It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these, so let’s start off with something fun. We’ll be practicing with Reggie soon, or never, actually.
1. Everything you wanted to know about megachurches in one big infographic. Clearly starting one has its rewards. Sadly I’m clearly too young…
2. Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects on his attempts to switch away from flying whenever possible after a train trip through the Northeast.
3. Chuck Queen talks about how he reads the Bible.
Adam and Eve from, 4th century Rome.I’ve long believed that our two biggest failings as a church are that we don’t spend nearly enough time in the world being the servants that Christ tells us we are called to be, and that we don’t have anything more than a surface level understanding of the theology of our faith. These two problems are too often treated as separate, or even opposed to each other, when they are actually inextricably linked. Christian theology is fundamentally a theology of service. We see this throughout the biblical narrative, but specifically in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We see it in Matthew 20:28 where Jesus says he came to serve and not to be served. We also see it in Jesus’ summary of the law where he says the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus spent time talking with the religious scholars of his day, debating theology with them for hours. He spent much more of his time working with people to meet their needs. It’s instructive to me that Jesus doesn’t spend all his time in the temple. He spends it walking around the country.
I bring this up because of this debate about whether the Adam & Eve story has to be literally true for Christianity to have any validity. To sum the debate up as simply as possible, Ross Douthat argues that atheists need religious fundamentalists because they both thrive on absolute black and white thinking, and neither side can stand people who try and introduce gray areas. Jerry Coyne then argues that Douthat has no idea what he’s talking about, and that anybody who thinks they can introduce grey into the black and white areas of theology is stupid, pathetic, and worse than fundamentalists. Oh, and he says the Bible is outdated and childish. Mark Shea responds to Coyne by arguing that there has to be gray, and that theology is about a deeper meaning than just literalism. Finally, Andrew Sullivan gives his thoughts here and here, which track closely with mine, and are more eloquent, so I’ll just ask you read his posts.
I don’t feel the need or interest to add more to this debate. I do however want to highlight what I think are two problems with Western Christianity that help cause this debate. I’m going to do this in two posts because I’m too long-winded to do it as one, so below is installment number one.
The miracle of the Catch of 153 fish by Duccio, 14th century.The first problem is one I stated above—we have a lack of theological depth in our churches and, therefore, in the people who attend those churches. The fault for this lies at the feet of those of us charged with leading the church. Too often we have looked at theology as either a subject we love but have no time for once we leave seminary, or as that pain in the ass class we just want to pass so we can get out of seminary and never have to think about again. I was amazed at the number of future pastors in seminary who viewed theology as antithetical to their future ministries.
The problem is that theology, being the study of God, undergirds everything we do as a church. You literally can’t escape doing theology, even if you don’t believe in God. Everything we do as a church and as individuals shows what we believe about God. I know pastors who claim that they don’t want to do theology, they just want to show people how to live like Christ wants us to live. They are completely oblivious to the fact that they just explained their theology in that sentence—Christ-like service as the purpose of our lives.
This lack of theological depth is the reason that so many of our churches fall in to one of three mistaken tracks. Either a) the “God wants you to be a millionaire” prosperity/quasi Retribution Theology gospel that is partially informed by the Pentateuch and not at all informed by the prophets or Jesus; b) The “You can go to heaven as long as you do x,y,z” gospel (or it’s twin, the more common “they’re going to hell because they do a,b,c” gospel) that also tends to ignore Jesus and the prophets while focusing on some laws cherry-picked from Leviticus; or c) the “Just come to church on Sunday morning and then keep your beliefs private” gospel that is very respectful and proper, but also ignores a good part of Jesus’ message and leads to a dying church that is out of touch with creation.
As the church we too often forget that so much of what Jesus did was teach theology to his disciples and anyone who would listen. What was the sermon on the mount if not a theology lesson? What were all the parables? It wasn’t the religious leaders who understood the teachings either, they were the ones least willing to listen. That should be reason enough for us as leaders to encourage everyone to claim their theology and work with us in figuring out who God is calling us to be in the world.
