Kingdom Matters

qb moved his blog

2009-02-20T16:24:00.001-06:00

Just in case you monitor this channel, qb moved his blog over a year ago. If you're interested in joining the other two people who read it, you can find it at

http://qbsblog.wordpress.com

Peace,

Pimp the Church

2007-07-28T07:25:00.000-05:00

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

Kenneson on Joy II

2007-07-26T12:45:00.000-05:00

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

The Pastoral Mandate

2007-07-24T09:06:00.000-05:00

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

A Rant on Small Groups and Success

2007-07-13T12:55:00.000-05:00

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

Leaving the Ninety and Nine

2007-07-09T08:46:00.000-05:00

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.

Marketing the "church"

2007-07-01T15:30:00.000-05:00

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

Jesus' Forgiving Spirit

2007-06-08T15:56:00.000-05:00

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

Reflections on a Wise, Master Teacher

2007-05-07T13:28:00.000-05:00

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

Cultosaurus Ecclesiasticus

2007-04-24T17:33:00.000-05:00

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

"Censorship?" Gimme a Break

2007-04-14T17:04:00.000-05:00

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*

Just who are these people?

2007-04-12T06:30:00.000-05:00

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

Commoditizing Jesus - A Lover's Quarrel

2007-03-29T10:21:00.000-05:00

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

Freedom and Virtue

2007-03-21T13:05:00.000-05:00

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

Brad Delp, R.I.P.

2007-03-15T19:08:00.000-05:00

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

Eat This Book

2007-03-02T13:25:00.000-06:00

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

Willard on Church Leadership

2007-02-23T06:00:00.000-06:00

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

Saul's Legacy

2007-01-26T13:22:00.000-06:00

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

The Prophetic Call

2007-01-24T10:33:00.000-06:00

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 Roots of Discontent

2006-11-08T09:09:00.000-06:00

In his blog today (11/8/06), Mike Cope posed the following scenario:

I spoke with two men.

One is unhappy at church. Some changes have him feeling uncomfortable. He just doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to be so uncomfortable. He doesn’t care for the way the church is heading. He’s exploring other options.

The other has never been happier. He was lost and is now found. He was unemployed and through a ministry of the church has just been hired. He is pouring himself into outreach. He, with his broken, difficult past, has become an informal leader of the church. The shade of his skin, the level of his education, the type of home he was raised in — all are quite different than many others at the church. But he smiles and laughs as he talks about his new family. He grins as he introduces me to others as “my pastor.”

Both men matter. Both deserve pastoral care.

One respondent from Mike’s blogosphere then said:

But I do have a question. When and where do we find in the Bible we are suppose to be comfortable? I hear that so often. “I am just not comfortable doing that.” Why do we think we have to be comfortable in everything we do? We don’t expect that in our jobs, at least if we plan to keep a job long! So why do we think we should be comfortable in everything at church?

I don’t think it’s helpful to suppose that people think they “have to be comfortable.”

Much of the change around us can easily appear arbitrary because (a) its motivations are absent, (b) its motivations are poorly communicated, (c) its motivations are NOT communicated or (d) its motivations are not interpreted in the context of what the plausible alternatives were. It is also possible, of course, that they appear arbitrary because the observer is (A) lazy or (B) simply incapable of seeing what many think self-evident.

I would hope that folks would extend the charity of Christ to the observer long enough to discern whether the case is (A) or (B); and in the meantime, elders need to take a long look at their pastoral and institutional assumptions – not just once, but continually – to discern whether there are contributions from (a-d).

All of those things, to the extent they exist, may arise because of any number of institutional pathologies. On the one hand, the church may have invested too much power and discretion in one man, who then feels no urgency to communicate well - in two directions, we mean, taking the congregation’s pulse before moving ahead with significant change. (Some might apply the term, hubris, to that phenomenon.) Or the elders may have decided that good, transparent, open-minded communication as ideas and plans develop is too risky, that it invites discord, so they demur from openness until the train has left the station. And there are probably other possibilities. In each case, though, one can easily suppose that the tendency to control and manipulate the future shows up at different stages and at different levels of authority.

I guess what I’m saying is this: to jump right to the assumption that the observer is lazy is itself lazy. Surely we can be more thoughtful than that.

The Kerry Flap

2006-11-02T10:02:00.000-06:00

May qb just say this?

