Things I learned from church...

(...that didn’t prove true and what I am learning lately).

Glenn is trying a Synchroblog experiment, and I am inviting myself to the party. I am not a pastor, pastor's wife, church planter or theologian - just a not-so-innocent bystander who was away from the church for a long time, and has been back "in", in varying degrees, for the last six years or so. I am not putting anything forward here as "the truth", or to attack any particular church or denomination in particular. I am simply going to talk about some things I've been taught (explicitly and implicitly) over the years in church, and what I think about them now. I will start each point with a statement of what I learned in church (and what I've learned since in parentheses).

Church is easy to join (but it's hard to stay)

I don't mean that churches don't have their own initiation/vetting requirements for membership, but they project that they want everyone to come and visit and preferably stay (and join). And it isn't like the catechism/confirmation classes are that hard, especially if you're motivated. It is after all of that "newness" and learning have worn off and you settle in to the actual practice, the mundane, day-to-day, weekend-in-and-weekend-out attendance that it starts to get hard. I look at this almost like marriage (which, with the bride of Christ analogy is apt). First there's the flurry of romance, where both sides are interested and engaged with the other, and it's all new and exciting. Then there's learning about each other and what the other likes and dislikes. Then comes the formal commitment, followed by settling in together, making a life together...And suddenly it's not all beautiful and exciting any more. Some of it is just pure habit after a while. Then we start looking for (and finding) faults. I think a lot of people that end up finding "irreconcilable differences" with their church and go seeking another (I am not talking about those who suffered spiritual abuses - I am talking more about "ADHD Christians") are doing so not because their current church is all that bad, but just that all the excitement has worn off, and they want that "romance" back.

All those other churches are wrong (we're all wrong, and we're all right)

I am not a universalist. I think there are points of doctrine over which one can be wrong - very wrong. However, I am very sure that no denomination or individual church has a total lock on the truth. We all are approximating our understanding of something that we can't even really comprehend - the infinite power, vastness and love of God. We are probably all right about some things, and certainly all wrong about some other things. The point is to find the parts we share in common and concentrate on those. The church has suffered enough division already.

Gossip is good (because church people do a lot of it)

This one really gets to me, because I have heard a lot of really mean-spirited gossip from otherwise good Christians. And I succumb as well. It is a trait that as I get older I like less and less. Maybe we all need to just learn to shut up about others for a while. We may find we have much less to talk about. We may also find we have better things to say.

Talking about mission is mission (talking is not doing)

A church can have mission committees, give to missions around the world, have sermons about mission, and not be missional at all. This is my single biggest disappointment with my current church - the pastor has even told me that most of his focus has to be on "internal mission". Say what? That almost seems like a oxymoron. He had some good reasons behind it, but it didn't really convince me. So instead, I look for mission experiences elsewhere, and don't count on my church to facilitate or provide them for me.

Prayer should be formal, ritualistic and responsitory (God wants to talk to me, not a script)

Cards on the table here - I cannot stand responsive prayers (or really readings of any kind). They do nothing for me. It invokes the "reading in front of class" syndrome, where I feel all my brain effort is going into parsing and vocalizing (if the prayer is new) or simply mouthing the words to the "correct" rhythm the congregation falls into (if the prayer is a known part of the weekly script). I have railed before about how I don't like charging through the Lord's Prayer as fast as it can be recited - we might as well not even do it. However, our service sang the Lord's prayer this past Sunday and I found that to be very cool and engaging. It was slow enough and different enough that there was time to actually think and feel it and send it to the Lord as mine.

