The Problem with Singles Ministry

Formerly titled, "Single People are Pathetic." Yes, I know. I am adorable. Due to popular demand (2 e-mails), I have reworked, clarified, and re-posted the essay. I do think these are important points for those with ears to hear. And yes, "single people" are still pathetic (just read the comments on the original post), but that's incidental to my real point.

I don't think a specialized "singles" ministry ought to exist. I have been in the company of many concerned Christians who disagree, but this is my reasoning:

I think church people make a bigger deal out of having separate "single" or "attached" catagories for humans more than non-church people do. It seems to me that the people who get excited about "singles ministry" reveal in their language an assumption that being "single" is somehow a lesser personhood.

Whenever I've been present for singles ministry meetings, things have gotten around to "recognition of singles" by "the church." The apparently problem? The generation before mine wants some ethereal entity called "the church" to bless their way of living. As if not being married were unusual are bad, and they need to be told it's not bad. In my context, I never concern myself with whether "the church" or "lots of people" think that not being married at age 14, 22, 30, or never, is weird. That's a bit of a misdirected search for validation I think. The important questions are, "What think the people who love me?" "What kind of man or woman, and in what manner of life, am I called to live?

I am not married, and I won't be soon. I am attempting to cultivate a holy celibacy, belonging to God and to my community, a local grouping of the Body of Christ. I do not need some prancing prelate priestling pontificating from a pulpit to inform me that this is an acceptable way of life. I would be insulted by the attempt. My friends and I do quite well discerning my vocation. Christianity, Inc. and associates can keep their opinions to themselves.

I have a problem with the language of "singleness," "singularity," or whatever one wants to say.

I am not single, or alone. Lots of people, including Christians, would say that I'm single, and not in a relationship. How sad it would be if that were true! What's with this "in a relationship" language? No wonder so many unmarried people feel worthless and unloved: they speak in a language that gives explicit value only to those relationships that are in some way sexual (or at least romantic) and offers implicit devaluation to those that are not. "No, I'm not in a relationship." Of any kind? With anyone?

If that's the way I saw it, I would certainly feel pathetic. But I am in lots of relationships, with lots of people. They love me, and I love them, and that's important. We learn to love well. We are committed to one other through our baptism and unity in the truth, empowered to love and remain by the Holy Spirit. Sexual relations would obviously not improve those friendships (for many, many reasons), but that's what's implied by the language of "in a relationship" and "just friends." Non-sexual relationships are second-best. Everyone knows that, apparently.

Christians are picking up the world's false views on healthy intimacy and happiness, and once again failing to teach a redemptive and healthy sexuality as a consequence. I think these false views of what it means to be with others and to be alone foundational to the idea of a "singles ministry," and why I don't share the enthusiasm of some of my colleagues.

While I am not in a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone, I am not "single" in any way that is meaningful to me, and I am certainly not "alone." For that reason, I could not in good conscience do "singles" ministry. I've not met any peers at this point in my life who see the need for such a thing, because for most of us it would unnecessarily separate us from our friends in the life of the Church.

At its worst, I think it becomes a lonely persons ministry or a matchmaker gathering, meant to offer "another chance" at dating or assuage the woundedness of those who experience continual relational disintegration. It can't ultimately heal those conditions because the premise is faulty: that unmarried (celibate) people are a different class of human, and need to be treated as such. In attempting to overcome the felt alienation of singles, these ministries increase it by buying into the assumptions of the cultural and ecclesial assumptions they hope to challenge.

As a side note, it is also disingenuous to say "singles ministry," when what is meant is "divorce recovery."

And that's what I think about that.

Technorati Tags: singles ministry, ministry, celibacy

a few less impurities to burn away

Not much to write about at the moment. I've been doing thinking, and resting. Which means less talking. Perhaps the creative output will pick up again soon.

I'm "free church" again. "Again?" you ask. I'll tell a story about that soon.

Last week I got to rejoin the mothership (ahem) to worship and spend time together. I had only joked about it before, but surely enough we talked about Purgatory for quite some time.

