Enchanted Community

BLOG 5/29/16. PART II: GENERATIONAL CULTURES

In my last Blog I was seeking to make the point that every generation produces its own culture, and this reality has escalated most rapidly since somewhere just after World War II, when, not only did the world get much smaller, but the digital-internet age was in its birth throes making it much more difficult to maintain isolated and unchanging cultures. Somewhere in there, also, we passed out of that age in which the Christian church was a dominant force in the west, and into something of a secular, or post-Christian era. What had been significant and culture-forming in previous generations (millennium and a half?) was fading fast. The church was, and is, very slow to wake up to this.

Let me go back to my brief career in the small and isolated mountain Kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. My wife and I were there to teach for a semester in the seminary of the Lesotho Evangelical Church (the major Protestant church in that tiny kingdom). The kingdom of Lesotho came into being in the middle of the nineteenth century, in set of tragic historical attempts by the Dutch Boers to eliminate several major tribes that threatened them in south Africa. The remnants of those tribes survived and created an amalgam tribe (the Basotho) and chose a king for themselves (Moshoeshoe I). Moshoeshoe had heard that Christianity would be good for the tribe and so persuaded (kidnapped?) a couple of French Huguenot missionaries to come and tell his people about their faith. He, thereupon, declared that his tribe was Christian, and there came into being a church modeled upon the strict French Calvinism of the Huguenots, including the severe black black clothing, and the hymns. To their credit they did a remarkable job of training every believer to engage in its missionary effort to the remotest parts of that mountain kingdom in those early years.

Now here’s my point. That was tdhe Lesotho Evangelical Church’s founding in the (circa) 1840s. But we were there in the 1980s. The church communities still met in Huguenot style stark sanctuaries, they still sang the theologically correct but musically impossible hymns of the Huguenots. The women of the church wore long black dresses with white bibs and black pillbox hats, the clergy all wore the garb of the Huguenot clergy, etc. Yes, and by the time we were there  the church was living on life-support. Yet the Basotho have their own musical culture that is vibrant and is nearly always accompanied with spontaneous rhythmic dances that would make the Rockettes jealous. The culture was totally different from 1840, but the church had not changed, alas!.

(Stick with me, I’m going somewhere here) Meanwhile, while we were there the mission had employed an African-American master-mechanic from Illinois to maintain their motor pool. Charles and his white wife were both full-blown Pentecostals, and very much alive to the faith in Jesus, to the power of the Holy Spirit, and with love for the Basotho. Charles would get under the hood of cars and communicate his contagious faith with the Basotho men. Guess what? Within a couple of years there was a Pentecostal assembly fully formed in the Basotho culture of several thousand participants. Charles took the present culture, not the culture of the mid-19^th century seriously. (Do you get my point?)

The traditional patterns of institutional Christianity in our country, what with their handsome and expensive sanctuaries, pipe-organs, etc. were wonderfully meaningful in a former culture—but while the church wasn’t looking, the emerging generational cultures found such patterns totally irrelevant to their lives, and began to form Christian communities that were indigenous to them. Let me raid Mark Labberton’s web in which he quotes a famous German theologian of a half-century ago: Helmut Thielicke famously wrote that “the Gospel must be constantly forwarded to a new address because its recipient is repeatedly changing his place of residence.”Church institutions which are unable to think out of their past are living on borrowed time. You heard it from me. Count on it, it’s already happening. Generation cultures are different and important.

BLOG 5/25/16. IMPORTANT: GENERATIONAL CULTURES

There is no one-size-fits-all culture. This is a very important dimension of our understanding that we, as God’s New Humanity, need to be very sensitive to. And in our North American scene it is a reality that we are slow to come by. Fine-tune that a bit more and wake up to the reality that every generation produces its own cultural characteristics. Part of our equipping to be mature followers of Christ should be that of cultural analysis. Our incarnation as the followers of Christ requires that we be sensitive to the particular culture in which we operate.