No fan of John Kerry am I, but all of this public consternation and
bellowing is just opportunistic, wilful misconstruing.  There isn't a
person alive (forgive the hyperbole here) who doesn't know that, deep
in his heart of hearts, John Kerry was trying to make sport of
President Bush, not the troops.  The references to Kerry's 1972
testimony - you remember, don't you?  The "black, the brown and the
poor" - are just more of the same.  There was an important question to
be raised about the relative merits of volunteer vs. compulsory
military service, and one of them was the nature of the interaction of
the financial incentives to volunteering and the fiscal demographics of
the young people who would be invited to volunteer.  We need to keep
those debates warm.

We're better off as a country discussing the merits of his point in the
context in which he made it instead of taking what is an obvious,
rhetorical blunder - which of us has never made such a blunder in
public speaking? - and using it to score petty political points.

Kerry thinks Bush is an ignorant boob.  He is wrong in that assessment.
But that is no justification for the kind of posturing that's going
on.  If the elephants maintain control of both houses, qb will be glad
and deeply relieved, but it will have been a Pyrrhic victory because of
the way it came about.

qb

Scot McKnight on the Emerging Church - Read It

2006-11-02T09:20:00.000-06:00

I am so glad I read Mike Cope's blog this morning, because he directed me to a transcript of a recent speech by some dude named McKnight or something at a reformed seminary somewhere. Find it at

http://foolishsage.com/2006/10/29/scot-mcknights-full-text-of-what-is-the-emerging-church-available-here/

The reasons I bring it up are severalfold.

1. Not too terribly long ago, qb in his ruthless ignorance castigated Coop and some other silverbacks around RM-Bible for being - and this was epithetical - a *gasp* pomo. (For those of you in Rio Linda, that's short for "postmodern person." It also charmingly permits the construction of an elegant term, "pomophobe," which adequately describes qb in one of his former manifestations.) But qb's pomophobia was borne, as so many brands of xenophobia are, of an inexcusable misunderstanding of the object of his righteous indignation. McKnight's speech is a wonderful antivenin for that.

2. Some great words in there. McKnight - qb doesn't know who the Sam Hill he is - appears to be equal parts scholar and welder, which is to say, he has no trouble stepping from "noetic" and "apophetic" into "[ ] sucks." He is multifluent; he makes you laugh at your familiar self, and then he sends you whistling to the dictionary.

3. Perhaps most importantly, he urges those of us who tend to build, and then reject, caricatures of movements that we fear or suspect to give the emerging church a fair hearing, which he defines as "describing it until its adherents say, `yes, you've got it.'" This is a helpful exercise for anyone, most notably qb, who is capable of the most toxic, oblivious forms of xenophobia.

4. Finally, the substance is really good. He characterizes the emerging church as a lake into which four streams flow: postmodernism, praxis, post-evangelical and political. There is much to be admired in how McKnight has described each of those four streams: generously, self-deprecatingly, but with a clear-eyed realism. (For example, he concedes that the movement's politics are, Brian McLaren's protestations notwithstanding, solidly liberal - as Americans experience that term. But I think McKnight would deny that the political conservative or the independent could not find a home within the emerging church movement, if only as a thorn, a corrective to the excesses of the social gospel.)

So I commend this speech-transcript to you. Pour a cup of Peet's coffee into your stainless travel mug, put on your Birkenstocks (!) and sink back into a bean bag with this thing. It will do you some good; it has certainly done qb some good already.

qb

A Complete Review of Frost's _Exiles_

2006-10-13T13:57:00.000-05:00

There can be no question that Michael Frost is a thoughtful guy, a critic with a deep and thoroughgoing desire to live victoriously after the manner of Christ. The first half of the book is a withering but good-natured critique of Christendom, especially its American, evangelical manifestations, which have departed in so many subtle ways from the liminal, exilic calling that Jesus modeled for us. Frost's extended meditation on what God's incarnation in Jesus implies for our mission on earth is passionate, moving, profound and relatively free of facile pap. His argument that the church must aggressively rid itself of unholy alliances with earthly kingdoms -- in the first half of the book, that means governments and quasi-governmental institutions -- is compelling. It is reminiscent of Roxburgh's little jewel on liminality and the church, and it is unfailingly practical.