You must name things and people explicitly in prayer for God to grant your wish (God already knows what we want)

This was one of two points I was taught while briefly living with a charismatic family as a teenager out on my own. It always struck me as "prayer as magic spell" - that if you just say the chant in exactly the right way, God must grant you what you wish. Whereas I oft times think we should approach many of our prayers to God with a "Watch out what you ask for, you just may get it" feeling. Anyway, I've heard close approximations of this since in more mainstream churches, and I've never been able to reconcile it with Romans 8:26:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

God gave us our minds so we could throw them away and turn to Him in faith (God gave us our minds because He wants us to use them)

This was the second thing taught to me by the father of the family I mentioned above (a college professor, BTW). I thought it was ludicrous then, and I think it's ludicrous now. Fortunately, I haven't heard this repeated in a verbatim way in a church since. But I have caught a lot of whiffs of "You're thinking too much about that" or "You shouldn't read that, it might lead you astray". However, I think God wants and loves me, the me He created, not some mindless automaton (or He would have created that, instead). And that means that since He gave me intelligence, He expects me to use it. The challenge is to use it to His glory. That I am still working on, and believe I will be for the rest of my life.

Comments appreciated.

Ooops!

When I posted about the great posters, I attributed them to Erin, when in fact they are Grace's. Sorry about that, folks, and thanks to Erin for pointing out my error. Totally a brain fart on my part, caused by following and linking to too many posts in a short period of time, I think.

The 40 Day Fast

So today is the end of the 40 Day Fast, where all readers who want to are supposed to fast and pray for something. Thanks to Kat for organizing this! I have been moved to both tears and action multiple times over the past 40 days. I believe the Spirit is working big time through all of this.

My focus today is on a local charity at which I volunteer, the Samaritan Center, which turned 20 years old this year. They are truly phenomenal, a great organization with a bunch of truly committed people. Here is a list of the services they offer:

Client Services

Food

USDA commodities and pantry items one time a month (additional pantry items available in the event of an emergency).

Clothing

Seasonal clothing, coats, blankets and
household items once a month with a ticket from the intake window.

Medical and Dental Care

For people without Medicaid or other insurance: Free Medical Clinic Thursday evenings 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm.
Dental Clinic by appointment only. Come during pantry hours for appointment.
Prescription assistance (as funds are available)
Adult disposable undergarments
Vouchers for special wound care, diabetic or nutritional needs.

Legal Care Program

Information and assistance on legal matters for low-income persons.

Tax Assistance

Professional assistance with filing taxes and obtaining refunds.

Help for Parents & Children

Infant formula and baby food
Cribs & car seats
School supplies
Valentines
Easter baskets for children
Mother’s Day baskets
Halloween costumes

Holiday Food (uncooked)

Easter ham and sides
Thanksgiving turkey and sides
Christmas ham or turkey and sides
Christmas Gifts
Gifts for your family from other members of our community if you meet income guidelines and have at least one child under the age of 12. Sign-up is in October.
Two gifts for each child from Santa’s workshop if your family is not adopted by a member of the community. Open in December.

Other Services

Utility assistance (as funds are available)
Rent assistance (under special circumstances only)
Gas vouchers for medical appointments
Fans
Spring cleaning kits
Personal hygiene kits (shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, etc.)

Special Programs

Book Buddies: 4:30 pm the third Wednesday of each month during the school year. Book Buddies is a reading program designed to promote a love of reading that can lead to lifetime success. Free refreshments and free books from Scholastic.

Cooking Class: 4:00 pm the second Thursday of each month. Learn how to use the USDA commodities and prepare nutritious, good tasting meals.

Service Area

The Samaritan Center serves people living in the following counties:

Cole
Osage
Maries
Miller
Moniteau
Southern Callaway

Pantry Hours: M-Th 9:30 AM – 11:30 AM, Thursday 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Currently the Samaritan Center serves about 1,400 families a year, which in a six-county area in central Missouri centered around a city of only 50,000 is a sign of the huge amount of need in the area - especially when you factor in there are three other food pantries working in our city alone. Most of the clients are working poor with children, elderly and/or disabled. I feel that along with the other food pantries, Habitat and the Salvation Army, they are covering the most fundamental of survival needs - food, clothing, shelter, medical care. So please pray for them.

Then go find a similar organization in your area and volunteer there. I volunteer weekly to help carry out food to client's cars (clients can only come once a month, but they get a lot of food). We also contribute to the food and school supply drives, give them clothing (all clothing distributed is free to the clients), and last winter we "adopted" a family for Christmas - my wife Les and my mom had a lot of fun shopping and wrapping gifts for them. I say none of this to pat myself on the back - I wish I could do much more for them, because I get back way more from helping others at the Samaritan Center than I ever could think of giving. I point it out because it is easy - I wrung my hands over going for probably six months, and then once I started I found it was and remains one of the highlights of my week.

