Blazing Trails

In my third through eighth grade years my family lived on a 40 acre farm in Michigan. We raised some chickens, occasionally some ducks and a pile of barn cats. My mom insisted on having a garden in which to torture her sons with the spirit-breaking task of pulling weeds 45 minutes a few days each summer while paying five cents for each ice cream bucket that we filled. That was the extent of our farming. Two fields were rented out to a neighbor who planted corn in them and there were two fields that had been hay fields for the previous owner. Since we didn’t raise livestock we let the grass grow tall in those fields.

We called these two unfenced hay fields of tall grass “the weeds” to distinguish them from the areas of cut grass around the house that we called the lawn. My brothers and I spent hours playing in the weeds every summer. There were no trails so we would blaze our own, carrying our bare arms at shoulder height so they wouldn’t be cut by the slicing blades of grass. Sometimes we would turn around and follow our new trail back out and sometimes we would make a new trail through to the other side of the field.

Standing on the edge of the field I could see where we had been. I don’t remember any of the trails ever being straight. Each one meandered and twisted through the tall grass. Sometimes they went around patches of nettles or around a rock but most of the time the crooked path was simply due to the fact that something inside us told us to step over this way or follow the slope of the land that way. Or, more likely, there was nothing inside of us that insisted that we travel a straight line.

 As a kid it would have made no sense to stand at the edge of the field and wait for a path to appear so that I knew where to go. I knew that playing in the field was fun and a large part of the fun was creating our own trails. We learned painful and irritating lessons about nettles and cockleburs by walking through them. We would be startled and excited by a noisy pheasant taking flight being flushed from its hiding place in the weeds. We would avoid the corner of the field where we could smell that a skunk den had been built. We were scared out of the field for days when a ground hog bull rushed its way past us low in the grass.

Had we stood on the side of the field waiting for a path to appear we would have missed all of this.

That’s the problem with waiting for God to reveal each new step in our lives. It completely ignores the fact that we learn through our experiences. It actually disengages us from the fullness of life that is given to us as a gift. But the biggest problem is that it immobilizes us with fear. When we wait to be absolutely sure of God’s next step for us we become anxious that we will miss it. We hesitate, afraid that it is too soon to move. We fret that we may have missed our opportunity and now it is too late.

The Plan

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

-Jeremiah 29:11

I believe that God does have a plan for us. However, it is not as specific as we sometimes wish that it would be. Instead, what if God’s plan for us is to set us free from fear (fear of harm, destruction, death etc…) so that we can live in the fullness of this life? What if God’s deepest desire isn’t to create a world full of obedient people but is to see the gift of this life experienced in all of its glory and tragedy? What if the point is to be blazing trails through the field of life instead of standing where we are in hopes that a straight and narrow trail with fences on both sides appears to lead us to the other side?

So then, if we are truly engaged and are blazing trails through this field of life, what does it mean to “wait upon the Lord?” What exactly are we waiting for?

A bit more about that tomorrow…

Two Kinds of Waiting

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

                                                                                                Psalm 27:14

A Confession

I hate waiting.

I know that’s not the kind of confession that makes for juicy gossip but it’s a confession that I don’t like to make. I like to think of myself as someone who is patient. After all, that’s one of the fruits of the Spirit right?

But to be patient means “to be long suffering.” Who wants to be long suffering? I don’t want to be suffering at all let alone suffering for a long time. I want relief from my suffering. I want to be saved from my suffering. And waiting is its own kind of suffering.

There are times when I don’t mind waiting so much. When I know that I’m waiting for something good I look forward to it with anticipation. If my wife tells me in the morning that she is planning on making a special meal for supper I don’t want to eat it for breakfast. I actually like to think about it during the day and anticipate how wonderful it’s going to be. Waiting makes it even better.

However, it doesn’t seem to work that way when I’m sick. When I have a cold or am stricken with the flu I know that I will gradually get healthy over time.  Thinking about being healthy and imagining the day when I won’t feel congested and tired only makes me more impatient to get over my illness.

The difference between these two types of waiting boils down to this: In the first example I am waiting for something that is a pure gift. My wife wants to make something special for me. If I refuse to wait and take the initiative to cook the meal myself I will ruin the gift. It just wouldn’t be the same as letting her do something nice for me.

In the example of waiting for my health to return I can actually take steps that will make it come sooner without ruining the end result. I can eat and drink in healthy ways and I can get extra rest instead of going full-speed through every day. In these ways I am an active participant in making the future that I eagerly wait for become a reality.