At one point in my life I was asked to come and teach the pastors of the Protestant church in the tiny Kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. (Lesotho is a tiny kingdom that exist in the middle of the Republic of South Africa, and has a unique history. It is also the only nation on the continent that is composed of only one tribe: the Basotho.) I had to quickly learn the protocols and the expectations and the customs of the Basotho people. In public appearances I had to always extend my greetings to the king and to the tribal chief, etc. I had to learn how they socialized. I had to learn their thought processes, and their understanding and expectation of the church. In short, I had to become culturally discerning.

This is no less a necessity for those of us in this country who are serious in the effectiveness of our Christian presence. I bring this up, because all too much of the Christian community is still captive to the cultural expectations and patterns of generations now in their twilight. I, for instance, am a product of that generation formed by the Great Depression and World War II. That period was at the end of the remnants of a culture that was focused in localities, villages, lack of much mobility. People in Boston or New York could hardly conceive of those who lived in remote Appalachia. That culture is no more.

The church itself was the product of the era of Christendom that extended back a millennium and a half. Its patterns were formed mostly in Europe and Great Britain. Its institutional customs, its hymns, its form of worship pretty much came with the immigrants and were unquestioned.

But then, following the traumatic events of the Great Depression and World War II, there was a surge of optimism, and the older generation sought to see the church prosper in the newly acquired prosperity, and so planted denominational franchises in the expanding suburban communities—all patterned after what had always been assumed to be the form the church should express. Then they also produced the next generation: the Boomers. The Boomers are a schizophrenic generation, with one foot in the culture of their parents and one in the new era of technology and communication they were developing. They were both attached to tradition forms of the church, … and questioning at the same time. The Boomers produced another generation: Generation X. The Gen Xers were/are a tentative generation who were seeking to learn how to function in a culture more and more formed by media, technology, and the birth of computers. They also had a streak of pessimism, an indifference to former mores, … but a spiritual hunger that looked elsewhere than the church for answers.

Then came the huge Millennial Generation, and the emergence of the Silicon Valley revolution: Gates, Jobs, Page and Brin, … and the internet which produced a culture unimaginable by previous generations. This was followed by the still emerging iY/Generation Z phenomenon, captive to their iPhones and their laptops, who redefine culture dramatically. These are each studies in themselves. And the church that is seeking to cling to institutional patterns of the past, with its focus on elegant houses of worship and gifted clergy … is destined to ossify and fade into irrelevance. New cultures require new wineskins that are capable of communicating to cultural communities that are, … not that once were (to be continued).

BLOG 5/22/16. CHRISTIANS AND THE MURKY WATERS OF A POLITICAL SEASON

Sir Edmund Burke made the much quoted opinion in the 18^th century that: “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” That sounds commendable except that knowing exactly what to do is seldom all that simple. It is more often a murky choice between shades of grey. We like clear good guy or bad guy, black or white, acceptable or unacceptable choices, … and they almost never are.

Then we can attempt to escape any responsibility at all, and attempt to be passive. That also has often dire consequences. There is still all too fresh in our historical memories the story of Nazi Germany, which in a time following its defeat in World War I, and in a time of economic difficulties, and national malaise there arose out of nowhere a charismatic figure who became a trauma to the whole world with his mantra that he would make Germany again an international power. Thus emerged out of a Bavarian beer hall Adolph Hitler with his huge ego and a manic agenda that destroyed millions of lives. Among others whom Adolph Hitler mesmerized were all of the passive church members who succumbed to his challenge that to be a true Christian was to be a German Christian and support his Third Reich. To that end he seduced a vast majority of the Christian church to passively support, or offer no resistance, to what he was doing Those in the church who opposed him were dealt with severely.

