Nobody actually reads this blog, but if they did, they might wonder what "enculturated" means.
What qb means by enculturation is nicely (if a bit blandly) phrased by WordNet: "the adoption of the behavior patterns of the surrounding culture." It's a sociology word often used synonymously with "socialization," as in children learning to play nicely by learning the norms of their surroundings, but qb is using the term in the more loaded sense, as an epithet.
Not as in, "becoming all things to all people, so that by all means I might win some," as Paul put it; but as in, "making every effort to be as indistinguishable from commercial American culture as possible so that my Christianity does not threaten or offend...and in fact proves to be profitable."
* * *
This morning's reading in Kenneson's _Selling Out the Church_ got me to thinkin' about what happened a couple of years ago when our Bible class, of which I was chairpersyn at the time, decided to put together a brochure for internal use only. It was two-color and stripped down with lots of text, which violates every principle of modern marketing. We had no intention of using it to market King's Couples (that was our class' name) to people who were not already in the room; we just wanted to use it to explain what convictions underlie our teaching and our class activities.
To demonstrate good faith, I floated our brochure by the staff member overseeing Adult Education. He thought it was OK, so we went with it - again, for internal use only, after the fact, for folks who visited our class and might have questions about what they had seen and heard. But it wasn't long until I fielded another call from him. Turns out the Powers That Be (PTB) up the food chain a little bit wanted all of the Bible classes now to put together their own brochures according to a graphically similar template so that the PTB could put them all in a rack out in the foyer. Our class leadership wasn't interested in that - let me use the technical term for my reaction: peristaltogenesis - but the PTB were persistent. We held our noses and went along.
That sequence of events came to mind this morning, uninvited, and something clicked. What is the true (as opposed to the stated) motivation for positioning a church in the religious marketplace and adopting what Kenneson and Street call the "marketing orientation" for the way we conceive of the church?
I think it's this: we want lives to be changed (a good thing), but we want our church to get the credit for it so that other people - people hunting for "authentic Christianity," or something - will think that what we've got going is the real thing. (After all, if it weren't the real thing, lives wouldn't be being changed, now, would they?) And they'll come and join us. Cynics might add: and they'll bring their children and their debit cards with them.
In other words, we make it about the church: what we can do for people, if only they'd come and place membership with us. And then we can say - as our Senior "Pastor" and our elders have recently said, multiple times - look, we don't have time for your little snits, we just had 50 baptisms last week, so we must be doing something right.
It reminds me of a scaled-up, corporate expression of what Paul was decrying in the church at Corinth.
For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, "I am of Paul," and "I of Apollos," and "I of Cephas," and "I of Christ." Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius so that no one would say you were baptized in my name. Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. (1:11-17, NASB; emphasis added)
When Christ returns to take us home, I kinda doubt that Harvey Porter and Bobby Hise are going to have a sign printed that says, "Montgomery Avenue Church of Christ was where qb was baptized back in '76; ain't we the cat's meow!"
Yeah, I secretly loved it when people voted with their feet and came to King's Couples. But it ain't that big a deal, and I don't get any feathers in my cap for it. In fact, I'm more than a little embarrassed by it. (If folks came to our class for any human reason, it was for SW's great teaching, nothing I'd done.)
My main concern is that you come to know Jesus. Throw in with Him, then find a group of people who love Him and walk through life with them as witnesses of what He's done for you.
And you folks who think you have to differentiate yourselves in the religious marketplace in order to grow your numbers: would you ever consider rethinking that whole deal? Kenneson and Street would be a pretty good place to start.
qb
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Kenneson on Joy II
If joy requires a willingness to be open to something beyond one’s self, then it should come as no surprise that people deeply rooted in the dominant cultural ethos have a difficult time experiencing joy. We are encouraged from an early age to seek our own pleasure above all else. Such relentless pursuit of personal pleasure is what the dominant culture means by “the pursuit of happiness.” Each of us is urged, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to pursue our own individually-defined happiness; in almost every case, we are called to pursue that which promises to give pleasure to each of us as individuals. The dominant culture also has enormous power to form our desires and affections. If one doubts this, simply consider the following questions: Where did we learn to desire what we desire? Where did we learn what we should want out of life? Or what we should wear or eat? Or what we should look like? Or what car to drive or house to buy? Or what we should do with our time? Although most of our desires have complex sources, we would be naive to doubt the significant impact that the dominant culture wields in shaping - and in many cases fabricating - those desires. (Kenneson, _Life on the Vine_, p. 65)
* * *
Kenneson has touched on something that has caused qb a great deal of discomfort - some might call it “cognitive dissonance:” a screaming disconnect and obvious incoherence between two competing strains of thought in his brain - especially in the last 3-4 years. (That that time frame coincides roughly with the war in Iraq is no coincidence.)
qb is in awe of those brave souls who, as we say, “put themselves in harm’s way to protect our freedoms as Americans.” A friend of mine - he is not a close friend, but he is a friend, and our Bible class walked closely with his wife during his two tours in the Green Zone, ferrying VIPs with big targets on their chests from point to point in the city of Baghdad - exemplifies the “freedom warrior,” loves his God deeply, wants men to love God with all of their hearts, souls, minds and strength. He is one in a long line of those whose love for America and Americans (and, more to the point of daily duties, his platoon buddies) puts them continually between bristling Kalashnikovs and the innocent women, children, infirm and aged, the oppression of whom is blood sport in that region of the world. These warriors’ love for their fellow mankind expresses itself in a willingness to lay down their lives for those they love, even from a distance, which is a form of the Jesus way (John 15:13). In many concrete ways, I am not worthy of them.
So my quarrel is not with the fighting man or woman, the warrior, the freedom fighter per se. No, my quandary goes backward in time and backward in reasoning, to the great American premise set forth in the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Consider that for a minute. Ponder it deeply. Have you ever questioned that premise or any of the elements that comprise it?
We know that all men are created equal. Anyone with a moment’s reflection will be able to point to passage after passage, especially in the New Testament, that affirms the essential equality of men before God. There is no quarrel here, and America, for all of its faults and foibles, consistently leads the world in demonstrating its commitment to equality. Not perfectly, but at least demonstrably. And when we fail, we wring our hands about it because that kind of failure offends our collective sensibilities. We have no shortage of prophets who persistently remind us of our egalitarian aspirations.
But what about the assertion that the “pursuit of happiness” is...
...our fundamental “right?”
...an “inalienable” right?
...a right with which our “Creator” has “endowed” us?
...a right that is “self-evident?”
Where do we find support for the notion that the right even exists? And even if it does exist, what witnesses would we call to confirm that God, not man, conferred it upon us? And is it not a bit far-fetched for a Christian to suppose that any such “right,” assuming that it exists, needs no evidence to support our assertion? Finally, what causes us to think that no other claims that our fellow man might set forth could be thought to trump our right to pursue happiness?
I wonder if we can put much stock in such a bald, sweeping, breathtaking assertion. I wonder if perhaps the Greeks, with Jesus looking on approvingly, might have asked us to substitute “virtue” for “happiness” as we drafted our Declaration. I wonder if there is any possible way that a successful, virtuous, God-pleasing nation can survive as such when its founding documents venerate something as formless and fluid and subjective and individualistic as the pursuit of “happiness.”
Upon reflection, does it not sound more like a recipe for the moral anarchy of Romans 1:18-32 and Judges 21:25 - “each man did what was right in his own eyes?”
Kenneson has not asked us to abandon the American political experiment. He has not asked us to spit on the graves of men and women who have paid an unfathomable price so that Americans might be politically free. He has asked us, however, to consider the extent to which our souls and desires have been formed by potentially disastrous premises and the conclusions and corollaries that flow from them. He has asked us to consider the extent to which those premises and corollaries shape our community of faith. He has asked us to consider the extent to which the church of Christ has been co-opted by distinctively American assumptions about what it means to be fully human. And he has asked us the provocative question - admittedly, a frightening one - are our premises correct?
Kenneson might well have asked us to consider whether or not the kind of joy that Christ sets before us as a promise can even be realized apart from suffering.
It might be well for us to consider one last question while we’re at it. If our premises are not right, what are the odds that we will ever reach the correct conclusions?