So What Am I Doing?

There are dozens of passages in the Bible that exhort us to “wait for the Lord.” What I want to know is which kind of waiting I am doing: The kind in which I simply look forward to the gift that is coming or the kind in which I take an active role in creating that hoped-for future?  

Throughout this week I want to explore the issues behind waiting. I think that some of them are directly related to the two ways of imagining heaven that I wrote about last week (Two Heavens: One Kingdom). I think some of the issues have to do with the way the predominant culture shapes us. Waiting also has to do with our desire to be in control and to take matters into our own hands. I imagine I will discover more issues as I write about them.

If there are issues related to waiting that you would like to see me address leave a comment or send an email to zukey.jones@gmail.com and put “waiting” in the subject line. I’ll see what I can do.

Two Heavens: One Kingdom

The current issue of Time magazine has a feature article by Jon Meacham about the evolving understanding of heaven in our culture. (I’m sorry that I can’t link directly to the article. You have to be a subscriber. Time/Warner hasn’t fully escaped the 20^th century yet.) It is a well-researched and written piece that summarizes the cultural trends in thinking about heaven. If you can get your hands on a copy I highly recommend taking time to read it.

Basically the change in the way we think about heaven can be summed up with two questions in a sidebar to the article: What if Christianity is not about enduring this sinful, fallen world in search of a reward of eternal rest? What if God brings together heaven and earth in a wholly new, wholly redeemed creation?

Yes. 

These are the questions that have been rattling around in my thoughts and prayers and sermons for the past few years. It’s a bit humbling to see it put so succinctly in an article printed in a major news magazine. But these questions lead to others and the lot of them have been causing some significant anxiety and stress within my mortal frame. Why? Because a faith that is built on enduring this world in the hopes of one day escaping to a safe reward feels a lot different than one where we are working together to bring God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”

I am coming to believe (and will write about this more in future posts) that this is not an issue of right and wrong. I firmly believe that it has to do with the culture changes happening around us. Both ways of imagining heaven encourage people to live altruistically in this life as a response to God’s goodness, grace and forgiveness. (Never mind that it isn’t always successful.) It’s just that the former way of imagining and talking about God’s kingdom (or heaven) isn’t connecting with people in the emerging culture. So if we want to continue to proclaim the gospel of God’s love then we need to reimagine heaven and find new ways of thinking about God’s kingdom that will connect.

The stress and anxiety come from a place inside that recognizes that there are wonderful, caring and loving people in my congregation that exist on both sides of this issue. Because the idea that Jesus brings heaven and earth together in a wholly redeemed creation is connecting with me I feel compelled to preach and teach in these terms. The scriptures are opening up in front of me in brilliant and exciting new ways as I revisit passages that I thought I understood before.

But I am also aware of the legacy that brought me to this point. And I am aware that there are many people who have spent a lifetime developing a faith based on the thought that heaven is a place we go after we die. It would be both wrong and arrogant for me to just write that off and say, “I’m sorry you committed your life to what turns out to be a mistaken notion of what this life is all about.”

So where do we go from here? Is it possible for a faith community/congregation make the transition from one concept of heaven to another? Or are we talking about two different ways of believing? Is there an even more basic core concept of what it means to be a Christian that unites us and will allow us to have two visions of God’s kingdom? Or are we destined to see an new expression of faith emerge similar to the way Christianity emerged from Judaism 2000 years ago?

Anyone interested in helping me think about this?

Time is Not on My Side

This is the tenth and final 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 get so overwhelmed by the programs, meetings and all of the minutiae of sustaining a congregation that I don’t have the creative energy to explore new ways of being the church together.

In the 20 years that I have been responsible for the worship practices of various congregations I have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of time that it takes to prepare for weekly worship. When I first started planning worship I helped lead two worship services every Sunday morning. Each week we followed one of two liturgies that were printed in our hymnal. The three or four hymns that we sang would be chosen by the pastor from several hundred available in the hymnal. The order of worship was printed in a weekly bulletin and a worshiper could follow the service by turning to the correct page in the hymnal. Both services on a given Sunday morning were identical with the exception of inserting a choir or a baptism at one service or the other.

Today I am responsible to plan, oversee and, at times, lead four unique worship services every week. Each one has its own special order of worship. At one we use an organist and traditional hymns but now rotate between six different liturgies. At two worship services our contemporary praise band leads the singing but each has a different order of worship. At the fourth service, on Wednesday evenings,  an acoustic music group provides a mix between the traditional and contemporary styles.

