Monday, November 14, 2011

Communion Bread

Description:
I usually make regular old no knead bread for communion, but I've been longing to make the thick, chewy, sweet communion loaf that we had in one of the churches I grew up in. It must have been in Massachusetts, because that's where I had my first communion.

I've found a recipe that comes out looking like that loaf, but it's just flour and water. Apparently in the Catholic church, that's all that's allowed in communion wafers. We must have attended some renegade hippy Catholic church in my childhood (in fact, I know we did. They had great music.) and I would swear there was honey in that bread.

This is 1/3 of the measurements of the original recipe with a few modifications.

Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup honey (I didn't measure. So I'm guessing. It might have been more.)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
Mix ingredients together. Knead for 5 minutes. Let the dough rest for another 5 minutes. Divide into two balls for thicker pieces, three balls for thinner/crunchier pieces. Roll these out and mark with a cross (or plus... since it's centered). Make two consecutive circles around the center. Then make cuts in each section to make separate pieces. Cut at least 1/2 way to 3/4 of the way into the dough.

Bake for 20 minutes at 400 for lightly browned loaves. (I think I've got the ingredients where I want them, but I'm still working out the cooking length part.)

I'll try to remember to take some photos next time so you can see my cutting handiwork. (Still didn't get photos this second time around. Once we started into eating this batch, it went quick. I might make some in plane old cracker shape next time around to nibble on at home.)

Update (7/6/13): I've started making this for a larger crowd and have fiddled with the recipe some. I'm now using:

6 cups freshly ground whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup clover honey
1 1/2 cups water

This leaves me with dough that's somewhat goopy. I cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper, glop the dough out on the paper - spreading it as evenly as possible - then cook it for 17 minutes at 350 F. When it's done I pull the parchment paper right off the cookie sheet and use a large knife to trim the edges, then cut the block into about 200 pieces. I actually need 300 pieces, so I might be refiguring the amounts. Scraps cut off the block are quite tasty and a good way to "test the product." (That's the excuse you can use, at least.)

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Why do we care why God allows suffering?

In high school, we read Edith Hamilton's Mythology book. While reading that book, I don't think the concept of the gods being just, or even good, ever really registered. Assistance, hospitality, caprice, revenge, and unending desire for pleasure all popped up over and over. The gods were good and they were bad. They were a lot like humans - well, super humans. Though you might hope that they would be kind and generous and loving, you really couldn't count on it, even when you were a demi-god, the child of a god.

So why, then, would people have a belief today that God should only be good and should only allow good things? Why would a post like this show up in my Google+ feed yesterday asking, "Why does god allow suffering?" Where did we ever get the idea that maybe God shouldn't allow suffering? It certainly seems like the gods of mythology (not just Greek, but Babylonian, Nordic, etc.) all created a fair bit of suffering among humans. Even Jehovah didn't spare his own son from suffering. So why do we seem to expect that God would forbid suffering during this life time? Why do we think that the existence of God cannot possibly coincide with the existence of suffering in the world? Why do people feel that suffering is one of the strongest arguments against God?

I wonder if the question doesn't reveal more about our own opinions of ourselves rather than our opinion of God. Did our sentiment around God and suffering change during the Enlightenment as we started to put more value on the individual?

I finally posted a response on the G+ thread: "I've been thinking on this one since you first posted it. What keeps popping back into my head is, 'Why do we expect god to not allow suffering?'" Joel, the one who originally posted the question, replied, "Great question. I guess for me it comes down to this: If god doesn't help people, why have a god? Why do so many people pray to god, if god isn't interested? Does he give us any benefits at all over not having a god?"

I thought that his questions, in turn, were also good. I'll post my reply to him here (in case you don't want to click through to the original post) but I'd be curious to also hear your thoughts. Why does God allow suffering? Why do we care? Are there any benefits at all to having a god over not having a god?

My last reply:

"
What if god does help people, he just doesn't help all people all of the time? Does that make a difference?

"Or what if god provides basics - such as a working ecosystem that's well suited to our needs - but not necessarily all of our wants - such as the end of all sickness. Does that make a difference? In this scenario, no god would mean no ecosystem or a crappy ecosystem... and we'd still have sickness.

"I just think the underlying assumptions beneath your original question are really fascinating. I've heard people argue about god and suffering till the cows came home. But I don't think I've ever heard a conversation on the premises that these discussions are based upon.

"I wonder if the ancient Greeks ever sat around and asked, "Why does Zeus allow suffering?""

Monday, November 7, 2011

Spare the rod, spoil the logic

There's an article in yesterdays's New York Times about a pastor in Pleasantville, Tennessee, who has written a book about how to raise children. Apparently the book was hailed by parents who severely abused their adopted daughter until she died. When her body was found she was emaciated, had been beaten, and apparently had been forced to live outside in an unheated barn. The upshot of the article was that the pastor had written a book along the lines of, "People are inherently sinful. Parents need to train their children not to sin. The only way to keep them from sinning is to spank them, or withhold food from them, or give them some other form of punishment until they eventually learn to behave."

What strikes me is the inherent lack of the gospel in this story. At the very end of the article the  pastor is quoted as saying, "To give up the use of the rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity." Where is the gospel in that? Where is grace? He seems to believe that the only way to get to heaven is to beat our human nature into submission, physically, so that God will accept our beaten up submission and allow us into heaven. If the only way to get rid of sin is to beat it out of a person, then why didn't Jesus come down with a big stick and give us all what for?

Isn't the whole point of the gospel that we can't sacrifice enough to ever make ourselves worthy? No amount of beating will ever cleanse us from our sin. Only the atoning death of Jesus can pay that price. And then we don't have to. There's no, "grace plus beating" clause in the gospel. The pastor's comment makes no logical sense in light of what Jesus has already done.

Monday, August 8, 2011

I feel like my gift to the church has been...

I'm writing a survey and I'd like feedback on this question. When you read the question, keep your own church congregation in mind. 

What do you think of the question itself? What do you think of the possible answers? Is there something that immediately springs to your mind in answer but that's not listed in the possible answer list? 

I feel like my gift to the church has been ____________________________________.

Please fill in the blank with whatever comes to mind (whether it's in the following list or not). Feel free to use the following list if that helps. 

a. compassionb. hospitalityc. faithfulness
d. humore. kindnessf. thoughtfulness
g. prayerh. evangelismi. teaching
j. listeningk. forbearance l. financial gifts
m. musicn. singingo. experience
p. leadershipq. knowledger. hope
s. practical help with the facilitiest. gentleness
u. practical help to people in the congregation
u. a welcoming attitude to newcomersv. wisdom

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Radical Together: Unleashing the People of God for the Purpose of God

Rating:★★
Category:Books
Genre: Religion & Spirituality
Author:David Platt
I decided to read the book, Radical Together by David Platt, at the suggestion of our pastor. Upon finishing it, I think I can best summarize my thoughts on the book by saying that Platt had a lot of good things to say, but he not only didn't say them very well (sometimes contradicting himself, many times overstating himself, and almost always showing only one piece of a much larger picture), but I think he overemphasized very extraverted traditional forms of evangelism and what it means to be "radical". I've read other reviews on this book and most readers seem to really, really like it. So obviously Platt is hitting cords with people and is able to motivate them in a way that just doesn't seem to connect with me. Different strokes for different folks and all that. (Could it be that Sensing individuals like the very clear, very physical forms of being "radical"? Both my mom and Pastor Don are S's and both like Platt's books. If you're an iNtuitive and you read this book, I'd love to hear your thoughts.) But this review is going to be about my response and thoughts on this book. So if you liked this book, that's great. But it really rubbed me the wrong way.

I could summarize Platt's six main points, but most other reviews already do that, so I won't spend the time. Rather, I'd like to focus on his underlying foundational premises and presuppositions. For the most part I agree with his stated points. We do need to be congregations who focus resources on more than just ourselves. We should have Bible-based preaching. We should encourage and equip congregants to build relationship with people in the community, helping people physically and spiritually. We should have a great concern for the poor and the orphans and the widow. I'm right on with all that. But Platt rests these "radical" (some might call them Biblical) behaviors on a foundation that I find at times to be shaky and at other times to be very one-sided. Platt clearly has a heart for evangelism and his book is primarily a focus on evangelism. And I don't have a problem with that. But I do have a problem with Platt's understanding of the church and her purpose and I do have a problem with Platt's statements that put evangelism at the pinnacle of all that is radical. It is one thing to focus on evangelism as an important part of what it means to be within a Christian community, it's another thing to make evangelism out to be all and (literally) end all.

Premises and Presuppositions

Platt makes several statements throughout the book that put in no uncertain terms his opinion of the purpose of the church:

"The only possible vision for the church of Jesus Christ is to make known the glory of God in all nations."

"God has called us to lock arms with one another in single-minded, death-defying obedience to one objective: the declaration of his gospel for the demonstration of his glory to all nations."

"If the ultimate goal of the church is to take the gospel to all people groups, then everything we do in the church must be aimed toward that end."