Just musing aloud,
qb
* * *
Kenneson has touched on something that has caused qb a great deal of discomfort - some might call it “cognitive dissonance:” a screaming disconnect and obvious incoherence between two competing strains of thought in his brain - especially in the last 3-4 years. (That that time frame coincides roughly with the war in Iraq is no coincidence.)
qb is in awe of those brave souls who, as we say, “put themselves in harm’s way to protect our freedoms as Americans.” A friend of mine - he is not a close friend, but he is a friend, and our Bible class walked closely with his wife during his two tours in the Green Zone, ferrying VIPs with big targets on their chests from point to point in the city of Baghdad - exemplifies the “freedom warrior,” loves his God deeply, wants men to love God with all of their hearts, souls, minds and strength. He is one in a long line of those whose love for America and Americans (and, more to the point of daily duties, his platoon buddies) puts them continually between bristling Kalashnikovs and the innocent women, children, infirm and aged, the oppression of whom is blood sport in that region of the world. These warriors’ love for their fellow mankind expresses itself in a willingness to lay down their lives for those they love, even from a distance, which is a form of the Jesus way (John 15:13). In many concrete ways, I am not worthy of them.
So my quarrel is not with the fighting man or woman, the warrior, the freedom fighter per se. No, my quandary goes backward in time and backward in reasoning, to the great American premise set forth in the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Consider that for a minute. Ponder it deeply. Have you ever questioned that premise or any of the elements that comprise it?
We know that all men are created equal. Anyone with a moment’s reflection will be able to point to passage after passage, especially in the New Testament, that affirms the essential equality of men before God. There is no quarrel here, and America, for all of its faults and foibles, consistently leads the world in demonstrating its commitment to equality. Not perfectly, but at least demonstrably. And when we fail, we wring our hands about it because that kind of failure offends our collective sensibilities. We have no shortage of prophets who persistently remind us of our egalitarian aspirations.
But what about the assertion that the “pursuit of happiness” is...
...our fundamental “right?”
...an “inalienable” right?
...a right with which our “Creator” has “endowed” us?
...a right that is “self-evident?”
Where do we find support for the notion that the right even exists? And even if it does exist, what witnesses would we call to confirm that God, not man, conferred it upon us? And is it not a bit far-fetched for a Christian to suppose that any such “right,” assuming that it exists, needs no evidence to support our assertion? Finally, what causes us to think that no other claims that our fellow man might set forth could be thought to trump our right to pursue happiness?
I wonder if we can put much stock in such a bald, sweeping, breathtaking assertion. I wonder if perhaps the Greeks, with Jesus looking on approvingly, might have asked us to substitute “virtue” for “happiness” as we drafted our Declaration. I wonder if there is any possible way that a successful, virtuous, God-pleasing nation can survive as such when its founding documents venerate something as formless and fluid and subjective and individualistic as the pursuit of “happiness.”
Upon reflection, does it not sound more like a recipe for the moral anarchy of Romans 1:18-32 and Judges 21:25 - “each man did what was right in his own eyes?”
Kenneson has not asked us to abandon the American political experiment. He has not asked us to spit on the graves of men and women who have paid an unfathomable price so that Americans might be politically free. He has asked us, however, to consider the extent to which our souls and desires have been formed by potentially disastrous premises and the conclusions and corollaries that flow from them. He has asked us to consider the extent to which those premises and corollaries shape our community of faith. He has asked us to consider the extent to which the church of Christ has been co-opted by distinctively American assumptions about what it means to be fully human. And he has asked us the provocative question - admittedly, a frightening one - are our premises correct?
Kenneson might well have asked us to consider whether or not the kind of joy that Christ sets before us as a promise can even be realized apart from suffering.
It might be well for us to consider one last question while we’re at it. If our premises are not right, what are the odds that we will ever reach the correct conclusions?
Just musing aloud,
qb
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Pastoral Mandate
18 months ago a brother introduced qb to Thomas a Kempis, which turned qb loose into a season of dwelling in the more contemplative, reflective literature. It has been deeply enriching. Time will tell, or course, whether it has been equipping as well. The modern names will be familiar: Peterson, Nouwen, Foster, Andrew Murray. And there is a common, insistent, pastoral strain, often invisible but ever present, that runs under the surface of their writings.
"Never forget, O man of God, that suffering is the norm, not the exception. And the gospel that you preach, through the way you live as well as what you speak, must be congruent with that."
* * *
What is the "remnant?" It is a broken people awaiting promises that never seem to come. It is a suffering people awaiting relief that is always around the next corner. It is an oppressed people awaiting justice that always seems to tilt the other way. It is a sinful people groaning for transformation that ever eludes our grasp. It is the Jesus way (Peterson's phrase). It is the way of community, of "life together" (Bonhoeffer's phrase), a life of tantalizing prospects that never materialize, a life of moving from one enslavement to another. The life of the remnant is a life of always seeking and seldom finding, a life toiling under Pharaoh and Ahab and Jeroboam and Sennacherib, Herod and Manasseh and Pilate and Domitian.
Does that ring true to you?
Is your gospel - I mean, the one you really live, the one you really believe - congruent with that? Or is your gospel the gospel of Osteen, the gospel of 21st-century American dreams, the gospel of plenty and harmony and entitlement, political freedom and unlimited blessing in the here and now?
In the midst of it all, the life of the remnant is a life of never ending, always abiding joy, in no small measure because of the fellowship - the fellowship of His sufferings, the fellowship of "two or three" in the midst of whom Jesus is pleased to dwell.
That, my friends, is our task as shepherds-in-training: to come to an understanding of life that is congruent with Jesus' experience, and then to communicate that understanding by the way we live and the words we speak into the lives of others, the buildings we build and the songs we sing. The pastoral mandate is ruthless realism: we are fallen, profoundly broken.
And yet...
qb
"Never forget, O man of God, that suffering is the norm, not the exception. And the gospel that you preach, through the way you live as well as what you speak, must be congruent with that."
* * *
What is the "remnant?" It is a broken people awaiting promises that never seem to come. It is a suffering people awaiting relief that is always around the next corner. It is an oppressed people awaiting justice that always seems to tilt the other way. It is a sinful people groaning for transformation that ever eludes our grasp. It is the Jesus way (Peterson's phrase). It is the way of community, of "life together" (Bonhoeffer's phrase), a life of tantalizing prospects that never materialize, a life of moving from one enslavement to another. The life of the remnant is a life of always seeking and seldom finding, a life toiling under Pharaoh and Ahab and Jeroboam and Sennacherib, Herod and Manasseh and Pilate and Domitian.
Does that ring true to you?
Is your gospel - I mean, the one you really live, the one you really believe - congruent with that? Or is your gospel the gospel of Osteen, the gospel of 21st-century American dreams, the gospel of plenty and harmony and entitlement, political freedom and unlimited blessing in the here and now?
In the midst of it all, the life of the remnant is a life of never ending, always abiding joy, in no small measure because of the fellowship - the fellowship of His sufferings, the fellowship of "two or three" in the midst of whom Jesus is pleased to dwell.
That, my friends, is our task as shepherds-in-training: to come to an understanding of life that is congruent with Jesus' experience, and then to communicate that understanding by the way we live and the words we speak into the lives of others, the buildings we build and the songs we sing. The pastoral mandate is ruthless realism: we are fallen, profoundly broken.
And yet...
qb
Friday, July 13, 2007
A Rant on Small Groups and Success
A family member recently asked me to give some thought as to how to start and sustain a small group.
"Small groups" are an enigma, wrapped as they are in a cloak of artificiality, especially at the outset. I'm not sure of any of the "hows." All I know - contingently, of course - is that my family member's instinct to run from the teacher/class paradigm is spot on.
I'm not even sure what constitutes a "successful" small group. We (I) tend to think, first and foremost, about such nonsense as (a) how many show up "faithfully," (b) how long the group persists and (c) how well the group becomes known by word of mouth of the participants. But all that is vanity, chasing after the wind; or, to be perhaps more charitable, all of that is but a surrogate for the real question, (d): are we growing to be more like Christ, or not?
Perchance I'm overanalyzing this. And to be sure, I have the good (!) fortune of participating in two small groups who pass the (a, b, c) tests above. One of the groups has grown qualitatively into a meta-community that actually likes to be together outside our normal meetings, and as word of our possible move to CO has spread, there have been expressions of dismay that indicate some degree of contribution to the group's development. But it is still that: a group, a meta-community, not yet a bona fide community. That's what I mean by "artificiality." It remains contrived. We bleed together only rarely, and usually in the artificial context of a Sunday night meeting over Scripture, not in the midst of actual life happening.