Volunteer for something in your community that is helping people with basic life needs! It is good and to the glory of God to give to others in need around the world, but make sure you are caring for those in your neighborhood as well. It is easy to feel good about helping others elsewhere and then turn around and condemn someone here in the good, ol' USA as just being "lazy" or an "addict" or "bum" who needs to "get a job" and then all their problems will somehow be solved. And even if you think that way about adults who are struggling, then volunteer for the sake of their children, because otherwise, those children are cursed to repeat the cycle. Be a Good Samaritan.

Volunteer. Please.

God's blessings,

Jim

Agapeology

Erin hits it out of the park again today with "Things I Learned From Church (That Didn’t Prove True And What I Am Learning Lately)", part of a synchroblog. I loved the following from her post:

I have decided one thing. I have little interest anymore in theology. I have little use in day-to-day life for the theories of atonement, hermeneutics or eschatology.

What I want is agapeology. When they start having schools of agape, I'll be the first in line.

Amen. And to which I would add something that's been burning in my head lately - writing about "mission" and "missional" is not the same as doing mission and being missional! And yet it seems all a lot of "missional" blogs do is write about it, not do it. They're too busy defining and arguing and contemplating "mission" and "being missional" to actually be out doing same (at least from what I can tell - they don't seem to write much about the doing part). And I am starting to prune those blogs from my feed reader and blog roll. I don't think I am perfect at it, either (by a long shot), but at least I am trying. But to many "missional" just seems to be yet another word we can theologize (read as "argue abstractly") about endlessly. As Erin says, God is love, and love is a verb as well as a noun. Go, be that verb, and tell me about that. Don't tell me what you think about God and love and mission. Tell me what you do about it. Come, let us encourage each other.

Get a goat

God loves everybody

Erin posts two interesting and thought-provoking pieces here and here on the nature of God. Check it out.

Dead authors society

Brant Hanson wrote a great post today on how Christians tend to have trouble with accepting the fact that we are all sinners, unless we're talking about general sin-in-theory or sin in our past ("but everything's hunky dory now"). Go check it out.

Michael Spencer then riffed on Brant's post and its vehicle for satire, Christian author Gary Smalley. Michael's point, and a good one it is, is that modern mass media has produced Christian "superstars" - authors, speakers, singers, worship bands, etc. He has a problem reconciling such celebrity (and profiteering) with true Christian values. And so do I.

So, between those two I was moved to write this post. Sure, we listen to some modern worship music at our house. But we also listen to a lot of other music (worship and otherwise, mostly otherwise). And I also read modern Christian authors. But in general I am cyncial of most of the pap in "Christian" publishing, whether it be books, music or other media. Most of it doesn't seem to map to what I perceive is the message in the Gospels. A lot of it seems to be not-so-thinly veiled real-world examples of the old Hudson and Landry "Friar Shuck" routines.

So I tend to fill a lot of my Christian reading book list with dead authors. C.S. Lewis. Merton. Bonhoeffer. Chesterton. Wesley. Luther. Calvin. Benedict. Various saints. The early church fathers and desert monks. Matthew. Mark. Luke. John. Paul. For one, since they're dead, I know they're not trying to sell me anything in the here and now, other than Christ crucified and resurrected. And with the passage of time, the cream rises to the top. We still read them because decades, centuries or millennia later, they're worth reading.

Sure, there are mini-industries around some of these authors, especially the more recently deceased ones (Lewis, Merton) or the founders of major denominational branches (Luther, Wesley, et al.) Most of these are simply different packagings, boxed sets and anthologies. As the writer's life gets farther back on the timeline, there are fewer publishers interested, even though the profit margin per book must be higher (no cut has to be given to an author's estate). But in the end, I know the author isn't going to be trying to cross-sell me their books on tape, their study guides, their diet plans or their investment advice. I know there won't be any more of their works in a series ("Buy the whole set!") for me to loyally purchase as they mine the seam of the faithful's wallets. There is just their canon of works, known ahead of time, a bounded, finite set of words about God, Jesus and the church. Laying out thoughts and arguments about Christ and what it means to follow Him that still define the main ways of thinking about it all to this day.