Unfortunately, Frost apparently finds it impossible to believe that the kinds of exilic values he holds, and that he urges on the rest of us, are compatible with political conservatism, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary that he does not bother to consider or cite. The second half of the book is little more than Frost's grandstanding and rapid-fire recitation of liberal talking points. His finely tuned sensitivity to nuance and paradox in the first half of the book gives way to an incoherent strafing run fueled by contempt for George W. Bush, corporations (Frost inexplicably neglects to observe that corporations are themselves people and could not exist without the personal investments of people -- and especially the publicly held ones that are responsible for a tremendous amount of the wealth that makes global-scale benevolence possible) and the diverse, multifaceted motivations for the current Iraq war. Frost justifiably deplores Western paralysis during many of the recent humanitarian crises across the world (e. g., Rwanda, Sudan, the Balkans) for our failure to stand courageously with the voiceless and downtrodden and oppressed, but then he turns a blind eye to the liberation of thousands of silent children and dissidents imprisoned (to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands wantonly exterminated) under the Hussein regime in Iraq, implicitly and blithely writing them off as unworthy of the very blood Frost rightly wanted us to shed in those other places. These latter chapters are classic paeans to modern, liberal myopia and simplistic, utopian politics, both of which are unworthy of such a thoughtful, engaging author.

In short, the second half of the book disappoints precisely because of the wonderfully high standard he set in the first half: returning to the scandalous person of Jesus and mining His life for direction for the modern, missional church. The second half of the book could have been written to those same standards in a way that relies on hopeful, prophetic discontent with the church he loves; instead, Frost's arguments devolve into a droning recitation of the Soros party line on everything from Wal-Mart's alleged, unmitigated pillaging of small-town America to the irredeemable evils of globalization to the baseless accusation that American political conservatism is raping the environment by refusing to ratify Kyoto -- the political left's environmental Buddha. He wilfully ignores -- or, less credibly, demonstrates his ignorance of -- the market mechanisms that actually benefit the environment, such as cap-and-trade strategies that have actually reduced SO2 emissions, as well as the incredible, ecological devastation wrought on the oil-rich states of Central Asia under the repressive Soviet regimes of the 1900s.

It would seem that Frost wants to have his cake -- eco-credibility for his ecologically responsible stance on energy efficiency -- and eat it, too, betrayed by his theologically grounded emphasis on drinking good, locally made beer (a woefully energy-inefficient manufacturing process if there ever were one). Frost fails to recognize that the very economies of scale that he resents on behalf of his environmental clients actually make possible the investments that large corporations are able to make in environmental protection.

The ironies of his conflicting positions -- what if the long-term, highest and ecologically best use of crude oil and coal is to make the (recyclable!) plastics he deplores instead of the airplane fuel he guzzles as he jets around the world preaching his seductive, social gospel? -- never seem to flower into an enlightening, salutary, cognitive dissonance. And that's too bad. The first half of the book is an inspiring tour de force. And that, by itself, is reason enough for Christians -- even those evil, red-state evangelicals -- to buy the book. Perhaps in his second edition, he will return to his roots and write a second half of _Exiles_ that retains his muscular, prophetic voice without so transparently aping the Michael Moores and Ted Kennedys of the world. Unless he does, he is unfortunately less likely to get a fair hearing by the very souls he ostensibly wants to engage.

qb

Michael Frost's _Exiles_

2006-10-06T10:49:00.000-05:00

"This book is written for those Christians who find themselves falling into the cracks between contemporary secular Western culture and a quaint, old-fashioned church culture of respectability and conservatism. This book is for the many people who wish to be faithful followers of the radical Jesus but no longer find themselves able to fit into the bland, limp, unsavory straitjacket of a church that seems to be yearning to return to the days when "everyone" used to attend church and "Christian family values" reigned. This book is for those who can't remain in the safe modes of church and who wish to live expansive, confident Christian lives in this society. This book is for those Christians who feel themselves ready (or yearning) to jump ship but don't want to be left adrift in a world where greed, consumerism, laziness and materialism toss them about endlessly and pointlessly. Such Christians live with the nagging tension of being at home neither in the world nor in the church as they've known it. Is there some way of embracing a Christ-centered faith and lifestyle that are lived tenaciously and confidently right out in the open where such a faith is not normally valued? I think so, but it will require a dangerous departure from standard church practice. It seems that the church is still hoping and praying that the ground will shift back and our society will embrace once again the values that it once shared with the Christian community...

