Our Church Stinks

So we’ve been consigned to the basement. It’s not as bad as it sounds. The Crossing meets in the basement of Redeemer Presbyterian (a church we were familiar with since it hosts many First Friday events as it shares space with the Harrison Center for the Arts) on Sunday nights. Each week, round tables, lit with candles, are set up around the periphery of rows of chairs. Nothing glamorous, no power points, barely a sound system, it’s small enough that it’s difficult to hide from one another. The pastor has a conversational style with plenty of interaction between him and the congregation.

I love the reaction folks have when we tell them that we’re going to The Crossing. It’s typically something along the lines of “oh, you’d fit in well there.” I can’t tell if it’s because I’m an artist or if it’s because it’s become known as the church for people with issues.

There’s almost an anti-growth program with its “we’re a screwed up place, you sure you want to be here?” vibe. I remember the Sunday evening gathering which sold me on the place. The couple next to us was high and/or drunk. If we couldn’t tell from the smell the alcohol was wafting off them, their attempt to keep beat to the music would have clued us in. Then during the meal afterward, me and a homeless gentlemen was discussing my unemployment:

“What do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“You can do that anytime.” At which point, he pulled out his cell phone and gave me numbers to call for job leads.

Oh yeah, did I mention that about a third of the congregation is homeless? For those not used to it, there’s a smell to homelessness. Unwashed bodies, unwashed clothes. One of those things that sounds good in theory. I know that Sally is being stretched as she told me early on that “I’ve always believed church should be a place where people should come as they are: high, drunk, homeless, dirty. I’m just not sure I’m ready to at that church. Or sitting next to them.”

Which is completely honest, though most folks wouldn’t admit to such sentiments. Let’s face it, we talk a pretty good game about social justice, reaching out to the poor, and dealing with homelessness, but we tend to think of that as one of those “over there” ministries. Something that’s done away from the comfort of our suburban castles. It’s also made me realize how much we’ve come to value smooth running services. There is an element of show or production to our church services that we’ve come to expect. A trains running on time veneer of professionalism done in the name of running on/respecting people’s time. And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless we’ve made an idol of that; our need for control superseding the role of the Holy Spirit in a service or the needs of the group. The meal time afterwards is always an adventure.

We tend to want to be with people who are like us, either by race or by class. People who are different will interrupt. People who are quirky aren’t as concerned about appearances. And people aren’t easy to know, assuming they let you get to know them. It’s difficult to embrace the awkwardness of relationships and encounters with people not like us, to allow them to stretch us out of our comfort zones.

We want to go in and fix, that’s our modern American way. But what does it mean to truly love others. What does it mean to be in relationship with them? We don’t give others a chance to let people in or let them in to love us. It’s risky to let people in on our struggles, our shame. We risked being misunderstood, rejected, or not liked. So it’s easier to cling to our addictions and self-protection. The work of building community is hard. It’s one thing to talk about it, another to live it out. To not only walk beside people, but be willing to go after them. To be willing to walk into another person’s pain, their hard reality, even entering into their suffering. That’s how community is forged.

Yes our church stinks. Stripped of the façade, it smells of brokenness and sweat. It’s the smell of community.

Just when we thought we were out …

aka, Looks like we found a church home(s)

The thought about diving into church at all, much less church shopping, hasn’t been something we looked forward to. There is a high amount of church burnout among me and my friends. A reluctance to invest again, be it being burned by previous experiences or just being disappointed. And this is with the full realization that there is no perfect church out there. I was reading on Scot McKnight’s blog about what he’d look for in a church home to see how well his list lined up with me and my wife’s lists. He said he’d consider at least the following items:

1. The significance of fellowship and community to the people already there.
2. Respect for the Great Tradition in the church, made manifest in how much attention to such elements in the church services.
3. Eucharist -- how often? I prefer this weekly.
4. Worship.
5. Teaching ministries: what's important to the teaching?
6. Missional presence.
7. Sermons.
8. Public reading of Scripture.
9. Growing church -- via evangelism and catechesis.
10. How many 20somethings and 30somethings are present?

I’d add an interesting addition to all of our lists: how are you greeted. We’ve had the oddest experience and it’s one that’s been repeated by our other friends as they’ve been church shopping. A lot of the communities we’ve visited haven’t been especially warm in greeting us even though in most situations (showing up as an interracial couple in our racially polarized church world), it was fairly obvious we were new. In fact, of the churches we’d visited, only three welcomed us. Which did help them make the short list.

I once wrote about my church life as dating. These days it feels like getting back into the dating scene after a divorce, so we haven’t been real excited about it. Friends have been inviting us to their churches (to extend the dating metaphor, it’s been sort of like double dating) and there have been some churches that I’d always wanted to visit (essentially blind dates). We actually still owe a few places a visit (Saturday evenings are tough to swing. Unless your social calendar revolves around your church group, it’s hard to carve out that time), but our children recently informed us that we had found our church.

Sally and I had our list narrowing down to two churches. On Sunday mornings at Common Ground, we can go and be invisible (Relatively anonymous. Turns out, Sally is well known by a lot of folks she knew from “back in the day”. I get to be “Sally’s husband” there), a place to just rest and continue healing. We have friends who go there, Sally and the pastor went to youth group together (ironically, it was the youth group she went to after she left the youth group where she and I met). Though I still struggled with finding a place to serve. We were walking with some friends through the building where the church we had checked out on Sunday evenings (The Crossing) meets, when the boys announced this was their church. On the list of churches we thought they might like, this was the least intuitive fit, after all, there was no kids program or kids their age and, not to put too fine a point on it, one third of the congregation is made up of homeless people. We asked them about why they liked it. Turned out they liked playing with the son of the co-pastor, the adults treat them like people, and they get to serve. They helped put the music equipment away and cleaned tables after the community meal. We don’t want to in anyway squelch their wanting to be helpful or serving others. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the place immediately. Instead of a “you won’t find anything better”/“we’re the best thing God’s got going” vibe which we often encountered (folks get really proud of their teachers), there is more of a “we’re a screwed up place. You sure you want to be here?” vibe.

This journey has been amazing and enlightening. Community is a tricky thing. You build community to have during times of stress. You can’t build community during times of upheaval (because there are times when you just can’t think straight and feel like you’re losing your mind), but community can be forged during them. You find out who can weather storms with you.

Friends that can know you at your worst and love you to new life are priceless treasures, a taste of God's love. We appreciate those friends who supported Sally during all of this and continue to pray for her and be a part of her life. And while we miss the friendships that were lost, we are also grateful for the new friendships made.

I’ve been blessed to walk with a band of brothers, true men of God, who held me and my faith together when I wanted to chuck it all. I’d especially like to thank Jim Falk, Larry Mitchell, and Brad Grammer who continue to push and challenge me, remind me that the church is more than one particular expression/community, and that God’s not through with me yet.

Church Planting and Mission Drift

I’ve had a front row seat watching a flurry of church plants plan, launch, and close. It may be my inner Pollyanna speaking,* a question that always struck me as curious that if several teams are going into the same area, and if we’re all about unity, why couldn’t they join in or join together?

I know, I know, the answer is manifold and cooperative church planting in the name of kingdom building is an ideal. There are fiscal realities (where they are getting their money from), those who are pastor as vocation (that’s their main income), and different visions/specific expression of the church they want to try. The cynic in me has to give a head nod to ego: THEY want to do it. Human nature wants to carve out their own empire and rare is the pastor that admits that they want to be a huge church or speak to large crowds or be on television or radio.

So we get more and more lone wolf communities.

And I get that. Planters have a particular vision, set of values, and a way of “doing/being church” which the vision person wants to try and his launch people/planters buy into. Churches start off with grand visions of who they want to be and what they want to do, called to a particular area for a reason. I think one of the big bugaboos of church planting is mission drift.