With modern translations for the older works, they can be quite accessible, relevant and readable (well, not Luther - it's hard to translate technical, philosophical or theological German faithfully into anything but long, long, long sentences in English :-). And guess what? Almost every topic covered by authors currently publishing are there in the old books, too. Perhaps the new authors are talking about current events, email and the Internet, TV, cars, airplane travel and using those items to put their examples and ideas into modern context, but really, humanity hasn't changed, and sometimes the older works cut right through all the ephemera of meaningless technology and the crises du jour and get right to the heart of the matter - our hearts, and our relationship to our Father and our Saviour, and what it means, and what it should mean.

I must point out as well I am as sceptical of the emerging authors as I am of the more established traditional Christian writers (if not more so). It seems to me all they're doing, and many of us are letting them get away with it, is changing one temple guard for another. The emerging authors come along and say we must all decide for ourselves, Sola scriptura and all that, and then proceed to deign to show us how, to presume to lead us, in an ever-increasing stream of books, lecture circuits and TV and radio appearances. They are then different from what we are supposedly leaving behind how, exactly? They may be presenting a kinder, gentler, more missional and engaged Christianity, but at the end of the day they are still presenting themselves as experts with something to say to us sheep who need a shepherd, and that we should follow them now (or at least listen to them and buy their books and DVDs and CDs). I've always thought this would end up as another rant post, but I might as well blurt it out here - most emergent "thought leaders" strike me rather like revolutionaries who only rail at power until they win, and then want us prols to settle back down and accept them as the new! improved! dictatorship. "Meet the new boss! Same as the old boss!" I reject all of that.

So we can make fun of or rage at people fattening themselves off the church, but they have always been there. To me, the better approach is to just ignore them. Not even give their names extra Google search hits by holding them up to ridicule. Don't buy their books. Don't listen to their music. Don't buy their self-help tapes. Just ignore them. Walk by their new hardbacks in the bookstore and go for the "classics". Read the daily prayer offices instead. Read the rule of Benedict. Acquaint yourself with some Chesterton if you haven't already. And of course, read the Bible - especially the Gospels (over and over again). There's all the leadership you'll ever need.

Great posters

Erin Grace has hit it out of the ballpark with her emerging/missional posters. Check 'em out.

Is it April 1st already?

This rant reads like satire, but it's deadly serious, which is even more scary. HT to signposts for the link.

I think we need to modify Godwin's Law to add "al Qaeda" next to Hitler and Nazi Germany on how to tell when a topic has veered off course to the point of being finished. Except in this case the topic started out that way, so I guess by definition it was DOA.

Sometimes family just surprises you

Last weekend we had a family reunion on my mother's side. Fifty people showed up at Meramec Spring park from as far away as California and Oregon. It was lovely weather, especially for Missouri in July, and everyone seemed to have a good time. It is always good when family can get together for something other than a funeral.

Anyway, one of my mom's cousins, Tom, told her that his father Ken Baird's Bible study radio broadcasts, which had aired in the 1960s and 1970s, were now available to listen to on the Web via MP3s. And sure enough, there they are, over 450 of them representing over 132 hours of play time, at http://www.voicesforchrist.org/speakers/BairdKen.html and http://www.voicesforchrist.org/speakers/BairdKen2.html. Mom wanted me to turn them into audio CDs for her, but when I explained that 132 hours divided by 72 minutes for a standard audio CD would yield somewhere around 110 CDs, she said she'd settle for a sampler. [grin]

My "Uncle Ken" and "Aunt Ruth" (actually great-uncle and great-aunt) lived in Boulder when I was growing up there in the 1960s and 1970s. I can remember going to their house for dinner, attending crafts night every Monday night in the basement of Boulder Bible Chapel where they attended, a newly memorized Bible verse in my head ready to spout to an adult to earn a stamp to put in a book toward getting a discount to Camp Elim, a Christian summer camp I attended twice and loved, and that I knew Uncle Ken had "something" to do with. My mom still has a wastebasket I made at those crafts classes. There's probably a tooled leather bookmark or the like floating around, too. And hanging on my office wall are two plaques I painted at Camp Elim, "Trust in the Lord" and "Trust and Obey - God is Love".