All this variety means that more time has to be spent planning. There are elements of worship that change each week but are used at all four worship times (prayers, scripture readings, dialogs etc…). These changes need to be prepared up to six weeks in advance so that the teams of people who now choose the music for each service can coordinate the music choices with the theme and message for the day.

This variety also means that we have to prepare five bulletins to help people follow the order of worship. One bulletin has all the community announcements and an outline of the orders of worship. It is given to those who come to worship. Then we have a separate “leader’s” bulletin for each of the four services with more details and cues for the musicians and worship leaders.

Instead of a hymnal we use a computer, a projector and a screen to put all the lyrics to songs and hymns, scripture readings and prayers in front of the congregation. All of these things need to be put into the special presentation software not once, but four different times; once for each service. And heaven forbid that we put these words up on plain backgrounds. Artwork needs to be found, purchased or designed to enhance the entire worship experience and tie in with the themes and messages of the week.

Using the projector and screen also means that when I preach I have to prepare pictures and words to put on the screen. To do that I spend time searching for pictures on the internet or modifying pictures with Photoshop and then create a graphic presentation to go along with my sermon. This has easily added two hours to my preparations each time I preach.

All this extra work has been created just for worship. It doesn’t include required duties like teaching confirmation, staff meetings, council meetings, committee meetings and fellowship events. Each of these also has a certain amount of prep time and follow-up time. All of these things are primarily about keeping the institutional church running.

It doesn’t leave a lot of time or creative energy to explore new ways of being the church. As a woodcarver and someone who likes to dabble in other artistic ventures I know the importance of having enough time to let thoughts and ideas percolate before a vision or idea can take shape in your head. The church used to leave room for pastors and leaders to do that kind of thinking and reflection. But the extra worship styles, the outreach programs and the need to fund them all have robbed church leaders of that time. The irony is that these things are started in an attempt to breathe new life into the church and welcome in new people. But again, is making more people members of the church the same as making disciples of Jesus? (See my earlier post in this series Recruiting for Christ).

Concluding Thoughts

Ultimately this leads me back to the place that I started from. Should I expect the church in its present form to be transformed to meet the needs of the emerging culture? Or is something new being born outside the traditional confines that we have called church? But as my spiritual director recently reminded me, the Church is bigger than the membership of every congregation and as a disciple of Jesus a person could be working for the Church even if they no longer worked within the church. Maybe so many young adults are leaving the institutional church, not because there is anything inherently wrong with it, but because they are being led by the Spirit to start what will become a new expression of the church.

The only thing I know for sure is that I wish I had more time to explore together what it all means.

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.

Doubt and Certainty

After taking a few days off from the blog to prepare and participate in the religious observances of Easter weekend I’m back at it. I had hoped to finish this series during Holy Week but found that I ran out of time and energy. This is the eighth 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 participate in a church culture in which any kind of doubt is viewed as suspect and I tend to hide my own struggles with faith behind a veneer of certainty. For that I am sorry.

Well, I did it again. Just yesterday. As the pastor who led Easter worship said, “He is risen!” I responded, “He is risen indeed!” The thing is, I didn’t just join in this Easter tradition.  I was the one who pieced together the parts of the liturgy in which we said it. I was responsible for including it in our worship.

For a Christian there is no more important article of belief. We believe that Jesus rose from the dead. To affirm that belief with certainty has been the definition of Christianity for a very long time. A Christian is someone who believes that Jesus is God and that he died on a cross and was raised from the dead. It has codified in creeds and doctrines for thousands of years. For many, many people, if you can’t say that Jesus is risen from the dead with certainty then you aren’t really a Christian.

As a part of the religious establishment I find myself participating in this culture out of habit and out of a sense of obligation. These are the things that have been passed on to me. It is what I have been taught in my upbringing and in seminary. It would seem downright weird to hear the congregation respond to “He is risen!” with a resounding, “We have no doubt something important happened but can’t be certain exactly what.” I can call what I do tradition but when tradition fails to convey meaning then it has simply devolved into a habit for me.

The problem is that traditions do carry meaning for a lot of people. Just because it has lost its meaning in my life doesn’t mean that it has lost meaning for everyone. So I feel obligated to use forms of liturgy that convey certainty of belief for other’s sake.