A friend once warned me that there was a “danger” when it came to getting a building to house your gathering. The danger was that once a community got a building it could become about the building. Having/owning/renting a building means utilities, rent, insurance, salaries, and repairs. It’s bad enough when administrators view their congregants as “giving units” or otherwise reduce their people to their utilitarian functions. And love is rarely cost effective.**

In a world more worried about production and attendance (“giving units”) and sermons and bottom lines, there’s little room for the eclectic, the square pegs for the round holes reserved for pew potatoes anxious to hear the latest bit of ear tickling, as we’re written off as trouble makers or drama bringers. Suddenly, pastors who didn’t care about numbers start to really care about numbers. The “great commission” becomes “a pretty good suggestion.” Crisis management becomes about how to not lose people. Grand notions of growing a church through winning new folks become reduced to sheep stealing. Because they have bills to pay, they play not to lose. Their communities retreat, become little more than social clubs who play at church.

I’m sure I’m way oversimplifying complex dynamics. And you know what? It’s not bad for a community to step back and reassess itself. After all, the mission was set out by Christ to go forth and make disciples. How each church body does it is up to them. There’s mission drift and there’s a change in focus or a re-prioritization. Not all change is bad and sometimes communities need to accept that’s what they are now and strike a new vision. Of course, I always like the idea of church plants joining together and both communities being blessed. Which is easier said than done.
*and as you know, when you think “Maurice Broaddus” you think “Pollyanna”

**Although, I’d be the first to admit that I tend to come at things as an “artist”, as in, I will blow up a budget. Which is why churches should have administrators who buy into their mission and DO care about numbers.

The Artist and the Church

So what are the sermons of the artists? As I’ve been reading great novels, I see the writers, at least, as field reporters sent to cover the human condition. The look, they observe and they have the talent to craft out words to save and share those observations. This is very important. This is why most of the Bible is made up of storytelling and poetry. It has great value and it does not have to come from the hand of a Christian to have value. As I’ve said before, we were humans first . . . then Christians. –The Christian Monist

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be an artist, an artist who’s a Christian (as opposed to a “Christian artist”). Recently I had the privilege of having a great conversation with some missional students about art and being an artist. Also, I have a friend who I have been having an on-going conversation about her life as a writer because she feels she has to hide what she does (as a horror writer) from her church community.

So what is the responsibility of artists, those communicators of ideas who transmit them to the (pop) culture at large? What does it mean to realize your gift and push into the kingdom with it? How do we express our theology in our writing or other works of art? On the flip side, how should the church shepherd its artists? Are there issues of particular struggle for artists (for example, balancing the need to do marketing and promotion against striving FOR humility and AGAINST idolatry)? For all the talk of culture wars, when all is said and done, most pundits miss one simple, though obvious, point: To impact the culture, impact the artists.

What does it mean to be an artist? It’s an artist’s job to ask questions. It’s an artist’s job to push lines. There a difference between being a writer vs. liking to write, being a dancer vs. liking to dance, or being a photographer vs. liking to take pictures. It’s not a matter of “artist vs. hack” or “professional vs. hobbyist”. I know that I have to write. I have to put pen to page to still “the voices” and the overwhelming urge to express what’s in me. It defines me. What makes us artists, what gives us our unique voice, is how we come at life and the world. It’s what makes many be seen or treated as “weirdos”. We can often be prickly, moody, and have isolationist tendencies, after all, we create in caves and tend to be introverts (just like there are lies artists often buy into about themselves, like how they “need” to be misunderstood or what they produce won’t be art).

Artists give up their lives. We cut open our emotional veins and bleed all over the page for our readers entertainment. There is a certain amount of fearlessness and abandonment as we put ourselves out there, exposing ourselves.* Revealing or at least speaking from our woundedness. We trust ourselves to the process, going where the journey takes us, no matter how scary. And sometimes it hurts. It reminds me of this recent conversation between me and a friend:

C: Why is it that it's often folks with woundedness and rejection issues who end up with vocations --like acting and writing-- where rejection is part of the process? Some weird need to relive our abandonment trauma? Just asking.

M: those vocations become their therapy...

C: True, the art part is definitely therapy. I get to put all my neurosis on paper in a form more elegant than mere rant and weepy telephone calls or emails. But, the dealing with agents, auditions, editors, critics. Aaargh. Wish there was another way to have our healing say....without going through all that.

M: on the flip side, carole, we're paid for sharing our neuroses!

C: So true, M. And we certainly help to heal all those souls who come up to us and say how we've "said exactly what they always wanted to say."

Sometimes it’s hard for an artist to find a place within the church. We are often unsure of how to “do” our craft within the church, struggling with being true to our art and to our faith. This is partly due to the church’s distrust of art. Somewhere along the line, unless it was “Christian” music or “Christian” books (which means, for example, me being a “Christian” horror writer), it was dismissed. Strictly branded in the “garbage in/garbage out” school of thought. This type of Christian ghetto mentality sprang from trying to figure out what it means to be in the world but not of it; but led to us becoming so dualistic in our thinking that certainly fine art was so insignificant and unspiritual. In practice, however, when the word “Christian” is reduced/used as an adjective (or worse, a marketing label), usually it’s the first red flag that we’re already off mission.

A way to erase this false dichotomy between sacred and secular is to, in all things, think redemptively, and let the renewing your mind be in finding God at work in the culture around us. I am reminded of how the Apostle Paul could walk around Athens, a city full of idols, and still find Jesus (Acts 17). Engage the artist, engage the audience of that artist, and let your words and deeds be salted with grace. What would our spiritual life be like without art? A shriveled up and dry experience, devoid of any sense of transcendence and beauty. I’m reminded of some words I read in The Christian Monist blog not too long ago:

When you hear the sound of voices of another heart telling the story of love (romantic) or sorrow, heartbreak and loss . . . you know that you are real too. You know that you are not alone. You sense a community of hearts who have all loved, lost and wondered if there is a better way for the world to live. You know that you are human.

We come from the same Creator, created in His image, with his creative Spirit, so it’s all right to love art for art’s sake. We can listen to beautiful music and feel God’s presence. We can become lost in a painting and let it wordlessly speak to us. We can get transported by a story and learn lessons about ourselves. That’s the role of the artist, to remind us of our humanity and to remind us of the story we find ourselves in.



*And as I was recently reminded, it’s one thing for the artist to put themselves out there, entirely another for their spouse. They still have privacy rights and will send out corrective memos when we go too far.

Vagabond Spirituality

Been reading Scot McKnight’s posts on emerging adults with a bit of fascination. I was drawn to his conclusion: there's much more continuity between a teenager's faith and an emerging adult's faith than you might expect. The religious commitments of the teenage years, and one might say the intensity and genuineness and depth of those commitments, are what shapes what happens in the emerging adult years. All of which reminded me of my musings about being “spiritual teenagers” and whether or not I’d truly outgrown some of those tendencies. But I don’t think that describes where I am in my spiritual walk. [read: this may be one of those windy sort of blogs that eventually gets to a point.]

Right now we’re half-heartedly church shopping. Come to find out we’re in a group of a dozen or so folks who are just sort of up in the air about where to land in a church. Some of us are simply tired of waiting for missional communities to actually do something rather than talk about doing something. Some of us are burned out on the whole “investing in church” idea. For some, church had become an unsafe place, a place that caused more hurts than reconciliation.

I know that we’ve contented ourselves with being back row church goers: we slip in, get our praise on, and slip out. Anonymous worship with no pressure to be someone or do something, which has helped us heal from the sense of burnout from our previous experience. Sermon exhaustion aside, it’s been a time to find contentment in just sitting for a while and being ministered to.

But that’s only part of where we are because we don’t want to forsake the idea of communal worship. (Ultimately we’d like to find a place with a relational pastor, a decent kid’s program, one of my wife’s concerns, and that’s racially balanced, one of mine.) While we’d want a place to be missional, both in mindset and deed, we aren’t waiting for that place. Our lives can be missional.

And we still have a community of relationships, both from our previous church community as well as our network of friends. I think that’s another reason why we haven’t dived into a new church. We don’t have time enough to be with all of the friends we have now. It’s kind of tough to then try to cultivate a new community’s worth of relationships or rather, make room in our lives for more people we won’t be able to hang out much with nor develop deep relationships with.