Donald Miller meditates on life and the guaranteed ending of each our lives, and says, “you don’t start processing death until you turn thirty.” I think there is probably something about turning thirty that changes how you approach the world. I remember my brother telling me that it was shortly after he turned thirty that he realized his body was starting to fall apart, making all sorts of new creaking and cracking noises. I’m getting to that point with my body, but I’ve been there for awhile with processing my own mortality.
I can remember the first time it hit me. It was as a result of walking one of my seniors through processing her emotions over the suicide of her best friend’s dad, who also was a close family friend. It grew more real about a year after I left my job at that church and Kate and I moved to San Anselmo. One night in the middle of class I found out that a former students and his mom had been killed in a double murder suicide. Life showed how fragile it is that night, and I’ve never been able to look at it the same since. It has been my work as a hospital chaplain that has brought me to a comfort level with my own mortality that I don’t think I ever realized was possible unless you were terminally ill. There is something about standing with a mother at 2:30 in the morning as she stares at her just deceased middle-aged son that makes you look at life differently. The same is true for sitting in a waiting room listening to three generations share their favorite stories about the family’s matriarch.
There really is something beautiful in death. Not death itself, or dead bodies, but in the process, in the community, in the finality and hope. I know that sounds weird and morbid, but it’s true. (For my readers who understand what I’m saying, please post a comment so people see I’m not totally crazy.) To be sure, there is a lot that is ugly and scary about death, and sometimes you have to look deep to find the beauty. I promise you it is there. It may be in the long forgotten stories that have been newly remembered, or repaired relationships, or the relief of suffering. It has many forms, but it is always there. By the grace of God it is always there.
By Randy Levine from New York, NY via Wikimedia Commons
Following up on this post, I’ve been thinking about why I still love the game of football so much. Conveniently this article over at Bill Simmon’s Grantland site gets at much of what I love about the sport. As Ta-Nehisi Coates explains, the article is really about the beautiful strategic battles that comprise a football game. This is why football gets me. I love how football is the intersection of strategy and aggression. Maybe with some work I could draw a metaphor for my wannabe pacifism out of this, or maybe it’s just an inherent contradiction within me. I don’t know. Maybe what I love about football is really that it appeals to both my base violent desires and my higher intellectual side. Phrasing it that way makes it sound a little less mature than I would like to admit, but I think it’s true. Maybe I should just be happy I get as excited about a well designed defensive scheme as I do a huge hit on a quarterback. At least I’m more than just my base desires…
Photo courtesy Salem-News.com
This has been an odd fall so far for me. Not because summer here in the bay area decided to finally show up in October, or because my favorite two teams are a combined 3-11, but because I haven’t been able to get into football—college or pro. I know that sounds like a lame complaint to many of you, and it is. For me as a kid though, Saturday mornings weren’t about cartoons. They were about waking up early to watch football. It didn’t matter if it was a boring Big 10 game (Indiana-Minnesota anyone?), or an even less inspiring offering from some obscure conference in the South. It was football and I loved it.
(I was also that kid who woke up really early Sunday mornings—before church—to watch Formula 1 races. I even cried the day Ayrton Senna died after a mid-race crash. And yes, I realize that a) I may have been the only kid who did this, and b) that most of you have no idea who Ayrton Senna was, or maybe even what Formula 1 is. At least you now know I cry for somewhat odd reasons. I hope that makes this worth your time.)
In college my roommates and I had two TVs in our living room so we could watch multiple games at a time—or just silence our other roommate’s whining about wanting to watch Argentinian junior soccer on Fox Soccer channel. Needless to say, we watched way too much football for our own good.
Those were the golden years that I can never go back to now. Peter Pan has grown up and can never regain the innocence that he once had. I think that is the biggest problem now—I can’t ignore the business side of the game anymore. This spring and summer the NFL lockout helped cultivate my ambivalence. I just can’t bring myself to care about a bunch of rich people arguing over how to divide all their money. I understood what they were fighting about, and why it was meaningful to them. It just wasn’t meaningful to me. There was an interview on NPR with Green Bay running back Ryan Grant, where he explained (in almost the same words) that the average fan didn’t understand that he only made about $500,000 last season, and he and his family had a lifestyle that took money to keep up. I was thankful for his honesty, but I couldn’t help thinking that there are millions of Americans right now who would like to say the same thing since they lost their jobs, then their homes, then maybe even their hope for ever having a better life. They don’t have an agent negotiating their multi-million dollar contract as you’re reading this.