Basic question: is the process of formation into the likeness of Christ, that process we're going about now, and that God is doing in us, a process that will continue in some sense after we die? Will there be an instantaneous completion of sanctification, or a process. JP put it well: "... like some kind of cosmic group therapy." Alan introduces a good article by an Asbury prof here if you want to read on the idea.

My take?

Purgatory makes sense to me. "Love's redeeming work" surely won't be finished like the final touches on an assembly line, but rather with the loving hands of a master artisan.

And frankly, I think I deserve the extra attention.

Pentecost: On Anger with God and Receiving the Holy Spirit

Pentecost

As I’ve been writing so much these past few months on spiritual development and living as God’s New Community, it’s been helpful to reflect on my own formative experiences. It’s Pentecost, so I will share a snapshot of my journey with the Holy Spirit.

Within the first two years of my apprenticeship to Jesus, I came to realize that if he really was Lord of all, any problems I might have with the world and my place in it were problems I had with him. I’ve been quite the angry young man, so this made things… awkward.

It seemed to me that there were two distinct sides to my religious life; on the one, I was learning to be with Jesus through corporate worship, prayer and the study of scripture. On the other, I found myself feeling deep resentment toward God, as he seemed to shirk many of the expectations I might reasonably place on a god. I didn’t see it being done at the time, but over a period of many months, the Holy Spirit integrated those parts of my personality. I learned to be hurt and bitter in the context of my prayer, study and worship. That meant being very honest in my prayers, choosing to rage against God while singing praises and reading Scripture.

I learned to be angry with Jesus while learning to love him. I learned that Jesus remains, long after my rage is exhausted. I learned it in the only way it can be learned: not by affirming the proposition, Sure, God can handle my anger,” but by remaining with Jesus while expressing anger and hurt to him, and watching him as he did remain.

However, I was possessed of a dark cynicism that ran deeper than mere anger. In the months before I left for Oxford in January 2002, I became more aware of deep-seated belief that, God indeed is not very good, and that God does not really love us - does not really love me - in any helpful way. I became aware of these thoughts as they began to surface in worship: whenever someone in the assembly spoke praises of God’s goodness and provision, “…my heart curses,” I wrote. “It curses because it knows better.” I began to realize just how much bitterness I held against God, but didn’t know of a thing I could do about it.

So I didn’t do anything. I didn’t suppress it. I didn’t deny it. I didn’t revel in it. I just let it be there. Nor (it must be said) did I dedicate myself to elaborate or rigorous spiritual exercises. I prayed and read scripture every few days, and joined in corporate worship. All of this was done with an attitude that could be summarized thus: “Stay away, Jesus, or I’ll kick you.” I avoided “emotional” engagement in worship and devotional practice, because I needed the control. I remained with Jesus – with him in concrete, practicable ways. No nonsense about “complete surrender,” or any kind of wishful thinking about the degree to which I was able to muster warm feelings about Jesus. I was just with him.

One evening, during Lent, I was worshipping in the assembly and had the strangest feeling. We sang a psalm of God’s goodness and faithfulness, but my normal commentary wasn’t running: my heart did not curse.

I had wanted to flee encounters with Jesus, and kept him at arm’s length for so very long, because I was afraid of him. I did not trust him.

And this was not a problem. Keeping Jesus at arm’s length is not the same as shutting him out of the room.

I learned that he’s quite pleased to love us from a distance, because that is how many of us will come to know and trust his love and care. He does not force his way in. He does not violate.

I learned that “letting God in” couldn’t remain some pious cliché, but needs to be specific in practice. So take courage if you are angry, and bitter against God. Take courage especially, if you are afraid to admit it. It’s alright to keep him at arms length; just consider ways that you might hang out in the same room from time to time.

Diognetus: Dropping Our Idols

Here's an excerpt from the schola reflection I prepared for last month, on Mathetes' Epistle to Diognetus, a second century defense of the faith written by a Gentile believer for a Roman audience.