One of those was Pastor Martin Niemoeller, who late in the game was imprisoned and became a voice of repentance for the church in the aftermath of that horrible period in which Hitler sought to exterminate his opposition. His lament was that the Nazi’s first came after the socialists, but since he wasn’t a socialist remained quiet. Then they came after the trade unionist, but since he wasn’t a trade unionist he remained silent as they were imprisoned in concentration camps. Then they came after the Jews, but since he wasn’t a Jew he didn’t lift his voice in protest. … But finally, he related, “they came for me,” and there was no one left to protest. He became a voice for justice only after it was too late. That may be an extreme example, but it didn’t seem so at the time. It was allowing a destructive and horribly unjust political unreality to go un-protested.

The Christian church was born into a period when it was very often the target of the hostile Roman Empire on the one hand, and of the established Jewish community on the other. It suffered untold numbers of martyrs, and frequently had to be very clandestine in its meetings. And yet … as it obeyed its calling to be God’s pilgrim people and to be the demonstration of his New Humanity living out the mandates of Jesus’ teachings, … it , like leaven,permeated the empire. The last book in the Bible reports that in the face of all of the fierce opposition of evil, God’s faithful people overcame “by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, even at the risk of their lives.” In many occasions in history “no man dared join himself to them unless he were one of them.”

And so it has ever been down through the centuries. The political dominions are always in the hands of imperfect people, those with massive egos, or agendas and platforms that do not seek the welfare of all citizens with justice. God people are citizens of two kingdoms, and this is never an easy relationship. They have often endured “fire and sword” and yet it is these who are God’s incarnation who quietly inhabit this political ethos as light and leaven, this humanly impossible calling, knowing that Jesus is the one who ultimately will prevail and destroy all that is of the darkness. We are no exceptions to this calling to be light in the darkness, and in the confusing political ethos and mixed motives of the politicians. Take heart. To do and say nothing is not an acceptable stance. “What does the Lord require of thee, O man, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8).

BLOG 5/18/16. THE TRUTH BE KNOWN … IT IS THE LITTLE PEOPLE, NOT SUPER-STARS WHO ARE THE MOST CRITICAL IN THE MISSION OF GOD.

In my recent (5/15/16) blog I heralded the commendable characteristics of generosity, caring for others, humility, and good humor that have been so refreshingly displayed in several larger-than-life sports, theatrical, and literary super-stars. I will stand by that. With so much posturing and vanity and negativity obvious in the political landscape, I’m thankful for those who really could boast, but choose the path of self-effacing modesty and caring for others.

But in God’s design to create all things new, and as an essential component of that New Creation, to bring into being a New Humanity that reflects his own design for the human community … God primarily uses little people, i.e., ‘nobodies’: “For consider your calling brothers and sisters, not many of you were powerful, not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (I Corinthians 1:26 ff.).

Yes, in this groaning creation, it has always been, and is, that vast unseen company of little people who are the sweet aroma of Christ to their neighbors in what are so often difficult, demeaning settings of their daily engagements in minimum-wage (or less) labor, in maintenance, in agriculture, in creating families, in surviving hostile principalities and powers, in the labyrinths of corporate life, in the professions of medicine, journalism, environmental stewardship, … and on and on. In the two millennia of the church’s history it is these who have used their homes and daily lives and modest resources … to be those who demonstrated/incarnated the good news of Jesus into the remote, obscure, back roads, and unseen places of ministry.

The real heroes and heroines are those who have embraced Jesus and his reconciling love, who frequently walk themselves through those expressions of new life and behavior that the Holy Spirit generates in them; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). They know that however modest their circumstances, they are called to be the radiant display of the divine nature, that they are endowed with the divine nature through Jesus Christ (who, remember, made himself of no reputation and took on the form of a servant). They know that by virtue of their baptism they are ordained to be part of Jesus’ missionary mandate. They most often are those whom the larger society considers ‘nobodies’ but they also know that they are to be those who are instruments of his peace … even at the risk of their lives.