Don’t get me wrong: I love those men, I love their families, and I love our gatherings. I have learned a tremendous amount from them, and they have refined my thinking and my ways of thinking.
So as you might have gathered, the questions surrounding "how to do a small group" elicit a lot of angst here. I just don't know. I don't like settling for positive answers to (a, b, c), and it's not enough to identify an individual or two in the group who can answer (d) in the affirmative. I would rather be able to answer (d) in the affirmative at the community level WITHOUT some charismatic individual ("teacher," "small group leader") having a reason to take credit for it.
It appears to be an article of faith for just about everyone that "every enterprise needs a strong, visionary leader to succeed." That notion is not even questioned. But I do question it. The words of Jesus leave me little choice.
qb
"Small groups" are an enigma, wrapped as they are in a cloak of artificiality, especially at the outset. I'm not sure of any of the "hows." All I know - contingently, of course - is that my family member's instinct to run from the teacher/class paradigm is spot on.
I'm not even sure what constitutes a "successful" small group. We (I) tend to think, first and foremost, about such nonsense as (a) how many show up "faithfully," (b) how long the group persists and (c) how well the group becomes known by word of mouth of the participants. But all that is vanity, chasing after the wind; or, to be perhaps more charitable, all of that is but a surrogate for the real question, (d): are we growing to be more like Christ, or not?
Perchance I'm overanalyzing this. And to be sure, I have the good (!) fortune of participating in two small groups who pass the (a, b, c) tests above. One of the groups has grown qualitatively into a meta-community that actually likes to be together outside our normal meetings, and as word of our possible move to CO has spread, there have been expressions of dismay that indicate some degree of contribution to the group's development. But it is still that: a group, a meta-community, not yet a bona fide community. That's what I mean by "artificiality." It remains contrived. We bleed together only rarely, and usually in the artificial context of a Sunday night meeting over Scripture, not in the midst of actual life happening.
Don’t get me wrong: I love those men, I love their families, and I love our gatherings. I have learned a tremendous amount from them, and they have refined my thinking and my ways of thinking.
So as you might have gathered, the questions surrounding "how to do a small group" elicit a lot of angst here. I just don't know. I don't like settling for positive answers to (a, b, c), and it's not enough to identify an individual or two in the group who can answer (d) in the affirmative. I would rather be able to answer (d) in the affirmative at the community level WITHOUT some charismatic individual ("teacher," "small group leader") having a reason to take credit for it.
It appears to be an article of faith for just about everyone that "every enterprise needs a strong, visionary leader to succeed." That notion is not even questioned. But I do question it. The words of Jesus leave me little choice.
qb
Monday, July 09, 2007
Leaving the Ninety and Nine
This little news nugget caught qb's eye this morning. Substitute...
..."local church" for "Sprint Nextel;"
..."members" for "customers," "clients" or "subscribers;"
..."church" for "service;" and
..."elders and pastors" for "customer service."
Making those substitutions, you end up with a pretty good snapshot of the current, corporate state of the evangelical megachurch.
I Corinthians 12 notwithstanding, the bottom line in this church paradigm is: people are expendable. People are fungible. People are what they do (/give). Lose one, gain another. Easy come, easy go. Fly with the eagles; avoid the turkeys. (Yes, that last one has been said, in so many words. Here in Amarillo. At my home church. By a senior member of leadership.)
And you know what? Nobody who derives his living from running the machine will deny it, because "expressing concern about the agenda" and "disagreeing with the leadership's direction and vision" are blithely equated with "complaining," and then the people lodging the "complaints" are dismissed as so much dead weight. Who needs 'em? We've got work to do, ground to cover, facilities to build!
It's all so tidy, so inpenetrable, so soulless.
Jim McGuiggan has written wonderfully on related matters. Check out http://www.jimmcguiggan.com/reflections3.asp?status=Church&id=644 for a brief glimpse of his thinking.
qb
____________________
Sprint Hangs Up on High-Maintenance Customers
Monday, July 09, 2007
Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) is breaking up with about 1,000 subscribers the company finds to be too high-maintenance, according to news reports.
The third-largest wireless carrier sent letters dated June 29 to the dumped clients stating: "The number of inquiries you have made has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs," according to reports.
The disconnected customers called customer service an average of 25 times a month, a rate 40 times higher than average customers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Customers have been given until the end of July to find new service.
..."local church" for "Sprint Nextel;"
..."members" for "customers," "clients" or "subscribers;"
..."church" for "service;" and
..."elders and pastors" for "customer service."
Making those substitutions, you end up with a pretty good snapshot of the current, corporate state of the evangelical megachurch.
I Corinthians 12 notwithstanding, the bottom line in this church paradigm is: people are expendable. People are fungible. People are what they do (/give). Lose one, gain another. Easy come, easy go. Fly with the eagles; avoid the turkeys. (Yes, that last one has been said, in so many words. Here in Amarillo. At my home church. By a senior member of leadership.)
And you know what? Nobody who derives his living from running the machine will deny it, because "expressing concern about the agenda" and "disagreeing with the leadership's direction and vision" are blithely equated with "complaining," and then the people lodging the "complaints" are dismissed as so much dead weight. Who needs 'em? We've got work to do, ground to cover, facilities to build!
It's all so tidy, so inpenetrable, so soulless.
Jim McGuiggan has written wonderfully on related matters. Check out http://www.jimmcguiggan.com/reflections3.asp?status=Church&id=644 for a brief glimpse of his thinking.
qb
____________________
Sprint Hangs Up on High-Maintenance Customers
Monday, July 09, 2007
Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) is breaking up with about 1,000 subscribers the company finds to be too high-maintenance, according to news reports.
The third-largest wireless carrier sent letters dated June 29 to the dumped clients stating: "The number of inquiries you have made has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs," according to reports.
The disconnected customers called customer service an average of 25 times a month, a rate 40 times higher than average customers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Customers have been given until the end of July to find new service.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Marketing the "church"
Philip Kenneson has written a marvelous book, _Life on the Vine_, and he has challenged me to think of the church in these terms. Imagine a congregation that refuses to market itself according to the current norms but that makes itself available under the web radar with the following statement:
We have no central personality directing our affairs in the capacity of a CEO-style, full-time "pastor." What we represent is a community of faith that (a) models these characteristics and (b) helps others, by example and patient teaching, to exemplify them as well. If you visit us, you can expect to see personified in our members and our community love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
You, as our guest, have the right and the responsibility to judge us against that standard; and if you elect to invest your life and that of your family in our community, we commit to you that we will love you deeply as we love ourselves and our Lord, and we will exert ourselves under Christ's guidance to help you develop those same virtues as a follower of Jesus.
As opposed to:
We have a campus valued at more than $20 million; a Senior Pastor who has written X books and who teaches dynamically and relevantly from the Word; and a wide variety of programs and initiatives for young and old alike to serve your needs.
Which community wins your allegiance?
qb
We have no central personality directing our affairs in the capacity of a CEO-style, full-time "pastor." What we represent is a community of faith that (a) models these characteristics and (b) helps others, by example and patient teaching, to exemplify them as well. If you visit us, you can expect to see personified in our members and our community love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
You, as our guest, have the right and the responsibility to judge us against that standard; and if you elect to invest your life and that of your family in our community, we commit to you that we will love you deeply as we love ourselves and our Lord, and we will exert ourselves under Christ's guidance to help you develop those same virtues as a follower of Jesus.
As opposed to:
We have a campus valued at more than $20 million; a Senior Pastor who has written X books and who teaches dynamically and relevantly from the Word; and a wide variety of programs and initiatives for young and old alike to serve your needs.
Which community wins your allegiance?
qb
Friday, June 08, 2007
Jesus' Forgiving Spirit
As some of you know, qb and his fam damily disaffiliated ourselves from Hillside (formerly Paramount Terrace) Christian Church here in Amarillo about a month ago, which for qb also meant relinquishing his role as chairmyn of our beloved Bible class, known as "King's Couples" (KC). From years long before qb and Jenn yoked up with KC, KC has been a powerful voice within the larger body for transracial outreach, transdenominational unity, service to "the least of these" (as well as, "especially to the household of faith") and dogged defense of the nuclear family, marriages and children. In large measure, that heritage resulted from the humble and quiet (but bold and unapologetic), example-based leadership of a supremely pastorally-minded couple whom I will call "Steve" and "Melissa." Steve had been our teacher until February of this year when he was precipitously and summarily dismissed from that post.