"The death of Christendom removes the final props that have supported the culturally respectable, mainstream, suburban version of Christianity. This is a Christianity expressed by the "Sunday Christian" phenomenon wherein church attendance has very little effect on the lifestyles or values or priorities expressed from Monday to Saturday. This version of Christianity is a facade, a method for practitioners to appear like fine, upstanding citizens without allowing the claims and teachings of Jesus to bite very hard in everyday life...[This version of Christianity is disappearing] leaving only the faithful behind to rediscover the Christian experience as it was intended: a radical, subversive, compassionate community of followers of Jesus...

"I, for one, am happy to see the end of Christendom."

A Few Assumptions We Seem to Make

2006-10-06T10:30:00.000-05:00

1. "Inviting" is fundamentally equivalent to "going."

2. A Christian community must have a physical headquarters.

3. Bigger is necessarily better, numerically speaking.

4. Efficiency and standardization are paramount virtues for the Church.

5. We need one leader to conceive and articulate vision and ideas.

6. Dissent is inherently divisive and dangerous.

7. Marketing - segmenting, and then catering to those segments' whims - is essential to reach the modern world with the Gospel.

8. Prophetic and apostolic roles (even if not viewed as identical with or equivalent to the Apostles per se) are relics of another time and place.

9. The focal point of Christian life, and therefore the arena of outreach in which we ought to invest most of our resources, is the Sunday assembly.

10. We need more hirelings, not fewer.

11. The tithe's proper "storehouse" is the church tiller.

12. Institutional orthodoxy is of comparable rank to doctrinal orthodoxy.

13. If our building, our staff and our programming were taken away from us, our congregation as we have always known it would cease to exist.

14. Experimentation is as dangerous as dissent.

In a moment of raw candor a couple of months ago, a close friend challenged me to describe what "my" church would look like if I were to start from scratch. At the time, out of false humility, I demurred. I have since come to understand that it is possible (essential?) to re-imagine the church according to my current understanding and still exhibit the humility to know that my concepts are subject to error, correction and outright contradiction by God or His people. So I'm walking down that road my brother challenged me to walk...not with the intent of actually starting "my" own church (which is terrible language to use in reference to Christ’s church), but as a means of coming to a coherent sense of what I understand the mission of Christ's people to be so that I can act on that understanding, in faith and in cooperation with God's people.

Michael Frost (Exiles, Chapter 1) says that the church has lost something vital through the centuries as it got comfortable with its respectability and cultural status as the focal point of social life: the dynamic, shared, multifaceted leadership of apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic dimensions (see Eph. 4:1ff), preferring the safe predictability of the pastoral and teaching gifts. I do not for a moment believe that returning the apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic (A-P-E) dimensions to church leadership must diminish the pastoral and teaching (P-T) gifts; if anything, the rise of A-P-E amplifies the need for strong P-T dimensions as a corrective. We take new ground with A-P-E, and we settle it with P-T. But we expend all of our energies these days on P-T, except for those hollow "programs" of the church that are designed for "outreach," by which we mean ultimately "inviting the unchurched to get churched at our church." No wonder, then, that the culture sees us as self-indulgent posers. What does that religious mall out on in affluent, fast-growing suburbia say to Amarillo? "If we build it, they will come." And they laugh at us. They won't come, for the most part (except for the members we borrow temporarily from other fellowships!), because they suspect rightly that we're all hat and no cowboy. If we really believed what Jesus said and taught, we'd be unafraid to jettison the distinct trappings of middle-upper-class, white, cultural religion and go engage the very ones to whom Jesus went to proclaim the kingdom of heaven's presence among us: the poor, the downtrodden, the outcasts, the lepers.

We have lost the "go" from the Great Commission with an undue focus on the "as you go" aspect of the Greek/Aramaic used there. We seem to assume that "as you go" implies a sort of benign, passive, trickle-down, side effect of so-called "discipleship." Our local preacher is right to call us to intentionality; he has the right wine, in other words, he just has the wrong wineskins to put it in. McManus and Eldredge both have important things to say about this, but we've got to go further and more wisely with it.

I know I'm a little slow on the up-take, but I'm finally getting to where many of you already are and have been for some time. I'm asking you to help me (a) figure out how to get this message out there for discussion, and then (b) get this message out there for discussion. Or perhaps I should say that I want to help you get this message out there where we can evaluate it soberly and open-mindedly. Our contest is not with our local preachers per se; it really is with the entrenched spirits of myopia, stasis, comfort and cultural respectability that have us paralyzed and imprisoned in Christendom’s world view, from the grassroots all the way up (ugh!) to our leaders. Time for a breakout. Now, how to go about it?