The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus begins by debunking the worship of both the pagans and unconverted Jews. The former worship that which are not gods, and the latter offer a worship that is unneeded and silly. Wishing to cooperate with my new nineteen hundred year old friend “Mathetes,” I started considering what my own idols might be. Nope, don’t worship money. I don’t build figures to adore as higher beings. I looked back at his introduction:

The first thing, then, is to clear away all the prejudices that clutter your mind and to divest yourself of any habit of through that is leading you into error. You must begin by being, as it were, a new man, ready, as you yourself put it, to give ear to a new story. You must take a look not only with your eyes, but with your mind, at what you call and consider gods, and ask: What substance or form can they really have?

One of my favorite idols is The Right Way. There is a Right Way, of course, to do everything. There’s a Right Way to be together and foster spiritual growth. There’s a Right Way to pray, and study the Scriptures. Is that Right Way mine? Do I deify myself and my proclivities? Not blatantly. See, I don’t often think that I have found The Right Way, but I’m always looking for it. I have lived as if the formation of Christ in me, and the formation of Christ in us together, was somehow contingent upon me getting things right.

I honor the works of my own hands when I expect my own actions and the effectiveness of my spiritual strategies to do the work of forming me into Christlikeness. I muster the right effort, follow the right steps to guarantee growth, and nurture particular feelings and behaviors, hoping that the right information, and the right incantation will somehow do the work of transformation. These presumptions, that I am the guide of my own path in Christ, that I must figure out the right things to do, that God for whatever reason will not teach me these things, is very silly and sad. In making those presumptions, I would make a god of my own understanding, and fashion on idol out of my own accumulated knowledge. The Lord should accept my counsel, for I may yet figure out how to form Christians.

How can I honor the God who cannot be controlled? I can create an empty space sufficient for him to do his redeeming work, a space in which I can listen and hear: “give ear to a new story.” The Father is well versed in our brokenness and he knows how to heal it. What he would do is not necessarily what we should chose for ourselves, but that can surely be trusted, right? I will not accept any more savvy inventions, or hear any more promises of a quick fix. I will be quiet and do the right things for a long time. I will read, listen, work, pray and eat with my friends. I will learn the new story of God’s redemption of the world through Christ, and learn to speak it in everything I do.

Discussion? If you're interested in further reflections on the document (mine or someone else's), you can find the rest for download here.

Meet Me on This Road

In the beginning, YHWH made heaven and earth

The Man and the Woman lived with promise,
clothed in their trust of his heart

And then they Fell

-

In the beginning, YHWH created Israel

Israel lived by his promise,
as he had brought Jacob to freedom through the Red Sea

And then they turned

and YHWH called
and they turned

and YHWH called
and they turned

and YHWH smote
and after that, our exile

YHWH promised a new beginning

he promised them a new heart, beating with covenant faithfulness

And soon their return

-

In the hours before the dawn of chastened Israel's vindication

the promise comes to bear

the Son of Man confronts the rod of YHWH's arrogant instrument

but

the righteous and anointed one is slain

-

They had promised their lives to him. They trusted YHWH's promise to redeem them. "How long will you hide your face from us, O YHWH?" they must have asked. "We are a disobedient people, and our god has finally forsaken us.

Their hope has died.

They walked along the road, arguing. Perhaps they argued about it, this shattered hope. Was he a false prophet? Had they disappointed YHWH? Had he finally proved as faithless as they had?

Or perhaps they argued about where to stop for the night.

They didn't know what the others did. They had not seen. They had not touched and felt. They offered their story and their broken hearts to a stranger on the road. They offered him bread and drink.

"He was our hope," they explained.

The stranger told them God's story anew. He told them of Moses and the Prophets, and of the Suffering Servant: the Son of Man who must suffer for Israel and be vindicated by God before his enthronement as his viceroy.

The Risen Lord told them the story anew, and their suffering was transformed. In the breaking of bread he bore the sorrows of their long and dark Holy Saturday into the joy and illumination of Eastertide.

Many of us have missed the promise of Easter, and suffer under the long shadow of our crucified hopes. We share our stories of pain with one another and with the stranger. We tell of the God who failed to show up. We offer him this bread.

We learn silence here that we might hear the new tale, the bigger story that weaves every tattered thread of our lives into the tapestry of YHWH's redemptive work.

We eat the bread, offering our brokenness for his healing.