Platt apparently believes that the ultimate and overarching goal of the church of Jesus Christ is evangelism. He doesn't say it's a part of the church's calling, but that it IS the church's calling. Sure, we're supposed to go forth to all nations. God definitely wants to get the word out and he wants us to do some of the footwork on that. But evangelism is only one of several things that glorify God. (Of course, evangelism can also be done in a way that very much does not glorify God and makes him out to be something he's not. But that's a different topic of discussion.) There are other things, according to the scriptures, that also glorify God: our worship (John 4:24), our love for one another (Romans 15:7), our sanctification as we become more like Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), and our service to others with the gifts God has given us (2 Corinthians 8:19). To imply that one of those things is more important than any other distorts the picture of what the church has been called to be and to do. If Platt had written from a premise that evangelism is one of the actions of the church, I'd feel much more comfortable with that. Writing that it's the "only possible vision for the church" minimizes the importance of other gifts within the church such as discipleship, hospitality, teaching, preaching, encouraging, showing mercy, etc.

I believe Platt also sensationalizes what it means to be "radical." He never defines the term, but the impression you get from reading the book is that in order to be radical, you must do something that can be measured, and when it is measured, it will big. Quitting your job and moving to a third world country to tell people about Jesus is clearly visible to the undiscerning eye. It is big. Going through the church budget and giving more away to overseas missions, or giving substantial amounts to programs that help orphans and widows, is measurable. And big. Platt may not have meant to imply this, but from reading the book it's fairly clear that if you can't see the action from a mile away, it's not radical. The Bible makes clear, though, that sometimes it's the little things that are radical. When there's another person in the congregation who gets on your very last nerve and who almost makes you want to just leave the church altogether, and yet through Christ's love and forgiveness you learn to love and forgive that individual in turn, that is radical. It's not easy to measure. It might not even be visible to those who didn't realize the animosity that was previously in the relationship. But that doesn't mean it's not entirely radical, especially in the midst of our self-protectionist, cut bait and run kind of culture. Or sticking with a congregation through thick and thin because we recognize that God has put us in the family, not to run away from it or to despise it, but to learn, within that context, how to hope, how to forgive, how to be patient, how to be kind, how to forbear and above all how to love well. That is radical. Sure, staying put might not look radical. And to be honest, sometimes it isn't radical. But staying put and learning to faithfully follow Jesus in a day to day setting as an imperfect person surrounded by imperfect people -- that is truly radical. If we're going to talk about being radical, we should be using the Bible's standard (forgiving 70x7 times or turning the other cheek) rather than using an outdated, Americanized view of what the term means.

Maybe it's not a contradiction, but it sure isn't very clear

Platt also seems to contradict himself a few times. The first time I think might actually have been intentional. In fact, the title of the chapter, "The gospel that saves us from work saves us to work" shows the problem. Though I understand what Platt was trying to get at (I think) -- that we are not saved by our works, so we should quit trying. Rather we are saved by Christ and the overflow of that is radical obedience to Jesus (shown in our actions/works) - I don't feel like he made that very clear in the chapter. I finished the section thinking, "OK, so we're supposed to stop working our butts off to the point of exhaustion so we can work our butts off to the point of exhaustion... for Jesus. How are those two things different again?" It simply wasn't clear and the chapter seemed like one big unresolved contradiction. But I also felt like Platt contradicted himself when talking about programs. In chapter one, Platt made very clear that sometimes we're so focused on programs that we're not actually following God's word. I agree to some extent with that. Sometimes a church that is focused on its programs is a church that's lost focus of itself as a body, the body of Christ. So what I got from chapter one was that programs should be demoted or done away with altogether in an effort to better align with the word of God. But then he proceeds in chapter four, in the section entitled "People, Not Programs," to suggest an alternative to big programs that take place in the church building. The alternative? Little programs taking place in people's homes. He doesn't change the what so much as the size and the where. So programs are OK as long as they're broken into little bits? As an introvert, I certainly have nothing against smaller group sizes. But if we're going to talk radical, shouldn't the difference be more than just quantity and location? Shouldn't there be a fundamental difference in how we relate to one another, not as co-participants in a program but as co-participants in the Kingdom?

What also wasn't clear was what Platt meant by certain words. I've already pointed out that he didn't define "radical" except through big, measurable examples. But he also never explained what he meant by "the gospel." He talked about the gospel quite a bit. But if I had never heard the term before, and I only knew about it through Platt, this is what I would discern from this book: 1) The gospel has been chained. (Implied on pages 45-46.) 2) The gospel needs to be unchained so that it will unleash God's people/the church. (Pages 25, 30, 34, and 46. Although on page 41 it's leaders who do the unleashing.) 3) The gospel gets people to do stuff that they wouldn't otherwise do (I didn't get page numbers for this. It was frequently stated, though.) and 4) sometimes the gospel is "of grace" and that gets people to do even more than they would have done. (Not as frequently stated. Seemed like a special case scenario.) I also felt like evangelism was never defined. Again, if I were an outsider looking in, I would assume from this book that evangelism consisted in convincing people (preferably in far away countries) to turn around and start convincing other people to turn around and convince yet other people about... something. ... probably about this "gospel" and Jesus and about how important evangelism is. Remember back in the days before the postmodern area when people could talk about Christianey stuff and assume that everyone else knew exactly what they were talking about? This book would have fit in really well back then. Even if Platt is directing his book toward a wholly Christian audience, I still think that some background, such as what he means when he says things, would help round out his message and make his meanings far more clear. As it is, he could very well mean that we just need to make people pray a prayer. And that's it. It's over. Check that person off and move on to the next one. I find that neither "radical", nor indicative of being "together."

Radical Together

Which brings me to one last pet peeve. When I see the words "radical" and "together" placed side-by-side, my impression is that the topic being covered will have to do with being together, being a community, in a way that is only made possible through God (which would therefore mean that it's radical). So upon reading this book and finding that most of the sections were really about how to organize programs and budgets in a large church setting, I was pretty thrown. Where's the together? If we're doing something simultaneously does that make it a "together" thing?

Walk the Word

I think David Platt is overall trying to make a good point. If you're going to say that you're a follower of Jesus Christ, then you should be reading the word. If you're trying to build your spiritual life only through reading books about the Bible rather than reading the Bible itself, you're going to end up being either a weak or a nominal Christian. If you're going to call yourself a Christian, but you're going to immerse yourself in the wealthy, self-centered American mindset rather than in the self-sacrificing, giving Christian mindset, then is your faith coming through in your actions? Are you a follower of Jesus or a follower of comfort? Are you walking the walking and not just talking the talk? These are certainly things that self-satisfied American Christians should be reflecting on.

But the way that Platt challenges people to think these things through, and the specific examples he gives as answers to the problems he's addressing, can go a long way toward creating guilt and misdirection among the people of God. You don't have to be livin' it loud to be radical. If your gifts are compassion and hospitality, those are things that are sorely needed. If your gifts are discipleship or teaching, the church needs you. If your gifts are preaching or showing mercy, God has a purpose for you. Evangelism is not the only call that God has placed upon his people. If you do not have the gift of evangelism, or if you are an evangelist who perseveres quietly through trial rather than running for greener pastures, that does not make you any less radical in God's eyes. You know what makes Christians truly and completely radical? Jesus. It's only through him that we're anything at all. His gifts are many and plentiful and cover a variety of purposes within the church. And by using those gifts within the context of a congregation, we can bring glory to God through worship, love for one another, sanctification, the use of our God given gifts, and evangelism. Now that's radical together.

How would you define "good kingdom productivity" based on this sentence? "This church, like yours, is composed of wonderful men and women who have not been designed by God to waste their lives on good church activity devoid of great kingdom productivity." And second, what are some examples of "good kingdom productivity" that you can think of from scripture?

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Thoughts on Church Planting - does the old model need a serious do-over?

David Fitch posted a suggestion today on how church planting is done. (STOP FUNDING CHURCH PLANTS and Start Funding Missionaries: A Plea to Denominations) I thought I'd repost my reply here.

Great post. I love munching on new ideas and this is one you can sink your teeth into. I agree that the church planting process is abysmal. The very fact that it ever worked is a sign that we (Americans, at least) have a ridiculously screwed up view of what church is. As Bob pointed out, “the only expectation that has been placed upon the people is to give their money to pay someone else to be a Christian for them.”

Having lived in both urban and suburban areas, I’ve yet to find an area in these United States that doesn’t already have at least one, if not zillions, of congregations already meeting in it. I think it’s interesting that we have a mindset that if our own denomination, or network, or whatever umbrella organization we feel connected to, doesn’t have a congregation in an area, then they’re probably not doing it right and a new church needs to be started there. What about using the congregations that already exist, the four churches who have touching parking lots, for example, and disciple people so that they live their commitment to christ themselves, rather than paying someone else to do it? (I know I’m echoing several folks sentiments here.)