You know what I feel like? One of those journeyman ball players. The ones who stay on a team for a couple years to fill a role and then gets traded. But we’re not worried, we know we’ll end up exactly where God wants us. But I've been asked a few times what I look for in a church. I think I'll write about that next week. [read: lots of deadlines this week.]

Post-Racial Church: The Myth and the Hope Part II: So what can we do?

[click here for Part I]

David Mills directs us to Larry Auster’s comments regarding “The only hope for the betterment of the black race (and the white race)”:

“The solution cannot be in the ‘horizontal’ dimension, that is, in the relationship between blacks and non-blacks, because blacks will always be behind on the level of earthly functioning, leading to unjust racial resentment on the part of blacks and undeserved racial guilt on the part of whites.

“The solution can only be found in the ‘vertical’ dimension,” he continues, “... in the relationship between each black person and God through Jesus Christ, who will put each person’s self in true order and true freedom and remove the focus on the ‘horizontal’ differences and inequalities.

“Each black person will then live and perform and fulfill himself as a human being according to his own aspirations and abilities, without comparing himself to whites.”

Um, yeah, so the solution is for us to pray for us to forgive white folks and leave our resentment behind. I do believe we need to keep having conversations across the racial divide, and I’m as “We Are the World” as the next brother, but this would be considered a conversation fail. Note, while there is some truth in the statement, the onus was in what black people need to do. We can get sidetracked and bogged down by so many conversations that dance around the true issues at hand, and still manage to enflame all the old passions and lingering resentments. Conversation does not mean confess your guilt to a Negro. Don’t confuse institutions of black survival (the black family, black church, and black schools) with institutional or reverse racism.

Sociologically speaking, I’ve learned that we can have the language of sorry, but we don’t have the practice of sorry. My two boys, Reese and Malcolm, have been known to on occasion fight. We, the parental figures and ruling authority in their lives, have been known to make them apologize to one another. Without fail, the initial apology is done through gritted teeth and is essentially worthless. But it is a start. If I’ve learned nothing over the last few months, I’ve at least learned that “sorry”, or rather, repentance, needs to be lived out. And racism needs to be repented of.

Institutionally speaking, the church doesn’t need to program diversity, it needs to be diverse. One of the myths about the Great Commission is that Crossing cultures is a step beyond the general mandate. This myth is that only select missionaries are called to cross cultures in order to make disciples. The rest of us should only focus on people like us, in our culture. The problem with this myth is that the actual Great Commission commands otherwise. Incredibly, Jesus gave a commandment to his mostly Jewish audience to go to a mostly Gentile people and make disciples! Jesus commanded his Jewish followers to go to all people groups (all ethnos, the Greek word for “nations”). In other words, the Great Commission itself is a mandate to cross cultures!

So we start with the individuals. Church folks concerned about multi-cultural church or the state of race relations, looking at your FaceBook friends list is a natural moment to examine the demographics of your life. If the diversity is my sister and I, you may need to color up your lives. I’m not saying take out ads looking for black friends, I’m saying take some steps to break out of the comfortable routine of your life.

At the same time, diversity isn’t the goal. Diversity isn't the mission. We're to be missional, advance God's kingdom here on earth. Strive to carve out a foretaste of what heaven's supposed to be. In my experience, most times conversations about race in the context of church devolve into spiritual circle jerk. Churches may talk about wanting diversity, even making token statements about wanting to see it reflected from the top down, yet their leadership remains a white, sausage fest. We hear plenty of talk and have attended many conventions, now we need more.

Too many people's idea of being post-black (post-racial group of choice) means leaving their heritage behind. As we move forward, no one should have to leave their culture for the the sake of coming together. I mentioned in my previous post about how my formative years were spent in another (the dominant) culture. It is part of a journey I’ve spoken about before. As a result, I was a perpetual other: never a part of the dominant culture and often looked at askance by my own. In order to navigate my circumstance, and keep some measure of cultural sanity, I developed a third culture mentality.

Church should be a third culture experience. Countercultural. Church needs to serve everyone: hungry is hungry, widowed is widowed, orphaned is orphaned, the least of these are the least of these. Pain knows no color. Diversity can be a measurement of how well we’re doing our job. Not something expressly sought after, but a by-product of how well you are serving your community. Your whole community.

Are we really living out our core values, the things we say we're about or do we once again have to learn to be patient and give the church another chance to get things right (and forgive it its slowness)?

Church is a bigger place than one building or one community. I’ve come to realize that one particular body might not meet all of our needs and may fail us on occasion. And we’re quick to measure our experience with the church by a particular body. But it is all of the Christians who make up the church. Our mission is to be about loving, learning, worshiping, and serving together and one another. But we can’t be that until we’re willing to enter the discomfort. In any culture, despite pain and discomfort that may come. We have to risk our safety and taking on pain. We need truth tellers, bridge builders, and risk takers. We need to be the church.

Post-Racial Church: The Myth and the Hope Part I: Coming to You

It would be cool for someone to do a documentary called "Being Black In Evangelicalism" the sub-title would be "The Only Black Person In The Room" (or vice-versa). Evangelicals, as members of the dominant culture, have no idea what it's like for a black person (esp. a black female) to be the only black dude in a room full of whites. It's hard to describe unless you've been in that position but it's always a bit uncomfortable no matter how nice and welcoming people are. I've been at evangelical stuff where the room had a few hundred whites and I'm the only black guy. And no one ever really seems to notice.

In light of the Jim Crow still being alive poolside incident, I’ve been thinking about race and wondering if things are any better in the church. With some of the talk about the new post-racial era that we're entering, the question has come up about whether the church can become post-racial. That's the hope, but I’ve been coming to terms with church being as fallen as the people who make it up.

Too many about race inside and outside of the church begin (and end) with “I don’t see race” as if that’s a triumph of societal acceptance. While I understand what the sentiment attempts to get at, what my ears often hear and how my heart reacts is “No, you see people (culturally) like you.” The bulk of our interchange of life, most of our interactions, is largely within the same race of people. So of course there’s no need to talk about race. You don’t see race if you’re fully emerged in one story. And we’ve lived with our comfortable situations for so long we’ve become inured to it and don’t want to change things. We’re content with life as it is and don’t want to do or say anything which may make waves in our lives.

Color blindness is not a virtue, it’s a disservice. Color effects how I experience the world. Color effects how I’m perceived by the world. So your “color blindness” negates my identity. I look back on my history whenever I have attended a majority white church. Most times, me and my family were the entire black experience for a lot of folks. And we made it easy for “them” to get to know us because we go to “them”. Here’s what I mean: we grew up in mostly the white/dominant culture. It’s where we went to school, it’s where we went to church, it’s where we go to work. Minorities in the dominant culture have swum in those waters all of our lives, so it’s easy for us to be “safe” because we’re used to adapting to that culture.

I can always tell when friendships with me reach a new level of depth. Those friends come to me. They go where we go, do what we do, be it Black Expo, step shows, or Kwanzaa festivals. They take an interest in us and our culture, wanting to get to know us and understand us better. Without wanting to co-opt it. Without condescension of “wanting to relate” or “have a black experience.” Without the denigration of calling it “weird”. (I’m reminded of when a group of “friends” asked me to take them to a rough area of the city. They were thrill seeking and wanted a ghetto tour guide. I took them to Carmel, a suburb north of me. I told them that me driving through there at night was all the thrill I needed.)

So no, white church, you don’t know me. You haven’t taken the time to get to know me. You’ve invited me in with your “Negroes Wanted” signs and hoped that I wasn’t too different from you so that I wouldn’t make you uncomfortable. So that you wouldn’t have to come face-to-face with the everyday consequences of a history of humiliation suffered by a black male, the powerlessness–without even the power to keep our own names, being exploited, the dreams shattered, the justice denied, and of being dehumanized.