Steve's dismissal, in my judgment, was a terrible injustice and was carried out in a ruthless, impersonal and degrading way, and it has reflected so poorly on our elders and our senior "pastor" (imagine a contemporary application of Ezekiel 34) that a significant percentage of KC has left the church. Anger and bitterness reign among many of us, but we remain devoted to one another even though we are now, physically, scattered across a number of other congregations in town or drifting aimlessly from one to the other. When Steve and Melissa were dismissed from any leadership or service roles in the church, I tried to hang in there as class chairmyn to shepherd the class through the mess. On the face of it, I failed in that task, and I resigned about a month ago when we pulled up our tentstakes and moved on.
All along, I have been trying to figure out what God is doing and get in step with it, hoping against hope that I could, through seeking God's will, help all of us come to grips with what has happened, learn what God wants us to learn from it, and walk victoriously through it. I am no champion at that, but it has been an obsession with me because the KC family is scattered and disoriented. We need a context for understanding and for moving forward.
Over the last couple of weeks, it has become increasingly apparent to me that our focus has been diverted from Christ, where it belongs, to each other, our "issues" and our corporate sense of injustice. In the meantime, I have been reading Eugene Peterson's _Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places_ - amazing work by a deeply thoughtful, pastorally minded scholar! - and have been struck afresh by the centrality of the Lord's table to life in community. It has seemed to me that we must return to Jesus' passion in order to recover that which has been lost, first through a reacquaintance with His body and blood and second through a reacquaintance with those seminal things He imparted to His disciples to equip them to carry on His work.
It is truly astonishing to observe the emptiness of self that so vividly characterized Christ during His final week. In the last several days, I have been impressed with Luke 23:34, which is familiar to all of us: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The "forgive them" part is the easy part to understand; this is Jesus, after all. But "they know not what they do" is a much harder pill to swallow. So much of what we observe as injustice appears, on its face, to be the result of bald, premeditated or self-conscious evil, calculated or at least recognized as such. When I sin, I walk into it wilfully and knowingly, knowing fully (if not actively hoping for, in some cases) the consequences of my words or deeds or choices. I *do* know what I am doing. And because I know what I'm doing, it is easy for me to conclude that others do, too. As a result, Jesus' words in Luke 23:34 are flattened into what my mind thinks of as a pious-sounding, psychological delusion that helps me make excuses for others who sin against me. Jesus' words sound like a ploy, a technique, a coping method designed to get me to overlook the plain truth of the matter so that I can forgive. In short, I lie to myself in order to gin up the gumption to forgive.
The inevitable result: my forgiveness is superficial; I know better. Those who sinned against me knew precisely what they were doing and what would result, and they did it anyway. Jesus' words on the cross sound nice and all, but they don't ring true. My forgiveness is therefore grounded in a self-delusion, and I cannot buy it in the core of my being.
What's more, to teach Luke 23:34 from this perspective means essentially to distill Jesus' teaching to a tidy, psychological principle: when your brother sins against you, try your hardest to think of him as unable to see what he is doing so that you can excuse his action as an unintended consequence of an innocent, well-meaning perspective. A moment's reflection on that will, in turn, impress you with its superficiality, its transparent absurdity. In the strictest sense possible of the word, that principle is *incredible*; it cannot be taken seriously.
And so Jesus' words on the cross in Luke 23:34 demand that I think more deeply about that whole mess. What is Jesus doing? Is He serious, or is He just playing psychological games with us to get us to feign forgiveness? Is this Jesus' version of "fake it 'til ya feel it" spirituality, or is there something more?
qb
Steve's dismissal, in my judgment, was a terrible injustice and was carried out in a ruthless, impersonal and degrading way, and it has reflected so poorly on our elders and our senior "pastor" (imagine a contemporary application of Ezekiel 34) that a significant percentage of KC has left the church. Anger and bitterness reign among many of us, but we remain devoted to one another even though we are now, physically, scattered across a number of other congregations in town or drifting aimlessly from one to the other. When Steve and Melissa were dismissed from any leadership or service roles in the church, I tried to hang in there as class chairmyn to shepherd the class through the mess. On the face of it, I failed in that task, and I resigned about a month ago when we pulled up our tentstakes and moved on.
All along, I have been trying to figure out what God is doing and get in step with it, hoping against hope that I could, through seeking God's will, help all of us come to grips with what has happened, learn what God wants us to learn from it, and walk victoriously through it. I am no champion at that, but it has been an obsession with me because the KC family is scattered and disoriented. We need a context for understanding and for moving forward.
Over the last couple of weeks, it has become increasingly apparent to me that our focus has been diverted from Christ, where it belongs, to each other, our "issues" and our corporate sense of injustice. In the meantime, I have been reading Eugene Peterson's _Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places_ - amazing work by a deeply thoughtful, pastorally minded scholar! - and have been struck afresh by the centrality of the Lord's table to life in community. It has seemed to me that we must return to Jesus' passion in order to recover that which has been lost, first through a reacquaintance with His body and blood and second through a reacquaintance with those seminal things He imparted to His disciples to equip them to carry on His work.
It is truly astonishing to observe the emptiness of self that so vividly characterized Christ during His final week. In the last several days, I have been impressed with Luke 23:34, which is familiar to all of us: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The "forgive them" part is the easy part to understand; this is Jesus, after all. But "they know not what they do" is a much harder pill to swallow. So much of what we observe as injustice appears, on its face, to be the result of bald, premeditated or self-conscious evil, calculated or at least recognized as such. When I sin, I walk into it wilfully and knowingly, knowing fully (if not actively hoping for, in some cases) the consequences of my words or deeds or choices. I *do* know what I am doing. And because I know what I'm doing, it is easy for me to conclude that others do, too. As a result, Jesus' words in Luke 23:34 are flattened into what my mind thinks of as a pious-sounding, psychological delusion that helps me make excuses for others who sin against me. Jesus' words sound like a ploy, a technique, a coping method designed to get me to overlook the plain truth of the matter so that I can forgive. In short, I lie to myself in order to gin up the gumption to forgive.
The inevitable result: my forgiveness is superficial; I know better. Those who sinned against me knew precisely what they were doing and what would result, and they did it anyway. Jesus' words on the cross sound nice and all, but they don't ring true. My forgiveness is therefore grounded in a self-delusion, and I cannot buy it in the core of my being.
What's more, to teach Luke 23:34 from this perspective means essentially to distill Jesus' teaching to a tidy, psychological principle: when your brother sins against you, try your hardest to think of him as unable to see what he is doing so that you can excuse his action as an unintended consequence of an innocent, well-meaning perspective. A moment's reflection on that will, in turn, impress you with its superficiality, its transparent absurdity. In the strictest sense possible of the word, that principle is *incredible*; it cannot be taken seriously.
And so Jesus' words on the cross in Luke 23:34 demand that I think more deeply about that whole mess. What is Jesus doing? Is He serious, or is He just playing psychological games with us to get us to feign forgiveness? Is this Jesus' version of "fake it 'til ya feel it" spirituality, or is there something more?
qb
Monday, May 07, 2007
Reflections on a Wise, Master Teacher
Today a brother in Christ challenged me to do some writing, some "meta-teaching" that draws from the prolific and wise Dallas Willard and interprets him in more accessible language for broader public consumption. What an intoxicating invitation...but sobering.
There are few topics of any kind more exciting to me than Dr. Willard's writing on discipleship to Jesus. He teaches as he writes, gently, humbly and yet with uncommon depth and power and hope. He loves Jesus and puts his full confidence in Him as the most brilliant man who has ever lived. No amount of pondering Jesus' deity is an adequate substitute for simply taking Jesus at His word and doing what He said to do while He was on this earth showing us how it is done. Thanks, GS, for the invitation to explore this.
A cautionary word: One of these days, one of Dr. Willard's USC proteges - or perhaps Willard's dear friend Dr. Richard Foster (_Celebration of Discipline_) - will launch off and sponsor a festschrift in Willard's honor. Those who have been fortunate to study at Willard's feet will be best equipped to render him accurately and well. If we accomplish anything here, it will inevitably be superseded by those who walked (and indeed now walk) with Dr. Willard as he works out the crowning achievements of his career - his "careen," as he now fondly refers to it - and offers his thoughts on how the disappearance of any body of moral knowledge in today's world can be remedied by Christ's disciples living fully in obedience, faith, hope and love. I look forward to their work and do not wish to preempt them in any way.