I don’t see anything wrong with people moving to urban or poor areas. I’m all for that. But to do it with the intention of starting a new church still seems silly to me. I’ve lived in Detroit and in the Mission district of San Francisco – both of which are (or were, when I lived there) rather poor urban zones. But they had churches already. Why rebuild the wheel? Why not help those “dying” churches get their second wind? Does it please God when the energy and excitement of youth is spent “for his glory” while simultaneously ignoring the wisdom and experience of the christians already living in that area? It seems to me that the old but faithful need the excitement, abilities and energy of the young. And the young and energized need the wisdom and the encouragement of the old and perseverant.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

If I don’t love Mabel… « BYSTANDERS TO GOD'S GRACE

http://weavingmajor.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/loving-mabel/
Sometimes it's easy to read scripture without hearing it. This is especially true when a passage becomes too familiar, or is so general that if we don't think through exactly how it applies to our life, then it's essentially nothing but platitudes. Kelly's rewrite of 1 Corinthians 13 takes a familiar passage of scripture and contextualizes it in such a way that it becomes immediately relevant.

The last of the quotes from Lynne Baab on personality types in congregations

I've already posted a few times about Lynne Baab's book, Personality Type in Congregations: How to Work with Others More Effectively. In the last third of the book, Baab addresses personality types in congregations (In other words, the personality type of the church, not just the individuals within it.), considering type in congregational activities (offering a variety of activities to support differing personality types), using type to help be a more effective leader in the church and to help a congregation through a time of change, and using type in pastoral care situations  such as counseling, premarital counseling, ministering to families and even in confirmation classes (helping kids better understand why they connect with some forms of worship or prayer and not others). 

I want to share some more quotes from this book, but if you're interested in type and congregation life, I would definitely encourage you to read the entire book. Baab does a great job of pulling in personality type wisdom from a very large variety of sources and tailoring it specifically to situations, conflicts and service within the church. She also includes several appendices that list resources for digging deeper into specific sub-topics. This book is well worth the read. 

"Without new challenges, we can't grow, and growth and change are a significant part of human development." 

I think one of the things I appreciated most about Baab's book is her emphasis on growth. Using type to better understand yourself and others is a good thing, but it can also be a tool for growth. Baab encourages pastors and leaders not to talk too much about type to their congregations as it might be seen as a different gospel, but she points out that the principals can still be used to help cope with conflict, to ease transitions, and to spur growth both within individuals and the congregation as a whole. 

"Understanding patterns of spiritual growth, particularly growth in self-acceptance and growth through facing the inferior function and the shadow, can help us develop a spirit of gentleness and kindness as we work with others in our congregations. We are all growing. We are all 'people i progress.' We all experience stress and behave in childish way when under pressure. We need a kind word or a gentle listening ear when we experience growth pants. I long four our congregation to be places offering that kind of love and acceptance along with tolerance for the complexity of our spiritual journeys."

This was kind of her concluding paragraph on the importance of growth. She then went on to talk through several specifics such as quiet activities vs. activities that involve lots of interaction between people. Teaching methods in Sunday school classes and how to teach in such a way that all personality types are engaged and learning. She said some stuff about small groups that fit me to a T. (Don't go changing out the people in my small group every single year. I don't like that. I want to get to know people.) She touches on worship, preaching, the way the building looks, and even scheduling events. In other words, she hits upon several things that we might not think about as being helpful or hurtful to people and she gives tips on how to make sure people feel a part of the body rather than being surprised or hurt by things (even simple things like not knowing a part of the service was changed at the last minute). 

She also has an interesting section on Generation X. Considering that the Emergent movement is all about reaching X and Y, her take on the differences via type rather than culture are intriguing. Baab quickly points out that, for whatever reason, various generations seem to fit into specific types. The generation from 1910-1930, that were involved in WWII and were raised during a time of hard work and duty, display STJ characteristics. Whereas the Baby Boomer generation has more of an N feel to it as people valued exploration and envelope pushing, but they retained the J sense of responsibility of the generation before them. Gen X, though, seems to be more perceiving than previous generations. Baab explains, "They are a generation raised on options, more options than most of us who are slightly older can even imagine. MTV and the Internet illustrate the plethora of possibilities that have shaped this generation." Baab believes that most congregations carry a J flavor, which could be one reason why Generation Xers don't feel comfortable in church. She encourages congregations to have more spontaneity and openness "without sacrificing that which is important to [you]." I particularly liked this bit, "One Presbyterian church with a high percentage of Generation X attenders is known in its presbytery as 'the barefoot church' because one 20-something fellow occasionally come to church barefoot." 

"Some conflict arises because we don't understand differences between ourselves and other.... We move to another level of misunderstanding when we believe that Kyle is being malicious or deliberately insensitive. This can lead to painful and damaging conflict."

I think this is particularly true. Since I've studied personality types, I generally have a sense of conflict through that lens. There are many times in a conflict when I hear one person say incredibly nasty things about the other person, as though the other person is being deliberately selfish or rude. But since I see where the other person is coming from through the lens of type, I often see just the opposite. Though you may hear them as being selfish, if you think through what it is they're actually saying, you'd realize that the reality is that they're trying to do something that will help and benefit everyone. (Yes, I do have a specific very acrimonious conflict in mind that happened among parents in my girls' class a few years back. It was heartbreaking to see these parents tear each other apart simply because they refused to take the time to listen and really hear what the other was saying.)

This happens in the church as well. Despite all of the Biblical admonitions to forgive and forebear and love, people see through the lens of their own personality type. Baab continues,

"Type can help us work with others in our congregation by giving us vocabulary and concepts to describe these differences in style. Once we understand them, we can be more gentle and also more assertive in asking that other styles be affirmed and included. This understanding can help us avoid falling into the trap of attributing evil to people when their styles differ from ours, and it can prevent conflict from escalating to damaging levels."

Baab also talked about change within extraverted vs. introverted congregations. Her descriptions of introverted congregations fit our church incredibly well. (We only have a couple extraverts in our congregation.) It surprised me to consider that change would happen differently, though, based on whether the congregation was introverted or extraverted. That was a neat little insight. 


There are three books on type that I'm interested in reading next. One is the book, Gifts Differing, by Isabel Briggs Myers and Peter B. Myers. (Isabel Briggs Myers helped to develop the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, so reading this book would be going to the source.) The second is Beside Ourselves: Our HIdden Personalities in Everyday Life, by Naomi Quenk. I want to explore this whole inferior function idea more, which is what this book gets into. And the last has to do with parenting styles -- The M.O.M.S. Handbook: Understanding Your Personality Type in Mothering. Baab mentions that this book described her parenting style to a tee and they hadn't even interviewed her for the book. 

Saturday, June 4, 2011

More quotes from Lynne Baab on Personality Types and working effectively with others

These are more quotes by Lynne M. Baab from her book, Personality Type in Congregations: How to Work with Others More Effectively.

"Psychological type is not a good source of direction for finding a place to serve. Type can provide us great understanding of how to serve once we get to a place of ministry. Type can help us understand what tasks will be easy and what tasks will be hard. type can help us understand which tasks will be tiring. Type can help us predict some of the ways we may experience conflict with people. 

"The best and most effective service grows out of our deeply held values, commitments, and passions, which give us energy to persevere when things become boring or difficult. These values, commitments, and passions can come from a variety of places in our lives."

I thought this was particularly interesting and insightful. Baab gives an example of an ESTJ gal who helps out in the church in several very practical ways (which is typical of ESTJ's). But at one point she decided to help with a hospice center, thinking that she'd do practical things like wash dishes and tidy up. But what she found was that caregivers wanted a chance to get away and she ended up sitting with the patients who often wanted to talk out what they were going through. So here was a very practical DO-ing oriented woman who was expected to sit and listen quietly to someone emote -- something she would find incredibly hard to do. But because she still felt strongly about the general task of helping with hospice care, she persevered and ended up growing richly in ways she hadn't expected. Because her weakest abilities were called upon, she felt like she had to rely ever more heavily upon God to learn to listen and empathize with people. But through it, she found healing for some of her own past wounds. Here she was doing a task that she never would have chosen based on personality type, and yet it stretched her and she grew in unexpected and exciting ways. And it worked because she felt strongly about hospice even though it wasn't an area of strength skill-wise for her. 

Baab encourages people to pursue what they feel passionately about, and only after that choice has been made should they consider how best to do their service in light of their personality type and strengths. 

"At midlife and beyond, people usually grow in their ability to use their less-preferred functions. In Navigating Midlife the authors write that beginning at midlife, people 'need to expand their identity by looking inward to discover the pieces of their personalities that are not yet developed. They need to move toward their own wholeness.' The push to grow toward wholeness often motivates people to try new areas of service  tat they never would have considered." 

I've heard this before, that as you grow older you're more willing, and even excited about, trying things that aren't as easy for your personality type. 

"Once we begin serving in a specific ministry, type can give us understanding and insight into why certain tasks are enjoyable and others are not. Type can help us make choices within that ministry to bring balance to our lives. Understanding type can help us know when to delegate tasks to someone else. Type can help us know when to ask for help."