Christ’s ‘gospel of the Kingdom’ has been, and is, permeating people groups globally through these little people. There are those gifted leaders, to be sure, … but the real leavening force of Christ’s New Humanity is at the grassroots. That community is transnational. It is reconciling. It seeks the welfare of the homeless, the migrant, the sick, the hungry, and the naked. It is redemptive and loving, and has a zeal for justice. It is not captive to any ethnic, political, social, or national entity in this calling.

Were the whole fine-print history of the church over the generations were known, it would be the obscure, non-glamorous men and women living out the authority Christ has given them as his holy nation and his royal priesthood that is most significant. Such are, in truth, the body of Christ in this real world. They / we are a motley crew, but our calling is from the Lord of All, and it is an awesome calling. Praise God for the great host of faithful little people.

[I would be grateful for your feedback, and for your recommending this blog to friends.]

BLOG 5/15/2016. POSITIVE CHARACTER IN A TOXIC CULTURE

In this present toxic political campaign, so replete with bombast, negative hyperbole about one’s opponents, and equally self-promoting hyperbole and dishonesty about oneself, … it is refreshing to have, also, in the news those remarkable persons who demonstrate those characteristics of humility, generosity, concern for others, and graciousness even while accomplishing great feats in their various fields.

I think, off-hand, of Lin-Manuel Miranda who both wrote and plays the lead in the record setting Broadway play Hamilton. Those we know him and work with him in the cast are unanimous in commenting on how generous he is and how solicitous of the welfare of all of his cast and staff. He is obviously a genius, but to watch him and to listen to the affection of all who associate with him is so refreshing. Or, there is the basketball super-star Steph Currie, who has, as has been said, redefined basketball by demolishing previous records and yet who has a very exemplary personal life and Christian faith, … all the while being very much a team player with notable humor, self-effacing and appreciated by his opponents, while in the glare of the inescapable engagements with the media, and also notable for his humor and love of family.

Others would bring up the example of Justin Spieth, who is a remarkably gifted golfer, who likewise has a heart filled with charity, and refuses to be arrogant about his skills, and is modest in his life amidst its professional setbacks and accomplishments. I keep in my own diary the descriptions of the late Irish poet and Nobel Award winner, Seamus Heaney, who when he died was every Irishman’s love, and whose character was described in four words by the Dublin newspaper: warmth, humor, caring, and courtesy.

Those of us who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ can joyously celebrate such persons and use them as models—not because they are/are not fellow believers, but because they display those characteristics that are what God’s New Humanity people are to incarnate. Just stop and think: when Jesus’s followers were jockeying for who would be the greatest in his kingdom, Jesus’ principle was that those in his kingdom who would be great would be those where were servants of all. He himself, is described by the apostle as one, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant—and all of God’s people are encouraged to have that mind in ourselves.

Yes, to be sure, we are citizens of this particular nation and have a responsibility to be engaged in its quest for the common welfare of all of its citizens. But this takes place in the reality of the political arena often inhabited by many with ‘anything but’ righteous agendas, so that we have to choose among imperfects. But more primarily we are citizens of God’s holy nation, his peculiar people and so are to be bonded with those from every nation and tongue and people as we, in that diversity, incarnate the divine nature. We are to be the veritable incarnations of the Sermon on the Mount and of the teachings of Christ and the apostles. We are those who wear righteousness/justice as a breastplate, and who are given the ministry of being reconcilers, since we ourselves have been reconciled to God. We wear on our feet as shoes the readiness of the gospel of peace. Yes, we are God’s New Humanity, and we walk to a different drummer as we are the display of God’s divine nature. What does that look like? It looks like you and like me living as aliens and exiles in a culture that is to a greater or lesser degree seeking autonomy from God, and so which puts us always in tension, in missionary confrontation, with our context.

So it’s helpful to have those persons who exemplify the character and qualities of the Kingdom of God (whether they know it or not) such as Miranda, Spieth, Currie, and Heaney. May God give you and me grace to be such models of God’s refreshing good purpose for humankind. …and if you find these Blogs helpful, recommend them to your friends.