One last thing. To listen to Dr. Willard's teaching in both the written and spoken word is to be impressed with his humility. But to interact with him is to be more impressed still. I have only corresponded with Dr. Willard once, during my first trip through _The Divine Conspiracy_ a few years back. I was thrilled with his exegesis of the Discourse on the Hill (Matthew 5-7), but one of his interpretations just seemed to strike me at odd angles. It made absolutely no sense at all. So I fired off a quick e-mail to Dr. Willard setting forth my competing reading of the verse in question and smugly went back to work on the rest of his book, never thinking he would ever notice an unsolicited e-mail from the Texas Panhandle backwoods, much less respond to it. But respond to it he did, acknowledging that he had a tough time with that passage himself and wasn't sure he had the right reading of it. And then he said, "what is important to me is that you GET it." What he meant, clearly, was that instead of simply parroting what Willard had SAID in the book, I had come to understand the way in which he was REASONING and had actually exerted that reasoning method myself.
It's hard to get across what that means, but if it means anything at all, it is that Willard has no interest in being the subject of what we're exploring here. He does not wish to be the center of attention, and he does not need to be right. What he wants is for us to GET it: that is, to adopt Jesus' premises, to learn to reason as Jesus reasons and then to work out the implications in our lives by applying what we learn. Willard wants to be transparent, not correct; faithful, not famous. Perhaps that is what I love about him more than anything.
There aren't many folks who pass this way in cyberspace, but if you happen by and want to chime in with your reflections on Willard and his teaching, by all means sound off.
qb
There are few topics of any kind more exciting to me than Dr. Willard's writing on discipleship to Jesus. He teaches as he writes, gently, humbly and yet with uncommon depth and power and hope. He loves Jesus and puts his full confidence in Him as the most brilliant man who has ever lived. No amount of pondering Jesus' deity is an adequate substitute for simply taking Jesus at His word and doing what He said to do while He was on this earth showing us how it is done. Thanks, GS, for the invitation to explore this.
A cautionary word: One of these days, one of Dr. Willard's USC proteges - or perhaps Willard's dear friend Dr. Richard Foster (_Celebration of Discipline_) - will launch off and sponsor a festschrift in Willard's honor. Those who have been fortunate to study at Willard's feet will be best equipped to render him accurately and well. If we accomplish anything here, it will inevitably be superseded by those who walked (and indeed now walk) with Dr. Willard as he works out the crowning achievements of his career - his "careen," as he now fondly refers to it - and offers his thoughts on how the disappearance of any body of moral knowledge in today's world can be remedied by Christ's disciples living fully in obedience, faith, hope and love. I look forward to their work and do not wish to preempt them in any way.
One last thing. To listen to Dr. Willard's teaching in both the written and spoken word is to be impressed with his humility. But to interact with him is to be more impressed still. I have only corresponded with Dr. Willard once, during my first trip through _The Divine Conspiracy_ a few years back. I was thrilled with his exegesis of the Discourse on the Hill (Matthew 5-7), but one of his interpretations just seemed to strike me at odd angles. It made absolutely no sense at all. So I fired off a quick e-mail to Dr. Willard setting forth my competing reading of the verse in question and smugly went back to work on the rest of his book, never thinking he would ever notice an unsolicited e-mail from the Texas Panhandle backwoods, much less respond to it. But respond to it he did, acknowledging that he had a tough time with that passage himself and wasn't sure he had the right reading of it. And then he said, "what is important to me is that you GET it." What he meant, clearly, was that instead of simply parroting what Willard had SAID in the book, I had come to understand the way in which he was REASONING and had actually exerted that reasoning method myself.
It's hard to get across what that means, but if it means anything at all, it is that Willard has no interest in being the subject of what we're exploring here. He does not wish to be the center of attention, and he does not need to be right. What he wants is for us to GET it: that is, to adopt Jesus' premises, to learn to reason as Jesus reasons and then to work out the implications in our lives by applying what we learn. Willard wants to be transparent, not correct; faithful, not famous. Perhaps that is what I love about him more than anything.
There aren't many folks who pass this way in cyberspace, but if you happen by and want to chime in with your reflections on Willard and his teaching, by all means sound off.
qb
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Cultosaurus Ecclesiasticus
This, friends, will be a living blog entry chronicling and documenting the tragic decline of my home church here in Amarillo, updated as the thoughts occur to me. At this point, we have established an interesting feature of our new church plant:
#1 -- The Mantra.
We're so sorry you don't agree with the direction we're going. Amarillo has many, many church options; why don't you take advantage of them? We've just celebrated 50 baptisms, and we need to attend to them.
Our proud, new mantra is generally directed from the elders or staff to long-term members who have dared to dissent - the insolence! - from or question the church leadership.
Translation: "Don't let the door hit you in the behind." (Or, paraphrasing my beloved Aggieland, "Hillside Road runs both ways.")
#2 -- The Monarch.
If you're going to work here for me, I expect 100%, unquestioning loyalty. And that goes for you elders, too.
I was on the search committee for our new Senior Minister back in the day (Jan-Oct 2005), a duty which included serving on the subcommittee charged with developing the job description based on guidelines given to us by the elders at that time. When our mandate came, the elders had prominently specified "CEO-level authority" as the organizing principle for the Senior Minister's duties. Of course, I raised mild concern (that's really quite an understatement) that we were heading down a road we had been before and that amounted to the Israelites' demand for a king in I Samuel 8-9. I was assured, though, by the elders on the committee at that time, that there would be adequate oversight and checks on the Senior Minister's authority on the part of the elders. Only one of those three elders is still on the board, and the one that remains does not appear overly concerned about executive accountability.
Historical Parenthesis. In fact, after we delivered the job description to the full committee, dutifully parroting the "CEO-level authority" phrase and incorporating its spirit into the rest of the text, I began to entertain the idea of applying for the job myself, more or less as a protest, but not without legitimate desire to do the job. I did not want - nor would I have accepted - CEO-level authority. Neither would I have accepted the well-into-6-figures salary package that the other subcommittee had developed to be competitive in the religious marketplace. (Does that very idea grate on you the way it grates on me?) In any event, I talked it over repeatedly with my wife, who ultimately said she would happily go along with whichever decision I made: to apply, or not to apply.
When it became clear that my interest in the position was getting serious, I took the committee chair and the chair of the elders to lunch at Zookini's on a Monday and told them that I needed to step down from the committee because of a developing conflict of interest; I also told the committee chair that he should NOT give me copies of the application packages that had arrived by that time. The deadline for applications was that Friday afternoon. The two of them understood, agreed (duh!) and sent me on my way with their blessing.
After a long, arduous season of prayer on Thursday afternoon in our church building's parlor, with the application halfway filled out, I finally decided that because I did not have either a Bible degree or a master's from seminary, I would not be seriously considered; there was no point in complicating others' lives and our own if I had no plausible shot in the first place. I immediately asked my wife what she thought about me pursuing a seminary degree at ACU, and she nearly pushed me out the door: "you must do it." The ambition for the position at our church vanished, I enrolled in the Graduate School of Theology at ACU, and that was that. After calling the committee chair to let him know of my decision, he immediately reinstated me on the committee, and he and his wife brought the two complete application packages that he had received to me at our house.
This whole affair was later to come back to haunt me in a private meeting with the new Senior Minister (sometime in Mar-Apr 2006, as I recall), who had learned of it and saw fit to throw it in my face and accuse me of unethical behavior. After that meeting, I called the man who had been chairman of the elders at that time and asked him about it, and he disagreed strongly, defending both my actions and his own. I also brought it up with today's board chairman just a few weeks ago - he was an elder at the time, too - and he told me he had no problem with what I had done. End Historical Parenthesis.
Well, our concern about the Senior Minister's authority and lack of accountability has proven sadly prophetic. Late last year, at his prodding, the elders rammed through a major revision of the by-laws, which the congregation affirmed in a vote that was "nearly unanimous." (I have heard that the tally was XYZ-to-1; you can probably guess who cast the lone dissenting vote.) I could see the handwriting on the wall, but the tide building toward Carver's "policy governance" and the present authoritarian regime was ineluctable. The number of elders was slashed to a size that the Senior "Pastor" (as he now calls himself, ironically) deemed "more manageable" (what a telling phrase!), in which "consensus" can be more easily forged.