Again, she's advocating for being involved in a ministry we feel strongly about rather than selecting something just because our type indicates that we have strengths in that area. Then she encourages people to find means of interacting with that ministry that fit our type. 

"Burnout can be like carpal tunnel syndrome or repetitive motion syndrome. Overuse of one part of our body results in soreness and pain. ... Overuse of our gifts and strengths in ministry follows the same pattern as repetitive motion syndrome. By the time we experience pain, the pattern of overuse is firmly established. Whether we are a pastor or a lay leader, the congregation expects us to continue to perform in the areas where we have shown so much competence. It is extremely difficult to form new patterns of behavior." 

Baab points out that there's three main ways to end up burned out: being overtaxed in an area of weakness until you're completely drained,  being overtaxed in an area of strength until you're injured in a way similar to getting carpal tunnel, and being so frustrated and stressed that you give up. She says that just because an area is our strength doesn't mean we can't still get burned out in it (which is especially a problem for people that work in their strength and then end up doing volunteer work that leans on that same strength). Just like with carpal tunnel, it can sometimes be helpful to strengthen surrounding muscles/functions. If we're strong extroverts and have to call upon that strength a lot for both work and church life, we may need to take time to strengthen our introverted function by taking on more behind the scenes tasks within the congregation for awhile. 

The frustration and stress section relied heavily upon an example, but she explains that we could work in our strength, but because the board or pastor or people we're helping don't have the same strengths as we do, they may not recognize the amount of work we've put in to something, or they may be grateful to us but not value our work. (In the example a T was thanked by a board of F's, but what she really wanted was her work to be critiqued and then used. She ended up leaving the church because all her hard labor was ignored... until, ironically, after she left the congregation and the F's learned how to use the documents that she had drawn up.) I definitely could relate to this example as I often feel like I'm thanked but not necessarily appreciated. 


Baab offers some great advice to pastors and other leaders in terms of helping people get plugged into the church life. She then moves on to talk about prayer and Bible study and how it differs among different personality types. She brought up Lectio Divina, which is an ancient form of Bible study, and she showed how the four stages of the Lectio Divina met the strengths of several different personality types, making it a good example for how to include all personality types in the same study. 

Quotes from Lynne Baab on Personality Types

I covered the "why" of personality types in my last post about Lynne Baab's book, Personality Type in Congregations: How to Work with Others More Effectively, but this time around I wanted to list some direct quotes from the book. 

"...we need to make sure there are places in every church where every type preference can experienced."

I think this is really important. I understand why SJ's would want to attend a church that focuses on structure, tradition, creeds and solemnity. And I understand why people with an Extroverted Sensing function might feel most comfortable in a church with incense or candles or raised hands or spectacular music. It makes sense to be in a congregation where we feel like we "fit" and we're best able to feel connected to God. And maybe we don't need to worry so much about visitors because they can always keep looking till they find a church that fits for them. But what about our kids? I have Extroverted Feeling daughters who love when we clap along to songs or otherwise get into the music, but that really doesn't happen so often in our mostly SJ church. 

And I think it's important that even in an SJ church, people are encouraged to stretch a little, try new things, and find other ways to connect to God that might not feel as natural or as comfortable, but that might still enable them to have a better sense of God that goes beyond their previous understanding. 

"When we are taking in information through intuition, we remain in the present reality of the senses only long enough to receive enough sensory data to make a leap into the possibilities associated with those data. While sensing focuses on the present and uses memories of the past to provide further information, intuition focuses on the future. Intuition explores the big pictures, the overall theme, the patterns that are present, the connections between the pieces of data received, and, above all, the meaning of the information."

"Each of us uses both ways of taking in information, but most of us prefer one over the other. People who prefer sensing tend to be practical, factual, and concrete, concerned with the details of each tree rather than studying the forest as a whole. People who prefer intuition tend to be abstract and to think globally. They are concerned with the pattern of the forest rather than the characteristics of the individual trees."

I found the first paragraph to be very helpful. (I included the second because it's also a good description, though I'd understood that part before.) When I try to explain the different between S and N to people, I often find myself saying that S's are more detail oriented and N's are more big picture oriented. But what confuses me is that I notice details, too. In fact, sometimes specific details are exactly what give me my insights. So I've been confused about the differences in detail gathering between S's and N's. I think Baab delineated the differences well in this paragraph. 

"The physical surroundings in their house of worship may be quite important to sensing types." 

This is so true of Rob, not just with worship but with schools, too. Every time we visit a university campus he doesn't care what programs they offer or what type of classes he could take, what matters is how old and cool the buildings are. He struggles with the fact that our congregation meets in a building that was built in the 60s or 70s. He's much rather be downtown in something old and funky. 

"When [Jung] uses the word feeling, he is referring to a decision making pattern that involves concern for human values and that strives primarily for relational harmony. It is decision making based on deeply held values. In contrast, the word "thinking" involves making decisions with a concern for logica nd truth. Thinking is more detached and objective than feeling."

"Thinking involves a concern for logic and truth; feeling involves a concern for values and harmony." 

I'm very clear on what thinking means. I get foggy when it comes to feeling. Or, more to the point, I get foggy when it comes to Rob. I would say that he makes decisions based on values and truth. He has very strongly held values and he sees them as core truths. So is he a T or is he an F? When he takes tests he often comes out right in the middle. I think he's an F when it comes to the values bit but a T when it comes to the relational harmony bit. 

Oh, and for the sake of the feeling folks here, let me add this quote:

"Logical analysis alone doesn't guarantee accuracy." 

You can use that against us the next time you're in an argument with a T.  ;-)

"In congregations the thinking-feeling preference may be the most explosive and painful aspect of psychological type differences. It can be difficult for people who prefer thinking and feeling to respect each other. The feeling type proposes an action. The thinking type asks, 'Why?' The feeling type thinks, 'If she really respected me, she wouldn't need to hear reasons.' The thinking type, meanwhile, is wondering, 'If he can't articulate his reasons, can this really be a good idea?'"

I thought this was a great insight. If we knew that we were T's and F's talking, then perhaps we could talk this out and satisfy either side in the end. But without knowing the metathinking that's going on, it's really hard to tease out what's really happening in a situation.

"Perceiving refers to a preference for keeping things open, for continuing to remain in a perceptive attitude. People who prefer perceiving often come across as flexible and easy-going. Judging refers to a preference for making decisions over taking in more information. People who prefer judging often seem to be organized, structured, committed to deadlines, and aware of schedules." 

I thought this was a nice description of J and P. 


Whew! That's plenty of quotes for now, and it doesn't even hit upon the bit of reading I did today. That was all from previous reading. I'll try to splash some more quotes up here soon. 

Why study personality types?

I'm reading a really fantastic book about personality types called Personality Type in Congregations: How to Work with Others More Effectively, by Lynne M. Baab. A lot of what the author writes about could really be applied in any organizational situation, not just within church congregations, but she does address prayer and a few other particularly spiritual activities (such as worship) that are more specific to a faith based community.  

Oftentimes when I bring up personality typing (especially within our congregation) I basically get pooh poohed. The attitude is either that it's all a bunch of hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo, or there's no real value in the study and, if anything, it will just be used against people. Baab did a great job of explaining that just the opposite is true. She says there are three paths to growth relating to personality types: self-acceptance, learning to use all functions, and learning to "access the shadow" (which deals with the way we behave/think under extreme stress).

The moment of self-acceptance comes when you discover your personality type and suddenly you realize that your constant fight to be one way or another is because you're not naturally that way. God made you to be a certain way and you may feel like your parents, or your church, or your work place has expected something very different of you, something that you found it depressing to be unable to achieve. When you realize that you're introverted because that's how God made you, or that there's value in being a dreamer, or that basing your decisions on feelings isn't wrong or right, it's just how you are... then you're able to accept who you are and how you naturally operate, irregardless of what others' expectations might be. (You might also have a better sense of why they are expecting something from you that's always seemed so foreign. It's because that other person has an opposite personality trait in that area so they'd always thought they were expecting something natural of you, not realizing it was natural to them, but not to you.) Once you discover your personality type, you'll probably have a better understanding of yourself and others. This will help you to be more accepting of others when they decide or act differently than you do. But there's a lot more value to personality typing than just awareness. The next step involves growth.

Each of the functions of the Meyers-Briggs personality type system are amoral. That means they're neither right or wrong, they're just different. And there are times when one type might be more appropriate than another. For example, if someone has just gone through a traumatic or sad experience, it's unlikely that they want a Thinking type person to come up and logically explain to them the situation that they're in. What they really need then is a Feeling type person who will empathize with them in their time of need (or a Thinking person who has learned to use their Feeling side). One of the goals of those studying personality typing should not only be to
learn more about your own personality type, and to learn to value and appreciate other personality types, but also to find ways to grow in areas where you have a weakness. Not only does this help us to be more well rounded people, but we may find the stretch into an area that doesn't come naturally to us to be an exciting challenge that helps us grow closer to God (as we learn to rely more upon him in our areas of weakness) and others (as we learn to relate to people in a way that might not be as natural for us, but which helps us to connect to them more deeply). I think this is an important aspect of personality study that is often overlooked and Baab does a great job of giving examples of how people have grown in areas that were previously foreign and uncomfortable to them (like learning to be a listener when you're naturally more of a talker). 