Looking Ahead in the Stone/Campbell Movement

2006-09-22T16:47:00.000-05:00

Al Maxey’s request for our impressions of where the Stone/Campbell

movement is heading caught me squarely in the middle of a season of

life during which I have been considering this very set of questions.

(I must admit up front that much of my extrabiblical reading over the last

couple of years has been narrowly focused -- D. Willard, E. Peterson,

P. Kenneson, S. Hauerwas -- so you might wish to take this with a grain of

salt for its inevitable bias.)

I see a schism coming, but not one like the Constantinian one or the

Reformation, or even the CoC/ICC/DoC split of the 1800s.  This soft

schism will be more of what you might call a "retrenchment," which will

result from and be guided and energized by a few key, related factors:

1.  Growing disillusionment with the megachurch and its big-box,

program-oriented, "seeker-sensitive," least-common-denominator,

consumerist religion;

2.  Growing disillusionment with the cults of executive/pulpit

personality that the megachurches have spawned;

3.  A growing realization that salvation and serious, self-denying

discipleship to Jesus are intimately intertwined;

4.  Within the Stone/Campbell movement especially, a broad sense of

boredom, emptiness and even exhaustion concerning the peripheral issues

that have so frequently and persistently provided flash points for

division over the past 30 years (that is:  "C'mon, I'm through worrying

about those issues; let's get on with the serious, difficult,

significant business of making disciples and quit fighting old, stale,

broken-record battles over pitch pipes and guitars and Bible schools

etc.");

5.  A growing appreciation for how remarkably irrelevant the question

of "traditional vs. contemporary worship styles" really is - especially

compared to the need for sustained, personal, spiritual discipline(s) -

for a deeply invested community of faith trying to make disciples

throughout the 165 hours per week we are not in the assembly; and

6.  A more critical persuasion that in order to preserve our prophetic

voice in the world, we must reject and resist identifying with

political entities on either the right or the left, opting instead to

focus our energies on the substantive inbreaking of the kingdom of God

among us, even when God's kingdom has clearly political dimensions for

the issue under consideration.  (Maybe a shorter way of saying this is:

 We will recognize that being coopted by any political party is an

abuse of God's church, and we will run from it.)

I think we face an era in which we will become "leaner and meaner," so

to speak, as we lay aside some of the major pieces of baggage that have

hindered our prophetic witness, our spiritual depth and the quality of

our discipleship.  I certainly hope so.

One of the most important implications of this is:  it will be a bumpy

ride that will require that we raise up dedicated, humble shepherds who

can stand against the cultural forces arrayed against (and even

within!) us.

Kirk Couloir Memories - I Think I'm Gonna Be Sick

2006-08-21T11:07:00.000-05:00

By a fluke of the Web, I just happened upon the tragedy of Douglas Beach, a firefighter from Cheyenne, WY, who died on June 11th of this year after falling on an ill-advised descent of the Kirk Couloir, which drops from the saddle between Challenger Point and Kit Carson Mountain on the north side of that connecting ridge.

On June 25th, 2002, I took that very same, ill-advised descent route to avoid having to return over the top of Challenger Point to my camp at Willow Lake. I knew when I got down to the snowfield fingers that poke up through the rocky bluffs that I had made a terrible, terrible mistake; my ice axe was back in the pickup at the Crestone trailhead. But once I had committed, I had to see it through, and it was terrifying. By the time I lost my footing, I was - thank God - over the part of the big snowfield to the west that just ran out into the rocks, rather uneventfully. My attempt at arresting my slide was laughable - a silly little nickel-plated latrine shovel or garden trowel.

Douglas and his five children and his wife paid for his mistake with his life. I walked away with ice burns on my forearms, knees that knocked for the next 48 hours, and a severely chastened spirit for almost having left my three boys fatherless.

To whoever found my North Face shell halfway up that snowfield back in '02: keep it. I never want to see it again.

qb

A Different Kind of Sermon?

2006-06-22T16:47:00.000-05:00

Big Mikeâ€™s rhetorical question about â€œa different kind of sermonâ€� rings truly with me.