BLOG 5/11/16. SILICON VALLEY CAN BE SELECTIVE, … THE CHURCH CANNOT

A brief blog on a passing thought.

Lazlo Bock has written a very thought-provoking and insightful book about the dynamics of a company such as Google. There are internal dynamics that operate within that operation that could be very helpful to the church in assessing its fulfilling of its purpose and calling. One thing is obvious is that no individual becomes anonymous in Google. They have contact and evaluations regularly with all those engaged with the company. They seek specific ways to be encouraging to all of their employees. They have ways of discerning poor performance, etc.

What sparked my thought was that at the very outset, Google can be very selective in employing its thousands, and in so doing have found ways of measuring their potential by many criteria. … But the church has only one criteria, and that is that one comes into Christ’s church through the Door, and that Door is Jesus Christ himself–his person, his teachings, work of reconciling us to God by his blood,and so into his new humanity. Such requires that the church includes within it those ‘Thomases’, replete with doubts. It requires that it receive broken and dysfunctional human-beings who have come to Christ for healing and newness. It requires that it receive he halt, the lame, and the blind of this society—those dysfunctional and often difficult persons whom Jesus came to seek and to save/heal.

The church cannot make well-ordered lives, of successful persons, or gifted persons to be the requirement for acceptance. Status churches are an oxymoron. People come to Christ with remnants of doubt, with ethical lapses, people who are “nobodies,” who are ragamuffins, little people of no consequence, broken, weak, “weary and heavy laden,” … “sinners poor and wretched,” –contra the pedigreed, powerful, rich, prominent, etc. (Matthew’s gospel includes a sermon on the congregation [Matthew 18] which is instructive.)

But, one of Google’s contributions to us is that they at least have a well thought-out system of performance rating, which means that they have to have sensitive people who are in touch knowingly with all of their employees. Who, I wonder (in so many churches), knows the individuals well-enough to rate them, and to discern how well they are entering into and living out their new life in Christ in the daily realities and details?

Contra Google, the church is a community of grace. To be sure it is complex and often ambiguous, but God’s little children should never be anonymous, or lost in the crowd, or un-accountable to anybody. Somehow the command to command to submit ourselves to one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to confess one’s sins to one another … means that we have to be close enough to one another that the transparency, or lack thereof, of our Christian lives becomes accountable to some shepherding figure within the community of God’s people.

Such is both demanding and enormously rewarding.

The church is a community of grace. It is that community where God puts his people back together again. It is a community of true communication. And the people it has to work with are people such as you and me. Reconciliation, forgiveness, mutual caring and sharing, warmth, hospitality, sensitivity, listen-ability, and self-denying love are its hallmarks. We are not Google, or a Silicon Valley enterprise, … we are God’s New Humanity.

BLOG 5/8/16. MY DEBT TO A CONTROVERSIAL PROPHET: DANIEL BERRIGAN

Daniel Berrigan was buried in New York this past Friday, and his death brought back to mind many poignant memories of his unlikely influence on one such as I. In the late sixties and seventies, in the midst of the huge national controversy over the Viet Nam War, Daniel and his brother Philip, two Jesuit priests, were often in the news, always in some confrontation with the dominant order of this nation which was supporting that war. They were often in prison. Daniel wrote eloquently about how totally immoral that war was. But the “my country right or wrong” constituency of the Christian community found the Berrigan brothers to be dangerous—as, to be sure, they were. But then, so are many of the teachings of Jesus.

