It Is a Small World

I recently returned home from Florida where I helped chaperon 320 high school musicians on a six day trip to Disney. On the third day of that trip I found myself wandering the streets of the Magic Kingdom on a Sunday morning instead of leading worship in my congregation. We had turned the clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time in the middle of the night so there were relatively few people in the park when it opened. It was the best way for me to experience the Magic Kingdom but Disney’s nightmare: A individual walking the park alone without any lines to wait in and with no desire to buy a souvenir.

The first attraction that caught my eye was the infamous “It’s a Small World” ride. I hadn't been on that ride since the first time I visited the park in 1976. I don’t know why it called out to me that morning but I jokingly thought to myself that this would be penance for missing worship on a Sunday morning.  So I walked through the maze of metal guardrails and climbed aboard the aqua-colored plastic boat and began floating down the twisting canal of this world-famous ride.

Fullness of Time

Some days it feels like I’m supposed to be a cheerleader at a funeral.

Some days it feels like I am doing hospice work

with a patient who is unaware of their own impending death.

On the Move

One of the predominant, but rarely talked about, themes of the Bible is moving. The characters in the Bible are constantly moving, asking to move or being asked to move. Adam and Eve are moved out of the garden. Abraham was called to a new land. Jacob moved to escape his brother’s wrath. Later his tribe moved to Egypt to survive a famine. The nation of Israelites wandered in the wilderness before settling in the promised land. David stayed on the run to hide from King Saul. Jesus’ ministry is described in the gospels as a journey towards the cross. Paul’s travels kept him moving to spread the news about Jesus.

We all know what it is like to move. Just thinking about such a change can cause anxiety to well up inside of us. We leave what has become familiar to face the unfamiliar. We walk away from the comfort that we know in hopes of creating a better life. We venture into unknown places, unknown relationships and, sometimes, unknown customs and cultures. Even when our move is nothing more than leaving one job to take another, we experience the same kind of anxiety and change as if we moved across the country, just on a lower level.

So far in my life, I have lived in ten unique zip codes in five different states. I’ve moved more than that, however.. I’ve lived in some towns more than once and have moved to a new residence within the same zip code a couple times. I’ve lived in cities, in suburbs, in small towns and in rural settings. Each transition created its own grief over what it being left behind as well as hope for what possibilities existed in the new place. Each place presented its own mix of new values and cultural assumptions. Each move brought unexpected challenges in addition to surprising gifts of wonder and grace.

The first move I remember happened when I was three or four. My family moved from a modest house in the city to a newly built house in the suburbs. Well, it wasn’t a suburb yet. It was a subdivision plopped down in the midst of a cornfield between the city and neighboring town. The landscaped brick wall at the entrance let passersby know that this was no ordinary, run of the mill neighborhood. These homes with sodded lawns and spindly trees were, in fact, Countryside Estates.

The subdivision was primarily one, main street with a couple of other streets that looped around and came back to main drive. In two or three places streets branched off and dead-ended at the edge of the corn field ready for future development. Since there was only one way in and out of the neighborhood there wasn’t a lot of traffic which made it great for being able to ride bikes when I got a little older. The subdivision ended at the top of a small hill in a wooded lot where some of the older kids made bike trails. It always felt dangerous and thrilling to ride through the woods since I was certain that my mom could sense whenever I participated in this forbidden activity.

When we moved to the subdivision we left behind my neighbor Ernie. I remember him being old because he had grown children but he was kind to me and my brother whenever we were outside. He wasn’t the only kindly older person we moved away from either. In the city we lived between my two sets of grandparents, just a few blocks from each. The subdivision wasn’t too far away but it required some planning to get together.

What I gained in the move was a bigger yard to play in (and eventually mow) and a house where I could have my own bedroom, which, as it turns out, was one of the very few times in my life when that was the case. The move also provided a safe place to gain a growing sense of independence. I started school while living here. As I got older I was able to venture beyond the borders of our yard without constant parental supervision. And I began that arduous task of making friends of my own with all the attendant heartache and joy that entails.

People leave home and move away for many different reasons. My parents moved because they thought it would be best for the family. I moved because I had to. We see both of  these reasons for moving in the Bible too. Clans and communities move because they decide it is in the best interest of everyone to make a change. There is better land somewhere else or they can avoid famine over there. But people also move because someone more powerful forces them: A community is sent into exile, an employer transfers a worker to a new city to keep a job or the government announces that a new highway is being built through your neighborhood.

