Bonhoeffer quote on Community

"Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray.  You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ.  If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Response to Philip Clayton's post on Theology After Google

I just spent way too long typing out a response to Philip Clayton's blog post on theOOZE (a site that I rarely frequent and that I only checked out in this instance because Jason at Sustainable Traditions recommended it.) only to find that my comment wouldn't go through.  Aaaarrrgggghhh!!!! (No Wonder there were no comments posted there yet.)

So I'm posting it here, mostly because I don't want to let all that work go to waste. (I don't even know that what I wrote was even decent, but still, it's the principle of the thing that counts here. If I spend that much time pounding out a reply, someone should have the opportunity to read it.)

i was shocked after reading through your article to see that there were no comments after you'd specifically asked for comments!  if some sites can get hundreds of idiots to reply their their posts, then this post should at least get the comments of one idiot.  

so here i am.   ;-)

(hopefully there's not 10 comments waiting in moderation before mine making me look like even more of an idiot once they all go through. *sigh*)

i suppose i'm left, after reading your article, wondering who you're talking about.  if pastor's are no longer authorities, is that because non-christians no longer see them as authorities? or because our churches have grown into mass media spectacles where you simply can't have a personal relationship with your pastor in which you can talk out theology and life in such a way that you build a relationship and respect for that individual and allow him to speak into your life -- to have some level of authority?

i'm a member of a small church (in a denomination that's been around since the '60's i think, when it split off from a mainline denom). i read blogs right and left. i write about my own spiritual journey and i feed my intellectual and spiritual self in a plethora of ways (from books to online posts to online communities). and i don't see my pastor as a host at all.  he's a teacher and a pastor.  he prepares information for me to digest, cogitate on and discuss.  he's the authority because he's the one spending the time it takes to research and delve into the topic in order to present it to us. granted he's not just stuffing facts and rules into our spiritual gullets. there's a lot of conversation and interaction. but he's guiding us, not hosting us. he's teaching us.

i also think you're creating a bit of a false dichotomy.  you're saying there's what church was and what church is becoming.  but what church was wasn't always church.  in my opinion it was far more common as recently as 30 or 40 years ago for churches to be filled to the brim with people who didn't believe a word of what they were hearing. they hadn't chosen to follow jesus. they were just "going to church" because that's what you did.  that's not church. ok, so it is, but it's a very different definition of the word than i think either you or i would mean by it. and how much "authority" did any pastor/clergy have in that case? they had neither authority nor were they a host.  they were just part of the ritual that people went through on sunday mornings.

i think i also balk at the "we're not in kansas anymore" overall idea to the post. yes, in many ways the internet is changing our world dramatically.  and yet people are still people and relationships still involve talking and interacting and probably having a bite to eat and something to sip on while you're together. in that sense, things are still very much the same.  church is made up of people learning to get along with each other despite differences, learning to love self-lessly, to care for each other and so on.  that's not internet stuff.  that's the same sort of thing that the church has been doing for millenia. 

New Monasticism

I came across these 12 marks of New Monasticism today. I thought I'd post them here both as a way to discuss them and to think them through a bit more. You can find the original list here at newmonasticism.org.  They don't give explanations for these, either. So make of them what you will.

1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.

2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.

3) Hospitality to the stranger

4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities
combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.

5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.

6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the
community along the lines of the old novitiate.

7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.

8) Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.

9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.

10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.

11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.

12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

May God give us grace by the power of the Holy Spirit to discern rules for living that will help us embody these marks in our local contexts as signs of Christ’s kingdom for the sake of God’s world.

RT @FakeSpurgeon "This thimble of grape juice represents my blood..." #whatjesusneversaid -- http://twitter.com/FakeSpurgeon/status/8284646367

Authentic

One of the things that I loved about the church I was a part of in Detroit was that it was utterly authentic. When we sang, it wasn't the sound of angels, or even of a choir.  It was the sound of a doctor, a janitor, a grandma turned mom again, a German, an African-American, a heinz 57 white person, a college graduate, a post doc student, a man who never made it past 3rd grade....  It was the sound of us. No more. No less. We were off key and off beat. We mucked our way through the songs and some days it sounded good and some days it was just a sound. But it was always a group of people pouring their hearts out to God.

I thought of this authentic style of worship again today when the pianist fumbled over the music, the songs were kinda cheesy youth groupy songs, and no one clapped but me and Rob. I was a bit embarrassed because we had three groups of visitors and all I could think was, "They must think we're so pathetic!" And yet, what they were hearing was us, just as we are.  Granted, last week the music rocked, so it's not like we're always stumbling along. But today we were. It was us. Just as we are. No frills. Nothing fancy. 

And it struck me -- the buzzword among "cutting edge" churches these days is that they're authentic.  But ironically, the "cutting edge" churches in our denomination, the ones that tout themselves as being "authentic Christian community"s are the ones that pay professionals (often not even Christian professionals) to play the music in their services.  How authentic is that?

Another buzzword is community. There's a movement to build community within churches rather than just walking in, punching your card (so to speak), and leaving again. Our church doesn't really talk about community, and yet we live it. We're not perfect, but we have a deep rooted sense of our family-ness with one another.  And again, the "cutting edge" church in our denomination that we attended, where community was an oft used term and people thronged to the church to hear the pastor speak on the topic, was probably the church with the least amount of community that I've ever been a part of.

I suppose my point is that people can talk a good talk. They can speak of authenticity and community and it all sounds blessedly marvelous. But the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. And it's not necessarily something you can see in one visit to one event in our congregation. Community is something that you see over a period of time. Authenticity is something that you recognize as you look at the church budget, as you talk with the church members, and as you see people's words and actions in alignment over a period of time.

I appreciate that I'm a part of a congregation that doesn't just talk the talk. It walks the walk. Granted, it's a jagged, jumbled, scraggly, fumbling walk. But we're walking it, in all of our messed-up-ness and frailty. We're on the road. Authentic isn't really very pretty. It's plain and sometimes it's even awkward and bumbling. But it's who we are.

What do you think of when you hear the word ___ ?

I've been thinking about that word "church" again and I was going to ask you all what you think of when you hear that word, but I hadn't gotten around to writing the post.  Then I read this article by Kathy Escobar called, the difference between “cultivating communities” and “building churches”, in which she asks what people think of when they hear the words "Christian," "Jesus" and "Church". So I thought, what the heck, lets ask about them all.

So if you're interested in the article, don't read it yet.  First, list whatever comes to mind whenever you hear the following words. (I even threw in a few extras for fun.) There's no right or wrong answers. This is a free association type of exercise.
 
1) Christian
2) Evangelical
3) Jesus
4) Church
5) Worship
6) Spiritual
7) Grace

(I threw "grace" in because I watched Jim Wallis on the Daily Show and he used that word. It made me wonder what people thought it meant.)

Jesus Died for Myspace in Heaven

Nathan and I heard this advertised on the radio this morning.  I laughed so hard I nearly choked.