My own career began in a very conservative portion of the Protestant church in the decade of the forties and fifties. Our part of the the Christian community was focused on that part of the message of Jesus Christ that had to do with personal redemption, the forgiveness of sins, our readiness for heaven—that sort of thing. Early in the 20^th century there had arisen that which was to be called: the social gospel. A pious German Baptist pastor, Walter Rauschenbusch, in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York had seen the wretched human conditions of poverty, homelessness, hunger and hopelessness among its inhabitants, mostly recent immigrants, … and how indifferent most of the prosperous Christian churches in New York were to those conditions right under their noses, and so began to eloquently call the church to its social responsibility as taught by Jesus. This became widely known, therefore, as the social gospel. The problem arose when Rauschenbusch’s disciples in following generations forgot the essence of the work of Jesus, and his teachings, and his cross … and focused only on the call to social ethics separated from the message of the root of those ethics in his reconciling work on the cross.

In my conservative section of the Christian church, it was generally considered that those who preached that social gospel had departed from he true faith and were to be avoided. And so I entered my public ministry as a teaching shepherd of the Christian church with that bias. The irony is that I was ordained in the summer of 1954 just after the Supreme Court’s Brown-vs-the Board of Education decision had been handed down, and for the next couple of decades was deeply engaged with university students in both their struggle with the civil rights era, and with the horrendous Viet Nam war, and with how the teachings of Jesus Christ, which I was expounding to them spoke to these complex but obviously unjust realities in their daily lives.

In my quest to find resources and company for my confrontation with these social and political realities, alas, I found almost none among my conservative colleagues in church, and was somewhat shunned and maligned by them when I insisted on seeking to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus and the Old Testament prophets. It was a lonely period. I must also say that those fellow leaders in the church who claimed to see the reality of these social problems were, what I would call: ‘armchair liberals,’ who were for the cause in the cloister of the like-minded but would hardly go public for fear of offending their congregations.

So it was out of that loneliness that, along the way, I found those such friends as John Perkins and Bill Pannell in the African-American community who encouraged and resourced me in he civil rights engagement, but it was Daniel and Philip Berrigan, whose writings and whose bold confrontational witness were such an encouragement to me. And it was in those days also that there was  emerging, in baby-form, Evangelicals for Social Action under Ron Sider, and the Sojourner’s Community under Jim Wallis. But even these were hardly affirmed by the majority of the church in which I operated, … but at least I knew that I was not alone. And so today I want to pay this tribute to my debt to Daniel Berrigan, and give praise to God for his bold confrontation of principalities and powers, and what an encouragement he has been to one such as I.

BLOG 5/4/16. CONVENIENT CHRISTIANITY, … OR “COME AND DIE!”

There is so much popular confusion, and so many misconceptions about the essence of Christianity in the popular mind, but more disturbingly also inside of too much of institutional Christianity. In a period of popular and political unrest in Germany almost a century ago (much like ours in the United States today), a charismatic leader emerged with a platform of restoring Germany to greatness, and swayed great crowds with the message. Part of his campaign strategy was to also co-opt the Christian church, so that to be a true ‘German Christian’ you would naturally support his agenda uncritically. The tragedy was that so much of the church did not really understand that the agenda of Jesus Christ and of the Kingdom of God which were totally at odds with the political agenda of that German leader. The small (and outlawed) witnessing church of Germany became an underground protest movement, and its primary leader, one Dietrich Bonhoeffer, became one of the clearest thinking Christian theologians of the last century. While he was emerging as an incredibly lucid and compelling teacher of the Christian faith, the majority of the German church was quite captive to the agenda of the popular political leader. They were what Bonhoeffer designated as religious Christianity, i.e., a counterfeit of true Christianity. (This, by the way, is all wonderfully spelled out in Bonhoefer’s classic The Cost of Discipleship).

Bonhoeffer was uncompromising in his insistence of how radical was the difference between the convenient and conformed popular counterfeit Christianity and the teachings of Christ. “When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die!” This message needs to be heralded today given the popular confusion over what the press designates as ‘evangelical Christians’ as a synonym for those politically wedded to a political agenda quite at odds with the radically transforming agenda of Jesus Christ and of the New Creation that he inaugurated.