Much more could be said about all of this, but one thing is clear: this Senior "Pastor" does not brook any disagreement with his agenda, even if that disagreement is scripturally derived and biblically plausible. I can only imagine what it is like to be a member of the staff, because if you disagree with him, I have to believe your job is in jeopardy. Whatever the truth is about that, one remarkable feature of the current regime is that there is no discussion, no disagreement, no dissent - either among the elders or among staff members with whom I am acquainted.
So Samuel spoke all the words of the LORD to the people who had asked of him a king. He said, "This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day." Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, "No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles." I Samuel 8:10-20
Who was it who said, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it?"
Until the next update, sadly,
qb
#1 -- The Mantra.
We're so sorry you don't agree with the direction we're going. Amarillo has many, many church options; why don't you take advantage of them? We've just celebrated 50 baptisms, and we need to attend to them.
Our proud, new mantra is generally directed from the elders or staff to long-term members who have dared to dissent - the insolence! - from or question the church leadership.
Translation: "Don't let the door hit you in the behind." (Or, paraphrasing my beloved Aggieland, "Hillside Road runs both ways.")
#2 -- The Monarch.
If you're going to work here for me, I expect 100%, unquestioning loyalty. And that goes for you elders, too.
I was on the search committee for our new Senior Minister back in the day (Jan-Oct 2005), a duty which included serving on the subcommittee charged with developing the job description based on guidelines given to us by the elders at that time. When our mandate came, the elders had prominently specified "CEO-level authority" as the organizing principle for the Senior Minister's duties. Of course, I raised mild concern (that's really quite an understatement) that we were heading down a road we had been before and that amounted to the Israelites' demand for a king in I Samuel 8-9. I was assured, though, by the elders on the committee at that time, that there would be adequate oversight and checks on the Senior Minister's authority on the part of the elders. Only one of those three elders is still on the board, and the one that remains does not appear overly concerned about executive accountability.
Historical Parenthesis. In fact, after we delivered the job description to the full committee, dutifully parroting the "CEO-level authority" phrase and incorporating its spirit into the rest of the text, I began to entertain the idea of applying for the job myself, more or less as a protest, but not without legitimate desire to do the job. I did not want - nor would I have accepted - CEO-level authority. Neither would I have accepted the well-into-6-figures salary package that the other subcommittee had developed to be competitive in the religious marketplace. (Does that very idea grate on you the way it grates on me?) In any event, I talked it over repeatedly with my wife, who ultimately said she would happily go along with whichever decision I made: to apply, or not to apply.
When it became clear that my interest in the position was getting serious, I took the committee chair and the chair of the elders to lunch at Zookini's on a Monday and told them that I needed to step down from the committee because of a developing conflict of interest; I also told the committee chair that he should NOT give me copies of the application packages that had arrived by that time. The deadline for applications was that Friday afternoon. The two of them understood, agreed (duh!) and sent me on my way with their blessing.
After a long, arduous season of prayer on Thursday afternoon in our church building's parlor, with the application halfway filled out, I finally decided that because I did not have either a Bible degree or a master's from seminary, I would not be seriously considered; there was no point in complicating others' lives and our own if I had no plausible shot in the first place. I immediately asked my wife what she thought about me pursuing a seminary degree at ACU, and she nearly pushed me out the door: "you must do it." The ambition for the position at our church vanished, I enrolled in the Graduate School of Theology at ACU, and that was that. After calling the committee chair to let him know of my decision, he immediately reinstated me on the committee, and he and his wife brought the two complete application packages that he had received to me at our house.
This whole affair was later to come back to haunt me in a private meeting with the new Senior Minister (sometime in Mar-Apr 2006, as I recall), who had learned of it and saw fit to throw it in my face and accuse me of unethical behavior. After that meeting, I called the man who had been chairman of the elders at that time and asked him about it, and he disagreed strongly, defending both my actions and his own. I also brought it up with today's board chairman just a few weeks ago - he was an elder at the time, too - and he told me he had no problem with what I had done. End Historical Parenthesis.
Well, our concern about the Senior Minister's authority and lack of accountability has proven sadly prophetic. Late last year, at his prodding, the elders rammed through a major revision of the by-laws, which the congregation affirmed in a vote that was "nearly unanimous." (I have heard that the tally was XYZ-to-1; you can probably guess who cast the lone dissenting vote.) I could see the handwriting on the wall, but the tide building toward Carver's "policy governance" and the present authoritarian regime was ineluctable. The number of elders was slashed to a size that the Senior "Pastor" (as he now calls himself, ironically) deemed "more manageable" (what a telling phrase!), in which "consensus" can be more easily forged.
Much more could be said about all of this, but one thing is clear: this Senior "Pastor" does not brook any disagreement with his agenda, even if that disagreement is scripturally derived and biblically plausible. I can only imagine what it is like to be a member of the staff, because if you disagree with him, I have to believe your job is in jeopardy. Whatever the truth is about that, one remarkable feature of the current regime is that there is no discussion, no disagreement, no dissent - either among the elders or among staff members with whom I am acquainted.
So Samuel spoke all the words of the LORD to the people who had asked of him a king. He said, "This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day." Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, "No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles." I Samuel 8:10-20
Who was it who said, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it?"
Until the next update, sadly,
qb
Saturday, April 14, 2007
"Censorship?" Gimme a Break
Fortunately for all of us, the thing that got Imus shut down was economic pressure from the private sector, not government fiat. The market worked very, very efficiently in this case, but censorship it ain’t. We must insist on understanding censorship to be government suppression of speech, not the actions of voluntary associations (corporations) exercising their prerogatives in response to market realities.
In other words, hand-wringing about “suppressing free speech” in the Imus case is totally misdirected. Imus has the same right to use offensive speech he had before; CBS and MSNBC just aren’t obligated to pay him to exercise it. In other words: it is as it should be.
qb
P. S. No fan of Sharpton or Jackson is qb, but losing Imus from the airwaves ain't much of a loss to the nation's political speech, either. *yawn*
In other words, hand-wringing about “suppressing free speech” in the Imus case is totally misdirected. Imus has the same right to use offensive speech he had before; CBS and MSNBC just aren’t obligated to pay him to exercise it. In other words: it is as it should be.
qb
P. S. No fan of Sharpton or Jackson is qb, but losing Imus from the airwaves ain't much of a loss to the nation's political speech, either. *yawn*
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Just who are these people?
I've been paying close attention to the church marketing materials on various web sites, banners in my home church, billboards and all the rest. Almost without exception, they feature pictures of sunny people smiling sunny smiles, giddy with delight over something...or grinning knowingly at me, as if they know more about me than I do.
I can't speak for all of these congregations who are featuring this stuff, but I do know this: the faces I'm seeing on my home church's marketing materials aren't anyone local, at least not that I know or recognize. And I suspect that's true of nearly all of them.
Who are these people, anyway? And what good do these pictures do, other than exposing the essential phoniness of the church-marketing enterprise?
qb
I can't speak for all of these congregations who are featuring this stuff, but I do know this: the faces I'm seeing on my home church's marketing materials aren't anyone local, at least not that I know or recognize. And I suspect that's true of nearly all of them.
Who are these people, anyway? And what good do these pictures do, other than exposing the essential phoniness of the church-marketing enterprise?
qb
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Commoditizing Jesus - A Lover's Quarrel
Briefly perusing the introduction of Victor Davis Hanson's 1999 book, _The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization_, it occurred to me that the phenomenon others have observed in culture at large - efficiency/productivity as the governing ideal, leading to commoditization on a broad scale, leading to a soul-numbing sameness that mocks the very wealth that produced it - has metastasized into the church with disastrous results.
Sadly, we are reaping that harvest here in Amarillo at my home church. Oh, yes! There is a shiny, seductive veneer of success, but it is measured in the stuff of mammon: tushes in the pews, clams in the tiller, squares on the architect's drawing table, spires on the horizon and column-inches in the Globe-News. It is all very impressive.
Impressive, as in: just like those huge churches in the sprawling, youthful, fabulous suburbs of Las Vegas, or Atlanta, or Dallas.