So the anger builds. I’ve absorbed the humiliations as part of the cost of the “privilege” of being with whites. And the hatred builds. The hatred of myself. The hate I’ve been taught, the hate I’ve learned, the hate I’ve internalized. We all have walls and race and culture is simply another wall we have to navigate. So I guess we’re wondering what can we do?

[continued tomorrow …]

Missional Expectations

The Dwelling Place has always defined itself as a missional faith community. Granted, we’ve been labeled an emergent church which I don’t care about because people love their categories and will use them to embrace and vilify you. Defending the emergent church or being missional is not part of my mission. In fact, arguing over the emergent church, its theology, etc. sounds like arguments that few but the inside care about (I get that arguments like these and things like the “ontological Christ” are important in some circles—and I know it’s hard to get our missiology correct if our theology is suspect—but in the final analysis, the bulk of my conversations are not with inside folks).

Generally, I’ve seen three models of what folks call emergent church. So most of the time we're trapped between the traditional crowd believing us to be "different" to the point of being suspect and emerging/emergent folks playing "more emergent than thou." Basically, the thing I’ve taken away most from the ongoing emergent conversation is the idea of rethinking what it means to be the church. As a faith community, is our chief responsibility to focus on how to teach and transmit faith? Are we to be a social service provider, a religious service provider, and follow a business model? Are we to build grand testaments to our empire and hope to attract people to our weekly production?

Basically I’ve been stung by two recent articles. The first by Alan Hirsch called Definining Missional. He recovers the roots of what it means to be missional this way:

Missional is not synonymous with emerging. The emerging church is primarily a renewal movement attempting to contextualize Christianity for a postmodern generation. Missional is also not the same as evangelistic or seeker-sensitive. These terms generally apply to the attractional model of church that has dominated our understanding for many years. Missional is not a new way to talk about church growth. Although God clearly desires the church to grow numerically, it is only one part of the larger missional agenda. Finally, missional is more than social justice. Engaging the poor and correcting inequalities is part of being God's agent in the world, but we should not confuse this with the whole.

A proper understanding of missional begins with recovering a missionary understanding of God. By his very nature God is a "sent one" who takes the initiative to redeem his creation. This doctrine, known as missio Dei—the sending of God—is causing many to redefine their understanding of the church. Because we are the "sent" people of God, the church is the instrument of God's mission in the world. As things stand, many people see it the other way around. They believe mission is an instrument of the church; a means by which the church is grown. Although we frequently say "the church has a mission," according to missional theology a more correct statement would be "the mission has a church."

On the flip side, I was equally chastened by Dan Kimball’s Missional Misgivings. Most on point was this criticism:

We all agree with the theory of being a community of God that defines and organizes itself around the purpose of being an agent of God's mission in the world. But the missional conversation often goes a step further by dismissing the "attractional" model of church as ineffective. Some say that creating better programs, preaching, and worship services so people "come to us" isn't going to cut it anymore. But here's my dilemma—I see no evidence to verify this claim.

… some from our staff recently visited a self-described missional church. It was 35 people. That alone is not a problem. But the church had been missional for ten years, and it hadn't grown, multiplied, or planted any other churches in a city of several million people. That was a problem.

Church ought to be put together in a way that makes sense. The missional model is more focused on deploying people, not attracting people. Drawing people out, finding their gifts, figuring out their callings, then sending them out to be a blessing in the world. In other words, we need to be about the doing.

The model of church that makes the most sense for me is family. Sundays are the family meeting, including the family dinner (Communion as our soul food). But we aren’t family just on Sundays, but have to be family during the week also. Families are hard and are re-defined with each addition. We don’t assimilate new members (to make them “one of us”) as much as add their gifts to our own. There is no privileged place and we learn and are taught in midst of life. We build communities of hope, full of hopeful possibility and people living from a place of hope.

And families grow. The goal of parents is to raise their children to be able to start their own families. It is anticipated, planned, and celebrated. You start your own family, you don’t take your brothers and sisters and begin a family.

Before I strain that analogy any further, I’d say missional churches operate from an organic paradigm , without a predetermined ministry method but rather letting their context determine their ministries. The environment should draw out people’s affinities and nurture people’s giftings. And the leadership should cultivate that environment. If you have the environment right, fruit happens naturally.

Believing in deep ecclesiology means that I’ve come to terms with the idea that there needs to be room for all kinds of church expressions, from the attractional model/mega-church to the niche church/coffee shop model. I know I've been quick to criticize mega-churches and touting how we're "not about numbers". At the same time, if we don’t grow, but rather remain static, we’re a collection of friends hanging out discussing spiritual issues, which isn’t bad, but not all we’re called to be.

I’m still waiting this wondrous conversation between the races promised by the emergent church, but I find that true across the board when it comes to the church. In the mean time, we’re to be communities of faith, hope, and love. We can have all the faith we want, but without love, it’s worthless. It’s sad that I have to remind myself that this includes loving my fellow Jesus people.


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Not Dancing to the Tune of the Pied Dobson

Up until a few months ago, I was still getting political forwards in my e-mail inbox. In light of a few posts, I quit getting them, however, my wife had no such luck and received the letter from 2012 from James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Ok, I’ll admit, James Dobson’s antics this political season have been getting on my nerves for a while (and this isn’t including the time he went after SpongeBob SquarePants). This fictional letter is written by a Christian from 2012 informing readers of the horrors that may happen if Barack Obama is elected president. I’m officially dubbing this letter Project Fail (and I’ll lump into it this project all of the tactics of fear-mongering and race baiting).


We get it in our heads that one political party speaks for Christendom. I have no problem with our spirituality informing our politics, but have huge problems with our politics informing our spirituality. When politics becomes our religion, with only two agenda points that all “right thinking Christians”/“True Believers” need to base their vote on: abortion and gay marriage. We position leaders to whom we look to for salvation. Their stump speeches become sermons. Their rallies serve as revival meetings.

It cuts both ways. There are black churches that condemn Republicans as evil (and black Republicans as sell outs) and white churches that proclaim that the Republican agenda God's agenda, and anyone against it amoral, irreligious, or anti-God. I’ve been to Republican and Democratic meetings and found them both attended by people who love this country and seek its best interests (and both opened their meetings in prayer, but this is Indiana).

As a church-cum-political action committee, we’ve been out to amass and wield power. This is the epitome of being of the world and conforming to its ways. I chalk up Project Fail as the last gasp of the Christian right as we've known it, though I fully expect 2012 to bring us a new brand of conservative. I've been doing some thinking about the idea of the Christian right and how they've framed a lot of the discussion about Christianity and politics, and I've come to a few conclusions:

1) Have you ever wondered that whenever folks talk about the Christian right, what "the church" should be doing, and Evangelicals in general, that maybe they should just say "white, conservative Evangelicals"? With the size of the black church in America, do you really think "all right thinking Christians" jumped on the Reagan/Bush/Gingrich bandwagon?

2) Religion informing politics is not a bad idea ... on paper. In practice is where things become muddled. Actually, they only become muddled when the idea becomes prescriptive rather than descriptive. Here's what I mean. I have spiritual beliefs that have defined my political views on things. I'm pro-life. I believe we need to be stewards of the environment. I believe we ought to be about "the least of these" (the poor, widows, children, etc). Now HOW we're to accomplish those things are up for debate. I can't just say "all right thinking Christians need to define pro-life 'this way' and we can only accomplish the end goal of our position with 'this method.'"

3) There's the rise of Christian left. I’m talking about the Brian McLarens, the Shane Clairbornes, the Jim Wallis' of the world. I don't think this is either good or bad (as jumping into bed with Democrats is no better a solution than jumping in bed with Republicans). What this does accomplish is re-frame the discussion so that there's not just "one Christian way" to do things. there can be other ideas and actions that can be just as much Christian.