We recognize him in this word and this sacrament, and he disappears from our sight.

And our cold hearts begin to burn

Facing Opposition: An Open Letter to Emergent Christians

To my faithful “emergent” brothers and sisters

As you may have realized, some denominational leaders are noticing us. Baptist Press recently offered an article arguing that our lives in Christ present a “threat to the Gospel.” We stand accused of accommodating the post-modern culture, abandoning trust in the unique saving work of Jesus, and selling out confessional Christianity. In my context of mission and ministry, these charges are simply untrue. Yet they are frustrating not merely because they are false, but because are born of stereotypes and poor generalizations about “what those emergent Christians believe.”

Why are these leaders so angry? Why are they so afraid? I can’t answer those questions, because those accusations are not made in the context of relationship. Without the mutual openness and respect that would come with a real friendship in the Gospel, any critiques that “emergent” and “traditional” Christians might offer one another are reduced to sound bites.

How then can we respond to our friends and the Powers That Be in American religious life who question our motives and our faithfulness?

I wholeheartedly believe that most of us in these emergent generations are making the choices we are in faithfulness to God’s call to be his new community in Jesus Christ: agents of change and redemption in his world. When our critics do not recognize our faithfulness, the answer is found in living openly. If it is really Jesus to whom we are responding, we needn’t be afraid to talk about that without defensiveness: we must “answer… with gentleness and respect … so that those who speak maliciously against [our] good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander” (1 Peter 3:15-16).

Many of us have critiques regarding the way “traditional” or “modern” Christians choose to live together. Many of them are valid and needful. But they will not be heard if we cannot be friends, and if we cannot be seen to assume the faithful intent of those with whom we disagree. If we are to be ideological adversaries, we must at least be adversaries in good faith. If we impugn the motives of our conversation partners, we will end the conversation, and relegate it to the realm of unhelpful, inflammatory, and fearful accusations: faithfulness is predicated, again, on who can most effectively use religious media to pain their enemies as “threats to the Gospel.”

To begin (or continue) fruitful conversation in religious life, we must remain friends. We must share our “redemption stories,” witnesses of how Jesus is transforming lives for the better in each of our ministry contexts. Let’s learn together what values and hopes we share in common with “traditional” church practitioners. If we let Jesus transform our lives, there will be quite a bit of deconstruction (post-modern or otherwise) along the way, as well as a great deal of construction. Truth, after all, is nothing to fear.

I offer a word of caution, however. This desire to maintain relationship with the traditional church and its structures can become idolatrous when the goal becomes approval, and not mutual learning and discernment. For many of us, our desire for the approval of “those reputed to be pillars” (whether seminary or convention presidents, popular writers, megachurch leaders, professors or pastors), can stand in the way of responding to God’s call. I don’t blame anyone for desiring the approval of those religious leaders who possess prestige and accolades from the masses, but that desire is dangerous.

Maintaining loving relationships with people does not require approving all of their values and practices, nor endlessly defending one’s own. Loving relationships are not so defensive, or so insecure. Sometimes we must agree to disagree. We must offer one another the freedom in Christ to do that.

God called Abram to leave his country, his people, and his father’s household for a land Abram had yet to see. He called him to leave behind his symbols of security, and trust God to reveal his faithfulness.

Sometimes we must disappoint important people whose intentions for us are not God’s intentions; we must often leave behind the approval of charismatic leaders and denominational entities. If you can remain in respectful, caring relationships with those religious persons, do. But if they continue to speak abusively and seek to keep you on the defensive regarding your life in Christ, it is better to walk away.

Regardless, keep praying together. Keep studying the scriptures. Keep delving deeply into the Church’s history. Keep doing life together. Keep being the Church.

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church, Emergent Church, Al Mohler, Kentucky Baptists, church

I made a t-shirt

I made a t-shirt today...

Freestyle prayer?

*sniff*

How... Protestant.

I was in a funny mood...

And in other news, habemus papam!

Read Andrew Greeley’s piece for an optimistic appraisal, courtesy of Kendall Harmon.