Impressive, as in: just like all the other kings and kingdoms of this world.
But the banality, the sameness, the damnable soullessness of it all...
...a soullessness that crucifies the prophet, casts aside the shepherd and kisses the king's scepter.
...a soullessness that brooks neither thoughtful dissent from its vision nor substantive challenges to the judgment of its patrons (and their hirelings).
...a soullessness that keeps family and spontaneity and tradition at a careful arm's length but embraces production cues, pixels and scripts as if they were long-lost lovers.
...a soullessness that trades spiritual passion, classical wisdom and the earthy grace of God Himself for something newer, more glamorous, less risky and more controllable - in other words, a cheap harlot who does what she's told and keeps her mouth shut. Or else.
...a soullessness that basks in the heady affirmation and fawning loyalty of the ninety-and-nine but steadfastly refuses to hear and heed the mournful cries of the scattered one.
...a soullessness that views pastoral responsibility and church governance in terms of the iron fist, the wagging finger and the dismissive wave rather than the outstretched hand.
...a soullessness that insists on no special accommodations for the old and weak but throws itself shamelessly at the young, healthy and beautiful (and who - coincidentally - have a lot of upside salary potential).
...a soullessness that trades away the deep, abiding, long-suffering, forebearing and messy love we once knew as agape for the manufactured stuff of on-demand pity, off-the-shelf counsel and the latest training in interpersonal techniques, demographic profiles and marketing trends.
Didn't Jesus say that we could not serve both God and mammon?
qb
Sadly, we are reaping that harvest here in Amarillo at my home church. Oh, yes! There is a shiny, seductive veneer of success, but it is measured in the stuff of mammon: tushes in the pews, clams in the tiller, squares on the architect's drawing table, spires on the horizon and column-inches in the Globe-News. It is all very impressive.
Impressive, as in: just like those huge churches in the sprawling, youthful, fabulous suburbs of Las Vegas, or Atlanta, or Dallas.
Impressive, as in: just like all the other kings and kingdoms of this world.
But the banality, the sameness, the damnable soullessness of it all...
...a soullessness that crucifies the prophet, casts aside the shepherd and kisses the king's scepter.
...a soullessness that brooks neither thoughtful dissent from its vision nor substantive challenges to the judgment of its patrons (and their hirelings).
...a soullessness that keeps family and spontaneity and tradition at a careful arm's length but embraces production cues, pixels and scripts as if they were long-lost lovers.
...a soullessness that trades spiritual passion, classical wisdom and the earthy grace of God Himself for something newer, more glamorous, less risky and more controllable - in other words, a cheap harlot who does what she's told and keeps her mouth shut. Or else.
...a soullessness that basks in the heady affirmation and fawning loyalty of the ninety-and-nine but steadfastly refuses to hear and heed the mournful cries of the scattered one.
...a soullessness that views pastoral responsibility and church governance in terms of the iron fist, the wagging finger and the dismissive wave rather than the outstretched hand.
...a soullessness that insists on no special accommodations for the old and weak but throws itself shamelessly at the young, healthy and beautiful (and who - coincidentally - have a lot of upside salary potential).
...a soullessness that trades away the deep, abiding, long-suffering, forebearing and messy love we once knew as agape for the manufactured stuff of on-demand pity, off-the-shelf counsel and the latest training in interpersonal techniques, demographic profiles and marketing trends.
Didn't Jesus say that we could not serve both God and mammon?
qb
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Freedom and Virtue
Detouring briefly...
qb has been steadily devouring Yoder, Hauerwas and Thiessen Nation, as well as copious amounts of Willard (of course). One of the strains of thought that winds its way through all of that material implicitly - and occasionally, in the case of Willard, explicitly - criticizes the annoying American habit of venerating freedom above all other collective ideals. Their writings, however, argue for a higher level of virtue among the American people.
But qb is wondering: if virtue is the aim (and if agape love is the highest expression of virtue), is not freedom a sine qua non, necessary even though not sufficient? Can a person pursue love without the freedom to choose to do so? Why is devotion to freedom antithetical somehow to the Christian idea of virtue?
qb
qb has been steadily devouring Yoder, Hauerwas and Thiessen Nation, as well as copious amounts of Willard (of course). One of the strains of thought that winds its way through all of that material implicitly - and occasionally, in the case of Willard, explicitly - criticizes the annoying American habit of venerating freedom above all other collective ideals. Their writings, however, argue for a higher level of virtue among the American people.
But qb is wondering: if virtue is the aim (and if agape love is the highest expression of virtue), is not freedom a sine qua non, necessary even though not sufficient? Can a person pursue love without the freedom to choose to do so? Why is devotion to freedom antithetical somehow to the Christian idea of virtue?
qb
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Brad Delp, R.I.P.
As a naive 11-year-old, I flew from my home in Albuquerque to McAllen, TX, to stay with my dear grandmother, my uncle and my aunt, and play a couple of tennis tournaments. Grandma took me to the mall one day, and I splurged, putting down about 7 slaps for the recently released, eponymous album called "Boston." I had heard that the lead guitarist was an MIT-educated brainiac who had designed and built his own 24-track recording equipment, and that was impressive enough, but all I knew as a preadolescent was that those guys knew how to rock, and that vocalist...
...wow, did he have a great set of pipes and a beautiful rock timbre.
I guess other rockers had more musical influence on the scene, but I never felt their loss quite this much. Maybe I'm just older. Maybe I've had similar pangs of despair now, and this is a bitter reminder. Or maybe it's just because this guy was such a stand-up, classy, kind fellow, and it seems like such a waste. Maybe it's all of that. But this really hurts.
Jehovah God, would you look down on Brad Delp with mercy? And on his family, friends and bandmates?
qb
...wow, did he have a great set of pipes and a beautiful rock timbre.
I guess other rockers had more musical influence on the scene, but I never felt their loss quite this much. Maybe I'm just older. Maybe I've had similar pangs of despair now, and this is a bitter reminder. Or maybe it's just because this guy was such a stand-up, classy, kind fellow, and it seems like such a waste. Maybe it's all of that. But this really hurts.
Jehovah God, would you look down on Brad Delp with mercy? And on his family, friends and bandmates?
qb
Friday, March 02, 2007
Eat This Book
From Eugene Peterson's new masterpiece, _Eat This Book_, p. 11:
*****
Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul - eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight. Words of men and women long dead, or separated by miles and/or years, come off the page and enter our lives freshly and precisely, conveying truth and beauty and goodness, words that God's Spirit has used and uses to breathe life into our souls. Our access to reality deepens into past centuries, spreads across continents. But this reading also carries with it subtle dangers. Passionate words of men and women spoken in ecstasy can end up flattened on the page and dissected with an impersonal eye. Wild words wrung out of excruciating suffering can be skinned and stuffed, mounted and labeled as museum specimens.
*****
Even this magnificent morsel does not do justice to what I'm finding here. Run - don't walk - to Amazon.com and order it. Let Peterson take you by the hand and walk you gingerly into God's world, the world that inhabits the holy Scriptures, the scrolls that John, Ezekiel and Jeremiah ate so long ago.
qb
*****
Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul - eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight. Words of men and women long dead, or separated by miles and/or years, come off the page and enter our lives freshly and precisely, conveying truth and beauty and goodness, words that God's Spirit has used and uses to breathe life into our souls. Our access to reality deepens into past centuries, spreads across continents. But this reading also carries with it subtle dangers. Passionate words of men and women spoken in ecstasy can end up flattened on the page and dissected with an impersonal eye. Wild words wrung out of excruciating suffering can be skinned and stuffed, mounted and labeled as museum specimens.
*****
Even this magnificent morsel does not do justice to what I'm finding here. Run - don't walk - to Amazon.com and order it. Let Peterson take you by the hand and walk you gingerly into God's world, the world that inhabits the holy Scriptures, the scrolls that John, Ezekiel and Jeremiah ate so long ago.
qb
Friday, February 23, 2007
Willard on Church Leadership
We can only tantalize ourselves here with an excerpt, but Dallas Willard has some interesting things to say about our inclination to create cults of personality around charismatic leaders, who then strip from us our sense of need to hear from God ourselves. The whole section is worth reading, pp. 80-84 in Hearing God.