But I was oblivious to the fact that Uncle Ken actually had a show on the radio. Or that he and his brother Eldon had helped plant churches from the 1930s through the 1950s and 60s (many of which would have started as what we call "house churches" today). Or that he and Aunt Ruth had worked in an orphanage in Colorado Springs in the 1940s. Or that he had actually helped found Camp Elim. To me, they were just "Uncle Ken and Aunt Ruth". Nice, loving people who were somehow in a fuzzy way in my kid's brain associated with a very small church and a cool summer camp and who had cool slides of interesting places they'd been. Oh, and Aunt Ruth was a good cook. Those are the things I remember.

Now, as an adult, I find their life full of a level of depth and commitment to following Christ that is almost amazing. Funny how sometimes the people in your family are the ones that can surprise you the most, isn't it? My mother's parents are a huge part of why I am a Christian - not because of any active evangelizing on their part, but just through how they lived and loved everybody. And I got to hear my grandpa "talk" (they'd never call it preaching) at a small country church they attended when they didn't have a circuit-riding minister that Sunday and someone from the congregation would have to fill in. But while I knew Uncle Ken and Aunt Ruth to be Christians through the obvious connections mentioned above, I now look under the covers of their lives and see a truly life-long commitment of walking the Gospel path. How cool. And how inspiring.

I look forward to listening to the radio broadcasts and hearing a new facet of my great-uncle as he taught various Bible studies. It is always good to learn from someone who practised what they preached.

"You can’t herd sheep with a cattle prod!"

Brother Maynard posted something that really resonated with me about the Western church model of pastor-as-CEO. Well worth the read. All of it is good, but one paragraph I really liked for both its message and style:

Those are just the lead-in to the grandaddy parable, where the father of the prodigal son goes out to the end of the road to watch, and wait… not because he’s there when the reprobate is ready to come to his senses and make the first move, but because the father moved first. He used to take his lawn chair out to the end of the lane every day and sit there, peering at the horizion… a speck appears: is that him? He rises, takes a few steps… no, it’s just the UPS delivery man. He sits back down, ever watching. Yes, I know this isn’t in the text… but how else would he see his son approach from afar unless he was watching? And one day when he sees the speck on the horizon and asks the same old question, he sees that yes indeed, it is him, the old man breaks out into a gallop that ends with a flurry of embracing and dancing and feasting. Because that’s precisely what that wounded son needed in the moment.

Good stuff.

Your Father's other family

Lyn recently posted "that some churches are so consumed with their programs that they forget to get outside those doors and be in the community around them." I fear that is certainly the case with my church, and my feeble attempts to get interest in mission work built up there doesn't seem to get very far. The congregation as a whole are basically all lifetime members of that church and that denomination, and are there for the "church as club" experience (with some notable exceptions). Or perhaps better put, "church as family", that is, the people you hang out with because you're supposed to, and whose events you go to because you feel you have to.

Then in Dan's blog he posted about an attempt to build some spontaneous community at his church on the 4th of July and how it didn't go as he planned. In my rather lengthy comments to that post I wrote:

"We are commanded to be in fellowship with each other, and that may be the hardest thing to do. It seems like it is easier in some weird sense to do missional work and love someone you don't know, like a homeless person at a food pantry, who obviously needs help and care, than to have to be friends with fellow congregants who we kinda sort know, flaws and alls, and with whom we are thrust together solely through the accident of which church we attend. It's like the old saw about family being that group of people who, when you have to go there, they have to let you in (whether they want to or not, and whether you want to go or not). I think a lot of us feel the same way about church."