Baab describes the third value of studying personality types as "accessing the shadow." When we are in periods of great stress, we often do our best to face the problem with our usual strengths. When those fail, or when we feel like we've exhausted our ability to deal with the situation, what often happens is that we revert to going the direct opposite route. The example that the author gives of herself was that under stress, she started to exhibit extroverted sensing behaviors (even though she's introverted and intuitive). Healthy extroverted sensing behaviors involve an enthusiastic, joyful embracing of sensory experience. But when we're in these stress modes and flip into using our "inferior function" (which means the opposite of how we'd normally behave) we end up embracing the worst possible form of that function. So in this case, instead of joyfully embracing of something sensory, she depressedly fell into a habit of over-eating. This state of relying upon our inferior function (in other words, relying on the areas we're weakest in and do the worst at) is called being "in the grip." Baab describes it as "vivid evidence that sin's power reaches deep into our souls." During these times, emotions are exposed that we'd managed to hide before. We continue to try to hide them with our inferior functioning, but Baabs encourages growth at this stage by facing our obsessions, mistakes, and failures and learning from them rather than allowing them to lead us down the road of poor behaviors. 

I've considered these first two values of studying personality type for quite awhile now, but the inferior functioning is something I've read about before, but not really delved into deeply. The description of the inferior functioning of an ISTJ (impulsiveness and catastrophizing) fit Nathan's recent behavior to a tee, though. That nearly gave me whiplash when I read it -- definitely catching my attention. Suddenly it makes a little more sense to me why my son is behaving so very differently than he's ever behaved in his life. Something in his life has caused severe stress and his only means of dealing with it has been this radical change in behavior. Baab suggests some means of helping a person get out of "the grip" but I've also noticed there's a book just on that topic. It's something I'll definitely be looking into. 

Understanding personality type is certainly not a panacea, but I've repeatedly seen situations in which it either has helped, or it could have helped if it was taken into consideration. Personality is, by definition, an incredibly personal thing. Some people don't like to be pigeon-holed or scrutinized. Others get a bit too gung ho and run with the beginning of the idea without really understanding how typing can be used beneficially and they end up doing more harm than good. I think it's helped me to be more sensitive and understanding of others. Just like any tool, typing can be helpful or harmful. It's a tool that I've found great value in, both in understanding myself and the actions and beliefs of those around me. Baab is a good writer and does a great job of giving specific benefits and goals of using personality typing within congregations. 

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Pressuring Congress to pass laws --> Civil Religion

I'm on chapter four of Resident Aliens, which hits upon the topic of Christian ethics and therefore also upon the relationship of the church and the government. Hauerwas and Willimon hit the nail on the head when ti comes to Christians trying to legislate morality. It shows a misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of the church as well as a gross misunderstanding of the relationship between church and state. What follows are several quotes from the fourth chapter. (*sheepish grin* OK, so not just several but lots.)

"The way most of us have been conditioned to think about an issue like abortion is to wonder what laws, governmental coercions, and resources would be necessary to support a 'Christian' position on this issue. The first ethical work, from this point of view, is for Christians to devise a position on abortion and then to ask the government to support that position."

"The habit of Constantinian thinking is difficult to break. It leads Christians to judge their ethical positions, not on the basis of what is faithful to our peculiar tradition, but rather on the basis of how much Christian ethics Caesar can be induced to swallow without choking. The tendency therefore is to water down Christian ethics, filtering them through basically secular criteria like 'right to life' or 'freedom of choice,' pushing them on the whole world as universally applicable common sense, and calling them Christian."

"Here is an invitation to a way that strikes hard against what the world already knows, what the world defines as good behavior, what makes sense to everybody. The Sermon [on the Mount], by its announcement and its demands, makes necessary the formation of a colony, not because disciples are those who have a need to be different, but because the Sermon, if believed and lived, makes us different, shows us the world to be alien, an odd place where what makes sense to everybody else is revealed to be opposed to what God is doing among us. Jesus was not crucified for saying or doing what made sense to everyone." 

"Merging one's personal aspirations within the aspirations of the nation, falling into step behind the flag, has long been a popular means of overcoming doubts about the substance of one's own life." 

"Christian community, life in the colony, is not primarily about togetherness. It is about the way of Jesus Christ with those whom he calls to himself. It is about disciplining our wants and needs in congruence with a true story, which gives us the resources to lead truthful lives. In living out the story together, togetherness happens, but only as a by-product of the main project of trying to be faithful to Jesus."

"Yet most modern ethics begin from the Enlightenment presupposition of the isolated, heroic self, the allegedly rational individual who stands alone and decides and chooses. The goal of this ethic is to detach the individual from his or her tradition, parents, stories, community, and history, and thereby allow him or her to stand alone, to decide, to choose, and to act alone.  It is an ethic of great value in our type of society because the corporation needs workers who are suitably detached from communities other than their place of work, people who are willing to move at the beck and call of the corporation."

"The question is, What sort of community would be required to support an ethic of nonviolence, marital fidelity, forgiveness, and hope such as the one sketched by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount?"

"Whenever Christians think that we can support our ethic by simply pressuring Congress to pass laws or to spend tax money, we fail to do justice to the radically communal quality of Christian ethics. In fact, much of what passes for Christian social concern today, of the left or of the right, is the social concern of a church that seems to have despaired of being the church. Unable through our preaching, baptism, and witness to form a visible community of faith, we content ourselves with ersatz Christian ethical activity--lobbying congress to support progressive strategies, asking the culture at large to be a little less racist, a little less promiscuous, a little less violent. Falwall's Moral Majority is little different from any mainline Protestant church that opposes him. Both groups imply that one can practice Christian ethics without being in the Christian community. Both begin with the Constantian assumption that there is no way for the gospel to be present in our world without asking the world to support our convictions through its own social and political institutionalization. The result is the gospel transformed into civil religion." 

"The Sermon on the Mount cares nothing for the European Enlightenment's infatuation with the individual self as the most significant ethical unit. For Christians, the church is the most significant ethical unit."

"We ask ourselves what sort of church we would need to be to enable an ordinary person like her [a pregnant teenager] to be the sort of disciple Jesus calls her to be. More important, her presence in our community offers the church the wonderful opportunity to be the church.... ...we are graciously given the eyes to see her as a gift of God sent to help ordinary people like us to discover the church as the Body of Christ."

"Our ethics do involve individual transformation, not as a subjective, inner, personal experience, but rather as the work of a transformed people who have adopted us, supported us, disciplined us, and enabled us to be transformed. The most interesting, creative, political solutions we Christians have to offer our troubled society are not new laws, advice to Congress, or increased funding for social programs--although we may find ourselves supporting such national efforts. The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.

"The Christian faith recognizes that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures who cannot reason our will our way out of our mortality. So the gospel begins, not with the assertion that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures, but with the pledge that, if we offer ourselves to a truthful story and the community formed by listening to and enacting that story in the church, we will be transformed into people more significant than we could ever have been on our own.

"As Barth says, '[The Church] exists... to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to [the world's] own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise' (Church Dogmatics, 4.3.2)" [Brackets in this quote are from the authors.]

"Ethically speaking, it should interest us that, in beginning the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes, Jesus does not ask disciplines [sic] to do anything. The Beatitudes are in the indicative, not the imperative, mood. First we are told what God has done before anything is suggested about what we are to do." [emphasis theirs]

The Sermon on the Mount "is morality pushed to the limits, not so much in the immediate service of morality, but rather to help us see something so new, so against what we have always heard said, that we cannot rely on our older images of what is and what is not."

"We are forever getting confused into thinking that scripture is mainly about what we are supposed to do rather than a picture of who God is." [emphasis theirs]

Turning the other cheek "is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we will feel so much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world in the Christ."

"Therefore, Christians begin our ethics, not with anxious, self-serving questions of what we ought to do as individuals to make history come out right, because, in Christ, God has already made history come out right. The Sermon is the inauguration manifesto of how the world looks now that God in Christ has taken matters in hand. And essential to the way that God has taken matters in hand is an invitation to all people to become citizens of a new Kingdom, a messianic community where the world God is creating takes visible, practical form."

Whew! I still have a few pages of the chapter to go, but I thought these quotes were all so meaty that I wanted to share them here. 

Friday, May 20, 2011

Some Grey Bloke gives some helpful tips for those being raptured tomorrow

He's got a good point about the time zone issue. 

"I understand that you're excited about going to heaven, but you shouldn't be making things difficult for those let behind. They already have the tribulation to deal with. They don't need to go out to your house carrying the Sunday supplements as well." lol!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Would you chain yourself to a tree to save it? Here, have a cheap bracelet.