And the problem behind the problem is careless church leadership that is either ignorant of the issue, or is intimidated by it, or whatever, … but the church has not taken seriously equipping each one of its baptized members into maturity in their conformity to Christ and to his mission. There is no such thing as passive membership. There is a clarion call to not be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of one’s mind in order to demonstrate what is the will of God. Jesus, himself, told those who would follow him that there was an absolutely all-consuming decision to be made: “If anyone would come after me, let him take up is cross (i.e., his/her willingness to die for me and my mission) and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

In the classical tradition of the Christian faith the very act of baptism is a deliberate act of will by which one forsakes all other lords and loyalties and embraces without reservation that Jesus is his/her one true Lord, and that a life of obedient discipleship to Jesus now becomes the center and focus of one’s life. It is a renunciation of the dominion of darkness in all of its forms of economic and political principalities and powers. This has always made God’s people to be both a radical presence and a healing source of true humanity, of hope, and love and justice—at the same time often being a disruptive presence.

The true Christian church is not a comfort-zone community, but rather is a colony of God’s transforming gospel of peace. It cost Bonhoeffer his life, as it has so many others. One dare not identify oneself as a Christian without pondering the enormous difference between human religions … and the demanding and transformational calling by Jesus into his New Humanity that operates on a whole different wave-length. And what is my source for such statements? Try the four gospels of the New Testament for starts. Then ponder the lives and witness of all of the prophets and martyrs over the centuries—and especially don’t overlook Bonhoeffer’s opposition to one of the most powerful political forces of the last century. It’s very instructive.

BLOG 5/1/2016. WHAT ON EARTH IS THE CHURCH? AN INQUIRER’S GUIDE

In addition to writing these Blogs, you need to know that I also have written a number of books focusing on the essence and mission of the church—or ecclesiology and missiology. This past week my publisher, Wipf and Stock, of Eugene, Oregon, announced the release of my latest project under the title: What On Earth Is the Church? An Inquirer’s Guide (www.wipfandstock.com). Of course, as an author that makes this past week quite fulfilling for me since the writing of this project has consumed me for the past fifteen months.

But you may be interested in knowing something of the genesis of this particular book. Having cut my teeth decades ago as a teaching pastor working with university students, I have from those days always been forced into thinking into the cultural context that has produced each generation. That, in turn, fixed in me a perennial prayer concern that whatever I was doing would somehow form, equip, and encourage the emerging generation. Since my early days several generations have emerged and each with its own particular characteristics. The reality of this moment is that now 50% of the world’s population is under 25 years of age (the Millennial, or iY Generation), and, not only that, it is also a generation that it fully into (formed by?) the post-Christian era.

That said, in my octogenarian years, being widowed and living alone, I find my socialization regularly at a popular coffee shop in the nearby suburban community, which is also near a major university, and is populated by young urban professionals who are very much a part of this emerging generation, probably a majority of them of the Millennial Generation. The coffee shop is what the New York Times once called: laptopopia, where all the folk bring their laptops (I counted 35 laptops one day) and make that coffee shop their study, or office. Others sit at counters with their iPhones dealing with clients or customers. Fascinating.

But once in a while, sitting next to one of these folk, we both look up at the same time and conversations occur. I frequently ask them what they’re working on, or what their profession is, and they usually are appreciative that someone recognizes them as a real person and is interested. And not infrequently they we respond by asking me what my career has been. Part of the stimulus of this book is that more than once, when I respond that my career was as a teaching-pastor in the church, they have responded: “Pardon me, but exactly what is the church?” Isn’t that fascinating? Here we are with an emerging generation many of whom have no connection with, or understanding about what the church is, that it is even a factor—this even though through the plate-glass windows next to the stand-up counters of the coffee shop you can see two major church buildings. The church is an unknown.