Moving, like any change, is a varied mixture of outside forces and interior desires. No matter what the motivation, however, not moving rarely seems to be a viable option. (Lots of Bible stories are about people’s reluctance but I can’t think of any stories where people refused to move and found blessings. If you can think of one leave let me know.) While we like to think that making such a change on our own terms is better, the truth is that it is difficult regardless of the reasons. Leaving a place of comfort and venturing out to experience something new is never easy but it seems to be one of those things that we are forever being faced with.

Being Slow to Change

This is the ninth post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It began as a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

 I apologize for being slow and unresponsive to the need for change because it’s easier to follow the path of least resistance (and there is tremendous resistance to the changes we are faced with).

I believe we are in midst of changes in our culture and our world of Biblical proportions. I know this is hard to prove and that times of change always feel like they are much bigger than they turn out to be. But I’m not the only one who believes this is so. Watch this brief (3 min.) video by Phyliss Tickle. She is the one who first gave structure and words to what I had been noticing in our world.

In addition to the “500 year rummage sale” I would also add that some of these transition points in Judeo-Christian history also coincide with significant advances in information technology. The Exodus, and the beginnings of Judaism as a communal faith, happened shortly after the invention of alphabets and using clay tablets to keep records. Some scholars believe that the Ten Commandments were the first set of religious laws codified in writing. The great Transformation and the writing of the New Testament took place at about the time that animal skin scrolls were being replaced by the cheaper and easier to make papyrus. This allowed the Gospels and Paul’s letters to be easily copied and distributed. And every student of the reformation knows the roll that Gutenberg’s printing press played in distributing catechisms, leaflets and even Bibles to more and more people.

Today the changes in information technology are astounding. Computers, smart phones and search technologies have simply transformed the way we store information (digitally), the way that it is shared (social media sites) and access we have to that information (all the time and everywhere). These changes are fundamentally changing the way we understand ourselves as humans and the way we are connected in community. At the risk of exposing myself as a TED Talk junkie here is a video talk by Amber Case (who calls herself a cyborg anthropologist) making a case for the ways technology is making us even more human.

When we begin to think about ourselves as people and as communities in different ways than we have in the past we get into all sorts of murky waters. In the past 100 years our culture has been struggling with gender roles and sexual orientation. We see changes in the relationship between parents and children at all stages of life. Work roles are changing from the thought that we are only a cog in the machine to being part of a collaborative team. We argue about our place in the earth’s ecology and just how much impact we really have. And what can it possibly mean for how we understand our place in the universe when we start imagining multiple universes or the simple fact that our universe is so much larger than we ever imagined?

The truth is, trying to keep up with the changes on a personal level is exhausting. Trying to make sure that a whole congregation full of people keeps up is even harder. As a rule, people are resistant to change. Change on this magnitude and at this speed only make it worse. Additionally,  many believe the church should provide an anchor in the storm of change or that it should provide black-and-white answers to a world that is shaded in gray.

I’ve been involved in this business of change in the church for over 20 years now. At times we debate (and debate and debate). Other times we wait to see what happens. And yet other times push to make the changes only to find that it is only one step in a process that is going to take many more steps. So for the fact that I am so tired of pushing for change and trying to get people to even see the need for change that I sometimes just give up, I’m sorry.

The world needs more than this from the church and its leaders. We need to be more inclusive in our conversations and try harder to understand what people are experiencing in these changes. We need to let the gospel speak to us all. And we have to understand that it is okay if we don’t understand it all. Perhaps the time for reflection will come when the changes have run their course. Maybe what we need now is to simply help one another through it.

Recruiting for Christ

This is the third post in a series about ways that I have missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here if you want some background to this current article.

I’m sorry for the way I deceive myself and others about the real reasons for evangelism. Honestly, my evangelism has a lot to do with recruiting people to share the burden of ministry with their time, talent and treasures.