Spokespeople for the Christian community as well as the general public are frequently heard to lament the way in which cults turn their adherents into mindless robots. In our highly fragmented society, which is dominated by gadgetry and technology, lonely and alienated people are ready prey for any person who comes along and speaks with confidence about life and death - especially when that person has some degree of glamour and professes to speak for God.
There are now more than two and a half thousand distinct cults active in the United States alone, most based on the premise that God speaks to one or several central people in the group in a way that He does not speak to the ordinary members. These members are taught not to trust their own minds or their own communications with God except within the context of the group, with all its pressures toward conformity to the word from on high. Frequently adherents are taught to accept pronouncements that are self-contradictory and fly in the face of all common sense if the leader says they must...
...But the more mainline religious groups, if they would be honest, might find that their own models of leadership actually prepare the way for cult phenomena because they too use these methods to some extent. I must ask myself, as a Christian minister, to what extent I, in order to secure enough conformity and support to maintain and enlarge my plans, might be prepared to have people put away their minds and their own individual experiences of guidance and communication with their Lord. [emphasis added]
Willard goes on to concede that "having everyone personally confer with God does risk disagreements and uncooperativeness." He suggests that the answer is not to avoid the circumstance, but rather to understand that "if the spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets, individual prophets may from time to time find themselves earnestly questioned and examined - perhaps overturned - by those they are appointed to lead. These leaders will then...need a true humility - everyone thinking others better than themselves (Phil. 2:3) - for them to carry on with their work."
Willard's argument begins earlier in the process and goes further into the implications of both individual conference with God and leadership that does not foster it. But he confirms a great deal of what we have been saying here out of, for example, I Corinthians 14, in which we find Paul saying that individuals (what Willard calls whimsically the "ordinary people") ought to aspire to the gift of prophecy, not merely assume that one person - generally today identified as the all-powerful "senior pastor," but perhaps including a small cabal of sycophantic "elders" - has the sole responsibility of hearing God and then conveying the truths to the congregation.
Thoughts?
qb
Spokespeople for the Christian community as well as the general public are frequently heard to lament the way in which cults turn their adherents into mindless robots. In our highly fragmented society, which is dominated by gadgetry and technology, lonely and alienated people are ready prey for any person who comes along and speaks with confidence about life and death - especially when that person has some degree of glamour and professes to speak for God.
There are now more than two and a half thousand distinct cults active in the United States alone, most based on the premise that God speaks to one or several central people in the group in a way that He does not speak to the ordinary members. These members are taught not to trust their own minds or their own communications with God except within the context of the group, with all its pressures toward conformity to the word from on high. Frequently adherents are taught to accept pronouncements that are self-contradictory and fly in the face of all common sense if the leader says they must...
...But the more mainline religious groups, if they would be honest, might find that their own models of leadership actually prepare the way for cult phenomena because they too use these methods to some extent. I must ask myself, as a Christian minister, to what extent I, in order to secure enough conformity and support to maintain and enlarge my plans, might be prepared to have people put away their minds and their own individual experiences of guidance and communication with their Lord. [emphasis added]
Willard goes on to concede that "having everyone personally confer with God does risk disagreements and uncooperativeness." He suggests that the answer is not to avoid the circumstance, but rather to understand that "if the spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets, individual prophets may from time to time find themselves earnestly questioned and examined - perhaps overturned - by those they are appointed to lead. These leaders will then...need a true humility - everyone thinking others better than themselves (Phil. 2:3) - for them to carry on with their work."
Willard's argument begins earlier in the process and goes further into the implications of both individual conference with God and leadership that does not foster it. But he confirms a great deal of what we have been saying here out of, for example, I Corinthians 14, in which we find Paul saying that individuals (what Willard calls whimsically the "ordinary people") ought to aspire to the gift of prophecy, not merely assume that one person - generally today identified as the all-powerful "senior pastor," but perhaps including a small cabal of sycophantic "elders" - has the sole responsibility of hearing God and then conveying the truths to the congregation.
Thoughts?
qb
Friday, January 26, 2007
Saul's Legacy
I Samuel 8-9 has some fascinating aspects that might be thought to relate to modern, American-style, evangelical Christianity, or at least the version of it that is most familiar to me. I'm seeing it up close lately at my home church, where the new CEO/preacher has taken full advantage (to say the least) of the authority conferred on him.
1. Saul arose as a result of popular demand for a king despite repeated, prophetic warnings about the tragic consequences that would surely ensue.
2. There was a Samuel on the scene, a prophet who routinely heard the voice of God directing his steps. He was on the scene before Saul and at least had the ear of the people, if not the assent.
3. Saul was a commanding, physical presence with drop-dead appearance. The author of I Samuel doesn't give us much to go on concerning his personality, so I'm not sure if he was a charming guy or not. But he was certainly noticeable for his looks and his stature.
4. God, at times, will allow us to do our own thing knowing consequences will occur and people will get hurt. God intends to use the consequences of our disobedience to bring us back to Him. This is the redemptive curse at work. (Thanks to DM for this insight.) Can you think of more interesting aspects of the setting here?
qb
1. Saul arose as a result of popular demand for a king despite repeated, prophetic warnings about the tragic consequences that would surely ensue.
2. There was a Samuel on the scene, a prophet who routinely heard the voice of God directing his steps. He was on the scene before Saul and at least had the ear of the people, if not the assent.
3. Saul was a commanding, physical presence with drop-dead appearance. The author of I Samuel doesn't give us much to go on concerning his personality, so I'm not sure if he was a charming guy or not. But he was certainly noticeable for his looks and his stature.
4. God, at times, will allow us to do our own thing knowing consequences will occur and people will get hurt. God intends to use the consequences of our disobedience to bring us back to Him. This is the redemptive curse at work. (Thanks to DM for this insight.) Can you think of more interesting aspects of the setting here?
qb
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The Prophetic Call
From Brueggemann, _The Prophetic Imagination_:
"The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us."
__________
A brief reflection on Brueggemann, FWIW (stipulating that Brueggemann is right, for argument's sake). Let's see where it leads.
In the midst of institutional church leadership drunk with the promises of self-consolidating, self-validating, self-perpetuating power, how does a prophet arise? Where does he gain his legitimacy, his voice?
Brueggemann's infinitives are telling: the prophet is to nurture, to nourish and to evoke. The prophet does not impose himself. His legitimacy is not a matter of [carnal] power but of [spiritual] substance. He accepts that few will listen, and it saddens him, but it dims neither his hope in Christ, his faith in God nor his love for God's people. With both rod and staff, he shepherds those who will listen toward "a new consciousness and a new perception" that stand over against the tacit norms and the spoken imperatives of a fatally enculturated church. His prophecy is content to begin with a whispered riddle among those whose ears are tuned.
But Brueggemann's picture begs the question: whence arises the prophet's claim to divine favor? Among the shrill competition for an audience by a horde of would-be prophets armed with proof-texts, reams of demographic survey data and intimidating stacks of case studies, what form does the hand of God's favor take? How does the modern Amos know when it is time to thunder forth, and how does Ezekiel know when simply to mime his message in some cryptic, enigmatic way?
There are so many more questions to raise, but this bite is big enough for now.
qb
"The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us."
__________
A brief reflection on Brueggemann, FWIW (stipulating that Brueggemann is right, for argument's sake). Let's see where it leads.
In the midst of institutional church leadership drunk with the promises of self-consolidating, self-validating, self-perpetuating power, how does a prophet arise? Where does he gain his legitimacy, his voice?
Brueggemann's infinitives are telling: the prophet is to nurture, to nourish and to evoke. The prophet does not impose himself. His legitimacy is not a matter of [carnal] power but of [spiritual] substance. He accepts that few will listen, and it saddens him, but it dims neither his hope in Christ, his faith in God nor his love for God's people. With both rod and staff, he shepherds those who will listen toward "a new consciousness and a new perception" that stand over against the tacit norms and the spoken imperatives of a fatally enculturated church. His prophecy is content to begin with a whispered riddle among those whose ears are tuned.
But Brueggemann's picture begs the question: whence arises the prophet's claim to divine favor? Among the shrill competition for an audience by a horde of would-be prophets armed with proof-texts, reams of demographic survey data and intimidating stacks of case studies, what form does the hand of God's favor take? How does the modern Amos know when it is time to thunder forth, and how does Ezekiel know when simply to mime his message in some cryptic, enigmatic way?
There are so many more questions to raise, but this bite is big enough for now.
qb
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