(See Big Mike Lewis' comment at http://www.preachermike.com/2006/06/14/training-for-professionalism#comments)

Iâ€™m not really sure that when Jesus sat down and started to teach on the hillside, he prefaced his remarks by saying, â€œthe sermon starts here; Iâ€™ll let you know when Iâ€™m done.â€� The sermons of Acts 17, Acts 2, Acts 8 and elsewhere just arenâ€™t that awfully long, and they seem to fit more squarely into a model-less model, a context that Willard seems to hint at with his renaming of the â€œdiscourse on the hill.â€� They were ad-hoc remarks that jump-started a dialogue, in other words, instead of standing on their own as one-way sermons. The one-way sermon model seems to lend itself to perpetuating and being perpetuated by the anthropocentrism, preachercentrism, â€œyou da manâ€� culture that pervades the contemporary church across all denominational strata.

The passage that lurks in the back of my mind here is I Corinthians 14, in which Paul makes it pretty plain that he wishes all of the church â€œmembersâ€� or â€œbody partsâ€� would prophesy. Similarly to Moses (Numbers 11?), Paul was not interested, apparently, in being considered the ultimate prophetic authority within a group of Christians. He wanted that gift to be dispersed among all who aspired to it, had been gifted by the Holy Spirit â€œjust as he willsâ€� and had the humble temperament required to exercise it faithfully.

A Small Victory for Federalism

2006-06-20T10:20:00.000-05:00

"Voters will have the final say on South Dakota's tough new law that bans almost all abortions."

(See http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ABORTION_SOUTH_DAKOTA?SITE=7219&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-06-19-21-44-19)

SD legislature passed a tough anti-abortion law last year, but instead of trying to fight in court, abortion-rights advocates collected signatures to put the law to a referendum. They got the necessary signatures.

That seems, to me, to be a hopeful sign...getting the courts out of the business of splitting moral hairs and inventing new law, reserving their efforts for interpreting laws already on the books written by legislators who are accountable to the people. Short of a benign dictatorship, this seems to be the best way of resolving our national dilemma: let the individual states decide what they're going to do.

qb

Addition by Subtraction? A contrary view

2006-04-27T09:26:00.000-05:00

In responding to a recent blog by Mike Cope (www.preachermike.com), "Addition by Subtraction," a brother or sister with pseudonym CB wondered whether that whole notion meant that "our family wants us to leave, or is just indifferent to our staying." CB, I'm inclined to share your apparent distaste for the whole idea. (That does not mean, of course, that I am attacking Mike. My desire is to add to the conversation, not to condemn a man who has amply demonstrated his compassion for and devotion to the saints of God.) The context of Mike's post was a shift in a local church toward a "missional" posture, and the discomfort that would inevitably result among some in the rank-and-file.

The whole notion of â€œaddition by subtractionâ€� seems tainted by an elitist point of view unless it is applied to the situations to which Jesus Himself applied it:

1. In the matter of church discipline for public sin (Matthew 18)
2. In the matter of choosing whether to serve Jesus or not (Luke 14)

We are clearly shown that these weighty matters justify the separation of believers; even if itâ€™s painful, it must be done. But is it equally justified in the matter of choosing what our evangelistic strategy is going to be? That seems to be a stretch, a nod to efficiency, a desire not to be held back by â€œthose recalcitrants,â€� a form of pin-your-ears-back urgency that neither the Gospels nor the Epistles seems to convey to us.

In musing over this whole idea, the thought occurred to me that no shepherd in Jesusâ€™ mold would be content simply to let some sheep wander off to God-knows-where (Luke 15) without some bona fide effort to reach them, communicate with them, listen to their hearts. â€œAddition by subtractionâ€� is euphemistic language for, â€œweâ€™re probably better off without you anyway.â€�

Of course, no shepherd has standing to prohibit someone from moving on if that is his/her conviction and intention. But simply to let him/her go without challenging his/her decision with a pastoral heart just seems contrary to the spirit of John 10:1ff, Luke 15 etc.

Iran's got us over a barrel - a few uneducated musings

2006-04-18T16:29:00.000-05:00

As it is, they can yank our chains anytime they want, almost without impunity. If we slap worldwide sanctions on them, then they've got nothing to lose, so they pull their oil off the market, and we end up in a bidding war with China, India, Europe and Japan for the rest of the oil on the market, followed hard by political upheaval here when Sadie Q. Public has to cancel her trip to Los Cabos and the truckers across the country revolt (see also, "France.") Maybe we win that bidding war, but at what price? $100/barrel? What Bin Laden was unable to do on 9/11, Iran can do almost at will, at least as far as major, irreversible body shots to our economy. And they don't have to fire a bullet to do it; it's all economic policy stuff. It stands to reason, though, that when Iran pulls its oil off the market, the cost of our war in Iraq goes up immediately, which means more domestic pressure to pull out, not less. That nutcase in Tehran is crazy...like a fox.