In the fervor of the election season, I can’t help but be reminded of the Old Testament Israelites who clamored for a king. They had some good kings and some bad kings, often getting the leader they deserved. I don’t look to politics to solve many of our problems, no matter who is in office. The church is not a political action committee. The church has a mission, a missio dei, God’s mission. The church needs to be about manifesting God’s love in sacrificial service to the world. We’ll soon know who the new leader of our country is and whoever it is, I will remember two things: 1) to pray for him and 2) that God is sovereign.


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Church Eats Its Own Part II: No Room for Sinners Here

People fall.

I don’t even think of it as falling any more. We screw up, it’s what we do. The measure of our faithfulness isn’t in how many times we fall down (or how creatively, because believe me, some days it feels like I have an entire Research & Development wing devoted to finding new ways for me to screw up), but in our ability to get up, dust ourselves off, and keep going.

Yet too often, the Church eats its own. It’s like we make a sport of trampling over the fallen as if that’s part of their punishment and our holy duty to do so. We assume the authority to judge whether another is doing ministry the way God wants, living lifestyles in line with how “Christians should act” (because there’s only one mold apparently), and being spiritual the way we should (again, back to that one mold).

No wonder so many niche ministries have such a defensive posture when talking to their brethren. They recognize that it’s easier to think ill of our neighbor, that they don’t do ministry right, rather than credit them with not only wanting to do ministry, but appreciating their ability to do things you can’t and reach people you couldn’t. There’s lots of room to be the body of Christ, yet too many folks want everyone to be a toe. Listen to how different church people treat each other when they disagree. We can’t have a generous orthodoxy, where one party doesn’t have the sole key to how things are interpreted, but rather we not only slander but dehumanize our brothers and sisters.

Heaven help you if you actually sin. Again, love and forgiveness should be our calling cards, but we can be a murderously intolerant lot. I’d daresay there is a hatred in how we treat folks sometimes, especially those we’ve deemed fallen/sinners. The thing about fallen folks is that now their façade is gone. There’s no longer that need for pretense, you are what you are, it’s been revealed to all (and in truth, it now makes you … no different than the rest of us). Our treatment of “the fallen” should be where we shine most, being a hospital for the sick, demonstrating the grace, the redemption, the inclusion, and the power to transform and heal as a community comes along side them.

Basically people, I know I’m going to “fall” (we’ll just my regular lifestyle hiccups as mere stumbles). I know I’m going to let people down. I know that I will struggle. And when I do, I want a community to come alongside me, allow me to be broken, and then help restore me in love and grace. That’s what I’d like to see out of a spiritual community.


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Church Eats Its Own Part I: Devouring our Pastors

I’ve discussed the idea of how the church typically responds to fallen leaders. It's a tough thing to wrestle with. There are some behaviors which should "disqualify" you from leadership. On the other hand, you still have gifts and you are obligated to use them. Being close friends with pastors, and now having fallen into a church leadership role despite years carefully avoiding such a role, I can say that it’s amazing more pastors don’t “fall.” Or at least burn out at a rate similar to public school teachers.

They are set up to fall and we create the bullseye. For a start, protestations aside, there is a trap for them to be perfect. We tend to put them on a pedestal or in front of us rather than beside us or allowed a measure of grace. I understand that part of that is the role they play of speaking into our lives. Any time we grant someone the right to speak into our lives with authority, there is an assumed elevation to them. Ironically, as intuitively natural as that may feel, we don’t do that with our friends. My friends have earned the right to course correct me if they see me going astray, but it doesn’t mean that they have to pull some sort of rank in order to do it.

Speaking of friends, I’ve been stunned by how lonely the role of pastor can be. They don’t seem to be allowed to have close friends. It’s like they can’t effectively pastor people who know them too well. The corollary to that is that folks don’t really allow their pastors to be real around them. Even in my role as “facilitator”, I’ve had to distance myself in some of my relationships because some folks, usually the more “churched” people, have very restrictive ideas about how church leaders should be and act (the two big complaints leveled against me: 1) I’m too fun. Apparently there’s something inherently not to be trusted in someone who’s having too good a time within his religion. And 2) I’m not afraid to have a drink. Look, you deal with church people all day and see if you don’t want to toss a couple down).

So now we’ve created a situation of isolation among the leadership so they are operating on a high wire without a net. Then we chew them up when they fall. Let’s take a “lesser scandal”, for instance, say a pastor becomes addicted to painkillers after an accident. We are quick to shoot our wounded and turn our backs on our fallen brethren. As if any sin automatically disqualifies them from leadership and exercising their gifts. You would think that if the church’s greater mission is to be a part of a ministry of reconciliation, there would be more of an emphasis on being about forgiveness and restoration.

Don’t mind me. Just venting, I guess. Had to hear from too many “I’m not gossiping, I just had a few observations” folks today. And now need a drink.


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Church Should be Like a Cover Letter

I enjoy getting constructive criticism. The need for helpful feedback has been hammered home to me as a writer. Not complaints: you have to earn the right to complain and most folks only get to complain to me only if they also come with a solution or how THEY can make it better (with that as my policy, I get surprisingly few complaints).

I remember a couple of comments I received after our Mo*Con III service. It ran along the lines of “the service was often insightful, but it needed a good editor.” I get that, we were trying to cram a lot into that one service. However, it got me thinking about church services in general.

Every now and then, we’re prone to being over-produced or are guilty of trying too hard. With the ease of multi-media technology at our fingertips, it’s easy to inflict sensory overload on a group. This can lead to the exact opposite of what we want: creating an atmosphere of chaos, leaving participants unable to retain anything because so much was going on.

I like the wisdom and perspective Kelli Dunlap provided (NOTE: the words “wisdom”, “perspective”, and “Kelli” were all used in the same sentence). She suggested that when we get a lot of newcomers to the church, we ought to do a beginner’s service. A sort of intro to the philosophy of our church, one that explores the idea of what we try to be and why we do what we do. Then she compared church services to cover letters. They should include:

Title – the theme of the day
Word count – how well we met the guidelines
Valid/relevant publications – how we live out the mission/the core message

They should not be an academic resume that goes on and on. Just something to keep in mind. I know I will. What do you think?


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Kids Art Theology

There are a couple of things my friends have learned about me. One, I tend to pick up stuff that I run across (I don’t care that you might have thrown it away) and two, I’m a bit of a packrat. So I hoard and keep stuff (but stop short of uttering things like “my precious”).

Our children’s ministry kids have been focused on art as a part of creative space summer as well as during the main gathering of the Dwelling Place. I have been fascinated with some of the things they have latched onto during a service.
The Sunday after our Easter/Resurrection Sunday service, I had the kids sit out to see what they took from the service. There were a lot of pictures of Christ on a cross. My son, Reese, had a full crucifixion scene, complete with a weeping Mary and laughing "bad guys".
And Maggie, daughter of one of our elders, had quite the ornamental cross.
"This is why we make crosses: because he died on a cross" (though I was mildly disconcerted by Emmy, my niece's, inclusion of savior nipples)

And then she followed it with a picture of Mary (I found it interesting that so many of the kids gravitated to the Mary portion of the Resurrection story). "Jesus got reserected means to me that he went to heaven but is still with us"
During Mo*Con, Alethea Kontis got into the act.
Last Sunday, Maggie came up with quite the profound bit of theology: This is the world in God's hand. And her hand holds His.


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Emerging Frustrations

Over the past year or so, it seems like about half a dozen or so churches popping up in the Indianapolis area under the umbrella of being “emergent” (however you choose to define the term; Lord knows I’ve tried before). The Dwelling Place is often called an emergent church (and I have no problem being labeled such), although we tend to refer to ourselves as a missional church (why? Because like any other “denomination”, the term “emergent” comes with a lot of baggage/doesn’t seem to mean anything to most people; whereas the word “missional” people can intuitively grasp).

There has been some great posts on the different models of emerging churches, but I’m much more of a pragmatist than theologian/philosopher. For me, in practice, churches that call themselves emergent tend to fall into one of three camps:

1. Too hip by half. These are what I call the “trappings” brand of churches. It was part of my lament from attending the 2004 Emergent Convention. I saw a lot of people over-emphasizing cosmetic changes and doing creative/“edgy” things almost for their own sake. A more cynical person would accuse them of attempting to re-create their college praise experience or venting their youth leader traumas. At any rate, they seem to be the equivalent to traditional/contemporary worship schisms where the only difference in the service was the brand of music (hymns vs. choruses) played.