Authority Issues

+ Irenaeus of Lyons

I wrote previously that

...trust is the willingness to feel badly [because of our relationships with one another], and deciding that in the light of the healing and love we’re receiving from Christ and his Church, we will stay with one another, and be obedient to him anyway.

If we will risk this, if we will accept the potential pain that comes with these relationships into which he calls us, then we can obey.

When discussing Clement's "come to Jesus talk" with the Corinthians, I wondered when one is justified in throwing off authority? Clearly, it depends on the nature of that authority.

I probably don't need to describe the destructive context of obedience, which is possibly what many of you are thinking of right now: signing over one's personhood to some powerful or charismatic figure who will take a very paternalistic role because one is just not clever or good enough to make one's own decisions. Often the decisions made by the authority figure will be for his own benefit, or the perceived benefit of "the community" at the utter expense of the individual.

Obviously, that's not godly authority, nor holy obedience.

The proper context of obedience occurs in communities in which the members are dedicated to one another for "the long haul." If God really is transforming us in that context of commitment, we can trust one another to care for us. Authority is not found in the dictates of a central figure, but in the counsels of the community at large.

We are responsible to one another, to listen.

We are responsible for one another, in healing, truth-telling, and sharing burdens.

Life in God's New Community draws us out to share our brokenness and confusion, as well as the joys and disappointment of everyday life. That intimacy is a gift we give God by handing it to one another. The recipient of the trust has an obligation to speak truth honestly.

Here's where it gets really difficult: that whole "agents of redemption and change" stuff.

The intimacy comes around to redemption, not mere catharsis. We do this because we believe that the Holy Spirit gives wisdom to the community for its healing. That wisdom will come through the counsel of friends in the community. That means that we have an obligation to listen our friends. Not to agree, and certainly not to obey slavishly, but to create a non-defensive place in ourselves in which we can really listen.

There is pain in that.

We're used to feeling pain because authority so often negates personhood instead of offering God's healing. But in trusting, loving relationships, it means something else. It's the pain that comes with realizing that we as individuals cannot be the final arbiter of God's will. It's the pain that comes when we cannot live according to our momentary whims - for we are dedicated to something bigger than ourselves. It's the pain that comes with learning we don't have the freedom - or damning responsibility - to orchestrate our own redemption.

There is another freedom in that. It's the freedom of listening to a Jesus who isn't mediated to us only by our own understanding. It's the freedom that comes with not needing to be right all the time in order to be "successful." It's the freedom and rest that comes with knowing that this community shares one's burdens. One does not succeed or fail alone.

What do you think? What is healthy authority? What is healthy, holy obedience?

Technorati Tags: religious authority, church, discipleship

What is the Emerging Church?

Your religious leaders are worried. Your parents and church members are suspicious. You might be part of it, and not even realize it.

Just what is this “emerging church” thing that folks are talking about? Should churches get on board in the hopes that this will be another great evangelistic tool, a way to be “relevant” to the kids? Should they denounce it as yet another culturally accommodated fad, a hip and postmodern Christianity that waters down the Gospel?

They shouldn’t do either.

The “Emerging Church” is not a movement, or an organization. It’s simply a phrase, a more or less useful shorthand for discussing what God seems to be doing in the midst of his people. Among the Christians who identify themselves as emerging, one would find a variety of descriptions of just what God is up to, and many of them contradictory. Hence, it’s not a cohesive “movement” by any means. I can’t speak for other “emerging” Christians, only myself and the communities with which I am involved. It’s only in that context that I can offer a definition. Emergence is a process that’s occurring now: ancient Christian orthodoxy and the practice of transformation in God’s new community have been buried in our Western religious culture, and they are surfacing again through an act of God’s love and power. There is nothing new here.

Our faithful response to God’s initiative is a work of deconstruction and positive construction. It is deconstructive, because it demands that we confront our assumptions about Jesus and ourselves. Nothing we have learned needs to be thrown away, but rather judged in light of the Gospel. For example, many Christians have remembered that the Bible is not a guidebook on how to live a moral life or grow successful churches. Nor is it a roadmap from our world to God’s heaven: one may not use it as if were the user’s manual for an iPod. While the Bible does contain key propositional truths, it first relates a story: God created the world and its people for his own enjoyment. The creation fell. In Israel, God called together a people for himself, through which he would save the entire world. This plan has culminated in Christ and his Church. Through us, God is bringing his redemption to bear upon the world.