Photo courtesy theatlantic.com
In the end I can get over the NFL lockout because everyone is an adult and well compensated for what they do. The NCAA, on the other hand, keeps finding new ways to make me want to care less and less. Actually that’s not true. They keep repeating the same scandals over and over. How many times can boosters get busted paying athletes, or athletes get suspended for selling their memorabilia, or universities get caught playing athletes that haven’t gone to class in 8 months? How many times will the players be the only ones who get meaningfully punished? The NCAA keeps showing the world that all they care about is making more and more money off the backs of the “student-athletes” who somehow are rarely ever held to the academic standards of regular students, or paid like athletes. Honestly, I have the same view of the NCAA as I do of Wall Street CEOs. The system is corrupt to the core and won’t be fixed unless the courts step in to do it. If you don’t share my view, read this article from The Atlantic magazine and I think you will (at least about the NCAA). If you care at all about college sports you should read the article. If you don’t like college sports and want some reasons to trot out at your next party, there are a bunch in there. If you’re just feeling too happy and hopeful, then this article will leave you feeling angry and depressed.
In the end, I should just stop caring about college sports all together. I’m not their yet. I still love watching my teams, and last Saturday my wife and I went to the Washington-Stanford game in Palo Alto with some friends and it was a great time. I’m not ready to lose that yet. A few more instances like this, though, and I might get there yet.
Courtesy Wikipedia
I started seminary in Chicago in August 2005 with lots of ideas of what I thought seminary would be. I was excited and ready to save the world. I graduated in May 2010 in San Anselmo, knowing that seminary was far from what I had hoped or expected. I was even more sure the world needed saving, and even more convinced of my call to help. My journey is unique in many details, but overall, I’ve come to realize that most seminarians go through a similar journey that leaves them jaded and frustrated with church institutions. I am thankful of my time in seminary, and I do feel better prepared to be a church leader. I still believe seminary is fundamental to the training and preparation of future clergy. I also know its myriad problems that cripple its ability to consistently produce healthy and capable leaders.
I really have no idea how much time I have spent in conversation with friends, or just in thought, about how to fix seminary. I don’t even how much good my ideas are. I do know that as I read this post there were a bunch of thoughts swirling in my head, and still are, that I am now trying to separate and write down. You’ll be seeing the stuff worth general consumption coming online soon in some form.
What I want to do now is encourage you to read the entire post I linked above and consider how your church supports its leaders, and how it supports aspiring leaders. How much do you know about what it takes to become a leader in your church? What would you consider to be the most important characteristics of a pastor? How can the church prepare its leaders, both ordained and non-ordained?
This subject obviously hits close to home for me. It should for you too, regardless of whether you lead a church or not. The future of the church depends on many things (formation of children in faith, authentic worship, building relationships with God, serving the world in God’s name, among many others), and all of them go back in part to the guidance of pastors and ministers. Without leaders who have knowledge of the Bible, theology and church traditions, have developed spiritual and prayer lives, understand leadership, and have a passion for God’s children, churches don’t have the needed vision, tools, or guidance to be what God is calling them to be. Obviously pastors are not all that matters. The best pastors won’t get anywhere without a congregation willing to work and serve God. Lay leadership, no matter how much money a church has, is fundamental to having a vibrant church (which brings up the related subject of how we train leaders who don’t want to be ordained).
We’re all in this together, and we need to invest our time and resources in the places they are most needed. The training of pastors is one of these places, so again, please read this post and let me know your thoughts.
1. Ezra Klein sums up my feelings about our current situation in this country better than I can. The question I still don’t know the answer to is how we get the trust back.
2. So besides regaining trust, maybe we need to add some balance to our lives in this country? Talk about a depressing infographic…
3. Tony Jones has some thoughts on Rob Bell and the widening mainline-evangelical divide in this country. His thoughts track with my experiences. I found out about Rob Bell from a friend who grew up in evangelical churches, not from any of my mainline friends and sources. I know I’m skeptical of the TV show idea in general, but if anyone can pull it off I think it’s Bell. I wish him the best with it.