2. Traditional looking. When all is said and done, I don’t think The Dwelling Place looks overtly much different than the kind of church I grew up with. Occasionally, candles and media clips are used, but for the most part, none of the boogeyman aspects people have attached to the word “emergent” could be seen there. (One friend of mine said that "I don't know why you don't just call yourself American Orthodox and be done with it.")

3. The picnic set. Foregoing entire the idea of organized “church”, they’ve abandoned anything resembling a traditional model. You never know where you’ll find them (though a coffee shop is a pretty good guess. Emergent folks tend to love coffee and beer.)

So what makes them emergent? Maybe it can be described as an attitude, a matter of their posture. What I mean is that they are about conversation and questioning, meeting people where they are, and realizing that if we can’t be certain about anything, we can learn from anyone. This includes the consumeristic folks in need of the familiar, that is, they need the “look” of the kind of church they grew up in, even though they know they will be stretched out of that mindset (too often emergent folks have a chip on their shoulder against “churched” folk). In other words, there is room for all.

At the same time, they can’t neglect the business of church. Church isn’t always going to look the same. However, I do have a concern about the picnic types. I understand that spiritual times and conversations can be had with a gathering of friends watching an episode of Lost or getting together at a coffee house. The Holy Spirit is present (as the verse goes, where two or more are gathered), so I don’t want to sell Her short.

It’s just that in our hyper-individualistic reaction to the idea of church (and the need to be constantly entertained), we can’t forget the business of church. Spiritual formation. Discipleship. Communion. Being Transformational.

We are to become new creatures, a people of God. Corporate worship should neither be a pep rally nor a lecture hall, but a place for interacting with God, the Word, and the Table (Communion). It should shape who we are. Our individual inner journeys should lead to a heart change and from that heart change, we should be lead to an outward journey of loving other people – done in community.

Jesus already told us the church is a mess and that He’ll sort it out in the end. In the mean time, welcome the stranger and join with others. Continue God’s mission (because He’s already at work) of redeeming the world (the missional aspect of what we should be about). Whether we eat or go to parties, our lives are a mission, an incarnational ministry. And only through continual incarnation is the work of the church done.

I believe in God. I believe in the church.

Still, I always have to question any organization that will have me as a member.


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Growing Through Disillusionment*

The other night a group of us were out together: Maurice Broaddus Rob Rolfingsmeyer, Rich Vincent, and Lauren David. We hate to shatter any illusions, but during the course of our discussion we came to the startling conclusion that we can be asses (except for Lauren). It’s not like any of us set out to be the Dr. House of the theological set, it’s more of a resignation to the facts. We’re not going out of our way to be an ass, we simply know we can be asses. And yet the question comes up “do we have any business attempting to model what the church should be about, much less the love of Christ?”

We have a certain idea of what a saint is and are too quick to label people saints without considering what we mean by the term. After all, even the best of people are but flawed vessels, yet flawed vessels are the only kind of person God works through. To quote Miroslav Volf, “I am not a Christian because of the church, but because of the gospel. However, it was only through the broken church that I received the gospel. Because of the gospel, I participate in the church.” Think of some of the greats. Mother Theresa of Calcutta was known for her temper and how mean she could be. Francis of Assisi hated lepers despite talking about how much we should love everyone. Yet God manages to continue His work through us.

It’s easy to fall into cynicism. A cynic is a frustrated idealist, with the emptiness they so often experience being a symptom of their inability to let go of their idealism. Most people are idealists at first but there must come a time in everyone’s lives when your ideals and your dreams must be measured against reality; where “what could be” and “what ought to be” is measured against “what is.” The false facades begin to crumble and those things which had been so solid and so true are not able to withstand the crush of practicality. What do we do when this happens? How do we handle our disappointment with the truth of life itself? It’s what we do with these questions that end up fundamentally shaping our mature selves. Do we hide in a corner and deny those things that seem to be crushing defeats? Do we toss up our hands in frustrated resignation and give up on whatever it is that we’d dreamed of for so long?

Such profound disillusion is often wrestled with the transition from childhood to adulthood (and thus probably a contributing factor to the condition of being a spiritual teenager). Starting with your parents and moving onto the institutions you want to hold dear (school, the government, etc.), it becomes a struggle to survive nothing, and no one, being as you thought they were.

There is an option that allows for growth and maturity in our lives. From its very foundation it is frightening and tends to take a lot of work (some of which may call for sacrifices which you’d never imagined). Fusing your ideals with the reality you have to work with. Hunting down those parts of your ideals that are able to be sacrificed without losing the whole and learning to integrate new ideas and new thoughts which previously seemed foreign and even counter to what you held so dear. Sometimes it calls for a delicate shifting of boundaries without sacrificing the core of your beliefs. Sometimes even the core must be discarded.

It’s not so easy to make the changes in our lives necessary to balance reality with ideals. It’s an uncertain time fraught with error and simply speaking, those mistakes must be made. If there is to be any room for growth you need to be unashamed of your own fallibility. Your mistakes are what mold and shape you if you learn from them. The lessons rarely come easy and at times can be quite frustrating.

We have faults and we make mistakes, so we’re going to need your grace as we journey together. We keep in mind the words of a friend of ours: “Instead of talking about what horrible people we are, why don't you go out and try to be the people you wish we were? If we do such a horrific job at loving people, why don't you go show us how it's done? If we are incapable of meeting hard to like people where they are at, why don't you go meet them where they are at?”

*A Maurice and Rob tag-team blog effort. With Lauren as the cheerleader.


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Horror Convention in Church?

I dream of being picketed.

Sometimes I think we confuse church with a building. The church I attend, The Dwelling Place, is hosting a gathering called “Continuing Conversations” (aka, Mo*Con II) on July 28-29th. It’s a daylong event where I have invited some horror writing friends of mine (Gary Braunbeck, Lucy Snyder, Brian Keene, Wrath James White) to come and speak. We’re going to talk about how our respective faiths impact our writing, the pursuit of being better writers, and even the impact of race when it comes to writing. Religion, art, and race - nothing too controversial.

Yes, it is a “convention” of horror writers. No, not all of us are Christian or even believe in God. That’s the point – all are welcome. So I thought I’d clarify a few points.

The chief complaint is “you can’t do that in a church.” Really? As a friend of mine said, “you may want to consider taking the toilets out cause that means folks are crapping in church, too.” What is church? The building we meet in is the old Marion County Health Department building. It is a building. There is nothing “sacred” about it until a sacred space is carved out … by the people. The church is people, not a building.

Church is a communal expression of faith, to pursue spiritual formation to be the kind of people God wants us to be. To be a safe place to ask and wrestle with spiritual questions. Whose mandate should include building a sense of community, loving each other, and serving the world, all in the name of Christ. Why can’t we carve out a sacred space with horror writers? If Sunday morning we talk about doubting God and discuss that reality, is the church not the best place to do it?

This is how we are working out being a missional community: us inviting people in and those people actually coming (and made to feel welcome). We get to see “their” world and they get to see “ours”. So feel free to protest.


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Making Your Pastor’s Job Easier

“Give a bonus to leaders who do a good job, especially the ones who work hard at preaching and teaching.” I Timothy 5:17 (The Message)

I’ve often railed about our consumer mentality as church-goers, the “me, me, me” spirit of people coming to a gathering to have their needs met. To be spiritually entertained. There are times when you simply need the gathering to prop you up, to realign your spirit back into the rhythm of God. However, there are times when the gathering needs you. So how can participation in the gathering be your act of service?

-Prepare yourself for worship before you get there. Pray in the car on the way to church. Listen to whatever music pumps you up. Enjoy the silence in order to meditate on the things of God. I realize this is often easier said than done: I have two children.