This basic story has been lost to the prevalent religious culture, which has little concept of how to practice it. The stories we tell ourselves now, of church growth, of the things mistaken for evangelism, of what “relevance” means, and about which side Jesus takes in the culture wars – all of these must be stripped away so that we can re-learn discipleship to Jesus. This rediscovery of orthodoxy is the constructive work the Holy Spirit is doing in us: we are again choosing to be intentional about sharing a new life as the Body of Christ, “the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Eph 1:23). Understanding that we will be known as his disciples by the way we love one another (John 13:34-35), we’ve stopped asking questions about what it means to be an efficient, successful church or how to attract people to our religious activities. Instead, we are learning to share friendship and love one another well. We are sitting prayerfully with the scriptures and re-learning our history, asking Jesus to show us how to be faithful, and releasing our former “churchy” goals as the idols they are.

We aren’t seeking, necessarily, to be “relevant to the culture,” nor are we searching for a better “worship experience.” We are letting go of the search for the big fix, the next spiritual fad that will somehow make Christianity “work for us” or make it easier. We are called to dedicate ourselves to one another, and to learn discipline: to do the same right things for the long haul. In doing this, we will be agents of redemption and change in one another’s lives, as well as the life of the world. We will love recklessly and inefficiently. Being together as a people that does that, who are blessed to be a blessing, is the great work for God that we are called to do.

(This article originally appeared in the Wednesday, April 14 2005 edition of the Georgetonian.)

Technorati Tags: emerging church, emergent church, postmodern church

Community: A Matter of Trust

I wrote last week on "risking love," and argued that a community ought not seek to ensure that its members never hurt one another. That is neurotic and severely limits our maturation. Instead, a community's members must strive to practice love and forgiveness, and learn how to heal and reconcile when hurt comes. We cannot choose not to be hurt by one another; we can only choose whether to keep walking together and share God's redemption or not.

Being faithful means that we choose to keep being together, as long as we can listen, and as long as we are willing to learn obedience to the word of God that our brothers and sisters bring to us. We do this because it is how God wills our salvation. We aren't risking on particular community members, but staking our lives on the trustworthiness of God's own plan.

This takes trust: trust that we are loved by God, and trust that we will continue to be loved by his New Community. Some people will tell you that trust means believing that a person will never hurt you, and that God will never allow you to feel pain. I reject that. Trust cannot be a savvy assessment of the odds, and taking our chances that we probably won’t be hurt.

In trust, we choose to be realistic, understanding that if we love, we will certainly feel badly at some point. Trust is the willingness to feel badly, and deciding that in the light of the healing and love we’re receiving from Christ and his Church, we will stay with one another, and be obedient to him anyway.

Choosing God's way of transformation and healing requires choosing the pain that comes with it. Otherwise, we will find ourselves changing our minds and backing out on Jesus every time things get too hard.

Trust isn’t about calculating the odds of someone else’s faithfulness, but about choosing to let myself be hurt. If I wait for a completely risk-free environment before trusting, I will never know what it is to freely give and receive the love of God.

Technorati Tags: church, discipleship

"They knew that innovation was another word for heresy."

I bought a florescent green polo shirt yesterday. I like to be noticed from a distance.

I spent some time researching more on the "Son of Man" tradition for Asher's Historical Jesus seminar yesterday. Studying the Bible is actually hard work, at least like this. Apparently the Son of Man figure as Jesus seemed to speak of him(self?) is an interesting conflation of several Old Testament traditions: the Davidic king, Isaiah's suffering servant, Daniel's "one like a son of man," and so on. A good bit of the tradition Jesus seems to be working from is found not in any canonical scriptures, but is produced in the book of 1 Enoch. And the funny thing is, there are 2 groups that count it as part of their scriptures: the Ethopian Church, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Now that's an odd pedigree.