One of the biggest surprises I have found in ministry is the way people pin their beliefs on their pastor. Peter Rollins explores this in his book Insurrection at length. In my experience people have attacked me for expressing even the slightest bit of doubt or for even questioning an article of faith. It seems that many people simply want to believe in belief. When they struggle in their own lives to believe, they want to know that someone has the kind of unshakable belief they aspire to. Often that person is a pastor. So when the pastor hints at personal doubt it forces others to deal with their own questions and uncertainty.  Maybe forcing them to do that is the loving thing to do. But this comes at a pretty serious cost to the pastor who is willing to do that. People will try to destroy or get rid of pastor as being “unfaithful” before they turn to the pain of their own shaky faith.

The other reason I hide my own struggles with faith is because it can indeed feel like I have lost my faith. It can feel like I’m abandoning so much of what I believe when I start asking myself questions like, “Can I be a Christian even if I admit some uncertainty about Jesus’ resurrection?” or “Is this passage from the Bible really what God wants for us or was it inserted by someone for other reasons?”  If I combine these feelings of lost faith with the insistence of others to be rock-solid-certain of my beliefs then add that to the sense of obligation I have for those who rely on the traditional forms of expressing faith, I sometimes feel like I have no choice but to hide my struggles behind a veneer of certainty.

One of the most amazing discoveries that I have made recently is that I can enter these places of doubt and questioning and still have a strong faith without ever coming to a resolution about them. There is something much deeper than the questions and doubts. And as unsettling as doubts and questions can be I also find a great comfort and even joy in the fact that I can explore these dark places. Now as I read the Bible I see more and more uncertainty written within its pages. I see people and communities struggling to come to grips with the meaning of life. Sometimes they choose ways that prove to be beneficial and sometimes they choose ways that aren’t.  I’m also finding that I enjoy working with people who want to engage their own faith on a deeper level by struggling with questions and doubt.

The question that haunts me right now is whether or not the culture of certainty that has taken root in the church can be transformed. I am skeptical but not without hope. When I read articles by people who are leaving the church but staying engaged in their faith it gives me hope that even if the church can’t be transformed, a new way of being church will be born that will welcome all doubts and questions as a path to greater faith.

The Tidiness of Doctrine

This is the seventh 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 that I engage so much of what is happening in our culture and our world on a doctrinal level and not as a matter of faith that is sometimes messy and unsure.

My faith lives in my head.

This is one of the main criticisms of the mainline Church in America and Lutherans are champions of this kind of faith. It’s why we are so good at theology. We think about faith. This was the faith in which I was raised and, as one of my favorite songwriters penned it, “you can only grow the way the wind blows.”

But it’s also where I find I am most engaged with God. I love to meditate and reflect on what I see God doing in the world. I can spend hours trying to sort out the relationships that we humans have with both creation and the creator. I find peace while listening for the Divine to speak in a variety of ways (except when I experience frustration at hearing nothing or hearing something that I don’t want to hear). I find joy whenever a new insight inches me closer to understanding what this life is all about.

To be honest, though, I like living out my faith in my head because it’s safe. It’s like sharing your faith in a sermon. Many people think that preaching in front of a large group is difficult but, once you get over the fear of public speaking, you soon find that sharing what you are thinking in a place where people aren’t (usually) welcome to respond, refute or rebuff can make a person pretty bold. (If you haven’t already, see my post from a couple days ago From Authority to Resource to get an idea of the kind of authority that is granted in preaching.)

I also like to let my faith live in my head because it is always a bit neater and more tidy than in the world of emotions. I can sort things out and categorize them. I can rationalize and reason. I can remove myself from the roller-coaster ride that emotions take us through. Again, it’s all about finding a safe place. So when someone comes to me with the raw emotion of life’s messy issues overflowing around them, retreating to the safe confines of religious doctrine is my first response for all these reasons.

The thing that I am being forced to learn is that faith doesn’t lead to a safe place. That’s where we want to end up: In a place of safety and comfort. But faith (and life) leads us to places of risk. As one conference presenter put it, the major stories of the Bible are all about leaving home, over and over again. Life is a constant leaving of the places where we have become comfortable in order to risk and grow, not just for ourselves but to help others grow as well.

I am constantly learning and relearning the importance of staying in the moment no matter how thrilling or anxiety-producing it is. I am a firm believer in a ministry of presence; just being there with people in their sufferings and joys. But it is never my default mode of ministry (or existence). I have to catch myself as I turn to doctrine to tidy up a messy situation and be mindful to just sit within the pain, the tension and even the delight. That doesn’t mean I can’t reflect upon it later or that I can’t help someone else reflect on it when they are ready. It just means that sometimes I have to experience life before I try to make sense out of it.