-Regular attendance. Nothing deflates a speaker faster than speaking to empty chairs. Not that they write sermons directed at folks, but pastors talk to their people through the week. They know the concerns of their flock, what they are going through, what might speak to them. Only to see them not there come Sunday morning.

-Participate in the service. Pray. Pay attention. Communion. Being a member of the “bride of Christ” means participating in the worship (the purpose of the gathering). Reading the Scriptures, hearing them preached, reciting the creeds and confessions, and remembering our baptism with one another.

How might this spirit impact a community? To realize that you aren’t there for a service, but to serve. Not there to leech from others—even if it’s just a matter of being a pew potato/there to be “fed”—but rather to contribute.

You aren’t going to feel moved every week. The sermon might not be clicking, the music might have left you flat, the mood of the congregation (or more likely you) might seem off. You might check out of the gathering, go have a smoke, go hang out, find a quiet spot just to be. That’s fine. However, sometimes, you ought to consider staying in it, if only to encourage the pastor. Lord knows he’s heard enough of your complaints.


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Belong Before You Believe

The church should be countercultural, a school of life, a pocket of resistance against the status quo, a foretaste (and first fruit) of things to come. It isn’t always.

The question becomes, should we join a church? (The short answer is “yes” and I’ll now refer you to “Why go to a church service?”). The issue that fascinates me is the one of how and why we go about becoming “members” of a church, because there are some real consequences to this decision.

Some people just aren’t joiners, or at least want no part of the rigamarole of joining. Whenever I’ve joined a church in the past, there were forms and doctrine statements that I had to sign to attest to their beliefs. I have NEVER been to a church were my beliefs lined up perfectly with theirs (mostly I skim them to see whether or not I can still drink). More than once I’ve told them that I can’t sign their membership papers because they would be making me lie to them (usually, they say that it’s just an acknowledgment that we know what the church believes. I still couldn’t shake the feeling like I was being Mirandized). Some churches have made me go through classes, as if you could actually flunk out (Lord knows, to my wife’s dismay, I’ve tried). Most times, joining a church has been more like an arranged marriage: can we live with each other.

I think any regular attender is a member. By the power of their presence, they have placed themselves under that church’s “authority,” as it were, to speak into their lives. One of the church’s role is to facilitate people into the formation of Christ’s image and I understand that trying to get some manner of commitment out of them would ease that process. And I get the frustration that some leaders have when their members have a lackadaisical attitude toward regular attendance.

But you know what? I would seriously consider not joining a church. Seriously. If one of the church's roles is to make disciples, we do that (practically speaking) by being a part of people's lives and butting into them. In fact, in this regard, I don't see the church operating much differently than, say, AA (or insert whatever you want for what it is the church is trying to get you up those 12 steps to solve). Frankly, I might even go one step further and say don't be a part of any close circle of friends. Only this past week I was asked whether or not a friend's situation had deteriorated to the point of needing an intervention. An intervention certainly sounds like a group of us taking it upon ourselves to butt in where we aren't particularly wanted.

I would enter into joining a faith community with my eyes wide open to the fact that being a part of a church body means you are inviting them into your life every bit as much as they are inviting you into theirs. That's the nature of relationships and the reality of community. The deeper the relationship, the more likely butting in and holding each other into account there will be. So if I wanted to do whatever I wanted, with people being allowed to speak into my life when I want them to and only in the areas I want them, I wouldn't join any faith community - especially a smaller one where people are more likely to know me.

If you are going to speak into my life, you have to have a relationship with me. More than an “I recognize your face/I know your name” relationship. We have to have lived life together. Shared times. Then you’ve earned the right to speak into my life. People need to belong before they believe, even if they never believe. The church should be a hospice, a safe haven where people can work out their questions. Allowing doubts, allowing people of differing beliefs, doesn’t change what you believe. Accepting and welcoming people where they are and as they are doesn’t change what we believe the Bible has to say about what’s right or wrong. We can’t just be about wagging fingers at one another.


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Church is Not a Building

I think the sentiment that church really doesn't happen on Sunday is total crap (to put it bluntly). It goes against centuries of tradition - both Jewish and Christian. The pinnacle of Israel's and the Church's formation took place in public liturgical worship. The services really meant something to them. Sure, this can be abused, but so can the idea that Sunday church doesn't matter, and only picnics in the park do. For too long, evangelical Christians have been too critical of those who faithfully attend Sunday worship as if they are second-rate Christians, as if they don't know true community, as if they are not really committed, etc. Sadly, we reap what we sow: We can't talk this for long without undermining Sunday worship. I know, for some, I sound like a museum-piece... and that's ok. I don't mind. I know that it is very cool and hip right now to criticize the church, be cynical about its future, disparage its workers, and pretend that organization is the devil's greatest work. (Interestingly, the same folk who decry "organized" religion would demand that their hospital, library, and school be organized.) But I can vouch as a pastor who prayerfully puts in long hours in order to make sure my flock is spiritually fed each week, that a low attendance impacts my spirit. I preach better when my flock is with me. I preach worse when I feel alone. For more of my rantings on the necessity and centrality of corporate worship, check out my most recent sermon “All Together Now”. Please accept these ravings in the spirit in which they are given - with much love and concern. The pursuit of true spiritual transformation cannot happen apart from self-denying commitment to the good of others, and one way to maintain this stance is to meet together regularly for worship, instruction, and service. No matter how innovative the church becomes, it will never improve on the discipline and rhythm of regular liturgical formation.

(And now a link to Rich’s sermon, All Together Now, his look at Psalm 150 as if offers a concentrated vision the where, why, how, and who of corporate worship.)

Many of us have gone through what Dan Kimboll called Reality Church, the stages of our involvement with the thing we call church. Our reactions to “how we do church” has folks all over the place, calling for more “high” church to the practical eradication of any sort of weekly gathering. I know many folks have wrestled with the disillusionment of seeing some “mega-churches” sprawl out of control, focusing on the building and its maintenance—caught up in empire building—while forgetting about the community, the neighborhood. Church isn’t a place. We’ve come to think of church as that building we go to on Sundays, that performance we go witness, that thing we do.

As I am thinking about the idea of church membership, the koininia, the fellowship, that comes from belonging to a people, I can’t help but recall something I heard about pods of whales. Humpback whales come together, as a pod, with their individual songs. Once they are together, they learn a new song, changing their individual songs, and then go their way to teach their songs to others. Church is a relationship, the developing a community of faith, a sacred space we carve out in our world and lives.

With the common goal of being committed to following Jesus we gather together. The grace of God is a school in Christ and everyone is welcome in the school … but the school is meant to progress you. The school is to “graduate” disciples. The church should be countercultural, a school of life, a pocket of resistance against the status quo, a foretaste (and first fruit) of things to come. It isn’t always.

“It is important to think about the Church not as "over there" but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer." --Henry Nouwen


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We Need More than a Prayer Meeting

Local ministers and community leaders will hold a news conference today to discuss crime in Indianapolis. Rev. Charles Harrison, pastor of Barnes United Methodist Church, was a victim of a robbery over the weekend. While at church Sunday evening, he was robbed by three young men. The group will discuss that and other crime issues at 1 p.m. at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. and 30th streets.

What was it that Chris Rock said you should do if you found yourself lost on MLK Jr Street at night? Run! This is more sad than funny as we are coming off one of the most murderous years in our city's history.

We keep waiting for folks, politicians, churches, and community leaders to do more than talk. There comes a point where talk is cheap. When you’ve done all you can do to draw attention to a problem and have to come up or join in with a solution. Maybe we–the people, the community–need to do more to stem the tide of violence where we can. Bear our share of the burden. Warehousing criminals, again, sounds good but isn’t a real solution. That’s society saying that we’ve given up so when you go bad, we’ll just lock you up. Yep, statistically crime will drop. Yep, we will “feel” safer knowing that we’ve thrown away the key. However, this country already has too long a sad history of putting people in chains and we can’t afford any more of those long-term scars on our collective soul.