I got out my crayolas to tell the tale of the other Kyle's secret origin. If I'm inclined, I might post the story come summer. I've been rolling around in my head a piece for Pentecost on the gifts of the Spirit. Yes, I am a charismatic Christian. Don't tell anybody. But first, two more essays on Community. I think that's fitting for Eastertide.

We're still doing the Apostolic Fathers at Schola today, so I thought I'd offer this bit I found somewhere. Enjoy, now.

"The Reformation is an argument not just about the Bible but about the early Christian fathers, whom the Protestants wanted to claim. This is one of those things that is so obvious nobody has paid much attention to it - then you look and you see it everywhere.
. . .

Calvin and Melanchthon both believed it was a very strong argument against a given theological position if you couldn't find authorization for it in the Fathers.
. . .

"The Protestants did this because they were keen to have ancestors. They knew that innovation was another word for heresy. 'Ours is the ancient tradition,' they said. 'The innovations were introduced in the Middle Ages!' They issued anthologies of the Fathers to show the Fathers had taught what the Reformers were teaching.

- David Steinmetz, Duke Divinity School, in Christian History and Biography, August 2003

This Week at School

It's been a pretty sweet week. The Georgetown College Pastor's Conference was held Monday through Wednesday, so most of my waking hours were spent on campus between reunion planning, the conference, and work (which I swear I really do!).

Dr. Ellis came from Regent's to interview undergrads for the Oxford program, and he gave a brilliant and deeply poignant lecture on my boy, G.A. Studdert-Kennedy. He showed great subtlety and style with the historic and contemporary parallels while focusing on the man's poetry.

We believe the call of God has come to Britain to spare neither blood nor treasure in the struggle to shatter a great anti-Christian attempt to destroy the fabric of Christian civilisation... We rejouice that many of the young men of our churches have dedicated themselves, with the consent of their parents, to the service of their country, and have been amongst the foremost to offer themslves for the defence and liberation of Europe.

- From the Minutes of the Baptist Union Council of Great Britain, September 1914.

I cannot say too strongly that I believe every able-bodied man ought to volunteer for service anywhere. There ought to be no shirking of that duty.

- Kennedy in his parish magazine, 1914.

Yeah, it's pretty creepy. But unlike many others, he did get out into the trenches and see the suffering caused by such attitudes.

I was invited to Shakertown last weekend with some profs and Oxford program participants to tour about and have an outstanding dinner. It was indeed mo' fun. Spent the time talking about local religious history ("I've never heard of these 'Campbellites' of which you speak...") and the nature of "practical" or "pastoral" theology. You know, how God forms Christ in people and how he forms us in communities. The usual.

Threw frisbee a few times this week, and got to sit at table with friends a few times.

So pretty outside. And I'm definately inside. Gonna type out my reflections on the Epistle to Diognetus. Whoopie!

Why it Hurts

This whole matter of being together, this living as God's New Community: it's not hard and painful because we're doing it wrong. It hurts because it's really real. Doing this Life requires willingness to speak and to listen, to Jesus and to one another. This willingness is required for the long term. I think most Christians go through their entire lives without choosing this.

It's helpful to know that my friends and I aren't the only ones fighting this out. Real Live Preacher writes on "Personal Space" in The Christian Century:

Real Christianity involves getting together with a handful of pilgrims and becoming intimate. It means braving the possibility of communion. It means letting people into your personal space. And, by the way, these are exactly the sort of people who may hear something desperate and child-like in your voice and be experienced enough at listening to know exactly what it means.

And a reminder from +Alan, once again, that if we're going to be formed together into the image of Christ, we're going to have to sit down and be about it for a long time:

How long, how long, O Lord, does it take for us to become comfortable with each other? How long!? Here's a question for you? How long are you willing to put into it?
...
When will I be fully transformed in the image of Christ? When will I stop hating my brother? When will I ever be patient in traffic on the way home!? When? Well, here's the deal on all of it. It takes a while. Those whiles depend on so many factors that if I tried to pretend I knew, I'd be legitimately full of shit. I do know this - a long time. It takes a long time for us to go from being one kind of creature to being another. So, it takes a long time for a community of faith to become what it should be. Relationships are a lifetime proposition. They are always developing and evolving, as are we - it's all very dynamic.