In the world of religiosity, there are levels, or perhaps they're Dantéan spheres, of holiness. Those within each sphere look very similar to each other no matter which god they've chosen to follow: the Omnipotent God, the Mother Earth, or the Perfect Man. Among the grandest sphere you'll find mystics, monks and priests. Beneath them the religious -- they attend the right meetings, read the right books, and make decisions based on their beliefs. In the level below that fall those who are really more nominal about their beliefs, talking the talk now and then, but walking the walk only when it suits their needs. The bulk of people fall here. They may follow one system of beliefs while paying lip service to an entirely different religion. The worst of these we call hypocrites. The rest are just how people are, we might say with a shrug. There is no sphere for those who are against a set of beliefs, because the very act of being against something gives this group of people a distinct set of beliefs of their own, and therefore would relegate them to one of the spheres already mentioned. The goal of the leadership of any movement is to draw people from that outer sphere to one of the inner ones. But I wonder, sometimes, whether their tactics don't really just draw people from one part of the outer circle to a different part of the outer circle, all the while lining the pockets, or stroking the egos, of those in the center -- opiating the masses for the self-gratification of the greedy shepherds.

A few weeks back I received an invitation from the Sierra Club in the mail. For anyone unfamiliar with the Sierra Club, they are (according to their website) "the largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States." One of the leaflets in the invitation asked me, "Would you chain yourself to a tree to save it?" In other words, what they were saying was, "Would you be willing to move to the in-most circle -- the realm of mystics, monks and priests -- to show your total dedication to the cause?" It was an evangelical call, one that was crafted to stir my blood and give me hope that I, too, could be radical and cool in my religion of environmentalism. It was designed to strike a cord within me that I could be great. I could be radical. Or, if I would just join the Sierra Club, I could at least be associated with such greatness. I could wear a backpack and bracelet that would mark me as a fanatic who's willing to go all out for the cause -- nevermind the fact that the backpack and bracelet are really tools of evangelism that ultimately undermine the cause. (The bracelet is shown on the right in the photo and the offer for the backpack is in the lower left. The bracelet is the tease, the backpack is the hook.) 

I would think that an environmental organization would, as one of its standard modes of operation, reduce, reuse and recycle, and encourage others to do the same. And yet here they've not only wasted some trees to generate the paper the evangelical call was printed on, but they've included a ridiculously cheap bracelet in the letter that, if tossed into the recycling bin without first being removed from the envelope, could muck up an entire load of paper recycling. I can't imagine anyone over the age of 5 or 6 being thrilled with such a bracelet, so for those that caught the fact it was in the envelope before they tossed the paper into recycling are now left with the choice of throwing it away (Rather than reducing their trash, the Sierra Club has just helped them to increase it.) or donating it to charity (where it'll most likely get thrown out as too cheap to sell). 

And that's just the bracelet. If you join now at the low introductory rate of $15, you'll receive an official Sierra Club 1892 Rucksack in the same style as the one used so long ago by John Muir, the founder of the club. It might be in the same style, but I'd bet money that not only is it made of very different material (something petroleum based?) but it was also probably made in China. There's no way they could make anything even remotely the same quality as John Muir's original rucksack for under $15, so not only are you contributing to environmental problems by procuring this petroleum based product that had to travel half way around the world to get to you and that was most likely made under lax environmental regulations, thereby contributing to the pollution of another nation, but it's not going to last long and will soon be yet another item you can add to the land fill. 

Why would the Sierra Club so brashly invalidate its own message by marketing in this way? Well, it takes a lot of work to become the "largest and most influential" environmental organization in the United States. Sometimes you have to do things that don't quite fit your message in order to further spread your message. In fact, sometimes you have to do things that argue directly against your message... in order to further spread your message. 

It's a philosophy that I see used not just by organizations like the Sierra Club, but within church circles as well. If the message is only spread through numerical growth, the argument goes, then numerical growth is of key importance. So services, programs, style and focus all need to be such that they will create the largest numerical growth possible within the congregation. And what draws people to an organization? A sense that perhaps they can be, if not the fanatic in the center circle, at least closely associated with the inner circle through being a part of a church that: (choose all that apply) is cool, is happening, is growing, is "authentic" (whatever that means), is exciting, is deep, that makes me feel good, that makes me feel like I get it and the rest of the world doesn't, that makes me feel special.

There's a common belief in many Christian circles that bigger is better. Quick growth is better. Younger is better. Newer is better. And if your congregation isn't young, energetic and growing by leaps and bounds numerically, then the opposite must be true. The converse of the belief is that if an organization is not growing, then it is ineffective at accomplishing its goal. Such congregations are just old and dried up and outdated. But what is most egregious, I find, is that the mentality, then, is to grow at all costs. Can you truly convey a message by contradicting it? And why do we buy that when it's a lie. It's a lie that we're quick to believe no matter which congregation we're in, the large or small, the energetic or the faithfully plodding along.

I'm not saying that growth is bad and stagnation is good. Far from it. What I'm saying is that the church has a message. It has been called not only to share the message, but to live it. When we decide that sharing the message is so important that we can stop living it in order to share it better, then "we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." (ripped from 1 John 1:8) Part of the message is perseverance. Part of the message is faithfulness. When we criticize those who have faithfully persevered even through difficult times we are criticizing them for taking the message of the gospel to heart and living it out. We are undermining our own ability to share the message by condemning our own brethren for holding true to the message. We may look or sound very incredibly cool. We may get people in that outer circle to stop and think, "I want to be in that inner circle. I want to be radical for Jesus." But what kind of radicality do we call them to? If they buy the t-shirts and raise their hands at the meetings and go our for a beer with their small group, have they really moved from the outer circle to an inner circle? If their choice to follow God depends primarily upon their own need to feel like they're a part of something or they like the energized feeling they get after a service or they need to be "fed," are they really following God, or are they submitting to a message of consumerism, or me-ism, or coolness? If you follow God for the buzz, are you following God or the buzz?

Are we calling people to Jesus? Or are we just encouraging them to move around in the nominal circle they were already a part of in order to make ourselves look more important?

Friday, May 13, 2011

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The South is Christ-haunted

"I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted." -- Flannery O'Connor, in her article The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South

(Just saw this quote in a Tom Cannon post and thought it was so well said that it needed to be reposted.)

tom cannon quote

When "authenticity" becomes a commodity it is immediately exclusionary and completely full of crap.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Who needs Jesus when you can just click for forgiveness?


Click.Forgive

I am not making this up. My brother-in-law sent me the link. He probably uses the level 4 Forgiveness several times a day, knowing him. He claims that not loving bacon is a level 3 offense. Who knew?


Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Mend broken, Make strong the weak, Vanquish evil

They were "ready, finally, with all their hearts, to take that ancient oath: to mend those who are broken, to make strong the weak, and without hesitation, [to] vanquish the evil."

Why is it more OK when owls say it? Why aren't Christians saying it more?

Friday, April 8, 2011

This makes Jesus facepalm (times inifinity)

I can honestly say that this is just as good as the original....



Don't miss these money quotes:

"God is my friend."

"Worshippin' Worshippin' Yeah!"

"Church can be fun. You know that it is."

"So excited. We so excited. We knowin' Jesus is alive today."

Oh, and please don't miss the cafe shot.

Not only did they entirely capture the simplistic, contrived feeling of the original, but they managed to map it directly onto the church. What's most frightening of all is the number of people who will watch this and think this is what church and Christianity are all about.

I think when you hit this point you stop facepalming and you just walk right over to the wall and start banging your head against it.

Monday, April 4, 2011

New Wine in Old Wineskins <- not always the best metaphor



"But the heart of Pacifica had always been and remained today the tropical islands of the ocean called Pacific in memory of the largest sea on Earth. The dwellers on these islands lived, not precisely in the old ways, but with the memory of the old ways still in the background of all sounds and at the edges of all sights. Here the sacred kava was still sipped in the ancient ceremonies. Here the memories of ancient heroes were kept alive. Here the gods still spoke into the ears of holy men and women. And if they went home to grass huts containing refrigerators and networked computers, what of that? The gods did not give unreceivable gifts. The trick of it was finding a way to let new things into one's life without killing that life to accommodate them." - Orson Scott Card in his book Children of the Mind

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Part of God's Story - a series of quotes from the book, Resident Aliens

"Too often, we depict salvation as that which provides us with a meaningful existence when we achieve a new self-understanding. here, with our emphasis on the narrative nature of Christian life, we are saying that salvation is baptism into a community that has so truthful a story that we forget ourselves and our anxieties long enough to become part of that story, a story God has told in Scripture and continues to tell in Israel and the church."

"It is our baptismal responsibility to tell this story to our young, to live it before them, to take time to be parents in a world that (though intent on blowing itself to bits) is God's creation (a fact we would not know without this story. We have children as a witness that the future is not left up to us and that life, even in a threatening world, is worth living -- and not because 'Children are the hope of the future,' but because God is the hope of the future." (emphasis theirs)

"The church must be created new, in each generation, not through procreation but through baptism."