Too many of us live in an utter state of self-delusion. We think danger is black, brown and poor, and if we can just move far enough away from "those people" in the cities we'll be safe. If we can just find an "all-American" town, life will be better, because "things like this just don't happen here." What has gone wrong and is not TV, rap music, video games or a lack of prayer in school. What went wrong is that we, as a society, decided to ignore dysfunction and violence when it only affected other communities, and thereby blinded themselves to the inevitable creeping of chaos which never remains isolated too long.

Churches are a good correct place to start in the war on crime. The church is supposed to be a reproducing community of authentic disciples who are being equipped as missionaries to be sent out by God. We listen to the questions asked by our community and dialogue over those questions. We don’t force questions that we think our community “should” be asking and provide those answers. That’s not real helpful.

As Christians, we have our identity in Christ. We find our mission in Christ. Missional people might not spend as much time at church because their whole lives are missions. And that mission is connected to social action, the key word being “action”. Not just “press conferences”. But you know what? I know in my heart that these leaders won’t be stopping at this press conference. I’d be willing to bet that this press conference is the beginning of a conversation. A laying out of a vision that will then be taken off camera as people assemble to put “feet” to the vision and do the work.

At least that’s my hope.


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Open Letter to Mega-Churches

You know, I really do love the Church. Like with anything else, it has its problems and I’m not one to shy away from criticizing. Thus my blogs on empire building, reconsidering mega-churches, and the problems of the prosperity gospel.

There comes a point where pastors or churches shift from doing Kingdom work into legacy mode. Where a church decides to spend $12, $22, or $27M dollars on a building project, to create essentially a bigger altar to itself. At what point do you shake yourself and ask what are you doing and who are you doing it for?

The church has adopted the ways of the world and is completely oblivious to it. Copying the attitudes and methods that worked so well for them individually in life and the corporate world.This follows from a mindset that has turned church-goers into consumers of the show: We've become part of the cult of personality, shopping for the speakers who can best tickle our ears, complainers about the music, the lights, the sound, the production - forgetting about what it means to worship. Church became about our needs. We want to be surrounded by a lot of voices, we want programs to keep us in our Christian cocoons, we want to be able to brag about what we can do. In other words,

The church has adopted the ways of the world and isn't aware of it. Though there is often a spirit of generosity, the mindset of such churches extols the virtue of size, power, and influence. They become guilty of pride. The church also values a kind of "collective individualism" as the individual churches want to make names for themselves, want to be able to do what they want, when they want, how they want ... on their terms. They are well-educated, live in nice houses, make nice livings, and are well-respected. They have become about protecting their comfort and thus compromising your first love.

Too often, large or small, churches become about maintenance: their buildings and programs, rallying their flocks behind the latest cause or protest, keeping their numbers up and in the process depersonalizing relationships. Growing by stealing members from other churches and putting butts in pews in order to cultivate pew potatoes is not really growing the Kingdom. Yet as long as butts are accounted for (and giving), they assume that your needs are being met.

Churches, how much of what you do is more about ego and leaving your imprint, your mark, in church history and compromising the Gospel message in the process? Don't be reduced to being about buildings, budgets, and butts.

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Empire Building

The recent trend in the way that churches have for growing the kingdom has me disturbed. I guess it’s because part of me has the feeling that churches have lost track of their mission to be growing the kingdom of God and have become more concerned with extending their own personal empires.

One church I know believes in producing satellite churches. Replicating itself by having videotape services of its worship/preaching time fed to its various branches. In my mind, it’s not different than watching a televangelist or any talking head. Plus I can’t see how that could be pastoring in any conventional sense, though I’m sure that there is an on-site pastor, just not the guy who is doing the teaching. Granted, part of what rubs me the wrong way is the way that this church caters to the white flight phenomenon that’s been going on in the city. Like many churches, it talks about wanting to be a multi-racial church, but has done little to implement this vision other than to stick a “Negroes welcome” sign out front. (Conveniently, all of the satellite churches have sprung up in areas where their members have fled to).

Nor is this limited to white mega-churches. Another local church plants branches all over town, from the inner city to the suburbs (because black folks like the suburbs, too. Either we’ll give you a reason to keep running or at some point folks may recognize that they may all be fleeing from the same thing: the lower class). This pastor used to drive around preaching at each location, arriving at each church just in time to preach then taking off after his ending message point. I’m going to assume that now that they are up to a half a dozen or so locations, this has proven impractical and they have worked out a new system.

The telling sign is that all of the satellites and branches retain the same name, popping up all over town like a McDonald’s franchise. The church essentially maintains brand loyalty. To give the leaders the benefit of the doubt, I bet that they started off with good intentions. They may see the way that they do things as a way of keeping integrity to what they want to do. Their sudden growth was unexpected, and they are in catch up mode, not knowing what to do with the massive numbers of people who attend their services. We’re talking about sincere, good men here, not money grubbing hucksters.

However, at some point, they lost sight of their mission and began serving their institution.

Because of the way many churches are set up, this might be out of the head pastor’s control. The elders, and I don’t want to spin it as them consolidating their power or exerting their control, might not have a vision for how to grow the church. So they fall back on what they know: the business model. The question becomes “how did we get here?”

Part of this is a function of the pastor and the cult of personality that develops around him. Many of these mega-churches have become all about the pastor, his personality, his interpretation of Scripture. What these men have in common are dynamic personalities and a winning speaking ability. In many ways, the head pastor has become the Protestant version of a (mini-) pope. But live by the cult of personality, die by the cult of personality: when that pastor gets sick, moves on, retires, or dies, the churches flounder. Many of their members drift off to the next charismatic preacher or bigger program. Because they came together not to form a community but to be entertained or serviced.

We feed into this in other ways, too. I think one of our problems is we expect the pastor to be this super-Christian. As if they have every gift and can do everything. (this might explain why we also have a habit of putting them on pedestals). Pastors or pastor-teachers are to shepherd and teach; that means they dedicate more of their time to study and preparation. The best leaders recognize their people's gifts and let them run with them appropriately. Somehow this has translated into us feeling more comfortable paying someone to do the "real" work of the church. Almost like "we have staff to look out for folks" so that we don't have to. Money is our contribution, our buy-off, as opposed to having to get off our butts and loving people. We put pastors on a pedestal then act surprised when they topple off.

Corporate policy and philosophy dominate our culture and the church has bought into it. Some people see the main job of the pastor as that of businessman. They see church as a business. The pastor is the CEO. The elders are the board of directors. Tithes become income, or worse, profit. The Gospel becomes the product they’re trying to push. You don’t think we try to advertise our product in the best light? I think the rise of the health and wealth Gospel proves otherwise. They’re marketing religion to the masses. Their congregations are consumers that the church ends up selling bits of its soul to keep happy. It ends up producing consumer-Christians content to drive to whoever pleases them and their needs the most. The church ends up feeding our narcissistic mentality, leading to our constant search for the better speaker– the ones who tickles our ears–with morality as entertainment. And the churches end up competing to for the “found” and forgetting about the “lost”.

It doesn’t stop there. We break down these consumers like they are a part of a targeted market campaign. We divide our community by advertising niches such as age (children’s ministry in two year increments, youth groups) or by life situation (college/career, singles, young marrieds, marrieds, single agains). Hmm, you say that we have trouble building community.

So it’s no surprise when I see various mega-churches turning around and engaging in corporate take overs. These churches take over struggling smaller churches, becoming its own association. I can see why the home church movement has started to build momentum. It’s a reaction to the churches who feel the need to drop $40 million on a new campus because they believe in maximizing their property or that as a bigger church they can do more. Certainly there has to be better uses of money in their own community, much less around the world. Maybe that’s just me.

When all is said and done, I’m not against these churches. There is room for all models of churches. Larger churches can indeed do things and have resources that smaller churches don’t. That doesn’t make them better: smaller churches can do things that larger churches can’t, also. There is plenty of kingdom work to be done, the more laborers the better. But the church has to be about the kingdom work, not lose sight of it in their rush to build their own personal empire.



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