Technorati Tags: church, discipleship

Community: Risking Love

Community is still hard. It is healing, redemptive, rewarding and exciting, but it is still hard. Understand that I don’t mean the “Okay everybody, let’s have community” thing that can be a new religious commodity or marketing ploy (See “Love,” in A is for Abductive by Leonard Sweet, et al). Real community is what you get when people dedicate themselves to loving one another. It’s often messy, uncertain and fearful, but it’s a process that can be trusted. When we do this, we are willing to hurt and be hurt, willing to argue, and willing to hit bumps along the way.

While God desires the complete restoration of each individual human life, the Master doesn’t do this work primarily on an individual basis. He restores us as a corporate entity, the Body of Christ. If we’re going to be Christians, if we’re going to be healed and whole, we must share our lives with one another. We have been called, and are being equipped, to carry the light of Christ into the dark and fearful places in our friends’ lives. This vocation requires dedicating ourselves to friendship for the long haul, and fully receiving all that comes with it: joy, compassion, and transformation, but also the certainty that we will be hurt.

If we are close enough to one another to offer love and healing words, we are close enough to hurt one another. This happens in any number of ways: through misunderstanding, unmet expectations, failure of communication, and any number of things. When we do get hurt, feeling rejected or maligned, we may even rebel against the love of God and our friends, resorting to bitterness, gossip, backbiting, and again the list goes on (Look at Paul's epistles if you want longer lists).

However, the community’s goal cannot be to set up barriers to make sure we do not hurt one another: that kind of fearful response will only grieve the Spirit and hinder love’s redeeming work. We must instead choose not to live in fear, and accept the certainty that this will happen, and decide how we will continue to be together when it does. When slighted, will we speak up and take responsibility for the way we feel? Will we deal directly with conflicts and be honest about our shortcomings and fears? Can we, in the midst of feeling rejected and uncared for, choose not to reject in turn? Can we affirm love for the other even in the face of one’s own perceived disaffirmation? Can we listen to one another, and be willing to absorb the pain of conflict?

In forgiving one another the sins we commit against each other and the community at large, we absorb the brokenness of our sinful humanity in the name of Christ. This is not an easy or glamorous task. It rarely feels warm and fuzzy. But it is a necessary part of redemption, for reconciliation is God’s fervent desire for his people.

- from Superpowers: On the Holy Spirit in the Community

Bonhoeffer warns us against loving “community.” The real work is found in loving the people in the community. If one loves community and not the people who are in it, as soon as one person’s weakness or sin interferes with the ideal, that person will be hated. We must sacrifice the ideal of community on the altar of our love for our friends.

Technorati Tags: forgiveness, church, discipleship

"Heaven is important but it's not the end of the world"

So much of the Bible is appropriately metaphorical and we need to know what it actually refers to. But much more important than that is to get into our heads what the New Testament really is banging on about, which is resurrection, which is not a synonym for going to heaven when you die, but is what is going to happen after that.

I've often said, heaven is important but it's not the end of the world. What the New Testament is on about is what I call "life after life after death." That is, resurrection life after whatever state we go into after death. The New Testament teaches a two-stage post-mortem eschatology. And it goes on and on about resurrection and says very little about the intermediate state, which we can call heaven if we like. It's very interesting that so much Western Christianity has focused on the intermediate state so much that it's forgotten that there is an ultimate resurrection. It thinks that heaven is all there is.

- N.T. Wright, in Christianity Today, June 7, 2004

Here's another that examines the question, "Do Western Christians really believe in the Resurrection?" It's readable and informative, so do check it out if you're interested in the matter.

If death is the dissolution of this body, never to be reassembled, then death has succeeded in saying present creation is bad and is going to be abandoned. But resurrection says, No. Present creation is good. It is corruptible and transient, not least because of sin, but God, having dealt with sin in the cross of Jesus Christ, will deal with corruption. And the result therefore must be the reaffirmation of the good creation, including the reaffirmation of human bodies.

- Wright, in Christianity Today, April 14, 2003.

Discussion?