One thing I think we can be certain of is that the new Pope will be conservative. Do we really expect an establishment body to elect a leader who will disrupt the status quo too much? Church teaching on issues like abortion, celibacy for priests and women in ministry are not Going to change anytime soon. (If Mother Theresa could not loosen the lid on that jar, I'm not holding my breath.).

Still, although we mainline Protestants may not come to terms with some theological positions of the church in Rome, we may yet find blessing in this election; depending on who is elected.

Among odds makers, a few favorites have emerged but as in most conclaves, the election is far from a lock for anyone. (Think John XXIII or John Paul II)

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is the only American mentioned to any serious degree. Of all the candidates, he will be the most unfortunate choice for the larger church. Whatever his gifts, Dolan is so closely associated with the cover-up of clergy child sexual abuse that little else will be seen.

If the church just has to stick with a European, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin would be a bold choice. Though not a cardinal, his election would make the opposite statement a Dolan election would make. Martin led the church in Ireland through both the Ryan and Murphy reports on child sexual abuse and in the end he showed far greater pastoral leadership and responsibility than the Roman Curia including the current Pope could be bothered to show. A Martin election would be both an act of acknowledgement by the church of its past sins and a statement that cover-up is no longer the party line. No choice will be totally outside of the box, but Martin would be more outside than most.

Two African and a few Latin American cardinals are mentioned. I don't know much a out any of them. Generally speaking, the cardinals who serve in the two-thirds world have a perspective on the realities of poverty, economic and political oppression, the burdens of environmental destruction and climate change, and, in the case of Africa especially, the reality of HIV/AIDS that their north Atlantic rim colleagues do not. Having a Pope whose ministry has been partly defined by first hand experience in a non-European context and outside the debates of the privileged class (when you are starving, do you really care if your priest gets married?) will help shape the public face of the faith in a new way. While the Christian world may remain divided on matters of polity and doctrine, our commitment to the poor and the oppressed should be universal. A Pope whose ministry is focused on the world's poor would be a great blessing to the potential of unity in the church's ministry if not its hierarchy.

One caution about the African candidates may be their relationship with Islam. Both Cardinal Arinze of Nigeria and Cardinal Turkson of Ghana have made statements about Islam that raise questions about their willingness to engage in dialogue across the boundaries of faith. If these men temper their rhetoric about Islam, the election of a Pope from the two-thirds world may be a great blessing for the church universal. If not, the good that may come from a Non-European Pope would be diminished.

Canadian cardinal Marc Ouelett has openly criticized what sees as the drift of the post-Vatican II church away from mission toward dialogue. He too may hamper inter-religious relationships. To his credit, he managed to lead the church with grace in one of the most hostile and secular places in the world; French-Canadian Quebec. a theologian focused on contemporary issues facing the global church rather than one focused on the nuance of ancient doctrine would be a refreshing change.

Whoever wears the "Shoes of the Fisherman," he will be the face and voice of global Christianity. Hopefully he will use that voice to rally the church, Catholic and catholic, to the cause of the world's poor and oppressed in a way seldom done in recent memory. Although the Pope holds no spiritual or ecclesiastical authority for me or the church I serve, he does have the bulliest of bully pulpits and his words will shape much of our shared life as a global church.

For that reason alone, this Presbyterian will be anxiously waiting for the white smoke from the Sistine Chapel and the announcement from the balcony "habemus papem!"


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