"People of God do not let the world determine how they respond to tomorrow."

"To launch out on a journey is to move toward some goal. Of course, in the journey of faith, we have no clear idea of what our end will be except that it shall be, in some form, true and complete friendship with God. For now, our daily experiences of testing and confirmation of that friendship sustain us. Perhaps this explains why Jesus' ethic was so thoroughly eschatological -- an ethic bound up with this proclamation of the end of history. Ethics is a function of the telos, the end. It makes all the difference in the world how one regards the end of the world, "end" not so much in the sense of its final breath, but "end" in the sense of the purpose, the goal, the result."

"Travelers, in the midst of the vicissitudes of the journey, learn to trust one another when the going is rough."

[The apostle] "Peter stands out as a true individual, or better, a true character, not because he had become 'free' or 'his own person,' but because he had become attached to the Messiah and messianic community, which enabled him to lay hold of his life, to make so much more of his life than if he had been left to his own devices."

-- Resident Aliens (Hauerwas and Willimon), chapter three.

What Am I Afraid Of?

I got to thinking yesterday, " What am I afraid of?" It's a long story on how I came to that question. Suffice it to say that the combination of my sister mentioning a life theory of fear vs. love, combined with a bus ride yesterday with a bunch of rather mean 8th graders got me first to wondering what they fear, which led me to wondering what I fear.  I took some time out to think about that question. I think there are specific fears for various situations, but one overriding fear that seems to dominate over all the rest is the fear of failure. What if I mess up? What if I screw up so bad that someone else has to deal with it?

I thought of death or of being in a situation like Joanne, where she had a debilitating stroke several months ago and is taking slow steps down the long road of recovery. But neither of those things scared me. What scared me was that if I died, someone else would have to come in and go through the piles of stuff I haven't gotten through in my office. (It also makes me very sad to think of what my family would go through. But that's because of my love for them, not for any fear of what they'll experience. I know they'll find a way to carry on without me, even if they miss me a great deal.) I fear messing up when I'm talking to someone - of saying the wrong thing or not saying what I want to say in a way that the other person will comprehend in the way I want it to be comprehended. I guess when I boil it all down, I fear that I'll get it wrong. I fear that I'll do or say something that impacts someone else negatively, in a way that they'll be left cleaning up my mess whether it's physical or emotional or maybe even spiritual.

My fear might seem very silly to you, but it's very poignant to me. It's pretty central to how I think about myself. I am a person who orders things. You might not think that from looking at my house or my back yard. But when I write a newsletter, I'm not only organizing words into a coherent and hopefully interesting portrayal of information, but I'm also organizing the blocks of text and images on the page. When I do the book keeping for the church or for CFHL, I'm ordering numbers - moving them in and out and keeping them all lined up in a row as I do so. I organize my kids schedules. I order the morning routine so that the kids can sleep as late as possible and still get to the bus stop on time. I take in and organize information for the kids school and send it out to the PTO and other parents. I take in, I rearrange and organize and then I send out. I wish I had a more ordered house and yard, but that one gets away from me, which I'm sure is why it comes at me in my fears.

So yesterday, while I was lying on my bed thinking this stuff through, I managed to ironically do what I feared. I messed up. Nathan had a 3:30 doctor's appointment and I entirely forgot about it. I had remembered it yesterday morning. But by afternoon I was exhausted and the appointment wasn't on my radar. When the office called to see what the deal was, I lost it. I broke down. That was it. I'd messed up. My greatest fear came rushing over me to overwhelm me.

It hasn't left me there. I've tried to walk myself through some of the things that I have been encouraging Nathan to do when he hits something that throws him for a loop. I've tried to look at the bigger picture. Sure, this happened and I screwed up, but what will that matter a year from now? Five years from now? It won't. It really wasn't that big of a deal. But it felt like a big deal. I'm still holding on to that feeling of it being a big deal, even if it wasn't.

I'm at Everyday Joe's right now sipping on my new favorite tea, Margaret's Hope Darjeeling, and reading Resident Aliens (Hauerwas and Willimon) and I hit this bit, "True freedom arises, not in our loud assertion of our individual independence, but in our being linked to a true story, which enables us to say yes and no. Our worst sins arise as our response to our innate human fear that we are a nobody." That, combined with several other bits that I'll probably share in another post, helped me to see that looking at the long term regarding my mess up wasn't really looking at the entire big picture. There's more that, if I really want to heal from this, I need to do. I need to allow for grace.

When I missed Nathan's appointment yesterday I was frustrated with Rob because he just didn't seem to get it. He didn't get that this was a major mess up. He wasn't as upset as I thought he should have been about it. He didn't jump in to be my superman, fixing the screw up that I had made. But looking back on it, I see it a different way now. Rob saw the situation with more grace than I did. He knows it's not the end of the world and he treated the situation as it deserves. He didn't get bent out of shape. He shrugged it off and moved on. Granted, it wasn't his mess up. But even though it was mine, that doesn't mean I need to hold on to it.

Jackie, Nathan's doctor, also dealt with me with grace. She talked to me on the phone about how Nathan's doing and she got us set up with an appointment on Wednesday next week. Though I'm sure it was frustrating for her to wait for us and we didn't show, she didn't express any anger with me. She didn't even show her frustration. She dealt with the situation and moved on, according it only what it required and not pouring extra meaning into the event that it didn't have.

And God forgives my screw up. When I stand before him at the end times, he's not going to pull out his notebook and say, "Dang, Meg. What's this about you forgetting that doctor's appointment?" There are much deeper heart issues that he's concerned with, and me messing up isn't a central issue. He knows I'm human. He knows I'm fallen. A central issue is that I let my fear of messing up define me. I let my belief that I can hold it all together, and that if I don't I'm worthless, be a driving force in my life. That's the heart issue. That's what's important. And I can't let go of that belief until I start to see the grace that is being offered to me by those around me and accept that grace from them, most especially God's grace.

God hasn't set me on the planet with some directions and then nudged me out to do it or fail. He has set me on this planet and then he's put himself beside me. We walk together. Even when I forget to let him lead (He's the one that knows the way after all. He should be the one leading.) and I try to take over with my own map and my own agenda, he's still there beside me. He's committed himself to get me through this. Some would say he's covenanted himself. This is one of those footprints in the sand times and I can choose to let it reinforce my fears. Or I can acknowledge that now is when there's only that one set of footprints in the sand and they sure aren't mine. I can't do this on my own, but then again, I don't have to. Thank God.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Bouncing off of some stuff that David Fitch said about mega churches

David Fitch posted recently about issues he sees among the Gospel Coalition (TGC). I'm not even going to begin to try to address who that is or what they're about. So just roll with that bit, OK? Fitch made 5 points that he feels the TGC is comfortable with that he thinks they shouldn't be. One of those is mega-churches. I've never been a mega-church fan, and I wanted to put my own 2 cents in regarding the issues he brought up on mega-churches. So the bits in quotie-boxes is what Fitch has said. The rambling monologue in between is from me.

5.) The Mega Church Still Makes Sense. [ <-- he's saying that's what the TGC believes.] Because of the above mentioned Reformed tendencies (exacerbated by American pragmatic evangelicalism) to individualize the gospel, to individualize the reading of Scripture, to individualize salvation, to separate doctrine from “way of life,” the Neo-Reformed do not see the problem of mega church for the future of church engagement with post-Christendom.

Whew! That right there is fodder for a gorgeous diatribe against the American individualism that reigns supreme in many congregations. *breaks out in a round of singing, "It's all about meeeeeeeeeeeeee... Jesus."* Megachurches certainly aren't the only ones that jump feet first into following "the doctrine of ME" but they're at the top of the list, in my book. With a staff the size of a small church, the congregants in many mega-churches believe that "church" is all about paying people to do what the whole church really should be doing. The role of the congregant is primarily to be "fed." (Sounds like something only a bunch of dumb sheep would believe. bahhhh, bahhhh)

Mega churches have worked well within Christendom’s modernity.

Worked well? What does that mean? They work well within modern day American individualist culture, sure. But do they work well within Christendom? I'd say that's debatable with a capital "D". ... unless "Christendom" means "a bunch of sheep drinking cool-aid." (OK, OK. I'm being a little too hard on MC's. All my snark comes out when I talk about this topic. Feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt. ... or with a Lik-a Stick of Fun Dip.)

Here the individual reigned supreme and the remainder of Christian culture lingered long enough to provide a foundation for masses of individuals to become Christians within large servicing organizations.

I'm not even really sure what he's saying here. But that's OK. I'm not trying to argue with Fitch. I'm just bouncing off what he says. (The more Fun Dip I eat, the more I bounce.) So I'm just going to run with that last bit - "large servicing organizations". That describes MCs well. They do provide services. And they can be really helpful services. MC's are able to provide programs and assistance in a way that little bitty churches just can't. There are serious advantages to being large, just ask the folks at Walmart.