Krauthammer said it right (although he had the wrong solution): "we are criminally unserious about energy policy." OPEC has us by the short hairs, and all it takes is one serious player to bring us to our knees. Saudi Arabia may be trying to help us right now, but their fields are in decline, and their claimed reserves may not be real. Canada's tar sands have everybody licking their chops, but how much oil does one have to burn to extract a barrel's worth of oil from those super-gummy reservoirs? Ethanol's all well and good, but how many acres of cattle feed (corn and sorghum) have to be redirected to grow corn for ethanol, and how are our beef-eating citizens going to like it when their double-meat McSlams end up doubling in price because feed costs have doubled...or when we start buying more Argentine beef to compensate for the higher livestock production costs here at home? It's a monstrously complicated picture, but I can't think of any scenarios under which to be terribly optimistic.

So I dunno, but I wouldn't get too wrapped around the axle about an Exxon exec's $400 million parachute. That retirement plan doesn't even cause a blip on the economic implications of Iran's upcoming decisions.

Who knows? We might be forced to view an Iranian move to take its oil off the market as an act of war. Lampooning the Iraq conflict as a "war for oil" misses the point: From here on out, every war is a war for oil, until we can figure out how to reduce our dependence on it. We dare not waste our strategic reserve just to keep Sadie comfortably in First Class on her way to Cabo.

In the meantime, some trust in horses, and some trust in chariots. How do I raise my boys in such a way that they will trust in God instead? America's had a great run for 200 years, but the party hostess is starting to bus the tables.

Elders as a "Board of Directors?"

2006-03-09T19:03:00.000-06:00

I guess I just don't get it these days. Since when did the primary function of elders become "to meet and make decisions," with a secondary function of "setting congregational policy?" Ugh. I'm having one of those moments. Ezekiel (see Chapter 34) didn't excoriate the elders of Israel for being "insufficiently nimble in their administration" or "insufficiently responsive to the directives of the CEO, aka the 'senior pastor.'" But that's what we're left with these days, or so it seems in the modern church that aspires to megachurch status.

*sigh*

qb

This One Looks Good

2005-10-31T15:18:00.000-06:00

From all appearances, Judge Alito looks like an excellent pick, certainly more energizing and compelling a choice than Harriet Miers. It boils down to this, it seems to me: if there's gonna be a brouhaha, and there is, we might as well make sure that it's not wasted on a nominee about which we're lukewarm. Let's get it on. Best wishes to you, Judge Alito.

qb

A Sigh of Relief

2005-10-28T11:58:00.000-05:00

Peggy Noonan has done it again.  Put words â€“ her strongest suit â€“ to your servantâ€™s thoughts.  Sort of.  Consider this closing excerpt from her October 27 column:
*****
Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.
I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."
You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.
Not all of course. There are a lot of people--I know them and so do you--trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives. They're trying to keep the boat afloat. Or, I should say, get the trolley back on the tracks.
That's what I think is going on with our elites. There are two groups. One has made a separate peace, and one is trying to keep the boat afloat.
*****
I find over the last year or so that I have spent less and less time and energy pondering political things and more and more time and energy pondering spiritual things.  (They are exclusive sets, or so they tell me.)  Yeah, the Miers nomination â€“ and sheâ€™s a great American patriot, donâ€™t get me wrong â€“ was a boneheaded move that self-inflicted unnecessary headaches on my beloved President Bush.  No, the president does not deserve all of the unalloyed vitriol that is spewed his way; these three hurricanes, and quite probably 9/11, would have happened no matter who was at the tiller.  All that, and so much more.
Still, despite the plain fact that such malignant attitudes could be rationally and successfully contested, I find myself disengaging from the Op-Ed page and all of the related venues for one simple reason.
Itâ€™s not quite the bunker mentality that Noonan seems to describe.  Itâ€™s more of a resignation to the Second Law, a concession to the monotonic descent to disorder.  And a subconscious decision to operate in a sphere in which my influence actually counts for something instead of being merely an oboe amongst the brass.
And I find myself doubting that many of our so-called â€œpublic servantsâ€� are really all that wise, all that noble.  The public they â€œserveâ€� surely cannot conceal its contempt for them, that much is clear.  And so whatâ€™s the point?  Even if they were noble, we donâ€™t view them that way.  Substantive arguments are viewed as war, or at least intemperate rudeness.  George Will is a â€œbrute?â€�  Really?  And if that gentle sage can be labeled a â€œbruteâ€� â€“ thatâ€™s the root of the word â€œbrutal,â€� may I remind you â€“ then what chance do I have to be heard at the level of merits?
Itâ€™s not fear of being persuaded to abandon my current beliefs; Iâ€™m secure enough in my identity to handle that.  And itâ€™s not shame; Iâ€™m convinced that being a conservative is worth the price one pays for making it known.  Itâ€™s just a sigh of resignation, of futility.
And of relief.  What greater joy is there than to retreat from all of that and take refuge in the park across the street with three healthy boys, all of them wide-eyed with the naÃ¯ve assurance that if they just packed enough engines onto that model rocket, it could carry them off to Cygnus?