Finally, while volunteering at the food pantry, the organist for our church showed up to help one day. I didn't know him or that he was our organist until we were making small talk, since I attend a small contemporary service on Sunday evenings that operates sans organ. Turns out that while he plays organ for our church, he is not a member, nor even in our denomination. Instead, he attends (somehow) another church in town. Huh. So I guess the organ thing is just a gig for him - whether for pay or strictly volunteer I am not sure, and it doesn't matter.

So where am I going with all this? I have been thinking lately about why do we feel we have to go or be involved in just one church? Unless we think that somehow Christ only shows up at "our" one single church each Sunday, why do we feel constrained to limit our involvement to only one group of people in the body of Christ?

For some, the answer will be denominational prejudice, but I've already written about what I think about that. For others, it will be a longing for continuity, or a sense of loyalty, or the comfort of the known, or the feeling of community. From the viewpoint of the church itself, I frankly think the answer will be money (tithes) and membership numbers. They won't want to "share" members (or offerings), as if anyone that shows up in their pews is "theirs" anyway - we and all we have are all owned by our Father.

My family goes to the church we do for a variety of reasons. It's closer than our last church. It is friendly and much less fractious than our last church. It has a great contemporary service that is small and very family-centric. But frankly the number one reason is that it is the denomination in which my wife grew up, and she feels the most comfortable (and loyal) to that, and agrees with their doctrine. As for me, I chafe a bit at some of the views and values, but ultimately it doesn't matter that much to me. They are good people, if a bit inward focused, and I am happy to go, and to volunteer to do the Web site. I don't believe in "church shopping." And it makes my wife happy, and that's good enough for me.

But that doesn't mean I do believe that I have to just be involved in that one church, either. If it doesn't have any missional activity that I can be involved with, and if the odds of such a thing happening are low, then instead of spending energy trying to get something like that off the ground and perhaps just getting frustrated and annoyed, I can simply help other churches that are doing real mission work. They won't get me as a tithing confessional member, but they will get my free labor, and most churches needing volunteers will be happy enough with that. I am already involved in two food pantry efforts, and both are run by other denominations. I am also considering going on a Katrina clean-up and rebuilding mission this September (yes, these are still going on, and yes, there's still a need), which is being sponsored by the church running one of the food pantries I help.

Does anyone see any reason why such a course is wrong? Does anyone think we're required not just to be "of the body", but to always attend only a single congregation? Even my father-in-law, an elder in his church, goes to other churches (and denominations) worship services from time to time, just to hear different ministers and pastors, and to probably gain some insight into how different congregations are "running the business". But I am not talking about that. While I think that's OK, too, from the vantage point of gaining perspective and avoiding mindless attendance and ritualism, it is a bit like flipping the channel on the TV, a "Let's see what else is playing at the other theaters this weekend", church-as-entertainment approach. A fine thing to do, as long as you don't make a habit of it. Instead, my question is does anyone have any objections to being actually and actively involved in more than one church at once? And if so, why?

As always, comments appreciated.

About the tower of Babel...

"I've got a favorite story
About the tower of Babel
Some say its true
And some say its a fable"
- Frank Black, "Old Black Dawning"

Just a quick post on an idea I had last night. The tower of Babel continues to be built today, and our ability to communicate with each other continues to degrade. The more we know, the more we "reach for the heavens" in science and technology, the more we seem not able to talk to each other, the more fractious and dangerous and hateful the world gets.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

- Genesis 11:1-9

Fra-gee-lay. That must be Italian...

Ever notice how hard people work at protecting and defending Jesus, the Bible, the church? How insulted they get when they think someone has maligned or infringed upon Christianity? How apparently fragile they think God's hold and influence in this world is?

Instead, what I think is going on here is they are not afraid of God's not being able to handle these attacks, but instead are afraid of the effects of such assaults on their own belief. When the pressure comes on, do we have the faith in God that can withstand such things without resorting to the tactics of battle and scorn, which are not very loving and Christ-following?

Jesus is not a fragile figurine to be wrapped in tissue, put in a box and placed on a shelf and only taken out on Sundays to look at for an hour. He is an action figure, to be played with, hard, outside in the sandbox of the world. He can take the abuse. Can you?

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