But is "a large servicing organization" the same thing as "church"? I'm talking about church as the Bible describes it, not as we think of it traditionally or conventionally. Can you operate as a body, the body of Christ, when you're mammoth? I don't think so. At least, I've never seen it happen. I've seen it in small pockets within the larger organization, but never in the organization as a whole.  MCs, in my experience, are pastor-centric shows in which the congregation is called to participate, mostly by giving money and attending programs.

Then again, MCs are doing important stuff. Like I said, they've got the money and the resources. They can do stuff. What I don't get is why little churches don't pool their resources to achieve similar purposes? I'm not saying that the little churches should combine to create their own MC. I'm saying they can remain as they are, smaller groups of individuals who can really get to know each other and serve each other, but linked in with other such bodies in a way that they can provide some of that bigger stuff too - training and assistance - both to their own congregations and to others in the community at large.

Now however, with the lingering remainder of Christian culture gone, the gospel must take root in a social communal embodiment.

Like that wasn't needed before? OK, so here I am taking issue with Fitch even though I said that wasn't the plan. The gospel is embodied in Christ, and what is the church but Christ embodied on earth? The gospel must take root in a social communal embodiment not just now, in a post-Christian world, but always. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked.

Here is where the gospel can be seen, heard, understood, experienced by those completely foreign to our faith in Christ.

Yes, yes, yes. Exactly.

And it's not just where those completely foreign to our faith experience the gospel. It's where we experience the gospel as well. We are all foreigners to the gospel at heart. We are all continually being reintroduced to it, even when we think we've finally grokked it as deep as we can ever grok anything. No deep, theological, cognitive understanding can stick it to our understanding in the way that living it can.

This kind of communal embodiment is nigh impossible in mega sized organizations (although I think I’ve seen it at least once). Still, I see the Neo-Reformed enamored that good solid preaching and culturally relative apologetics will gather post-non-Christendom into its churches. I fear TGC then becomes a force for coalescing mega size preaching churches that preach to the already initiated. We in essence become a church that preaches to ourselves and in the process retrench from being expedited for Mission into post Christendom. (P.S. I still strongly believe in preaching!! As my writings and “the college of preachers” at our church will attest to).

This gets back to what I was saying about MCs having something of value. They do. That's why people flock to them. They might not be the best place for living in the midst of the working out of the gospel, but they're a great place to hear good speakers, learn through well written programs, and/or be involved in social justice issues as part of a movement rather than as an individual. MCs are a powerhouse of knowledge dispersal and social services. They do have strengths. They just operate more like an institutional organization than an organic organization. They run more like a business than a body. They're a good thing, but calling them a "church"... aye, there's the rub.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Were the gods to boast of their followers, what would they say?

I recently finished the book, Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. And I'm nearly done with the fourth book in the series, Children of the Mind. (I going way out of order only because that's how the library got the books to me and I wasn't really paying attention when I started in on book 4.)

They are both very thought provoking books (which is probably why Card has won both Hugo and Nebula awards for his writing). In the fourth book, there are quotes from what I believe is a fictitious book called The God Whispers of Han Qing Jao. The following quote certainly hits a chord.

"Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?
Do the gods of Chinese cities speak to the ancestors of the Japanese?
To the lords of Xibalba? To Allah? Yahweh? Vishnu?
Is there some annual get-together where they compare each other's worshippers?
Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one.
Mine will sacrifice animals, says another.
Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third.
Here is the question I think of most often:
Are there any who can honestly boast,
My worshippers obey my good laws, and treat each other kindly, and live simple generous lives?

from The God Whisperers of Han Qing Jao"
by Scott Orson Card in his book, Children of the Mind

Faith - part of a much bigger story

"Faith begins, not in discovery, but in remembrance." - Willimon and Hauerwas in Resident Aliens.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Telling our story, reminding ourselves of how we got to where we are

I'm currently rereading Hauerwas and Willimon's book, Resident Aliens. (Which I highly recommend.) I was diving into the third chapter this morning in which they describe a church that had invited a retired pastor to come and speak to the congregation. The man had pastored the church for 5 years in the '60s and had encouraged the congregation to welcome in the newcomers in their neighborhood -- the blacks who were moving into what was previously an all white enclave. His tenure in the church had been tumultuous and his "radical" ideas eventually led to his leaving the position. Yet here they'd asked him back again to speak to them and he took that opportunity to remind them of their own history. He preached to them from Hebrews 11-12, the stories of faith of such people as Noah, Abraham, and Joseph. And he included the church in that parade of the faithful. They had gone through a struggle, but they had trusted God despite their own misgivings. They were faithful and had welcomed in the newcomers. And when the pastor had returned many years later, the congregation was a mix of black and white, a testimony to the faithfulness of God to the congregation and of the congregation's faithfulness to the gospel despite their own apprehension about such a change.

At Cornerstone, the church that Rob and I are a part of, we've been in discussions of what we're about and where we're going. After one meeting I came home and started to list all of the people who have been a part of our congregation over the past decade. I wrote out a teeny bit of the history of our church as described through these people, and I sent it to our pastor who is fairly new to the congregation. (He's been with us for 2 1/2 years now.) I did this because it seemed like we had been talking about the church, during our discussion, as if it had no history, or the only history it had was what could be seen at a glance. (How much history Can you see at a glance?) The pastor's response was to say,

Thanks for sharing about previous people.  These are the kinds of things I need to hear to get a more balanced view about our church. I was totally unaware!   May I suggest you edit your email below and put it in your blog and/or email it to our church folks?

So here's my edited email. This congregation has been around for almost 25 years, and Rob and I have only been a part of it for the last 10, so this really is just skimming the surface of our history. But I do think it is helpful not only to see ourselves aright, but to get a better sense of how God has been working among us as well.

I thought I'd back up what I said this afternoon with some names. [I gave a list of names at the end of this, that I won't include here.] I've gotten a very clear impression from [some folks who have only visited our congregation] that they believe our church is opposed to including people who are different than us. Granted, we don't have any blacks and we've only had one Korean and a couple of Latinos in our congregation in the 10 years we've been here, but I think we've been very open to everyone who's ever come to our church, from the three felons who we welcomed with open arms (one of whom lived with Rob and I for awhile and another of whom we elected as a deacon, which we shouldn't have [for entirely different reasons], but it still shows the extent to which we welcomed him) to the two couples who left our congregation to be missionaries elsewhere through Navigators. We've had quite a few college students, and that's really saying something given that RUF [a college ministry within our denomination] took them all away several years ago. So we're looking at a pretty good number of kids in the less than a decade that we had them before they were Pied Pipered away. And we've had many baby Christians and a few seekers that have come, that we've welcomed in wholeheartedly, and who we were often available to outside of Sunday events for discussions and fellowship.

All of this to say that I don't think it's our stance that's the problem. We are a congregation who has shown over and over again that we're ready to take anyone that God sends our way. We're ready to love them, help to meet their needs, help them find work, help them with their children, help them find housing, etc.

I think it's discouraging when we've had so many people who have come to us and who we've poured ourselves into, and then they leave for whatever reason and now we're being told that we're holding ourselves back. I'm discouraged by people telling me that I'm just not putting myself out there when I feel that we have been. We have had two different people live in our house with us, one was a felon and the other was an international student. (We also had a couple live with us for a month while the wife was doing residency here. They had emailed several congregations in town and we were the only one to respond to their request for a place to stay.) And we invited some neighbors who were just seekers at the time and who the congregation welcomed very warmly and the pastor spent hours discipling. I think the whole congregation has put themselves out there, welcomed people in, and been willing to meet any needs as presented.

Yeah, we don't have a congregation that's full of evangelists, at least not in the traditional sense. Our last pastor brought a lot of people in. He was probably the main evangelist in the congregation this past decade. [Another member] probably was as well, though the people he talked to didn't always end up at our congregation and he wasn't with us for as long (2 or 3 years?). But the bulk of us are introverts who build relationships with people and invite people in slowly. Our few extroverts tend to also be pretty outspoken politically, which may make people shy away from checking out our congregation fearing that we're all like that. But overall I feel like we are a congregation that stands at the ready and is always up to the challenge when a new person or family joins us, even when they come to us with needs.

We've definitely grown slowly. And each set back seems to put us a step and a half back for every step we've moved forward. But we have been moving forward. I'm sure there are more things we can be doing to reach out to the community, and I think people are definitely open to doing that. But I don't think the problem has at all been that we're not willing or we're not accepting. I feel like people in other congregations (especially within our denomination) have regularly and routinely judged Cornerstone not by who we actually are, but by who they would like to perceive us as being. Just because people see us wrong doesn't mean that we need to change to suit them. I think it behooves them to get a better sense of us before making judgments about us.

Our congregation certainly has its weaknesses and its problems. But from what I have seen over the past decade, it is faithful. We have many stories to tell about ourselves and we should be doing exactly that. By remembering who we are and where we come from, we will have a better sense of where we are headed.