Challenger Point summit shot 26 June 2002

2005-10-28T09:30:00.000-05:00

If Only Alec Baldwin Had Been Serious

2005-02-07T15:09:00.000-06:00

Drudge is linking to a story in the IH-T about disaffecteds for whom the Bush victory on 11/2/04 was the last straw and who are actively making plans to emigrate to more liberal-friendly Canada, where many of them can pursue their agnostic or extramarital agendas unfettered and unencumbered by the emotional load of a diversity of social opinion weighing on their shoulders. They are in desperate search of a more uniformly accommodating politic, it seems...and they will surely find it on Front Street.

Alas, it looks as if only 18,000 will make it this year. qb wonders aloud, "how can I help you guys?"

qb

p. s. ...many of them, in a delicious twist of irony, from the Seattle area. What a hoot *that* is!

The Divine Conspiracy

2005-02-04T11:47:00.001-06:00

Those of you needing something inspiring to read might want to pick up a copy of Dallas Willard's _The_Divine_Conspiracy_. Man, is it ever toothsome reading. You will never look at the Sermon on the Mount in quite the same way. qb is just about halfway through the book - it's not the easiest read in the world - and is mesmerized by the depth of it.

BTW, as qb learned this morning, if you pray for other people out of a desire to be their hero, it's time to check under the hood. God does not favor using His power to make US look good. About time qb learned that!

qb

The Right to Be An Ignoramus

2005-02-01T08:39:00.000-06:00

Perhaps qb would think differently if he had lost someone in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11...but the outrage over CU Professor Churchill's speaking engagement at some obscure college in the Rust Belt seems a bit over the top. In what way, precisely, does Churchill actually threaten us? One extremist after another keeps popping his head up and exposing himself for what he is, and qb is actually grateful for that.

The present political environment, in large measure created by President Bush's stubborn resolve, has been cathartic: the Michael Moores and the Howard Deans and the Terry McAuliffes and the Jacques Chiracs of the world have nowhere to run from their legacies and nowhere to hide from their true identities. Churchill is just another sorry example of the self-loathing left, and it comforts qb greatly to have such folks raise their heads instead of lurking down beneath somewhere, undetected and unexposed.

Mount of the Holy Cross 2005

2005-01-31T20:46:00.000-06:00

I made the mistake yesterday of lingering over the "Best New Gear" edition of Backpacker magazine, and it reminded me that 2005 must be the year in which I summit the Mount of the Holy Cross via the Notch Mountain shelter. I'll want to take a group with me to share the views, and maybe reminisce a little about how John Eldredge's books have brought the Scriptures to life again for me. An overnight next to the shelter would be a total gas.

Any of you who has summited by the Notch Mountain route, I'd be grateful for your tips and observations and trip reports. I'm a seasoned fourteener veteran (if 15 summits qualifies for that - does it change your opinion if one of them was Longs?), but my rather extreme experience descending in 2002 from the saddle between Kit Carson and Challenger Point has chastened me a bit about my intuition up there at 14,000'. (If you are the one who found my beloved North Face shell halfway down the big snowfield on June 26th, congratulations on a worthy find.)

A Luddite No More

2005-01-31T15:04:00.000-06:00

OK, folks, you win. The trend has overcome qb. Welcome to qb's blog, a repository of random musings from the fringe, a stream of consciousness with no apparent thematic center.

In qbland, we lean pretty far to the political right, but contrary viewpoints get a fair hearing if they're expressed with elegance and style. If you're up to the task, bring it on.

Enjoy!

qb