I am an introverted Lutheran of Scandinavian and German descent. Evangelism is not something I do eagerly. Or often. I just can’t seem to engage a stranger in a discussion about something as deeply personal as faith. And yet Jesus commands his disciples to go and make more disciples. (Matthew 28)

The way that I’ve done this over the years is to adopt a Field of Dreams approach to evangelism: Build it and they will come. I have focused my time on developing inspiring worship, engaging classes and programs, and fun fellowship activities. Then I employ “bridge events” that encourage congregation members to invite friends to “come and see” in the hope that they will want to become a part of the congregation.

I have begun to see that this type of evangelism is all about recruiting people to become members of the congregation (see yesterday’s post When Faithful Looks Like Me). The true reasons for my congregation’s evangelical efforts are revealed when we speak with muted hope about prospective new people who will help us do the work and support the congregation’s programs with financial gifts. Now there is nothing wrong with inviting people to invest their time and treasures in ministry. The underlying hope, however,  is that someone will take my place, do my work and pay my share. We want more people involved so we don’t have to do as much.

It’s taken me 20 years to see it but my approach to evangelism creates an addictive cycle: I create programs and worship designed to get people to join the church. More people in the pews equals more money in the offering plate. More money the plate means more resources to hire staff and create new programs and better worship. Investing in programs and worship draws more people. It just keeps going.

  If another organization invited me to join them with thinly-veiled promises of fellowship and fun and then expected me to joyfully hand over two or more hours every week and a percentage of my paycheck for the rest of my life I would be very suspicious. Yet here I am doing that very thing.

So how do I keep Jesus’ command to make disciples without selfish, ulterior motives? What does evangelism look like in a church that isn’t trying to fill the pews and offering plates? Is it even possible?

My gut instinct is that evangelism has to do with showing people, with my words and actions, how close the kingdom of God is to this life. It’s about caring for people without regard to getting something in return. It’s more about the way I live than about where I belong. In fact, it actually begins to look like ministry and service, not recruiting. 

A Broken Church

The Church is broken.

(Which isn't a bad thing. It's just not broken in the right way.)

I am amazed at how hard the institution of the Church fights to remain whole and viable. "Unity" is the rallying cry as thousands of years of divisions within the church are officially healed, by legal sounding documents. Synod leadership rushes around to put out the smoldering fires in disgruntled congregations. Congregations face the shame and embarrassment of shrinking membership and the worry of unmet budgets. They begin to make decisions based not on who can be served but who can serve them in their attempt to stay open.

To be sure, there are many good things happening in the church and we can spend out time showing and telling what marvelous things God is doing through us. But you can also focus on the various pieces of a broken tea cup without mentioning that it is broken. You can talk about how well designed and useful the handle is and how it is secured to the cup. You can describe the way the base sits flat and true and how we designed that base together. You can keep your attention on the smooth porcelain finish and make a case that none of us could afford a tea cup this good by ourselves. But if you never step back and look at the condition of the whole tea cup you might never understand that it is broken.

I ran across this video clip by CNN about a Christian congregation in Texas that put up a billboard proclaiming that they (Christians) were a bunch of jerks. What I find interesting is the commentary by guest Gabe Lyons about the way the Christian church is perceived in our culture and how people are working to change it.

I'm sorry I can't embed the video in the blog. Restrictions of a free service I suppose.
or you can watch the video in the right column for a time.

Truth be told, the Church is supposed to be broken. In communion we actually celebrate that the body of Christ is "broken for you." In the Gospel of John, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples in a locked room and showed them his wounds; his broken body. They could even put their finger inside the mark of the nails. If the Church is the Body of Christ as Paul suggests in this letters (and as the entirety of scripture points to) then the Church is supposed to be broken.

The problem is that the Church is not broken "for you." It's broken exactly because it is no longer "for you." The church has become a place that is "for me." Divisions happen when people feel that the church no longer agrees with their opinions. When I can't be comfortable in my own pew (every pun intended) I find something to fault and build a theological case around it. The God that created everything is never given the chance to do anything new but is restricted to literal interpretations of past actions.

For the Church to be whole and at peace (shalom) again it needs to be broken. The Church needs to die so that it can be raised as a new creation. We need to sacrifice those Church things that give us the most comfort: Sunday mornings, low-commitment serving opportunities, drop-in visits with the pastor, soft seats and spacious fellowship areas, favorite musical genres and "the way we've always done it."

When the Church quits trying to be a church and becomes the Body of Christ it will be broken. But that is the way it is supposed to be.