This blank spot kept coming up in different ways in many conversation, until I began to process what ultimately became this book. I thought to myself: If I had to explain, from Square # 1, to such an inquirer exactly what the church was and how it was a part of the good news of what Jesus came to be and do (also a category much misunderstood) what would I say? How would I avoid ‘churchy’ jargon? How would I make it reasonably compelling for them to pursue? How would I deal with many popular distortions? The church’s diversity?

So I plunged in, and sought to make it reasonably short (since Millennials are not ordinarily book-readers). When I was reading the proofs, I asked myself: Did I say too much? Or too little? And the answer to both of those is probably: Yes! In a couple of weeks I will have the publicity flyer from Wipf and Stock and will post it on this blog, but meanwhile I am sharing with you that it is now in publication … just in case you are interested Those wedded to the traditional church probably won’t understand it. They may have never asked themselves what is the church’s purpose in the design of Jesus Christ. But those seriously engaged as Christian missioners to such communities of Millennials and young urban professional will tune-in quickly.

BLOG 4/27/16. IS THE MINIMUM WAGE A THEOLOGICAL ISSUE?

Front and center in the media is so much of the political and ecclesiastical debate of the day are those having to do with sexual issues: What is legal? Whom to admit? Where to go to the bathroom? Etc. Those are certainly cultural issues that require both wisdom and grace. But the ethical issue that is much more on the front-burner of scriptures has to do with the just treatment of workers and of the helpless poor, i.e. economic ethics. The prophet Ezekiel even asserts that the real cause for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was because of the failure to aid the poor and the needy. Economic ethics always looms large in the teachings of the Old Testament law and prophets, and only a blind eye can miss the encounters of Jesus with persons of wealth.

The number of those of our fellow citizens who are economically poor because of an inadequate minimum wage is vastly larger than those whose sexual lifestyle might not suit our own. And the teachings of scriptures on the subject of economic justice, the just dealing with workers, our care for the helpless poor are vastly larger than those on sexual ethics. Why are we unwilling to challenge the injustices, and the ethical immorality of unconscionable acquisition of, and use of wealth?

A few years ago the gifted writer and activist Barbara Ehrenreich decided to actually try living on the official minimum wage, and so actually forsook her comfortable existence and entered the world of one who had to live on the minimum wage for a forty-hour week. She found it was almost impossible, and wrote Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Making It in America, which was a detailed account of her journey as a single person attempting to do basic living on the nation’s minimum wage (and became a best-selling book).

When corporations, agencies, and individuals maintain their profits and prosperity at the expense others poverty, something has a foul odor. I was jolted out of my own innocence on this when as a young pastor living on our denomination’s minimum wage, and in the church’s housing, I was barely making it, and my wife and I had four small children. There really was no room in our budget to hire any help for my wife, but she desperately needed some. So we found a black lady who serviced some of our more prosperous neighbors with part-time house-keeping and asked her about her availability, and what she would would charge us to to a half-day’s work. We were astounded to find that our financially secure neighbors were only paying her half of the nation’s stated minimum wage. That was partly an evidence of the racism that existed, but it was also indifference to the teachings of scripture about just wages that my neighbors professed to believe. Mrs. (Odessa) Flake became part of our family for our years in that community, and our neighbors ultimately got the message from us and raised her wages (and were not very happy with us). But it opened my eyes.

You may remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis to be a part of the garbage workers’ strike for fair wages when he was assassinated. My purpose here is to raise the issue of just wages, the existential issue of underpaid workers, and also the disparity of pay for women, and the economically discrimination due to ethnicity.

The other side of that issue is that God’s people are also to be excellent workers and to do good work for their wages, and for excellence in their relationships in the workplace. Economic sin has two sides: ethical justice in paying wages, and ethical justice in earning them. It’s a big issue in God’s plan for his New Humanity. So the issue of a $15.00 per hour minimum/livable wage is absolutely an issue of theological ethics. (The Occupy Wall Street protest, by the way, has good ethical foundations in scripture where the arrogance of the super-wealthy receives God’s just displeasure.) [If you find this Blog provocative, pass the word to your friends.